Mark sat on the edge of an empty desk. “Everything quiet?” he asked Odell.
“Yeah, nothing much doing,” Odell said, and went on with his careful, lip-moving perusal of the paper.
The room was hot and smelled of stale cigarette smoke, and the unshaded overhead fights revealed the cracks in the green shades, the scratches on the furniture, and the shine on Gianfaldo’s blue suit. It was, all things considered, Mark thought, a hell of a place for a man to sit around six or eight hours a day in order to make a living. He couldn’t help comparing it with Linda’s apartment.
Nolan turned from the window and walked over to him.
“I want to talk to you,” he said.
“Sure,” Mark said. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “What’s up?” He knew what was coming.
Nolan stared at him, his eyes shining and cold. “What the hell is your interest in me?” he said. “Yesterday you were out at the Forty-first checking behind me, and last night you were with—” he paused, and made an angry, impotent gesture with his hand. “You were up to the same thing with another party. What’s it all about, snoop?”
Silence had settled over the room. Odell was looking at them over his paper, his mouth opened slightly, and an expression of blank amazement on his face. Smitty and Lindfors and Gianfaldo were studiously gazing in other directions.
“I’m not sure I get you,” Mark said, easily. “I was out in Germantown yesterday, all right—”
“Yeah, I know damn well you were. And talking about me and Dave Fiest, weren’t you?”
“So were half the people in the city. It was a page one story,” Mark said.
“You and Spiegel had some ideas about the shooting, I hear,” Nolan said. “Why don’t you come to me with ’em, snoop?”
“Who’d you get this information from?” Mark said.
“I’ll ask the questions. What is it you want to find out, snoop?”
Mark saw that Nolan was setting himself to swing. He had worked himself to a point that demanded physical release; and Mark shifted slightly to get himself into position to roll with the blow.
“Hey, how about both of you guys relaxing?” Sergeant Odell said.
Nolan turned on him angrily. “How about you keeping your big trap shut.”
Sergeant Odell’s beef-red face went one shade darker as he hoisted himself from his chair and strode around in front of his desk. He pointed a finger the size of a banana at Nolan and roared: “You keep your mind on who you’re talking to, Nolan.”
Lieutenant Ramussen came out of his office and took in the scene with his cold bright eyes. “What’s all the noise about?” he asked.
Odell walked back and sat down heavily at his desk. “Nothing much, Lieutenant.” He hesitated a moment, then said: “Mark seems to be bothering Nolan somehow, and Nolan was just straightening him out.”
Ramussen glanced at Mark with a puzzled expression. “We don’t want to be bothered by reporters, Mark,” he said. “You boys are welcome here, and you get good cooperation on the news, I believe. Isn’t that right?”
“Sure,” Mark said. He met Odell’s eyes, and the sergeant reddened slightly and looked away. Mark didn’t blame him for putting him in the dog house. Every man in the room would stick for Nolan, regardless of the circumstances or their personal feelings. That was an ingrained part of their thinking. Mark surmised that most of them knew by now that Dave Fiest had been carrying twenty-five thousand dollars when he was shot; and that the money had disappeared. But blinded by an unhealthy loyalty, they’d look the other way unless forced to do something about it.
“Let’s not have any more of this sort of thing,” Ramussen said to Mark. “Understand?”
Mark glanced at Nolan who was again standing at the window; and then he nodded to Ramussen. “Sure thing, Lieutenant,” he said, and walked out of the room.
Downstairs, the hearings were just starting and the roll-call room was crowded with defendants, complainants, people in all sorts of trouble, and witnesses, lawyers, bondsmen and cops. Mark walked behind the bench and nodded to the Magistrate. He glanced down the complaint sheets but saw nothing that looked like a story. There were a few family rows, and a non-support case, an accident, and one assault and battery by milk bottle, in addition to the vags and drunks.
A Negro in incredibly tattered clothes and a uniformed patrolman stood before the bench, and the cop, tired and bored, was testifying.
“I observed this man at five o’clock this morning, Your Honor, walking east on Eleanor Street with this object in his hand.” He held up a brick.
Mark turned over the scene with Nolan in his mind, realizing with some satisfaction that the detective was edgy and nervous. One or two more bits of pressure and he might blow wide open.
The magistrate silenced the Negro by slapping the desk with his hand. “You’ll get a chance later. Officer, did he give you any trouble?”
“No, he was all right. Drunk.”
Glancing at the hearing sheets, the magistrate said: “Jeremiah Green, no address. What were you doing out at five in the morning?”
“I was mix up, Jedge. I look for my friend, Jimmy, mos’ the night, and I lucked up on him kind of late and he gimme a drink.”
“What was the brick for?”
“Fo de rat.”
There was a murmur of laughter, and the Negro bobbed his head and smiled tentatively.
“What rat?” The magistrate, who had a reputation for wit, leaned back in his chair and regarded the Negro with raised eyebrows.
“De rat is where I sleep, Jedge.”
“I thought you told the House Sergeant you had no address?”
“It ain’t got any address, Jedge. It’s a box and I move it ’roun. The rat comes in a hole, and I’se chockin’ it wit de brick.”
There was laughter from the crowd which the magistrate indulgently allowed to continue. He was laughing himself. Mark put his copy paper in his pocket, stepped down from the bench and walked into the empty corridor. He felt tired and depressed, partly because of the brush with Nolan, and partly because people like the old Negro always made him wonder what in hell was wrong with this best of all possible worlds.
Richardson Cabot came in the front door of the station, his cigarette holder cocked at a jaunty angle. He was wearing a blue suit with a blue polka dot tie, and a dark Homburg. Every inch the gentleman of the Fourth Estate, Mark thought.
“How’re things, Mark?” he said. “All quiet?”
“Looks that way. There’s nothing at the Hearings.”
“Fine, let’s go upstairs and see what the brains have cooking?”
“You go ahead, Cabot. I’m persona non grata at the moment. I had a little row with Nolan.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cabot said. He flipped ashes on the floor and scowled. “You know what we used to do in the old days when one of those jug-heads got down on a reporter?”
“No,” Mark said. “What did you used to do?”
“Why we’d boycott the Division, every one of us,” Cabot said. “They’d come around after a while, begging us to put their two-bit stories in the papers, and then you know what we did?”
“No, what did you do then?”
Cabot laughed cheerfully. “We’d mix up all the detectives’ names. You see, if it was Nolan, say, who had a case, we’d have the newspaper credit it to Lindfors. We’d claim the rewrite men got things fouled up, but that brought ’em into line pretty fast.”
Mark felt sorry for Cabot, re-living this manufactured past.
“You’d better go on up there and cover for both of us,” he said.
“To hell with ’em,” Cabot said stoutly. “If they don’t want you around, I’ll stay down here.”
“No, you go on up there,” Mark said.