“Well, if the men were conscious—and we all know they probably were—it means that we’ve got something very dangerous out there. Something the public ought to be made aware of, and the police ought to take steps to eliminate.”
“Yeah, but that’s no problem because I intend to order that damn dump cleared of wild dogs. I’ll send in the Tactical Patrol Force and clean it out. There won’t be another problem no matter how those dogs got to DiFalco and Houlihan. Even if the men were conscious it doesn’t make any difference because by this time tomorrow the dogs are going to be dead. I’m going to say that the officers were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and were attacked by the dogs while they were unconscious or semiconscious.” He cleared his throat. “All right with you?”
“It’s your statement, Chief,” Wilson said.
“OK, don’t you do or say anything to contradict it, you understand. Just keep your problems to yourself. And as of right now you’re off the case.”
Becky was astonished. This had never happened to them before; people always put up with Wilson, endured him. Being pulled off this case was a blow to his prestige and to hers. She could have kicked him for his Goddamn bullheadedness.
“It won’t last, Underwood,” Wilson said quietly. “You can kick us around and you can make any damn statement you want, but in the end you’re going to be embarrassed. This thing isn’t going to go away.”
“The hell it isn’t. You wait and see.”
“Something damn strange happened out there.”
“Nothing the TPF can’t deal with.” His face was getting blotchy; this was almost too much for his temper. “Nothing we can’t deal with! Unlike you! You two can’t seem to put this case together! Dogs indeed —that’s ludicrous. It isn’t even a good excuse, much less a solution. Here I’ve got this whole town screaming at me for a solution and you give me bullshit!” Suddenly he glared at Becky. “And another thing, sweetheart. I’ve heard the rumors about your sweet husband. This DA ought to be doing a little investigating into the Neff family instead of trying to dig up some kind of organized crime links to supply motive for the killers of DiFalco and Houlihan. We’ve got a bent cop’s wife right here—or is it a family affair, dear?”
The Assistant DA remained tight-lipped, staring like a statue at the Oriental rug. At the Chief’s words the whole room seemed to sway; Becky felt her head tightening, the blood rushing, her heart thundering. What in the name of God was he implying! Was Dick in trouble? She knew that she herself was an honest cop. And Dick had to be too. Had to be. Like Wilson. He had to be as honest as Wilson.
“You think we’re incompetent,” Wilson said mildly, “why not convene a Board of Inquiry? Present your facts.”
“Shut up and get out. Your superior officers will handle this from now on.”
“Which means there’s going to be a Board?”
“Shut up and get out!”
They left, even Wilson perceiving that the meeting was terminated. “I’m going home,” Becky said to her boss as the elevator dropped toward the garage. “Want a lift?”
“Nah. I’m gonna go over to Chinatown, get some supper. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you.”
That was that for today. Another charming day in the life of a lady cop.
Traffic was heavy and she had missed the evening news by the time she got home. No matter, the Chief’s statement wouldn’t make it on the air until eleven o’clock.
When she arrived at their small upper East Side apartment, Becky was disappointed that Dick wasn’t there. Mechanically she ran the Phone-Mate. Dick’s voice said he’d be in about three A.M. Great. A lonely night just when you need it the most.
At eleven the Chief appeared with his terse statement—carbon monoxide, wild dogs, TPF roundup of dogs, case closed in one day.
The hell it is, she thought, the hell it is.
Chapter 3
« ^ »
Mike O’Donnell hated this part of his daily journey. The streets around here were sullen, dangerous and empty. Openings in the ruined buildings exhaled the stench of damp rot and urine. O’Donnell liked the bustling crowds a few blocks away, but on the money a blind man made you couldn’t take cabs through these areas, you had to walk. Over the years the deadly stillness had grown like a cancer, replacing the noisy, kindly clamor that Mike remembered from his childhood. Now it was almost all like this except the block where Mike lived with his daughter and the block near the subway station a twenty-minute walk away.
Those twenty minutes were always bad, always getting worse. Along this route he had encountered addicts, muggers, perverts—every kind of human garbage. And he had survived. He let them shake him down. What could he lose, a few dollars? Only once had he been struck, that by some teenagers, children really. He had appealed to their manhood, shamed them out of their plan to torture him in one of the empty buildings.
Mike was tough and resilient. Sixty sightless years in the Bronx left him no other choice. He and his beloved daughter were on welfare, home relief. She was a good girl with bad taste in husbands. God knows, the kind of men… smelling of cologne and hair grease, moving around like cats through the apartment, voices that sneered every word… actors, she said. And she was an actress, she said… he groped his way along with his cane trying to put trouble out of his mind, not wanting to bring his feelings home, start an argument.
Then he heard a little sound that made the hairs rise along the back of his neck. It didn’t quite seem human, yet what else could it be? Not an animal— too much like a voice, too little like a growl.
“Is somebody there?”
The sound came again, right in front of him and down low. He sensed a presence. Somebody was there, apparently crouching close to the ground. “Can I help you? Are you hurt?”
Something slid along the pavement. At once the strange sound was taken up from other points—behind him, in the abandoned buildings beside him, in the street. There was a sense of slow, circling movement.
Mike O’Donnell raised his cane, started to swing it back and forth in front of him. The reaction was immediate; Mike O’Donnell’s death came so suddenly that all he registered was astonishment.
They worked with practiced efficiency, pulling the body back into the abandoned building while blood was still pumping out of the throat. It was a heavy, old body, but they were determined and there were six of them. They worked against time, against the ever-present danger of being discovered at a vulnerable moment.
Mike O’Donnell hadn’t understood how completely this neighborhood had been abandoned in recent years, left by all except junkies and other derelicts, and the ones who were attracted to them for their weakness. And now Mike O’Donnell had joined the unnumbered corpses rotting in the abandoned basements and rubble of the empty neighborhood.
But in his case there was one small difference. He had a home and was missed. Mike’s daughter was frantic. She dialed the Lighthouse for the Blind again. No, they hadn’t seen Mike, he had never appeared for his assigned duties. Now it was six hours and she wasn’t going to waste any more time. Her next call was to the police.
Because missing persons usually turn up on their own or don’t turn up at all, and because there are so many of them, the Police Department doesn’t react instantly to another such report. At least, not unless it concerns a child or a young woman who had no reason to leave home, or, as in the case of Mike O’Donnell, somebody who wouldn’t voluntarily abandon the little security and comfort he had in the world. So Mike O’Donnell’s case was special and it got some attention. Not an overwhelming amount, but enough to cause a detective to be assigned to the case. A description of Mike O’Donnell was circulated, given a little more than routine attention. Somebody even questioned the daughter long enough to draw a map of Mike’s probable route from his apartment to the subway station. But the case went no farther than that; no body turned up, the police told the daughter to wait, not to give up hope. A week later they told her to give up hope, he wasn’t going to be found. Somewhere in the city his body probably lay moldering, effectively and completely hidden by whoever had killed him. Mike O’Donnell’s daughter learned in time to accept the idea of his death, to try to replace the awful uncertain void with the comfort of certainty. She did the best she could, but all she really came to understand was that her father had somehow been swallowed by the city.