This section of the city was called The Club by everyone in the city except the people who lived there. The residents, of whom there were less than a hundred or so, called it Smoke Rise. They used the title casually, but they knew it represented wealth and exclusiveness; they knew that Smoke Rise was almost a city within a city. Even its geographical location seemed to verify the concept. It was bounded on the north by the River Harb. On its south, the poplars lining the River Highway created a barrier which made Smoke Rise impenetrable from invasion by the rest of the city, the rest of the world.
South of the highway was fancy Silvermine Road, a distantly wealthy (but not that wealthy) relative of Smoke Rise. Continuing southward from Silvermine Park and the apartment buildings facing it, the peripatetic stroller encountered first the gaudy commercialism, the blinking neons, the all-night restaurants, the candy stores, the shrieking traffic signals of The Stem, crossing the precinct territory like a dagger dripping blood. South of that was Ainsley Avenue, and the change from riches to rags was subtle here, the buildings still maintaining some of their old dignity, the dignity of a once stylish, now shabby Homburg; and then came Culver Avenue and the change was apparent now, striking one in the face with the sudden ferocity of naked poverty, nakedly dirty buildings stretching grime-covered facades to a cold wintry sky, bars crouched between the unemotional masks of tenements, churches huddled on street corners—Come pray to God—the wind sweeping through the gray canyon as bleakly as an icy tundra blast.
Southward, southward, through the short stretch of Mason Avenue known to the Puerto Ricans as La Via de Putas, a flash of exotic color, a splash of eroticism on the ice floe, and then Grover Avenue and beyond that the happy hunting grounds for muggers, knifers, and rapists, Grover Park.
The 87th Precinct building was on Grover Avenue, facing the park. The detective squadroom was on the second floor of the building.
Detective 2nd/Grade Meyer Meyer sat at a desk before one of the windows overlooking Grover Avenue and the park beyond. The feeble October sunshine reflected from his bald pate, danced in his blue eyes. A pad of lined yellow paper rested on the desk before him. Meyer scribbled notes onto the pad as the man opposite him spoke.
The man said his name was David Peck. He owned a radio supply store, he told Meyer.
“You sell radio parts, is that right?” Meyer asked.
“Well, not for commercial stuff. I mean, we sell a little of that, but mostly we sell stuff for hams, you know what I mean?” Peck tweaked his nose with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed to Meyer that Peck wanted to blow his nose, or perhaps pick it. He wondered if Peck had a handkerchief. He was going to offer him a Kleenex, but he decided the man might be offended by the gesture.
“Hams?” Meyer said.
“Yeah, hams. I don’t mean like you eat. Not them hams.” Peck smiled and tweaked his nose again. “Like, I mean, we don’t run a delicatessen or nothing. By hams, I mean amateur radio operators. Like that. We sell equipment to them mostly. You’d be surprised how many hams there are in this neighborhood. You wouldn’t think so, huh, would you?”
“No, I guess I wouldn’t,” Meyer said.
“Sure, lots of hams. My partner and me, we got a pretty good business here. We also sell some commercial stuff, like portables and hi-fi units and like that, but that’s only a service we run, you understand, what we are primarily interested in is selling stuff to hams.”
“I understand, Mr. Peck,” Meyer said, wishing the man would blow his nose, “but what is the nature of your complaint?”
“Well,” Peck said, and he tweaked his nose, “like somebody busted into our store.”
“When was this?”
“Last week.”
“Why’d you wait until now to report it?”
“We wasn’t going to report it because the guy who busted in, he didn’t steal very much, you know. This equipment is pretty heavy stuff, you know, so I guess you have to be strong to cart away a whole store. Anyway, he didn’t take very much, so my partner and me we figured we’d just forget about it.”
“What makes you report it now?”
“Well, he came back. The crook, I mean. The thief.”
“He returned?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“And this time he stole a lot of equipment, is that right?”
“No, no. This time he took even less than last time.”
“Now, just a minute, Mr. Peck, let’s start from the beginning. Would you like a Kleenex, Mr. Peck?”
“A Kleenex?” Peck said. “What do I need a Kleenex for?” And he tweaked his nose again.
Meyer sighed patiently.
Of all the detectives on the 87th Squad, Meyer Meyer was perhaps the most patient. The patience was not an inherited trait. If anything, Meyer’s parents had been capable of behaving somewhat impulsively on occasion. Their first impetuous act involved the conception and birth of Meyer Meyer himself. He was, you see, a change-of-life baby. Now whereas news of an impending birth will generally fill the prospective parents with unrestrained glee, such was not the case when old Max Meyer discovered he was to be presented with an offspring. Max did not take kindly to the news. Not at all. He mulled it over, he stewed about it, he sulked, and finally he decided impulsively upon a means of revenge against the new baby. He named the boy Meyer Meyer, a splendid practical joke, to be sure, a gasser. It almost killed the kid.
Well, perhaps that’s exaggeration. After all, Meyer had grown to manhood, and he was a sound physical and mental specimen. But Meyer had done all his growing in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood, and the fact that he was an Orthodox Jew with a double-barreled name like Meyer Meyer did not help him in the winning of friends or the influencing of people. In a neighborhood where the mere fact of Jewishness was enough to provoke spontaneous hatred, Meyer Meyer had had his troubles. “Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire,” the kids would chant, and whereas they never translated the chant into an actual conflagration, they committed everything short of arson against the Jewboy with the crazy monicker.
Meyer Meyer learned to be patient. You couldn’t win a fight against a dozen other boys by using your fists. You learned to use your head instead. Patiently, intelligently, Meyer Meyer handled his problem without the aid of a psychiatrist. Patience became an ingrown trait. Patience became a way of life. So perhaps old Max Meyer’s joke was harmless enough. Unless one cared to make note of the fact that Meyer Meyer was as bald as a cue ball. And even this fact assumed no real importance until it was connected with a second purely chronological fact:
Meyer Meyer was only thirty-seven years old.
Patiently now, he poised his pencil over the yellow pad and said, “Tell me, Mr. Peck, what did this thief steal the first time he broke into your store?”