Boynton frowned. “What was all that about extradition?”
“I remember,” Zelinski said, as if to flaunt his now-operative memory. “Yeah, now I remember. They both refused lawyers A guy come out from the Italian Consulate. Said something when he left about how they’d both probably be extradited.”
“They’re wanted in Italy?”
Zelinski grinned. “Naw.” His face straightened. “I mean, no, sir. Not that I know of. I guess it’s just that the consulate guy figured they wouldn’t be wanted over here. I mean, concealed weapons, attempted assault with a deadly weapon—”
“And they’re not even citizens,” someone said sardonically.
“Yeah,” Zelinski said, pleased someone understood.
Chief Boynton brought the meeting back to order.
“Italian eh? The other one, too?”
“Yes, sir. His name is Vito Patrone.”
“Were they drunk when they were brought in?”
“No, sir. Sober as a judge, the two of them.”
“Did they say what the fight was about?”
“No, sir. Matter of fact,” Zelinski said honestly, “neither one of them speaks a word of English, and after we got an interpreter from the courts downstairs, they both clammed up. Haven’t said a word since, either one of them.”
Boynton drummed his fingers on the table, frowning. “No English, eh?”
“No, sir. Not a word. Or if they have, we don’t know it.”
“What about their passports?”
“All in order, sir. Tourist visas good for ninety days, issued in Rome a month or so ago.”
“Had they ever been in the States before?”
“If they did,” Zelinski said, his memory now prodded into working on all twelve cylinders, “it had to be more than four years ago, if they come into the country legally, that is. I remember all about them two guys, now. Yeah. We got their passports upstairs if you want to see them, but I remember them passports. Four years old and no trips to the United States in that time. Other places, I don’t remember where, but not here.”
“Any other identification on them?”
“Well, their passports, and they each had a wallet and each one had plenty of cash on him, but” — he frowned — “now you mention it, sir, no other I.D. in the wallets.” Zelinski had a sudden thought. He pointed toward the tape recorder. “But that guy, he knew Lazaretti, at least by name.”
“True,” Boynton said, not greatly impressed. “What about their passage? Their plane tickets?”
“They didn’t have them on them, sir.” Zelinski tried to answer what he considered an unspoken criticism. “We figured, what the hell, they’d be out of our hair in three, four days, Chief. We didn’t really get very involved with them. They were just in for a street scrap. We get a lot more serious stuff coming through all the time.”
If Boynton had been contemplating criticism, he didn’t voice it.
“Were they staying in town?”
Zelinski reddened a bit. “Like I said, sir, they didn’t hand out any information.” He brightened a bit. “But if they were staying in a hotel under their own names — and they probably would be, because maybe they figured they had to turn in their passports here like they do in Europe — it shouldn’t be too tough to trace them.” A thought came to him. “But we don’t have to trace them sir. We got them.”
“Except you say they haven’t been overly communicative.” Boynton shrugged. “Besides, staying in a hotel without speaking a word of English? My own guess is they’d be with friends or relatives. Not,” he added half to himself, “where I can see it makes one damn bit of difference.” He drummed his fingers on the table, while he stared off into space, thinking.
Reardon suddenly spoke without really knowing why. Only a faint memory of something Porky Frank had said — or hadn’t said, he didn’t recall which at the moment — seemed to prompt him.
“Was there anything in the newspapers about these two characters? Being picked up by the police, I mean?”
Zelinski shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. If there was, I didn’t see it. I can’t imagine who would be interested, but there’s always reporters hanging around, and one of them maybe might have put in a squib. Easy enough to find out, I suppose. Just ask the reporters.”
“Yeah,” Reardon said, and fell silent.
Captain Vinocur, of Communications, spoke up. He had been Mike Holland’s latest superior, and had been lying back in the bushes, waiting to see what would develop. He was a giant of a man, with spiky black hair that jetted from his wrists and arms, as well as his head, removed to Communications after ten years, eight citations, and three trips to the hospital as head of Narcotics.
“All right,” he said in his booming voice. “In the meantime, what do we do about Mike?” He glared around the room. “Damn it, he’s a good man!”
“Well, damn it yourself,” Clark said with even more than his usual irritation. “We sure as hell don’t let ourselves get blackmailed, that’s for damned sure!” He seemed to have forgotten that moments before he had been positive the entire thing had been a tempest in a teapot. “Look like bloody idiots if we did!”
“Except that it might make it a little tough on Mike, don’t you think?” It was Captain Tower, huge in a suit that seemed, as usual, far too small for him. He spoke in a deceptively mild voice.
There was a brief silence, broken by Chief Boynton.
“Captain Clark has a point,” he said. He had forced all emotion from his voice and was speaking in the flat, impersonal tones of a person responsible for the Police Department, and not as an individual. He paused in his finger-drumming and looked at Tower, but he was addressing each man in the room independently, and each man knew it. “Let’s face it — if we let one prisoner be exchanged for a kidnapped police officer, there wouldn’t be a police officer safe on his beat, or in his patrol car, or in his home, or anywhere else, from then on.”
Vinocur started up in his chair, prepared to argue, his big pockmarked face reddening. He was in no mood to watch his language at the moment, chief or no chief.
“Now, let’s wait a goddamn second! You mean we just sit around on our big fat duffs and let Mike Holland go down the drain? What the hell gives around here? A couple guys get into an argument on the street, so they get pulled in! So what? So they were armed. Who in hell isn’t, in this town, for Christ’s sake? Ten-year-old kids got guns in this town! And these two guys, they didn’t kill anybody — nobody even got hurt! So we let one of them go in exchange for Mike, for a police officer! What’s the difference we let him go or Judge Melchor fines him fifty bucks next Wednesday or Thursday and then kicks his ass out of the country? You tell me, what’s the difference? Except maybe Mike gets taken out of the play in the meantime!”
“It’s the principle of the thing, dummy...!” Clark began, but Boynton cut him off abruptly.
“Let’s all calm down. And watch our language.” He frowned and began drumming on the table again, speaking in a low voice, as if more to himself than to the meeting. “And it isn’t the principle of the thing, at all. Principles are great when they’re practical, but otherwise they’re just so much shouting down a rain barrel.”
He swung around to look Vinocur in the eye.
“Let’s keep remembering one thing — the crime here isn’t a street fight, where we can make up our mind easily to let a hood go. The crime here is kidnapping. And you ought to know as well as anyone how often the victim of a kidnapping is ever freed after the demands are met. Especially if he’s in a position to identify his kidnapper. You know as well as I do that the percentage is that Mike Holland is dead right now, whether you want to face that fact or not.”