If he did let her walk, of course, Genero would bring departmental charges or do something else stupid. Hawes was pondering the inequity of having to work with someone like Genero when Hal Willis pushed through the slatted rail divider, dragging behind him two people handcuffed to each other. Hawes couldn't tell whether the people were boys or girls because they were both wearing designer jeans and woolen ski masks. The drunks in the cage cheered again, this time in greeting to the masked couple. Willis took a bow, spotted the pregnant hooker with the open coat, said, "Close your coat, lady, you'll freeze those sweet little darlings to death," and then said, "Come in, gentlemen," to the two people in the designer jeans and the ski masks. "Hello, Steve," he said to Carella, "it's starting early today, isn't it? Who's that in the cage? The Mormon Tabernacle Choir?"
The drunks found this almost as amusing as they found the pregnant hooker. The drunks were having the time of their lives. First a topless floor show, and now a stand-up comic with two guys in funny costumes. The drunks never wanted to leave this place.
"What've you got?" Carella asked.
"Two masked bandits," Willis said, and turned to them. "Sit down, boys," he said. "You won't believe this," he said to Carella, and then he turned to where Meyer was typing, and said, "You won't believe this, Meyer."
"What won't I believe?" Meyer asked, and his words seemed to command the immediate respect of everyone in the squad-room, as though — like a superb ringmaster — he had cracked a whip to call attention to the morning's star performers, diminutive Hal Willis and the two masked men. The pregnant hooker turned to look at them, and even closed her coat so that her own star performers would not detract from the action in the main ring. The drunks put their faces close to the meshed steel of the detention cage as if they were Death Row inmates in a B-movie, watching a fellow prisoner walk that Long Last Mile. Hawes looked, Carella looked, Meyer looked, everybody looked.
Willis, never one to shun the limelight, upstaged the two masked and manacled bandits, and said, "I was heading in to work, you know? Snow tires in the trunk 'cause I planned to have them put on at the garage on Ainsley and Third, okay? So I stop there, and I tell the mechanic to put on the tires for me — don't ask why I waited till February, okay? The Farmer's Almanac said it was gonna be a harsh winter. So he starts jackin' up the car, and I take the key to the men's room, and I go out to take a leak — excuse me, lady."
"De nada," the pregnant hooker said.
"And when I come back, these two guys are standin' there with cannons in their hands and yelling at the mechanic, who already crapped his pants, to open the safe. The mechanic is babbling he hasn't got the combination, and these two heroes here are yelling that he'd better find the combination fast or they'll blow his goddamn brains out, excuse me, lady. That's when I come out of the can zipping up my fly."
"What happened?" one of the drunks asked breathlessly and with sincere interest. This was really turning into a marvelous morning! First the topless dancer, then the stand-up comic, who was now becoming a very fine dramatic actor with a good sense of timing and a wonderful supporting cast of actors in masks as in the Japanese traditional No theater.
"Do I need an attempted armed robbery at nine in the morning?" Willis asked the cageful of drunks. "Do I need an armed robbery at any time of day?" he asked the pregnant hooker. "I stop in a garage to get my tires changed and to take a leak, and I run into these two punks."
"So what'd you do?" the drunk insisted. The suspense was unbearable, and all this talk about taking a leak was making him want to pee, too.
"I almost ran out of there," Willis said. "What would you have done?" he asked Hawes. "You're zipping up your fly and suddenly there are two punks with forty-fives in their hands?"
"I'd have run," Hawes said, and nodded solemnly.
"Of course," Willis said. "Any cop in his right mind would've run.
"I'd have run, too," Carella said, nodding.
"Me, too," Meyer said.
"No question," Willis said.
He was beginning to enjoy this. He was hoping the drunk would ask him again about what had happened back there at the garage. Like any good actor, he was beginning to thrive on audience feedback. At five feet eight inches tall, Willis had minimally cleared the height requirement for policemen in this city — at least when he had joined the force. Things had changed since; there were now uniformed cops, and even some detectives, who resembled fire hydrants more than they did law enforcers. But until recently, Willis had most certainly been the smallest detective anyone in this city had ever seen, with narrow bones and an alert cocker-spaniel look on his thin face, a sort of younger Fred Astaire look-alike carrying a .38 Detective's Special instead of a cane, and kicking down doors instead of dancing up staircases. Willis knew judo the way he knew the Penal Code, and he could lay a thief on his back faster than any six men using fists. He wondered now if he should toss one of the masked men over his shoulder, just to liven up the action a bit. He decided instead to tell what had happened back there at the garage.
"I pulled my gun," he said, and to demonstrate, pulled the .38 from its shoulder holster and fanned the air with it. "These two heroes here immediately yell, 'Don't shoot!' You want to know why? Because their own guns aren't loaded! Can you imagine that? They go in for a stickup, and they're carrying empty guns!"
"That ain't such a good story," the previously interested drunk said.
"So go ask for your money back," Willis said. "Sit down, punks," he said to the masked men.
"We're handcuffed together. How can we sit?" one of them said.
"On two chairs," Willis said, "like Siamese twins. And take off those stupid masks."
"Don't," one of them said to the other.
"Why not?" the other one said.
"We don't have to," the first one said. "We know our constitutional rights," he said to Willis.
"I'll give you rights," Willis said. "I could've got shot, you realize that?"
"How?" Meyer said. "You just told us the guns—"
"I mean if they'd been loaded," he said, and just then Genero came up the hall from the men's room. He said, "Who turned off my radio?" looked around for the pregnant hooker, the only one of his prisoners who wasn't in the detention cage, spotted her sitting on the edge of Hawes's desk, walked swiftly toward her, and was saying, "Okay, sister, let's…" when suddenly she began screaming at him. The scream scared Genero half out of his wits. He ducked and covered his head as if he'd suddenly been caught in a mortar attack. The scream scared all the drunks in the cage, too. In defense, they all began screaming as well, as if they'd just seen mice coming out of the walls and bats flying across the room to eat them.
The woman's strenuous effort, her penetrating, persistent, high-pitched angry scream — aside from probably breaking every window within an eight-mile radius — also broke something else. As the detectives and the drunks and the two masked men watched in male astonishment, they saw a huge splash of water cascade from between the pregnant hooker's legs. The drunks thought she had wet her pants. Willis and Hawes, both bachelors, thought so, too. Carella and Meyer, who were experienced married men, knew that the woman had broken water, and that she might go into labor at any moment. Genero, his hands over his head, thought he had done something to provoke the lady to pee on the floor, and he was sure he would get sent to his room without dinner.