“Not a nightstick-twirler.”
“Nut a traffic jockey.”
“Clear?” Monroe asked.
“Yes,” Kling said.
“It’s gonna get a lot clearer,” Monoghan added. “The lieutenant wants to see you.”
“What for?”
“The lieutenant is a funny guy. He thinks Homicide is the best damn department in the city. He runs Homicide, and he don’t like people coming in where they ain’t asked. I’ll let you in on a secret. He don’t even like the detectives from your precinct to go messing around in murder. Trouble is, he can’t refuse their assistance or their cooperation, specially when your precinct manages to stack up so many goddamn homicides each year. So he suffers the dicks — but he don’t have to suffer no goddamn patrolman.”
“But — but why does he want to see me? I understand now. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in, and I’m sorry I—”
“You shouldn’t have stuck your nose in,” Monoghan agreed.
“You definitely shouldn’t have.”
“But I didn’t do any harm. I just—”
“Who knows what harm you done?” Monoghan said.
“You may have done untold harm,” Monroe said.
“Ah, hell,” Kling said, “I’ve got a date.”
“Yeah,” Monoghan said. “With the lieutenant.”
“Call your broad,” Monroe advised. “Tell her the police are bugging you.”
Kling looked at his watch. “I can’t reach her,” he said. “She’s at school.”
“Impairing the morals of a minor,” Monoghan said, smiling.
“Better you shouldn’t mention that to the lieutenant.”
“She’s in college,” Kling said. “Listen, will I be through by seven?”
“Maybe,” Monoghan said.
“Get your coat,” Monroe said.
“He don’t need a coat. It’s nice and mild.”
“It may get chilly later. This is pneumonia weather.”
Kling sighed heavily. “All right if I wash my hands?”
“What?” Monoghan asked.
“He’s polite,” Monroe said. “He has to take a leak.”
“No, I have to wash my hands.”
“Okay, so wash them. Hurry up. The lieutenant don’t like to be kept Waiting.”
He called Claire at eleven-ten. The phone rang six times, and he was ready to hang up, afraid he’d caught her asleep, when the receiver was lilted.
“Hello?” she said. Her voice was sleepy.
“Claire?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“Did I wake you?”
“Yes.” There was a pause, and then her voice became a bit more lively. “Bert? Is that you?”
“Yes. Claire, I’m sorry I—”
“The last time I got stood up was when I was sixteen and had a—”
“Claire, I didn’t stand you up, honest. Some Homicide cops—”
“It felt like being stood up. I waited in the newspaper office until a quarter to eight, God knows why. Why didn’t you call?”
“They wouldn’t let me use the phone.” Kling paused. “Besides, I didn’t know how I could reach you.”
Claire was silent.
“Claire?”
“I’m here,” she said wearily.
“Can I see you tomorrow? We’ll spend the day together. I’m off tomorrow.”
Again there was silence.
“Claire?”
“I heard you.”
“Well?”
“Bert, why don’t we call it quits, huh? Let’s consider what happened tonight an ill omen, and just forget the whole thing, shall we?”
“No,” he said.
“Bert—“
“No! I’ll pick you up at noon, all right?”
Silence.
“Claire?”
“All right. Yes,” she said. “Noon.”
“I’ll explain then. I… I got into a little trouble.”
“All right.”
“Noon?”
“Yes.”
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Good night, Claire.”
“Good night, Bert.”
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“That’s all right. I’d just dozed off, anyway.”
“Well… good night, Claire.”
“Good night, Bert.”
He wanted to say more, but he heard the click of the receiver being replaced in the cradle. He sighed, left the phone booth, and ordered a steak with mushrooms, French fried onions, two baked potatoes, a huge salad with Roquefort dressing, and a glass of milk. He finished off the meal with three more glasses of milk and a slab of chocolate cream pie.
On the way out of the restaurant, he bought a candy bar.
Then he went home to sleep.
He had planned on a picnic in Bethtown, with its attendant ferry ride from Isola across the river. Rain had destroyed that silly notion.
He had drippingly called for Claire at twelve on the dot. The rain had given her a “horrible headache.” Would he mind if they stayed indoors for a little while, just until the Empirin took hold?
Kling did not mind.
Claire had put some good records onto the record player, and then had lapsed into a heavy silence which he attributed to the throbbing headache. The rain had oozed against the windowpanes, streaking the city outside. The music had oozed from the record player — Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D, Strauss’s Don Quixote, Franck’s Psyche.
Kling almost fell asleep.
They left the apartment at two. The rain had let up somewhat, but it had put a knife-edge on the air, and they sloshed along in a sullen, uncommunicative silence, hating the rain with common enmity, but somehow having allowed the rain to build a solid wedge between them. When Kling suggested a movie, Claire accepted the offer eagerly.
The movie was terrible.
The feature was called Apache Undoing, or some such damn thing, and it starred hordes of painted Hollywood extras who screeched and whooped down upon a small band of blue-clothed soldiers. The handful of soldiers fought off the wily Apaches until almost the end of the movie. By this time, the hordes flung against the small, tired band must have numbered in the tens of thousands. With five minutes to go in the fiim, another small handful of soldiers arrived, leaving Kling with the distinct impression that the war would go on for another two hours in a subsequent film to be titled Son of Apache Undoing.
The second film on the bill was about a little girl whose mother and father are getting divorced. The little girl goes with them to Reno — Dad conveniently has business there at the same time Mom must establish residence — and through an unvarying progression of mincing postures and bright-eyed, smirking little-girl facial expressions, convinces Mom and Dad to stay together eternally and live in connubial bliss with their mincing, bright-eyed, smirking little smart-assed daughter.
They left the theater bleary-eyed. It was six o’clock.
Kling suggested a drink and dinner. Claire, probably in self-defense, agreed that a drink and dinner would be just dandy along about now.
And so they sat in the restaurant high atop one of the city’s better-known hotels, and they looked through the huge windows which faced the river; and across the river there was a sign.
The sign first said: SPRY.
Then it said: SPRY FOR FRYING.
Then it said: SPRY FOR BAKING.
Then it said, again: SPRY.
“What’ll you drink?” Kling asked.
“A whiskey sour, I think,” Claire said.
“No cognac?”
“Later maybe.”
The waiter came over to the table. He looked as romantic as Adolf Hitler.
“Something to drink, sir?” he asked.
“A whiskey sour and a martini.”