“Perhaps?”
“You are infact …”
“Too late to apologize,” she said.
Her eyes were dancing.
He said nothing for a moment.
She raised her eyebrows.
Yes? her eyebrows asked. Her eyes asked.
“If I were to offer you dessert…” he said.
“Yes?” she said.
“…would you accept?”
“Or?”
“Or would you rather we went home and watched you on television?”
“Offer me and see,” she said.
“Honey…”
“Yes, Cotton?”
“Would you care for dessert?”
“No, I would like you to take me home,” she said, and smiled as if she were still on camera. “Wouldyou care for dessert?” she asked.
11
SEEMEDlike old times.
A bright morning in the merry month of May, and the detectives of the Eight-Seven were gathered in the Loot’s office for a Tuesday morning confab. The lieutenant was late. Arthur Brown was telling a drunk driver joke.
“Motorcycle cop’s been hiding in the bushes all day, hoping to catch a speeder, he finally pulls over this dude doing eighty miles an hour in a convertible Jag. Grinning from ear to ear, the cop leans into the Jag and says, ‘I’ve been waiting for you all day long, pal.’ The dude in the Jag has three sheets to the wind. He says, ‘Well, offisher, I got here as fast as I could.’ ”
Brown burst out laughing.
So did the other detectives in the room.
Seven of them altogether. Six men and one woman, typical of most squadrooms in this city. Andy Parker couldn’t resist trying to embarrass Eileen Burke.
“Another motorcycle cop pulls over the same drunk,” he said. “This time the cop’s a female. She tells him, ‘Sir, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be held against you.’ The drunk says, ‘Tits.’ ”
Which Eileen guessed was better than breaking into her locker and pissing in her shoes. In fact, she thought the joke was pretty funny. After the meeting this morning, she was scheduled to interview a woman who’d been snorting cocaine since she was fifteen years old, but who was now ready to take a stand against the gang that was terrorizing her building in the projects. It was tough enough trying to quit the powder crowd. Protecting your kids against the people hoping to hook them was something else again. The woman was twenty-seven years old. She had a son of eleven who’d already been approached. Enough was enough.
“There’s this guy gets stopped by a cop for speeding?” Richard Genero said tentatively. As the newest detective on the squad, he was still not too sure of himself at these weekly meetings. But the lieutenant wasn’t here yet, and everyone seemed to be in a receptive mood this morning, so he was ready to venture a joke. “The cop wants to know where he’s going in such a hurry, and the guy says, ‘I have to do a show in New Haven.’ The cop asks, ‘What kind of show?’ The speeder says, ‘I’m a juggler.’ The cop is skeptical. ‘Oh yeah?’ he says. ‘Let’s see you juggle something.’ The speeder says, ‘I’d be happy to, but all my equipment is at the theater.’ Well, the cop leads him around to the back of his cruiser, and he opens the trunk and takes out three flares, which he lights and hands to the speeder. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Juggle these!’ It so happens the guy reallyis a juggler, so he throws the flares into the air and is doing his little act when who should come speeding down the highway but that same drunk in the Jag! He takes one look, jams on the brakes, walks over to the cop, and says, ‘Take me to jail right now, offisher. I’ll never be able to passthat test.’ ”
Everyone was still laughing when Byrnes walked into the room. Gray-haired and bullet-headed, he walked behind his desk, said a gruff “Good morning,” and then asked, “What’s so funny?”
Genero said they were telling drunk driver jokes.
“This drunk comes out of a liquor store,” Byrnes said, “sees a motorcycle cop at the curb, writing a parking ticket. He staggers over to the cop, says, ‘Come on, pal, give a guy a break.’ The cop keeps writing the ticket. ‘Come on,’ the drunk says, ‘don’t be such a friggin Nazi.’ So the cop writes a second ticket for the car having bald tires. The drunk calls him an asshole, and the cop writes a third ticket for worn windshield wipers. This goes on for ten minutes, the drunk hurling abuse, the cop writing ticket after ticket. Finally, the cop closes his book, and says, ‘You satisfied now?’ The drunk says, ‘I really don’t give a damn, offisher.My car’s parked aroun’ the corner.’ ”
The detectives laughed harder than perhaps they should have.
“Have some bagels and coffee,” Byrnes said, and turned to where Carella was standing over by the bookcases with all the legal tomes in them. “What happened last night?” he asked. Carella told him everything that had happened to him down at One Fed Square and beyond.
“And?” Byrnes said.
“I walked,” Carella said.
“Why?”
“I was there through sufferance.”
“Sufferance, huh? Well, my beamish boy, what if I told you the Commish wants us to stick with it?”
Carella looked at him.
“This is all politics,” Byrnes said. “We caught the squeal. If the Feebs crack the case, we look inept. If we’re the ones who nab these guys, we come off smelling of roses.”
“The Feebs don’t have anything yet. And neither do I,” Carella said.
“That’s why we’re here today, ain’t it?” Byrnes said, and turned away and said, “You ready to listen, men?” And immediately added, “Eileen?”
“Good save, Loot,” Eileen said, and everyone laughed. Score one for the frails, she thought, and crossed her splendid legs for emphasis.
Cotton Hawes thought of Honey Blair crossing her legs last night.
“Here’s what we’ve got,” Byrnes said. “You all know we caught this friggin kidnapping Saturday night…”
“Actually, I’m the one who caught it,” Andy Parker said.
“Bravo, you want a medal?” Byrnes asked. “The Joint Task Force moved in and the vic asked for Carella to…”
“Not the vic,” Carella corrected.
“Right, the CEO of the company thatrecords the vic, you’ve seen her all over television. He asked for Carella on the case because he has some sort of rapport with him…”
“Must be the smile,” Meyer said.
“Must be,” Carella said, and flashed a toothy grin.
“Anyway, they get him down there and treat him like a country cousin, except when the CEO demands he go along on the ransom drop. Am I getting this right, Steve?”
“More or less,” Carella said.
“So last night, when they diss him yet again, he walks. Told Corky Corcoran…any of you know him?”
“A prick,” Brown said. “ ’Scuse me, Eileen.”
“Why?” Eileen said. “Heis a prick.”
“Anyway, Steve told him to shove his job.”
“Good for you,” Meyer said.
“Only trouble is,” Byrnes said, “I got a call from the Commish last night, soon as he heard what happened.”
“How’d he hear?” Genero asked.
“Corcoran called him. Filed a complaint.”
“The prick,” Eileen said.
“The Commish agrees. He wants Carella—he wantsus —to stay on it. In fact, he would like nothing better than for us to crack it. Before The Squad does.”
“Fat Chance Department,” Parker said. “They’ve got technology pouring out of their wahzoo.”
“Didn’t help them locate the perps,” Carella said.
“What’d you learn down there, Steve?” Brown asked.