Maybe, Agnes McFadden thought, if he was areal cop, and wore a uniform, and shaved, and had his hair cut; and rode around in a prowl car giving out tickets, going to accidents, and doingreal cop-type things; it wouldn't be so bad; but she didn't like it at all, now, and if he wouldn't admit it, neither did his father.
Charley was twenty-five, and it was time for him to be thinking about getting married and starting a family. No decent girl would want to be seen with him in public, the way he looked (and sometimes smelled) and no girl in her right mind would marry somebody she couldn't count on to come home for supper, or who would jump out of bed in the middle of the night every time the phone rang. Not to mention being in constant danger of getting shot or stabbed or run over with a car by some nigger or spic or dago full of some kind of drug.
Officer Charles McFadden, who had been engaged in dipping a piece of toast into the yolk of his fried eggs, looked up at his father.
"Pop, ask me how many stars are in the sky?"
His father, who had been checking the basketball scores in the sports section of thePhiladelphia Daily News, eyed him suspiciously, and took another forkful of his own eggs.
"It's not dirty," Charley McFadden said, reading his father's mind.
"Okay," Kevin McFadden said. "How many stars are in the sky?"
"All of them," Charley McFadden said, pleased with himself.
It took Kevin a moment, but finally he caught on, and laughed.
"Wiseass," he said.
"Chip off the old block," Charley said.
"I don't understand," Agnes McFadden said.
"The only place, Mom, stars is, is in the sky," Charley explained.
"Oh," she said, not quite sure why that was funny. "There's some more home fries in the pan, if you want some."
Charley had come in in the wee hours, and slept until, probably, he smelled the coffee and the bacon, and then come down. It was now quarter after nine.
"No, thanks, Mom," Charley said. "I got to get on my horse."
"You goin' somewhere?" Agnes McFadden asked when Charley stood up and carried his plate to the sink. "Here, give me that. Neither you or your father can be trusted around a sink with dishes."
"I got to change the oil in the car," Kevin McFadden said. "And I bought some stuff that's supposed to clean out the carburetor. Afterward, I thought maybe you and me could go to Flo and Danny's and hoist one."
"I can't, Pop," Charley said. "I got to go to work."
"You didn't get in until four this morning-" Agnes McFadden said.
"Three, Mom," Charley interrupted. "It was ten after three when I walked in the door."
"Threethen," she granted. "And you got to go back? Your father has the day off, and it would be good for you to spend some time together. And fun, too. You go down to Flo and Danny's and when I finish cleaning up around here, I'll come down and have a glass of beer with the two of you."
"Mom, I got to go to work."
"Why?" Agnes McFadden flared. "What I would like to know is what's so important that it can't wait for a couple of hours, so that you can spend a little time with your family."
She was more hurt, Charley saw, than angry.
"Mom, you see on the TV where the police officer, Captain Moffitt, got shot?"
"Sure. Of course I did. What's that got to do with you?"
"There was two of them," Charley said. "Captain Moffitt shot one of them, and the other got away."
"I asked, so what's that got to do with you?"
"I think I know where I can catch him," Charley said.
"Mr. Big Shot," his mother said, heavily sarcastic. "There's eight thousand cops-I know 'cause I seen it in the newspaper-there's eight thousand cops, and you, you been on the force two years, and all you are is a patrolman, though you'd never know it to look at you, and you 're going to catch him!"
Charley's face colored.
"Well, let me just tellyou something, Mom, if you don't mind," he said, angrily. "I'mthe officer who made the identification of the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, and those eight thousand cops you're talking about areall looking for a guy named Gerald Vincent Gallagher, because I was able to identify him as a known associate of the girl."
"No shit?" Kevin McFadden asked, impressed.
"Watch your tongue," Agnes McFadden snapped. "Just because you work in a sewer doesn't mean you have to sound like one!"
"You bet your ass," Charley said to his father. "And I got a pretty good idea where the slimy little bastard's liable to be!"
"I won't tolerate that kind of dirty talk from either one of you, I just won't put up with it," Agnes said.
"Agnes, shut up!" Kevin McFadden said. "Charley, you're not going to do anything dumb, are you? I mean, what the hell, why take a chance on anything if you don't have to?"
"What I'm going to do, Pop, is find him. If I can. Hang around where I think he might be, or will show up. If I see him, or if he shows up there, I'll get Hay-zus to go with me."
Officer Jesus Martinez, a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican, was Officer Charley McFadden's partner. He pronounced his Christian name as it was pronounced in Spanish, and Charley McFadden had taken to using that pronounciation when discussing him with his mother. Agnes McFadden had made it plain that she was uncomfortable with Jesus as somebody's first name. Hay-zus was all right. It was like Juan or Alberto or some other strange spic name.
"I wishyou wore a uniform," Agnes McFadden said.
"Yeah, sure," Charley said. "Maybe be a traffic cop, right? So I can stand in the middle of the street downtown somewhere, and freeze to death in winter and boil my brains in the summer? Breathing diesel exhaust all the time?"
"It would be better than what you're doing," his mother said.
"Mom, you don't get promoted guarding school crossings," Charley said. "Or riding around some district in a car on the last out shift."
"I don't see you getting promoted," Agnes McFadden said.
"Leave him alone, Agnes," Kevin McFadden said. "He hasn't been with the cops long enough to get promoted."
"The detective's examination is next month, and I'm going to take it," Charley said. "And for your information, I think I'm going to pass it. If I can arrest this Gallagher punk, Iknow I 'd make it."
"You're getting too big for your britches," Agnes McFadden replied, aware that she was angry and wondering why.
"Yeah? Yeah? My lieutenant, Lieutenant Pekach, you know how oldhe is? He'sthirty years old, that's all how old he is. And he's a lieutenant, and he's eligible to take the captain's examination."
"That's young for a lieutenant," Kevin McFadden said. "I suppose they do all right on payday."
"You can do it," Charley said. "Pop, when I went to identify the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, down to the medical examiner's, where they were autopsying her, Lieutenant Pekach introduced me to Staff Inspector Wohl."
"Who's he? Am I supposed to know what that means?" Kevin McFadden asked.
"A staff inspector is higher than a captain," Charley explained. "All they do is theimportant investigations."
"So?" Agnes McFadden said.
"So, Mom, so here is this Staff Inspector Wohl, wearing a suit that must have cost him two hundred bucks, and driving this brand-new Ford LTD, and he ain't hardly any older than Lieutenant Pekach, that's what!"
"He must have pull, then," Agnes McFadden said. "He must know somebody."
"Ah, Jesus Christ, Mom!" Charley said, and stormed out of the kitchen.
"You shouldn't have said that, Agnes," Kevin McFadden said. "Charley' s ambitious, there's nothing wrong with that."