"I'm not people," Monoghan said, looking offended and hurt. "I'm your partner."
"So stop saying they this, they that all the time."
"I certainly will," Monoghan said, and walked over to where a second black leather sofa rested under the windows on the far side of the room. He glanced angrily at the sofa, and then heavily plunked himself down onto it.
Brown couldn't believe that the M amp;Ms were arguing. Monoghan and Monroe? Joined at the hip since birth? Exchanging heated words? Impossible. But there was Monoghan, sitting on the sofa in a sulk, and here was Monroe, unwilling to let go of it. Brown kept his distance.
"People are always doing that," Monroe said. "It drives me crazy. Don't it drive you crazy?" he asked Brown.
"I don't pay much attention to it," Brown said, trying to stay neutral.
"It's the heat's driving you crazy," Monoghan said from across the room.
"It ain't the goddamn heat," Monroe said, "it's people always saying they this, they that."
Brown tried to look aloof.
At six feet four inches tall and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds, he was bigger and in better condition than either of the two Homicide dicks. But he sensed that the argument between them was something that could easily turn against him if he wasn't careful. Nowadays in this city, a black man had to be careful, except with people he trusted completely. He trusted Carella that way, but he knew nothing at all about the religion or politics of the M amp;Ms, so he figured it was best not to get himself involved in what was essentially a family dispute. One thing he didn't want was a hassle on a hot summer night.
Brown's skin was the color of rich Colombian coffee, and he had brown eyes and kinky black hair, and wide nostrils and thick lips, and this made him as black as anyone could get. Over the years, he had got used to thinking of himself as black - though that wasn't his actual color - but he was damned if he would now start calling himself African-American, which he felt was a phony label invented by insecure people who kept inventing labels in order to reinvent themselves. Inventing labels wasn't the way you found out who you were. The way you did that was you looked in the mirror every morning, the way Brown did, and you saw the same handsome black dude looking back at you. That was what made you grin, man.
"You get people saying things like 'They say there's gonna be another tax hike,'" Monroe said, gathering steam, "and when you ask them who they mean by they, they'll tell you the investment brokers or the financial insti…"
"You just done it yourself," Monoghan said.
"What'd I do?"
"You said you ask them who they mean by they, they'll tell you the investment…"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Monroe said.
"I'm talking about you complaining about people saying they this and they that, and you just said they this yourself."
"I said nothing of the sort," Monroe said. "Did I say that?" he asked Brown, trying to drag him into it again.
"Hello, hello, hello," the ME said cheerily from the door to the apartment, sparing Brown an answer. Putting down his satchel, wiping his brow with an already damp handkerchief, he said, "It's the Sahara out there, I'm sorry I'm late." He picked up the satchel again, walked over to where the victim lay on the carpet, said, "Oh my," and knelt immediately beside her. Monoghan got off the sofa and came over to where the other men stood.
They all watched silently as the ME began his examination.
In this city, you did not touch the body until someone from the Medical Examiner's Office pronounced the victim dead. By extension, investigating detectives usually interpreted this regulation to mean you didn't touch anything until the ME had delivered his verdict. You could come into an apartment and find a naked old lady who'd been dead for months and had turned to jelly in her bathtub, you waited till the ME said she was dead. They waited now. He examined the dead woman as if she were still alive and paying her annual visit to his office, putting his stethoscope to her chest, feeling for a pulse, counting the number of slash and stab wounds - there were thirty-two in all, including those in the small of her back - keeping the detectives in suspense as to whether or not she was truly deceased.
"Tough one to call, huh, Doc?" Monoghan asked, and winked at Monroe, surprising Brown.
"Cause of death, he means," Monroe said, and winked back.
Brown guessed they'd already forgotten their little tiff.
The ME glanced up at them sourly, and then returned to his task.
At last he rose and said, "She's all yours."
The detectives went to work.
