Fuzz полностью

Which meant that he was stuck with all the various images encouraged by countless television shows and motion pictures: the dim-witted public servant being outsmarted by the tough private eye; the overzealous jerk inadvertently blocking the attempts of the intelligent young advertising executive in distress; the insensitives dolt blindly encouraging the young to become adult criminals. Well, what're you gonna do? You got an image, you got one. (He wondered how many television writers were lying in an alley tonight waiting for two hoods to attack.) The damn thing about the deaf man, though, was that he made all these stereotypes seem true. Once he appeared on the scene, every cop on the squad did appear dim-witted and bumbling and inefficient.

And if a man could do that merely by making a few phone calls or sending a few notes, what would happen if -

Carella tensed.

The detective assigned to the surveillance of Anthony La Bresca was Bert Kling, whom he had never seen before. Brown's call to the squadroom had advised the lieutenant that La Bresca had admitted he was involved in a forthcoming caper, and this was reason enough to put a tail on him. So Kling took to the subzero streets, leaving the warmth and generosity of Cindy's apartment, and drove out to Riverhead, where he waited across the street from La Bresca's house, hoping to pick up his man the moment he left to meet Dominick. Brown had informed the lieutenant that the pair had arranged a meeting for ten o'clock that night, and it was now 9:07 by Kling's luminous dial, so he figured he had got here good and early, just in time to freeze solid.

La Bresca came down the driveway on the right of the stucco house at ten minutes to ten. Kling stepped into the shadows behind his parked car. La Bresca began walking east, toward the elevated train structure two blocks away. Just my luck, Kling thought, he hasn't got a car. He gave him a lead of half a block, and then began following him. A sharp wind was blowing west off the wide avenue ahead. Kling was forced to lift his face to its direct blast every so often because he didn't want to lose sight of La Bresca, and he cursed for perhaps the fifty-seventh time that winter the injustice of weather designed to plague a man who worked outdoors. Not that he worked outdoors all of the time. Part of the time, he worked at a desk typing up reports in triplicate or calling victims or witnesses. But much of the time (it was fair to say much of the time) he worked outdoors, legging it here and there all over this fair city, asking questions and compiling answers and this was the worst son of a bitch winter he had ever lived through in his life. I hope you're going someplace nice and warm, La Bresca, he thought. I hope you're going to meet your friend at a Turkish bath or someplace.

Ahead, La Bresca was climbing the steps to the elevated platform. He glanced back at Kling only once, and Kling immediately ducked his head, and then quickened his pace. He did not want to reach the platform to discover that La Bresca had already boarded a train and disappeared.

He need not have worried. La Bresca was waiting for him near the change booth.

"You following me?" he asked.

"What?" Kling said.

"I said are you following me?" La Bresca asked.

The choices open to Kling in that moment were severely limited. He could say, "What are you out of your mind, why would I be following you, you're so handsome or something?" Or he could say, "Yes, I'm following you, I'm a police officer, here's my shield and my I.D. card," those were the open choices. Either way, the tail was blown.

"You looking for a rap in the mouth?" Kling said.

"What?" La Bresca said, startled.

"I said what are you, some kind of paranoid nut?" Kling said, which wasn't what he had said at all. La Bresca didn't seem to notice the discrepancy. He started at Kling in honest surprise, and then started to mumble something, which kling cut short with a glowering, menacing, thoroughly frightening look. Mumbling himself, Kling went up the steps to the uptown side of the platform. The station stop was dark and deserted and windswept. He stood on the platform with his coattails flapping about him, and waited until La Bresca came up the steps on the downtown side. La Bresca's train pulled in not three minutes later, and he boarded it. The train rattled out of the station. Kling went downstairs again and found a telephone booth. When Willis picked up the phone at the squadroom, Kling said, "This is Bert. La Bresca made me a couple of blocks from his house. You'd better get somebody else on him."

"How long you been a cop?" Willis asked.

"It happens to the best of us," Kling said. "Where'd Brown say they were meeting?"

"A bar on Crawford."

"Well, he boarded a downtown train just a few minutes ago, you've got time to plant somebody there before he arrives."

"Yeah, I'll get O'Brien over there right away."

"What do you want me to do, come back to the office or what?"