BYRNES: That’s amazing.
JOEY: How about that? So I wondered if he was still up there, and I buzzed the apartment. No answer. Then—I don’t know—I guess I was just curious, I mean, Mr. Smith having come down already and all that, so I hopped in the elevator and went up to the sixth floor and knocked on the door. There was no answer and the door was locked.
BYRNES: What’d you do then?
JOEY: I remembered that Car—What’s his name?
BYRNES: Carella, Carella.
JOEY: Yeah, Carella, how about that? I remembered he’d gone up on the roof, so I figured I’d go take a look up there, which I done. Then, while I was up there, I figured I might as well go down the fire escape and take a peek into 6C, which I also done. And that was when I seen him laying on the floor.
BYRNES: What’d you do?
JOEY: I opened the window, and I went into the apartment. Man, I never seen so much blood in my life. I thought he was dead. I thought the poor bast—Are you taking downeverything I’m saying?
STENO: What?
BYRNES: Yes, he’s taking down everything you say.
JOEY: Then cut out that word, huh? Bastard, I mean. That don’t look nice.
BYRNES: What did you think when you found Carella?
JOEY: I thought he was dead. All that blood. Also, his head looked caved in.
BYRNES: What did you do? (No answer) I said what did you do then?
JOEY: I passed out cold.
As it turned out, not only had Joey passed out cold, but he had later revived and been sick all over the thick living-room rug, and had only then managed to pull himself to a telephone to call the police. The police had got to the apartment ten minutes after Joey had made the call. By this time, the living-room rug had sopped up a goodly amount of Carella’s blood, and he looked dead. Lying there pale and unmoving, he looked dead. The first patrolman to see him almost tagged the body D.O.A. The second patrolman felt for a pulse, found a feeble one, and instantly called in for a meat wagon. The interne who admitted Carella to the Emergency Section of the Rhodes Clinic estimated that he would be dead within the hour. The other doctors refused to commit themselves in this day and age of scientific miracles. Instead, they began pumping plasma into him and treating him for multiple concussion and extreme shock. Somebody in the front office put his name on the critical list, and somebody else called his wife. Fanny Knowles took the call. She said, “Oh, sweet loving mother of Jesus!” Both she and Teddy arrived at the hospital not a half hour later. Lieutenant Byrnes was already there waiting. At 1A.M . on April 29, Lieutenant Byrnes sent both Teddy and Fanny home. Steve Carella was still on the critical list. At 8A.M ., Lieutenant Byrnes called Frankie Hernandez at home.
“Frankie,” he said, “did I wake you?”
“Huh? Wha’? Who’s this?”
“This is me. Pete.”
“Pete who? Oh, oh, OH! Hello, Lieutenant. Whattsa matter? Something wrong?”
“You awake?”
“Is he dead?” Hernandez asked.
“What?”
“Steve. Is he all right?”
“He’s still in coma. They won’t know for a while yet.”
“Oh, man, I was just having a dream,” Hernandez said. “I dreamt he was dead. I dreamt he was laying face down on the sidewalk in a puddle of blood, and I went over to him, crying for him, saying ‘Steve, Steve, Steve’ again and again, and then I rolled him over, and Pete, it wasn’t Steve’s face looking up at me, it was my own. Oh man, that gave me the creeps. I hope he pulls through this.”
“Yeah.”
Both men were silent for several seconds. Then Byrnes said, “You awake?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“I wouldn’t cut in on what’s supposed to be your day off, Frankie. I know you were up all last night…”
“What is it, Pete?”
“I want you to check out the apartment where Steve got it. I wouldn’t ask you ordinarily, Frankie, but I’m in one hell of a bind here. You know, we’ve got these damn stores under surveillance because Meyer and Kling’ve got me convinced this nut’s gonna hit one of them. Well, Captain Frick let me have the patrolmen I needed, but he reserved the right to pull them if he needs them anyplace else. So I had to work out some kind of a system where a team of detectives would be on the prowl ready to relieve any of these cops if something else came up. I couldn’t pull Parker out of the candy store, and I couldn’t get those two men back from Washington where they’re taking that damn FBI course, so I had to pull two men off vacation, and I’ve got these two teams cruising around now, Meyer and Kling, and this other pair, ready to either relieve or assist, whichever is necessary. I’m practically running the squad single-handed, Frankie. Steve’s in the hospital, and I’m going out of my mind worrying about him, that guy is like a son to me, Frankie. I’d check this out myself, believe me, but I got to go down to City Hall this afternoon to make arrangements for that damn ball game tomorrow—of all times the Governor’s got to come down to throw out the ball, and the damn ball park has to be in my precinct, so that’ll mean—I don’t know where I’m gonna get all the men, Frankie. I just don’t know.”
He paused.
There was another long silence.
“His face is all smashed in,” Byrnes said at last. “Did you see him, Frankie?”
“I didn’t get a chance to go over there yet, Pete. I had—”
“All smashed in,” Byrnes said.
The silence came back. Byrnes sighed.
“You can see what a bind I’m in. I’ve got to ask you to do me the favor, Frankie.”
“Whatever you say, Pete.”
“Would you check that apartment? The lab’s already been through it, but I want one of my own boys to go over it thoroughly. Will you?”
“Sure. What’s the address?”
“Four fifty-seven Franklin Street.”
“I’ll just have some breakfast and get dressed, Pete. Then I’ll go right over.”
“Thanks. Will you phone in later?”
“I’ll keep in touch.”
“Okay, fine. Frankie, you know, you’ve been on the case with Steve, you know what his thinking on it has been, so I thought…”
“I don’t mind at all, Pete.”
“Good. Call me later.”
“Right,” Hernandez said, and he hung up.
Hernandez did not, in truth, mind being called on his day off. To begin with, he knew that all policemen are on duty twenty-four hours a day every day of the year, and he further knew that Lieutenant Byrnes knew this. And knowing this, Byrnes did not have to ask Hernandez for a favor, all he had to do was say, “Get in here, I need you.” But hehad asked Hernandez if he’d mind, he had put it to him as a matter of choice, and Hernandez appreciated this immensely. Too, he had never heard the lieutenant sound quite so upset in all the time he’d been working for him. He had seen Peter Byrnes on the edge of total collapse, after three days without sleep, the man’s eyes shot with red, weariness in his mouth and his posture and his hands. He had heard his voice rapping out orders hoarsely, had seen his fingers trembling as he lifted a cup of coffee, had indeed known him at times when panic seemed but a hairsbreadth away. But he had never heard Byrnes the way he sounded this morning. Never.
There was something of weariness in his voice, yes, and something of panic, yes, and something of despair, but these elements did not combine to form the whole; the whole had been something else again, the whole had been something frightening which transmitted itself across the copper telephone wires and burst from the receiver on the other end with a bone-chilling sentience of its own. The whole had been as if—as if Byrnes were staring into the eyes of death, as if Byrnes were choking on the stench of death in his nostrils, as if Byrnes had a foreknowledge of what would happen to Steve Carella, a foreknowledge so strong that it leaped telephone wires and made the blood run suddenly cold.