Cop Hater (21 page)

"He wasn't. Do you realize
I
could have been killed?" Savage said.

Carella made no comment

"If you people cooperate more with the press ..."

Carella stopped walking. "Listen," he said, "what are you doing in this neighborhood? Looking for more trouble? If any of The Grovers recognize you, we're going to have another rhubarb. Why don't you go back to your newspaper office and write a column on garbage collection?"

"Your humor doesn't..."

"I'm not trying to be funny," Carella said, "nor do I particularly feel like discussing anything with you. I just came off duty. I'm going home to shower and then I have a date with my fiancee. I'm theoretically on duty twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week, but fortunately that duty does not include extending courtesy to every stray cub reporter in town."

"Cub?" Savage was truly offended. "Now, listen ..."

"What the hell do you want from me?" Carella asked.

"I want to discuss the killings."

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"Jesus, you're a real leech, aren't you?'

"I'm a reporter, and a damned good one. Why don't you want to talk about the killings?"

"I'm perfectly willing to discuss them with anyone who knows what I'm talking about"

"I'm a good listener," Savage said.

"Sure. You turned a fine ear toward Rip Desanga."

"Okay, I made a mistake, I'm willing to admit that. I thought it was the kids, and it wasn't. We know now it was an adult. What else do we know about him? Do we know why he did it?"

"Are you going to follow me all the way home?"

"I'd prefer buying you a drink," Savage said. He looked at Carella expectantly. Carella weighed the offer.

"All right," he said.

Savage extended his hand. "My friends call me Cliff. I didn't get your name."

"Steve Carella."

They shook. "Pleased to know you. Let's get that drink."

The bar was air-conditioned, a welcome sanctuary from the stifling heat outdoors. They ordered their drinks and then sat opposite each other at the booth alongside the left-hand wall.

"All I want to know," Savage said, "is what you think."

"Do you mean me personally, or the department?"

"You, of course. I can't expect you to speak for the department."

"Is this for publication?" Carella asked.

"Hell, no. I'm just trying to jell my own ideas on it. Once this thing is broken, there'll be a lot of feature coverage. To do a good job, I want to be acquainted with every facet of the investigation."

"It'd be a little difficult for a layman to understand every facet of police investigation," Carella said.

"Of course, of course. But you can at least tell me what you think."

"Sure. Provided it's not for publication."

"Scout's honor," Savage said.

"The department doesn't like individual cops trying to glorify..."

"Not a word of this will get into print," Savage said. "Believe me."

"What do you want to know?"

"We've got the means, we've got the opportunity," Savage said. "What's the motive?"

"Every cop hi the city would like the answer to that one," Carella said.

"A nut maybe."

"Maybe."

"You don't think so?"

"No. Some of us do. I don't."

"Why not?"

"Just like that."

"Do you have a reason?"

"No, just a feeling. When you've been working on a case for any length of time, you begin to get feelings about it. I just don't happen to believe a maniac's involved here."

"What
do
you believe?"

"Well, I have a few ideas."

"Like what?"

"I'd rather not say right now."

"Oh, come on, Steve."

"Look, police work is like any other kind of work—except we happen to deal with crime. If you run an import-' export business, you play certain hunches and others you don't. It's the same with us. If you have a hunch, you don't go around making a million dollar deal on it until you've checked it."

"Then you do have a hunch you want to check?"

"Not even a hunch, really. Just an idea."

"What kind of an idea?"

"About motive."

"What about motive?"

Carella smiled. "You're a pretty tenacious guy, aren't you?"

"I'm a good reporter. I already told you that."

"All right, look at it this way. These men were cops. Three of them were killed in a row. What's the automatic conclusion?"

"Somebody doesn't like cops."

"Right. A cop hater."

"So?"

"Take off their uniforms. What have you got then?"

"They weren't wearing uniforms. None of them were uniform cops."

"I know. I was speaking figuratively. I meant, make them ordinary citizens. Not cops. What do you have then? Certainly not a cop hater."

"But they
were
cops."

"They were men first. Cops only coincidentally and secondarily."

"You feel, then, that the fact that they were cops had nothing to do with the reason they were killed."

"Maybe. That's what I want to dig into a little deeper."

"I'm not sure I understand you."

"It's this," Carella said. "We knew these men well, we worked with them every day. Cops. We knew them as cops. We didn't know them as
men.
They may have been killed because they were men, and not because they were cops."

"Interesting," Savage said.

"It means digging into their lives on a more personal level. It won't be fun because murder has a strange way of dragging skeletons out of the neatest closets."

"You mean, for example . . ." Savage paused. "Well, let's say Reardon was playing around with another dame, or Foster was a horse player, or Bush was taking money from a racketeer, something like that."

'To stretch the point, yes."

"And somehow, their separate activities were perhaps tied together to one person who wanted them all dead for various reasons. Is that what you're saying?"

"That's a little complicated," Carella said. "I'm not sure the deaths are connected in such a complicated way."

"But we do know the same person killed all three cops."

"Yes, we're fairly certain of that."

"Then the deaths are connected."

"Yes, of course. But perhaps . . ." Carella shrugged. "It's difficult to discuss this with you because I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about. I only have this idea, that's all. This idea that motive may go deeper than the shields these men wore."

"I see." Savage sighed. "Well, you can console yourself with the knowledge that every cop in the city probably has his own ideas on how to solve this one."

Carella nodded, not exactly understanding Savage, but not willing to get into a lengthier discussion. He glanced at his watch.

"I've got to go soon," he said. "I've got a date."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Yes."

"What's her name?"

"Teddy. Well, Theodora really."

"Theodora what?"

"Franklin."

"Nice," Savage said. "Is this a serious thing?"

"As serious as they come."

"These ideas of yours," Savage said. "About motive. Have you discussed them with your superiors?"

"Hell, no. You don't discuss every little pang of inspiration you get. You look into it, and then if you turn up anything that looks remotely promising, well, then you air the idea."

"I see. Have you discussed it with Teddy?"

"Teddy? Why, no, not yet."

"Think she'll go for it?"

Carella smiled uneasily. "She thinks I can do no wrong."

"Sounds like a wonderful girl."

"The best. And I'd better get to her before I lose her."

"Certainly," Savage said understandingly. Carella glanced at his watch again. "Where does she live?"

"Riverhead," Carella said.

"Theodora Franklin of Riverhead," Savage said.

"Yes."

"Well, I've appreciated listening to your ideas."

Carella rose. "None of that was for print, remember," he said.

"Of course not," Savage assured him.

"Thanks for the drink," Carella said.

They shook hands. Savage stayed in the booth and ordered another Tom Collins. Carella went home to shower and shave for his date with Teddy.

She was dressed resplendently when she opened the door. She stood back, waiting for him to survey her splendor. She was wearing a white linen suit, white straw pumps, a red-stoned pin on the collar of the suit, bright scarlet oval earrings picking up the scream of the pin.

"Shucks," he said, "I was hoping I'd catch you in your slip."

She made a motion to unbutton her jacket, smiling.

"We have reservations," he said.

Where?
her face asked.

"Ah Lum Fong," he replied.

She nodded exuberantly.

"Where's your lipstick?" he asked.

She grinned and went to him, and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and then she clung to him as if he were leaving for Siberia in the next ten minutes.

"Come on," he said, "put on your face."

She went into the other room, applied her lipstick and emerged carrying a small red purse.

"They carry those on the Street," he said. "It's a badge of the profession," and she slapped him on the fanny as they left the apartment.

The Chinese restaurant boasted excellent food and an exotic decor. To Carella, the food alone would not have been enough. When he ate in a Chinese restaurant, he wanted it to look and feel Chinese. He did not appreciate an expanded, upholstered version of a Culver Avenue diner.

They ordered fried wonton soup, and lobster rolls, and barbecued spare ribs and Hon Shu Gai and Steak Kew and sweet and pungent pork. The wonton soup was crisp with Chinese vegetables; luscious snow peas, and water chestnuts, and mushrooms, and roots he could not have named if he'd tried. The wontons were brown and crisp, the soup itself had a rich tangy taste. They talked very little while they ate. They dug into the lobster rolls, and then they attacked the spare ribs, succulently brown.

"Do you know that Lamb thing?" he asked. "A Dissertation on..."

She nodded, and then went back to the spare ribs.

The chicken in the Hon Shu Gai was snappingly crisp. They polished off the dish. They barely had room for the Steak Kew, but they did their best with it, and when Charlie —their waiter—came to collect their dishes, he looked at them reproachfully because they had left over some of the delicious cubes of beef.

He cut a king pineapple for them in the kitchen, cut it so that the outside shell could be lifted off in one piece, exposing the ripe yellow meat beneath the prickly exterior, the fruit sliced and ready to be lifted off in long slender pieces. They drank their tea, savoring the aroma and the warmth, their stomachs full, their minds and their bodies relaxed.

"How's August nineteenth sound to you?"

Teddy shrugged.

"It's a Saturday. Would you like to get married on a Saturday?"

Yes,
her eyes said.

Charlie brought them their fortune cookies and replenished the tea pot.

Carella broke open his cookie. Then, before he read the message on the narrow slip of paper, he said, "Do you know the one about the man who opened one of these in a Chinese restaurant?"

Teddy shook her head.

"It said, 'Don't eat the soup. Signed, a friend.'"

Teddy laughed and then gestured to his fortune slip. Carella read it aloud to her:

"You are the luckiest man alive. You are about to marry Theodora Franklin."

She said "Oh!" in soundless exasperation, and then took the slip from him. The slender script read: "You are good with figures."

"Your figure," he said.

Teddy smiled and broke open her cookie. Her face clouded momentarily.

"What is it?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Let me see it."

She tried to keep the fortune slip from him, but he got it out of her hand and read it.

"Leo will roar—sleep no more."

Carella stared at the printed slip. "That's a hell of a thing to put in a cookie," he said. "What does it mean?" He thought for a moment. "Oh, Leo. Leo the Lion. July 22nd to August something, isn't it?"

Teddy nodded.

"Well, the meaning here is perfectly clear then. Once we're married, you're going to have a hell of a time sleeping."