“Or,”Eileen said.
Both men looked at her.
“They’re onto us,” she said.
HOGAN GOT BACKto Ollie at ten that night.
Ollie was enjoying a snack before going to bed. He hated any of his meals being interrupted, and was almost sorry he’d given Hogan his home number.
“What I did,” Hogan explained, “was first I cleaned the site, filed it down smooth, and polished it with Carborundum till I had it looking like a mirror. Then I kept swabbing it with hydrochloric acid till the numbers came up. Took me three hours altogether.”
Don’t tell me your fuckin troubles while I’m eating, Ollie thought.
“So what’d the computer have to say?” he asked.
“The gun was registered to a guy named Charles McGrath. He used it in a bank holdup five years ago, shot the guard and a lady making a deposit. He still had the piece in his possession when he got busted two months later.”
“Where is he now?”
“Castleview. Doing a max of twenty on a B-felony conviction. He should be coming up for parole in a year or so.”
“Meanwhile he’s behind bars, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what the computer says.”
“What happened to the gun?”
“What do you mean?”
“After they sent Mr. McGrath to the country.”
“I told you. It was recovered in his possession.”
“Yeah, but how’d it get on the street again?”
“Well now, gee, that’syourjob, ain’t it?” Hogan said, and hung up.
SHARYN EVERARD COOKEwas the Police Department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon, the first black woman ever to be appointed to the job—though “black” was a misnomer in that her skin was the color of burnt almond. She wore her black hair in a modified Afro, which—together with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and eyes the color of loam—gave her the look of a proud Masai woman. Five feet, nine inches tall, she considered herself a trifle overweight at a hundred and thirty pounds. Bert Kling thought she looked just right. Bert Kling thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Bert Kling loved her to death.
The only problem was where to sleep.
Sharyn’s apartment was at the very end of the Calm’s Point subway line, some forty minutes from Kling’s studio apartment across the river and into the trees. From his apartment, it took him twenty minutes to get to work in the morning. From her apartment, it took him an hour and fifteen minutes. Sharyn still had her own private practice, but as a uniformed one-star chief, she still worked fifteen to eighteen hours a week at the Chief Surgeon’s Office, which was located in Rankin Plaza in that part of the city known as Majesta. Majesta happened to be forty-five minutes by subway from Kling’s apartment. So it all got down to where they should sleep on any given night. All couples should have such a problem.
They had planned to spend that Wednesday night in Sharyn’s apartment, but because a cop had got shot downtown, and Sharyn was here in The City, anyway—
No matter where you lived in this city, Isola was still called The City. If you lived in Riverhead or Majesta or Calm’s Point or even Bethtown, and you were taking the subway or a bus downtown, you were going into The City. That was it. Sharyn lived in Calm’s Point, but Kling lived in The City, and since she wasinthe city anyway that day, they decided to sleep at his place, talk about lengthy exposition.
His place was a studio apartment.
His place wasn’t too very comfortable.
But she loved him, so what could you do?
“Did your mother really work for Gabe Foster?” he asked.
She was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. She was still wearing a half slip and a bra and the sandals she’d worn to work that morning, strappy and buckled, with a medium-sized heel. She had rinsed out her pantyhose, and they were hanging over the shower rod. He liked her things hanging all over the place. He liked anything that reminded him of her.
“My mother worked for everyone in the world,” she said. “How do you think I got through college and med school?”
“Foster said she used to help around the church every now and then. When he was just starting out.”
“That’s possible,” Sharyn said. “I’ll have to ask her.”
She was cold-creaming makeup off her face now. It took her a half-hour every night to get ready for bed. She always came to bed smelling sweet and clean and fresh and beautiful. He loved the way she smelled. He loved everything about her.
“You ever meet him?” Kling asked.
“Foster? Once. There was a liquor store holdup in Diamondback, and one of the cops who responded was a brother. He got shot twice in the chest. Foster showed up at the hospital to do his thing.”
“What’s his thing?”
“False compassion for anyone who’s black, indignation for any imagined slight to the black man—or woman, he claims, though I understand he favors honkie trim. He’s a rabble rouser who wants to be mayor of this city one day. How’d you happen to talk to him?”
“Ollie Weeks thinks…”
“Bigot.”
“I know. Maybe that’s why he thinks Foster might have had something to do with the councilman’s murder.”
“Are you on that case?”
“Sort of.”
“What does that mean, sort of?”
“We’re sharing the bust with Ollie. If we make one.”
“Is Foster a suspect?”
“Not really. Not yet, anyway. But he had a fist fight with Henderson…”
“Uh-oh.”
“Well, maybe. Be sort of dumb to shoot a guy you just brawled with, though.”
“Not something I would do, that’s for sure.”
“Especially if you’re in the public eye, the way Foster is.”
“So ask him where he was when the shooting took place.”
“We did. He could have been in the neighborhood.”
“Then heisa suspect.”
“Maybe. In police work…”
“Yes, dear, tell me all about police work.”
“Inpolicework, wise guy, everyone’s a suspect until he’s no longer a suspect.”
“Gee,” Sharyn said, and rolled her eyes in mock amazement.
She was standing in the bathroom door now, the light behind her, looking tall and magnificent and lovely and wonderful. She put her hands on her hips. She looked across the room to where he was lying on the bed in his undershorts. The window was open. There was the sound of traffic below, moving toward the Calm’s Point Bridge.
“Are we going to make love tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Do you feel like it?”
“Do you?”
“I think I could be persuaded.”
“What I’m asking…”
“I know.”
“Should I put the diaphragm in?” Her voice lowered. “Is what I’m asking.”
“Well, if you’re going to look so sexy and beautiful and all in that transparent slip with the light behind you, I think you ought to put in your diaphragm and take the pill and do everything possible to protect yourself because I’m but a mere mortal who can’t possibly resist you, is what I think.”
“Sweet talker,” she said, and smiled, and went back into the bathroom, and closed the door.
In a little while, she came to him.
THE THING ABOUTbeing with him was the shared intimacy. Before him, she had never been intimate with another man. She didn’t mean sexually intimate, she’d had sex with a dozen men, at least, before she met Kling. Having sex with a man wasn’t the kind of intimacy she meant. You could be sexually intimate with any man, she supposed, white or black, although Kling was the first white man she’d ever been to bed with. She never expected to go to bed with any other white man in her life. Any other black man, either. Being sexually intimate with some man wasn’t the point of it all. She had finally discovered the point of it all with Bert Kling, the least likely candidate for the job.