“I didn’t kill either of them!”
“The only one who can verify...”
“Her name is Robin Steele, damn it!” Benson said, and Hawes let go of his arm.
6
There were times when Cotton Hawes wished he really was named Great Farting Bull Horse. He hated the name Hawes. It was hard to say. Hawes. It sounded like yaws, a disease of some kind, he hated the name. He hated the name Cotton, too. Nobody on earth was named Cotton except Cotton Mather, and he’d been dead since 1728. But Hawes’s father had been a religious man who’d felt that Cotton Mather was the greatest of the Puritan priests and had named his son in honor of the colonial God-seeker who’d hunted witches with the worst of them. Conveniently, Hawes’s father had chalked off the Salem trials — his father had been very good at chalking off things — as the personal petty revenges of a town feeding on its own ingrown fears. Jeremiah Hawes (why hadn’t he named Hawes “Jeremiah, Jr.”?) simply exonerated Cotton Mather and the role the priest had played in bringing the delusion to its fever pitch, naming his son in the man’s honor. Why hadn’t he named him “Lefty” instead? Hawes wasn’t left-handed, but he would have preferred “Lefty” to “Cotton.” Lefty Hawes. Scare the shit out of any cheap thief on the street.
There were also times when Hawes hated anyone who wasn’t a cop. This went for cops’ wives or girlfriends, too. If they weren’t on the force, then they didn’t know what the hell it was all about. You double-dated with another cop and his girlfriend, you sat there trying to tell the women that you almost got shot that afternoon, they wanted to talk about their nails instead. Some new nail polish that made your nails grow long. Guy with a .357 Magnum tries to blow you away three hours earlier, and they want to talk about their nails. If they weren’t on the force, they just didn’t understand. Hawes once told Meyer that Star Wars had it all wrong. It shouldn’t have been, “May the force be with you.” What it should have been, instead, was, “May you be with the force.”
Anybody who wasn’t on the force didn’t really want to hear about what it was like being a cop. They all agreed that this city was a nice place to visit, but who’d want to live here? Even though they lived here, they complained about living here. But the things they complained about weren’t the things that made it really difficult to live here — and impossible to work here, if you happened to be a cop. They didn’t know about the underbelly. They didn’t want to hear about the underbelly in this city or in any city. The underbelly was pale white, and it was slimy, and maggots clung to it. The underbelly was a working cop’s life, day in and day out.
Cops’ wives and girlfriends understood that their men looked at the underbelly twenty-four hours a day, but they didn’t want to hear the underbelly defined. They said novenas in church, praying that their men wouldn’t get hurt out there, but they didn’t want to know about the underbelly, not really. Sometimes they prayed that they wouldn’t have to hear about it, know about it, that pale white, maggoty-crawling underbelly. Sometimes, they tried to forget about it by going to bed with somebody who wasn’t a cop. Later, they prayed forgiveness for their sins — but at least they hadn’t had to touch that pale white underbelly and get its slime all over their fingers.
Robin Steele’s husband worked out of the Two-Six downtown.
He was a patrolman.
He’d been on the force for three years, hardly enough time to get burned out, especially in a soft precinct like the Two-Six.
But Robin Steele had been sleeping with Martin J. Benson for the past six months now.
She confirmed that she had been with Benson on the night of October sixth, while her husband was riding shotgun in a radio motor patrol car. She confirmed that she was with him again last night, while her husband was again occupied on the city streets. She asked them please not to tell her husband any of this. She told Carella that she loved her husband very much and wouldn’t want to see him hurt in any way. She knew he was in a dangerous job, and she didn’t want him to have any worries on his mind when he was out there doing whatever it was he did. When Hawes asked her if she knew she wasn’t the only woman in Benson’s life, she said, “Oh, sure, that doesn’t matter.”
None of it mattered, Hawes guessed.
Except that somebody was hanging young girls from lampposts.
He guessed he called Annie Rawles because he wanted to be near a woman who was a cop. He wanted to be able to relax with somebody without having to explain what the hell a duty chart was. He wanted to be with someone who would automatically understand about the underbelly. At first he thought he might take a whack at Dorothy Hudd of the hanging pearls and roaming fingers. He went so far as to look up her name in the Isola directory, finding a listing for a D. Hudd (why did women use only the initial of their first name in telephone directories, a sure invitation to heavy breathers?), dialed the first two numbers, and then hung up, figuring he did not want to be with a civilian on a day when a good suspect had come up with an excellent alibi.
He called the Departmental Directory instead, identified himself as a working cop, told the clerk who took his rank and shield number that he was working a case with Detective Rawles of the Rape Squad, and got her home phone number in minutes. She’s probably married, Hawes thought as he dialed the number. But he hadn’t seen a wedding band on her hand. Maybe Rape Squad cops didn’t wear wedding bands. He listened to the phone ringing on the other end.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.
“Miss Rawles?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Cotton Hawes,” he said.
“Who?” she said.
“Hawes. The Eight-Seven. You were up there last week about a rape case, we talked briefly...”
“Oh, yes, hi,” Annie said. “Hawes. The redheaded one.”
“Yes,” Hawes said.
“You got him, is that it?” she asked.
“What?”
“The rapist.”
“No, no,” Hawes said. “Eileen Burke was in late this afternoon, I gather she’s been assigned...”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t think she’s beginning till tomorrow.”
“That’s right. I just thought lightning may have struck.”
“No such luck.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“So... uh... what is it?” Annie asked.
Hawes hesitated.
“Hello?” Annie said.
“Hello, I’m still here.” He hesitated again. “You’re not married or anything, are you?”
“No, I’m not married,” Annie said. He thought he detected a smile in her voice.
“Have you had dinner yet? I know it’s past seven, maybe you’ve already...”
“No, I haven’t had dinner yet,” she said. He was sure she was smiling now. “I just got in a few minutes ago, in fact.”
“Would you... uh...?”
“Sure,” she said. “Want to pick me up here, or shall we meet someplace?”
“Eight o’clock sound all right?” Hawes asked.
They had dinner in a Chinese restaurant and went back to Annie’s place later on. She lived in an old brick building on Langley Place, near the Three-One, which was one of the oldest precincts in the city, and which still had a coal-burning furnace in the basement. She told him that she was sure her presence in the building accounted for the fact that there hadn’t been a burglary here in three years. She figured word had got around that a lady cop lived in the building. She told him this while she was pouring cognac into brandy snifters.