"You'd ordinarily handle it?" Frick asked.
"Boy, that's a laugh. I've got to kill myself to get you to take a legitimate squeal. Why bother me with this, Pete? Why don't you just give it to the desk sergeant?" Frick paused.
"How the hell'd you get a hold of it anyway?
Who's on the desk?"
"Will you take care of it, John?"
"Are you kidding me, Pete? What is this?"
Frick began laughing.
"Your joke for today, huh?
Okay, I bit. How's everything upstairs?"
Byrnes hesitated for a moment, phrasing his next words carefully. Then, watching Virginia, he sai~f, "Not so hot."
"What's the matter? Headaches?"
"Plenty. Why don't you go up and see for yourself?"
"Up? Up where?"
Come on, Byrnes thought. Think! For just one lousy minute of your life, think!
"It's part of your job, isn't it?" Byrnes said.
"What's part of my job? Hey, what's the matter with you, Pete? You flipped or something?"
"Well, I think you ought to find out," Byrnes said.
"Find out what? Holy Jesus, you have flipped."
"I'll be expecting you to do that then," Byrnes said, aware of a frown starting on Virginia's forehead.
"Do what?"
"Go up there to check on it. Thanks a lot, John."
"You know, I don't understand a damn thing you're.~.." and Byrnes hung up.
"All settled?" Virginia asked.
She stared at Byrnes thoughtfully.
"There are extensions on all these phones, aren't there?" she said.
"Yes," Byrnes said.
"Fine. I'll be listening to any other call that goes in or out of this place."
CHAPTER 4
The problem, Byrnes thought, is that we cannot
communicate with each other. This, surely, has been the problem of the human race since the beginning of time, but it's especially aggravated right here and right now. I'm in my own squad room with three capable detectives, and we can't sit down together to discuss the ways and means of getting that gun and that nitro-if the nitro exists-away from that menacing little bitch. Four intelligent men with a nut cruncher of a problem, and we have no way of talking it out. Not with her sitting there.
Not with that .38 in her fist.
And ~so, lacking communication, I also lack command. In effect, Virginia Dodge now commands the 87th Squad.
She'll continue to command it until one of two things happens:
a) We disarm her.
b) Steve Carella arrives and she shoots him.
There is, of course, a third possibility.
There is the possibility that she'll get rattled and put a bullet into that purse with its alleged jar of nitro, and there we go. No more waiting for next week's chapter. It'll all be over in a mighty big way. They will probably hear the blast away the hell over in the 88th. The blast might even knock the commissioner out of bed. Assuming, of course, that there really is a jar of nitro in that bag. Unfortunately, we cannot proceed as if there isn't. We have to assume, along with Virginia Dodge, that the jar of nitro is as real as the .38. In which case, another interesting possibility presents itself. We can't fool around here. We can't go playing grab-ass because nitroglycerin is very potent stuff which can explode on the slightest provocation. Where the hell did she get a jar of nitro? From her safecracker husband's hope chest?
But even safe crackers-except in Scandinavia-don't use it on blow jobs any more. It's too damn unpredictable. I've known safe crackers who, when using nitro, carried it in a hot-water bottle.
So there she sits with a jar full of the stuff in her purse.
I wonder if she rode the subway with it in her purse? Brynes thought, and he smiled grimly.
Okay, the nitro is real. We play it as if it's real. It's the only way we can play it.
And this means no sudden moves, no grabs for the purse.
So what do we do?
Wait for Carella? And what time will he be back? What time is it now?
He looked up at the wall clock. 5:07.
Still broad daylight outside-well, maybe a hint of dusk-but still a golden afternoon, really. Does anyone out there know we're playing footsie with a bottle of soup?
No one, Byrnes thought. Not even meat headed Captain Frick. How do you set a fire under that man, how do you get the wall of bricks to fall on his head?
How the hell do we get out of this mess?
I wonder it she smokes, Byrnes thought.
If she smokes ... Now wait a minute ... now, let's work this out sensibly. Let's say she smokes. Okay. Okay, we've got that much.
Now.." if we can get her to put the purse on the desk, get it off her lap. That shouldn't be too hard ... Where's the purse now? ... Still in her lap ... Virginia Dodge's goddamn lap dog, a bottle of nitro .. Okay, let's say I can get her to put the purse on the desk, out of the way ... Then let's say I offer her a cigarette and then start to light it for her.
If I drop the lighted match in her lap, she'll jump a mile.
And when she jumps, I'll hit her.
I'm not worried about that .38-well, I'm worried, who the hell wants to get shot but I'm not really worried about it so long as that soup is out of the way. I don't want to have a scuffle anywhere near that explosive. I've faced guns before, but intro is another kiling one uun want them blotting me off the wall.
I wonder if she smokes.
"How have you been, Virginia?" Byrnes asked.
"You can cut it right now, Lieutenant."
"Cut what?"
"The sweet talk. I didn't come here to listen to any of your crap. I heard enough of that last time I was here."
"That was a long time ago, Virginia."
"Five years, three months, and seventeen days. That's how long ago it was."
"We don't make the laws, Virginia," Byrnes said gently.
"We only enforce them.
And when a person breaks ..
"I don't want a lecture. My husband is dead. Steve Carella sent him up. That's good enough for me."
"Steve only arrested him. A jury tried him, and a judge sentenced him."
"But Carella..
"Virginia, you're forgetting something, aren't you?"
"What?"
"Your husband blinded a man."
"That was an accident."
"Your husband fired a gun at a man during a holdup and deprived that man of his eyesight. And he didn't fire the gun by accident."
"He fired because the man began yelling cop. What would you have done?"
"I wouldn't have been holding up a gas station to begin with."