By the time he changed the flat, his hands were numb, his temper was short, the time was 10:32, and the bar was still a ten-minute drive away. On the off-chance that La Bresca and his fair-weather friend would still be there, O'Brien drove downtown, arriving at the bar at ten minutes to eleven. Not only were they both gone already, but the bartender said to O'Brien the moment he bellied up, "Care for something to drink, Officer?"
It was one of those nights.
On Friday morning, March 8, Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman of the Police Laboratory called the squadroom and asked to talk to Cotton Hawes. He was informed that Hawes, together with several other detectives on the squad, had gone to Buena Vista Hospital to visit Steve Carella. The man answering the telephone was Patrolman Genero, who was holding the fort until one of them returned.
"Well, do
"Sir, I'm just supposed to record any calls till they get back," Genero said.
"I'm going to be tied up later," Grossman said, "why don't I just give this to you?"
"All right, sir," Genero said, and picked up his pencil. He felt very much like a detective. Besides, he was grateful not to be outside on another miserable day like this one. "Shoot," he said, and quickly added, "Sir."
"It's on those notes I received."
"Yes, sir, what notes?"
" 'Deputy Mayor Scanlon goes next," ' Grossman quoted, "and 'Look! A whole new,' et cetera."
"Yes, sir," Genero said, not knowing what Grossman was talking about.
"The paper is Whiteside Bond, available at any stationery store in the city. The messages were clipped from national magazines and metropolitan dailies. The adhesive is rubber cement."
"Yes, sir," Genero said, writing frantically.
"Negative on latent prints. We got a whole mess of smeared stuff, but nothing we could run a make on."
"Yes, sir."
"In short," Grossman said, "you know what you can do with these notes."
"What's that, sir?" Genero asked.
"We only run the tests," Grossman said. "
Genero beamed. He had been included in the phrase "You guys" and felt himself to be a part of the elite.
"Well, thanks a lot," he said, "we'll get to work on it up here."
"Right," Grossman said. "You want these notes back?"
"No harm having them."
"I'll send them over," Grossman said, and hung up.
Very interesting, Genero thought, replacing the receiver on its cradle. If he had owned a deerstalker hat, he would have put it on in that moment.
"Where's the john?" one of the painters asked.
"Why?" Genero said.
"We have to paint it."
"Try not to slop up the urinals," Genero said.
"We're Harvard men," the painter said. "We never slop up the urinals."
The other painter laughed.
The third note arrived at eleven o'clock that morning.
It was delivered by a high school dropout who walked directly past the muster desk and up to the squadroom where Patrolman Genero was evolving an elaborate mystery surrounding the rubber cement that had been used as an adhesive.
"What's everybody on vacation?" the kid asked. He was seventeen years old, his face sprinkled with acne. He felt very much at home in a squadroom because he had once been a member of a street gang called The Terrible Ten, composed of eleven young men who had joined together to combat the Puerto Rican influx into their turf. The gang had disbanded just before Christmas, not because the Puerto Ricans had managed to demolish them, but only because seven of the eleven called The Terrible Ten had finally succumbed to an enemy common to Puerto Rican and white Anglo-Saxon alike: narcotics. Five of the seven were hooked, two were dead. Of the remaining three, one was in prison for a gun violation, another had got married because he'd knocked up a little Irish girl, and the last was carrying an envelope into a detective squadroom, and feeling comfortable enough there to make a quip to a uniformed cop.
"What do you want?" Genero asked.
"I was supposed to give this to the desk sergeant, but there's nobody at the desk. You want to take it?"
"What is it?"
"Search me," the kid said. "Guy stopped me on the street and give me five bucks to deliver it."
"Sit down," Genero said. He took the envelope from the kid and debated opening it, and then realized he had got his fingerprints all over it. He dropped it on the desk. In the toilet down the hall, the painters were singing. Genero was only supposed to answer the phone and take down messages. He looked at the envelope again, severely tempted. "I said sit down," he told the kid.
"What for?"
"You're going to wait here until one of the detectives gets back, that's what for."
"Up yours, fuzz," the kid said, and turned to go.
Genero drew his service revolver. "Hey," he said, and the boy glanced over his shoulder into the somewhat large bore of a .38 Police Special.
"I'm hip to Miranda-Escobedo," the kid said, but he sat down nonetheless.
"Good, that makes two of us," Genero said.
