Officer Lanza had quickly learned that being a cop was not what he thought it would be. Right out of the Academy, he had been assigned to the 18^th District at 55^th and Pine Streets. He spent eight months riding around the district in a battered Ford van, with another rookie police officer. Hauling prisoners (a great many of whom were drunks, not even guys who'd done a stickup) from where they had been arrested to the holding cells in the District Station was not exactly what he'd had in mind when he had become a law enforcement officer. Neither was hauling sick people from their houses to a hospital.
(Philadelphia Police, unlike the police of other major American cities, respond to every call for help. The citizens of Philadelphia have learned over the years that what one does when Junior falls off the porch and cracks his head open, or Grandma falls on an icy sidewalk, or Mama scalds herself with boiling water on the stove, is to call the cops.)
And Vito learned that while it was certainly possible that he could become a Highway Patrolman and race around the streets on a Harley, or in one of the antennae-festooned special Highway Radio Patrol Cars, fighting crime, that would have to be some time in the future.After he had four, five, sixgood years on the job, he couldapply for Highway. It was police folklore-which is not always accurate-that unless you had done something spectacular, like personally catch a bank robber, or unless you knew somebody in Highway, or had a rabbi, some white shirt who liked you, your chances of getting in Highway were about as good as they were to win the Irish Sweepstakes.
But one night, after he had been pushing the van for eight months, the sergeant at roll call had asked, "Does anybody know how to type good?"
Vito had always thought that typing was something girls did, and was reluctant to publicly confess that he could do that sort of thing, but maybe it would get him out of the fucking van for the night.
"Over here, Sergeant," Officer Lanza had said, raising his hand.
"Okay," the sergeant had said. "See the corporal. Sweitzer, you take his place in the van."
"Shit," Officer Sweitzer said.
The district was behind in its paperwork, the corporal told Officer Lanza, and the captain was on his ass, because the inspector was on his ass.
It had not taken Officer Lanza long to figure out that (a) while he was not a really good typist, compared to anybody in the district he was a world fucking champion and (b) that sitting behind a desk in the district building pushing a typewriter was way ahead of staggering around in the ice and slush loading a fat lady into the back of a van.
That particular typing job had taken three days. Over the next two years, Officer Lanza had spent more and more time behind a typewriter in the office than he had spent in an emergency patrol wagon, in an RPC, or walking a beat.
When he had almost three years on the job, he had taken the examinations for both detective and corporal. He hadn't expected to pass either first time out-he just wanted to see what the fuck the examinations were like-and he didn't. He found that the detective examination was tougher than the corporal examination. Probably, he deduced, because he had been doing so much paperwork, which is what corporals did, that he had come to understand a lot of it.
Two years later, when there was another examination for both detective and corporal, he figured fuck the detective, I think I'd rather be a corporal anyhow, detectives spend a lot of time standing around in the mud and snow.
He passed the corporal's examination, way down on the numerical list, so it was another year almost before he actually got promoted. He did four months working the desk in the Central Cell Room in the Roundhouse, and then they transferred him upstairs to the Traffic Division, where he had met Lieutenant Schnair, who was a pretty good guy for a Jew, and was supposed to have Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, the chief inspector of the Detective Division, for a rabbi.
Obviously, pushing a typewriter for the Traffic Division in the Roundhouse was a lot better than standing in the snow and blowing your whistle at tractor trailers at some accident scene for the Traffic Division, and Vito tried hard to please Lieutenant Schnair.
When Schnair got promoted to captain, and they gave him the Airport Unit (which, so far as Vito was concerned, proved Chief Lowensteinwas his rabbi), he arranged for Corporal Lanza to be transferred to Airport too, after one of the corporals there got himself killed driving home from the shore.
It was a good job. All he had to do was keep on top of the paperwork, and everybody left him alone. The lieutenants and the sergeants and the other corporals knew how good he got along with Captain Schnair. If he came in a little late, or left a little early, no one said anything to him.
It never entered Corporal Vito Lanza's mind to ask permission to leave his desk in the Airport Unit office at 11:15. He simplytold the lieutenant on duty, Lieutenant Ardell, that he was going to lunch.
He would get back when he got back. He was going to have a real lunch, not a sandwich or a hot dog, which meant getting out of the airport, where they charged crazy fucking prices. Just because he had a bundle of Las Vegas money was no excuse to pay five dollars for something worth two-fifty.
The Buick surprised him by starting right off. Now that he was going to dump the sonofabitch, it had decided to turn reliable. It was like when you went to the dentist, your teeth stopped hurting.
Thinking of dumping the Buick reminded him that he was supposed to meet Antoinette after work and go see her uncle, who had a car lot. He'd told her, of course, that he'd had a little luck in Vegas and was going to look around for a Caddy, and she told him her uncle had a car lot with a lot of Caddys on it.
He hadn't been sure then whether she had been trying to be nice to him, or just steering her uncle some business. After she'd taken him to her apartment, he decided that she really did like him, and maybe this thing with her uncle would turn out all right.
It also made him feel like a fool for slipping that bimbo in Vegas two hundred dollars. He didn't really have to pay for it, and now he couldn't understand why he had. Except, of course, that he was on a high from what had happened at the tables.
Antoinette had told him her uncle's car lot was one of those in the "Auto Mall" at 67^th Street and Essington Avenue. Just past the ballpark on South Broad, he decided that it wouldn't hurt to just drive past the uncle's car lot, it wasn't far, to see what he had. If he was some sleaze-ball with a dozen cars or so, that would mean that Antoinette was trying to push some business his way, and when he saw her after work, he would tell her he had made other arrangements. Tell her nice. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was piss her off. She was really much better in the sack than the bimbo in Vegas he'd given the two hundred dollars to.
Fierello's Fine Cars, on Essington Avenue, was no sleaze operation. Vito thought there must be a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty cars on the lot, which was paved and had lights and everything and even a little office building that was a real building, not just a trailer. And there were at least twenty Caddys, and they all looked like nearly new.
He drove past it twice, and then started back to the airport. He didn't get the real lunch he started out to get-he stopped at Oregon Steaks at Oregon Avenue and Juniper Street and had a sausage and peppers sandwich and a beer-but he was in a good mood and it didn't bother him. Not only was he probably going to drive home tonight in a new Caddy, but on the way, the odds were that he might spend some time in Antoinette's apartment.
He was still on a roll, no question about it.