Killer's Choice

'What?'

'Yeah.'

'How many of those did you work on?'

'None.'

'Oh,' Carella said, smiling.

'Did you prove your point?'

'Which point?'

'That I don't know my ass from my elbow?'

'I wasn't trying to prove anything.'

'I don't know homicide, that's true. It was always my impression that killings were left to Homicide North or Homicide South.'

'If we gave all the 87th's homicides to the Homicide Squads, they wouldn't have enough dicks to go around.'

'Okay. I don't know homicide. Are we agreed?'

'We're agreed. What else don't you know?'

'I don't know the 87th Precinct.'

'Granted.'

'I don't know you, either.'

'Stephen Louis Carella, Detective 2nd Grade, thirty-four years old, been a cop since I was twenty-one. I'm married to a girl named Teddy who's a deaf mute. We're very happy. I like my job. I've worked on forty-one homicide cases, and just about every other type of crime being committed in this city. I made two big mistakes in my lifetime. I jumped on a hand grenade in Italy, and I got myself shot last Christmas. I survived both times, and I won't make the same mistakes again. End of deposition.'

'That's it, huh?'

'In a nutshell.'

'You're a college man, aren't you?'

'Two and a half years. Chaucer finally threw me.'

'You were medically discharged from the Army, right?'

'Yes. How'd…'

'If you've been a cop since you're twenty-one, and if you went to college for two and a half years, that doesn't leave much time for the Army. What'd you do? Graduate high school at seventeen, go to school for a year, get drafted, get wounded, get medically discharged, and then go back to school for a year and a half before you joined the force?'

'You're reading it right down the line,' Carella said, somewhat amazed.

'Okay. I guess I now know Detective Steve Carella.'

'I guess so. How about Detective Cotton Hawes?'

'There's not much to know,' Hawes said.

'Tell it.'

'It bores me.'

'The way Pete Kronig in the lab bored you.'

'In a way, yes.'

'I'll give you some advice, Hawes.'

'What's that?'

'I'm not the best cop in the world,' Carella said. 'I just try to do my job, that's all. But I've worked on homicides, and I know my job is made a whole lot easier because of Sam Grossman and his technicians. Sometimes the lab isn't worth a damn. Sometimes a case is all legwork and stool-pigeons and personal mathematics. But there are times when the lab does everything but go out to make the pinch. When a lab cop talks, I listen. I listen hard.'

'You're saying?' Hawes asked.

'I'm saying you've got ears, too,' Carella said. 'Shall we go get some coffee?'

CHAPTER FIVE

495 Hall Avenue was a sumptuous building with a wide entrance lobby and fourteen elevators. It rested in the heart of the publishing section, flanked on either side by the high-class department stores which lined the street.

Kling felt as if he'd died and gone to heaven.

It was a distinct pleasure to get away from the 87th. There was a nice feeling to midtown Isola, a feeling he had almost forgotten. He could remember Christmas shopping with Claire, his fiancée, but this was June and Christmas seemed as if it had happened in 1776. It was good to be back on Hall Avenue, good to see men carrying brief-cases and going about clean jobs, good to see girls in tailored suits or skirts and blouses, clean-scrubbed girls hurrying to their offices, or hurrying to do their shopping. This was the nicest part of the city, he felt, the part that really felt like it, that really made you think you were in a giant metropolis.

The weather, too, was ideal. Summer had not yet begun its onslaught. Spring had not yet left the air. It was mild and balmy, a day for taking off your shoes and walking barefoot on wet grass. He regretted that he had a job to do. But his regret did not spread to include Hall Avenue.

He entered 495 and walked to the directory. Theodore Boone was listed as being in Room 1804. Kling looked at his watch. It was 2.50. He nodded slightly and walked toward the elevator banks. He wore grey slacks and a grey-striped seersucker jacket. He did not at all look like a cop. With his blond hair and wide shoulders, with his long purposeful strides, he looked like a Scandinavian in America to study investment banking.

The elevator banks were divided into several sections. He passed the Local 1-12 section, and then stopped at the Express 14-22 section, amused at the idea of a modern office building in the heart of a modern city superstitiously eliminating the thirteenth floor.

He stepped into the closest car and said, 'Eighteen, please,' The elevator operator stabbed a button.

'How's it outside?' the elevator operator asked.

'Nice.'

'I never get out. I'm trapped in this building. From eight in the morning 'til five at night, I'm a prisoner. I never see the light. I have my lunch right here in the building. I bring my lunch, I eat it downstairs in a little room we got. I'm a mole.'

Kling nodded sympathetically.

'This is a city of moles, you know that? I know people, they get off the subway, they walk underground to their office. At least I get the two-block walk to this building every morning and every night. Them, they get nothing. They walk underground to the office 'cause it's quicker, rain or shine. They eat their lunch in the arcade, underground. They go back to the subway underground when they leave the office at night. They never see the city. Me, I see two blocks of the city. How is it outside?'

'Nice,' Kling said.

The starter snapped his fingers. The elevator operator closed the doors. 'Eighteen, right?' he asked.

'Right,' Kling said.

'Up and down all day long,' the elevator operator said. 'Up and down, but I'm never going any place. I'm a vertical mole. I'd rather be a subway conductor. Then at least I'd be a horizontal mole. And they come up for air. When they reach Calm's Point or Riverhead, the train comes up outa the ground. Me, up and down, up and down, all day long. It's nice outside, huh?'

'Very nice,' Kling said.

'It seemed nice on the way to work this morning. You got an outside job, mister?'

'Part of the time,' Kling said.

'Listen, even a part-time outside job is good,' the elevator operator said. 'I think I ought to get an outside job. Even maybe a street cleaner's job. That's outside.'

'It gets cold in the winter,' Kling said.

'Yeah?' This was a new idea to the elevator operator. 'Yeah, that's right, ain't it? Say, that's right.' The car slid to a stop. 'Eighteen,' he said.

The door slid open. 'Thank you,' Kling said as he walked out of the car.

'Don't mention it,' the elevator operator said. The door slid shut. Behind the door, the mechanism whirred and faded down the shaft. Kling smiled and looked for Room 1804. He followed the doors down the hallway and stopped before a set of double doors with frosted glass. He opened one of the doors and stepped into a small luxuriously furnished waiting-room. A receptionist sat behind a desk at one end of the room. Kling walked directly to her.

'Mr Boone,' he said.

'Who shall I say is calling, please?'

'Detective Kling.'

The girl looked up suddenly. 'Are you a detective?'

'Yes,' Kling said.

'Just a moment, sir.'

She kept watching him as she pushed a toggle on her intercom.

'Yes?' a voice asked. Kling recognized it as Boone's.

'Detective Kling to see you, sir,' the girl said, her eyes on Kling.

'Send him right in,' Boone said. 'I'm in the studio.'

'Yes, sir.' She flipped up her toggle and said, 'Would you go in please, Mr Kling? Through that door and then down the corridor. It's the last door.'