"Not them two. I'm talking about the old man and the guy who killed him."
Again, the room went silent. They were all looking
at Parker now. Sometimes a great notion.
"I mean, were they buddies or something? Cause otherwise, how'd he get in the apartment? And how come they were smoking pot together and drinking together? They had to know each other, am I right?"
"I don't see how," Carella said. "Danny told me the
killer was a hit man from Houston. Going back there tomorrow."
"Told you everything but what you wanted to know,
right?"
"Did the old man ever go to Houston?" Byrnes asked.
"Well, I don't know."
"What do you know about him?"
"Not much. Not yet."
"Find out. And soon."
"Did he leave a will?" Hawes asked.
"Left everything he had to the kids."
"Which was what?"
"Bupkes,"
Meyer said.
"What's that?" Parker asked.
"Rabbit shit."
Ed McBam
"So then what's this something somebody wanted bad
enough to kill for?"
"The MacGuffin," Hawes said.
"I told you," Willis said. "It's a fuckin movie."
"Movie, my ass," Byrnes said. "Get some composites
made from the witnesses in that pizza joint. Let's at least
find two guys who came in blazing in broad daylight,
can we? And find out where that poker game took place.
There has to be . . ."
"On Lewiston," Carella said. "Up in the . . ."
"Where
on Lewiston? Our man's leaving town tomor
row."
The room went silent.
"I want you to treat this like a single case with Danny
as the connecting link," Byrnes said. "One of the guys in
that poker game knew Danny, and another one may have
killed Hale. Let's find out who was in the damn game.
And find out who that old man really was. He didn't exist in a vacuum. Nobody does. If he had something somebody wanted, find out what the hell it was. If it was just the insurance policy, then stay with the Keatings till you nail them. I want the four of you who caught the squeals to work this as a team. Split the legwork however you like. But bring me something."
Carella nodded.
"Meyer?"
"Yeah."
"Artie? Bert?"
"We hear you."
"Then do it," Byrnes said.
"What about my dope bust?" Parker asked.
"Stay," Byrnes said, as if he were talking to a pit bull.
There were several training exercises at the academy,
each designed to illustrate the unreliability of eye witnesses. Each of them involved a variation on the same
theme. During a class lecture, someone would come into
the room, interrupting the class, and then go out again.
The cops-in-training would later be asked to describe the
person who'd entered and departed. In one exercise, the
intruder was merely someone who went to one of the
windows, opened it, and walked out again. In another,
it was a woman who came in with a mop and a pail, quickly mopped a small patch of floor, and went out again just as quickly. In a more vivid exercise, a man came in firing a pistol, and then rushed out at once. In none of these exercises was the intruder accurately described afterward.
Brown, Kling, and the police artist interviewed four
teen people that Tuesday morning. Only one of them— Steve Carella—was a trained observer, but even he had
difficulty describing the two shooters who'd marched
into the pizzeria at ten minutes past nine the day before.
Of all the witnesses who'd been there at the time, only
two blacks and four whites remembered anything at all
about the men. The white witnesses found it hard to say
what the black shooter had looked like. If they'd been
asked to tell the difference between Morgan Freeman,
Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, and Mike Tyson,
there'd have been no problem. Maybe. But when the police artist asked them to choose from representative eyes, noses, mouths, cheeks, chins, and foreheads, all at once all black men looked alike. Then again, they might have had similar difficulty describing an Asian suspect.
In the long run—like many other decisions in America—the result was premised on race. The blacks had better luck describing the black suspect, and the whites had better luck with the white one. The detectives were less than satisfied with what the artist finally
Ed McBam
delivered. They felt the composite sketches were
well . . . sketchy at best.
When Carella and Meyer walked in late that Tuesday
morning, Fat Ollie Weeks was sitting alone in a booth
at the rear of the diner, totally absorbed in his breakfast.
Acknowledging their presence with a brief nod, Ollie
stabbed a sausage with his fork and hoisted it immediately
to his mouth. A ribbon of egg yolk dribbled from the sausage onto Ollie's tie, where it joined a medley of other crusted and hardened remnants of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners devoured in haste. Ollie always ate as if expecting an imminent famine. He picked up his cup, swallowed a huge gulp of coffee, and then smiled in satisfaction and at last looked across the table at the two visiting cops. He did not offer his hand; cops rarely shook hands with each other, even during social encounters.
"So what brings you up here?" he asked.
"The murder yesterday," Carella said.
"What murder?" Ollie asked. Here in Zimbabwe West, as he often referred to his beloved Eighty-eighth Precinct, there were murders every day of the week, every minute of the day.
"An informer named Danny Gimp," Carella said.
"I know him," Ollie said.
"Two shooters marched into Guide's Pizzeria while
we were having a conversation," Carella said.
"Maybe they were after you," Ollie suggested.
"No, I'm universally well-liked," Carella said. "They
were after Danny, and they got him."
"Where's Guide's?"
"Culver and Sixth."
"That's your turf, man."
"Lewiston isn't."
"Okay, I'll bite."
"A pal of Danny's was in a poker game a week ago
Saturday," Meyer said. "On Lewiston Avenue."
"Met a hitter from Houston who later treated him to a little booze, a little pot, some casual sex, and a strip of
roofers."
"Uh-huh," Ollie said, and signaled to the waitress.
"So what's that got to do with me?"
"Lewiston is up here in the Eight-Eight."
"So? I'm supposed to know every shitty little card
game in the precinct?" Ollie said. "Give me another toasted onion bagel with cream cheese," he told the waitress. "You guys want anything?"
"Just coffee," Meyer said.
"The same," Carella said.
"You got that?" Ollie asked the waitress, who nodded
and walked off toward the counter. "You think this card game's gonna lead you to the shooters?"
"No, we think it's gonna lead us to the hitter from
Houston."
"World's just full of hitters these days, ain't it?" Ollie
said philosophically. "You think your Houston hitter and
the two pizzeria shooters are connected?"
"No."
"Then what are you . . . ?"
"Don't you work in the Eight-Three?" the waitress
asked, and put down Ollie's bagel and the two coffees.
"I used to work in the Eight-Three," Ollie said. "I got
transferred."
"You want more coffee?"
"Ah, yes, m'dear," Ollie said, doing his world-famous
W. C. Fields imitation. "If it's not too much trouble, ah, yes."
"You like it here better than the Eight-Three?" the