“Thank you. I won’t.”
From a typewriter at the next desk Gene Fields looked up. Fields was a big cop with shrewd blue eyes and a friendly smile. The smile belied the fact that he could be the toughest cop in the precinct when he wanted to.
“What’s eating you, Frank?” he asked, smiling.
“Nothing. What’s eating you?”
Fields continued smiling. “You looking for a fight?” he asked.
Randolph studied him. He had seen Fields in action, and he was not particularly anxious to provoke him. He wanted to smile back and say something like, “Ah, the hell with it. I’m just down in the dumps” — anything to let Fields know he had no real quarrel with him. But something else inside him took over, something that had not been a part of him long ago.
He held Fields’ eyes with his own. “Any time you’re ready for one,” he said, and there was no smile on his mouth.
“He’s got the crud,” Fields said. “Every month or so, the bulls in this precinct get the crud. It’s from dealing with criminal types.”
He recognized Fields’ manoeuvre and was grateful for it. Fields was smoothing it over. Fields didn’t want trouble, and so he was joking his way out of it now, handling it as it should have been handled. But whereas he realized Fields was being the bigger of the two men, he was still immensely satisfied that he had not backed down. Yet his satisfaction rankled.
“I’ll give you some advice,” Fields said. “You want some advice, Frank? Free?”
“Go ahead,” Randolph said.
“Don’t let it get you. The trouble with being a cop in a precinct like this one is that you begin to imagine everybody in the world is crooked. That just ain’t so.”
“No, huh?”
“Believe me, Frank, it ain’t.”
“Thanks,” Randolph said. “I’ve been a cop in this precinct for eight years now. I don’t need advice on how to be a cop in this precinct.”
“I’m not giving you that kind of advice. I’m telling you how to be a man when you leave this precinct.”
For a moment, Randolph was silent. Then he said, “I haven’t had any complaints.”
“Frank,” Fields said softly, “your best friends won’t tell you.”
“Then they’re not my best...”
“All right, get in there!” a voice in the corridor shouted.
Randolph turned. He saw Boglio first, and then he saw the man with Boglio. The man was small and thin with a narrow moustache. He had brown eyes and lank brown hair, and he wet his moustache nervously with his tongue.
“Over there!” Boglio shouted. “Against the wall!”
“What’ve you got, Rudy?” Randolph asked.
“I got a punk,” Boglio said. He turned to the man and bellowed, “You hear me? Get the hell over against that wall!”
“What’d he do?” Fields asked.
Boglio didn’t answer. He shoved out at the man, slamming him against the wall alongside the filing cabinets. “What’s your name?” he shouted.
“Arthur,” the man said.
“Arthur what?”
“Arthur Semmers.”
“You drunk, Semmers?”
“No.”
“Are you high?”
“What?”
“Are you on junk?”
“What’s — I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Narcotics. Answer me, Semmers’.
“Narcotics? Me? No, I ain’t never touched it, I swear.”
“I’m gonna ask you some questions, Semmers,” Boglio said. “You want to get this, Frank?”
“I’ve got a prisoner outside,” Randolph said.
“The little girl on the bench?” Boglio asked. His eyes locked with Randolph’s for a moment. “That can wait. This is business.”
“Okay,” Randolph said. He took a pad from his back pocket and sat in a straight-backed chair near where Semmers stood crouched against the wall.
“Name’s Arthur Semmers,” Boglio said. “You got that, Frank?”
“Spell it,” Randolph said.
“S-E-M-M-E-R-S,” Semmers said.
“How old are you, Semmers?” Boglio asked.
“Thirty-one.”
“Born in this country?”
“Sure. Hey, what do you take me for, a greenhorn? Sure, I was born right here.”
“Where do you live?”
“Eighteen-twelve South Fourth.”
“You getting this, Frank?”
“I’m getting it,” Randolph said.
“All right, Semmers, tell me about it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you cut up that kid.”
“I didn’t cut up nobody.”
“Semmers, let’s get something straight. You’re in a squadroom now, you dig me? You ain’t out in the street where we play the game by your rules. This is my ball park, Semmers. You don’t play the game my way, and you’re gonna wind up with the bat rammed down your throat.”
“I still didn’t cut up nobody.”
“Okay, Semmers,” Boglio said. “Let’s start it this way. Were you on Ashley Avenue, or weren’t you?”
“Sure, I was. There’s a law against being on Ashley Avenue?”
“Were you in an alleyway near number four sixty-seven Ashley?”
“Yeah.”
“Semmers, there was a sixteen-year-old kid in that alleyway, too. He was stabbed four times, and we already took him to the hospital, and that kid’s liable to die. You know what homicide is, Semmers?”
“That’s when somebody gets killed.”
“You know what Homicide cops are like?”
“No. What?”
“You’d be laying on the floor almost dead by now if you was up at Homicide, Just thank God you’re here, Semmers, and don’t try my patience.”
“I never seen no kid in the alley. I never cut up nobody.”
Without warning, Boglio drew back his fist and smashed it into Semmers’ face. Semmers lurched back against the wall, bounced off it like a handball, and then clasped his shattered lip with his hand.
“Why’d you—”
“Shut up!” Boglio yelled.
From where he sat, Randolph could see the blood spurting from Semmers’ mouth. Dispassionately, he watched.
“Tell me about the kid,” Boglio said.
“There ain’t nothing to—”
Again, Boglio hit him, harder this time.
“Tell me about the kid,” he repeated.
“I...”
The fist lashed out again. Randolph watched.
“You going to need me any more?” he asked Boglio.
“No,” Boglio said, drawing back his fist.
From across the room, Fields said, “For Christ’s sake, lay off, Rudy. You want to kill the poor bastard?”
“I don’t like punks,” Boglio said. He turned again to the bloody figure against the wall.
Randolph rose, ripped the pages of notes from the black book, and put them on Boglio’s desk. He was going through the gate in the railing when Fields stopped him.
“How does it feel?” Fields asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Being an accomplice.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Randolph said.
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“You beginning to think the way Boglio docs? About punks, I mean?”
“My thoughts are my business, Gene,” Randolph said. “Keep out of them.”
“Boglio’s thoughts are his business, too.”
“He’s questioning a punk who knifed somebody. What the hell do you want him to do?”
“He’s questioning a human being who maybe did and maybe didn’t knife somebody.”
“What’s the matter, Gene? You in love with this precinct?”
“I think it stinks,” Fields said. “I think it’s a big, stinking prison.”
“All right. So do I.”
“But for Christ’s sake, Frank, learn who the prisoners are! Don’t become—”