"Ah, sweet," she said, and touched his face. "I've got to run," she said, and put the coffee cup in the sink.
"Will you be back?" he asked. "I don't have to be in till four this afternoon."
"Oooo, I wish I could, sweetie," she said, "but I'm busy all day. Save it for tomorrow, okay? Can you save it for me?"
"I'll save it," he said.
"Mmm, yes," she said, and glanced at his groin, and smiled. She kissed him on the cheek, gave his cock a friendly little squeeze, backed away from him, and said, "Tomorrow morning, okay? Ten o'clock."
"Ten o'clock," he said.
"Don't be late," she said, and started out of the kitchen, and then stopped and turned to him again. "Just let yourself out when you're ready to go, okay? I'll set the answering machine, you don't have to answer the phone. Pull the doors shut behind you, the inner one and the outer one, they lock automatically."
"I won't be long," he said. "I just want to shower and…"
"Take as long as you like."
She looked at him tenderly and then came to him again and kissed him fiercely. "Mmmm," she said, "this is going to be good, isn't it?" and then released him abruptly and went out.
He heard her going down the stairs. He heard her setting the answering machine in the living room. He heard the front door closing behind her.
He went to the upstairs bathroom, showered, and then dressed.
He left the apartment at a little after twelve.
And although he wasn't due in till a quarter to four, he went immediately to the squadroom.
CHAPTER 7
There were three shifts on the squad-room duty-chart, more closely resembling the blues' shifts than they used to, an innovation initiated by the new Chief of Detectives, but one honored more in the breach than in actuality; detectives were used to making their own schedules.
Nonetheless, the day shift officially began at eight in the morning and ran through to four p.m. The evening shift started at four and ended at midnight. The night shift (familiarly called the Graveyard Shift) began at midnight and ended at eight in the morning. The detectives tried to work the shifts so that they'd be on days for a couple of weeks, then evenings, then nights—the better to establish sleep patterns that were seriously threatened, anyway.
The morning shift was midway and a bit more through its inexorable cycle when Willis got to the squadroom at a quarter to one. Kling and Brown were sitting at Kling's desk, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee when Willis pushed through the slatted rail divider that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside. Brown looked up in surprise.
"You bucking for Commissioner?" he said.
Willis ignored this. He had learned over the years that if a person tried to respond to every quip and jibe bouncing off the squadroom walls, he had to learn how to play squash.
"Three hours early," Kling said. "The man is dedicated."
Willis sighed.
"There are three kinds of cops," Brown said, and Willis knew he was in for an impromptu standup-comic routine (though in this case, both Brown and Kling were sitting). "You've got your burned-out cop…"
"Burnout occurs after four minutes on the job," Kling said.
"… who tries to do as little work as possible without calling the Loot's attention to the fact that he is goofing off."
Brown and Kling, the best Mutt and Jeff team on the squad, now doing their world famous comedy shtick. Willis much preferred them as Mutt and Jeff. Big Bad Leroy Brown (though his given name was Arthur and he was familiarly called Art or Artie by every other detective on the squad) as black as midnight, six feet two inches tall, tipping the scales at a hard, muscular two-twenty; and tall, blond, slender Bert Kling, looking like a farmboy from the wheatfields of Indiana (wherever that was), peach fuzz on his jaw and chin, mild hazel eyes reflecting worlds of innocence, a cop willing to listen to any sob story a cheap thief pitched, the perfect Mutt and Jeff team. "Gee, Artie, I really do think we've got the wrong man this time," and Brown looking like a ferocious bear ready to pounce and claw and bite, "Let me at 'im, Bert, I'm goan tear the man apart!" Within minutes, the thief was in Kling's arms, begging for mercy and willing to confess to the murder of a maiden aunt twelve years ago. But now…
"And you've got your time-study cop…"
"In on the dot…"
"Out on the dot…"
"Types up everything in triplicate…"
"Goes to court uncomplainingly…"
"Doesn't mind working on Christmas or New Year's…"
"Protector of the innocent…"
"Dedicated to the pursuit of justice…"
"But who won't give you a nickel's more than the time he's being paid for." Brown grinned like a wolf. "And then you've got your cop like Willis here."
"On the job twenty-four hours a day…"
"Takes his pistol to bed with him…"
"Do not be afraid, guapa, it is only my pistol."
"Breaks up armed robberies when he's off-duty…"
"Never calls in a 10-13…"
"Constantly bucking for promotion…"
"Comes in three hours early to relieve the shift…"
"Your eager-beaver cop…"
"Appearing for the first time in America…"
"Live and in person…"
"Detective/Third Grade…"
"Looking for Second…"
"Harold O. Willis."
"Take a bow, Oliver," Brown said.
Willis wondered how Brown had tumbled to his middle name. He brought up his hands and clapped hollowly, twice. Then he went to Kling's desk and dropped a quarter onto Brown's paper plate. "Very nice," he said. "Thank you very much, boys."
"Big tipper, too," Brown said, but pocketed the quarter anyway.
"Steve left a note on your desk," Kling said.
"I'll be going now," Brown said, "seeing as I'm relieved and all."
"You're not relieved," Willis said. "Sit down."
He went to his own desk and picked up Carella's note.
It told him to expect a callback from the Food and Drug Administration, which Carella had phoned yesterday (while Willis was in bed with Marilyn, but Carella didn't know that) in an attempt to learn whether nicotine was used in any commercial products. It also advised Willis not to expect him at four on the dot because he was going first to Basil Hollander's building to recanvass the tenants Larkin of the Twelfth had already canvassed. Since it's ours now, he'd written, I want to make sure he got everything.
Willis wondered in which of Brown's cop-categories Carella would fit.
He also wondered about the honesty—to use Marilyn's word—of what had happened yesterday afternoon and last night and this morning in her apartment, his cop-mentality considering the possibility that the lady had let him into her pants and into her bed only as a diversionary tactic.
He had told her yesterday that he thought he was the cat's ass, but in the private recesses of his mind, he knew this wasn't the truth. He had never been a ladies man, somehow always favoring women who were much too tall for him, a penchant that inevitably led to rejection of the Did-You-Bring-Your-Stepladder sort. He considered himself an average-looking man in a world populated more and more, it seemed, with spectacularly handsome men. He knew he was short. He knew, too, that short men were supposed to carry chips on their shoulders, angry at the world for the genetic unfairness that had robbed them of the inches necessary to compete in a nation of giants. He might have felt more at home in Japan. Or India. But he was stuck with the U.S. of A., where even your average cab driver looked like a linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams. Generation after generation growing taller and broader, the result of good food and good medicine. Unless you lived in a slum.