The squadroom was silent. Steve Carella, his shirt sleeves rolled up, was sitting at his desk, reading an FBI report on a suspected burglar. Hot sunlight covered the top of his desk like molasses. Bymes walked to the grilled window and stared out at the street. The cars, the people, all seemed to have been captured in transparent plastic, suspended in time and space, unmoving. Byrnes sighed.
"Hot," he said.
"Mmm," Carella answered.
"Where is everybody?"
"Barker's on the prowl, Hernandez is answering a squeal, and Kling…" Carella shrugged. "He's on a plant, isn't he?"
"That drugstore thing?"
"I think so."
"Yeah," Byrnes said, remembering. "The guy who's passing phony cocaine prescriptions." He shook his head. "He won't turn up. Not in this heat."
"Maybe not," Carella said.
"I always choose the wrong time for my vacation," Byrnes said. "Harriet and I spend months figuring it out. I'm the senior officer around here, so I get first choice. So what happens? I always miss the good weather by a month. It's so hot you can't even think, and then it's time for my vacation, and it starts raining, or it rums gray, or we suddenly get a snowstorm from Canada. It never fails. Every year." He paused for a moment. "Well, every year except one. We went to the Vineyard once. We had good weather." He nodded, remembering.
"Vacations are rough anyway," Carella said.
"Yeah? How so?"
"I don't know. It generally takes me two weeks to unwind, and the minute I start relaxing, it's time to come back to work."
"You going away this year?"
"I don't think so. The kids are too small."
"How old are they, anyway?" Byrnes asked.
"They were a year old in June."
"Boy, time flies," Byrnes said, and fell silent. He thought about the passage of time, thought about his own son, thought how much Carella seemed like a son to him, thought how his squadroom seemed like a family business, a candy store or a grocery store, thought how good it was to have Carella working behind the counter with him.
"Well, talking about the heat never helped it any," Byrnes said, and he sighed again.
"Some day, they're going to invent…" Carella started, and the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. "Eighty-seventh Squad," he said. "Detective Carella."
The voice on the other end said, "I know where Pepe Miranda iss."
They saw Sixto as he came out of the drugstore. His face looked flushed. It seemed as if he were about to cry. He kept blinking his eyes like a person fighting to hold back tears.
"What's the matter?" Zip asked. He studied Sixto impersonally, not as if he were truly concerned, not as if he really wanted to know what the matter was, but asking the disguised question, "How will your present state affect
"Nothin'," Sixto said.
"You look like somebody hit you with a ball bat."
"No."
"What were you doing in the drugstore?"
"Havin" a Coke. I wass thirsty."
"I thought I told you to keep an eye on Alfie's pad."
"I could see his buildin' from where I wass sittin'," Sixto said.
"We gah dee guns," Papa said, grinning.
"Come on," Zip told them both. "Cooch is rounding up some kids. We got to meet him near the luncheonette."
They walked down the avenue together, Zip in the middle flanked by Sixto and Papa. He felt rather good with the boys on either side of him. He walked with his shoulders back and his head erect, setting the pace, knowing they would keep up with him, and feeling very friendly towards the boys as he walked, feeling a bond with them which he could not have described accurately if he'd tried. There was no logic to the bond because he admitted to himself that he didn't even particularly like either Sixto or Papa. One was a mama's boy and the other was a half-wit. And yet he could not deny the emotional satisfaction of walking down the avenue with these two by his side, like a general with his trusted aides. The bod, he knew, would become stronger once they had washed Alfredo Gomez. The word crossed his mind, washed, and he was instantly face to face with the other word, the stronger word. Kill. He did not flinch from it. Kill. He repeated the word in his mind. Kill. We will kill Alfredo Gomez. Kill.
By the time they reached the luncheonette, the word had no more meaning to him than the word "wash". Cooch was there, waiting for them. Two small boys were with him. Parker, the bull, had taken off, but the sailor was still inside the luncheonette, probably waiting for La Gallina to open, waiting for a Spanish girl. The idea pleased Zip at first He felt a fierce pride in the knowledge that the sailor had come uptown to seek the passion only a Spanish girl could give him. And then the pride turned sour, and he thought darkly that the sailor had no right to be here, no right to be emptying himself into Spanish girls, the way sewers empty into the river. He frowned and cast a black scowl at the sailor's back, and then walked quickly to where Cooch stood with the younger boys.
