“I don’t like departmental rank telling me I’m not running my squad by
the book.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to tell you something, Reardon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I want you to listen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you like to know why I limp? Would you like to know how I got this game leg?”
“I think I know how you got the limp, sir.”
“I’ll tell you how I got this limp,” Farmer said, as if he hadn’t heard Reardon. “Some dumb jerk didn’t go by the book, that’s how I got this limp.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was supposed to post the color of the day, the color was blue, Reardon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was supposed to put a blue feather in my hatband so some dumb patrolman wouldn’t mistake me for a cheap thief. And this clerk who didn’t go by the book, he posted the color as white. So I put a white feather in my hatband, and some dumb patrolman did shoot me, and that’s how I got this limp.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you understand that, Reardon?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you heard that story before?”
“Yes, sir, that’s how I understood you got the limp.”
“And the desk job. Because of the limp.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You think I want a desk job?”
“No, sir.”
“You think I want an ulcer? You think I want to drink milk, which I hate?”
“No, sir.”
“If the regs call for a homicide victim to be printed, then by Christ the victim will be printed or you’ll be walking a fuckin’ beat on Staten Island! Do you think you’ve got that, Reardon?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve got it.”
“Get that body fingerprinted. And let me see your report as soon as it’s typed.”
“Chick’s working on it now, sir.”
“Tell him,” Farmer said. “I don’t like unsolved murders in my precinct.”
“No, sir, none of us do.”
“Tell him,” Farmer said in dismissal.
“Yes, sir,” Reardon said, and went to the door.
Hoffman looked up as he came out into the squadroom.
“He wants the body printed,” Reardon said. “Can you get the morgue on it right away?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Hoffman said. “Go on, get out of here.”
“What about Santa?”
“I’ll take care of him, too.”
“You owe me two and a half bucks,” Gianelli said.
Reardon took out his wallet.
“You sure you can handle this alone?” he said.
“Go already,” Hoffman said.
The locker rooms were on the third floor of the station house. A toilet for policemen and another toilet for policewomen were on that same floor. Reardon washed his hands and face at the sink in the men’s toilet, and then headed for the locker room to change out of his working clothes and into his street clothes. The locker rooms were behind a combined recreation room/training room with a pool table, a Ping-Pong table, a weightlifting rack, and a large TV set — ostensibly there for the showing of departmental films, but tuned now to one of the local channels. A uniformed cop was shooting solitary pool as Reardon crossed the room.
On the television screen, the anchorman was saying, “... taped earlier tonight at the Sotheby gallery. Julio?”
Another man came onto the screen.
“We’re here on York Avenue,” he said, “where they are about to auction perhaps the finest and most extensive collection of Impressionist art in the world. The owner, Robert Sargent Kidd, is here with us at Sotheby’s...” The camera panned to where a man in Western gear and a white Stetson hat was standing. The interviewer joined him as a title flashed across the bottom of the screen.
“Mr. Kidd.” the interviewer said, “can you tell us why you’ve decided to sell your collection at this time?”
“Oh, just tired of it, I guess,” Kidd said, grinning.
“Eight ball in the side pocket,” the cop at the pool table said to himself. He fired at the cue ball, said, “Very good, Tony. Ten ball in the corner,” and shot again. “Excellent, Tony,” he said, “we’re putting you in for a commendation.” Looking up, he said, “Watch this one, Bry. Six ball in the corner, off the three.” He shot and missed. “Shit,” he said.
A beautiful blonde woman was on the television screen now.
“Miss Kidd,” the interviewer said, “how do you feel about your brother selling all these valuable paintings?”
Another title appeared on the bottom of the screen:
The camera was close on the blonde’s face now.
“My brother’s paintings are my brother’s business,” she said. “It’s his collection, he can do with it as he wishes.”
“Turn that off, willya, Bry?” the cop said. “It’s ruinin’ my game.”
Reardon moved to the television set.
“When do you expect you’ll be going back to Phoenix, Miss Kidd?” the interviewer asked.
“I have no idea,” the blonde said, and Reardon turned off the set.
Reardon knew this hospital well.
St. Vincent’s. Seventh Avenue and Eleventh Street. Right in the heart of the Sixth Precinct, which ran north-south from West Fourteenth to Houston, and east-west from Broadway to the Hudson — sort of adjoining the Fifth at its northwest corner. Waited out here for her more times than he could count. Cold winter nights like this one, where even the traffic seemed frozen in a stop-time crawl, sweltering summer nights with the fire hydrants open up the street and the kids romping in swimsuits under the spray. Autumn nights, when you wanted to kiss the star-drenched sky. And the spring, the scents of this city in the springtime, the scent of Kathy in the spring. Waited here to walk her home or to take her for a cappuccino or a beer farther downtown in the Village. Waited for her to step out of this gray-white building — what was now part of the Emergency wing, but what used to be the main building, the only building, in fact, before they started expanding in red brick next door and across the street — the sight of her in her nurse’s uniform, blonde head bent as she came down the steps, lines of weariness around her blue eyes, his heart leaping each time he saw her. Her shifts were like a patrolman’s — eight to four, or four to midnight, or sometimes the graveyard shift from midnight to eight A.M. — and he’d be here waiting for her, the way he was waiting now, waiting to take her hand in his and kiss the weariness from her eyes. He sometimes wondered whether it wasn’t tougher dealing with sick people than it was with criminals. All that pain and suffering. Nurses burned out as easily as cops, he was sure of that.
If she’d been relieved on time, same as cops, fifteen minutes before the hour, she should be coming through those doors at the top of the steps any—
There.
Kathy.
Blonde head characteristically ducked, that pensive look on her freckled Irish face, little white nurse’s cap a bit askew, black cape billowing over the white uniform under it, slender, well-shaped legs in the white, flat nurse’s shoes, his heart leaped.
“Kathy?” he said.
She was coming down the steps, almost to the sidewalk now. The traffic light on the corner changed, tinting the white cap red. She blinked at him, surprised, and squinted into the gloom.
“Hello, Bryan,” she said.
No enthusiasm in her voice. The formal name “Bryan.” Her voice dead.