“I thought you did at first. I thought maybe you just moved in or something.”
“No.”
“I thought maybe Petie had moved out.”
“No,” Hawes said. He put a pile of shirts onto the dresser and then reached into his back pocket for a tag.
“Why do you need a laundry mark to tell you what Petie’s name is?” the little girl asked.
“Because that’s the only way we…” Hawes paused. “What did you say, honey?”
“I don’t know. What did I say?”
“Something about… Petie?”
“Oh, yeah, Petie.”
“Is that his name?”
“Whose name?”
“The man who lives here,” Hawes said.
“I don’t know. What does it say inside his shirts?”
“Well, never mind his shirts, honey. If you know his name, you can save us a lot of time.”
“Are you a bull?” the little girl asked.
“Now what makes you ask that?”
“My poppa says bulls stink.”
“Is Petie your poppa?”
The little girl began laughing. “Petie? My poppa is Dave, that’s who my poppa is.”
“Well… well, what about Petie?”
“What about Petie?”
“Is that his name?”
“I guess so. If that’s what it says inside the shirts, then that must be his name.”
“Petie what?”
“What Petie what?”
“His second name. Petie what?”
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” the girl said, and she began giggling. “Do you know how to skate?”
“Yes. Honey, what’s Petie’s second name?”
“I don’t know. My second name is Jane. Alice Jane Horowitz.”
“Did he ever tell you his second name?”
“Nooooo,” the girl said, drawing out the word cautiously.
“How do you know his first name?”
“Because he showed me how to use a skate key.”
“Yeah? Go ahead.”
“That’s all. I was sitting on the steps, and the skate wouldn’t open, and he was coming downstairs, and he said, ‘Here, Petie’ll fix that for you,’ and then he fixed it, so that’s how I know his name is Petie.”
“Thanks,” Hawes said.
The little girl studied him solemnly for a moment and then said, “You are a bull, aren’t you?”
* * * *
The six bulls who met in the squadroom that night after dinner were not in the mood for a raid on a shooting gallery. Carella and Meyer wanted to be home with their wives and children. Andy Parker had been trying to get to a movie for the past week, but instead he’d been involved in this surveillance. Bert Kling wanted to finish a book he was reading. Cotton Hawes wanted to be with Christine Maxwell. Lieutenant Byrnes had promised his wife he’d take her to visit her cousin in Bethtown. But nonetheless, the six detectives met in the squadroom and were briefed by Parker on the location and setup of the apartment he’d had under surveillance for the past three weeks.
“They’re shooting up in there, that’s for sure,” Parker said. “But I think something unusual happened last night. A guy came with a suitcase for the first time since I’ve been on the plant. And he left without it. I think a big delivery was made, and if we hit them tonight, we may be able to nab them with the junk.”
“It’s worth a try,” Byrnes said. “The least we’ll net is a few hopheads.”
“Who’ll be out on the street again by tomorrow,” Carella said.
“Depending on how much they’re holding,” Hawes said.
“Someday, this city is going to get some realistic laws about narcotics,” Carella said.
“Aluvai,” Meyer put in.
“Let’s get moving,” Byrnes said.
They traveled in one sedan because they wanted to arrive together, wanted to get out of the car and hit the apartment before the telegraphing grapevine was able to warn of the presence of cops in the neighborhood. As it was, their margin was a close one. The instant they pulled up in front of the tenement, a man sitting on the front stoop ran inside. Parker ran after him into the hallway and collared the man as he was knocking on a ground floor door. Parker hit him only once and without hesitation, a sharp rabbit punch at the base of the man’s neck.
“Who’s there?” somebody inside the apartment called.
“Me,” Parker said, and by that time the other five detectives were in the hallway.
“Who’s me?” the voice inside said, and Parker kicked in the door.
Nobody was shooting up that night. The apartment may have been filled with addicts on the other nights of Parker’s surveillance, but tonight there was only a fat old man in an undershirt, a fat old woman in a house dress, and a young kid in a T shirt and dungarees. The trio was standing at the kitchen table, and they were working over what seemed to be eight million pounds of pure heroin. They were cutting it with sugar, diluting the junk for later sale to addicts from here to San Francisco and back again. The old man reached for a Luger in the drawer of the table the moment the door burst inward. He changed his mind about firing the gun because he was suddenly looking at an army of cops armed with everything from riot guns to Thompsons.
“Surprise!” Parker said, and the old man answered, “Drop dead, you cop bastard.”
Parker, naturally, hit him.
The men got back to the squadroom at about eight-thirty. They all had coffee together, and then Cotton Hawes drove uptown to Christine Maxwell’s apartment.
* * * *
16
He loved to watch her strip. He told himself that all he was, after all, was a tired businessman who couldn’t afford the price of a musical comedy on his meagre salary, who chose to watch Christine Maxwell rather than a stageful of chorus girls-but he knew he was not the ordinary voyeur, knew there was something rather more personal in his joy. He was tired, true, and perhaps he was only a businessman whose business happened to be crime and punishment. But sitting on the couch across the room from her, a glass of Scotch in his big hands, his bare feet resting on a throw pillow, he watched Christine as she took off her blouse, and he felt something more than simple anticipation. He wanted to hold her naked in his arms, wanted to make love to her, but she was more to him than a promised bed partner; she provided for him a haven, she was someone to whom he returned at the end of a long and difficult day, someone he was always happy to see and who, in turn, always made him feel welcome and wanted.
She reached behind her now and unclasped her brassiere, releasing the full globes of her breasts, and then carrying the bra to the chair over whose back she had draped the blouse. She folded the bra in two over the blouse, unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, folded that onto the seat of the chair, and then stepped out of her half slip and put that on top of the skirt. She took off her black, high-heeled pumps and put them to one side of the chair, and then ungartered her stockings, rolled them off her legs, and put those on the chair, too. She smiled unselfconsciously at him in the dimness of the room, removed her panties, threw them onto the chair and then, wearing only her garter belt, walked to where he was stretched out on the couch.