“You got any questions or are you just learning to like it here?”
“Nuts,” Coffey said. He started for the door, threw Brannigan a salute which could just as easily have been translated into an obscene gesture as anything it was supposed to mean, and went out. The toothpick lay on the carpet where he’d been standing.
I looked at Brannigan. He was still working the unlighted cigar and he did not say anything.
“What the hell is all that?” I asked him. “You guys give him white mice to play with when he wants them, too?”
“Tell you later,” he muttered. “Let’s go, huh?”
I stood there a minute after he was gone, then I knelt next to the door and lifted the raincoat away. Woodsmoke would have had more color than her face. Waterman was watching me. I went downstairs.
The stenographer had taken one of the cars. Coffey was just pulling out in the second one and Brannigan was waiting at the third, one without insignia. “Counting Waterman it looks like three vehicles for four men,” I said when I got in. “Evidently the whole departments gone soft.”
Brannigan looked at me, made a face, then finally got rid of the decimated cigar. “Guys who came with Coffey and Pete have been checking out every apartment on this block for an hour and a half,” he said almost indifferently, “trying to rouse up somebody who might have had insomnia and been staring out a window when the deed was done. I’ve once in a while been known to give a legitimate P.I. his head, Harry, but I don’t particularly sit on my butt and read Ralph Waldo Emerson while I’m letting him run. Four other officers are out pulling hack drivers out of bed to see if any of them noticed that red MG on the streets last night, or any red MG, and where, and every patrolman who was on duty is being asked the same thing. We’ve already talked to everybody in your building, and it may also interest you to know that your office has been pulled apart and put back together again, just in case you might be working on something that could have tied in with this, or for that matter to see if you’d had any communication from the deceased lately which you might not want to mention. Also I used your phone to call and check the figures on that Troy heist. You can bill us on it, I suppose. You got anymore questions or are you beginning to like it here, too?”
“The Perry Street apartment’s in the block between Fourth and Bleecker,” I told him.
He’d had the car idling. He grinned at me, shifted and swung out. He went across to Second Avenue and straight down. He drove like most cops, treating the general run of working men’s cars like moving targets. Once or twice he gave me a nudge and I opened the siren for him. If I’d been in a better mood I would have watched the street corners for familiar faces to wave to.
“You were going to tell me about Coffey,” I said after a while. “What the hell, he walks around as if he knows where the department hides the bodies.”
He stopped the shenanigans with the car when I asked him that, punching his tongue into the side of his cheek for a minute before he answered. “Coffey’s all right,” he said then. “His wife and kid were killed in an auto smash up near Poughkeepsie about two months ago. Son of a bitch driving the other car was drunk as a calf and walked away without a bruise. They booked him on vehicular manslaughter but I don’t suppose that helps Coffey much.”
“He’s going to work it off, you think?”
“Either that or he’ll walk in on some trigger-happy junkie one afternoon and not get his own gun out in time, and who’s going to know whether he was really trying or not? I talked it over with the day chief. At least he still gets things done. He’s thorough.”
“He would be,” I said meaninglessly. I sat there remembering how I’d needled him.
We cruised through the Village slowly. Brannigan cut west on Charles Street, so that we could come back along Perry with the one-way traffic. “I want to roll by once,” he told me. “Perry’s left-side parking only, so the stake-out will be on my side. I’ll tell him to give us a horn signal if anything comes up while we’re inside.” He glanced at his watch. “Not that anything will, though. Sabatini’s had more than three hours since he slugged you. He was probably down here long before I had a chance to put anybody on it.”
“He’ll be back,” I said.
“You got reasons?”
“Two. He still doesn’t know she’s dead. Also he won’t be expecting badges. He thinks I’m in it alone. I’m the same kind of grafter he is.”
We had made the turn from Hudson Street and I could see Sally’s building up ahead. I pointed it out but Brannigan was more interested in locating his stake-out. He was moving on little more than half a horsepower. “Ought to be along in here. Yeah, the Ford. Joe Turner. Now what the silly hell’s he got his motor running for?”
We stopped next to the Ford. The detective named Turner was being busy with a day-old Journal but he had spotted us before we came alongside. He gave Brannigan a nod instead of a salute, showed me a sallow, pock-marked face I had seen in a squad room once or twice and was talking before Brannigan could say anything.
“You’re just on it, Capt’n. Green Chevy sedan, ‘56. The guy driving checks out perfect with the Sabatini make. He’s cruised by twice, circling the block and looking at the house. I was going to wait until I catch him in the mirror again and then pull out easy — let it look as if I’m giving up the parking space but then block him when he gets in close. The street’s narrow enough.”
“How long’s it take him to make it around?”
“Four, five minutes. He’s about due. You want to pull up the block so I can have room to—”
“Too late,” I said.
Turner and Brannigan looked. “That’s it,” Turner said. The green car had just made the turn a block and a half away.
“I’ll fake a stall up ahead,” Brannigan said quickly. “Pull out behind him, Joe. We’ll box him.”
Brannigan accelerated slowly, watching the rear-view mirror. Sabatini was coming on in a crawl. We crept past five or six parked cars, then came to a hydrant area. Brannigan swung left and into it, then backed out again. Sabatini wouldn’t see the hydrant. Nate was being just another incompetent driver, misjudging the size of a parking slot.
Sabatini kept on coming. One more ridiculous maneuver and we were angled across the middle of the road like beginners flunking the test. Brannigan cut the ignition then. “Wait for Turner,” he muttered. He bent forward and began to aggravate the starter noisily.
I was slumped low and out of Duke’s line of vision. He had held up about fifteen yards behind us, probably ready to start leaning on his horn. And then Turner pulled out to barricade the street behind him.
“Now,” Brannigan said.
Duke’s car was facing us like the stem on a letter “T.” Brannigan was on the side closest to him. He threw open his door and swung out fast. I had to go out the opposite side and chase around the rear of our car. Brannigan’s hand was in his jacket before I was moving.
“Police, Sabatinil Get out of there with your hands high!”
But Duke wasn’t buying. His eyes shot to the rear and he saw Tinner running toward him. His gears clattered and the Chevy leaped forward with a roar like something being abused in a wind tunnel.