Fuzz полностью

Genero's father, who was a civil service employee himself, having worked for the Department of Sanitation for some twenty years now, was not aware that his son had accidentally shot himself in the leg. All he knew was that his son was a hero. As befitted a hero, he had brought a white carton of cannoll to the hospital, and now he and his wife and his son sat in the semi-private stillness of a fourth floor room and demolished the pastry while discussing Genero's almost certain promotion to Detective 3rd/Grade.

The idea of a promotion had not occurred to Genero before this, but as his father outlined the heroic action in the park the day before, Genero began to visualize himself as the man who had made the capture possible. Without him, without the warning shot he had fired into his own leg, the fleeing Alan Parry might never have stopped. The fact that Parry had turned out to be a wet fuse didn't matter at all to Genero. It was all well and good to realize a man wasn't dangerous after the fact, but where were all those detectives when Parry was running straight for Genero with a whole lunch pail full of God-knew-what under his arm, where were they then, huh? And how could they have known then, while Genero was courageously drawing his pistol, that Parry would turn out to be only another innocent dupe, nossir, it had been impossible to tell.

"You were brave," Genero's father said, licking pot cheese from his lips. "It was you who tried to stop him."

"That's true," Genero said, because it was true.

"It was you who risked your life."

"That's right," Genero said, because it was right.

"They should promote you."

"They should," Genero said.

"I will call your boss," Genero's mother said.

"No, I don't think you should, Mama."

"Perche no?"

"Perche … Mama, please don't talk Italian, you know I don't understand Italian so well."

"Vergogna," his mother said, "an Italian doesn't understand his own tongue. I will call your boss."

"No, Mama, that isn't the way it's done."

"Then how is it done?" his father asked.

"Well, you've got to hint around."

"Hint? To who?"

"Well, to people."

"Which people?"

"Well, Carella's upstairs in this same hospital, maybe …"

"Ma chi e questa Carella?" his mother said.

"Mama, please."

"Who is this Carella?"

"A detective on the squad."

"Where you work, si?"

"Si. Please, Mama."

"He is your boss?"

"No, he just works up there."

"He was shot, too?"

"No, he was beat up."

"By the same man who shot you?"

"No, not by the same man who shot me," Genero said, which was also the truth.

"So what does he have to do with this?"

"Well, he's got influence."

"With the boss?"

"Well, no. You see, Captain Frick runs the entire precinct, he's actually the boss. But Lieutenant Byrnes is in charge of the detective squad, and Carella is a detective/2nd, and him and the lieutenant are like this, so maybe if I talk to Carella he'll see how I helped them grab that guy yesterday, and put in a good word for me."

"Let her call the boss," Genero's father said.

"No, it's better this way," Genero said.

"How much does a detective make?" Genero's mother asked.

"A fortune," Genero said.

Gadgets fascinated Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman, even when they were bombs. Or perhaps especially when they were bombs. There was no question in anyone's mind (how much question could there have been, considering the evidence of the demolished automobile and its five occupants?) that someone had put a bomb in the deputy mayor's car. Moreover, it was mandatory to assume that someone had set the bomb to go off at a specific time, rather than using the ignition wiring of the car as an immediate triggering device. This aspect of the puzzle pleased Grossman enormously because he considered ignition-trigger bombs to be rather crude devices capable of being wired by any gangland ape. This bomb was a time bomb. But it was a very special time bomb. It was a time bomb that had not been wired to the automobile clock.

How did Grossman know this?

Ah-ha, the police laboratory never sleeps, not even on Sunday. And besides, his technicians had found two clock faces in the rubble of the automobile.

One of the faces had been part of the Cadillac's dashboard clock. The other had come from a nationally advertised, popular-priced electric alarm clock. There was one other item of importance found in the rubble: a portion of the front panel of a DC-to-AC inverter, part of its brand name still showing where it was stamped into the metal.