“I don’t know. It was about that time.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “About—musta been about a quarter to twelve.”

  “Where’d you go then?”

  “For some coffee and—”

  “Where?”

  “The White Tower.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Half hour, I guess.”

  “What’d you eat?”

  “I told you. Coffee and—”

  “Coffee and what?”

  “Jesus, a jelly donut,” Bronckin said.

  “This took you a half hour?”

  “I had a cigarette while I was there.”

  “Meet anybody you know there?”

  “No.”

  “At the movie?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t have the gun with you, that right?”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  “Do you usually carry it around?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You ever been in trouble with the law?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Spell it.”

  “I served two at Sing Sing.”

  “What for?”

  “Assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “What was the weapon?”

  Bronckin hesitated.

  “I’m listening,” Carella said.

  “A .45.”

  “This one?”

  “No.”

  “Which?”

  “Another one I had.”

  “Have you still got it?”

  Again, Bronckin hesitated.

  “Have you still got it?” Carella repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “How come? Didn’t the police—”

  “I ditched the gun. They never found it. A friend of mine picked it up for me.”

  “Did you use the business end?”

  “No. The butt.”

  “On who?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I want to know. Who?”

  “A…a lady.”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old?”

  “Forty. Fifty.”

  “Which?”

  “Fifty.”

  “You’re a nice guy.”

  “Yeah,” Bronckin said.

  “Who collared you? Which precinct?”

  “Ninety‐Second, I think.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who were the cops?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The ones who made the arrest, I mean.”

  “There was only one.”

  “A dick?”

  “No.”

  “When was this?” Bush asked.

  “Fifty‐two.”

  “Where’s that other .45?”

  “Back at my room.”

  “Where?”

  “831 Haven.”

  Carella jotted down the address.

  “What else have you got there?”

  “You guys going to help me?”

  “What help do you need?”

  “Well, I keep a few guns.”

  “How many?”

  “Six,” Bronckin said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Name them.”

  “The two .45s. Then there’s a Luger, and a Mauser, and I even got a Tokarev.”

  “What else?”

  “Oh, just a .22.”

  “All in your room?”

  “Yeah, it’s quite a collection.”

  “Your shoes there, too?”

  “Yeah. What’s with my shoes?”

  “No permits for any of these guns, huh?”

  “No. Slipped my mind.”

  “I’ll bet. Hank, call the Ninety‐Second. Find out who collared Bronckin in ’52. I think Foster started at our house, but Reardon may have been a transfer.”

  “Oh,” Bronckin said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “That’s what this is all about, huh? Those two cops.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re way off,” Bronckin said.

  “Maybe. What time’d you get out of that RKO?”

  “About the same. Eleven thirty, twelve.”

  “The other one check, Hank?”

  “Yep.”

  “Better call the RKO on North Eightieth and check this one, too. You can go now, Bronckin. Your escort’s in the hall.”

  “Hey,” Bronckin said, “how about a break? I helped you, didn’t I? How about a break?”

  Carella blew his nose.

  None of the shoes in Bronckin’s apartment owned heels even faintly resembling the heel‐print cast the lab boys had.

  Ballistics reported that neither of the .45s in Bronckin’s possession could have fired any of the fatal bullets.

  The 92nd Precinct reported that neither Michael Reardon or David Foster had ever worked there.

  There was only one thing the investigators could bank on.

  The heat.

  At 7:26 that Thursday night, the city looked skyward.

  The city had heard a sound, and it paused to identify the sound. The sound was the roll of distant thunder.

  And it seemed, simultaneously, as if a sudden breeze sprang up from the north and washed the blistering face of the city. The ominous rolling in the sky grew closer, and now there were lightning flashes, erratic, jagged streaks that knifed the sky.

  The people of the city turned their faces upward and waited.

  It seemed the rain would never come. The lightning was wild in its fury, lashing the tall buildings, arcing over the horizon. The thunder answered the spitting anger of the lightning, booming its own furious epithets.

  And then, suddenly, the sky split open and the rain poured down. Huge drops, and they pelted the sidewalks and the gutters and the streets, and the asphalt and concrete sizzled when the first drops fell, and the citizens of the city smiled and watched the rain, watched the huge drops—God, how big the drops were!—splattering against the ground. And the smiles broadened, and people slapped each other on the back, and it looked as if everything were going to be all right again.

  Until the rain stopped.

  It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. It had burst from the sky like water that had broken through a dam. It rained for four minutes and thirty‐six seconds. And then, as though someone had suddenly plugged the broken wall of the dam, it stopped.

  The lightning still flashed across the sky, and the thunder still growled in response, but there was no rain.

  The cool relief the rain had brought lasted no more than ten minutes. At the end of that time, the streets were baking again, and the citizens were swearing and mumbling and sweating.

  Nobody likes practical jokes.

  Even when God is playing them.

  She stood by the window when the rain stopped.

  She swore mentally, and she reminded herself that she would have to teach Steve sign language so that he’d know when she was swearing. He had promised to come tonight, and the promise filled her now, and she wondered what she should wear for him.

  Nothing was probably the best answer. She was pleased with her joke. She must remember it. To tell to him when he came.

  The street was suddenly very sad. The rain had brought gaiety, but now the rain was gone, and there was only the solemn gray of the street, as solemn as death.

  Death.

  Two dead, two men he worked with and knew well. Why couldn’t he have been a street cleaner or a flagpole sitter or something? Why a policeman? Why a cop?

  She turned to look at the clock, wondering what time it was, wondering how long it would be before he came, how long it would be before she spotted the slow, back‐and‐forth twisting of the knob, before she rushed to the door to open it for him. The clock was no comfort. It would be hours yet. If he came, of course. If nothing else happened, something to keep him at the station house, another killing, another…

  No, I mustn’t think of that.

  It’s not fair to Steve to think that.

  If I think of harm coming to him…

  Nothing will happen to him…no. Steve is strong, Steve is a good cop, Steve can take care of himself. But Reardon was a good cop, and Foster, and they’re dead now. How good can a cop be when he’s shot in the back with a .45? How good is any cop against a killer in ambush?

  No, don’t think these things.

  The murders are over now. There will be no more. Foster was the end. It’s done. Done.

  Steve, hurry.

  She sat facing the door, knowing it would be hours yet, but waiting for the knob to turn, waiting for the knob to tell her he was there.

  The man rose.

  He was in his undershorts. They were gaily patterned, and they fitted him snugly, and he walked from the bed to the dresser with a curiously duck‐like motion. He was a tall man, excellently built. He examined his profile in the mirror over the dresser, looked at the clock, sighed heavily, and then went back to the bed.

  There was time yet.

  He lay and looked at the ceiling, and then he suddenly desired a cigarette. He rose and walked to the dresser again, walking with the strange duck‐like waddle which was uncomplimentary to a man of his physique. He lighted the cigarette and then went back to the bed, where he lay puffing and thinking.

  He was thinking about the cop he would kill later that night.

  Lieutenant Byrnes stopped in to chat with Captain Frick, commanding officer of the precinct, before he checked out that night.

  “How’s it going?” Frick asked.

  Byrnes shrugged. “Looks like we’ve got the only cool thing in this city.”

  “Huh?”

  “This case.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” Frick said. Frick was tired. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and all this hullabaloo made him tired. If cops got knocked off, those were the breaks. Here today, gone tomorrow. You can’t live forever, and you can’t take it with you. Find the perpetrator, sure, but don’t push a man too hard. You can’t push a man too hard in this heat, especially when he’s not as young as he used to be, and tired.

  To tell the truth, Frick was a tired man even when he was twenty, and Byrnes knew it. He didn’t particularly care for the captain, but he was a conscientious cop, and a conscientious cop checked with the precinct commander every now and then, even if he felt the commander was an egghead.

  “You’re really working the boys, aren’t you?” Frick asked.

  “Yes,” Byrnes said, thinking that should have been obvious even to an egghead.

  “I figure this for some screwball,” Frick said. “Got himself a peeve, figured he’d go out and shoot somebody.”

  “Why cops?” Byrnes asked.

  “Why not? How can you figure what a screwball will do? Probably knocked off Reardon by accident, not even knowing he was a cop. Then saw all the publicity the thing got in the papers, figured it was a good idea, and purposely gunned for another cop.”

  “How’d he know Foster was a cop? Foster was in street clothes, same as Reardon.”

  “Maybe he’s a screwball who’s had run‐ins with the law before, how do I know? One thing’s for sure, though. He’s a screwball.”

  “Or a mighty shrewd guy,” Byrnes said.

  “How do you figure that? What brains does it take to pull a trigger?”

  “It doesn’t take any brains,” Byrnes said. “Unless you get away with it.”

  “He won’t,” Frick answered. He sighed expansively. He was tired. He was getting old. Even his hair was white. Old men shouldn’t have to solve mysteries in hot weather.

  “Hot, ain’t it?” Frick said.

  “Yes indeed,” Byrnes replied.

  “You heading for home now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good for you. I’ll be taking off in a little while, too. Some of the boys are out on an attempted suicide, though. Want to find out how it turns out. Some dame on the roof, supposed to be ready to jump.” Frick shook his head. “Screwballs, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Byrnes said.

  “Sent my wife and kids away to the mountains,” Frick said. “Damn glad I did. This heat ain’t fit for man nor beast.”

  “No, it’s not,” Byrnes agreed.

  The phone on Frick’s desk rang. Frick picked it up.

  “Captain Frick,” he said. “What? Oh. Okay, fine. Right.” He replaced the receiver. “Not a suicide at all,” he said to Byrnes. “The dame was just drying her hair, had it sort of hanging over the edge of the roof. Screwball, huh?”

  “Yes. Well, I’m taking off.”

  “Better keep your gun handy. Might get you next.”

  “Who?” Byrnes asked, heading for the door.

  “Him.”

  “Huh?”

  “The screwball.”

  Roger Havilland was a bull.

  Even the other bulls called him a bull. A real bull. He was a “bull” as differentiated from a “bull,” which was a detective. Havilland was built like a bull, and he ate like a bull, and he screwed like a bull, and he even snorted like a bull. There were no two ways about it. He was a real bull.

  He was also not a very nice guy.

  There was a time when Havilland was a nice guy, but everyone had forgotten that time, including Havilland. There was a time when Havilland could talk to a prisoner for hours on end without once having to use his hands. There was a time when Havilland did not bellow every other syllable to leave his mouth. Havilland had once been a gentle cop.

  But Havilland had once had a most unfortunate thing happen to him. Havilland had tried to break up a street fight one night, being on his way home at the time and being, at the time, that sort of conscientious cop who recognized his duty twenty‐four hours a day. The street fight had not been a very big one, as street fights go. As a matter of fact, it was a friendly sort of argument, more or less, with hardly a zip gun in sight.

  Havilland stepped in and very politely attempted to bust it up. He drew his revolver and fired a few shots over the heads of the brawlers, and somehow or other, one of the brawlers hit Havilland on the right wrist with a piece of lead pipe. The gun left Havilland’s hand, and then the unfortunate thing happened.

  The brawlers, content until then to be bashing in their own heads, suddenly decided a cop’s head would be more fun to play upon. They turned on the disarmed Havilland, dragged him into an alley, and went to work on him with remarkable dispatch.

  The boy with the lead pipe broke Havilland’s arm in four places.

  The compound fracture was a very painful thing to bear, more painful in that the damned thing would not set properly and the doctors were forced to re‐break the bones and set them all over again.

  For a while there, Havilland doubted if he’d be able to keep his job on the force. Since he’d only recently made detective third grade, the prospect was not a particularly pleasant one to him. But the arm healed, as arms will, and he came out of it just about as whole as he went into it—except that his mental attitude had changed somewhat.

  There is an old adage which goes something like this: “One guy can screw it up for the whole company.”

  Well, the fellow with the lead pipe certainly screwed it up for the whole company, if not the whole city. Havilland became a bull, a real bull. He had learned his lesson. He would never be cornholed again.

  In Havilland’s book, there was only one way to beat down a prisoner’s resistance. You forgot the word “down” and you concentrated on beating in the opposite direction: “up.”

  Not many prisoners liked Havilland.

  Not many cops liked him, either.

  It is even doubtful whether or not Havilland liked himself.

  “Heat,” he said to Carella, “is all in the mind.”

  “My mind is sweating the same as the rest of me,” Carella said.

  “If I told you right this minute that you were sitting on a cake of ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, you’d begin to feel cool.”

  “I don’t feel any cooler,” Carella said.

  “That’s because you’re a jackass,” Havilland said, shouting. Havilland always shouted. When Havilland whispered, he shouted. “You don’t want to feel cool. You want to feel hot. It makes you think you’re working.”

  “I am working.”

  “I’m going home,” Havilland shouted abruptly.

  Carella glanced at his watch. It was 10:17.

  “What’s the matter?” Havilland shouted.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s a quarter after ten, that’s what you’re looking sour about?” Havilland bellowed.

  “I’m not looking sour.”

  “Well, I don’t care how you look,” Havilland roared. “I’m going home.”

  “So go home. I’m waiting for my relief.”

  “I don’t like the way you said that,” Havilland answered.

  “Why not?”

  “It implied that I am not waiting for my relief.”

  Carella shrugged and blithely said, “Let your conscience be your guide, brother.”

  “Do you know how many hours I’ve been on this job?”

  “How many?”

  “Thirty‐six,” Havilland said. “I’m so sleepy I could crawl into a sewer and not wake up until Christmastime.”

  “You’ll pollute our water supply,” Carella said.

  “Up yours!” Havilland shouted. He signed out and was leaving when Carella said, “Hey!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get killed out there.”

  “Up yours,” Havilland said again, and then he left.

  The man dressed quietly and rapidly. He put on black trousers and a clean white shirt and a gold‐and‐black‐striped tie. He put on dark‐blue socks, and then he reached for his shoes. His shoes carried O’Sullivan heels.

  He put on the black jacket to his suit, and then he went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. The .45 lay on his handkerchiefs, lethal and blue‐black. He pushed a fresh clip into the gun and then put the gun into his jacket pocket.

  He walked to the door in a duck‐like waddle, opened it, took a last look around the apartment, flicked out the lights, and went into the night.

  Steve Carella was relieved at 11:33 by a detective named Hal Willis. He filled Willis in on anything that was urgent, left him to catch, and then walked downstairs.

  “Going to see the girlfriend, Steve?” the desk sergeant asked.

  “Yep,” Carella answered.

 

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