So Long As You Both Shall Live (87th Precinct) Read Online Free PDF Page A

beginning to tear. Immediately opposite the exit door, some thirty feet from the hotel, there was the unbroken brick wall of the apartment house next door. On Carella’s left, as he stood with his back to the exit door, he could see the driveway that ran between the two buildings, and he could see the early-morning traffic on the cross street. On his right he saw a bank of grimy windows running like a lighted bridge from hotel to apartment house, part of a low stucco structure that crouched between the two buildings as though frightened it would be squashed flat by one or the other of them. A metal door to the right of the windows was painted red. Carella did not appreciate the current slang for cops, but neither had he appreciated the terminology that was in vogue when he’d first made detective. In those days, detectives were called “bulls.” Nonetheless, he zeroed in on that red door as if it were a cape being waved by a matador. Crossing the windy courtyard, cursing the cold, he reached the door and knocked on it.
    There was no answer.
    He knocked again.
    “Who is it?” a voice said.
    “Police,” Carella said.
    “Who?”
    “Police officer. Would you please open the door, sir?”
    “Just a second, okay?”
    The man who unlocked and then opened the door appeared to be in his early seventies, a tall thin man wearing eyeglasses, black trousers, a white shirt, and a long dirty white apron. He was holding a broom in his left hand.
    “Could I see your badge, please?” he asked Carella.
    Carella showed him the gold shield.
    “Come in, officer,” the man said, and then waited for Carella to enter, and closed and locked the door behind him. As soon as he had performed this task, he shifted the broom to his right hand. “Cold out there, ain’t it?” he said.
    “Very,” Carella said.
    The man had brown eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses. He had a very soft speaking voice, so low that Carella had trouble hearing him. A gray bristle was on his chin and cheeks. “What’s the trouble, officer?” he asked.
    “This is a routine investigation,” Carella said, hauling out the old police pacifier. Routine investigation. Two words that usually satisfied any honest citizen’s curiosity. Try them on a crook, though, and they often struck terror in his heart. “How long have you been in here tonight, sir?”
    “I got in around ten.”
    Looking around now, Carella saw that he was in a kitchen. A huge black cookstove ran almost the length of the courtyard wall. The grimy windows Carella had seen from outside had undoubtedly got that way from the grease spatters of the day’s cooking. There was a large butcher-block worktable opposite the stove, spotless stainless-steel bowls and utensils ranged on it in readiness for the morning’s work. On the other side of the worktable, there was a bank of stainless-steel refrigerators. “Is this a restaurant?” Carella asked.
    “Luncheonette,” the old man answered. “The R and M Luncheonette. I seen you looking at the windows there. Haven’t got to them yet. They’ll be spotless clean, time I leave here.”
    “You say you got to work at ten?” Carella asked.
    “That’s right. My job’s cleaning up. They close right after supper, usually around nine o’clock, sometimes a little later. I come in at ten. My name’s Bill Bailey, please don’t make no jokes, okay? Every time I meet somebody, he says, ‘Bill Bailey, whyn’t you go on home and stop causing that woman so much trouble?’” Bailey chuckled and shook his head. “Wish they’d never written that song, I’ve got to tell you.” But it was plain to see he enjoyed whatever small notoriety the song offered him. “What’s your name, sir, if I may ask?”
    “Detective Carella.”
    “How do you do, sir?” Bailey said, and shifted the broom to his left hand again, and extended his right hand.
    “How do you do?” Carella said. They shook hands almost solemnly. For Bailey, this must have been