The parks commissioner cleared his throat and said, "Well, why didn't you say so?"
The situation was ridiculous.
The parks commissioner had never heard of a more ridiculous situation, why this man had to be an absolute maniac to assume anyone would pay him five thousand dollars on the strength of a few phone calls. Byrnes agreed that the situation was ridiculous, but that nonetheless a great many crimes in this city were committed daily by misguided or unprincipled people, some of whom were doubtless screwballs, but sanity was not a prerequisite for the successful perpetration of a criminal act.
The situation was unthinkable.
The parks commissioner had never heard of a more unthinkable situation, he couldn't even understand why they were bothering him with what were obviously the rantings of some kind of lunatic. Why didn't they simply forget the entire matter?
"Well," Byrnes said, "I hate to behave like a television cop, sir, I would really
"Well, you've discussed it with me," the parks commissioner said, "and I say forget it."
"Sir," Byrnes said, "we would like to try to apprehend the man who picks up the lunch pail, and we would also like to supply you with police protection tomorrow night. Had you planned on leaving the house tomorrow night?"
The parks commissioner said that Byrnes could do whatever he thought fit in the matter of apprehending the man who picked up the lunch pail, but that he did indeed plan on going out tomorrow night, was in fact invited by the mayor to attend a performance of Beethoven's
Byrnes said, "Well, sir, let's see what results we have with the lunch pail, we'll get back to you."
"Yes, get back to me," the parks commissioner said, "but not in the middle of the night again, okay?" and hung up.
At five A.M. on Tuesday morning while it was still dark, Detectives Hal Willis and Arthur Brown drank two fortifying cups of coffee in the silence of the squadroom, donned foul-weather gear requisitioned from an Emergency Squad truck, clipped on their holsters, and went out onto the arctic tundra to begin a lonely surveillance of the third bench on the Clinton Street footpath into Grover Park. Since most of the park's paths meandered from north to south and naturally had entrances on either end, they thought at first there might be some confusion concerning the Clinton Street footpath. But a look at the map on the precinct wall showed that there was only one entrance to this particular path, which began on Grover Avenue, adjacent to the park, and then wound through the park to end at the band shell near the lake. Willis and Brown planted themselves on a shelf of rock overlooking the suspect third bench, shielded from the path by a stand of naked elms. It was very cold. They did not expect action, of course, until Hawes dropped the lunch pail where specified, but they could hardly take up posts after the event, and so it had been Byrnes' brilliant idea to send them out before anyone watching the bench might observe them. They did windmill exercises with their arms, they stamped their feet, they continuously pressed the palms of their hands against portions of their faces that seemed to be going, the telltale whiteness of frostbite appearing suddenly and frighteningly in the bleak early morning hours. Neither of the two men had ever been so cold in his life.
Cotton Hawes was almost, but not quite, as cold when he entered the park at nine A.M. that morning. He passed two people on his way to the bench. One of them was an old man in a black overcoat, walking swiftly toward the subway kiosk on Grover Avenue. The other was a girl wearing a mink coat over a long pink nylon nightgown that flapped dizzily about her ankles, walking a white poodle wearing a red wool vest. She smiled at Hawes as he went by with his lunch pail.
The third bench was deserted.
Hawes took a quick look around and then glanced up and out of the park to the row of apartment buildings on Grover Avenue. A thousand windows reflected the early morning sun. Behind any one of those windows, there might have been a man with a pair of binoculars and a clear unobstructed view of the bench. He put the lunch pail on one end of the bench, moved it to the other end, shrugged, and relocated it in the exact center of the bench. He took another look around, feeling really pretty stupid, and then walked out of the park and back to the office. Detective Bert Kling was sitting at his desk, monitoring the walkie-talkie operated by Hal Willis in the park.
"How you doing down there?" Kling asked.
"We're freezing our asses off," Willis replied.
"Any action yet?"
