"Big man," Juana repeated, but she shut up.
Zip looked out over the crowd. "They're coming back," he said. "The bulls are coming back."
11
The plan was a simple one, but Lieutenant Byrnes had discovered in his years of police work that most feasible and practical plans were simple.
The plan was one of deception, a plan which would utilize every man's innate susceptibility to the expected, and then knock him flat by suddenly producing the unexpected. The plan, of course, undertook to presume what Miranda would consider "expected". But it seemed a reasonable guess to suppose that Miranda expected the cops to get him out of that apartment, and that one certain way to accomplish this was to bust into the joint. If a rush were made across the street, a rush which carried all the earmarks of a frontal attack, Miranda would brace himself for an assault on his front door. Actually, the assault would come from elsewhere. Such was the unoriginal and simple nature of the deception. Broken down into simple terms, the police plan could have been stated thusly: Hit him where he ain't.
"Have you got it straight?" Byrnes asked his men.
"I want the fire escape," Parker said.
"We'll see about that."
"I want to be the one who gets him," Parker said. "I want to blow his head off."
"Sometimes, Parker, you turn my goddamn stomach," Byrnes said.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Well, what do you want to say something like that for?"
"Skip it," Byrnes said. "Do you understand the plan?"
"I understand it," Parker said sullenly.
"Frankie?"
"I've got it."
"Steve?"
"Run through it once more, would you, Pete?"
"Okay, this is it in a nutshell. I'm going to tell Miranda we're coming in after him. A pile of us'll rush the stoop when the shooting starts. Miranda I hope will think we're going to force the apartment door from the hallway. But one of us will break away from the rest and flatten himself against the side of the building."
"Me," Parker said.
"Whoever it is, he'll pull down the ladder of the fire escape and climb up to the first floor. He may be able to get Miranda from the window. Otherwise, he'll have to enter the apartment and have it out there. It's tricky, but I'd rather risk one man than a dozen."
"Let's get started," Parker said.
"In a minute. I need a volunteer for that fire escape job."
"You've already got your volunteer, Lieutenant," Parker said.
"You've got two" Hernandez said.
"Keep out of this, Frankie. This is my baby."
"Why should it be?"
"Because I want it."
"I'll decide who..." Byrnes started.
"Lieutenant, you'd be crazy to send up a guy who's..." Parker cut himself short.
"Who's what?" Hemandez asked.
"Okay! Who's got a personal stake in this, okay?"
"Personal? What the hell are you talking about?"
"You grew up with Miranda!"
"What difference does that make? We want him out of that apartment, don't we?"
"We want him dead," Parker said. "He's a punk. He should have been killed a long time ago. He's the biggest stink in these streets."
"What the hell do you know about the stink here, Parker? Did you..."
"I seen plenty of it. I been in this precinct for..."
"Did you grow up with the stink in your nostrils, day and night? Did you live with it every day of your life?"
"You're telling me about this precinct? I know it like my own mother. There's nothing you can tell me about..."
"No, nothing! To you, this precinct is one big violation, one big crime being committed every hour on the hour. And you're scared of the place! You're scared out of your wits!"
"Scared? Who the hell..."
"Well to me it's people! And they deserve a goddamn break! They want to get that son of a bitch as much as you do!"
"They want him to hold off the whole damn city!" Parker shouted. "You know that! You know it's true!"
"They only want a Puerto Rican to win for a change. Okay, if I go up there, a Puerto Rican wins."
"If I go up..."
"If you go up, you purge yourself. You think killing him is gonna help you, Parker? You think that's the answer?"
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"If you go up there, you accomplish nothing. Not for yourself, and not for the city. You'll be making Miranda a hero. I'm telling you that right now. You kill him, and this neighborhood has a martyr. The kids'll be playing Pepe Miranda and the Cops for the next six weeks."
"The hell with the kids. You think I'm interested in... ?"
"Who's gonna show them, Parker? You want a hundred more Mirandas ten years from now?"
"You gonna show them?" Parker asked sarcastically.
"If I kill him," Hernandez said flatly, "the neighborhood gets nothing but a dead punk."
"You've got him, Frankie," Byrnes said.
"Thank you."
"Get to the car, Parker. Radio the men on the next block to open up. I want to draw his fire away from these windows."
"You're sending Hernandez up there?"
"Yes. Any complaints?"
"Damn right I've got a"
"Take it to the mayor!" Byrnes snapped, and he turned his back and walked toward the patrolman who was holding the megaphone. Parker stared after him, spat viciously into the gutter, and then walked around to the other side of the squad car.
A reporter behind the barricade caught at Hernandez's sleeve. "Hey, are you in charge here?" he asked.
"No."
"Well, who is? Can't we get some men in there for pictures?"
"The police department'll send out pictures," Hernandez said. He pushed past the reporter and walked to the luncheonette. "Look at these kids," he said to Luis. "Sucking violence from the same tits Miranda used." He shook his head. "He's waiting up there to die, Luis, you know that? He's waiting up there for us to kill him."
Luis nodded.
"And you know something? I think he wants to die. I think he wants to end it, once and for all."
The two girls who came around the avenue and stopped at the mouth of the street were apparently more interested in beginning something than in ending it. They were both tall brunettes. One was wearing a tight, bright-red silk dress. The other wore the identical dress in yellow. The dresses were designed to exhibit and reveal; they were incapable of keeping a secret. Every nuance of flesh beneath the skintight silk, every subtle hint of muscle or bone, every flowing curve, every dimple, every pucker, insistently shrieked its existence to the most casual observer. The girls were not the bashful type. They moved with a fluidity of breast, hip, thigh and leg that aided the dresses in their task of nonconcealment. They were, in fact, so much the Hollywood concept of what a whore should look like that at first glance they seemed to be imitations. If there was one quality which every prostitute in the 87th Precinct shared, it was the ability to look like anything but a street walker. In most instances, the precinct whore was the best-dressed girl on the streets. Her careful grooming, more than any other attribute, was usually the one clue to her occupation.
These two were either new at the trade, or else they'd canceled their subscriptions to Vogue magazine. In any case, they walked directly to the barricade and stopped there. The girl in the red dress touched the arm of the nearest patrolman who turned, ready to start yelling, and then looked as if a movie queen had wandered into his bedroom by mistake.
"Excuse me, officer," she said in a tiny little voice, "but can't we get through here? We work right across the street."
"Where?" the patrolman asked.
"At La Gallina."
"What the hell do you do there?"
The girl in the red dress seemed at a loss for words. She turned to her companion. The other girl smiled at the patrolman sweetly and said, "We're in ... ah ... public relations."