He went up the steps. There were seven of them.
There were two doors. He tried the knob of the one on the left, but the door did not open. He reached for the knob directly to the right of the first one. The door opened on a very large room with grilled windows running its entire length on the left-hand side and with a large raised wooden counter that looked something like a judge's bench in front of the windows. A hand-lettered sign on top of the counter, bold black on white, read ALL VISITORS MUST STOP AT DESK. There were two uniformed policemen behind the muster desk. One of them was wearing sergeant's stripes. The other was sitting behind a switchboard and was wearing earphones. A railing had been constructed some four feet in front of the desk, with lead-pipe stanchions bolted to the floor, and with a horizontal piece of pipe forming the crossbar. An electric clock was on the wall opposite the desk. The time was twelve-fifteen. Two wooden benches flanked a hissing radiator on that same wall, and a small white sign, smudged, and lettered in black with the words DETECTIVE DIVISION, pointed to an iron-runged staircase that led to the upper story. The walls were painted a pale green and looked dirty.
Two men were standing in front of the muster desk, both of them handcuffed to the pipe railing. A patrolman stood to the side of the two men as the desk sergeant asked them questions. Roger walked to one of the benches opposite the muster desk, and sat.
"When did you pick them up?" the sergeant asked the patrolman.
"As they were coming out, Sarge."
"Where was that?"
"1120 Ainsley."
"What's that? Near Twelfth? Thirteenth?"
"Thirteenth."
"What's the name of the place?"
"Abigail Frocks," the patrolman said.
"She does?" the sergeant asked, and all the men including the two in handcuffs burst out laughing. Roger didn't see what was so funny.
"It's a dress loft up there on Ainsley," the patrolman said. "I think they use it for storing stuff. Anyway, there's hardly ever anybody up there, except when they're making deliveries or pickups."
"Just a loft, huh?"
"Yeah."
"They got a store, too?"
"Yeah."
"In this precinct?"
"Yeah, it's just a little place on Culver."
"Abigail Frocks, huh?" the sergeant said, and all the men giggled again. "Okay, boys, what were you doing coming out of Abigail Frocks?" the sergeant said, and again everyone giggled.
"We was after the pigeons," one of the men said, suppressing his laughter and becoming serious all at once. He seemed to be about twenty-five years old, badly in need of a haircut, and wearing a gray suede jacket with gray ribbing at the cuffs and at the waist.
"What's your name, fella?" the sergeant asked.
"Mancuso. Edward Mancuso."
"All right, now what's this about the pigeons, Eddie?"
"We don't have to tell him nothing," the second man said. He was about the same age as Mancuso, with the same shaggy haircut, and wearing a dark-brown overcoat. His trousers seemed too long for him. "They got us in here for no reason at all. We can sue them for false arrest, in fact."
"What's your name?" the sergeant asked.
"Frank Di Paolo, you know what false arrest is?"
"Yeah, we know what false arrest is. What were you doing coming down the steps from that dress loft?"
"I want a lawyer," Di Paolo said.
"For what? We haven't even booked you yet."
"You got nothing to book us on"
"I found jimmy marks on the loft door," the patrolman said drily.
"That must've been from some other time it got knocked over," Di Paolo said. "You find any burglar's tools on us?"
"He knows all about burglar's tools," the sergeant said, and then turned to Di Paolo and said, "You know all about burglar's tools, don't you?"
"If you live in this crumby neighborhood, you learn all about everything," Di Paolo said.
"Also about how to break and enter a dress loft and steal some clothes? Do you learn all about that?"
"We was after the pigeons," Mancuso said.
"What pigeons?"
"Our pigeons."
"In the dress loft, huh?"
"No, on the roof."
"You keep pigeons on the roof of that building?"
"No, we keep pigeons on the roof of 2335 Twelfth Street, that's where."
"What's that got to do with the dress loft?"
"Nothing," Mancuso said.
"We ain't got nothing to do with the loft, either," Di Paolo said. "We were only in that building because our pigeons were on the roof."
"We only went up to get them," Mancuso said.
"What's the matter?" the sergeant asked. "Don't your pigeons know how to fly?"
The patrolman laughed.
"They've got pigeons that don't know how to fly," the sergeant said, encouraged, and the patrolman laughed again.
"They know how to fly, but sometimes they don't come back when you call them. So from where we were on our roof, we could see these two birds sitting on the roof of the building where the dress loft was in"
"Oh, you knew there was a dress loft in that building, huh?"
"No, we didn't know until we got over there. When we was climbing to the roof, we saw the sign for the dress loft."
"And decided to jimmy open the door while you were at it."
"What jimmy? We were going up the roof for our pigeons."
"Where are they?"
"Where's what?"
"The birds."
"They flew away when we got up there."
"I thought they didn't know how to fly."
"Who said that? You said that, not us."
A man came down the iron-runged steps leading into the muster room, and the men at the desk turned momentarily to look at him. He was well-dressed, clean-shaven, with eyes that slanted to give his face an almost Oriental look. He wore no hat, and his hair was a sandy brown, cut close to his head, but not in a crew cut. He was reading something, some form or other, as he crossed the room, and then he folded the form and put it in his inside jacket pocket and stopped at the desk. The sergeant looked up.
"Dave, I'm going out to lunch," the man said. "Anybody calls for me, I'll be back around one-thirty, two o'clock."
"Right, Steve," the sergeant said. "You recognize these two?" he asked.
The man called Steve looked at Mancuso and Di Paolo and then shook his head. "No," he said. "Who are they?"
"A couple of pigeon fanciers." The sergeant looked at the patrolman, and the patrolman laughed. "You don't make them, huh?"
"No."
The sergeant looked at Di Paolo and said, "You see this fellow here? He's one of the meanest cops in this precinct. Am I right, Steve?"
The man, who was obviously a plainclothes detective, smiled and said, "Sure, sure."
"I'm only telling you this because if you're smart you'll give your story to me, and not wait until he gets you upstairs. He's got a rubber hose up there, right, Steve?"
"Two rubber hoses," the detective answered. "And a lead pipe."
"There ain't no story to give," Mancuso said.
"We was going up after the pigeons, and"
"See you, Dave," the detective said.
"that's the truth. We spotted them on the roof from where we was flying the pigeons"
"So long, Steve. In February?"
"What do you mean?"
"Flying your pigeons on a day you could freeze your ass off?"
"What's that got to do with . . ."
Roger stood up suddenly. The detective had gone through the door, and was heading down the front steps of the building. The desk sergeant looked up as Roger reached the door, and then as though noticing him for the first time asked, "Did you want something, mister?"