“Iwear shoes that cost more than that,” Meyer said, “and I’m only a cop.”
“I read someplace that J. Edgar Hoover doesn’t like cops to be called cops,” Kling said.
“Yeah? I wonder why that is?” Parker scratched his head. “We’re cops, ain’t we? If we ain’t cops, what are we then?”
Captain Frick pushed his way through the gate in the railing and said, “Frankie Hernandez here?”
“He’s in the john, Captain,” Meyer said. “You want him?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Frick said. There was a pained and harried expression on his face, as if something dreadful had happened and he didn’t quite know how to cope with it. If the truth were known, of course, there weren’t very many things that Captain Frick could cope with. He was technically, in charge of the entire precinct, although his actual command very rarely extended beyond the uniformed force. In any case, he hardly ever offered any advice to Lieutenant Byrnes who ran the detective squad quite capably and effectively. Frick was not a very bright man, and his approach to police work was perhaps comparable to the approach of an old woman toward a will to be settled. He allowed the actual settling to be handled by those better qualified to handle it, and then he reaped the rewards. And yet, all the while it was being handled for him, he fretted and fussed like a hen sitting on a laggard egg.
He fretted and fussed now while he waited for Frankie Hernandez to come out of the men’s room. He would have followed him into the room but Frick firmly believed that police business should be conducted in dignified surroundings. So he paced back and forth just inside the railing, one eye on the closed men’s room door, waiting for the appearance of the detective. When Hernandez did come out of the room, he went to him immediately.
“Frankie, I’ve got a problem,” he said.
“What is it, Captain Frick?” Hernandez asked. He was drying his hands on his handkerchief. He had, in fact, been heading for the Clerical Office to tell Miscolo there were no more paper towels in the bathroom when Frick intercepted him.
“There’s a boy who keeps getting into trouble, a nice kid, but he keeps swiping things from the fruit carts, little things, nothing to get upset about, except he’s done it maybe seven, eight times already, he’s a Puerto Rican kid, Frankie, and I think you know him, and I think we can save both him and the law a lot of headaches if somebody talks to him right now, which is why I’m coming to you, I’m sure you know the kid, his name is Juan Boridoz, would you talk to him please, Frankie, before he gets himself in trouble? His mother was in here yesterday afternoon and she seems like a nice hardworking lady, and she doesn’t deserve a kid who’ll wind up in the courts. He’s only twelve, Frankie, so we can still catch him. Will you talk to him?”
“Sure, I will,” Hernandez said.
“You know the kid?”
Hernandez smiled. “No,” he said, “but I’ll find him.” It was a common assumption among the men of the 87th that Frankie Hernandez knew every single person of Spanish or Puerto Rican descent in the precinct territory. He had, it was true, been born and raised in the precinct, and hedid know a great many of the residents therein. But there was more to the assumption of the other men than a simple recognition of his birthplace. Frankie Hernandez was a sort of liaison between the cops and the Puerto Ricans in the precinct. The other cops came to him when they wanted advice or information. Similarly, the people came to him whenever they needed protection, either from criminal elements or from the law. There were people on both sides of the fence who hated Frankie Hernandez. Some men in the department hated him because he was Puerto Rican and, despite department edicts about the prevalence of brotherhood among the men in blue, these men simply felt a Puerto Rican had no right being a cop and certainly no right being a detective. Some people in the streets hated him because he had flatly refused to square any raps for them, raps ranging from speeding tickets to disorderly conduct, or sometimes assault, and on several occasions burglary. Hernandez wanted no part of it. He let it be known quickly and plainly that, old neighborhood ties be damned, he was a cop and his job was enforcing the law.
For the most part, Frankie Hernandez was a highly respected man. He had come out of the streets in one of the city’s hottest delinquency areas, carrying the albatross of “cultural conflict” about his youthful neck, breaking through the “language barrier” (only Spanish was spoken in his home when he was a child) and emerging from the squalor of the slums to become a Marine hero during the Second World War, and later a patrolman ironically assigned to the streets which had bred him. He was now a Detective 3rd/Grade. It had been a long hard pull, and the battle still hadn’t been won—not for Frankie Hernandez, it hadn’t. Frankie Hernandez, you see, was fighting for a cause. Frankie Hernandez was trying to prove to the world at large that the Puerto Rican guy could also be thegood guy.
“So will you talk to him, Frankie?” Frick asked again.
“Sure I will. This afternoon some time. Okay?”
Frick’s mouth widened into a grateful smile. “Thanks, Frankie,” he said, and he clapped him on the shoulder and went hurrying off down the corridor to his office downstairs. Hernandez opened the door to the Clerical Office and said, “Miscolo, we’re out of towels in the bathroom.”
“Okay, I’ll get some,” Miscolo said, without looking up from his typing. Then, as an afterthought, he wheeled from the machine and said, “Hey, Frankie, did Steve mention about May Reardon ‘’
“Yeah.”
“You in?”
“I’m in.”
“Good, good. I’ll get a fresh roll of towels later.”
Hernandez went into the squadroom. He was just about to sit at his desk when the telephone rang. He sighed and picked it up.
Behind the closed door markedLT .PETER BYRNES , Steve Carella watched his superior officer and wished this were not quite as painful for Byrnes as it seemed to be. The lieutenant clearly had no stomach for what he was doing or saying, and his reluctance to carry out an obviously unpleasant task showed in his face and in the set of his body and also in the clenching and unclenching of his hands.
“Look,” Byrnes said, “don’t you think I hate that son of a bitch as much as you do?”
“I know, Peter,” Carella said. “I’ll do whatever—”
“You think I enjoyed that call I got from Detective Lieutenant Abernathy yesterday afternoon? Right after you left, Steve, the phone buzzes and it’s a patrolman in the Public Relations Office downtown on High Street, and he asks me to hold on a moment for a call from Lieutenant Abernathy. So Abernathy gets on the phone and he wants to know if a man named Steve Carella works for me, and did I know that this man had sent out photos to all the newspapers except one and that if the police department was to expect co-operation from the press in the future, it would have to show equal consideration toall of the city’s newspapers. So he demanded that I give this Carella a reprimand and that a copy of the photo go out to Cliff Savage’s paper immediately, together with a note from Carella apologizing for his oversight. Abernathy wants to see a copy of the note, Steve.”
“Okay,” Carella said.
“You know I hate that son of a bitch Savage.”
“I know,” Carella said. “I should have sent him the picture. Kid stuff never gets anybody anyplace.”
“You sore at me?”
“What the hell for? The order came from upstairs, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Byrnes shook his bullet-shaped head and pulled a sour face. “Just write a little note, Steve. Sorry I overlooked your paper, something like that. The day we have to kiss Savage’s ass is the day I turn in my buzzer.”