Our father who art in Heaven ... And he fired.
And now Brown was firing, too.
And Sonny Cole fell to the ground.
He called Lieutenant Byrnes at home and told him that he and Brown had shot and killed a man named Samson Wilbur Cole who'd been waiting outside his house with a Desert Eagle in his hand. He asked the lieutenant to advise the local precinct, and also Homicide and Internal Affairs, and he told the lieutenant that he and Brown would be waiting here at the scene for them.
The shots had awakened everyone in the neighborhood and they were all out in the street in robes and pajamas when first a patrol car and then several unmarked cars arrived. This was now around seven in the morning. Some twenty minutes later, two more marked police cars arrived at the Carella house and spewed forth a glittering array of brass, all eager to talk to Carella and Brown before the media got hold of this. Much of the day, in fact, was spent downtown at Headquarters, with no less a worthy than the Commissioner himself instructing the two detectives on what they should say once the newspaper reporters and telecasters descended en masse.
That evening, just as Carella and Brown were about to begin regretting their own ten minutes of television fame, The Cookie Boy was moving out of the spotlight and onto a 747 bound for London, where he had relatives in the meat-packing business. At six o'clock, while his plane was roaring down the runway for takeoff, a television journalist eager to turn the Sonny Cole story into a big TV drama of black-white tension and family vendetta, asked Carella how it had felt to kill the man once accused of murdering his father.
him.”
Carella wondered exactly how he had felt. The truth was he didn't know.
He guessed he felt all right.