The shoulder didn’t hurt at all now.
It was funny. You figure you get shot in the shoulder, it’s going to hurt for a long, long time. But it didn’t. Not at all.
As a matter of fact, if Bert Kling had had his way, he’d be back on the job, and the job was working as a patrolman out of the 87th Precinct. But Captain Frick was the boss of the uniformed cops at the house, and Captain Frick had said, “Now, you take another week, Bert. I don’t care whether the hospital let you go or not. You take another week.”
And so Bert Kling was taking another week, and not enjoying it very much. “Another week” had started with Monday, and this was Tuesday, and it seemed like a nice brisk autumn day outside, and Kling had always liked autumn, but he was bored silly with it now.
The hospital duty hadn’t been bad in the beginning. The other cops had come up to see him, and even some of the detectives had dropped around, and he’d been something of a precinct celebrity, getting shot up like that. But after a while, he had ceased to be a novelty, and the visits had been less frequent, and he had leaned back against the fat hospital mattress and begun his adjustment to the boredom of convalescence.
His favorite indoor sport had become the crossing off of days on the calendar. He had also ogled the nurses, but the joy of such diversion had evaporated when he had realized his activities — so long as he was a patient, at any rate — could never rise higher than the spectator level. So he had crossed off the days, one by one, and he had looked forward to returning to the job, yearned for it with almost ferocious intensity.
And then Frick had said, “Take another week, Bert.”
He’d wanted to say, “Now, look, Captain, I don’t need any more rest. I’m as strong as an ox. Believe me, I can handle two beats.”
But knowing Frick, and knowing he was a thickheaded old jerk, Kling had kept his peace. He was still keeping his peace. He was very tired of keeping his peace. It was almost better getting shot.
Now, that was a curious attitude, he realized, wanting to get back to the job that had been responsible for the bullet in his right shoulder. Not that he’d been shot doing his job, actually. He’d been shot off duty, coming out of a bar, and he wouldn’t have been shot if he hadn’t been mistaken for someone else.
The shot had been intended for a reporter named Savage, a reporter who’d done some snooping around, a reporter who’d asked too many leading questions of a teenage gang member who’d later summoned all his pals and colleagues to the task of taking care of Savage.
It happened to be Kling’s misfortune that he’d been coming out of the same bar in which Savage had earlier interrogated the kid. It was also his misfortune that he was blond, because Savage, inconsiderately, was blond, too. The kids had jumped Kling, anxious to mete out justice, and Kling had pulled his service revolver from his back pocket.
And that’s how heroes are made.
Kling shrugged.
Even when he shrugged, the shoulder didn’t hurt. So why should he be sitting here in a stupid furnished room when he could be out walking a beat?
He rose and walked to the window, looking down toward the street. The girls were having trouble keeping their skirts tucked against the strong wind. Kling watched.
He liked girls. He liked all girls. Walking his beat, he would watch the girls. He always felt pleased when he did. He was twenty-four years old and a veteran of the Korean fracas, and he could remember the women he’d seen there, but never once connected those women with the pleasure he felt in watching the girls in America.
He had seen women crouched in the mud, their cheeks gaunt, their eyes glowing with the reflected light of napalm infernos, wide with terror at the swishing roar of the jet bombers. He had seen underfed bodies hung with baggy quilted garments. He had seen women nursing babies, breasts exposed. The breasts should have been ripe and full with nourishment. They had been, instead, puckered and dried — withered fruits clinging to starved vines.
He had seen young women and old women clawing in the rubble for food, and he could still remember the muted, begging faces and the hollow eyes.
And now he watched the girls. He watched the strong legs, and the firm breasts, and the well-rounded buttocks, and he felt good. Maybe he was crazy, but there was something exhilarating about strong white teeth and sun-tanned faces and sun-bleached hair. Somehow, they made him feel strong, too, and never once did he make any connection with what he had seen in Korea.
The knock on the door startled him. He whirled from the window and called, “Who is it?”
“Me,” the voice answered. “Peter.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Peter. Peter Bell.”
Who’s Peter Bell? he wondered. He shrugged and went to the dresser. He opened the top drawer and took his .38 from where it lay alongside a box holding his tie clasps. With the gun dangling at his side, he walked to the door and opened it a crack. A man can get shot only once before he realizes you don’t open doors too wide, even when the man outside has already given his name.
“Bert?” a voice said. “This is Peter Bell. Open the door.”
“I don’t think I know you,” Kling said cautiously, peering into the darkened hallway, half expecting a volley of shots to splinter the door’s wood.
“You don’t know me? Hey, kid, this is Peter. Hey, don’t you remember me? When we were kids? Up in Riverhead? This is me. Peter Bell.”
Kling opened the door a little wider. The man standing in the hallway was no older than twenty-seven. He was tall and muscularly built. He wore a brown leather jacket and yachting cap. In the dimness, Kling could not make out his features clearly, but there was something familiar in the face, and he began to feel a little foolish holding a gun. He swung the door open.
“Come in,” he said.
Peter Bell walked into the room. He saw the gun almost instantly, and his eyes went wide. “Hey!” he said. “Hey, Bert, what’s the matter?”
Holding the gun loosely, finally recognizing the man who stood before him in the center of the room, Kling felt immensely ridiculous. He smiled sheepishly. “I was cleaning it,” he said.
“You recognize me now?” Bell asked, and Kling had the distinct impression that his lie had not been accepted.
“Yes,” he said. “How are you, Peter?”
“Oh, so-so, can’t kick.” He extended his hand, and Kling took it, studying his face more carefully in the light of the room. Bell would have been a good-looking man were it not for the prominence and structure of his nose. In fact, if there was any one part of the face Kling did not recognize, it was the massive, craggy structure that protruded incongruously between sensitive brown eyes. Peter Bell, he remembered now, had been an extremely handsome youth, and he imagined the nose had been one of those things that, during adolescence, simply grow on you. The last time he’d seen Bell had been fifteen years ago, when Bell had moved to another section of Riverhead. The nose, then, had been acquired sometime during that span of years. He realized abruptly that he was staring at the protuberance, and his discomfort increased when Bell said, “Some schnoz, huh? Eek, what a beak! Is it a nose or a hose?”
Kling chose that point in the conversation to return his revolver to the open dresser drawer.
“I guess you’re wondering what I want,” Bell said.
Kling was, in truth, wondering just that. He turned from the dresser and said, “Well, no. Old friends often…” He stopped, unable to complete the lie. He did not consider Peter Bell a friend. He had not laid eyes on him for fifteen years, and even when they’d been boys together, they’d never been particularly close.
“I read in the papers where you got shot,” Bell said. “I’m a big reader. I buy six newspapers every day. How do you like that? Bet you didn’t even know there was six papers in this city. I read them all, cover to cover. Never miss anything.”