“Well, it has no ceiling,” Carella said. “And there’ll be a hell of a crowd there, that’s for sure.”
“But will it be an outdoor crowd?”
“Actually, I don’t think so. He says no boundaries , no walls . An arena…”
“The Deaf Man?”
“No, Rivera. I’m sure a crowd in an arena wouldn’t be the kind of crowd he means.”
They kept searching the entertainment pages.
Liza Minnelli was scheduled to perform in the Coca-Cola Concert Series this coming Sunday night, the fifth of April. But that was at Isopera, the city’s opera house, very definitely a walled space and therefore specifically excluded by Rivera’s—and presumably the Deaf Man’s—definition.
Peggy Lee was in town and so was Mel Tormé, each of them performing at separate clubs, again excluded by definition.
“Does it have to be in town?” Brown asked.
“Why?”
“Here’s a couple over the bridge.”
“I don’t think he’d be alerting us if…”
“Yeah,” Brown said.
“I mean, it has to be something in the city, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“Here’s something on a cruise ship,” Carella said.
“What kind of cruise?”
“Around Isola. Big-name band cruise.”
“Well, a ship doesn’t have walls ,” Brown said. “But doesn’t the size of the crowd mean something? He calls it a multitude , doesn’t he? Rivera? a multiplying multitude. That doesn’t sound like a crowd on a ship to me. That sounds more like…”
“Hey,” Carella said.
He was looking at a full-page ad in today’s morning newspaper. The headline on the ad read:
The location of the event was the Cow Pasture in Grover Park. The concert would start at one o’clock this Saturday and end at midnight on Sunday. At the bottom of the ad was a single line that read:
Produced by Windows Entertainment, INC
THE WAY MEYER and Hawes figured this, the shifts at the Temple Street shelter were the same as those in the police department. They tried to time the stake-out, or the plant—or even the sit as it was called in some cities—so that they’d catch part of the four-to-midnight and also part of the graveyard shift. Their reasoning was that if people were walking out of the armory with armloads of goods paid for by the city, then they wouldn’t be doing so in broad daylight, nor would they be doing it when there was a lot of activity on the street. The armory wasn’t located in what you’d call a high-traffic area, but there were some scattered shops and restaurants in the surrounding streets, and at least some kind of activity till around ten, ten-thirty, when it started getting quiet. They pulled up across the street at ten-fifteen that Thursday night, doused the headlights, and sat back to watch the passing parade.
Hawes kept bitching about what they’d done to his teeth. He told Meyer he was afraid to call Annie Rawles because she’d notice right off his teeth didn’t have their usual sparkle. Meyer said he had to look at the bright side, making a pun Hawes didn’t get.
“I don’t see any bright side to this,” he said. “I let them talk me into removing the enamel from my teeth, and now they tell me it’ll never come back. What kind of bright side is that?”
Meyer had his eye on the big brick building across the street. He was thinking this would make the third night they’d be sitting the place and if something didn’t come down soon, he was ready to call it quits. He frankly had his doubts about the reliability of Hawes’s informer, the crazy Frankie with the wild eyes and the watch cap.
“How’d he know all this, anyway?” he asked.
“The dentist? He said he’d done it for the Feebs once. What I should’ve said is I don’t want you to do anything to me you did for them jackasses, is what i should’ve said. Now the enamel won’t grow back.”
“I meant your informer,” Meyer said. “Frankie.”
“He said he saw them walking out with the stuff.”
“When?”
“All the time, he said.”
“At night, during the day?When , Cotton?”
“What the hell are you so cranky about? It’s my goddamn teeth.”
“I’m thinking we’re wasting our time here, is why I’m getting a little impatient , let’s say, not cranky.”
“Meyer, it stands to reason if they’re stealing the whole damn store, they’re doing it at night.”
“They haven’t done it so far the past two nights,” Meyer said.
“Thursday’s a good night for stealing,” Hawes said mysteriously.
Meyer looked at him.
“He said they’re all in on it, all the square shields, they take turns divvying up the loot,” Hawes said. “They walk out with it a little at a time….”
“Like what? A bar of soap every six months?”
“No, like half a dozen blankets, a carton of toothpaste, like that. Spaced out. So the stuff won’t be missed.”
“Is Laughton in on this?”
“The supervisor? My guy didn’t say.”
“Your guy,” Meyer said.
“Yeah.”
“A guy you meet inside there in the dead of night, he’s crazy as a bedbug, he’s all at once your guy , as if he’s a respected informer ,” Meyer said, not realizing he’d just uttered an oxymoron.
“Let’s say he seemed reliable,” Hawes said.
“Why is Thursday such a good night for stealing?” Meyer asked.
“Is that a riddle?” Hawes said.
“You said Thursday…”
“I give up,” Hawes said. “Why is Thursday such a good night for stealing?”
Someone was coming out of the shelter.
A man wearing a brown jacket and dark trousers, hatless, carrying a big cardboard carton in his arms.
“What do you think?” Meyer asked.
“I don’t think he’s one of the guards.”
“You only saw the ones on the graveyard.”
“Want to take him?”
“That box looks heavy, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s wait till he clears the shelter. Otherwise we blow the plant.”
They waited. The man was struggling with the weight of the carton, staggering up the street with it. They kept watching him till he turned the corner, and then they got out on either side of the car, and ran to the corner. He was halfway up the block now, walking in the middle of the sidewalk, still bent with his load. They came up behind him, one on each side, flanking him.
“Police,” Meyer said softly.
The guy dropped the box. Hawes wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d simultaneously wet his pants. The box clattered to the sidewalk as if it contained a load of scrap iron. Meyer pulled open the flaps and looked inside.
“Where’d you get these?” Meyer asked.
He was looking at half a dozen used pots and pans.
“They’re mine,” the man said.
He was unshaven and unshowered and he smelled like a four-day-old flounder. The brown jacket was stiff and crusted with grime. He was wearing high-top black sneakers worn through at the big toe on each foot. His trousers were too large for him, soiled at the cuffs, baggy in the seat, torn at each knee.
At first glance, the carton seemed to contain only the cooking implements, which they guessed he’d stolen from the shelter’s kitchen. But this was only the top layer. As they dug deeper into the box, they discovered a stainless-steel fork, knife, and teaspoon, a coffee mug, a quart thermos bottle, a tiny reading lamp, three or four frayed paperback mystery novels, an umbrella, a plaid lap robe, an inflatable pillow, a folding aluminium chair with green plastic back and seat, a tattered pair of fur-lined gloves, a black leather aviator’s helmet with glass goggles, a stack of paper plates, a packet of paper napkins, an alarm clock with a broken dial, a desk calendar, a red plastic egg crate, a corded stack of newspapers, three pairs of socks, one pair of Jockey shorts, a comb, a hairbrush, a bottle of Tylenol, a deodorant spray can, a…