south.'
Jason: 'And what did you do with the hammer?'
Gerber: 'Like I told you-I pushed it in a trash can on Eighth Street.'
Keisman: 'Why did you kill him, Harold?'
Gerber: 'Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you? He was a nosy fucker. After a while he knew too much about me.
Hey, let's have another brew; I'm thirsty.'
The three sat there in silence, the two officers staring at the other man's wild, flan-dng eyes. As usual, Gerber needed a shave, and uncombed hair still spiked out from under his black beret.
'You going to take me in?' he asked finally.
'We'll think about it,' Jason Two said.
'I did it. That's God's own truth. I'm guilty as hell.'
They didn't reply.
'Hey, you guys?' Gerber said brightly, straightening. up.
'I'm moving. A city marshal showed up with an eviction notice. I've got to vacate the premises, as they say.'
'Yeah?' the Spoiler said.
'Where you moving to?'
'Who the hell knows? I've got to look around. I want another place as swell as this one.'.
'Need any help moving?' Jason offered.
'Moving what?' Harold Gerber said with a ferocious grin.
'I can carry all my stuff in a shopping bag. I'm going to leave a lot of shit right here. You guys want any books? I've got a pile of paperbacks over there under the sink. Some hot stuff.
Yore welcome to any or all.' Yeah?' Jason said.
'Let's take a look. Maybe there's something my wife would like. She's always got her nose in a book.' He squatted down at the sink, began to inspect the jumble of books. He pulled out a thick one.
'What's this?' he said.
'A Bible?'
'Oh, that…' Gerber said casually.
'I fished it out of a garbage can.
I flipped through it. A million laughs.'
Jason inspected the book.
'Douay Version,' he read aloud.
'That's a Catholic Bible, isn't it? You a Catholic, Harold?'
'I was. Once. What are you?'
'Baptist. Mind if I take this along?' Jason Two asked, holding up the Bible.
'Be my guest,' Gerber said.
'Read the whole thing. I won't tell you how it comes out.'
They sat around awhile longer before the two officers left, promising Gerber they'd tell him the next day whether or not they would arrest him.
They sat in Jason's car, the heater on, trying to get warm.
'He's full of crap,' Keisman said.
'A complete whacko.'
'Oh, yeah,' Jason agreed.
'Doesn't even know how Ellerbee died.'
'Why do you figure he wants to get busted?'
'I don't know for sure. Something to do with guilt, I suppose. What happened in Vietnam… It's too deep for me. 'What's with the Bible?' the Spoiler asked, jerking a thumb at the book.
'Why did you glom on to that?'
'Look at it,' Jason Two said, ruffling the pages.
'It's full of dog-ears. Someone's been doing some heavy reading. And I don't believe he found it in a garbage can. Nobody throws out a Bible.'
'Jose, that's the Baptist in you talking.'
'Maybe. But he says he used to be a Catholic, and this is a Catholic edition. Funny a backslid Catholic should find a Catholic Bible in a garbage can.'
'God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.'' 'Hey, Jason said admiringly, 'there's more to you than Gucci after all, isn't there?'
'I was brought up right,' Keisman said.
'Didn't go bad until-oh, maybe the age of six or so.'
'Well…' Jason T. Jason said, staring down at the book in his hands,
'it may be nothing, but what say we give it the old college try?'
The Spoiler groaned.
'You mean check every Catholic church in the city?'
'I don't think we'll have to do that. Just the ones in Greenwich Village. I'm hoping that poor son of a bitch was praying in some church on that Friday night.'
'Man, you really dig the long shots, don't you?'
Because of previous arrests, there was a photo of Harold Gerber in his NYPD file, and Jason cajoled a police photographer into making two copies, one for himself, one for Keisman.
At the same time, Detective Calazo was having more serious photo problems. Apparently there was no shot of Ronald Bellsey in the files.
Calazo could have requested that a police photographer take a telephoto of Bellsey without the subject's knowledge-but that meant making out a requisition and then waiting.
The old, white-haired gumshoe had been around a long time, and knew a lot of ways to skin a cat in what he sometimes called the 'Dick Biz.' He looked up the name and address of a trade magazine, The Wholesale Butcher, and visited their editorial offices on West 14th Street.
Sure enough, they had a photograph of Ronald J. Bellsey in their files.
Calazo flashed his patsy and borrowed the shot, promising to return it.
He didn't bother asking them not to tell Bellsey about his visit. Let them tell the fink; it would do him good to sweat a little.
Then Benny, with the aid of Sergeant Boone, when he could spare the time, tailed the subject for almost a week. He discovered that Bellsey had three bars he favored: the Tail of the Whale on Eleventh Avenue, a tavern on Seventh Avenue near Madison Square Garden, and another on 52nd Street, just east of Broadway.
He also discovered that Bellsey got his ashes hauled two afternoons a week by a Chinese hooker working out of a fleabag hotel on West 23rd Street. She had a sheet a yard long, all arrests for loitering, solicitation, and prostitution. She was getting a little frazzled around the edges now, and Calazo figured she'd be lucky to get twenty bucks a pop.
He didn't move on her-just made sure he put her name (Betty Lee), address, room, and phone number in his report to Boone. Then he turned his attention to those three hangouts Bellsey frequented.
All three were patronized by boxers, trainers, managers, agents, bookies, and hangers-on in the fight racket. And all three had walls covered with photos and paintings of dead and living pugs, along with such memorabilia as bloodied gloves, trunks, shoes, and robes.
Calazo then checked the records at Midtown North and Midtown South to see how many times the cops had been called to the three joints, and for what reasons. This would have been an endless task, but Benny had friends in every precinct in Manhattan, so, with a little help, the job took only two days.
After winnowing out incidents of public drunkenness, freefor-all donnybrooks, robberies, attempted rape, and one case of indecent exposure, Calazo was left with four unsolved cases of assault that pretty much followed the pattern of the attack on Detective Timothy Hogan.
In all four episodes, a badly beaten man had been found on the sidewalk, in an alley, or in the gutter near one of the three bars. None of the victims could positively identify his assailant, but all four had been drinking in one of
