'Did he do something wrong?' Harriet asked.
'No, he didn't do anything wrong,' Byrnes said, shaking his head. 'No, it isn't him. I'm just saying I like him, and I like his wife. I look at that girl as if she's my own daughter. I swear it. A man who runs a squad isn't supposed to have favourites, but I like that boy. He's a damned fine boy.'
Larry Byrnes said nothing. He ate with the complete abandon of a hungry adolescent. It had not been so long ago that Larry Byrnes's hunger had not been for the normal adolescent pleasures. He had not forgotten that Steve Carella had been shot trying to solve a narcotics case in which he'd been involved. That was all behind them now, a part of the Byrnes existence they no longer discussed, but he had not forgotten. He knew why his father's favourite cop was Steve Carella. His own favourite cop, since last Christmas, was a detective-lieutenant named Peter Byrnes. So he listened to his father attentively, but he none the less managed to gobble his food with total adolescent oblivion.
'I like Steve, too,' Harriet said. 'What happened?'
'He almost got killed today,' Byrnes said.
'What!'
'Yes, yes. Four bullets that missed him by maybe half an inch.'
'Steve? How?'
'Hawes,' Byrnes said. 'Cotton Hawes. They had to send him to me. Of all the precincts in the city, they had to pick mine. They take him out of a precinct which is a finishing school for young girls, and they send him to the 87th. The 87th! Of all the precincts! What did I do to deserve him? What did I do to deserve a man who knocks on a murderer's door and announces that the police are there?'
'Is that what he did?' Harriet asked, astonished.
'That's what he did.'
'What happened?'
'The guy opened fire. Almost ripped Steve's head off. Hawes got himself beat to a pulp. What am I gonna do with him? Put him on tracing lost bicycles? I need all the cops I can get. Havilland may have been a terrible guy personally, but he wasn't a bad cop. He really wasn't, Harriet. Loose with his hands, yes, and I don't go for that. But he wasn't a bad cop. He didn't pull stupid blunders. I can't afford to risk a man like Steve Carella because of a stupid blunder a jerk like Cotton Hawes makes!'
'The one who fired? Is he the man who killed Roger?'
'We think so.'
'And this Hawes knocked on the door?'
'Yes! Can you believe it? Harriet, tell me the God's honest truth. Would you have knocked on that door?'
'I'd have kicked it in,' Harriet said calmly, 'and shot at the first thing that moved.'
'Good,' Byrnes said. 'Would you like to join my squad?'
'I joined it the day we were married,' Harriet said, smiling.
Byrnes smiled, too. He looked at Larry. He sighed heavily.
'Son,' he said, 'I know a famine is expected this year, but go easy. We've been hoarding food in the basement.'
In the living-room of Claire Townsend's apartment, she and Detective Bert Kling were necking.
It was a pleasant spot to neck, much more comfortable than the back seat of an automobile. Ralph Townsend, Claire's father, had retired at 10.30, leaving the living-room to 'the kids,' figuring that nothing very terrible or spectacular could happen to two people who were already engaged. On that particular night, he was absolutely right because Bert Kling didn't have his mind on necking somehow. The lights were dimmed and there was soft music coming from the record player, but all Kling could do was talk about Cotton Hawes.
'Knocks on the door,' he said. 'This is me, Renfrew of the Mounted! Bang! Four shots come plowing through the wood. Steve almost collected his life insurance.'
'Are we going to talk about Cotton Hawes all night?'
'He's a danger,' Kling said. 'He's a positive danger. I hope to hell I never answer a squeal with him.'
'He's new. He'll learn.'
'When? When all the cops on the squad are dead? Oh, Claire, this man is dangerous.'
'I wish you were a little more dangerous.'
'How do you mean?'
'You figure it out.'
'Oh,' Kling said. He kissed her perfunctorily. 'But how can a man be so ignorant?' he persisted. 'How can a man deliberately…?'
'Is it considered impolite for policemen to knock on doors?'
'It's considered wonderful,' Kling said. 'Except when the man in the apartment is a suspected murderer.'
'This man was a suspected murderer?'
'This was the man who threw Roger Havilland into the plate glass window.'
'Oh.'
'So would you have knocked?'
'I'd have said "Kiss me, lover."' Claire said.
'What?'
'Kiss me, lover,' she repeated.
So he kissed her.
The only man who wasn't doing much complaining was Steve Carella. At home with Teddy, he had more important things on his mind. He did not like taking police work home with him. He saw too many things during the day which often left him feeling sick. He knew too many cops who had allowed the filth of criminal detection to wipe off on the floor mats of their homes. Teddy was a sweet girl, Teddy was his wife. Except when something was really troubling him, except when there was a nut too difficult to crack, he did not usually discuss the precinct or the squad with her. Besides, what had happened this afternoon was over and done with. It had been close, but he'd survived in one piece, and maybe Hawes had learned a lesson. The lesson undoubtedly would have been driven home with sharper impact had Carella been killed. Unfortunately, he had not. Hawes would have to derive from the lesson what he could—without the benefit of homicide.
Steve Carella kissed his wife. She was good to kiss. She was a brunette with brown eyes and full lips and a full body, and he enjoyed kissing her. The room was very quiet, dark except where the street lamps below filtered up to the open windows. Steve Carella didn't tell Teddy about Hawes. Steve Carella had more important things on his mind.
CHAPTER TEN
On Boxer Lane, there walked a man who felt like a horse's ass.
The man had adhesive tape all over his face. The man was six feet two inches tall and weighed one hundred and ninety pounds. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound healed.
The man's name was Cotton Hawes.
The man was off duty, but he had none the less come back to Boxer Lane because he wanted to find out more about the man who'd thrown four slugs through the door and then beaten him silly. His pride was injured and his face was injured, but most of all he felt pretty stupid. He did not like to feel stupid. He'd have felt even more stupid had Carella been killed. He thought again of the absurdity of his knocking, thought again of those four shocking explosions which had sent Carella plummeting to the floor. Carella could be dead now, he thought. I could have killed Carella this afternoon.
The thought was not a pleasant one. For perhaps Hawes was an opinionated man, and perhaps he'd been raised on a squad where murderers were not too frequent guests, and perhaps he was impatient, and perhaps he was somewhat snide and disrespectful at times, but he thought highly of his profession, and he had a heart as wide as the Grand Canyon. He would no more have wanted Steve Carella dead than he'd have wanted himself dead. Nor had he wanted to commit such a stupid blunder that afternoon. He supposed he'd been too eager. He hadn't stopped to think. Failure to think was a bad habit for a cop to develop, especially in a precinct like the 87th. It was becoming increasingly clear to Hawes that the 87th was a little bit different from anything he'd come across in his years on the force. Curiously, he enjoyed the challenge. He was a cop because he wanted to fight crime. There had been crime in the 30th, to be sure, but the crime there when compared to the crime in the 87th was somewhat like a glass of ginger ale set alongside a vodka martini.