Flying Crows Read Online Free PDF Page B

crowded, noisy, awful place to be—and sometimes even dangerous for prisoners not used to this rough, violent, profane world.
    Randy, his mind on the robbery suspect, hadn’t even glanced in the cell on his way to the interview, but now he did. And there, huddled in one corner, his head down and his hands around his legs, was an old man with wild white hair.
    It was the Union Station bum! The guy they’d found yesterday. What was his name? Birdie. Right. Birdie . . . something.
    Randy was furious. He began to count to ten—maybe even thirty or forty for this one. He had a hot temper that he worked hard at controlling, in the interests of advancing his police career as well as his family life. His promotion to sergeant a few years back had been delayed three months while he underwent counseling by a psychologist who specialized in anger management. That grew out of his throwing a heavy metal chair from a window of the detectives’ squad room when informed of a judge’s decision to put a particularly vicious holdup man back on the street. The chair fell four floors to the street, barely missing the head of a passing pedestrian.
    Counting before acting on a particular burst of rage was the cure.
    He was up to thirty-five by the time he arrived at the main processing desk to confront the sergeant in charge about Birdie . . . Carlucci? Yes. Birdie Carlucci was what he had said his name was.
    â€œI just saw a guy named Carlucci in the Cage,” Randy said. His upper lip was quivering, but otherwise he was in control. “He’s a sick old man who needs help from social services. What’s going on?”
    The sergeant, younger but as rough and ready as Randy, looked at some papers. “The computer maybe came up with a
wanted
on him, I don’t know. Maybe we’re waiting for some clarification. He’ll most probably be out of here to a group house somewhere.”
    â€œHe escaped from a state hospital more than sixty years ago! At least put him in a cell by himself. He’ll get eaten up in the Cage.”
    The sergeant agreed, and in a few minutes Randy went with a jail guard to the Cage to retrieve Carlucci and settle him into an individual cell. It was small but it was clean and had a cot, a chair, and its own commode.
    â€œDid you find Josh . . . yet?” Carlucci asked Randy, once the guard was gone. Without being invited, Randy sat down in the chair and motioned for Carlucci to sit on the cot. The old man’s speaking, while still deliberate, was not as halting as it had been. But he did seem sick—and more frail even than when they found him two days ago.
    â€œNo, I haven’t had a chance to get on that yet,” Randy said. “To tell you the truth, without his last name I don’t even know where to begin.”
    â€œCentralia. I said he was . . . from Centralia. They would . . . know where he is. He was from Centralia.”
    Randy said he would try Centralia. “I’m sorry you got tossed in that holding cell, Mr. Carlucci. We call it the Cage and that’s about all it is. Are you feeling all right?”
    â€œI’m fine, thank you. I . . . didn’t mind that many people. It has . . . been a long time.”
    â€œI assume they’ve given you plenty to eat? You still look pretty weak.”
    â€œI am not really . . . hungry.”
    â€œHow did you eat while you lived at Union Station?”
    â€œAt first, mostly with help from a wonderful Harvey Girl . . . Janice. She gave me leftovers. I ate like a king. When the Harvey House closed, it was . . . much harder. And it was really hard after the last restaurant closed, the one that came in after the Harvey House.”
    In Randy’s mind, the Union Station had begun its real decline when the Harvey House closed in the 1960s. Randy was fourteen or fifteen at the time. He had read a story in the
Star
that said Kansas City hadn’t been the same since, and he was inclined