His partner in crime was George Barret, head of the forensics lab. Together, they were the Mutt and Jeff of Pathology, the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of crime lab and morgue. Barret stood barely five-five, outweighed Grimm by at least twenty pounds, wore rimless bifocals, and parted his strawberry-coloured h4ir down the middle like a turn-of-the-century snake-oil pedlar. He was an arch-Baptist who neither smoked, swore, nor drank and was constantly offended by Grimm’s penchant for Napoleon brandy, which the coroner nipped constantly from a Maalox bottle. Barret entered the scene from one of the bedrooms carrying an ancient black snap-satchel which his late father, a country doctor, had willed him. Inside were crammed all the mysterious vials, chemicals, and tools of the forensic trade.
In his soft Southern voice he said, in a single sentence virtually uninhibited by punctuation: ‘Nothing here, I got all the pictures and measurements I need, oh, hi, Barney, I think we can assume from the tape and what we can .- or more correctly, what we can’t — find that the killer never ventured beyond the door there.’
Friscoe was a man fighting frustration, pearls of sweat twinkling on his forehead. ‘Well, where’s everybody else?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’ Livingston replied.
‘I mean where the hell is everybody else? Where’s Homicide? I see the ME there. I see Forensics. Where is everybody else? Here it Is an hour and five minutes since it happened and there ain’t a Homicide in sight yet.’
‘Nobody called Homicide,’ Livingston said.
Friscoe’s eyes went blank. ‘Nobody called Homicide?
‘Nobody called Homicide.’
‘Well, uh, is there a reason nobody called Homicide? I mean have all communications between this here apartment house and the main station busted down or what?’
Sharky was staring at the floor. He had said nothing since Friscoe arrived. He was still having trouble putting together an intelligible sentence. The one thing Friscoe would not understand, would not accept, was Sharky’s personal feeling and Sharky knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to put his personal anger aside. He had to be cautious and it was that necessity that kept him from saying anything. Friscoe finally turned to Livingston. ‘Arch?’
‘Sure,’ Livingston said and then suddenly words seemed to die in his mouth, too. It was Papa who finally broke the awkward stammering cadence of the conversation. ‘We wanna do it,’ he said simply.
‘We wanna do what?’ Friscoe said.
‘We wanna handle this one.’
‘What are you talkin’ about?’
‘He means we want to run with it, Barney,’ Livingston said. ‘We know more about —‘
‘Wait a minute! Wait a fuckin’ minute,’ Friscoe said, and his voice wavered. He held up a finger. ‘You all understand, right, that the golden rule, I mean rule number one of the holy scriptures according to The Bat, is that in the event of any sudden or unexplainable or suspicious death, any death of that nature, Homicide gets notified first. Before anybody even goes to the fuckin’ bathroom, the Homicides are brought in. That’s gospel, boys.’
‘Listen a minute,’ Livingston implored.
‘No! I don’t believe my ears. Maybe the robust second chorus of Lieutenant Kije has temporarily damaged the old ears here, because if what I’m hearing is what I think I’m hearing, you’re all off the wall. You’re all dangerous if that’s what’s comin’ off here. You’re as dangerous as a goddamn cross-eyed barber if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.’ Friscoe’s face had turned red with anger.
‘Look, don’t take it personal, for Chrissakes,’ Livingston said.
‘Well I am talkin’ it personal. How about that? I’m talkin’ all this bullshit personal. And that’s what it is — bullshit.’
‘Look,’ Livingston said, ‘we’re all a little, uh, freaked right now.’
‘Oh, I can tell that, yessiree. You’re all around the bend, if you ask me. You — you’re Abrams, that right?’
The Nosh nodded.
‘And you go along with this?’
The Nosh nodded again.
‘Shit, you’re all nuttier than a team of one-legged tap dancers, you wanna know what I think. That’s if anybody’s interested in what I think.’
The Nosh smiled.
‘It ain’t funny there, Abrams,’ Friscoe roared. ‘You got yourself one hell of a pile of trouble. What you think’s gonna happen when D’Agastino hears about this? You think I’m going up? Hah! D’Agastino’s gonna break eardrums in Afghanistan. That fuckin’ wop can outscream Billy Graham.’
‘Will you just listen for a mm —, Livingston started to say.
Friscoe cut him off. ‘Crazy,’ the lieutenant said, ‘crazeeee.’ He put his hands over his ears.
Livingston looked at Sharky and shrugged. ‘What’d I tell you?’ he said.
‘What’d I tell who?’ Friscoe said, still holding his hands over his ears.
‘1 told him you’d think we were nuts.’
‘You are nuts. Absogoddamulutely nuts. The lot of you. N-u-t-s.’
‘I thought at least you’d. . .‘ Livingston started, and then let the sentence dangle.
‘Thought what? Thought what?’ Friscoe said, his voice beginning to rise again.
‘I thought you’d hear us out.’
‘What is this here you’re layin’ off on me, Arch? What’s with this heartbreak hotel shit? Jesus, right now, this here very minute you are all up to your ass in alligators. And for Christ’s sake, so am I. I ain’t even involved in this and I’m in trouble. The Bat’s gonna have ass, man. Ten fat cheeks nailed to his fuckin’ wall. And you, too, Twigs. You and George there. You know the procedure.’
‘I work for the county,’ Twigs said quietly. ‘Captain Jaspers can go suck a duck egg.’
‘That’s real cute,’ Friscoe said. ‘How about you, George?’
‘He owes me,’ Livingston said. ‘I just called in my green stamps.’
‘Jaspers won’t bother me,’ Barret said. ‘I can remember when he was pounding a beat. He had difficulty tying his shoes in those days.’
‘He still does,’ Twigs said. ‘Besides, until you arrived, Barney, Arch was the senior officer on the scene. All I am required to do is make a preliminary study of the corpse on the scene prior to performing an autopsy. The officer in charge gets the results. In this case, I believe Sergeant Livingston was the ranking man on the scene.’
Barret smiled. ‘I follow the same procedure. Livingston will get my report. If he handles it improperly, it’s his problem, not mine.’
Friscoe sat down on the couch. ‘Cheez,’ he said. He sat for several seconds shaking his head slowly. Finally: ‘Okay, okay. Everybody here’s gone a little ape. I can understand that. I’ll work it out. I’ll take on The Bat and get it straightened out.’
‘Barney, all we want is the weekend. Sixty hours. What the hell’s that? Until Monday-morning roll call,’ Livingston said.
‘It’s nuts, that’s what it is,’ Friscoe said. ‘Look, I said I’d get it straightened out. But right now we got to get some Homicides up here and fast.’
Ironically, it was Papa who exploded. Papa — who rarely said anything and when he did could reduce the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to a single syllable, Papa who rarely showed any emotion — exploding like a wounded bull.
‘Fuck ‘em!’ he roared, jolting the anguished Friscoe, ‘Fuck ‘em all. Fuck The Bat, fuck Homicide, fuck that goddamn psalm-singin’ moron of a DA. Fuck ‘em all. Arch and me have been stuck down in that stinkin’ garbage pail at Vice for six years. You been there longer, Friscoe. Everybody in the House thinks all we’re good for is puttin’ the arm on hookers and perverts and wipin’ dogshit off our shoes. We ain’t a bunch of morons, y’know. Between you, me, and Arch there we got about fifty years in. This here’s our caper. We turned it up. I’m the one waltzed that god. damn Mabel around interrogation until my arches fell and that’s what started it all, got us into this here spot in the first place, or maybe you forgot that. Now you know what we’re gonna get outa all this? More shit, that’s what. The rest of the force is gonna come down on us with their wisecracks and insults. It don’t make no never mind that Sharky was up there on the roof doin’ his job proper. Don’t make no never mind that we turned this whole thing up and followed through. Hell, no! All we’re gonna hear is that we had a man on the roof when that lady there got her brains handed to her. Well, I’ll tell you what — I’m tired of bein’ the asshole of the whole police department. Fuck ‘em all, Barney. I say we go after this son of a bitch ourselves and when we get him we hang his goddamn balls on Jaspers’s wall. I’m tired of hem’ shit on.’ Papa pulled open the french doors and stormed out on the balcony, his face as pink as a salamander.