Three police officers were killed—one of them a woman—and five were hospitalized, two of them in critical condition for third-degree burns.
* * * *
‘He’s telling us to go piss in the wind,’ Brown said.
It was bitterly cold outside, and frost rimed the grilled windows of the squadroom.
This was the tenth day of Christmas.
January 3 by the calendar on the wall. Five minutes after ten by the clock. Four detectives were on duty that morning. Brown, Kling, Meyer and Carella. They were all looking at the ten blank D.D. forms that had been delivered by Federal Express earlier that morning. The forms looked innocent enough. Standard police department issue. Printed for the department by municipal contract.
‘He’s telling us to go write up our reports,’ Brown said, ‘cause it won’t help one damn bit.’
‘These forms are legit,’ Kling said. ‘You can’t buy them anyplace, he had to have got them from a squadroom.’
‘Or ten squadrooms,’ Carella said.
‘Write up your dumb reports, he’s saying,’ Brown said. File your shit on the eight black horses and the nine cars...’
‘And he planned that way back in October?’ Meyer asked. ‘To send us ten D.D. forms so we could write up reports?’
‘Ten D.D. forms, right,’ Brown insisted. ‘For the ten separate...’
‘Are we supposed to write up a D.D. report on this shit, too?’
‘On what shit?’ Brown asked.
‘On this shit. The D.D. forms we got today.’
‘That’s what you write the shit on, isn’t it?’ Brown said, looking at the other men as though Meyer had momentarily lost his wits. ‘You write the shit on D.D. forms.’
‘I meant about the forms.’
‘What?’
‘Does he expect us to file a report about these forms?’
‘Who knows what he expects?’ Brown said. ‘The man has a twisted mind.’
‘So he’s telling us to write a report on the pear tree, right? And the two nightsticks...’
‘Don’t go over them again, okay?’ Kling said. ‘I’m tired of hearing all that stuff over and over again.’
‘He’s tired,’ Brown said, rolling his eyes.
‘No, let’s go over it again,’ Carella said. ‘This is all we’ve got, so let’s go over it.’
Kling sighed.
‘First the pear tree,’ Carella said.
‘On the first day of Christmas,’ Brown said. ‘I told you all along it’d be the twelve days of Christmas.’
‘Give him a medal,’ Meyer said.
‘With the ear attached to it,’ Carella said.
‘To let us know it was him,’ Brown said.
‘Then the two nightsticks...’
‘Easy to come by,’ Kling said.
‘Ditto the three pairs of handcuffs,’ Brown said.
‘Easy stuff.’
‘Then all that stuff from precincts all over the city...’
‘Four police hats, five walkie-talkies, six police shields...’
‘The wanted flyers...’
‘Seven of them.’
‘From squadrooms, had to be,’ Brown said.
‘Not necessarily. Any muster room bulletin board...’
‘Yeah, okay, so he coulda got them in a muster room someplace.’
‘And then it gets serious,’ Carella said.
‘Eight black horses,’ Kling said. ‘Six blocks from here.’
‘And the nine cars. Our own cars.’
The men were silent.
‘Ten D.D. forms,’ Meyer said.
‘You don’t find those hanging on no muster room bulletin board,’ Brown said.
‘Those came from a squadroom,’ Kling said.
‘Or ten squadrooms,’ Carella repeated.
‘So tomorrow we get eleven Detective Specials,’ Brown said.
‘And on Thursday we get the big feast. Twelve roast pigs.’
‘And a hundred dancing girls,’ Meyer said.
‘I wish,’ Brown said, and then looked quickly over his shoulder, as if his wife, Caroline, had suddenly materialized in the squadroom.
“Maybe he’s finished,’ Kling said. ‘Maybe the nine cars were the end of it, and now he’s telling us he’s finished, we can go write up our reports. Like Artie says.’
‘What about the guns tomorrow?’ Meyer asked. ‘If he sends them.’
‘He’ll be telling us to shove our guns up our asses,’ Brown said.
‘He’s roasting the pigs, don’t you get it?’ Kling said.
‘Huh?’
‘Pigs,’ Kling said. ‘Cops.’
‘So?’
‘So didn’t you ever watch “Celebrity Roast” on television?’
‘What’s that?’ Meyer said.
‘A roast,’ Kling said. ‘It’s this testimonial dinner, all these guys get up and rake another guy over the coals. They tell jokes about him, they make him look foolish—a roast. Didn’t you ever hear of a roast?’
‘Those cops yesterday got roasted, all right,’ Meyer said.
Carella had been silent for some time now.
‘I was just thinking ...’ he said.
The men turned to him.
‘My grandmother once told me that in Naples ... in other Italian cities, too, I guess ... whenever someone important dies, his coffin is put in a big black carriage, and the carriage goes up the middle of the street ... and it’s drawn by eight black horses.’
The men thought this over.
‘Was he telling us there’d be some funerals the next day?’ Kling asked.
‘First the eight black horses and then the dead cops? On the following day?’
‘I don’t know,’ Carella said.
The squadroom windows rattled with a fierce gust of wind.
‘Well,’ Kling said, ‘maybe those cars yesterday were the end of it.’
‘Maybe,’ Carella said.
* * * *
The invitation read:
Scrawled on the flap of the card in the same handwriting was the message:
Andy Parker was touched.
He hadn’t even realized the lieutenant’s wife knew his name.
He wondered if he was expected to bring a present.
* * * *
On January 4, the eleventh day of Christmas, eleven .38-caliber Colt Detective Specials were delivered to the squadroom. They were not new guns. Even a preliminary examination revealed that all of them had previously been fired, if only on a firing range. Each of the guns had a serial number stamped on it. A check with Pistol Permits revealed that the eleven guns were registered to eleven different detectives from precincts in various parts of the city. None of the detectives had reported a pistol missing or stolen. It is shameful for a cop to lose his gun.