Kling was the one who spotted him.
He was sitting silhouetted in a western window, drinking a cup of coffee, the sun dipping lower on the horizon behind him. He looked a lot like John Travolta, but what would John Travolta be doing in a McDonald's in Calm's Point? For a moment, Kling felt like going over to the table and asking him if he was John Travolta, but then he noticed the missing pinkie on the hand holding the coffee cup, and any thought of getting an autograph went straight out of his mind. He walked swiftly toward the utensil counter, turned sideways so he could keep an eye on Blyden while at the same time shielding the walkie-talkie that came out of his pocket and up to his mouth.
"Got him," he said. "Third table on the western wall. Sitting alone, looks like he's finished his meal and is ready to go.”
There was a silence.
Then Meyer's voice said, "I see him.”
"What do we do?" Parker asked.
"um “
"Let him j p, Kling said.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Meyer moving off the line and heading toward the dining room. In that same instant, Blyden put down his coffee cup, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, picked up his tray, and started for where Kling was standing. Kling moved away at once. Blyden went to the trash container at the end of the counter, scraped his tray clean, stacked it, and again moved toward where Kling was now standing near the side exit door. "Moving out," Meyer said. "Side exit.”
“I'm here," Parker said.
Willis, hearing this out front, began moving toward the parking lot.
Blyden walked past Kling without looking at him. He shoved open the exit door, walked past Parker without looking at him. Meyer and Kling came out immediately behind him. Parker fell in on Blyden's left.
Willis, spotting their approach, took up position ahead of him. The classic three points of a moving-target triangle. If he'd come here in a car, they'd have to close in before he entered it. Either that, or lose him. Plenty of background out here, too, but not as closely packed as it was inside. No one dared use a walkie-talkie again, not just yet. One false move and he'd bolt.
Somebody made that false move.
They would later debate who it might have been. Maybe the entire setup was the false move, the short guy in a jacket moving some ten feet ahead of Blyden, the guy needing a shave and also wearing a jacket moving parallel to Blyden some twelve feet on his left, the two guys in jackets behind Blyden, maybe all at once there were too many guys in jackets on a hot summer night, and maybe all at once Blyden smelled cop.
Whatever it was, he suddenly darted to his right, the open side of the surveillance triangle, and began racing up the avenue Willis was closest to him when he made the break He started after him at once, and shouted the initial warning mandated by the guidelines, "Police! Stop!”
but Blyden kept running because he knew he was looking at a positive burglary and two possible felony murders "Police! Stop!" The second warning. But a different voice this time. Parker's voice Coming up fast on Willis's left, his legs longer than Willis's, pounding past him and closing on Blyden, who would have thought it? Andy Parker? None of the detectives dared open fire. There was simply too damn much background on this hot August night with everybody out for a walk, the sky purple now as Blyden fled westward into it. Moreover, they were literally gun shy, having been lambasted in the press and on television, having been severely chastised by a publicly defensive but privately furious Chief of Detectives. So they followed Blyden down the avenue into the setting sun, four of them in a Keystone Kops opera, echoing one after the other, "Police! Stop!," the choruses overlapping, the crowds parting, but not one of them firing the weapon that would have decisively stopped Blyden in his tracks.
It was Parker Andy Parker? who finally took a headlong dive at Blyden, throwing himself in the air like a Ioottali nero, wmcn he'd never been, grabbing for Blyden's churning legs and pounding feet, making a tackle he'd never before made in his lifetime, and bringing Blyden and himself crashing to the sidewalk in a sprawling tangle of arms and legs. The other detectives came thundering up, nobody yelling "Stop" anymore because Parker ... Andy Parker? had finally stopped Blyden.
So all there was to say now was "Police.”
Which Meyer said.
And breathlessly added, "You're under arrest." And began reciting the Miranda rigmarole.
"You have the right to remain silent, you have the right ...”
And so on.
This was America.
Nellie Brand wondered why it was that every time she was on homicide call there was a murder in the Eighty-seventh Precinct. Her home phone rang at seven-thirty P.M. She and her husband were just about to leave the apartment. She was wearing a pretty white summer frock with a yoke neck and pale blue French-heeled pumps. Simple silver and turquoise pendant on a peach-colored silk cord. Sand-colored hair swept back and caught in a ponytail. Jeff Canard was the cop calling from the D.A."s Office downtown "Hello, Jeff," she said.
"Nellie," he said, "they caught The Cookie Boy.”
Nellie didn't know who The Cookie Boy was. She figured he was a sex offender who lured kiddies into his car. Canard told her who he was. She said she was all dressed up to go out to dinner with her husband. “
Canard said he was sorry, but this was August, and to s half the world was on vacation. She told him her star husband would divorce her.
divi "That's okay," Canard said, "I'll marry you." She "At went into the bedroom to change her clothes.
Les When she got uptown at eight-fifteen, she was wearing simple tailored slacks, a tailored shirt, and a sai fawn-colored linen jacket. Her hair was still in a ponytail. She was expecting Carella, but the desk sergeant told her he'd already gone home. He told her su, The Gang of Four had made the arrest here. She didn't know who The Gang of Four was, either, the Working for the District Attorney's Office did not leave much time for watching television. She liked Carella, and was a little disappointed that he hadn't been the arresting officer.
The Gang of Four was waiting upstairs. Meyer and Kling, she knew. Kling introduced her to the other two detectives, Willis and Parker, and then told her Blyden's lawyer hadn't yet arrived, so they had a little time to talk here. Blyden was The Cookie Boy. Full name was Leslie Talbot Blyden.
Gulf War veteran, lost his pinkie in an accident overseas. Admitted to the burglary, but said he had nothing to do with killing two people.
"We're looking at a Burg Two and two counts of felony murder," Meyer said.
"He looks like John Travolta," Parker said.
"Does anyone know Marilyn Monroe's real name?”
Kling asked.
"Is this agame show't- 1Nellie sma.
"Who's in charge here?" a voice asked. They turned to see a rather corpulent man in a pinstriped suit standing just outside the slatted wooden railing that divided the squad room from the second-floor corridor. "Attorney Marvin Meltzman," he said, "representing Leslie Blyden. Where's my client?”
"Assistant District Attorney Nellie Brand," Nellie said, and walked to the railing and extended her hand. Meltzman took it. "Sorry I'm late," he said.
'"Just got here myself," she said. "Where's the suspect?," she asked Meyer.
"Interrogation Room down the hall," he said, and then to Meltzman, "I'll take you there, counselor." The two of them walked off.
"Who questioned him?" Nellie asked Kling.