In addition to their willingness to work extended hours, Tony and Frank had a few other things in common. Although many plainclothes detectives had tossed out the old dress code and now reported for duty in everything from jeans to leisure suits, Tony and Frank still believed in wearing traditional suits and ties. They thought of themselves as professionals, doing a job that required special skills and education, a job as vital and demanding as that of any trial attorney or teacher or social worker--more demanding, in fact--and jeans simply did not contribute to a professional image. Neither of them smoked. Neither of them drank on the job. And neither of them attempted to foist his paperwork on the other.
So maybe it'll work out between us, Tony thought. Maybe in time I can quietly convince him to use more charm and less force with witnesses. Maybe I can get him interested in films and food, if not in books and art and theater. The reason I'm having so much trouble adjusting to him is that my expectations are far too high. But Jesus, if only he'd talk a little more instead of sitting there like a lump!
For the rest of his career as a homicide detective, Tony would expect a great deal of anyone who rode with him because, for five years, until last May 7, he had worked with a nearly perfect partner, Michael Savatino. He and Michael were both from Italian families; they shared certain ethnic memories, pains, and pleasures. More important than that, they employed similar methods in their police work, and they enjoyed many of the same extracurricular activities. Michael was an avid reader, a film buff, and an excellent cook. Their days had been punctuated by fascinating conversations.
Last February, Michael and his wife, Paula, had gone to Las Vegas for a weekend. They saw two shows. They ate dinner twice at Battista's Hole in the Wall, the best restaurant in town. They filled out a dozen Keno cards and won nothing. They played two-dollar blackjack and lost sixty bucks. And one hour before their scheduled departure, Paula put a silver dollar in a slot machine that promised a progressive jackpot, pulled the handle, and won slightly more than two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Police work never had been Michael's first choice for a career. But like Tony, he was a seeker of security. He attended the police academy and climbed relatively quickly from uniformed patrolman to detective because public service offered at least moderate financial security. In March, however, Michael gave the department a sixty-day notice, and in May he quit. All of his adult life, he had wanted to own a restaurant. Five weeks ago, he opened Savatino's, a small but authentic Italian ristorante on Santa Monica Boulevard, not far from the Century City complex.
A dream come true.
How likely is it that I could make my dream come true the same way? Tony wondered as he studied the night city through which they moved. How likely is it that I could go to Vegas, win two hundred thousand bucks, quit the police force, and take a shot at making it as an artist?
He did not have to ask the question aloud. He didn't need Frank Howard's opinion. He knew the answer. How likely was it? Not very damned likely. About as likely as suddenly learning he was the long-lost son of a rich Arabian prince.
As Michael Savatino had always dreamed of being a restaurateur, so Tony Clemenza dreamed of earning his living as an artist. He had talent. He produced fine pieces in a variety of media: pen and ink, watercolor, oil. He was not merely technically skilled; he had a sharp and unique creative imagination as well. Perhaps if he had been born into a middle-class family with at least modest financial resources, he would have gone to a good school, would have received the proper training from the best professors, would have honed his God-given abilities, and would have become tremendously successful. Instead, he had educated himself with hundreds of art books and through thousands of hours of painstaking drawing practice and experimentation with materials. And he suffered from that pernicious lack of self-confidence so common to those who are self-taught in any field. Although he had entered four art shows and had twice won top prize in his division, he never seriously considered quitting his job and plunging into the creative life. That was nothing more than a pleasant fantasy, a bright daydream. No son of Carlo Clemenza would ever forsake a weekly paycheck for the dread uncertainties of self-employment, unless he had first banked a windfall from Las Vegas.
He was jealous of Michael Savatino's good fortune. Of course, they were still close friends, and he was genuinely happy for Michael. Delighted. Really. But also jealous. He was human, after all, and in the back of his mind, the same petty question kept blinking off and on, off and on, like a neon sign: Why couldn't it have been me?
Slamming on the brakes, jolting Tony out of his reverie, Frank blew the horn at a Corvette that cut him off in traffic. "Asshole!"
"Easy, Frank."
"Sometimes I wish I was back in uniform again, handing out citations."
"That's the last thing you wish."
"I'd nail his ass."
"Except maybe he'd turn out to be out of his skull on drugs or maybe just plain crazy. When you work the traffic detail too long, you tend to forget the world's full of nuts. You fall into a habit, a routine, and you get careless. So maybe you'd stop him and walk up to his door with your ticket book in hand, and he'd greet you with a gun. Maybe he'd blow your head off. No. I'm thankful traffic detail's behind me forever. At least when you're on a homicide assignment, you know the kind of people you're going to have to deal with. You never forget there's going to be someone with a gun or a knife or a piece of lead pipe up ahead somewhere. You're a lot less likely to walk into a nasty little surprise when you're working homicide."
Frank refused to be drawn into another discussion. He kept his eyes on the road, grumbled sullenly, wordlessly, and settled back into silence.
Tony sighed. He stared at the passing scenery with an artist's eye for unexpected detail and previously unnoticed beauty.
Patterns.
Every scene--every seascape, every landscape, every street, every building, every room in every building, every person, every thing--had its own special patterns. If you could perceive the patterns in a scene, you could then look beyond the patterns to the underlying structure that supported them. If you could see and grasp the method by which a surface harmony had been achieved, you eventually could understand the deepest meaning and mechanisms of any subject and then make a good painting of it. If you picked up your brushes and approached the canvas without first performing that analysis, you might wind up with a pretty picture, but you would not produce a work of art.
Patterns.
As Frank Howard drove east on Wilshire, on the way to the Hollywood singles' bar called The Big Quake, Tony searched for patterns in the city and the night. At first, coming in from Santa Monica, there were the sharp low lines of the sea-facing houses and the shadowy outlines of tall feathery palms--patterns of serenity and civility and more than a little money. As they entered Westwood, the dominant pattern was rectilinear: clusters of office highrises, oblong patches of light radiating from scattered windows in the mostly dark faces of the buildings. These neatly ordered rectangular shapes formed the patterns of modern thought and corporate power, patterns of even greater wealth than had been evident in Santa Monica's seaside homes. From Westwood they went to Beverly Hills, an insulated pocket within the greater fabric of the metropolis, a place through which the Los Angeles police could pass but in which they had no authority. In Beverly Hills, the patterns were soft and lush and flowing in a graceful continuum of big houses, parks, greenery, exclusive shops, and more ultra-expensive automobiles than you could find anywhere else on earth. From Wilshire Boulevard to Santa Monica Boulevard to Doheny, the pattern was one of ever-increasing wealth.