What this city did was hire high school drop-outs, put them in suits, and then teach them how to greet the public with blank stares on their faces. In this city, if you needed a copy of, say, your birth certificate or your driver’s license, you stood on line for an hour and a half while some nitwit pretended to be operating a computer. When he or she finally located what you were there for, you had to go over to the post office and stand on line for another hour and a half to purchase a money order to pay for it. That was because in this city, municipal employees weren’t allowed to accept cash, personal checks, or credit cards. This was because the city fathers knew the caliber of the people who were featherbedding throughout the entire system, knew that cash would disappear in a wink, knew that credit cards would be cloned, knew that personal checks would somehow end up in private bank accounts hither and yon. That’s why all those people behind municipal counters gave you such hostile stares. They were angry at the system because they couldn’t steal from it. Or maybe they were pissed off because they couldn’t qualify for more lucrative jobs like security officers at any of the city’s jails, where an ambitious man could earn a goodly amount of unreportable cash by smuggling in dope to the inmates.
Monoghan and Monroe were necessary to such a system.
Without two jackasses here to tell an experienced detective like Ollie how to do his job, the system would fall apart in a minute and a half. The Homicide dicks knew damn well who was in charge here. Oliver Wendell Weeks was in charge here. It bothered them, too, that in days of yore, the Homicide Division in this city had merited the measure of respect it now enjoyed only on television. Nowadays, Homicide’s proud tradition was vestigial at best. All that remained of its elegant past were the black suits Homicide cops still wore, the color of death, the color of murder itself.
Both Monoghan and Monroe were wearing black on this dismal November afternoon. They looked as if they were on their way to a funeral home to tell some Irish mick like themselves how sorry they were that Paddy O’Toole had kicked the bucket, poor drunken soul. The consistent thing about Ollie Weeks was that he hated everyone, regardless of race, creed, or color. Ollie was a consummate bigot. Without even knowing it.
“These two Irishmen walk out of a bar?” he said.
“Yeah?” Monoghan said.
“It could happen,” Ollie said, and shrugged.
Neither Monoghan nor Monroe laughed.
Kurtz, the fuckin Nazi, laughed, but he tried to hide it by blowing his nose again, because to tell the truth these two big Irish cops scared hell out of him. He guessed Ollie was of English descent, or he wouldn’t have told such a joke to two Irishmen dressed like morticians and looking somewhat red in the face to begin with.
“What is that, some kind of ethnic slur?” Monoghan asked.
“Some kind of stereotypical innuendo?” Monroe asked.
“Is she dead or not?” Ollie asked the ME, changing the subject because these two Irish jackasses seemed to be getting touchy about their drunken cronies.
“Yes, she’s dead,” Kurtz said.
“Would you wish to venture a guess as to the cause?” Ollie said, this time trying to sound like a sarcastic British barrister, but it still came out as W. C. Fields.
“Coroner’s Office’ll send you a report,” Kurtz said, thinking he could ace the Big O, but Ollie merely smiled.
“I can’t blame you for being so cautious,” he said, “knife stickin out of her chest and all.”
Fuck you, Fat Boy, the ME thought, but he blew his nose instead and walked out.
The Homicide dicks wandered around the apartment looking grouchy.
Ollie guessed they were still smarting over his Irish joke, which he thought was a pretty good one, hey, if you can’t take a joke, go fuck yourself. There were enough personal items around the place-an engagement calendar, an address book, bras and panties in the dresser-to convince Ollie that the girl lived here and wasn’t just visiting whoever had juked her. The super of the building confirmed this a few minutes later when he came upstairs to see how the investigation was coming along. One thing Ollie hated-among other things he hated-was amateur detectives sticking their noses in police work. He asked the super what the girl’s name was, and the super told him she was Althea Cleary, and that she’d been living here since May sometime.
He thought she was from Ohio or someplace like that. Idaho maybe. Iowa.
Someplace like that. Ollie thanked him for the valuable information and his citizenly concern and ushered him out of the apartment. One of the responding blues told him the lady who’d phoned the police was in the hall outside waiting to talk to him, was it okay to let her in? “What makes you think it wouldn’t be okay?” Ollie asked.
“Well, it being a crime scene and all.”
“That’s very good thinking,” Ollie said, and smiled enigmatically.
“Show her in.”
