Fuzz полностью

Willis, in the meantime, had slid his walkie-talkie up between Eileen Burke's breasts and flashed the news to Hawes, parked in his own car on Grover Avenue, good place to be when your man is going the other way. Willis was now desperately trying to lower the zipper on the bag, which zipper seemed to have become somehow stuck. Willis didn't mind being stuck in a sleeping bag with someone like Eileen Burke, who wiggled and wriggled along with him as they attempted to extricate themselves, but he suddenly fantasied the lieutenant chewing him out the way he had chewed out Kling and Meyer this morning and so he really was trying to lower that damn zipper while entertaining the further fantasy that Eileen Burke was beginning to enjoy all this adolescent tumbling. Genero, of course, didn't know that Hawes had been alerted, he only knew that the suspect was abreast of him now, and passing the bench now, and moving swiftly beyond the bench now, so he got up and first took off the sun-glasses, and then unbuttoned the third button of his coat the way he had seen detectives do on television, and then reached in for his revolver and then shot himself in the leg.

The suspect began running.

Genero fell to the ground and the dog licked his face.

Willis got out of the sleeping bag and Eileen Burke buttoned her blouse and her coat and then adjusted her garters, and Hawes came running into the park and slipped on a patch of ice near the third bench and almost broke his neck.

"Stop, police!" Willis shouted.

And, miracle of miracles, the suspect stopped dead in his tracks and waited for Willis to approach him with his gun in his hand and lipstick all over his face.

The suspect's name was Alan Parry.

They advised him of his rights and he agreed to talk to them without a lawyer, even though a lawyer was present and waiting for him in case he demanded one.

"Where do you live, Alan?" Willis asked.

"Right around the corner. I know you guys. I see you guys around all the time. Don't you know me? I live right around the corner."

"You make him?" Willis asked the other detectives.

They all shook their heads. They were standing around him in a loose circle, the pretzel man, two nuns, the pair of lovers, and the big redhead with a white streak in his hair and a throbbing ankle in his thermal underwear.

"Why'd you run, Alan?" Willis asked.

"I heard a shot. In this neighborhood, when you hear shooting, you run."

"Who's your partner?"

"What partner?"

"The guy who's in this with you."

"In what with me?"

"The murder plot."

"The what?"

"Come on, Alan, you play ball with us, we'll play ball with you."

"Hey, man, you got the wrong customer," Parry said.

"How were you going to split the loot, Alan?"

"What loot?"

"The loot in that lunch pail."

"Listen, I never seen that lunch pail before in my life."

"There's thirty thousand dollars in that lunch pail," Willis said, "now come on, Alan, you know that, stop playing it cozy."

Parry either avoided the trap, or else did not know there was supposed to be fifty thousand dollars in the black pail he had lifted from the bench. He shook his head and said, "I don't know nothing about no loot, I was asked to pick up the pail, and I done it."

"Who asked you?"

"A big blond guy wearing a hearing aid."

"Do you expect me to believe that?" Willis said.

The cue was one the detectives of the 87th had used many times before in interrogating suspects, and it was immediately seized upon by Meyer, who said, "Take it easy, Hal," the proper response, the response that told Willis they were once again ready to assume antagonistic roles. In the charade that would follow, Willis would play the tough bastard out to hang a phony rap on poor little Alan Parry, while Meyer would play the sympathetic father figure. The other detectives (including Faulk of the 88th, who was familiar with the ploy and had used it often enough himself in his own squadroom) would serve as a sort of nodding Greek chorus, impartial and objective.

Without even so much as a glance at Meyer, Willis said, "What do you mean, take it easy? This little punk has been lying from the minute we got him up here."

"Maybe there really was a tall blond guy with a hearing aid," Meyer said. "Give him a chance to tell us, will you?"

"Sure, and maybe there was a striped elephant with pink polka dots," Willis said. "Who's your partner, you little punk?"

"I don't have no partner!" Parry said. Plaintively, he said to Meyer, "Will you please tell this guy I ain't got a partner?"

"Calm down, Hal, will you?" Meyer said. "Let's hear it, Alan."

"I was on my way home when …"

"From where?" Willis snapped.

"Huh?"

"Where were you coming from?"

"From my girl's house."

"Where?"

"Around the corner. Right across the street from my house."

"What were you doing there?"

"Well, you know," Parry said.

"No, we don't know," Willis said.

"For God's sake, Hal," Meyer said, "leave the man a little something personal and private, will you please?"

"Thanks," Parry said.