“Sure,” I said. “The question is, I want to find this guy Mahoney. I think he’s probably stationed at Centre Street, but I’m not sure.”
“What is he, a wheel?”
“I think so. But maybe not.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Could you find out some way if there is a Patrick Mahoney stationed at Centre Street, or a Patrick Mahoney who’s a wheel stationed somewhere else? And find out on the quiet, so Mahoney doesn’t get wise?”
He frowned at me. “Charlie, are you up to something you shouldn’t? I don’t want to talk like a cop now, you know that, I want to talk like a friend. If you’re involved in something you shouldn’t, your best bet is get out of it, right now, before it’s too late.”
“I’m not involved in anything I shouldn’t,” I told him, which wasn’t exactly true but on the other hand was true for what he’d meant. I said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask me about this.”
He spread his hands, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, “All right, Charlie, I don’t snoop, I don’t interfere. Your business is your business.”
“Thanks.”
“And I’ll do what I can,” he said. “You’ll stay here?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll walk by the station house,” he said, “see what I can find out.”
“Quietly,” I said.
“Naturally.”
“I could drive you over to the station house,” I said. “That might be quicker.”
“I got to walk,” he reminded me. “But I’ll meet you there. It’s over on Glenwood Road, you know?”
“I know. I’ll park down the block from it.”
“Fine.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“I haven’t found out anything yet,” he told me.
We waved at each other and he walked on his way, practicing some more. I put the Packard back in gear and headed for the 69th Precinct station house on Glenwood Road.
Chloe said, “He’s sort of sweet, isn’t he? For a cop.”
“He’s a nice guy,” I said.
She said, “I bet you’ve got a better class of friends than somebody like Artie.”
“What do you mean? Artie’s my friend.”
“Sure. But you’re one of the best people he knows, and he’s one of the worst people you know.”
“Artie? What’s wrong with Artie?”
“Never mind,” she said. She patted my hand the way a teacher might pat the hand of a kid who’d just stayed back in kindergarten. “You just be yourself.”
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s to be patronized. But I couldn’t think of a really good comeback line, so I just hunched over the steering wheel and fumed.
Neither of us said anything more until I’d parked the car down the block from the station house, a converted frame one-family house that didn’t look any more like a police station than like a moon rocket. Then Chloe said, “I wonder where Artie is now.”
“Home, I suppose,” I said. “But what about Miss Althea, that’s what I wonder.”
“We’re better off without her,” Chloe said. “She was all trouble, and no use to anybody.”
“Listen,” I said. “About that crack you made about Artie before.”
“Charlie, you know Artie as well as I do. Why talk about it?”
“Well, you’re his girl friend, for Pete’s sake. Why do you say things like that about him?”
She smiled crookedly. “That isn’t the question,” she said. “The question is, I say those things and they’re true, so why am I Artie’s girl friend? And I’m not really even his girl friend, Charlie. At the best I’m one of his girl friends, and at the best he’s one of my boy friends. I’m his morning-after-girl, I told you that.”
I said, “Why?”
She cocked her head to one side and seemed to consider the question. After a minute she said, “I’m twenty-three years old, Charlie. Puberty struck me when I was twelve. That’s eleven years. When I was seventeen I got married, to a boy eighteen, believe me he was a mistake. Two years later I got a divorce for reasons of desertion. Not here, over in Jersey where we lived in Elizabeth. Maury worked in the Esso refinery until he ran out. Is this beginning to sound like a true-confessions story just a little bit?”
I said, “If you don’t want to tell me about it, I don’t... I mean, it’s your personal business, I’ve got no right...”
“No, let me. I’m started now, so let me go. You’ve been taking a very simplistic attitude about me, Charlie, it’s time you got a more complicated picture. Like for instance I’ve got a five-year-old daughter, Linda, my parents have her up in the Bronx.”
I said, “Oh.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re darn right oh. One thing I’m happy about, I didn’t let Maury talk me into quitting high school the middle of my senior year. I finished, I got my diploma. The last four years I’ve been working here and there, going to night school at NYU, sometimes I keep Linda and sometimes my parents keep her, and so it goes. You got a picture in your head now?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Now, here’s another point. After Maury, after getting married too early, one thing I haven’t been in any hurry for is adult responsibility, you follow? That’s why I unload Linda on my parents every chance I get, that’s why I hang around with people like Artie and his crowd where there’s no responsibility at all, you know what I mean?”
“I never got married when I was seventeen,” I said, “but I guess my job at the bar is the same thing. Avoiding responsibility.”
“All right, so you understand that part. Now, one last point, and I hope I don’t make you blush. Remember, puberty at twelve. Married at seventeen. A mother at eighteen. I’m long since no virgin, Charlie, and I’ve got drives and needs just like anybody else. So I’ve got these drives and needs, and I don’t want responsibility, so I wind up Artie Dexter’s morning-after girl. You got the picture?”
“You didn’t have to, uh,” I said.
“Shut up, Charlie,” she said. “I just want you to know what Artie is to me and what I am to Artie. And that I know what Artie is and it’s just the weakness in Artie that made me connect with him.”
I said, “Well, uh, what about this social-conscience thing, this TV special and not selling the pills any more and all?”
“I know,” she said. “There’ve been a couple of other signs like that. Like him looking up to you like he does these days. Maybe he’s growing up, maybe pretty soon I’ll have to be somebody else’s morning-after girl.”
I said, “Couldn’t you—”
“Don’t say anything dumb, Charlie,” she said. “Look, there goes your cop friend.”
I looked, and there went my cop friend all right, into the station house.
Chloe said, “To get back to business, can I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“After this, we call it quits for tonight. It’s getting late, Mr. Gross probably has men looking all over for us, we’d probably be smartest to hole up somewhere until morning. Besides, I’m getting tired and you should be, too.”
“I guess I am,” I said. “But—”
“You’re not going to find this Mahoney in the middle of the night,” she said.
“Where do I hole up?”
“Same place as last night. Artie’s. I’ve got a key. We should be safe there till morning.”
“We?”
She made a disgusted face. “Don’t start a foolish argument, Charlie,” she said. “I’m sticking with you. I’ll drive the getaway car, I’ll do whatever you need. I already came in handy once, remember?”
“I remember,” I said. And I thought to myself, there was no point arguing with her. She was right about my waiting till morning before going on, and right about my holing up at Artie’s place in the maantime. If Artie was there, or showed up by morning, we could all talk over who’d do what from there on. If Artie didn’t show, the morning would be time enough to tell Chloe I’d feel better going off on my own.