Free Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 by Romance Page B

“we’re searchin this fuckin alley in the rain?”
    “The fuck knows,” the other one said. “I never heard of her.”
    It was really raining quite hard again.
    Both of the blues were wearing black ponchos, and rain covers on their hats, but their shoulders and heads were dripping wet,
     anyway, and the drilling rain made it difficult to see in the dark alley here at close to two o’clock in the morning, even
     though they were industriously fanning every inch of it with their torches. Although they hadn’t expressed it quite this way,
     they were right about fame in that a stabbing in this city—especially so soon after there’d been so
many
stabbings in Grover Park last Saturday—was a relatively insignificant occurrence that might have gone virtually unnoticed
     if the victim hadn’t been an actress who once upon a time had played the lead in a road show production of
Annie.
Instead, here they were in a fuckin dark alley looking for a knife that had given some unknown “star” a scratch on the shoulder.
    Well, something more than a scratch maybe, but according to what each of them had seen separately on television before they’d
     come on tonight, Michelle Cassidy’s shoulder wound had been truly superficial. How bad
could
it have been if they’d released her from the hospital within several hours of her admission to the emergency room? So if
     this was just a scratch here, then it couldn’t possibly be the required “serious” physical injury for Attempted Murder or
     even Assault One. What they had here was an Assault Two,
maybe,
where there’d been just a
plain
physical injury by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument. Which is why they were looking for a knife in the
     rain, they guessed.
    “A fuckin Class D felony,” one of the blues said.
    “Seven years max,” the other one said.
    “ Get a sharp lawyer in there, he’ll bargain it down to Assault Three.”
    “A Class A mis.”
    “Is what we’re wastin our time on.”
    “This country, anything happens to you,” the first blue said, “you automatically become a star and a hero. All these shmucks
     came back from the Gulf War, they were all of a sudden
heroes.
I can remember a time when a hero was a guy who charged a fuckin machine-gun nest with a hand grenade in each hand and a
     bayonet between his teeth.
That
was a hero! Now you’re a hero if you just
went
to the fuckin war.”
    “Or if you get yourself stabbed,” the other one said. “It used to be if you
defended
yourself against the perp, and grabbed the knife
away
from him, and shoved it down his fuckin throat,
then
you were a hero. Now you’re a hero if you just get stabbed. The TV cameras come in on you, this is the person got stabbed
     on the subway tonight, folks, he’s a hero, look at him, he got himself stabbed, give him a great big hand.”
    “A hero
and
a celebrity, don’t forget,” the first one said.
    “Yeah, but this one here is really
supposed
to be a celebrity, though.”
    “You ever hear of her?”
    “No.”
    “Neither did I. Michelle Cassidy? Who the fuck’s Michelle Cassidy?”
    “She’s a Little Orphan Annie.”
    “She’s
bull
shit is what she is. Anybody gets hurt in this country, he becomes a hero and a celebrity, they give him a fuckin ticker tape
     parade. You notice how everybody knows exactly how to be interviewed on television? There’s a tenement fire and the television
     cameras are there, and all at once this spic in her nightgown, she just got here from Colombia the night before, she’s standin
     in the street can hardly speak English, she’s giving an interview to the reporter, she sounds as if she’s the guest star on
The Tonight Show
. ‘Oh, si, it wass so
terrible,
my baby wass in huh creeb in dee odder room, I dinn know
wah
to do!’ An illegal from Colombia is all at once a fuckin
celebrity
givin interviews.”
    “She’ll be doin hair commercials next week.”
    “Commercials for
fire
extinguishers,” the first