The cars nosed through the night like surfaced submarines, two big sedans with five detectives in each of them. The detectives were all wearing bulletproof vests. Carella was riding in the lead car, with Wade and Bent and two cops they'd introduced as Tonto and the Lone Ranger. Tonto didn't look the slightest bit Indian. Carella had suited up with the others at the Four-Five, and was sitting on the backseat between Wade and Bent. They were all big men. Wearing the vests made them even bigger. The car felt crowded.
"The one done the shooting is named Sonny Cole," Wade said. "He's packing a nine-millimeter for sure, and from the way the girl described it, it's probably the Uzi we're looking for."
"Okay," Carella said, and nodded. Sonny Cole, he thought. Who killed my father.
"The other one's named Diz Whittaker. I think his square handle is Desmond, we're running computer checks on both of them right this minute. From what she told us, Diz is the brains of the operation."
"Some brains," Bent said sourly.
"Anyway, he's the one planned the holdup in your father's shop and also another one last Thursday night, when we almost got them."
"A liquor store," Bent said. "This is how they keep themselves in dope, they do these shitty little holdups."
Wade looked at him sharply.
Carella was thinking A shitty little holdup. My father got killed for twelve hundred dollars. He was thinking he was going to enjoy meeting these two punks. He was going to enjoy it a lot.
"Girl's been living with them a coupla weeks now, they picked her up on Cemetery Row one night, she's a hooker," Wade said.
"A junkie, too," Bent said.
"An all-around straight arrow," Wade said.
"The house is on Talley Road, in the Four-Six, mostly black and Hispanic, they're renting a room on the second floor. Two-family house, wide open, bulldozed lots on either side of it, getting ready for another project."
"Means they can see us coming a mile away."
"Yeah, well, that's life," Bent said.
The house was a two-story clapboard building with an asphalt shingle roof. Empty sandlots on either side of it, looked like somebody had built it in the middle of a desert. New low-cost housing project just up the street, not a block away, looking as though it had already been taken over by a marauding army, graffiti all over the brick walls, benches torn up, windows broken.
There were eight detectives waiting across the street under the trees, all of them from the Four-Six, all of them wearing bulletproof vests. This was a big one; a cop's father had been shot. A slender moon hung over the trees, casting a silvery glow on the scraggly lawn in front of the house. Night insects were singing. It was almost midnight. There was not a police vehicle in sight yet. They were all up the street in the project's parking lot, out of sight and just a radio call away; nobody wanted to spook the perps. The two cars from the Four-Five dropped eight of the ten detectives into the silent dark and moved off into the night. Under the trees, the sixteen detectives huddled, whispering like summer insects, planning their strategy.
"I want the door," Carella said.
"No," Wade said.
"He was my …"
"The door's mine."
None of the other cops argued with him. What they were discussing here was something called taking the door, and that meant they were discussing sudden death. Taking the door was the most dangerous thirty seconds in any policeman's life. Whoever was the point of the attacking wedge could be next in line for a halo and a harp because you never knew what was inside any apartment, and with today's weaponry bullets could come flying through even a metal-clad door. In this case, they knew what was inside that house across the street. What was in there was a killer with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic weapon. Nobody in his right mind wanted to take that door. Except Carella. And Wade.
"We'll take it together," Carella said.
"Can't but one man kick in a door," Wade said, and grinned in the moonlight. "It's mine, Carella. Be nice."
The hands on Carella's watch were standing straight up. Tonto put in a call to the patrol sergeant waiting in his car in the project's parking lot. There were six other cars with him. He told the sergeant they were going in. The sergeant said, "Ten-four."
The detectives all looked at each other.
Wade nodded and they started across the street.
The eight detectives from the Four-Six and four of the detectives from the Four-Five split into teams of six each and headed around to cover the sides and back of the house. Carella and Wade started up the walkway with the Lone Ranger and Tonto close behind them.
