87th Precinct 17 - Ten Plus One by McBain Ed

Author:McBain, Ed [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Police Procedural, Fiction, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781612181837
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2012-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

A sure sign that nothing was happening on this case—oh, yeah, maybe a cheap hood was being beaten up and made to realize you can’t go home again—was the fact that time was passing. It was true that there had been no murders since Andrew Mulligan drank his last drink, but time was nonetheless flitting by, and there was no greater proof of this than the reappearance of Bert Kling at the squadroom, looking tanned and healthy and very blond from the sun after his vacation. Lieutenant Byrnes, who didn’t like to see anyone looking so well-rested, immediately assigned him to the Sniper Case.

On the afternoon of May 7, while Meyer and Carella were uptown requestioning Mrs. O’Grady, the nice little woman who had been present when Salvatore Palumbo called it quits, Bert Kling was in the office looking over the Sniper file and trying to acquaint himself with what had gone before. When the blonde young lady walked into the squadroom, he barely looked up.

Meyer and Carella were sitting in the living room of a two-story clapboard dwelling in Riverhead while Mrs. O’Grady poured them coffee and tried to recall the incidents preceding the death of Salvatore Palumbo.

“I think he was weighing out some fruit. Do you take cream and sugar?”

“Black for me,” Meyer said.

“Detective Carella?”

“A little of each.”

“Should I call you Detective Carella, or Mr. Carella, or just what?”

“Whichever is most comfortable to you.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll call you Mr. Carella. Because calling you Detective Carella sounds as if you should be calling me Housewife O’Grady. Is that all right?”

“That’s fine, Mrs. O’Grady. He was weighing out some fruit, you said.”

“Yes.”

“And then what? I know we’ve been over all this, but…”

“Then he just fell onto the stand and slid down to the sidewalk. I guess I began screaming.”

“Did you hear the shot, Mrs. O’Grady?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just before the train pulled in.”

“What train?”

“The train. Upstairs.”

“The elevated?”

“Yes.”

“It was coming into the platform when Mr. Palumbo got shot?”

“Well, to tell you the truth,” Mrs. O’Grady said, “I’m not too clear about the sequence. I mean, I heard the shot, but at the time I didn’t think it was a shot, I figured it was a backfire or a blowout—who expects to hear a gun go off while you’re buying fruit from a man? So, although I heard the shot, I didn’t realize Sal…Mr. Palumbo…had been shot. I thought he was suffering a heart attack or something, him falling like that, and the fruit all tumbling off the stand. But then, of course, I saw the blood at the back of his head, and I guess my mind made the connection between the explosion I had heard and the fact that Sal was…well, I didn’t know he was dead…but certainly hurt.”

“And the train?”

“Well, what I’m trying to say is that everything happened so fast. The train coming in…I think it was coming in, though it may have been leaving…and the shot, and Sal falling down hurt. It all happened so fast that I’m not sure of the time sequence, the poor man.

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