“Search me,” Hawes said, and went back to his desk, where he had spread a paper towel over the dropcloth, and where he had been drinking tea from a cardboard container and eating a cheese Danish before the telephone call interrupted him.
He was a huge man, six feet two inches tall and weighing two hundred pounds, some ten pounds more than was comfortable for him. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound healed. He had a straight unbroken nose, and a good mouth with a wide lower lip. Sipping his tea, munching his Danish, he looked like a burly Captain Ahab who had somehow been trapped in a civil service job. A gun butt protruded from the holster under his coat as he leaned over the paper towel and allowed the Danish crumbs to fall onto it. The gun was a big one, as befitted the size of the man, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, weighing 44 1/2 ounces, and capable of putting a hole the size of a baseball in your head if you happened to cross the path of Cotton Hawes on a night when the moon was full. He was biting into the Danish when the telephone rang again.
“87th Squad, Kling here.”
“The penalty for extortion,” the man said, “is imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years. Any other questions?”
“Listen …” Kling started.
“You listen,” the man said. “I want five thousand dollars in unmarked singles. I want them put into a metal lunch pail, and I want the pail taken to the third bench on the Clinton Street footpath into Grover Park. More later,” he said, and hung up.
“We’re going to play Fits and Starts, I see,” Kling said to Hawes.
“Yeah. Shall we call Pete?”
“Let’s wait till we have the whole picture,” Kling said, and sighed and tried to get back to typing up his report. The phone did not ring again until eleven-twenty. When he lifted the receiver, he recognized the man’s voice at once.
“To repeat,” the man said, “I want the lunch pail taken to the third bench on the Clinton Street footpath into Grover Park. If the bench is watched, if your man is not alone, the pail will not be picked up, and the commissioner will be killed.”
“You want five grand left on a park bench?” Kling asked.
“You’ve got it,” the man said, and hung up.
“You think that’s all of it?” Kling asked Hawes.
“I don’t know,” Hawes said. He looked up at the wall clock. “Let’s give him till midnight. If we don’t get another call by then, we’ll ring Pete.”
“Okay,” Kling said.
He began typing again. He typed hunched over the machine, using a six-finger system that was uniquely his own, typing rapidly and with a great many mistakes, overscoring or erasing as the whim struck him, detesting the paperwork that went into police work, wondering why anyone would want a metal pail left on a park bench where any passing stranger might pick it up, cursing the decrepit machine provided by the city, and then wondering how anyone could have the unmitigated gall to demand five thousand dollars not to commit a murder. He frowned as he worked, and because he was the youngest detective on the squad, with a face comparatively unravaged by the pressures of his chosen profession, the only wrinkle in evidence was the one caused by the frown, a deep cutting ridge across his smooth forehead. He was a blond man, six feet tall, with hazel eyes and an open countenance. He wore a yellow sleeveless pullover, and his brown sports jacket was draped over the back of his chair. The Colt .38 Detective’s Special he usually wore clipped to his belt was in its holster in the top drawer of his desk.
He took seven calls in the next half-hour, but none of them were from the man who had threatened to kill Cowper. He was finishing his report, a routine listing of the persons interrogated in a mugging on Ainsley Avenue, when the telephone rang again. He reached for the receiver automatically. Automatically, Hawes lifted the extension.
“Last call tonight,” the man said. “I want the money before noon tomorrow. There are more than one of us, so don’t attempt to arrest the man who picks it up or the commissioner will be killed. If the lunch pail is empty, or if it contains paper scraps or phony bills or marked bills, or if for any reason or by any circumstance the money is not on that bench before noon tomorrow, the plan to kill the commissioner will go into effect. If you have any questions, ask them now.”
“You don’t really expect us to hand you five thousand dollars on a silver platter, do you?”
“No, in a lunch pail,” the man said, and again Kling had the impression he was smiling.
“I’ll have to discuss this with the lieutenant,” Kling said.
“Yes, and he’ll doubtless have to discuss it with the parks commissioner,” the man said.
“Is there any way we can reach you?” Kling asked, taking a wild gamble, thinking the man might hastily and automatically reveal his home number or his address.
“You’ll have to speak louder,” the man said. “I’m a little hard of hearing.”
“I said is there any way …”
And the man hung up.
The bitch city can intimidate you sometimes by her size alone, but when she works in tandem with the weather she can make you wish you were dead. Cotton Hawes wished he was dead on that Tuesday, March 5. The temperature as recorded at the Grover Park Lake at seven A.M. that morning was twelve degrees above zero, and by nine A.M. — when he started onto the Clinton Street footpath — it had risen only two degrees to stand at a frigid fourteen above. A strong harsh wind was blowing off the River Harb to the north, racing untrammeled through the narrow north-south corridor leading directly to the path. His red hair whipped fitfully about his hatless head, the tails of his overcoat were flat against the backs of his legs. He was wearing gloves and carrying a black lunch pail in his left hand. The third button of his overcoat, waist high, was open, and the butt of his Magnum rested just behind the gaping flap, ready for a quick right-handed, spring-assisted draw.
The lunch pail was empty.
They had awakened Lieutenant Byrnes at five minutes to twelve the night before, and advised him of their subsequent conversations with the man they now referred to as The Screwball. The lieutenant had mumbled a series of grunts into the telephone and then said, “I’ll be right down,” and then asked what time it was. They told him it was almost midnight. He grunted again, and hung up. When he got to the squadroom, they filled him in more completely, and it was decided to call the parks commissioner to apprise him of the threat against his life, and to discuss any possible action with him. The parks commissioner looked at his bedside clock the moment the phone rang and immediately informed Lieutenant Byrnes that it was half past midnight, wasn’t this something that could wait until morning?
Byrnes cleared his throat and said, “Well, someone says he’s going to shoot you.”
The parks commissioner cleared his throat and said, “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
The situation was ridiculous.
The parks commissioner had never heard of a more ridiculous situation, why this man had to be an absolute maniac to assume anyone would pay him five thousand dollars on the strength of a few phone calls. Byrnes agreed that the situation was ridiculous, but that nonetheless a great many crimes in this city were committed daily by misguided or unprincipled people, some of whom were doubtless screwballs, but sanity was not a prerequisite for the successful perpetration of a criminal act.
The situation was unthinkable.
The parks commissioner had never heard of a more unthinkable situation, he couldn’t even understand why they were bothering him with what were obviously the rantings of some kind of lunatic. Why didn’t they simply forget the entire matter?