"Your friend here has been in jail, how many times, Ralphie? Three, four? For possession once, I remember that, and weren't you in for burglary, and-"
"Twice is all," Ralph said.
"Twice is enough," Parker said. "That's why I'm asking you questions, Roger." Parker smiled. "Why? Did you do something?"
"No."
"You're sure now?"
"I'm sure."
"You didn't kill anybody with a hatchet, did you?" Parker said, and laughed. "We had a guy got killed with a hatchet only last month."
"An ax," the counterman said.
"What's the difference?" Parker asked.
"There's a difference," the counterman said, and shrugged.
"To who? To the guy who got hit with it? What does he care? He's already singing with the choir up there." He laughed again, rose, walked to where he had hung his coat, and put it on. He turned to the counterman. "What do I owe you, Chip?" he asked.
"Forget it," the counterman said. "Mark it on the ice."
"Uh-uh," Parker said, shaking his head. "You think I'm a coffee-and-cruller cop? You want to buy me, you got to come higher. What do I owe you?"
The counterman shrugged. "Twenty-five," he said.
"How much higher?" Ralph said. "I know guys who bought you for a fin, Parker."
"Ha ha, very funny," Parker said. He put a quarter on the counter and then turned to face Ralph. "Why don't you try to buy me sometime, pal? Sometime when I catch you red-handed with a pile of shit in your pockets, you try to buy your way out of it, okay?"
"You can't fix narcotics, Parker, you know that."
"Yeah, worse luck for you, pal." He waved at the counterman. "So long, Chip," he said. "I'll see you."
"Take it easy, Andy."
At the door, Parker turned. He looked at Roger without a trace of a smile and said, "If I see you hanging around too long with our friend here, I may have to ask you some more questions, Roger."
"All right," Roger said.
"I just thought you might like to know."
"Thanks for telling me."
"Not at all," Parker said, and smiled. "Part of the service, all part of the service." He opened the door, went out into the street, and closed the door noisily behind him.
"The son of a bitch," Ralph whispered.
It was just the idea of going in there that he didn't like. He stood across the street from the police station, looking at the cold gray front of the building and thinking he wouldn't mind telling them all about it if only it didn't mean going in there. He supposed he could have told that detective in the luncheonette, but he hadn't liked the fellow and he had the feeling that telling this could be easy or hard depending on whether he liked the fellow he was telling it to. It seemed to him that Ralph, who was a convicted burglar and a narcotics user (according to the detective, anyway), was a much nicer person than the detective had been. If he was sure he could find somebody like Ralph inside there, he'd have no qualms at all about just crossing the street and marching right in and saying he was Roger Broome, and then telling them about it.
He supposed he would have to begin it with the girl, and end it with the girl, that would be difficult, too. Telling them about how he had met the girl. He couldn't see himself sitting opposite a stranger at a desk someplace inside there and telling them how he had met the girl, Molly was her name. Suppose they gave him a detective like that fellow Parker in the luncheonette, how could he possibly tell him about the girl, or about how they'd met or what they'd done. The more he thought about it the harder it all seemed. Walking across the street there and climbing those steps seemed very hard, and telling a detective about the girl seemed even harder, although the real thing, the important thing didn't seem too hard at all, if only he could get past the other parts that were so very difficult.
He would have to tell them first, he supposed, that he hadn't been looking for a girl at all last night, although he didn't know why that would be important to them. Still, it seemed important and he thought he should explain that first. I wasn't looking for a girl, he could say. I had just finished my supper, it was around seven o'clock at night, and I had gone back to the room and was just sitting there watching the street and thinking how lucky I'd been to have sold the salad bowls so high and to have made a new contact here in the city, that store in the Quarter.
Yes, he supposed he could tell them. He supposed he could walk in there and tell them all about it.
