“Sir,” Byrnes said, “we have had two notes from the man we suspect killed Parks Commissioner Cowper, and they constitute a threat upon the life of Deputy Mayor Scalon.”
“What are you doing about it?” the commissioner asked.
“Sir,” Byrnes said, “we have already sent both notes to the police laboratory for analysis. Also, sir, we have located the room from which the shots were fired last night, and we have reason to believe we are dealing with a criminal known to this precinct?”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
“I thought you said he was known …”
“Yes, sir, we’ve dealt with him before, but to our knowledge, sir, he is unknown.”
“How much money does he want this time?”
“Fifty thousand dollars, sir.”
“When is Scanlon supposed to be killed?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
“When does this man want his money?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
“Where are you supposed to deliver it?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
“What the hell do you know, Byrnes?”
“I know, sir, that we are doing our best to cope with an unprecedented situation, and that we are ready to put our entire squad at the deputy mayor’s disposal, if and when he asks for protection. Moreover, sir, I’m sure I can persuade Captain Frick who, as you may know, commands this entire precinct … “
“What do you mean, as I may know, Byrnes?”
“That is the way we do it in this city, sir.”
“That is the way they do it in most cities, Byrnes.”
“Yes, sir, of course. In any case, I’m sure I can persuade him to release some uniformed officers from their regular duties, or perhaps to call in some off-duty officers, if the commissioner feels that’s necessary.”
“I feel it’s necessary to protect the life of the deputy mayor.”
“Yes, of course, sir, we all feel that,” Byrnes said.
“What’s the matter, Byrnes, don’t you like me?” the commissioner asked.
“I try to keep personal feelings out of my work, sir,” Byrnes said. “This is a tough case. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never come up against anything like it before. I’ve got a good team here, and we’re doing our best. More than that, we can’t do.”
“Byrnes,” the commissioner said, “you may have to do more.”
“Sir …” Byrnes started, but the commissioner had hung up.
Arthur Brown sat in the basement of Junior High School 106, with a pair of earphones on his head and his right hand on the start button of a tape recorder. The telephone at the La Bresca house diagonally across the street from the school had just rung for the thirty-second time that day, and as he waited for Concetta La Bresca to lift the receiver (as she had done on thirty-one previous occasions) he activated the recorder and sighed in anticipation of what was to come.
It was very clever of the police to have planted a bug in the La Bresca apartment, that bug having been installed by a plainclothes cop from the lab who identified himself as a telephone repairman, did his dirty work in the La Bresca living room, and then strung his overhead wires from the roof of the La Bresca house to the telephone pole outside, and from there to the pole on the school sidewalk, and from there to the roof of the school building, and down the side wall, and into a basement window, and across the basement floor to a tiny room containing stacked textbooks and the school’s old sixteen-millimeter sound projector, where he had set up Arthur Brown’s monitoring station.
It was also very clever of the police to have assigned Arthur Brown to this eavesdropping plant because Brown was an experienced cop who had conducted wiretaps before and who was capable of separating the salient from the specious in any given telephone conversation.
There was only one trouble.
Arthur Brown did not understand Italian, and Concetta La Bresca spoke to her friends exclusively in Italian. For all Brown knew, they might have plotted anything from abortion to safe cracking thirty-one times that day, and for all he knew were about to plot it yet another time. He had used up two full reels of tape because he hadn’t understood a word that was said, and he wanted each conversation recorded so that someone — probably Carella — could later translate them.
“Hello,” a voice said in English.
Brown almost fell off his stool. He sat erect, adjusted the headset, adjusted the volume control on the tape recorder, and began listening.
“Tony?” a second voice asked.
“Yeah, who’s this?” The first voice belonged to La Bresca. Apparently he had just returned home from work.
The second voice …
“This is Dom.”
“Who?”
“Dominick.”
“Oh, hi, Dom, how’s it going?”
“Great.”
“What’s up, Dom?”
“Oh, nothing,” Dom said. “I was just wondering how you was, that’s all.”
There was silence on the line. Brown tilted his head and brought his hand up to cover one of the earphones.
“I’m fine,” La Bresca said at last.
“Good, good,” Dom said.
Again, there was silence.
“Well, if that was all you wanted,” La Bresca said, “I guess …”
“Actually, Tony, I was wondering …”
“Yeah?”
“I was wondering if you could lend me a couple of bills till I get myself organized here.”
“Organized doing what?” La Bresca asked.
“Well, I took a big loss on that fight two weeks ago, you know, and I still ain’t organized.”
“You never been organized in your life,” La Bresca said.
“That ain’t true, Tony.”
“Okay, it ain’t true. What is true is I ain’t got a couple of bills to lend you.”
“Well, I heard different,” Dom said.
“Yeah? What’d you hear?”
“The rumble is you’re coming into some very big loot real soon.”
“Yeah? Where’d you hear that shit?”
“Oh, I listen around here and there, I’m always on the earie.”
“Well, this time the rumble is wrong.”
“I was thinking maybe just a few C-notes to tide me over for the next week or so. Till I get organized.”
“Dom, I ain’t seen a C-note since Hector was a pup.”
“Tony …”
There was a slight hesitation, only long enough to carry the unmistakable weight of warning. Brown caught the suddenly ominous note and listened expectantly for Dom’s next words.
“I know,“ Dom said.
There was another silence on the line. Brown waited. He could hear one of the men breathing heavily.
“What do you know?” La Bresca asked.
“About the caper.”
“What caper?”
“Tony, don’t let me say it on the phone, huh? You never know who’s listening these days.”
“What the hell are you trying to do?” La Bresca asked.
“Shake me down?”
“No, I’m trying to borrow a couple of hundred is all. Until I get organized. I’d hate like hell to see all your planning go down the drain, Tony. I’d really hate to see that happen.”
“You blow the whistle, pal, and we’ll know just who done it.”
“Tony, if I found out about the caper, there’s lots of other guys also know about it. It’s all over the street. You’re lucky the fuzz aren’t onto you already.”
“The cops don’t even know I exist,” La Bresca said. “I never took a fall for nothing in my life.”
“What you took a fall for and what you done are two different things, right, Tony?”