Saturday. In the morning, just for the hell of it, really, I do a half-block canvass on Whitman Avenue. It’s a nice neighborhood now. A middle-class enclave on the frontier of the Twenty-Seven: You got the old University Library over on Volstead, and the Business School on York. American cities like to fix it so that their seats of learning are surrounded by war zones (this is reality, pal), and it used to be that way around here. Ten years ago, Volstead Street was like the Battle of Stalingrad. Now it’s all nailed up and scorched-looking— vacated or plain abandoned, with hardly a hoody in sight. It’s tough to say who made this happen. The economy did it.
So as I move from door to door, under the elms, the residents are very, very cooperative. It wasn’t like doing a rowhouse block in Oxville or a project in Destry. Nobody told me to go suck cocks in hell. But nobody saw anything either. Or heard anything, on March fourth.
Until my last call. Yeah. Wouldn’t you know. A little girl, too, in pink ribbons and bobby socks. Silvera’s right: This case is so fucking cute. But it’s not pure ketchup, because kids do notice things, with their new eyes. The rest of us just looking out there and seeing the same old shit.
I’m winding it up with the mom, who suddenly says, “Ask Sophie. Sophie! Sophie was out riding her new bike up and down the street. I don’t let her leave the street on it.” Sophie comes into the kitchen and I hunker down on her.
Now, honey, this could be important.
“Number 43. Yeah. The one with the cherry tree.”
Think carefully, sweetheart.
“My chain came loose? I was trying to fix the chain?”
Go on, honey.
“And a man came out?”
What did he look like, sweetheart?
“Poor.”
Poor? Honey, what do you mean? Like shabby?
“He had patches on his clothes.”
It took me a second. He had patches on his
Sweetheart. How’d he seem?
“He looked mad. I wanted to ask him to help me but I didn’t.”
And soon I’m saying, “Thanks, honey. Thanks, ma’am.”
When I badge my way from door to door like this, and the women see me coming up the path—I don’t know what they think. There I am in my parka, my black jeans. They think I’m a diesel. Or a truck driver from the Soviet Union. But the men know at once what I am. Because I give them the eyeball— absolutely direct. As a patrol cop, on the street, that’s the first thing you have to train yourself to do: Stare at men. In the eyes. And then when I was plainclothes, and undercover, I had to train myself out of it, all over again. Because no other kind of woman on earth, not a movie star, not a brain surgeon, not a head of state, will stare at a man the way a police stares.
Back home I field the usual ten messages from Colonel Tom. He veers around, racking his brains for shit on Trader. A prior record of instability and temper-loss that amounts to a few family disagreements and a scuffle in a bar five years ago. Examples of impatience, of less than perfect gallantry, around Jennifer. Times he let her walk by a puddle without dunking his coat in it.
Colonel Tom is losing the story line. I wish he could hear how he sounds. Some of his beefs are so smallprint, they make me think of diss murders. Diss murders: When someone gets blown in half for a breach of form that would have slipped by Emily Post.
“What’s the game plan, Mike?”
I told him. Jesus... Anyway, he seemed broadly satisfied.
If the jury is still out on women police, then the jury is still out on Tobe. Still out, after all these months, and still hollering for transcripts of the judge’s opening address.
Right now the guy is next door watching a
I just went through and sat on the great couch of Tobe’s lap for five minutes and watched them doing it. Grown adults acting like five-year-olds at a birthday party, with this routine: What do Americans think is America’s favorite breakfast? Cereal.
What do Americans think is America’s choice suicide method. Sleeping pills. Yeah! Ow!
Where do Americans think France is? In Canada.
There’s an obit in this morning’s Sunday
