Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Brown came over and nodded, and together, they began walking toward the line of men standing on the sidewalk. Both detectives unbuttoned their overcoats.
    “Do you see him?” Brown asked La Bresca.
    “Not yet,” La Bresca said.
    They walked the length of the line slowly.
    “Well?” Brown asked.
    “No,” La Bresca said. “He ain’t here.”
    “Let’s take a look upstairs,” Willis suggested.
    The line of job seekers continued up a flight of rickety wooden steps to a dingy second-floor office. The lettering on a frosted glass door read:
    MERIDIAN EMPLOYMENT AGENCY
    JOBS OUR SPECIALTY
    “See him?” Willis asked.
    “No,” La Bresca said.
    “Wait here,” Willis said, and the two detectives moved away from him, toward the other end of the corridor.
    “What do you think?” Brown asked.
    “What can we hold him on?”
    “Nothing.”
    “So
that’s
what I think.”
    “Is he worth a tail?”
    “It depends on how serious the loot thinks this is.”
    “Why don’t you ask him?”
    “I think I will. Hold the fort.”
    Brown went back to La Bresca. Willis found a pay phone around the bend in the corridor, and dialed the squadroom. The lieutenant listened carefully to everything he had to report, and then said, “How do you read him?”
    “I think he’s telling the truth.”
    “You think there really
was
some guy with a hearing aid?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then why’d he leave before La Bresca got back with the pail?”
    “I don’t know, Pete. I just don’t make La Bresca for a thief.”
    “Where’d you say he lived?”
    “1812 Johnson. In Riverhead.”
    “What precinct would that be?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ll check it out and give them a ring. Maybe they can spare a man for a tail. Christ knows we can’t.”
    “So shall we turn La Bresca loose?”
    “Yeah, come on back here. Give him a little scare first, though, just in case.”
    “Right,” Willis said, and hung up, and went back to where La Bresca and Brown were waiting.
    “Okay, Anthony,” Willis said, “you can go.”
    “Go? Who’s
going
anyplace? I got to get back on that line again. I’m trying to get a job here.”
    “And remember, Anthony, if anything happens, we know where to find you.”
    “What do you mean? What’s gonna happen?”
    “Just remember.”
    “Sure,” La Bresca said. He paused and then said, “Listen, you want to do me a favor?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Get me up to the front of the line there.”
    “How can we do that?”
    “Well, you’re cops, ain’t you?” La Bresea asked, and Willis and Brown looked at each other.
    When they got back to the squadroom, they learned that Lieutenant Byrnes had called the 115th in Riverhead and had been informed they could not spare a man for the surveillance of Anthony La Bresca. Nobody seemed terribly surprised.
    That night, as Parks Commissioner Cowper came down the broad white marble steps outside Philharmonic Hall, his wife clinging to his left arm, swathed in mink and wearing a diaphanous white scarf on her head, the commissioner himself resplendent in black tie and dinner jacket, the mayor and his wife four steps ahead, the sky virtually starless, a bitter brittle dryness to the air, that night as the parks commissioner came down the steps of Philharmonic Hall with the huge two-story-high windows behind him casting warm yellow light onto the windswept steps and pavement, that night as the commissioner lifted his left foot preparatory to placing it on the step below, laughing at something his wife said in his ear, his laughterbillowing out of his mouth in puffs of visible vapor that whipped away on the wind like comic strip balloons, that night as he tugged on his right-hand glove with his already gloved left hand that night two shots cracked into the plaza, shattering the wintry stillness, and the commissioner’s laugh stopped, the commissioner’s hand stopped, the commissioner’s foot stopped and he tumbled headlong down the steps, blood pouring from his