He sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for a very long time, his head bent. Outside, the noise was merciless. He rose at last, and went to the window, and threw it wide open to the wintry blast and the assault of the horns.
"Shut up," he whispered to the traffic below.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!" he shouted.
Ten minutes later, he shot and killed a guy who was blowing his horn on the approach ramp to Hamilton Bridge.
The car looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. Black Richard had never seen it looking so good. He told the three rich white fucks they should go into the car wash business together. They all laughed.
In an open bodega not far from the car wash, they bought a can of starter fluid and then found a soot-stained oil drum that had already been used for fires a hundred times before. This neighborhood, when it got cold the homeless gathered around these big old cans, started these roaring fires, sometimes roasted potatoes on a grate over them, but mostly used them just to keep warm. It was warmer in the shelters, maybe, but in a shelter the chances were better of getting mugged or raped. Out here, standing around an oil drum fire, toasting your hands and your ass, you felt like a fuckin cowboy on the Great Plains.
They started the fire with scraps of wood they picked up in the lot, old newspapers, picture flames without glass, wooden chairs with broken legs, a dresser missing all of its drawers, curled and yellowing telephone directories, broomstick handles, whatever they could find that was flammable. On many of the streets and roadways in this city, in most of the empty lots, the discarded debris resembled a trail left by war refugees. When the fire was roaring and crackling, they threw in the bloody sheets and rags, and then stirred them into the flames with a broomstick, Richard the First intoning, "Double double toil and trouble," Richard the Second chiming in with "Fire burn and cauldron bubble," which black Richard thought was some kind of fraternity chant.
They stayed around the oil drum till everything in had burned down to ashes. Well, not everything. some wood in there, turning to charcoal, beginning to smolder. But anything they were worried about was now history. No more bloody sheets, no more bloody rags. Poof. Gone.
"Time to celebrate," Richard the First said.
The man sitting at Meyer Meyer's desk was Randolph Hurd. He was a short slender man, almost bald as Meyer himself, wearing a brown suit and a muted matching tie, brown shoes, brown socks. An altogether drab man who had killed a cabdriver in cold blood and been apprehended by a traffic cop before he'd taken six steps from the taxi, The tagged and bagged murder weapon was on Meyer's desk. Hurd had just told Meyer about all the phone calls he'd made this morning. Brown eyes wet, he now asked, "Isn't horn-blowing against the law?"
There were, in fact, two statutes against the blowing of horns, and Meyer was familiar with both of them. The first was in Title 34 of the Rules of the City, which rules were authorized by the City Charter.
Title 34 governed the Department of Transportation. Chapter 4 of Title 34 defined the traffic rules. Chapter 4, Subsection 12(i) read:
Horn for danger only. No person shall sound the horn of a vehicle except when necessary to warn a person or animal of danger.
The penalty for violating this rule was a $45 fine. The second statute was in the City's Administrative Code. Title 24 was called Environmental Protection and Utilities. Section 221 fell within Chapter 2, which was called Noise Control, within Subchapter 4, which was called Prohibited Noise and Unnecessary Noise Standards. It read:
Sound signal devices. No person shall operate or use or cause to be operated or used any sound signal device so as to create an unnecessary noise except as a sound signal of imminent danger.
The fines imposed for violating this statute ranged from a minimum of $265 to a maximum of $875.
"Yes, sir," Meyer said. "Horn-blowing is against the law. But, Mr.
Hurd, no one has the right to take…"
"It's the cabbies and the truck drivers," Hurd said. "They're the worst offenders. All of them in such a desperate hurry to drop off a fare or a precious cargo. Other motorists follow suit, it's contagious, you know. Like a fever. Or a plague. Everyone hitting his horn. You can't imagine the din, Detective Meyer. It's ear-splitting. And this flagrant breaking of the law is carried on within feet of traffic officers waving their hands or policemen sitting in parked patrol cars. Something should be done about it."
"I agree," Meyer said. "But Mr. Hurd…"
"I did something about it," Hurd said. Meyer figured it was justifiable homicide.
Priscilla Stetson thought she was keeping Agnello and Tony Frascati as sex toys. Georgie and Tony thought they were taking advantage of a beautiful blonde who liked to tie them up blindfold them while she blew them.
It was a good arrangement all around.
