'If you have it handy.'
'Cooke 4-8310,' Boone said.
Kling wrote it into his pad. 'Thank you, Mr Boone,' he said. 'I hope you'll be available if any further questions come to mind.' He took a card from his wallet. 'If you should happen to remember anything you feel is important, just call me, won't you. The 87th Squad, Detective Kling. The number's on the card.'
Boone took the card and studied it.
From the other side of the room, Karl—standing with his arms folded—said, 'Hey, Ted, can we get this show on the road? The jungle queen's getting rich.'
'I've got to get back to work,' Boone said.
'I appreciate the time you've given me,' Kling said.
'One thing, Mr Kling.'
'Yes?'
'You don't think I did this, do you?'
'You know the answer to that one, Mr Boone,' Kling said.
'Come on, Ted,' Karl called. 'Let's go.'
'Okay, okay,' Boone said. 'Good luck, Mr Kling.' And then he turned his back and walked toward the model and said, 'Now let's get this jazz right this time, okay?'
CHAPTER SIX
It was funny the way Detective Roger Havilland got killed.
Now there are certainly a good many people who don't think there is anything funny whatever about getting killed, no matter how you happen to get killed. And the way Roger Havilland got killed wasn't really a funny ha-ha way, it was simply funny-peculiar. But it was funny. No question about it. If you knew Roger Havilland at all, you had to admit it was funny.
It wasn't easy to be Havilland.
He was a big man if you consider six feet four inches and two hundred and twenty pounds big. Maybe you don't. There are a lot of men who consider that average, and a lot of women who like their men to look like Primo Camera. Maybe you're one of them. Maybe you think Havilland was a midget.
The cops at the 87th thought he was pretty big, but that's because they had seen Havilland in action. He was not easy to miss when he was in action. He used his hands a lot. He liked to hit people, so to speak. Well, maybe he didn't really like to hit them, but he did hit them all the time, and it seemed as if he enjoyed it while he was doing it.
Cops like Steve Carella and Bert Kling didn't find it strange that Havilland enjoyed hitting people. They knew why he did. They didn't approve of it, but they knew why. They disliked him intensely. There wasn't a cop in the 87th, uniformed or detective, who really liked Havilland. They were sorry he got it, but not because they really liked him. They just didn't like to see cops getting killed. It made them think about becoming plumbers or bartenders.
Havilland, however, had once been a nice cop. That's the truth. Carella knew him when, and Meyer knew him when, and Lieutenant Byrnes knew him when, and a lot of other cops at the 87th knew Havilland before he became a bull.
He became a Havilland-bull as differentiated from a Carella-bull or a Kling-bull. He became a real bull. A bull who snorted and farted and burped and gored and roared and boffed like a bull. A bull. Havilland was simply a bull.
He became a bull because he decided there was no percentage in being a nice-type happy-guy smiling-faced cop. The way he decided was like this.
He was walking along one day minding his own business when he spotted a street fight in progress, and it seemed as if a lot of kids were ganging up on one nice-type happy-guy smiling-faced kid, and so Havilland stepped in like a hero. The kids, who'd been content up to then to be bashing in the head of a fellow street fighter, decided it would be more fun to play the Anvil Chorus on the head of Roger Havilland. Havilland had drawn his service revolver by that time, and he very politely fired a few shots into the air to let the boys know the Law was on the scene. One of the boys, not being terribly impressed by the Law, brought a lead pipe down on Havilland's right wrist and knocked the gun from his hand. That was when the other boys became musicians in earnest.
They played a chorus of Chopsticks and then a few bars of Night on Bald Mountain and then they did their famous version of To a Wild Rose, by which time they had succeeded in breaking Havilland's arm in four places. They also succeeded in leaving his face looking like a pound of chopped chuck, ground twice, thank you.
The compound fracture hurt. It hurt like hell. It hurt worse than hell because the doctors had to break the arm all over again since it would not set properly the first time around. Havilland had just made Detective 3rd Grade, and he thought perhaps the broken arm would kick him clear off the force. It didn't. It healed. Roger Havilland was a whole man again, except for the queer mental quirk his do-gooder intrusion had produced. He had, of course, been on the business end of a lead pipe before. No cop in the 87th survived very long if he didn't know how to cope with an arm swinging a lead pipe or a ball bat or a wrench or a broom or any one of a number of homemade weapons. But he had never been beat up while actually trying to help someone. Havilland even suspected that the kid he'd been trying to help was one of those who'd kicked him after he'd fallen and was dragged into an alley. This was certainly no way to treat a good Samaritan. This wasn't even a way to treat a bad Samaritan.
Sitting alone in his hospital room, Havilland figured it out. As far as he was concerned, they could all go and. Every last one of them could go and. Their mothers could go and. Their fathers could go and. The whole world could go and. Roger Havilland was watching out for Number One. Everybody else could go and. In Macy's window.
It was unfortunate.
A lot of people suffered because of what half a dozen kids did to Roger Havilland a long time ago.
Looking at it in another way, if Havilland had had the gumption to stick to his original premise, he might still be alive today. That's the trouble with people. You find a streak of human nature in almost every one of them. If Havilland could have stuck to being an out-and-out rat, he'd have been all right. No. He had to get noble.
Which is why it was funny the way he got killed.
He had left the squad at about 10.35. He'd told Carella and Hawes, who were working with him, that he wanted to check the streets. Actually, he was going down to get a cup of coffee, and then he would go home. When he got home, he would call Carella and say, 'Everything's quiet. I'm heading home.' When a cop's been on the force awhile, he learns these little tricks.
It was a pretty nice night and Havilland, only because he wanted a little air before he went into the subway, decided he really would walk around the streets a little. He was not looking for trouble. Havilland was one of those cops who consciously avoid trouble. If trouble came to Havilland, he would not back away from it. But look for it? No. Not Havilland. He would leave that to the heroes. The world was full of heroes.
Sometimes, the streets of the 87th were nice. It didn't have anything to do with the people in them. Havilland hated the people in the streets of the 87th. As far as he was concerned, all spies could go and. All kikes could go and. All wops could go and. All niggers could go and. In fact, all people could go and. Except Number One.
It was just that sometimes everything got quiet in the streets and you could feel the heartbeat of a city there, especially on a night close to summer when the sky was a shade of off-black, and the moon hung in the sky like a whore's belly button, and you smell the perfume of the city. On nights like that, Havilland remembered perhaps that he'd been born in the city, and that he'd once played Kick the Can on the city's streets, and that he'd once been in love with an Irish girl named Peggy Muldoon. This was a night like that.