'Well, maybe this one. But not really.'
'The idea in this is simplicity,' Angelo said to Hawes. 'We're not trying for a portrait that'll hang in the Louvre. We want a likeness that people can identify. Shade and shadow tend to confuse. I try to stick to line, blacks and whites, a feeling of the person rather than a photographic representation. So if you'll try to remember the characteristics that struck you most about this man, I'll try to get them on paper—simply. We'll refine as we go along. This is just the beginning; we'll draw and we'll draw until we get something that looks like him. Now—how about those noses? Which one is the closest to his?'
'This I guess,' the kid said. Hawes agreed.
'Okay,' Angelo began sketching. He produced another card. 'Eyes?'
'He had blue eyes, I remember that,' Hawes said. 'Sort of slanted, downward.'
'Yeah,' the kid said. Angelo kept nodding and drawing.
The first sketch looked like this:
'That don't look like him at all,' the kid said when Angelo showed it.
'All right,' Angelo said mildly. 'Tell me what's wrong with it.'
'It just don't look like the guy, that's all.'
'Well, where is it wrong?'
'I don't know,' the kid said, shrugging.
'He's too young, for one thing,' Hawes said. 'The guy we saw is an older man. Late thirties, maybe early forties.'
'Okay. Start with the top of the picture and work your way down. What's wrong with it?'
'He's got too much hair,' the kid said.
'Yes,' Hawes agreed. 'Or maybe too much head.'
Angelo began erasing. 'That better?'
'Yeah, but he was going bald a little,' the kid said, 'like up here. On the forehead.'
Angelo erased two sharp wings into the black hair on the man's forehead. 'What else?'
'His eyebrows were thicker,' Hawes said.
'What else?'
'His nose was shorter,' the kid said.
'Or maybe the space between his nose and his mouth was longer, either one,' Hawes said. 'But what you've got doesn't look right.'
'Good, good,' Angelo said. 'Go on.'
'His eyes looked sleepier.'
'More slanted?'
'No. Heavier lids.'
They watched as Angelo sketched. Putting an overlay of tracing paper onto the erased drawing, he began to move his pencil rapidly, nodding to himself as he worked, his tongue peeking from one corner of his mouth. At last he looked up.
'This any better?' he asked.
He showed them the second drawing:
'It still don't look like him,' Frankie said.
'What's wrong?' Angelo asked.
'He's still too young,' Hawes said.
'Also, he looks like a devil. His hair is too sharp,' Frankie said.
'The hairline, you mean?'
'Yeah. It looks like he got horns. That's wrong.'
'Go ahead.'
'The nose is about the right length now,' Hawes said, 'but it's still not the right shape. He had more of a—this middle thing, whatever you call it, the thing between the nostrils.'
'The tip of his nose? Longer?'
'Yes.'
'How are the eyes?' Angelo asked. 'Better?'
'The eyes look right,' Frankie said. 'Don't touch the eyes. Don't them eyes look right?'
'Yes,' Hawes said. 'The mouth is wrong.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'It's too small. He had a wide mouth.'
'And thin,' the kid said. 'Thin lips.'
'Is the cleft chin right?' Angelo asked.
'Yeah, the chin looks okay. But that hair…' Angelo was beginning to fill in the hairline with his pencil. 'That's better, yeah, that's better.'
'A widow's peak?' Angelo asked. 'Like this?'
'Not as pronounced,' Hawes said. 'He had very close-cropped hair, receding above the temples, but not as pronounced as that. Yes, now you're getting it, that's closer.'
'The mouth longer and thinner, right?' Angelo asked, and his pencil moved furiously. Working with a new sheet of tracing paper, he began to transpose the results of the collaboration. It was very hot at the desk where he worked. His sweating fist stuck to the flimsy tracing paper.
The third version of the suspect looked like this:
There was a fourth version, and a fifth version, and a tenth version, and a twelfth version, and still Angelo worked at the desk in the sunlight. Hawes and the boy kept correcting him, often changing their minds after they had seen their verbal description take shape on paper. Angelo was a skilled technician who transposed their every word into simple line.
Their reversals of opinion did not seem to disturb him.Patiently he listened. And patiently he corrected.
'It's getting worse,' the kid said. 'It don't look at all like him now. It looked better in the beginning.'
'Change the nose,' Hawes said. 'It had a hook in it. Right in the middle. As if it had been broken.'
'More space between the nose and the mouth.'
'Shaggier eyebrows. Heavier.'
'Lines under the eyes.'
'Lines coming from his nose.'
'Older. Make him older.'
'Make his mouth a little crooked.'
'No, straighter.'
'Better, better.'
Angelo worked. There was sweat clinging to his forehead. They tried turning on the fan once, but it blew Angelo's papers all over the floor. From time to time, cops from all over the precinct drifted over to where Angelo was working at the desk. They stopped behind him, looking over his shoulder.
'That's pretty good,' one of them said, never having seen the suspect in question.
The floor was covered with sheets of rumpled tracing paper now. Still Hawes and Frankie fired their impressions of the man they had seen, and Angelo faithfully tried to capture those impressions on paper. And suddenly, after they had lost count of the number of drawings, Hawes said, 'Hold it! That's it.'
'That's him,' the kid said. 'That's the guy!'
'Don't change a line,' Hawes said. 'You've got him! That's the man.' The kid grinned from ear to ear and then shook hands with Hawes.
Angelo sighed a heavy sigh of relief.
This was the picture they felt resembled the man they had both seen:
Angelo began packing his case.
'That's very neat,' the kid said.
'That's my signature,' Angelo replied. 'Neat. Forget this Angelo stuff. My real name is Neat, with a capital N.' He grinned. He seemed very happy it was all over.
'How soon can we get copies?' Hawes asked.
'How soon do you need them?'
Hawes looked at his watch. 'It's 3.15,' he said. 'This guy is going to kill a woman at eight tonight.'
Angelo nodded seriously, the cop in him momentarily replacing the artist. 'Send a man with me,' he said. 'I'll run them off the minute I get back.'
At 4.05 p.m., armed with pictures the ink on which was still wet, Carella and Hawes left the precinct simultaneously. Carella headed for a bar on North Thirteenth, a bar named The Pub, the bar to which Samalson had taken his girl on the preceding Sunday. Carella went there solely to show the picture to the bartender in the hope he might identify the suspect.
Hawes went directly around the corner from the precinct, to Seventh Street, where Frankie Annuci had said he had met the man who'd given him the letter. It was Hawes's plan to start with Seventh and work his way east, heading uptown, going as far as Thirty-third if he had to. He would then double back, working north and south. If the man lived anywhere in the neighbourhood, Hawes meant to find him. In the meantime, a copy of the picture had been sent to the l.B. in the hope of getting a make from the photos in the files in case none of the investigating cops struck paydirt.
At 4.10 p.m. Meyer and Willis left the squad-room with their copies of the picture. Starting with Sixth Street, their plan was to work westward from the precinct, going down past First and into the named streets below First until they hit Lady Astor's street.