coffee was bitter but it was black and it was hot. I sipped it as I read through the file again. I knew everything in the file by heart. I read it automatically, then shoved it over to Fischer.
“Name,” I said, “Frank Calder. First arrest at age 14, 1948, grand theft auto. Suspended. Arrested three months later, GTA again, six months in Elmira. Three years later he was picked up for assault with a deadly weapon. A knife. The victim refused to press charges and we dropped them.”
I sipped some more of the coffee. “That was eight years ago. Since then he’s been picked up fifteen times. Same charge each time. Suspicion of homicide.”
“Innocent?”
“Guilty, of course. Fifteen times that we know about. Probably a dozen more that we don’t know about. Fourteen times we let him go. Once we thought we had a case.”
“What happened?”
“Grand jury disagreed with us. Indictment quashed.”
Fischer nodded. “And you think he may have killed Blue?”
“No.”
“Then why are we—”
“I don’t think he might have killed Blue,” I said. “I know damn well he killed Blue. Calder does most of his work in the Kitchen. A Hell’s Kitchen boy from the start, grew up on 39th Street west of Ninth. Gun used was a .38. Calder always uses a .38. Likes to shoot people in cars.”
“Still, you can’t be sure that—”
“I can be sure,” I cut in. I wished that Vice would send Danny back to me. Fischer was impossible. “Calder works for Nino Popo a lot of the time. Popo had a thing against Blue. Quit sounding like a public defender, will you? This was one of Calder’s. Period.”
“We pick him up now?”
“No.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said. I know damn well what I said and I don’t need a parrot to toss it back at me.”
“But—”
“Shut up.” I finished the coffee. “I told you Calder was a pro. You know what that means? You understand what that record says? He’s a hired killer. You pay him and he shoots people. That’s how he makes his living. A good living. He dresses in three-hundred-dollar suits. He wears gold cuff links. He lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. The west side of the park—he’s not a millionaire. But he does well in his job.”
I paused for breath. I just wanted to get home and go to bed. I was tired. “I told you about pros,” I said. “They don’t fool around. They don’t leave loopholes. It’s their business and they know it. They don’t crack under pressure. If we pick up Calder he’ll be out in no time at all. No witnesses. A cast-iron alibi. No holes at all.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go home,” I said. “We go home and take hot showers and go to bed. Tomorrow we pick him up.”
I left him there to wonder what I was talking about. I went home and took a hot shower and fell asleep the minute I hit the bed.
Homicide is rugged. There are good things about it—we don’t take bribes, we stay clean. There are also bad things.
Because there are only three types of murder, and of the three there is only one that we solve. There is the amateur killing with a motive, the husband who strangles his wife, the tavern brawl, the grudge murder. There you have your suspect at the start and you look around for the proof. And find it, no matter how clever a job they do of burying it. That is the kind that gets solved.
There is also the silly killing. The bum beaten to death on the Bowery. The hustler with a knife in her belly. The fag killed in his own apartment by a casual conquest. The mugging victim with a crushed skull. These we don’t solve. Not without a break.
And there is the professional murder. And those we never solve.
I met Fischer at five in the afternoon. He was carrying a folded copy of an afternoon tabloid. The headline ran GANGLAND SLAYING IN HELL’S KITCHEN. I could have guessed it word for word. I took the paper from him and gave the story a quick run-through. It was about the same as the morning papers had it.
It didn’t say we had nothing to work with. It didn’t say we had anything to work with. It said that Johnny Blue had been found in a parked car with holes in him, and that he was dead. Then there were a few paragraphs trying to turn