And All Through the House Read Free

in this city," the kid said.
        "Tell 'im," Carmody said.
        "What's this I hear?" Bert Kling said from the railing. "Inside, mister." His blond hair was wet with snow. He was carrying a huge valise in one hand, and his free hand was on the shoulder of a tall black man whose wrists were handcuffed behind his back. The black man was wearing a red-plaid Mackinaw, its shoulders wet. Snowflakes still glistened in his curly black hair. Kling looked at the sheep. "Miscolo told me it was a deer," he said.
        "Miscolo's a city boy," Carella said.
        "So am I," Kling said, "but I know a sheep from a deer." He looked down. "Who made on the floor?" he asked.
        "The sheep," Meyer said.
        "My sister's present," the kid said.
        Kling put down the heavy valise and led the black man to the detention cage. "OK, back away," he said to Carmody and Knowles and waited for them to move away from the door. He unbolted the door, took the cuffs off his prisoner and said. "Make yourself at home." He bolted the door again. "Snowing up a storm out there," he said and went to the coatrack. "Any coffee brewing?"
        "In the clerical office," Carella said.
        "I meant real coffee," Kling said, taking off his coat and hanging it up.
        "What's in the valise?" Hawes asked. "Looks like a steamer trunk you got there."
        "Silver and gold," Kling said. "My friend there in the cage ripped off a pawnshop on The Stem. Guy was just about to close, he walks in with a sawed-off shotgun, wants everything in the store. I got a guitar downstairs in the car. You play guitar?" he asked the black man in the cage.
        The black man said nothing.
        "Enough jewelry in here to make the queen of England happy," Kling said.
        "Where's the shotgun?" Meyer asked.
        "In the car," Kling said. "I only got two hands." He looked at Hawes. "What happened to your head?" he asked.
        "I'm getting tired of telling people what happened to my head," Hawes said.
        "When's that ambulance coming?" Carmody asked. "I'm bleeding to death here."
        "So use the kit," Carella said.
        "And jeopardize my case against the city?" Carmody said. "No way."
        Hawes walked to the windows.
        "Really coming down out there," he said.
        "Think the shift'll have trouble getting in?" Meyer said.
        "Maybe. Three inches out there already, looks like."
        Hawes turned to look at the clock.
        Meyer looked at the clock, too.
        All at once, everyone in the squad room was looking at the clock.
        The detectives were thinking the heavy snow would delay the graveyard shift and cause them to get home later than they were hoping. The men in the detention cage were thinking the snow might somehow delay the process of criminal justice.
        The kid sitting at Meyer's desk was thinking it was only half an hour before Christmas and his sister wasn't going to get the sheep she wanted. The squad room was almost as silent as when Carella had been alone in it.
        And then Andy Parker arrived with his prisoners.
        "Move it," he said and opened the gate in the railing.
        Parker was wearing a leather jacket that made him look like a biker. Under the jacket, he was wearing a plaid-woolen shirt and a red muffler. The blue-woolen watch cap on his head was covered with snow. His blue-corduroy trousers were covered with snow. Even the three-day beard stubble on his face had snowflakes clinging to it. His prisoners looked equally white, their faces pale and frightened.
        The young man was wearing a rumpled black suit, sprinkled with snow that was rapidly melting as he stood uncertainly in the opening to the squad room. Under the suit, he wore only a shirt open at the collar, no tie. Carella guessed he was twenty years old. The young woman with him- girl , more accurately-couldn't have been older than sixteen. She was wearing a lightweight