She was wearing a simple blue dress and blue patent-leather high-heeled pumps; he doubted she’d been dressed for work that way. She looked like any pretty civilian might look — black wedge-cut hair, brown eyes behind black-rimmed eyeglasses, the simple blue dress, a gold chain and pendant — well, no. A civilian in this city wouldn’t risk wearing a gold chain. A lady cop with a .38 in her handbag might take the chance. But otherwise, she didn’t look like a cop; some of the lady cops in this city resembled hog callers at a county fair, big guns on their hips, cartridge belts hanging, big fat asses. Annie Rawles looked like a schoolgirl. Word had it that she had blown away two hoods trying to rob a bank, but Hawes couldn’t visualize it. Couldn’t see her in a policeman’s crouch, leveling the gun and squeezing off however many shots it had taken to deck the bastards. He tried to imagine the scene. As he accepted the brandy snifter from her, he realized he was staring.
“Something?” she said, and smiled.
“No, no,” Hawes assured her. “Just remembering you’re a cop.”
“Sometimes I wish I could forget it,” Annie said.
She sat beside him on the couch, tucking her legs up under her. The room was pleasantly furnished, a Franklin stove laid with cannel coal on the wall opposite the sofa, framed prints on all of the walls, a pass-through counter leading into a tidy kitchen hung with copper-bottomed pots and pans. The furniture looked like quality stuff; he remembered she earned $37,935 a year as a detective/first. He sipped at the cognac.
“Good,” he said.
“My brother brought it back from France,” she said.
“What does he do?”
“He imports fish,” she said. “Don’t laugh.”
“What kind of fish?”
“Salmon. Irish salmon, mostly. Very expensive stuff. Something like thirty-eight dollars a pound.”
“Whoo,” Hawes said. “So how come France?”
“What? Oh. A side trip. Mixing business with pleasure.”
“I’ve never been to France,” Hawes said, somewhat wistfully.
“Neither have I,” Annie said.
“Popeye got to go to France, though.”
“Popeye?”
“The French Connection. Did you see that movie? Not the one where he goes to France, that was lousy. The first one.”
“Yeah, it was pretty authentic, I thought.”
“Yeah, standing around in the cold, and everything. That really happened to Carella, you know.”
“Who’s Carella?”
“Guy I’m working these homicides with, good cop.”
“What really happened to him?”
“They made him an addict. On a case he was working. They turned him on to heroin. Like with Popeye in the second French Connection movie. Only it happened to Carella before there even was that movie. I mean, really happened to him, never mind fiction.”
“Is he okay now?”
“Oh, sure. Well, he was hooked, but not for very long, and besides they did it to him, you know, it wasn’t a voluntary thing.”
“So he kicked it.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Some fun, huh? Being a cop?”
“A million laughs,” Hawes said. “How’d you happen to get into it?”
“I thought it would be exciting,” Annie said. “I guess it is. Don’t you think it is?”
“I guess so,” Hawes said.
“I was fresh out of college...”
“You still look like a college girl.”
“Well, thank you.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Thirty-four,” Annie said immediately.
He liked that about lady cops. No bullshit. Ask a question, you got a straight answer.
“Been on the job long?”
“Eight years.”
“You used to work out of Robbery, right?” Hawes said.
“Yeah. Well, I was on the Stakeout Squad before that. Right after I got the gold shield. Then Robbery, and now Rape. How about you?”
“I’ve been with the Eight-Seven for more years than I can count,” Hawes said. “Before that, I was with the Three-Oh, a silk-stocking precinct, are you familiar with it?”
“Yes,” Annie said, and nodded, and sipped at her cognac.
“I’ve learned a lot uptown,” he said.
“I’ll bet you have,” Annie said.
They were silent for a moment. He wanted to ask her where she’d gone to college, what she’d majored in, whether she’d had any qualms about working with the Stakeout Squad, whose prime purpose — before it was disbanded — was to sit in the back of stores that had been previously held up, waiting to ambush any robber who came back a second time. The Stakeout Squad had blown away forty-four armed robbers before the Commissioner decided the operation was something the Department shouldn’t be too terribly proud of. Hawes wondered if she’d shot anyone while she was working with Stakeout. He had a lot of questions he still wanted to ask her. He felt he was getting to know her a little better, but there were still a lot of questions to ask. Instead, though, suddenly feeling totally relaxed and secure, he didn’t ask a question at all. As if he had known her forever, he said only, “It gets to you after a while. The job.”
She looked at him for what seemed like a long time before she answered.
“Yes,” she said simply. “It gets to you.”
They kept looking at each other.
Hawes nodded.
“Well,” he said, and glanced at his watch. “If your day was anything like mine...”
“Rough one,” she said, and nodded.
“So,” he said, and rose awkwardly. “Thanks for the cognac, your brother’s got good taste.”
“Thanks for the dinner,” she said.
She did not rise. She kept sitting right where she was, looking up at him, her legs tucked under her.
“Let’s do it again sometime,” he said.
“I’d love to.”
“In fact... I’ve got the day off tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe we could...”
“I don’t have to be in till four,” she said.
“Maybe... well, I don’t know. What would you like to do?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Marty,” she said, and smiled. “What would you like to do?”
“I love that movie,” he said.
“I do, too.”
“I saw it on television again last week.”
“So did I.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I saw it last week.”
“Late at night, right?”
“About two in the morning.”
“How about that?” he said. “Both of us watching the same movie at opposite ends of the city.”
“What a pity,” she said.
Their eyes met.
“Well,” he said, “let me call you in the morning, okay? I’ll try to figure out something we can...”
“Let’s not be dopes,” Annie said.
Eileen Burke was in Kling’s bed.
They had known each other intimately for the better part of eight months now, but the sex tonight had been as steamy and as improvisational as it had been the first time. When at last they expired on the separate little deaths of literary reknown, and after they exchanged the obligatory assurances that it had been as good for him as it had been for her and vice versa, and after Eileen had gone to the bathroom to pee, and after Kling had crossed the room naked to open the window to the sounds of the night traffic below, they lay back against the pillows, entwined in each other’s arms, Eileen’s hand resting idly on Kling’s chest, his own hand gently cradling her breast.
It was a little while before Eileen told him what was troubling her.