Joe Pender had retired as a sergeant when he had put his full time in on the Job. Sergeant was as high as the husky redhead had wanted to go — his pension was adequate and he had made an outside job with another cop, renovating old buildings and renting them, so he wasn’t hurting for money.
I said, “Good to see you, pal. I didn’t know you’d retired down this way.”
As we shook hands he told me, “The wife’s doing. She’s a real Florida lover. New York got to be too much for her. You moving in?”
“Got a place over on Kenneth Avenue.”
“Fancy, man!” he laughed. “That’s where the brass have their digs. Got an old commissioner at the far end of the street with a pair of inspectors right beside him.”
“They still giving orders?”
“Hell no. This time we have a very democratic club.” He paused and nodded toward the building behind him. “Damn, Jack, let’s get you in and on the rolls.”
“I just got here yesterday.”
He wrapped his fingers around my arm and said, “And now is when you get back on duty.”
“Duty?”
“Sure. The guys would flip out if they tried to hide their cop background and just be plain civilians. We rotate helping Kinder out on security stuff. No rank, no roll calls, plenty of shooting matches on our own firing ranges.”
“Who buys the ammunition?” I asked him.
“We have reloading equipment. All calibers. Even the women get in on this action.”
“They safe to keep around?”
“Buddy, there hasn’t been a divorce since anybody’s been here. This retirement scene is the greatest. Jeannie and I damned near broke up until we moved here. Now we’re kissing and hugging all over the place.”
And Joe Pender was right. Sunset Lodge was a brand new beginning for a bunch of streetwise old police officers who had brushed the grime of New York and New Jersey off their clothes and took to the shorts and sunshine of Florida.
But they couldn’t brush the concept of police action from their station house. The walls still held typed and handwritten memos for member activities and in two locations were official mug shots of current criminals somebody in the big city was forwarding to the clubhouse.
“Like it?” Joe asked me.
“Like I never left home,” I remarked.
“Right. Now let’s get you signed up. Hell, you even get a badge again. Miniature, of course, but you get five percent off your bills over in the big cities. Just show the tin.”
I shook my head and followed him to the reception desk where I became semi-official in this new land of make believe.
I said so long to Joe and went back outside. A half dozen matrons in tennis outfits were squealing like little kids, all anxious to get to the tennis courts for their tee off times or whatever they called it. I had to stare for half a minute before I fully recognized them. The last time I had seen them they were two-hundred-pounders who had to shop in the big and tall ladies’ stores, emphasis on the big. Sunset Lodge had turned them into chorus cutie size again. I sure hoped their husbands appreciated them. Damn.
I got back in my car and pulled out of the parking lot.
When a cop went on the street for the first time, he felt like I do now.
Everybody was looking at him. He was being sized up.
The locals would need several takes. Is he good enough? they would ask themselves.
The bad guys would know right away. Would he hesitate to kill them? No. Not this one... not the Shooter....
I’d thought I had shrugged those reflections off a long time ago, but I guess I hadn’t. I drove down to the intersection of my street, slowed down and made the turn.
I’d never had a big dog in my life. Where would you walk one on a leash? How long would you stay out? I circled the block twice without seeing any signs of Bettie and her greyhound, then finally turned in to my driveway and went up on the porch and eased into a rocker. I sat there for five minutes and it was like waiting for a snake to strike. I was tense all over. My muscles had tightened into a ready position, poised, balanced, raring for the go signal.
Then I heard the yip and looked to my left. It was a short sound and it had come from a full-throated animal who had spotted something that pleased him and let out a noise to show his appreciation.
Like water spilling from an overflowing jar, the tension went away when I saw Bettie and Tacos come into my direct line of vision and I got up, walked off the porch and waited for her on the sidewalk.
Tacos told her she had company ahead. I heard the nearly muted whine of pleasure.
How the heck would a dog know about us?
So I wouldn’t startle her, I said, “It’s me, your new neighbor,” then added softly, “Jack.”
She wore black sunglasses and their blank lenses bore down on me. “I heard all about you a little while ago. The ladies over at the station house keep everyone well informed.”
“I know a lot of them.”
“So they mentioned. They all like you too. Did you know that?”
“Well, I’ve never been arrested.”
“They don’t arrest policemen, do they?” she asked me.
“The heck they don’t,” I told her.
She was carrying some mail and a few grocery items in an ornamented wire basket and I slid my fingers under the handle and took it from her. Was the mail in Braille, or did someone read it to her, I wondered.
I said, “You handle your dog and I’ll carry your groceries up the stairs. First good deed I’ve done all day.”
Slowly, she turned her head and appeared to look down at Tacos. “Strange,” she said softly.
“What is?”
“Tacos never moved to stop you from taking my basket from me.”
“Should he?”
“He’s extremely protective.”
“So am I,” I said with a grin. “He knows a kindred soul.”
I don’t know why, with her heightened senses, she couldn’t hear my heart beating. My own breath seemed muffled and the muscles in the small of my back had tightened annoyingly. But the oversized greyhound seemed to realize that something was happening and his eyes met mine for an instant’s inspection, then he tugged at his leash and walked to the porch steps, Bettie following him closely.
At the door she slid the key into the lock, turned the knob, let the dog enter ahead of her and said to me, “Won’t you join us for a cold drink, Jack?”
I didn’t answer her for a few seconds and she said, “We are neighbors now, you know.”
“And you have one oversized greyhound dog with big vampire teeth, if anyone made any moves against you.”
“Yes,” she agreed quite pleasantly. “That’s because he loves me.”
The minute delay in my answer almost spoke what was in my mind but hadn’t reached my tongue yet. I asked her, “How heavy is Tacos anyway?”
“A hundred and twenty pounds,” she told me. “All muscle, extremely bright, but too big to race and not enough dog plumage to stay warm while pulling a sled in heavy snow.”
“Where did you get him?”
“He was about to be put down. I rescued him at the track just in time. I wish I could have taken more of the animals, but this one licked my hand and gave me a knowing, pleading look and he became mine and I became his.”
“No offense,” I said, “but what is a ‘knowing’ look, when you’re blind?”
Without hesitation, she said, “Just that he knew I was blind. And that we both needed each other.”
I nodded and said a quiet, “Oh. I see.”
Her head turned and she looked at me. Behind her dark glasses I knew her eyes had somehow found mine. “Do you really?”