“Caroline used to love it,” Brown said. “She never wanted to sit inside, winter or summer. We always stood here on the bow, even if it meant freezing our asses off.”
“The poor man’s ocean cruise,” Carella said.
“Moonlight and sea breezes...”
“Concertina playing...”
“Tugboats honking...”
“Sounds like a Warner Brothers movie.”
“I sometimes thought it was.” Brown said wistfully. “There were lots of places I couldn’t go in this city, Steve, either because I couldn’t afford them or because it was made plain to me I wasn’t wanted in them. On the Bethtown ferry, though, I could be the hero of the movie. I could take my girl out on the bow and we could feel the wind on our faces, and I could kiss her like a colored Humphrey Bogart. I love this goddamn ferry, I really do.”
“Yeah,” Carella said, and nodded.
“Sure,” Robert Coombs said, “I used to have a piece of that picture.”
“Used to have?” Brown asked.
“Used to have, correct,” Coombs said, and spat on the sidewalk in front of the hot-dog stand. He was a man of about sixty, with a weather-beaten face, spikes of yellow-white hair sticking up out of his skull like withered stalks of corn, an altogether grizzled look about him as he sat on one of the stools in front of his establishment (Bob’s Roadside) and talked to the two detectives. The hot-dog stand was on Route 24, off the beaten path; it was unlikely that a dozen automobiles passed the place on any given day, in either direction.
“Where’d you get it?” Carella asked.
“Petey Ryan give it to me before the holdup,” Coombs said. His eyes were a pale blue, fringed with blond lashes, overhung with blond-white brows. His teeth were the color of his brows. He spat again on the sidewalk. Brown wondered what it was like to eat food prepared at Bob’s Roadside.
“Why’d Ryan give it to you?” Carella asked.
“We was good friends,” Coombs said.
“Tell us all about it,” Brown suggested.
“What for? I already told you I ain’t got the picture no more.”
“Where is it now?”
“Christ knows,” Coombs said, and shrugged, and spat.
“How long before the holdup?” Carella said.
“How long what?”
“When he gave you the picture.”
“Three days.”
“Petey came to you...”
“Correct.”
“And handed you a piece of a snapshot...”
“Correct.”
“And said what?”
“Said I should hang onto it till after the hit.”
“And then what?”
“Then he’d come collect it from me.”
“Did he say why?”
“In case he got busted.”
“He didn’t want to have the picture on him if the police caught him, is that it?”
“Correct.”
“What did you think about all that?” Brown asked.
“What should I think? A good friend asks me to do a favor, I do it. What was there to think?”
“Did you have any idea what the picture meant?”
“Sure.”
“What did it mean?”
“It showed where they was ditching the loot. You think I’m a dope?”
“Did Petey say how many pieces there were in the complete photograph?”
“Nope.”
“Just told you to hang onto this little piece of it until he came to collect it?”
“Correct.”
“Okay, where’s the piece now?”
“I threw it in the garbage,” Coombs said.
“Why?”
“Petey got killed. Cinch he wasn’t going to come back for the piece, so I threwn it out.”
“Even though you knew it was part of a bigger picture? A picture that showed where they were dropping the NSLA loot?”
“Correct.”
“When did you throw it out?”
“Day after the hit. Soon as I read in the paper that Petey got killed.”
“You were in a pretty big hurry to get rid of it, huh?”
“A pretty big hurry, correct.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to get hooked into the holdup. I figured if the picture was hot, I didn’t want no part of it.”
“But you accepted it from Petey to begin with, didn’t you?”
“Correct.”
“Even though you knew it showed where they planned to hide the proceeds of a robbery.”
“I only guessed that. I didn’t know for sure.”
“When did you find out for sure?”
“Well, I still don’t know for sure.”
“But you became sufficiently alarmed after the robbery to throw away the scrap Petey had given you.”
“Correct.”
“This was six years ago, right, Mr. Coombs?”
“Correct.”
“You threw it in the garbage.”
“In the garbage, correct.”
“Where was the garbage?”
“Where was the what?”
“The garbage.”
“In the back.”
“Out back there?”
“Correct.”
“You want to come back there with us, and show us where you threw it in the garbage?”
“Sure,” Coombs said, and got off the stool, and spat, and then led them around to the rear side of the hot-dog stand. “Right there,” he said, pointing. “In one of them garbage cans.”
“You carried that little tiny piece of the photograph out back here, and you lifted the lid of the garbage can and dropped it in, is that right?”
“Correct.”
“Show us how you did it,” Brown said.
Coombs looked at him curiously. Then he shrugged, pinched an imaginary photograph segment between his thumb and forefinger, carried it to the nearest garbage can, lifted the lid, deposited the non-existent scrap inside the can, covered the can, turned to the cops, and said, “Like that. That’s how I done it.”
“You’re lying,” Brown said flatly.
Neither of the two detectives, of course, knew whether or not Coombs was lying, nor had their little charade with the garbage can proved a damn thing. But public relations has a lot to do with criminal investigation and detection. There is not a red-blooded citizen of the US of A who does not know through constant exposure to television programs and motion pictures that cops are always asking trick questions and doing trick things to trap a person in a lie. Coombs had seen his share of movies and television shows, and he knew now, knew with heart-stopping, faceblanching, teeth-jarring certainty that he had done something wrong when he walked over to the garbage can, and lifted the lid, and dropped in the imaginary photo scrap, something that had instantly told these two shrewd investigators that he was lying.
“Lying?” he said. “Me? Lying?” He tried to spit again, but his throat muscles wouldn’t respond, and he almost choked, and then began coughing violently.
“You want to come along with us?” Carella said, sternly and pompously, and in his most legal-sounding voice.
“Wh... wh... wh...?” Coombs said, and coughed again, his face turning purple, and then put one hand flat against the rear wall of the hot-dog stand, head bent, and leaned against it, and tried to catch his breath and recover his wits. They had him cold, he knew, but he couldn’t figure what the charge would be, and he tried to buy time now while the big black cop reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs with vicious-looking sawtooth edges — oh Jesus, Coombs thought, I am busted. But for what?
“What’s the crime,” he said, “the charge,” he said, “what’s the, what’s the, what did I do?”
“You know what you did, Mr. Coombs,” Carella said coldly. “You destroyed evidence of a crime.”