Chapter EIGHT
on the night that David Foster was killed, a careless mongrel searching for food in garbage cans had paused long enough to sully the sidewalk of the city. The dog had been careless, to be sure, and a human being had been just as careless, and there was a portion of a heelprint for the Lab boys to work over, solely because of this combined record of carelessness. The Lab boys turned to with something akin to distaste.
The heelprint was instantly photographed, not because the boys liked to play with cameras, but simply because they knew accidents frequently occurred in the making of a cast. The heelprint was placed on a black-stained cardboard scale, marked off in inches. The camera, supported above the print by a reversible tripod, the lens parallel to the print to avoid any false perspectives, clicked merrily away. Satisfied that the heelprint was now preserved for posterity—photographically, at least—the Lab boys turned to the less antiseptic task of making the cast.
One of the boys filled a rubber cup with half a pint of water. Then he spread plaster of Paris over the water, taking care not to stir it, allowing it to sink to the bottom of its own volition. He kept adding plaster of Paris until the water couldn't absorb anymore of it, until he'd dumped about ten ounces of it into the cup. Then he brought the cup to one of the other boys who was preparing the print to take the mixture.
Because the print was in a soft material, it was sprayed first with shellac and then with a thin coat of oil. The plaster of Paris mixture was stirred and then carefully applied to the prepared print. It was applied with a spoon in small portions. When the print was covered to a thickness of about one-third of an inch, the boys spread pieces of twine and sticks onto the plaster to reinforce it, taking care that the debris did not touch the bottom of the print and destroy its details. They then applied another coat of plaster to the print, and allowed the cast to harden. From time to time, they touched the plaster, feeling for warmth, knowing that warmth meant the cast was hardening.
Since there was only one print, and since it was not even a full print, and since it was impossible to get a Walking Picture from this single print, and since the formula
r ra rv raa 11 Ib
H -- BS --- --- ---- --- --- X,
l la Iv laa rl rb
a formula designed to give the complete picture of a man's walk in terms of step length, breadth of step, length of left foot, right foot, greatest width of left foot, right foot, wear on heel and sole—since the formula could not be applied to a single print, the Lab boys did all they could with what they had.
And they decided, after careful study, that the heel was badly worn on the outside edge, a peculiarity which told them the man belonging to that heel undoubtedly walked with a somewhat duck-like waddle. They also decided that the heel was not the original heel of the shoe, that it was a rubber heel which had been put on during a repair job, and that the third nail from the shank side of the heel, on the left, had been bent when applying the new heel.
And—quite coincidentally if the heelprint happened to have been left by the murderer—the heel bore the clearly stamped trade name "O'Sullivan," and everyone knows that O'Sullivan is America's Number One Heel.
The joke was an old one. The Lab boys hardly laughed at all.
The newspapers were not laughing very much, either.
The newspapers were taking this business of cop-killing quite seriously. Two morning tabloids, showing remarkable versatility in headlining the same incident, respectively reported the death of David Foster with the words SECOND COP SLAIN and KILLER SLAYS 2ND COP.
The afternoon tabloid, a newspaper hard-pressed to keep up with the circulation of the morning sheets, boldly announced KILLER ROAMS STREETS. And then, because this particular newspaper was vying for circulation, and because this particular newspaper made it a point to "expose" anything which happened to be in the public's eye at the moment—anything from Daniel Boone to long winter underwear, anything which gave them a free circulation ride on the then-popular bandwagon—their front page carried a red banner that day, and the red banner shouted "The Police Jungle—What Goes On In Our Precincts" and then in smaller white type against the red, "See Murray Schneider, p. 4."
And anyone who had the guts to wade through the first three pages of cheesecake and chest-thumping liberalism, discovered on page four that Murray Schneider blamed the deaths of Mike Reardon and David Foster upon "the graft-loaded corruptness of our filth-ridden Gestapo."
In the graft-loaded Squad Room of the corrupt 87th Precinct, two detectives named Steve Carella and Hank Bush stood behind a filth-ridden desk and pored over several cards their equally corrupt fellow-officers had dug from the Convictions File.
"Try this for size," Bush said.
"I'm listening," Carella said.
"Some punk gets pinched by Mike and Dave, right?"
"Right."
"The judge throws the book at him, and he gets room and board from the State for the next five or ten years. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Then he gets out. He's had a lot of time to mull this over, a lot of time to build up his original peeve into a big hate. The one thing in his mind is to get Mike and Dave. So he goes out for them. He gets Mike first, and then he tries to get Dave quick, before this hate of his cools down. Wham, he gets Dave, too."
"It reads good," Carella said.
"That's why I don't buy this Flannagan punk."
"Why not?"
'Take a look at the card. Burglary, possession of burglary tools, a rape away back in '47. Mike and Dave got him on the last burglary pinch. This was the first time he got convicted, and he drew ten, just got out last month on parole after doing five years."
"So."
"So I don't figure a guy with a big hate is going to be good enough to cut ten years to five. Besides, Flannagan never carried a gun all the while he was working. He was a gent."
"Guns are easy to come by?'
"Sure. But I don't figure him for our man."
"I'd like to check him out, anyway," Carella said.
"Okay, but I want to check this other guy out first Or-diz. Luis 'Dizzy' Ordiz. Take a look at the card."
Carella pulled the conviction card closer. The card was a 4x6 white rectangle, divided into printed rectangles of various sizes and shapes.
"A hophead," Carella said.
"Yeah. Figure the hate a hophead can build hi four years' time."
"He went the distance?"
"Got out the beginning of the month," Bush said. "Cold turkey all that time. This don't build brotherly love for the cops who made the nab."
"No, it doesn't."
"Figure this, too. Take a look at his record. He was picked up in '51 on a dis cond charge. This was before he got on the junk, allegedly. But he was carrying a .45. The gun had a busted hammer, but it was still a .45. Go back to '49. Again, dis cond, fighting in a bar. Had a .45 on him, no busted hammer this time. He got off lucky that time. Suspended sentence."
"Seems to favor .45's."
"Like the guy who killed Mike and Dave. What do you say?"
"I say we take a look. Where is he?"
Bush shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Danny Gimp was a man who'd had polio when he was a child. He was lucky in that it had not truly crippled him. He had come out of the disease with only a slight limp, and a nickname which would last him the rest of his life. His real surname was Nelson, but very few people knew that, and he was referred to in the neighborhood as Danny Gimp. Even his letters came addressed that way.
Danny was fifty-four years old, but it was impossible to judge his age from his face or his body. He was very small, small all over, his bones, his features, his eyes, his stature. He moved with the loose-hipped walk of an adolescent, and his voice was high and reedy, and his face bore hardly any wrinkles or other telltale signs of age.