Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 by Fuzz

covered with refuse and grime and not a little of his own blood, so they decided to stomp him, which is of course what you must necessarily do when your opponent falls down, you kick him in the head and the shoulders and the chest and everywhere you can manage to kick him. If he’s a live one, he’ll squirm around and try to grab your feet, but if you happen to be lucky enough to get a pigeon who was burned only recently, why you can have an absolute field day kicking him at will because his hands are too tender to grab at
anything
, no less feet. That’s why guns were invented, Carella thought, so that if you happen to have second-degree burns on your hands you don’t have to use them too much, all you have to dois squeeze a trigger, it’s a shame the gun snagged. It’s a shame, too, that Teddy’s going to be collecting a widow’s dole tomorrow morning, he thought, but these guys are going to kill me unless I do something pretty fast. The trouble is I’m a bumbling god-damn cop, the deaf man is right. The kicks landed now with increasing strength and accuracy, nothing encourages a stomper more than an inert and increasingly more vulnerable victim. I’m certainly glad the gasoline, he thought, and a kick exploded against his left eye. He thought at once he would lose the eyes, he saw only a blinding flash of yellow, he rolled away, feeling dizzy and nauseous, a boot collided with his rib, he thought he felt it crack, another kick landed on the kneecap of his left leg, he tried to get up, his hands, “You fucking fuzz,” one of the boys said, Fuzz, he thought, and was suddenly sick, and another kick crashed into the back of his skull and sent him falling face forward into his own vomit.
    He lost consciousness.
    He might have been dead, for all he knew.
    It was one of those nights.
    Bob O’Brien got a flat tire on the way to the Erin Bar & Grill on Crawford Avenue, where Tony La Bresca was to meet the man named Dom.
    By the time he changed the flat, his hands were numb, his temper was short, the time was 10:32, and the bar was still a ten-minute drive away. On the off-chance that La Bresca and his fair-weather friend would still be there, O’Brien drove downtown, arriving at the bar at ten minutes to eleven. Not only were they both gone already, but the bartender said to O’Brien the moment he bellied up, “Care for something to drink, Officer?”
    It was one of those nights.

6
    On Friday morning, March 8, Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman of the Police Laboratory called the squadroom and asked to talk to Cotton Hawes. He was informed that Hawes, together with several other detectives on the squad, had gone to Buena Vista Hospital to visit Steve Carella. The man answering the telephone was Patrolman Genero, who was holding the fort until one of them returned.
    “Well, do
you
want this information or what?” Grossman asked.
    “Sir, I’m just supposed to record any calls till they get back,” Genero said.
    “I’m going to be tied up later,” Grossman said, “why don’t I just give this to you?”
    “All right, sir,” Genero said, and picked up his pencil. He felt very much like a detective. Besides, he was grateful not to be outside on another miserable day like this one. “Shoot,” he said, and quickly added, “Sir.”
    “It’s on those notes I received.”
    “Yes, sir, what notes?”
    “‘Deputy Mayor Scanlon goes next,’” Grossman quoted, “and ‘Look! A whole new,’ et cetera.”
    “Yes, sir,” Genero said, not knowing what Grossman was talking about.
    “The paper is Whiteside Bond, available at any stationery store in the city. The messages were clipped from national magazines and metropolitan dailies. The adhesive is rubber cement.”
    “Yes, sir,” Genero said, writing frantically.
    “Negative on latent prints. We got a whole mess of smeared stuff, but nothing we could run a make on.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “In short,” Grossman said, “you know what you can do with these