Su brought Karras back to the world. “Think Feller will sign with Cleveland?”
“Like I say, Su, I wouldn’t know.”
Su tried again. “DiMaggio signed yesterday, d’ya hear about it? The Yanks are gonna pay him ninety grand.”
“That so.”
Karras shook a Lucky from the deck, struck a match to it, dropped the match out the cracked window. He looked at Su looking at him in the rearview.
Karras said, “You still running errands for the Hip Sings?”
“Hip Sings?” said Su. “What the hell is that?”
Su didn’t say much after that. Karras figured the crack would shut Su up, and he was right. These Chinese, you brought up their secret societies, you might as well ask them to rat out their own mothers. Su drove quietly through the streets while Karras smoked his cigarette.
Su dropped Karras on the 4500 block of Alabama Avenue, let it idle by the curb. Karras went around to the driver’s window, leaned in.
“Thirty cents,” said Su.
“Here you go.” Karras handed him four bits.
“Ninety grand for DiMaggio, Pete. Can you imagine it?” Su winked, put his fists together, broke his wrists in an abbreviated swing. “Joltin’ Joe.”
Karras smiled. “Take it easy, Su.”
“You too.”
Su gunned it down the street. Karras waited for the cab to make the turn at the intersection, then walked along the sidewalk to the middle of the block. He took the steps up to the front of a row house there and went through an open door into a common foyer. He rested for a moment in the foyer, then knocked on a door marked 1.
The door opened: A built, green-eyed blonde in a black slip stood in the frame. She wore black stockings with seams running down their backs, sling-backed, open-toed high heels finished things off.
Karras swallowed hard. The woman turned all the way around to let him have a good look, wiggled one foot in the air when she was done.
“You like?” she said.
“Cat-eyes, right?”
“That’s what they call them. How’d you know?”
“I saw ’em down at Hahn’s. I was walkin’ down F last week, the guy was just putting them out in the window.” Karras made an eye-sweep of the foyer. “You always come to the door dressed like this?”
“When it’s you knocking, I do.” The woman took Karras by the hand. “C’mon inside, Pete, it’s awfully cold.”
Karras looked her over, couldn’t help but grin. “That much I can see.”
“Quit clowning around. You know I’ve only got an hour for lunch.”
“A whole hour, huh? How we gonna fill it up?”
The woman chuckled, reached out to touch his cheek. Karras stepped through the open door frame. He slipped his arms around her waist, pulled her to him gently. He kissed her open mouth.
“Vera,” he said.
Karras breathed her in, a smell clean as spring.
19
Jimmy Boyle unwrapped his second hot dog of the morning, took a bite. With the mustard and the raw onions and a little of the vendor’s green relish, God, the dog was good. He finished it quickly, drank off the rest of his Coke to push the mess down his throat. His burp brought the taste back up, making him think with some remorse that the two hot dogs had only made him angry, sometime soon he’d be ready for a serious crack at lunch.
“Hey, Mister, you gonna turn that bottle in?”
A kid had been sitting on the curb nearby, eyeing the bottle like he could have taken a bite out of the glass.
“What say?” Boyle turned so his good ear was pointed toward the boy.
“Your bottle. Would ya mind if I turned it in for the refund?”
Boyle went to the boy, dropped the empty in his lap. “Here you go, kid. Knock yourself out.”
Boyle bought a paper at a newsstand, stood on the sidewalk facing a bank, had a look at the front page. The alleged lead on the killer in the latest whore murder almost made him laugh. The Department spokesman had told the Times-Herald that a walk-in confession was being looked into, but Boyle knew that was a flat-out lie. Confessions they had, in spades. What they needed was a killer. Every time one of these roundheels bought it, handfuls of phony confessors — terminal drunks and dopers looking for a permanent three-square, bedwetters crying for attention — turned themselves in. Some of them were capable of violence in certain situations; one or two of them qualified as drool cases or rubber-room candidates. None of them were gone enough to do what the killer had done. And only the killer would know certain elements absent from the newspaper accounts — the press had been fed the facts minus several key details. So the few detectives still assigned to the murders took the confessions, noted the pertinent omissions, and slipped the reports in a thickening file.
Reading the story, Boyle felt a click in his chest. If he could just dig a little bit, turn up the right rock that had a genuine lead underneath, a solid lead on the murders... hell, he might as well forget about it — he’d been dreaming about cracking this case for the last three years. Why would he think he could uncover something when the homicide boys had come up with major-league goose eggs? They were the ones with the wheels and the departmental muscle. They had the access to the lab jockeys with all the scientific equipment, they wore the suits and ties. And here he was, a beat cop, wearing the same lousy blues given to him when he joined the force. To top it off, the Department had colored guys working Shaw now, walking the same beat, making the same amount of dough as him.
Boyle lowered the newspaper, looked at his reflection in the bank’s window. Shit, did he really look like that? The window distorted things, that much he knew. But this wasn’t some circus mirror like they had out at Glen Echo, the one that could make a skinny man look fat. This was him, more or less — a guy not even thirty years old, with a triple chin, a head like a cantaloupe, and a gut covering the buckle on his belt. Boyle looked away.
Most of the guys he came up with were now private sixth grade, the highest rank of nonofficer, and a few had already made the jump. These were the guys who had kept an eye on their physiques, made a few high-profile busts along the road. Boyle had not distinguished himself in looks or in deed, or in any way at all. When promotions came around, he had been passed up every time.
His father had told him long ago that a man is judged on how he looks. Not that his father — a frail, balding morgue attendant on and off the city payroll throughout his career — had ever looked like much himself. But Boyle had always listened patiently to every homespun bit of advice the old man had given out. And it was his father and uncle, now a detective, who had come through when Boyle had applied for the force — the two of them had managed to falsify his physical, get him into the Academy despite the bum ear. So Boyle had no reason to doubt that a man’s looks could keep him from getting ahead. The knowledge, however, was of little use to him if he couldn’t take off the weight. The truth of it was, Boyle just loved so goddamn much to eat.
Boyle would try this new thing Karras had suggested, though he had his doubts. A pill that could make you forget about food, give you energy all the time — a “pep pill.” Now, what the hell was that? Karras had assured him that it wasn’t any kind of dope, but Pete had always been on the blind side about things like that. Still, Pete had gone out of his way to drop his name to that uptown pharmacist he knew. He might as well go there, give the Doc a try.
Boyle took the U Street trolley over to 14th, caught a northbound bus. He rode it up through Columbia Heights and into Brightwood Park to the end of the line, got off at the depot at Colorado Avenue. The pharmacy stood on the corner there, where Colorado crossed 14th.