Carella went down the long flight of steps first, Hawes immediately behind him. At the bottom of the stairway they moved through a beaded curtain and found themselves in a large room overhung with an old Air Force parachute painted in a wild psychedelic pattern. A counter on which rested a coffee urn and trays of sandwiches in Saran Wrap was just opposite the hanging beaded curtain. To the left and right of the counter were perhaps two dozen tables, all of them occupied. A waitress in a black leotard and black high-heeled patent-leather pumps was swiveling between and around the tables, taking orders.
There was a buzz of conversation in the room, hovering, captured in the folds of the brightly painted parachute. Behind the counter a man in a white apron was drawing a cup of coffee from the huge silver urn. Carella and Hawes walked over to him. Carella was almost six feet tall, and he weighed 180 pounds, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist and the hands of a street brawler. Hawes was six feet two inches tall, and he weighed 195 pounds bone-dry, and his hair was a fiery red with a white streak over the left temple where he had once been knifed while investigating a burglary. Both men looked like exactly what they were — fuzz.
“What’s the trouble?” the man behind the counter asked immediately.
“No trouble,” Carella said. “This your place?”
“Yeah. My name is Georgie Bright, and I already been visited, thanks. Twice.”
“Oh? Who visited you?”
“First time a cop named O’Brien, second time a cop named Parker. I already cleared up that whole thing that was going on downstairs.”
“What whole thing going on downstairs?”
“In the Men’s Room. Some kids were selling pot down there, it got to be a regular neighborhood supermarket. So I done what O’Brien suggested, I put a man down there outside the toilet door, and the rule now is only one person goes in there at a time. Parker came around to make sure I was keeping my part of the bargain. I don’t want no narcotics trouble here. Go down and take a look if you like. You’ll see I got a man watching the toilet.”
“Who’s watching the man watching the toilet?” Carella asked.
“That ain’t funny,” Georgie Bright said, looking offended.
“Know anybody named Harry?” Hawes asked.
“Harry who? I know a lot of Harrys.”
“Any of them here tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“Where?”
“There’s one over there near the bandstand. The big guy with the light hair.”
“Harry what?”
“Donatello.”
“Make the name?” Carella asked Hawes.
“No,” Hawes said.
“Neither do I.”
“Let’s talk to him.”
“You want a cup of coffee or something?” Georgie Bright asked.
“Yeah, why don’t you send some over to the table?” Hawes said, and followed Carella across the room to where Harry Donatello was sitting with another man. Donatello was wearing gray slacks, black shoes and socks, a white shirt open at the throat, and a double-breasted blue blazer. His long blondish hair was combed straight back from the forehead, revealing a sharply defined widow’s peak. He was easily as big as Hawes, and he sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him, talking to the man who sat opposite him. He did not look up as the detectives approached.
“Is your name Harry Donatello?” Carella asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“Police officers,” Carella said, and flashed his shield.
“I’m Harry Donatello. What’s the matter?”
“Mind if we sit down?” Hawes asked, and before Donatello could answer, both men sat, their backs to the empty bandstand and the exit door.
“Do you know a girl named Mercy Howell?” Carella asked.
“What about her?”
“Do you know her?”
“I know her. What’s the beef? She underage or something?”
“When did you see her last?”
The man with Donatello, who up to now had been silent, suddenly piped, “You don’t have to answer no questions without a lawyer, Harry. Tell them you want a lawyer.”
The detectives looked him over. He was small and thin, with black hair combed sideways to conceal a receding hairline. He was badly in need of a shave. He was wearing blue trousers and a striped shirt.
“This is a field investigation,” Hawes said drily, “and we can ask anything we damn please.”
“Town’s getting full of lawyers,” Carella said. “What’s your name, counselor?”
“Jerry Riggs. You going to drag me in this, whatever it is?”
“It’s a few friendly questions in the middle of the night,” Hawes said. “Anybody got any objections to that?”
“Getting so two guys can’t even sit and talk together without getting shook down,” Riggs said.
“You’ve got a rough life, all right,” Hawes said, and the girl in the black leotard brought their coffee to the table, and then hurried off to take another order. Donatello watched her jiggling as she swiveled across the room.
“So when’s the last time you saw the Howell girl?” Carella asked again.
“Wednesday night,” Donatello said.
“Did you see her tonight?”
“No.”
“Were you supposed to see her tonight?”
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“We’re full of ideas,” Hawes said.
“Yeah, I was supposed to meet her here ten minutes ago. Dumb broad is late, as usual.”
“What do you do for a living, Donatello?”
“I’m an importer. You want to see my business card?”
“What do you import?”
“Souvenir ashtrays.”
“How’d you get to know Mercy Howell?”
“I met her at a party in The Quarter. She got a little high, and she done her thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing she does in that show she’s in.”
“Which is what?”
“She done this dance where she takes off all her clothes.”
“How long have you been seeing her?”
“I met her a couple of months ago. I see her on and off, maybe once a week, something like that. This town is full of broads, you know — a guy don’t have to get himself involved in no relationship with no specific broad.”
“What was your relationship with this specific broad?”
“We have a few laughs together, that’s all. She’s a swinger, little Mercy,” Donatello said, and grinned at Riggs.
“Want to tell us where you were tonight between eleven and twelve?”
“Is this still a field investigation?” Riggs asked sarcastically.
“Nobody’s in custody yet,” Hawes said, “so let’s cut the legal jazz, okay? Tell us where you were, Donatello.”
“Right here,” Donatello said. “From ten o’clock till now.”
“I suppose somebody saw you here during that time.”
“A hundred people saw me.”
A crowd of angry black men and women were standing outside the shattered window of the storefront church. Two fire engines and an ambulance were parked at the curb. Kling pulled in behind the second engine, some ten feet away from the hydrant. It was almost 2:30 A.M. on a bitterly cold October night, but the crowd looked and sounded like a mob at an afternoon street-corner rally in the middle of August. Restless, noisy, abrasive, anticipative, they ignored the penetrating cold and concentrated instead on the burning issue of the hour — the fact that a person or persons unknown had thrown a bomb through the plate-glass window of the church.
The beat patrolman, a newly appointed cop who felt vaguely uneasy in this neighborhood even during his daytime shift, greeted Kling effusively, his pale white face bracketed by earmuffs, his gloved hands clinging desperately to his nightstick. The crowd parted to let Kling through. It did not help that he was the youngest man on the squad, with the callow look of a country bumpkin on his unlined face; it did not help that he was blonde and hatless; it did not help that he walked into the church with the confident youthful stride of a champion come to set things right. The crowd knew he was fuzz, and they knew he was Whitey, and they knew, too, that if this bombing had taken place on Hall Avenue crosstown and downtown, the Police Commissioner himself would have arrived behind a herald of official trumpets.