The Deaf Man finished his floor plan of the bank. He folded the deposit slip as though he had been making money calculations in the secret manner of bank depositors everywhere, put it into his pocket, and then took another slip from the rack. He quickly filled it out, and walked to the nearest teller’s cage.
“Good morning, sir,” the teller said, and smiled pleasantly.
“Good morning,” the Deaf Man said, and returned the smile. Bored, he watched as the teller went about the business of recording the deposit. There were alarm buttons on the floor behind each of the tellers’ cages and scattered elsewhere throughout the bank. They did not overly concern him.
The Deaf Man thought it fitting that a police detective would help him rob the bank.
He also thought it fitting that the police detective who would lend his assistance was Steve Carella.
Things had a way of interlocking neatly if one bided his time and played his cards according to the laws of permutation and combination.
“Here you are, sir,” the teller said, and handed back the passbook. The Deaf Man perfunctorily checked the entry, nodded, slipped the book back into its plastic carrying case, and walked toward the revolving doors. He nodded at the security guard, who politely nodded back, and then he went into the street outside.
The bank was a mile outside the 87th Precinct territory, not far from three large factories on the River Harb. McCormick Container Corp. employed 6,347 people. Meredith Mints, Inc. employed 1,512. Holt Brothers, Inc. employed 4,048 for a combined work force of close to twelve thousand and a combined payroll of almost $2 million a week. These weekly salaries were paid by check, with roughly 40 percent of the personnel electing to have the checks mailed directly to banks of their own choice. Of the remaining 60 percent, half took their checks home to cash in supermarkets, whiskey stores, department stores, and/or banks in their own neighborhoods. But some 30 percent of the combined work force of the three plants cashed their checks each and every week at the bank the Deaf Man had just visited. Which meant that every Friday the bank expected to cash checks totaling approximately $600,000. In order to meet this anticipated weekly drain, the bank supplemented its own cash reserve with money shipped from its main branch. This money, somewhere in the vicinity of $500,000, depending on what cash the bank already had on hand, was delivered by armored truck at nine-fifteen each Friday morning. There were three armed guards on the truck. One guard stayed behind the wheel while the other two, revolvers drawn, went into the bank carrying two sacks of cash. The manager accompanied them into the vault, where they deposited the money, and then left the bank, revolvers now holstered. At eleven-thirty the cash was distributed to the tellers in anticipation of the lunch-hour rush of factory workers seeking to cash their salary checks.
The Deaf Man had no intention of intercepting the truck on its way from the main branch bank. Nor did he wish to hit any one of the individual tellers’ cages. No, he wanted to get that money while it was still neatly stacked in the vault. And whereas his own plan was far less dangerous than sticking up an armored truck, he nonetheless felt it to be more audacious. In fact, he considered it innovative to the point of genius, and was certain it would go off without a hitch. Ah yes, he thought, the bank will be robbed, the bank will be robbed, and his step quickened, and he breathed deeply of the heady spring air.
The tennis sneaker found in the abandoned building was in shabby condition, a size-twelve gunboat that had seen better days when it was worn on someone’s left foot. The sole was worn almost through in one spot, and the canvas top had an enormous hole near the area of the big toe. Even the laces were weary, having been knotted together after breaking in two spots. The brand name was well-known, which excluded the possibility of the sneaker having been purchased (as part of a pair, naturally) in any exotic boutique. The only thing of possible interest about this left-footed sneaker, in fact, was a brown stain on the tip of it, near the small toe. This was identified by the Police Laboratory as microcrystalline wax, a synthetic the color and consistency of beeswax, but much less expensive. A thin metallic dust adhered to the wax; it was identified as bronze. Carella was not particularly overjoyed by what the lab delivered. Nor was he thrilled by the report from the Identification Section, which had been unable to find any fingerprints, palm prints, or footprints that matched the dead man’s. Armed with a somewhat unflattering photograph (it had been taken while the man lay stone-cold dead on a slab at the morgue), Carella went back to the Harrison Street neighborhood that afternoon and tried to find someone who had known him.
The medical examiner had estimated the man’s age as somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. In terms of police investigation, this was awkward. He could have been running with a younger crowd of teenagers, or an older crowd of young adults, depending on his emotional maturity. Carella decided to try a sampling of each, and his first stop was a teenage coffee house called Space, which had over the years run the gamut from kosher delicatessen to Puerto Rican bodega to store-front church to its present status. In contradiction to its name, Space was a ten-by-twelve room with a huge silver espresso machine on a counter at its far end. Like a futuristic idol, the machine intimidated the room and seemed to dwarf its patrons. All of the patrons were young. The girls were wearing blue jeans and long hair. The boys were bearded. In terms of police investigation, this was awkward. It meant they could be (a) hippies, (b) college students, (c) anarchists, (d) prophets, (e) all of the foregoing. To many police officers, of course, long hair or a beard (or both) automatically meant that any person daring to look like that was guilty of (a) possession of marijuana, (b) intent to sell heroin, (c) violation of the Sullivan Act, (d) fornication with livestock, (e) corrupting the morals of a minor, (f) conspiracy, (g) treason, (h) all of the foregoing. Carella wished he had a nickel for every clean-shaven, crew-cutted kid he had arrested for murdering his own brother. On the other hand, he was a police officer and he knew that the moment he showed his badge in this place, these long-haired youngsters would automatically assume he was guilty of (a) fascism, (b) brutality, (c) drinking beer and belching, (d) fornication with livestock, (e) harassment, (f) all of the foregoing. Some days, it was very difficult to earn a living.
The cop smell seeped into the room almost before the door closed behind him. The kids looked at him, and he looked back at them, and he knew that if he asked them what date it was, they would answer in chorus, “The thirty-fifth of December.” He chose the table closest to the door, pulling out a chair and sitting between a boy with long blond hair and a dark boy with a straggly beard. The girl opposite him had long brown hair, frightened brown eyes, and the face of an angel.
“Yes?” the blond boy asked.
“I’m a police officer,” Carella said, and showed his shield. The boys glanced at it without interest. The girl brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and turned her head away. “I’m trying to identify a man who was murdered in this area.”
“When?” the boy with the beard asked.
“Sunday night. April eighteenth.”
“Where?” the blond boy asked.
“In an abandoned tenement on Harrison.”
“What’d you say your name was?” the blond boy asked.
“Detective Steve Carella.”
The girl moved her chair back, and rose suddenly, as though anxious to get away from the table. Carella put his hand on her arm and said, “What’s your name, miss?”
“Mary Margaret,” she said. She did not sit again. She moved her arm, freeing it from Carella’s hand, and then turned to go.