Blood Innocents Part 4

Reardon said nothing.

"Two lousy deer. And you'd think it was the only crime in the city." He shrugged and changed the subject. "What's your plan for today?"

"I don't know for sure," Reardon said.

"That ought to please Piccolini."

"What would you suggest then?"

Mathesson placed his hands in his overcoat pockets and looked helplessly at Reardon.

"Crews are covering the area looking for witnesses, right?" Reardon asked.

"Right."

"And they haven't come up with any, right?"

"Right."

"And crews are looking for the weapon, right? And they haven't found it yet, right?"

"Yeah," Mathesson said.

"And there must be crews keeping it out of the papers for a while, right?"

Mathesson smiled and said, "Right."

"Okay, that's it. No witnesses, no weapon and no publicity."

"How about the wounds?" Mathesson asked. "Could they mean anything?"

"What?"

"I don't know."

"Fifty-seven wounds on one body and just one on the other?" Reardon said. "You're grabbing for straws, and that's always a mistake."

"Yeah," Mathesson said. He sat down next to Reardon. "Two lousy deer." He leaned back, arms stretched casually along the backrest of the bench, and stared up through the trees. "You know, old Wallace himself could have been a pretty good witness if he had some binoculars."

"What do you mean?"

Mathesson pointed to a line of trees at the top of a twenty-five-story apartment house overlooking Fifth Avenue. "See those trees, the ones on top of that building?"

"Yeah," Reardon answered.

"That's the Van Allen penthouse."

Reardon stared for a moment at the building. He could tell that the wind was rustling through the trees that grew incongruously and imperiously hundreds of feet above Fifth Avenue.

When Reardon returned to the precinct house later that morning, he reviewed the arrest sheet for the previous day. For the last twenty-four hours people had been molesting each other in the accustomed fashion. They had been stealing from and killing each other, raping and falsely accusing each other, and running out on debts. Someone named Bill Rob-bins had attacked his mother with a ballpoint pen in a restaurant on 79th Street. Two teenagers named Thompson and Berger had drunkenly run down a pedestrian on Second Avenue. A h.o.m.os.e.xual had propositioned a plainclothes officer in the washroom of Grand Central Station. Two construction workers had wrecked a bar on First Avenue. At another bar a few blocks away an off-duty policeman had beaten his wife to a pulp in full view of twenty-seven people. Some of them had still been cheering him on when patrolmen arrived and arrested everyone, spectators included, for disorderly conduct.

Reardon wearily ran his fingers through his hair and continued reading the arrest sheet, his eyes reviewing the crimes, roaming up and down the streets and avenues where they were committed, through the roster of wh.o.r.es, pimps, muggers, purse s.n.a.t.c.hers and drunks, through the embittered marriages, the turncoat friends, amateur arsonists, and everywhere through hopelessly flailing rage. But he did not stop. He was looking for something, and about two-thirds down the third page he found it. The first thing he noticed was the place the arrest had been made: the steps leading up to the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Central Park Zoo on 64th Street. Quickly, he ran his finger across the page for the time of the arrest: Monday a 3:35 A.M. There was little other information available on the report. Someone named Winthrop Lewis Daniels had been arrested for possession of cocaine.

Reardon looked up from his desk. "Mathesson," he called. Me saw Mathesson turn away from the water cooler in the hall and approach his desk.

"I got something here," Reardon said.

Mathesson was smiling. "Find some more blood?"

Reardon handed him the arrest sheet. "About a third of the way up from the bottom. That cocaine bust. Take a look at that."

"Winthrop Lewis Daniels." Mathesson said. He looked at Reardon. "Who's that?"

"I don't know, but look at where that bust was made. Look at when it was made."

Mathesson's eyes resumed to the sheet, widened in recognition. "Well, I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned. That puts that hophead close to the deer, don't it. s.h.i.t, he couldn't have been more than two or three blocks away."

"That's right."

Mathesson smiled. "Now wouldn't that be a lucky break."

"It says Langhof made that bust," Reardon said. "Is he around the precinct house?"

"He's upstairs."

"Tell him I want to talk to him."

When Mathesson had gone Reardon looked at the arrest sheet again. He took a map of Central Park from one of his desk drawers and unfolded it on his desk. The map confirmed what he already knew: that Daniels had been arrested two blocks away from the cages of the fallow deer maybe five minutes or so after they had been killed.

He heard steps coming down the stairway at the rear of the precinct house and turned to see Mathesson and Langhof approaching his desk. Langhof was dressed in a neatly pressed uniform, his cap blocked squarely on his head, with the badge shining brightly from his chest like a small golden flame.

"Mathesson here says you want to talk to me," he said.

"Yeah," Reardon said. "I want to talk to you about that cocaine bust you made yesterday."

"What about it?"

"Where did you pick Daniels up?"

Langhof looked at Reardon suspiciously. "Right on Fifth Avenue. Why?"

Reardon reversed the map on his desk so that Langhof could read it. "Where on Fifth Avenue?"

Langhof placed his finger directly on the steps at 64th Street. "Right there."

"On the steps?"

"Yeah. Right on the steps."

"The arrest sheet said you busted him at 3:35 A.M. on Monday morning. Is that right?"

Langhof looked at Reardon. "That's exactly right. I'm always real careful about the time. I always get that right. A lot depends on that."

"What was Daniels doing?" Mathesson asked.

"He was standing on top of the stairs. He was kind of leaning on that stone pillar at the top."

"Just leaning?"

"No, he wasn't just leaning!" snapped Langhof. "He was snorting c.o.ke, the stupid little f.u.c.k."

"On the street?"

"Right there on Fifth Avenue," Langhof said. "We cruised right up to him in the patrol car. I just kind of looked out the window, just glancing out, you know, not really looking for anything, and there he was. Snorting right on the f.u.c.king street." He shook his head in amazement. "I couldn't believe it. I thought maybe this was some kind of joke, a come-on, you know, some kind of April fool type thing to make us look stupid. I tapped my partner and pointed to this guy. He says, *Do you think that's for real?' I couldn't believe that a guy would just stand around on the street and snort c.o.ke. Not even at three or four in the morning."

Mathesson smiled. "So what did he say, your partner?"

"He said we'd better find out."

Mathesson seemed delighted with the story. "Then what happened?"

"We both got out of the car. We just strolled over to this guy * what's his name? * Daniels. We just strolled over to him."

"He didn't try to get away?"

"Get away?" Langhof laughed. "He didn't even know we were around till we were right under his G.o.dd.a.m.n nose. He was too busy with that f.u.c.king c.o.ke. He was really into it, you know." Langhof grinned. "Dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d. No. Not dumb. He just didn't give a s.h.i.t. We asked him what he was doing, and he just looked at us. You know, like we were garbage, like what the h.e.l.l was it our business what he was doing." He looked at Reardon. "I never seen such a thing in my life. I mean there this little p.r.i.c.k was, snorting c.o.ke like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and he just looks at us like we come from Mars or something, like we was spoiling his good time, you know?"

Reardon nodded.

"Then what happened?" Mathesson asked.

"Then my partner says, *What you got there, buddy?' and he still didn't say nothing. He just stared at us. So I grabbed the bag. The c.o.ke was in a little cellophane pouch. So I grabbed it. I took a sniff. c.o.ke. So we busted his little a.s.s."

"You took him to the precinct house?" Reardon asked.

"Yeah, we shoved him in the patrol car, told him his rights and all that s.h.i.t, and took him right to the precinct house. And we didn't touch that little p.r.i.c.k either," Langhof blurted suddenly, angrily. "So if this little third degree we're having is about police brutality, you can forget it."

"What makes you think this has anything to do with something like that?" Reardon asked.

"Well, that's the way it goes, ain't it?" Langhof said.

"What do you mean?"

"Look, the minute we got that little f.u.c.ker to the precinct house he says he wants to call his old man. So we let him. That's his right, right? So we let him. And Jesus Christ, there was three G.o.dd.a.m.n lawyers down here before we could get the arrest report written out. He was on the streets again in no time."

"You boys better watch out who you f.u.c.k with on the east side of Central Park," Mathesson kidded. "You'll be the ones that end up getting your a.s.ses busted."

"Well, it was a solid bust," Langhof said bitterly, "a solid G.o.dd.a.m.n bust, whether it sticks or not. No matter what you guys report."

"We're not trying to break your bust," Reardon said.

"You're not?"

"No, we're not."

Langhof seemed to relax. "h.e.l.l, I figured the department was embarra.s.sed by it, or something, afraid of all those lawyers or something like that."

"No," Mathesson said, "we're checking into something else. We don't give a s.h.i.t about this bust."

"Did you notice anything strange about Daniels?" Reardon asked.

"No." Langhof scratched his head, subdued now. "No, nothing that I can think of except the way he just didn't seem to care about us, about being busted."

"Did you notice if he looked out of breath, tired, anything like that?" Reardon asked.

"No."

"How about blood?" Mathesson asked. "Did you notice any blood on him?"

"Blood?"

"Yeah, blood."

"No, we didn't see no blood. This guy was very straight-looking. Well dressed. He could have walked right out of a TV commercial. He was no slob." Langhof stared at Reardon curiously. "What is it with this guy anyway?"

"Reardon thought he might have had something to do with the deer killing," Mathesson said.

"The deer were killed between three and three-thirty the same morning you made the bust," Reardon said. "Daniels could have been involved in it and still be on Fifth Avenue by the time you busted him. Or he could have seen something. Maybe he came through the park, you know? He might have pa.s.sed the deer cages just about the time they were being killed."

Langhof shook his head. "Well, he didn't look like he could have killed no deer. He didn't have no blood on him or look tired or anything like that. He was too cool, man. That's what we noticed the most. And he didn't have no blood on him."

"You sure?" Mathesson said.

"h.e.l.l, yes. Come on, Mathesson, don't you think we'd have noticed something like that?"

"Where is this Daniels now?" Reardon asked.

"At home, I guess." Langhof pulled a notebook from his back pocket and flipped through it. "Here it is. He lives at Thirty-one East Sixty-Eighth Street."

"Any apartment number?"

"No, it's a townhouse I guess."

Reardon wrote the address in his notebook. "Okay. Thanks."

"What do you think?" Mathesson asked Reardon after Langhof had gone back upstairs.

"About what?"