No cup of coffee, that settles that. The coffee in itself probably doesn't have too many calories, but the sugar certainly does.
No coffee. I'll walk around and window shop that's excellent for the figure.
Or maybe I should go up to the squad now?
Maybe Steve'll be back earlier than he thought. I could surprise him. Yes, maybe I'll do that. Go up to the squad now and wait for him. I'll think about it.
He might like a surprise waiting when he walks into the squad room
The man walked with his head bent.
There was no breeze blowing, not a strong breeze in any case, only a mild caressing murmur of air, but he walked with his head bent because he never really felt quite like himself in this city, never really felt quite like a person. And so he ducked his head, pulling it into his shoulders as far as he could, almost like a turtle defending himself against any blow which might come.
The man was nicely dressed. He wore a tweed suit and a neat blue tie fastened to his white shirt with a tiny gold pin. He wore dark blue socks, and black loafers, and he knew he looked like any other man walking the streets, and yet he did not feel as if he were a real person here, an individual, a person who could walk with his head up and his shoulders back-the city had done that to him, the city had given him this feeling of not belonging, not being. And so he walked with his hands in his pockets and his head bent.
And because his head was bent, he happened to notice the blue sheet of paper lying on the sidewalk. And because he was in no particular hurry to get anywhere in this city of hostility which made him feel unimportant, he picked up the paper and studied it with curious brown eyes.
The blue sheet of paper was the original Detective Division Report which Meyer Meyer had typed and floated down from the second-story window of the precinct house.
The two carbon copies of the D.D. form were nowhere in sight on the sidewalk.
There was only the one blue sheet, and the man picked it up and studied it, and then walked to one of the big trash baskets sitting under the lamppost on the corner of the block. The trash basket read KEEP
OUR CITY CLEAN.
The man crumpled Meyer Meyer's message and hurled it into the trash basket.
Then he put his hands into his pockets, ducked his head, and walked on his way in this hostile city.
The man's name was Juan Alverra, and he had arrived from Puerto Rico three months ago. No one in the city had attempted to teach Juan the English language which Meyer had used to compose his note.
Juan Alverra read and wrote only Spanish.
CHAPTER 10
Cotton Hawes unobtrusively closed first one window and then the other. Outside, the sultry night pressed its blackness against the windowpanes, filtered by the triangular mesh beyond the glass. The six hanging light globes, operated by a single switch inside the railing near the coat rack, feebly defended the room against the onslaught of darkness. A determined silence had settled over the squad room the silence of waiting.
Angelica Gomez sat with her crossed legs and high-heeled pumps, jiggling one foot impatiently. Her coat was draped over the back of her chair. Her peasant blouse swooped low over her confessedly unrestricted bosom. She sat with her own thoughts-thoughts perhaps of the man whose throat she'd cut, a man named Kassim whose friends had behind them the power of the vendetta; thoughts perhaps of the uncompromising arm of the law;
thoughts perhaps of an uncomplicated island in the Caribbean where the sun had always shone and where she had helped cut sugar cane in season and drunk deeply of rum at night with the guitars going in the velvet black hills.
At the desk beside her sat Virginia Dodge, solemnly dressed in black-black dress and black overcoat and black shoes and black leather tote bag. Thin white legs and a thin white face. The blue-black steel of a revolver in her fist. The colorless oil of a high explosive on the desk before her.
Nervously, the fingers of her left hand rapped a tattoo on the desk top. Her eyes, so brown that they toe appeared black, darted about the room, wild birds searching for a roost, settling always on the corridor beyond the railing, waiting for the apearance of a detective who had sent her man to prison.
Behind her, on the floor near the huge green bulk of the metal filing cabinets, lay at Miscolo, police clerk. Unconscious, gasping for breath, his Chest and head on fire, Miscolo did not know he might be dying. Miscolo knew nothing. In the void of his unconsciousness, he dreamt he was a boy again. He dreamt that it was Hallowe'en, dreamt that he was carrying bundles of paper to be tossed into the huge bonfire set in the middle of the city street. He dreamt he was happy.
Cotton Hawes wondered if the room were getting any hotter.
It was difficult to tell. He was sweating profusely, but he was a big man, and he always did sweat when the pressure mounted. He had not sweated much when he was a detective assigned to the 30th Squad. The 30th was a posh precinct and he had not, in all truth, relished his transfer to the 87th. The transfer had come through in June, and now it was October-four paltry months-and here he was a part of the 87th, working with the men here, knowing the men here, deeply concerned about the welfare of a single solitary man named Steve Carella.
Perhaps the lieutenant was right.
Misunderstanding Byrnes' thinking, Hawes assumed he was willing to let Carella die for the safety of the other men on the squad, and perhaps Byrnes' reasoning was right.
Perhaps it was perfectly moral and perfectly logical to allow Carella to walk into the blazing end of a .38. But Hawes did not believe so.
The 87th, he'd discovered, was a strange precinct and a strange squad. He had approached the transfer with great hostility, rejecting the concept of slums and slum dwellers, rejecting the men of the squad, chalking them off as disillusioned cynics even before he'd met them. He had learned otherwise, and very quickly.
He had learned that the people of the slums were only people. They enjoyed the same pleasures he did, and they suffered a great many misfortunes he would never have to suffer. They wanted love, and they wanted respect,
and the walls of a tenement (lid not necessarily become the cage of an animal. He had learned this from the men of the squad. He had seen each and every one of them in action. He knew that they held no rose-colored-glasses view of the precinct or its crime rate. He knew they could knock a thief flat on his back without batting an eyelid and without any great amount of soul-searching afterwards. Crime was crime, and no cop of the 87th tried to rationalize the evil of crime.
But he was surprised to learn that the men of the 87th clung to another concept which in no way limited the effectiveness of their law enforcement; that concept was fairness. And within this concept, they knew when to get tough and when to understand, They did not automatically equate slum dwellers with criminals. A thief was a thief-but a person was a person. Fairness. And he had found the concept a contradictory one for men confronted daily with the facts of violence and sudden death.
And now, in the squad room where fairness was an unspoken credo, the men had been presented with a situation1 which was totally unfair, totally illogical, and yet it sat there. Immovable, illogical, unfair, it sat there and waited.