Cop Hater Read Free

He subtracted a few minutes, and indicated a t.o.a. for Carella and Bush, too.
    Carella looked down at the back of the dead man's head. His face remained expressionless, except for a faint, passing film of pain which covered his eyes for a moment, and then darted away as fleetingly as a jack-rabbit.
    "What'd they use?" he asked. "A cannon?"
    "A .45," the first cop said. "We've got the cartridge cases."
    "How many?"
    "Two."
    "Figures," Carella said. "Why don't we flip him over?"
    "Ambulance coming?" Bush asked quietly.
    "Yeah," the first cop said. "Everybody's late tonight."
    "Everybody's drowning in sweat tonight," Bush said. '1 can use a beer."
    "Come on," Carella said, "give me a hand here."
    The second cop bent down to help Carella. Together, they rolled the body over. The flies swarmed up angily, and then descended to the sidewalk again, and to the bloody broken flesh that had once been a face. In the darkness, Carella saw a gaping hole where the left eye should have been. There was another hole beneath the right eye, and the cheek bone was splintered outward, the jagged shards piercing the skin.
    "Poor bastard," Carella said. He would never get used to staring death in the face. He had been a cop for twelve years now, and he had learned to stomach the sheer, overwhelming, physical impact of death—but he would never get used to the other thing about death, the invasion of privacy that came with death, the deduction of pulsating life to a pile of bloody, fleshy rubbish.
    "Anybody got a flash?" Bush asked.
    The first cop reached into his left hip pocket. He thumbed a button, a circle of light splashed onto the sidewalk.
    "On his face," Bush said.
    The light swung up onto the dead man's face.
    Bush swallowed. "That's Reardon," he said, his voice very quiet. And then, almost in a whisper, "Jesus, that's Mike Reardon."
     
     
     
     
    Chapter THREE
     
    there were sixteen detectives assigned to the 87th Precinct, and David Foster was one of them. The precinct, in all truth, could have used a hundred and sixteen detectives and even then been understaffed. The precinct area spread South from the River Highway and the tall buildings which still boasted doormen and elevator operators to the Stem with its delicatessens and movie houses, on South to Culver Avenue and the Irish section, still South to the Puerto Rican section and then into Grover's Park, where muggers and rapists ran rife. Running East and West, the precinct covered a long total of some thirty-five city streets. And packed into this rectangle —North and South from the river to the park, East and West for thirty-five blocks—was a population of 90,000 people.
    David Foster was one of those people.   David Foster was a Negro.
    He had been born in the precinct territory, and he had grown up there, and when he'd turned 21, being of sound mind and body, being four inches over the minimum requirement of five feet eight inches, having 20/20 vision without glasses, and not having any criminal record, he had taken the competitive Civil Service examination and had been appointed a patrolman.
    The starting salary at the time had been $3,725 per annum, and Foster had earned his salary well. He had earned it so well that in the space of five years he had been appointed to the Detective Division. He was now a 3rd Grade Detective, and his salary was now $5,230 per annum, and he still earned it.
    At one a.m., on the morning of July 24th, while a colleague named Mike Reardon lay spilling his blood into the gutter, David Foster was earning his salary by interrogating the man he and Bush had picked up in the bar knifing.
    The interrogation was being conducted on the second floor of the precinct house. To the right of the desk on the first floor, there was an inconspicuous and dirty white sign with black letters which announced DETECTIVE DIVISION, and a pointing hand advised any visitor that the bulls hung out upstairs.
    The stairs were metal, and narrow, but scrupulously clean.