“We were wondering,” the lieutenant said, “if we could get some coffee and Danish.” He had to put his head back and look up when talking to her, which was uncomfortable under the circumstances. The bill of his cap had protected his face from the rain, but now he was practically drowning in it.
“We’re closed,” the woman said.
Another woman appeared, saying, “What is it, Gertrude?” This one was shorter and wore a neck brace and looked irritable.
“He wanted coffee and Danish,” Gertrude said. “I told him we were closed.”
“We are closed,” the other woman said.
“Well, we’re police officers,” the lieutenant started.
“I know,” said Gertrude. “I could tell by your hat.”
“And your car,” said the other woman. “It says ‘Police’ on the side.”
The lieutenant turned his head and looked at the patrol car, even though he already knew what it said on its side. He quickly looked back and said, “Well, we’re on duty here, and we were wondering if you could maybe sell us some coffee and Danish even if you aren’t one hundred percent open.” He tried a winning smile, but all he got for it was a mouthful of rain.
“We don’t have any Danish,” the irritable woman in the neck brace said.
Gertrude, being more kindly, said, “I’d like to help you out, but the fact is, we don’t have any electricity yet. Nothing’s hooked up at all. We just got here. I’d like a cup of coffee myself.”
“It’s getting damn cold in here,” said the irritable woman, “with that door open.”
“Well, thanks anyway,” said the lieutenant. Gertrude said, “Come around when we’re open. We’ll give you coffee and Danish on the house.”
“I’ll do that,” said the lieutenant and slogged back through the puddles to report, saying, “They don’t have any electricity, Captain. They’re not set up for anything yet.”
“We can’t even pick a hilltop right,” the captain said. To the radio man he said, “You!”
“Sir?”
“Find out if there’s any patrol cars around here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We want coffees and Danish.”
“Yes, sir. How do you like your coffee?”
“Light, three sugars.”
The radio man looked ill. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant?”
“Black, one Sweet ’n’ Low.”
“Yes, sir.”
While the radio man took the driver’s order, the captain turned to the lieutenant and said, “One sweet and what?”
“It’s a sugar substitute, sir. For people on diets.”
“You’re on a diet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I weigh about twice as much as you, Lieutenant, but I’m not on a diet.”
The lieutenant opened his mouth, but once again no response seemed exactly right, and he didn’t say anything.
But silence, this time, was also a mistake. The captain’s brows beetled, and he said, “Just what do you mean by that, Lieutenant?”
The radio man said, “I put in the order, sir.”
It was a timely distraction. The captain thanked him and subsided again and brooded out the window for the next ten minutes, until another patrol car arrived, delivering the coffee and Danish. The captain cheered up at that, until the second patrol car arrived two minutes after the first, bringing more coffee and Danish. “I should have guessed,” the captain said.
When the third and fourth patrol cars with shipments of coffee and Danish arrived simultaneously, the captain roared at the radio man, “Tell them enough! Tell them to stop, tell them it’s enough, tell them I’m near the breaking point!”
“Yes, sir,” said the radio man and got to work on the phone.
Nevertheless, two more patrol cars arrived with coffee and Danish in the next five minutes. It was the captain’s belief that discipline was best maintained by never letting the ranks know when things louse up, so they had to accept and pay for and say thank you for each and every shipment, and gradually the mobile headquarters was filling up with plastic cups of coffee and brown paper bags full of Danish. The smell of the lieutenant’s wet uniform combined with the steam of diner coffee was becoming very strong and fogging up the windows.
The lieutenant pushed several wooden stirrers off his lap and said, “Captain, I have an idea.”
“God protect me,” said the captain.
“The people working in that diner don’t have any electricity or heat, sir. Frankly, they strike me as born losers. Why don’t we give them some of our extra coffee and Danish?”
The Captain considered. “I suppose,” he said judiciously, “it’s better than me getting out of the car and stamping all this stuff into the gravel. Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The lieutenant gathered up one carton — four coffees, four Danish — and carried them from the car over to the diner. He knocked on the door, and it was opened immediately by Gertrude, who still had a cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth. The lieutenant said, “We got more food delivered than we wanted. I thought maybe you could use some of —”
“We sure could,” Gertrude said. “That’s really sweet of you.”
The lieutenant handed up the carton. “If you need any more,” he said, “we’ve got plenty.”
Gertrude looked hesitant. “Well, uh …”
“Are there more than four of you? I mean it, we’re loaded down with the stuff.”
Gertrude seemed reluctant to say how many of them were in the diner — probably because she didn’t want to strain the lieutenant’s generosity. But finally she said, “There’s, uh, there’s seven of us.”
“Seven! Wow, you must really be working in there.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We really are.”
“You must be in a hurry to open up.”
“We really want to open it up,” Gertrude said, nodding, the cigarette waggling in the corner of her mouth. “You couldn’t be more right about that.”
“I’ll get you some more,” the lieutenant said. “Be right back.”
“You’re really very kind,” she said.
The lieutenant went back to the patrol car and opened the rear door. “They can use some more,” he said and assembled two more cartons.
The captain gave him a cynical look. He said, “You’re delivering coffee and Danish to a diner, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“It doesn’t strike you as strange?”
The lieutenant paused in his shuffling of coffee containers.
“Sir,” he said, “my basic feeling about this whole business is that I’m actually in a hospital somewhere, undergoing major surgery, and this day is a dream I’m having while under the anesthetic.”
The captain looked interested. “I imagine that’s a very comforting thought,” he said.
“It is, sir.”
“Hmmmmm,” said the captain.
The lieutenant carried more coffee and Danish to the diner, and Gertrude met him at the door. “How much do we owe you?”
“Oh, forget it,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll take a free cheeseburger some time when you’re doing business.”
“If only all police officers were like you,” Gertrude said, “the world would be a far better place.”
The lieutenant had often thought the same thing himself. He gave a modest smile and scuffed his foot in a puddle and said, “Oh, well, I just try to do my best.”
“I’m sure you do. Bless you.”
The lieutenant carried his happy smile back to the patrol car, where he found the captain in a sour mood again, beetle-browed and grumpy. “Something go wrong, sir?”
“I tried that anesthetic thing of yours.”
“You did, sir?”
“I keep worrying how the operation’s going to come out.”