Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 by Fuzz

one of the cops asked.
    “A man in the park.”
    “Did he pay you to bring it here?”
    “Yeah. Yes. Yeah.”
    “How much?”
    “Five dollars.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “He had yellow hair.”
    “Was he tall?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “Was he wearing a hearing aid?”
    “Yeah. A
what?”
    “A thing in his ear.”
    “Oh, yeah,” the kid said.
    Everybody tiptoed around the note very carefully, as though it might explode at any moment. Everybody handled the note with tweezers or white cotton gloves. Everybody agreed it should be sent at once to the police lab. Everybody read it at least twice. Everybody studied it and examined it. Even some patrolmen from downstairs came up to have a look at it. It was a very important document. It demanded at least an hour of valuable police time before it was finally encased in a celluloid folder and sent downtown in a manila envelope.
    Everybody decided that what this note meant was that the deaf man (who they now reluctantly admitted was once again in their midst) wanted fifty thousand dollars inlieu of killing the deputy mayor exactly as he had killed the parks commissioner. Since fifty thousand dollars was considerably more than the previous demand for five thousand dollars, the cops of the 87th were quite rightfully incensed by the demand. Moreover, the audacity of this criminal somewhere out there was something beyond the ken of their experience. For all its resemblance to a kidnaping, with its subsequent demand for ransom, this case was
not
a kidnaping. No one had been abducted, there was nothing to ransom. No, this was very definitely extortion, and yet the extortion cases they’d dealt with over the years had been textbook cases involving “a wrongful use of force or fear” in an attempt to obtain “property from another.” The key word was “another.” “Another” was invariably the person against whom mayhem had been threatened. In this case, though, their extortionist didn’t seem to care
who
paid the money so long as someone did.

    Anyone
. Now how were you supposed to deal with a maniac like that?
    “He’s a maniac,” Lieutenant Byrnes said. “Where the hell does he expect us to get fifty thousand dollars?”
    Steve Carella, who had been released from the hospital that afternoon and who somewhat resembled a boxer about to put on gloves, what with assorted bandages taped around his hands, said, “Maybe he expects the deputy mayor to pay it.”
    “Then why the hell didn’t he
ask
the deputy mayor?”
    “We’re his intermediaries,” Carella said. “He assumes his demand will carry more weight if it comes from law enforcement officers.”
    Byrnes looked at Carella.
    “Sure,” Carella said. “Also, he’s getting even with us. He’s sore because we fouled up his bank-robbing scheme eight years ago. This is his way of getting back.”
    “He’s a maniac,” Byrnes insisted.
    “No, he’s a very smart cookie,” Carella said. “He knocked off Cowper after a measly demand for five thousand dollars. Now that we know he can do it, he’s asking ten times the price not to shoot the deputy mayor.”
    “Where does it say ‘shoot’?” Hawes asked.
    “Hmmm?”
    “He didn’t say anything about
shooting
Scanlon. The note yesterday just said ‘Deputy Mayor Scanlon Goes Next.’”
    “That’s right,” Carella said. “He can poison him or bludgeon him or stab him or …”
    “Please,” Byrnes said.
    “Let’s call Scanlon,” Carella suggested. “Maybe he’s got fifty grand laying around he doesn’t know what to do with.”
    They called Deputy Mayor Scanlon and advised him of the threat upon his life, but Deputy Mayor Scanlon did not have fifty grand laying around he didn’t know what to do with. Ten minutes later, the phone on Byrnes’ desk rang. It was the police commissioner.
    “All right, Byrnes,” the commissioner said sweetly, “what’s this latest horseshit?”
    “Sir,” Byrnes said, “we have had two notes from the man we