'Entonces que hacías en el techo con ella?' the girl asked.
'Yo le estaba enseńando las palomas de Tommy,' the boy said.
'Tú estabas tratando de chingarla, eso es lo que tú estabas hacienda,' the girl said, and opened her purse.
'No! Solamente le estaba enseńando las palomas,' the boy said, and a razor blade suddenly appeared in the girl's right hand, and the blade moved with startling swiftness toward the boy's face, slicing across the bridge of his nose and his right cheek, a gushing trail of blood following the cutting edge as it slashed over the jaw line and almost severed the carotid artery, which would have proved deadly. Blood spilled onto the white Swedish Army coat. The boy, startled, reached into the coat, pulled out a very big gun that Broughan immediately identified as a Colt .45, and pointed it at the girl.
Broughan moved.
He did not say a word. There was no time to pull his own gun. In the next three seconds the cannon in the boy's hand might explode, and Broughan would be dealing with a homicide. The boy had his back to him; Broughan hit him at the base of the skull, with both hands clenched together like a mallet. The boy fell to the sidewalk, barely conscious, and Broughan pulled his gun as the girl began to run. He stuck out his foot, and tripped her, and she went sprawling to the sidewalk, bruising her hands as she tried to cushion the fall. Broughan put them both in handcuffs, told the owner of the record store to call the 101st and tell them Detective Broughan needed a patrol car and a meat wagon, and then turned to the gathering crowd and said, 'All right, go home, it's all over.'
It was not all over. The night was just beginning.
The boy's name was Pacho Miravitlles.
His face bandaged, he sat on a white table in the emergency room of Washington Hospital and refused to talk to Broughan. While Broughan fired his questions, an intern hovered about, fearful that the boy would begin bleeding again, and maybe die right there on the table, and then he'd be somehow blamed for it instead of this big cop who was badgering somebody who'd just been badly injured.
'Why were you carrying that piece?' Broughan said.
Pacho did not answer.
'You're smarter than that, Pacho. You punks never go around heeled unless there's something on. Now what's on, would you like to tell me?'
'Officer,' the intern started, and Broughan said, 'Shut up,' and turned to Pacho again. 'Who's the girl?'
'My chick,' Pacho answered, apparently figuring this was a safe area for discussion.
'What's her name?'
'Anita Zamora.'
'Why'd she cut you?'
'She thought I was fooling around with somebody.'
'Who?'
'A girl named Isabel Garrido.'
'Were you fooling around with her?'
'No. I took her up on the roof to show her my brother's pigeons.'
'In this weather?'
'That's what I wanted to show her. The way the pigeons all crowd together in the coop. To keep warm, you know.'
'Did she keep you warm while you were up there, Pacho?'
'She's only thirteen years old. I wouldn't fool around with nobody that young. I really took her up there to show her the pigeons.' He turned to the intern. 'Hey, it still feels like blood is under these bandages.'
'Officer, I really would like to…'
'I really would like to find out why this young man was carrying a .45 automatic in the pocket of his coat, Doctor. You've done your job, you stopped the blood, you've got him nicely bandaged there. Now why don't you go outside and have a cigarette, okay?'
'Cigarettes cause cancer,' the intern said automatically.
'Then go down to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee. Or go outside there where you've got a lot of other patients to take care of, okay?'
'This boy is my patient, too.'
'I'll take care of this boy, don't you worry about that,' Broughan said. 'Would you please leave us the hell alone for five minutes?'
'I'm not responsible,' the intern said.
'Fine.'
'I'm telling you, if anything happens to him, I'm not responsible.'
'What do you think is going to happen?'
'He could fall off the table,' the intern said.
'He could also slip on the banana peels that are all over the floor.'
'What banana peels?'
'There aren't any,' Broughan said. 'Go take a walk, will you?'
'Okay, but I'm not responsible,' the intern said, and walked out.
'What do you say, Pacho?'
'I told you all I got to tell you.'
'Tell me about the piece.'
'No comment.'
'You got a license to carry that weapon?'
'You know I ain't got no license.'
'Okay, so to begin with, we got you on a gun charge. You know what else we got you on?'
'You got me on nothing.'
'You're mistaken, Pacho. We got you on a couple of things that are very interesting. You were holding a loaded weapon in your hand, and you were pointing it at your nice little girl friend who already cut you up, and who's going to be charged with First-Degree Assault. We can charge you with the same thing, at the very least, since'
'The gun in my hand don't mean nothing.'
'Uh-uh, it means a lot, Pacho. It means you violated Section 240 of the Penal Law. You assaulted another person with a loaded firearm.'
'I never touched her. I never fired a shot.'
'You stuck the gun in her face. We can presume you intended firing it. But Assault is the least of your worries, Pacho. We might decide to charge you with Attempted Homicide instead. That's an even heavier rap.'
'I didn't try to kill nobody. I only wanted to scare her. Anyway, it was self-defense.'
'Yeah, well, let's not try the case right here and now, okay, Pacho? I'm just trying to tell you how much time you're going to absolutely spend in jail, and how much time you might spend in jail if a jury sees it the same way the D.A. sees it. On the gun charge, you'll absolutely and without question get a year for carrying a loaded firearm without a license. On the assault, you can get ten years, and on the attempted murder, you can get twenty-five. How old are you, Pacho?'
'Nineteen.'
'Either way, by the time you get out of prison, you won't be a teen-ager any more. How does that appeal to you?'
'It don't.'
'So tell me why you were carrying that piece.'
'Go fuck yourself,' Pacho said.
Bert Kling was about to propose to Augusta Blair.
It was almost nine-thirty, and they had finished their meal and their coffee, and Kling had ordered cognac for both of them, and they were waiting for it to arrive. There was a candle in a red translucent holder on the tabletop, and it cast a gentle glow on Augusta's face, softening her features, not that she needed any help. There was a time when Kling had been thoroughly flustered by Augusta's beauty. In her presence he had been speechless, breathless, awkward, stupid, and incapable of doing anything but stare at her in wonder and gratitude. Over the past nine months, however, he had not only grown accustomed to her beauty, and comfortable in its presence, but had also begun to feel somehow responsible for it - like the curator of a museum beginning to think that the rare paintings on the walls had not only been discovered by him, but had in fact been painted by him.
If Kling had been a painter, he would have put Augusta on canvas exactly the way she looked, no improvements, no embellishments; none were necessary. Augusta's hair was red, or auburn, or russet, depending on the light, but certainly in the red spectrum, and worn long most of the time, usually falling to just below her shoulder blades, but sometimes worn back in a pony tail, or braided into pigtails on either side of her face, or even piled on top of her head like a crown of sparkling rubies. Her eyes were a jade-green, slanting upward from high cheekbones, her exquisite nose gently drawing the upper lip away from partially exposed, even white teeth. She was tall and slender, with good breasts and a narrow waist and wide hips and splendid wheels. She was surely the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life - which is why she was a photographer's model. She was also the most beautiful person he had ever met in his life - which is why he wanted to marry her.