The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 71

G.o.d, it was quiet around here.

He got up from his desk and walked around the bank of high cabinets that part.i.tioned the rest of the squad room from a small sink in the corner opposite the detention cage. Quiet night like this one, you could fall asleep on the job. He opened the faucet, filled his cupped hands with water and splashed it onto his face. He was a tall man and the mirror over the sink was set just a little too low to accommodate his height. The top of his head was missing. The mirror caught him just at his eyes, a shade darker than his brown hair and slanted slightly downward to give him a faintly Oriental appearance. He dried his face and hands with a paper towel, tossed the towel into the wastebasket under the sink, and then yawned and looked at the clock again, unsurprised to discover that only two minutes had pa.s.sed since the last time he'd looked at it. The silent nights got to you. He much preferred it when things were really jumping.

He walked to the windows on the far side of the squad room and looked down at the street. Things looked as quiet down there as they were up here. Not many cars moving, hardly a pedestrian in sight. Well, sure, they were all home already, putting the finishing touches on their Christmas trees. The forecasters had promised snow, but so far there wasn't so much as a flurry in the air. He was turning from the window when all of a sudden everything got b.l.o.o.d.y.

The first thing he saw was the blood streaming down the side of Cotton Hawes's face. Hawes was shoving two white men through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squad room from the corridor outside. The men were cuffed at the wrist with a single pair of cuffs, right wrist to left wrist, and one of them was complaining that Hawes had made the cuff too tight.

"I'll give you tight," Hawes said and shoved again at both men. One of them went sprawling almost headlong into the squad room, dragging the other one with him. They were both considerably smaller than Hawes, who towered over them like a redheaded fury, his anger somehow pictorially exaggerated by the streak of white in the hair over his right temple, where a burglar had cut him and the hair had grown back white. The white was streaked with blood now from an open cut on his forehead. The cut streamed blood down the right side of his face. It seemed not to console Hawes at all that the two men with him were also bleeding.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?" Carella asked.

He was already coming across the squad room as if someone had called in an a.s.sist officer, even though Hawes seemed to have the situation well in hand and this was, after all, a police station and not the big, bad streets outside. The two men Hawes had brought in were looking over the place as if deciding whether or not this was really where they wanted to spend Christmas Eve. The empty detention cage in the corner of the room did not look too terribly inviting to them. One of them kept glancing over his shoulder to see if Hawes was about to shove them again. Hawes looked as if he might throttle both of them at any moment.

"Sit down!" he yelled and then went to the mirror over the sink and looked at his face. He tore a paper towel loose from the holder, wet it, and dabbed at the open cut on his forehead. The cut kept bleeding.

"I'd better phone for a meat wagon," Carella said.

"No, I don't need one," Hawes said.

"We need one," one of the two men said.

He was bleeding from a cut on his left cheek. The man handcuffed to him was bleeding from a cut just below his jaw line. His shirt was stained with blood, too, where it was slashed open over his rib cage.

Hawes turned suddenly from the sink. "What'd I do with that bag?" he said to Carella. "You see me come in here with a bag?"

"No," Carella said. "What happened?"

"I must've left it downstairs at the desk," Hawes said and went immediately to the phone. He picked up the receiver, dialed three numbers, and then said, "Dave, this is Cotton. Did I leave a shopping bag down there at the desk?" He listened and then said, "Would you send one of the blues up with it, please? Thanks a lot." He put the receiver back on the cradle. "Trouble I went through to make this bust," he said, "I don't want to lose the G.o.dd.a.m.n evidence."

"You ain't got no evidence," the man bleeding from the cheek said.

"I thought I told you to shut up," Hawes said, going to him. "What's your name?"

"I'm supposed to shut up, how can I give you my name?" the man said.

"How would you like to give me your name through a mouthful of broken teeth?" Hawes said. Carella had never seen him this angry. The blood kept pouring down his cheek, as if in visible support of his anger. "What's your G.o.dd.a.m.n name?" he shouted.

"I'm calling an ambulance," Carella said.

"Good," the man bleeding from under his jaw line said.

"Who wants this?" a uniformed cop at the railing said.

"Bring it in here and put it on my desk," Hawes said. "What's your name?"

"Henry," the cop at the railing said.

"Not you," Hawes said.

"Which desk is yours?" the cop asked.

"Over there," Hawes said and gestured vaguely.

"What happened up here?" the cop asked, carrying the shopping bag in and putting it on the desk he a.s.sumed Hawes had indicated. The shopping bag was from one of the city's larger department stores. A green wreath and a red bow were printed on it. Carella, already on the phone, glanced at the shopping bag as he dialed Mercy General.

"Your name," Hawes said to the man bleeding from the cheek.

"I don't tell you nothing till you read me my rights," the man said.

"My name is Jimmy," the other man said.

"Jimmy what?"

"You dope, don't tell him nothin' till he reads you Miranda."

"You shut up," Hawes said. "Jimmy what?"

"Knowles. James Nelson Knowles."

"Now you done it," the man bleeding from the cheek said.

"It don't mean nothin' he's got my name," Knowles said.

"You gonna be anonymous all night?" Hawes said to the other man.

Into the phone, Carella said, "I'm telling you we've got three people bleeding up here."

"I don't need an ambulance," Hawes said.

"Well, make it as fast as you can, will you?" Carella said and hung up. "They're backed up till Easter, be a while before they can get here. Where's that first-aid kit?" he said and went to the filing cabinets. "Don't we have a first-aid kit up here?"

"This cut gets infected," the anonymous man said, "I'm gonna sue the city. I die in a police station, there's gonna be h.e.l.l to pay. You better believe it."

"What name should we put on the death certificate?" Hawes asked.

"Who the h.e.l.l filed this in the missing-persons drawer?" Carella said.

"Tell him your name already, w.i.l.l.ya?" Knowles said.

"Thomas Carmody, OK?" the other man said. He said it to Knowles, as if he would not allow himself the indignity of discussing it with a cop.

Carella handed the kit to Hawes. "Put a bandage on that, w.i.l.l.ya?" he said. "You look like h.e.l.l."

"How about the citizens?" Carmody said. "You see that?" he said to Knowles. "They always take care of their own first."

"On your feet," Carella said.

"Here comes the rubber hose," Carmody said.

Hawes carried the first-aid kit to the mirror. Carella led Carmody and Knowles to the detention cage. He threw back both bolts on the door, took the cuffs off them and said, "Inside, boys." Carmody and Knowles went into the cage. Carella double-bolted the door again. Both men looked around the cage as if deciding whether or not the accommodations suited their taste. There were bars on the cage and protective steel mesh. There was no place to sit inside the cage. The two men walked around it, checking out the graffiti scribbled on the walls. Carella went to where Hawes was dabbing at his cut with a swab of cotton.

"Better put some peroxide on that," he said.

"What happened?"

"Where's that shopping bag?" Hawes asked.

"On the desk there. What happened?"

"I was checking out a ten-twenty on Culver and Twelfth, guy went in and stole a television set this guy had wrapped up in his closet, he was giving it to his wife for Christmas, you know? They were next door with their friends, having a drink, burglar must've got in through the fire-escape window; anyway, the TV's gone. So I take down all the information-fat chance of ever getting it back-and then I go downstairs, and I'm heading for the car when there's this yelling and screaming up the street, so I go see what's the matter, and these two jerks are arguing over the shopping bag there on the desk."

"It was all your fault," Carmody said to Knowles.

"You're the one started it," Knowles said.

"Anyway, it ain't our shopping bag," Carmody said.

"I figure it's just two guys had too much to drink," Hawes said, putting a patch over the cut, "so I go over to tell them to cool it, go home and sleep it off, this is Christmas Eve, right? All of a sudden, there's a knife on the scene. One of them's got a knife in his hand."

"Not me," Carmody said from the detention cage.

"Not me, either," Knowles said.

"I don't know who started cutting who first," Hawes said, "but I'm looking at a lot of blood. Then the other guy gets hold of the knife some way, and he starts swinging away with it, and next thing I know, I'm in the middle of it, and I'm cut, too. What it turns out to be--"

"What knife?" Carmody said. "He's dreaming."

"Yeah, what knife?" Knowles said.

"The knife you threw down the sewer on the corner of Culver and Eleventh," Hawes said, "which the blues are out searching in the muck for right this minute. I need this on Christmas Eve," he said, studying the adhesive patch on his forehead. "I really need it."

Carella went to the detention cage, unbolted the door and handed the first-aid kit to Carmody. "Here," he said. "Use it."

"I'm waiting for the ambulance to come," Carmody said. "I want real medical treatment."

"Suit yourself," Carella said. "How about you?"

"If he wants to wait for the ambulance, then I want to wait for the ambulance, too," Knowles said.

Carella bolted the cage again and went back to where Hawes was wiping blood from his hair with a wet towel. "What were they arguing about?" he asked.

"n.o.body was arguing," Carmody said.

"We're good friends," Knowles said.

"The stuff in the bag there," Hawes said.

"I never saw that bag in my life," Carmody said.

"Me, either," Knowles said.

"What's in the bag?" Carella asked.

"What do you think?" Hawes said.

"Frankincense," Carmody said.

"Myrrh," Knowles said, and both men burst out laughing.

"My a.s.s," Hawes said. "There's enough pot in that bag to keep the whole city happy through New Year's Day."

"OK, let's go," a voice said from the railing.

Both detectives turned to see Meyer Meyer lead a kid through the gate in the railing. The kid looked about fourteen years old, and he had a sheep on a leash. The sheep's wool was dirty and matted. The kid looked equally dirty and matted. Meyer, wearing a heavy overcoat and no hat, looked pristinely bald and sartorial by contrast.

"I got us a shepherd," he said. His blue eyes were twinkling; his cheeks were ruddy from the cold outside. "Beginning to snow out there," he said.

"I ain't no shepherd," the kid said.

"No, what you are is a thief, is what you are," Meyer said, taking off his overcoat and hanging it on the rack to the left of the railing. "Sit down over there. Give your sheep a seat, too."

"Sheeps carry all kinds of diseases," Carmody said from the detention cage.

"Who asked you?" Meyer said.

"I catch some kind of disease from that animal, I'll sue the city," Carmody said.

In response, the sheep s.h.i.t on the floor.

"Terrific," Meyer said. "Whyn't you steal something clean, like a snake, you dummy?"

"My sister wanted a sheep for Christmas," the kid said.

"Steals a G.o.dd.a.m.n sheep from the farm in the zoo, can you believe it?" Meyer said. "You know what you can get for stealing a sheep? They can send you to jail for twenty years, you steal a sheep."

"Fifty years," Hawes said.

"My sister wanted a sheep," the kid said and shrugged.

"His sister is Little Bopeep," Meyer said. "What happened to your head?"

"I ran into a big-time dope operation," Hawes said.

"That ain't our dope in that bag there," Carmody said.

"That ain't even our bag there," Knowles said.

"When do we get a lawyer here?" Carmody said.