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copyright ©1956 Hui Corporation
ISBN-13: 9781612183701
ISBN-10: 1612183700
The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.
INTRODUCTION
I had just pulled the last page of Cop Hater out of the typewriter. I read the final lines and sat there thinking for several moments. I used to work in the back bedroom of a development house on Long Island. I walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where my former wife was spoon-feeding our infant twins. I said, “How’s Ed McBain?” She said, “Good,” and went back to feeding the twins. So here’s Cop Hater. By Ed McBain. The first of them.
From the river bounding the city on the north, you saw only the magnificent skyline.
The city lay like a sparkling nest of rare gems, shimmering in layer upon layer of pulsating intensity.
There was garbage in the streets.
“Mike?” “Go back to sleep, honey.” “Are you leaving?” she murmured hoarsely. “Yes.” “Be careful, Mike.” “I will.” He grinned. “And you be good.”
At 11:41, when Mike Reardon was three blocks away from his place of business, two bullets entered the back of his skull and ripped away half his face when they left his body.
Another citizen found him at 11:56 and went to call the police.
Mike Reardon was a cop.
“Remington slugs. .45 caliber.”
“What’ve you got?” “Just what it looks like. He was shot twice in the back of the head. Death was probably instantaneous.” “Want to give us a time?” “On a gunshot wound? Don’t kid me.” “I thought you guys worked miracles.” “We do. But not during the summer.” “Can’t you even guess?” “Sure, guessing’s free. No rigor mortis yet, so I’d say he was killed maybe a half hour ago. With this heat, though…Hell, he might maintain normal body warmth for hours. You won’t get us to go out on a limb with this one. Not even after the autopsy is—”
“Here’s the 87th now.”
“Looks like Carella and Bush.”
“If it ain’t Speedy Gonzales and Whirlaway,” the second Homicide cop said. “You guys certainly move fast, all right. What do you do on a bomb scare?” “We leave it to the Bomb Squad,” Carella said drily. “What do you do?”
“Poor bastard,” Carella said. He would never get used to staring death in the face. He had been a cop for twelve years now, and he had learned to stomach the sheer, overwhelming, physical impact of death—but he would never get used to the other thing about death, the invasion of privacy that came with death, the reduction of pulsating life to a pile of bloody, fleshy rubbish.
Bush swallowed. “That’s Reardon,” he said, his voice very quiet. And then, almost in a whisper, “Jesus, that’s Mike Reardon.”
There were sixteen detectives assigned to the 87th Precinct, and David Foster was one of them.
The precinct area spread south from the River Highway and the tall buildings which still boasted doormen and elevator operators to the Stem, with its delicatessens and movie houses, on south to Culver Avenue and the Irish section, still south to the Puerto Rican section, and then into Grover’s Park, where muggers and rapists ran rife. Running east and west, the precinct covered a long total of some thirty‐five city streets. And packed into this rectangle—north and south from the river to the park, east and west for thirty‐five blocks—was a population of 90,000 people.
At 1:00 A.M., on the morning of July 24, while a colleague named Mike Reardon lay spilling his blood into the gutter, David Foster was earning his salary by interrogating the man he and Bush had picked up in the bar knifing.
Lieutenant Byrnes was the man in charge of the 87th Detective Squad.
The lieutenant knew his precinct was a trouble spot, and that was the way he liked it. It was the bad neighborhoods that needed policemen, he was fond of saying, and he was proud to be a part of a squad that really earned its keep.
“No pep talk,” he said suddenly. “Just go out and find the bastard.”
“You’re a regular cop hater, aren’t you?” Carella asked. “This whole goddamn city is full of cop haters. You think anybody respects a cop? Symbol of law and order, crap! The old man ought to get out there and face life. Anybody who ever got a parking tag is automatically a cop hater. That’s the way it is.” “Well, it sure as hell shouldn’t be that way,” Carella said, somewhat angrily.
“What do you think, Steve?” Bush asked Carella. Carella shrugged. “It came too easy. It’s never good when it comes that easy.” “Let’s check it, anyway,” Bush said.
“There it is,” Bush said. “Clarke. Three‐B.”
On one of the doors hung a plaque, and the plaque read, IN GOD WE TRUST. And behind that door, there was undoubtedly the unbending steel bar of a police lock, embedded in the floor and tilted to lean against the door.
Carella did not like the heat. He had never liked summer, even as a kid, and now that he was an adult and a cop, the only memorable characteristic summer seemed to have was that it made dead bodies stink quicker.
Clarke had indeed owned a pistol permit—but that didn’t mean he hadn’t used the pistol on a cop named Mike Reardon.
“Ballistics report on that .45 you brought in last night.” “Any luck?” “Hasn’t been fired since Old King Cole ordered the bowl.”
Carella sighed and looked at his watch. “It’s going to be a long night, fellers,” he said.
He had not seen Teddy Franklin since Mike took the slugs.
And, of course, he spent all his free time with her because he was in love with the girl.
He had met her less than six months ago, when she’d been working addressing envelopes for a small firm on the fringe of the precinct territory.
This was the girl he wanted to marry. This was the girl he wanted for his own.
Quickly, he mounted the steps, stopping outside her door. He did not knock. Knocking was no good with Teddy.
There was sadness on her face now, an exaggerated sadness because Teddy could not give tongue to words, Teddy could neither hear words, and so her face was her speaking tool, and she spoke in exaggerated syllables, even to Carella, who understood the slightest nuance of expression in her eyes or on her mouth. But the exaggeration did not lie, for there was genuineness to the grief she felt. She had never met Mike Reardon, but Carella had talked of him often, and she felt that she knew him well.
“Will you marry me?” She nodded. “I’ve only asked you about a dozen times so far.” She shrugged and nodded, enjoying herself immensely. “When?” She pointed at him.
You’re more than any other woman, so much more, so please marry me.
“Everything about you. I love you, Teddy. Jesus, how I love you.”
David Foster thought about his partner Mike Reardon, and so immersed in his thoughts was he that he did not hear the footsteps behind him, and when he finally did hear them, it was too late. He started to turn, but a .45 automatic spat orange flame into the night, once, twice, again, again, and David Foster clutched at his chest, and the red blood burst through his brown fingers, and then he hit the concrete—dead.
“David was a good boy,” she said. Her voice was hollow, a narrow sepulchral voice. He had come to talk of death, and now he could smell death on this woman, could hear death in the creak of her voice, and he thought it strange that David Foster, her son, who was alive and strong and young several hours ago was now dead—and his mother, who had probably longed for the peaceful sleep of death many a time, was alive and talking to Carella.
Mike Reardon, Bush thought. He used to be a cop and a friend. Now he’s a victim and a corpse, and I ask questions about him.
The ballistics report stated that the same weapon had been used in both murders.
Danny Gimp was a man who’d had polio when he was a child. He was lucky in that it had not truly crippled him. He had come out of the disease with only a slight limp, and a nickname which would last him the rest of his life. His real surname was Nelson, but very few people knew that, and he was referred to in the neighborhood as Danny Gimp. Even his letters came addressed that way. Danny was fifty‐four years old, but it was impossible to judge his age from his face or his body. He was very small, small all over, his bones, his features, his eyes, his stature. He moved with the loose‐hipped walk
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“Dizzy Ordiz,” he said. “Yeah, yeah.” “You know where he is?” “What’d he do?” “We don’t know.”
“But this guy ain’t a killer, take it from me. He don’t even know how to kill time.”
