She stands motionless in the center of the room near the post. She is afraid they will tie her to the post with her hands behind her back. This is a serious offense, she is afraid they will whip her across her naked breasts. She knows of a girl in another gang who was whipped that way for the offense of adultery. The offense is clearly lettered on the rules chart that hangs on the clubhouse wall. Adultery. She is about to make love to a brother, but she is Lloyd’s woman, and that is adultery, and they will hurt her badly for it. They will hurt Jimmy, too. They will force him to run the gauntlet, hitting him with chains and pipes as he runs between his brothers lined up on either side of him.
And when it is all over and done with, when they’ve given her the fifty lashes she’s certain she’ll receive in punishment, fifty of maybe a hundred because she’s the president’s woman, across her naked breasts, the sergeant at arms methodically and deliberately beating her with the seven-thonged whip; when they’ve forced Jimmy through the gauntlet and have left him bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the ground, why, then both of them will be thrown out of the club to fend for themselves. The club is their insurance in a hostile world of enemy camps that grow like toadstools in the surrounding streets. There is no help from the Law in these streets, there is no help from parents who are scrounging for the big white dollar out there, there is only aid and comfort from your brothers and sisters in the clubs.
If you don’t belong to a club, you are anybody’s.
If you’re a boy, you’re anybody’s to beat up on, anybody’s to rob, anybody’s to cut or bum or snuff. If you’re a girl, you’re anybody’s to hurt, anybody’s to fuck, anybody’s to do with what they want. This is the city. You need insurance here. Belonging to the Hawks’ auxiliary is her insurance, and she is about to have it canceled only because she is a stupid bitch. She knows she’s being dumb, she knows that. But she wants Jimmy Harris, and she suspects she’s maybe wanted him from the first time he began coming on six months back, and she began looking the other way and making believe it wasn’t happening. It was happening, all right. It is happening right now. He is locking the basement door, double-locking it like he’s expecting a raid from a hundred gangs, putting the chain on it in the bargain, and then coming back to where she’s standing, and grabbing her tight, and kissing her hard on the mouth till she has to pull away to catch her breath.
His hands are all over her. He unbuttons her blouse, he touches her breasts, he slides his hands under her skirt and up over her thighs, he grabs her ass tight in nylon panties, she is getting dizzy standing there in the middle of the room. She falls limp against the post, and he does it to her standing there against the post. Rips her panties. Tears them in his hands, rips them away from where she’s wet and waiting, unzips his fly and sticks it in her. He comes almost the minute he’s inside her, and she screams and comes with him, the hell with the Hawks, the hell with Lloyd, the hell with the whole world. They grab each other like it’s the weekend ending, they cling to each other there against the post in the middle of the basement, the lightning and thunder crashing around them. She begins crying. He begins crying, too, and then makes her promise she won’t ever tell anybody in the world that he cried
Twelve
Monday morning came at last.
The telephone on Carella’s desk was ringing. He picked up the receiver and said, “87th Squad, Carella.”
“This is Maloney, Canine Unit.”
“Yes, Maloney.”
“You were supposed to call me,” Maloney said.
“I just got here this minute,” Carella said, and looked up at the clock. “It’s only a quarter to nine, Maloney.”
“I told you to call first thing in the morning.”
“This is first thing in the morning,” Carella said.
“I don’t want to get in no argument about whether it’s first thing in the morning,” Maloney said. “I been here since eight o’clock, that's first thing in the morning, I don’t want to get in no argument. All I want to know is what disposition is to be taken with this dog here.”
“Yeah,” Carella said.
“What does that mean, yeah?”
“It means, give me a minute, okay?”
“This dog is not a nice dog here,” Maloney said. “He won’t let nobody go near him. He won’t eat nothin we put in his dish, he’s a fuckin ungrateful mutt, you want to know.”
“That’s how he was trained,” Carella said.
“To be ungrateful?”
“No, no. To take food only from his master. He’s a seeing-eye dog.”
“I know what he is. We don’t need no seeing-eye dogs down here. Down here, we need dogs who sniff out dope, that’s what we need down here. So what do you want me to do with him? You don’t want him, he goes to the shelter. You know what they do at the shelter?”
“I know what they do.”
“They keep the mutt three weeks, then they put him away. It’s painless. They put him in a container, they draw all the air out of it. It’s like going to sleep. What do you say, Coppola?”
“Carella.”
“Yeah, what do you say?”
“I’ll send someone down for him.”
“When?”
“Right away.”
“When is right away?”
“Right away is right away,” Carella said.
“Sure,” Maloney said. “The same way first thing ill the morning is quarter to nine, right?”
“I’ll have somebody there by ten o’clock.”
“It’s the Headquarters Building, eighth floor. Tell him to ask for Detective Maloney. What do you guys do up there, work half a day?”
“Only when we’re busy,” Carella said, and hung up. Detective Richard Genero was at his desk, studying his dictionary. Carella walked over to him and said, “What’s the good word, Genero?”
“What?” Genero said. “Oh,” he said, “I get it. The good word.”
He did not smile. He rarely smiled. Carella imagined he was constipated a lot. He wondered suddenly why no one on the squad called Genero “Richard” or “Richie” or “Dick” or anything but “Genero.” Everyone else on the squad called everyone else by his first name. But Genero was Genero. Moreover, he wondered why Genero had never noticed this. Was it possible that people outside the squadroom also called him Genero? Was it possible that his mother called him Genero? Did she phone him on Fridays and say, “Genero. this is Mama. How come you never call?”
“How would you like to do me a favor?” Carella said.
“What favor?” Genero asked suspiciously.
“How would you like to go downtown to pick up a dog?”
“What dog?” Genero asked suspiciously.
“A seeing-eye dog.”
“This is a gag, right?”
“No.”
“Then what dog?”
“I told you. A seeing-eye dog down at Canine.”
“This is a gag about when I got shot in the foot that time, right?”
“No, no.”
“When I was on that stakeout in the park, right?”
“No, Genero, wrong.”
“When I was making believe I was a blind man, and I got shot in the foot, am I right?”
“No. This is a real job. There’s a black Labrador that has to be picked up at Canine.”
“So why are you sending me?”