Now he glanced at the pawprints again. They were ugly, frightening. He tested the door and then pulled the curtains closed. This time he left and did not return. Outside the wind hit him with the force of a powerful shove. It bit right through his coat and made his muscles grow taut with cold. He wanted another drink, better make a pit stop on the way down. What the hell, make it now. Across the street was O’Faolian’s where he usually made a stop on his way to the apartment. He went there now.
“Hiya, Frenchie,” he said as he slipped up to the bar, “gimme a Bloody.” The bartender made it and set it in front of him. Instead of going about his business, though, he hovered there fooling with glasses.
“You want something?” Dick asked. Frenchie was not a friendly guy, not the type to make small talk.
“Nah. A guy’s been in is all. A guy wantin’ to know about you.”
“So?”
“So I don’t say nothin’.”
“Good. What else is new?”
“You don’t wanna know what he’s askin’ about?” Frenchie looked surprised, a little disappointed.
“I can pretty well guess,” Dick said expansively. “He wanted to know if I had ever been seen in here with a little kike five-two, greasy black hair, wire-rimmed glasses, name of Mort Harper. And you said no.”
“Hell I didn’t say nothin’. Not yes or no.” He looked pleadingly at Neff. “The guy, he flashed on me, see. What could I do? You don’t get ’em flashin’ unless it’s serious business.”
Dick chuckled. “Thanks, Frenchie,” he said. He put a five on the bar and left. Damn decent of the little jerk to tell him that Captain Lesser had been in here confirming that this was where Dick met Mort Harper to take the pass. How long had it been going on? Dick couldn’t remember exactly. God, though, it must be years. All that money right up to the Stranger Nursing Home. Right up there to keep the old man in cigars.
The old man. A pang of sentiment went through him, thinking of the old senile man who had once been so powerful, so determined. Drove a bus for the Red and Tan Line. Retirement pay plus Social Security: $177.90 a lousy month. Senile decay, Parkinson’s disease, helplessness had turned to violence, periodic seizures, a thousand-dollar-a-month problem. You don’t give your old man over to the tender care of the State, not when you’ve seen the inside of those places firsthand. “Gonna make you go naked for a day, you old fart, you don’t stop that shakin’. Stop it, you gettin’ on my nerves. OK, fuck you, gimme that gown!” That’s the kind of thing that went on. A bunch of monsters making life hell for the old and helpless. “Come on, guinea, light my cigarette! Fuckin’ old shit.” Dick had seen what it was like in those State hospitals, a playground for sadistic perverts masquerading as attendants. No place for his old man.
All of a sudden he was shaking uncontrollably, standing there in the doorway of the bar. He grabbed at the door handle to steady himself, then reeled back into the bar. He dropped to a table. “Shit, Frenchie,” he said, “get some food in me. I feel like shit.”
Frenchie produced a hamburger and some stale fries and as soon as he bit into the food Dick found that he was ravenously hungry. He wolfed down the burger, ordered another. Now he leaned back, relaxed into the mild fog that the drinks had produced, that and the ease of the food.
What the fuck had he been doing? Oh yeah, going to get that damn camera for Becky, his kid bride. Kid, hell, she was only a year younger than him and he was no kid. She was still a damn good lay, though, especially the way she came. Like a Goddamn female freight train. She made you feel like you were worth something. None of the others ever really did that. They were all pretending, wanting to fuck a cop for reasons that had nothing to do with love. Pros that needed a friend, most of them. What the hell, they threw it at you. Becky didn’t know and never would if Dick had anything to say about it. What they had together was something special, something no pro was going to take away from them.
Well, what the hell, what she didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt her.
“Frenchie! Bring me another Bloody.”
Frenchie came over. “Nosir,” he said, “can’t do that.”
“Why the fuck not! What is this, a Salvation Army Shelter?”
“You’re on duty. I’m not gettin’ you drunk in here. Shit, you came in here half looped. Now you go on about your business. I don’t want no cops gettin’ drunk in here. It’s a bad rap with the department and you know it. Go somewhere else.”
“I’m not on duty. I’m graveyard this week.”
“You’re carryin’ a piece, Lieutenant Neff. I can’t serve you any more booze.”
“Jesus Christ, Mr. Hot Shit—OK, I’ll take my trade elsewhere. But don’t say I didn’t warn you, Frenchie. You look out for your ass, hear. Just look out real careful, you never know what’s gonna come up your back.”
Frenchie walked away shaking his head. Dick left, wanting at once to say something to appease Frenchie, wishing he hadn’t been so nasty, yet still feeling in himself the urge to be even nastier, to strike out at somebody. He hailed a cab to go to headquarters.
Yablonski’s office was a clutter of photographic equipment, report forms, pictures tacked to walls, half-empty coffee cups. “Hey, Dick,” the little man said when he looked up. “What brings you down here?”
“Your beautiful face. I need some night photography equipment.”
“Yeah? You got infrared uptown. If you need a photographer forget it until next week, my guys are—”
“Hooked up. No, we don’t need a photographer.”
“You guys take up time. I can’t spare men to spend days and days sitting in cars doing what any moron—”
“Like me can do.”
“Yeah. So why don’t you just use your own infrared equipment and let me the fuck alone.”
“Because I don’t need infrared. I need high power and long range. You know infrared’s no good over fifty yards.”
“No, I didn’t know that. Hell, Dick, it’s my business, don’t take that tone with me.”
Neff closed his eyes. What made this little fart so Goddamn difficult to deal with? He always talked in arguments. “I need the Starlight camera.”
“Like hell.”
“For one night.”
“I repeat: like hell. That camera doesn’t leave this Bureau without a trained operator, meaning me. And I’m not takin’ it out without a signed letter from somebody I can’t turn down.”
“Come on now, don’t get crazy. I only need it for one night. Think if you don’t give it to me and I lose an important collar as a result. Think how that’ll look.”
“It won’t look like nothin’. Officially you don’t even know that camera exists.”
“Oh, cut the crap. We got an eyes only on it in 1975. That thing’s been goin’ in and out of Narcotics ever since.”
“Well, I didn’t know that.” Yablonski glowered, pugnacious, aware that Dick was somehow edging him into a corner.
“How’s the wife?”
“What’s she got to do with it? She the suspect?”
“Just trying to be friendly. Look, I’ll level with you. I got a big collar coming up but we need evidence. We got to have pictures.”
“Big deal. Use fast film. There’s plenty of light in the streets.”
Dick sighed, pretended to give up on something. “I guess I gotta tell you more than you need to know. We got a big pass comin’ up. We just can’t risk missin’ it. We gotta have that camera.”