At his desk Meyer Meyer started to type up a report on the Gorman ghosts, then decided the hell with it. If the lieutenant asked him where he’d been half the night, he would say he had been out looking for trouble in the streets. The Lord knew there was enough of that around, any night. He pulled the report forms and their separating sheets of carbon paper from the ancient typewriter, and noticed that Detective Hal Willis was pacing the room anxiously, waiting to get at the desk the moment he vacated it.
“Okay, Hal,” he said, “it’s all yours.”
“Finalmente!” Willis, who was not Italian, said.
The telephone rang.
The sun was up when they came out of the building and walked past the hanging green “87” globes and down the low flat steps to the sidewalk. The park across the street shimmered with early-morning autumn brilliance, the sky above it was clear and blue. It was going to be a beautiful day.
They walked toward the diner on the next block, Meyer and O’Brien ahead of the others, Carella, Hawes, and Kling bringing up the rear. They were tired, and exhaustion showed in their eyes, in the set of their mouths, in the pace they kept. They talked without animation, mostly about their work, their breaths feathery and white on the cold morning air.
When they reached the diner, they took off their overcoats and ordered hot coffee and cheese Danish and toasted English muffins. Meyer said he thought he was coming down with a cold. Carella told him about some cough medicine his wife had given one of the children. O’Brien, munching on a muffin, glanced across the diner and saw a young girl in one of the booths. She was wearing blue jeans and a bright colored Mexican serape, and she was talking to a boy wearing a Navy pea jacket.
“I think I see somebody,” he said, and he moved out of the booth past Kling and Hawes, who were talking about the newest regulation on search and seizure.
The girl looked up when he approached the booth.
“Miss Blair?” he said. “Penelope Blair?”
“Yes,” the girl answered. “Who are you?”
“Detective O’Brien,” he said, “Eighty-seventh Precinct. Your mother was in last night, Penny. She asked me to tell you—”
“Flake off, cop,” Penelope Blair said. “Go stop a riot somewhere.”
O’Brien looked at her silently for a moment. Then he nodded, turned away, and went back to the table.
“Anything?” Kling asked.
“You can’t win ’em all,” O’Brien said.