Boyle entered the pharmacy, passed a soda bar managed by a young, handsome guy, a Marine Corps veteran of the Philippine campaign. The vet was a friend of Peter Karras, but Boyle could not remember his name: Paleo-something, some shit like that. Whatever, the only thing Boyle would have bet on was that it ended in an s. These Greeks and their crazy names. Boyle nodded at the guy and the guy nodded back. Karras had told Boyle that this veteran was a good Joe.
The Doc was behind the counter in the back of the store, smoking a cigarette. He was tall and thin with sharp, elongated features, gray half-moons below his eyes, the caved-in cheeks of the often ill. His thin assistant, young and on the healthier side, stood on a platform working on an order. Boyle went up to the counter, waited for the Doc to look up. He was reading a paper he had spread there, smoke dribbling slowly through the flared nostrils of his long nose. He crushed the cigarette in an ashtray filled with dead ones, pushed the newspaper to the side. Boyle noticed the caffeine shake in the man’s hand.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m Jim Boyle. Pete Karras sent me.”
The Doc cracked a smile, everything on his face rearranging itself into a whole new wrinkled mask. “You the cop?”
“Yeah, but this isn’t business. I’m here on my own time. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Who’s worried? Pete told me what you wanted, I thought I might be able to help.”
“I been puttin’ on the pounds lately—”
“Not a problem. You just wait right there.”
“Could you speak up a little?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Boyle watched him go up to the platform, talk to the young assistant. The assistant looked Boyle over from up on his perch. Then he disappeared for a couple of minutes, came back and put something in the Doc’s shaky paw. The Doc returned to the counter, pressed a plastic canister into Boyle’s hand. Boyle shook it, listened for the rattle before slipping the canister into his trouser pocket.
“Anything I ought to know?”
“Let’s see. Well, they’re going to make you a bit jumpy, in a pleasant kind of way. You’ll find you have more energy, less desire to eat. If you have trouble sleeping, knock off taking them late at night. You should see the results you’re looking for fairly quickly.”
“That it?”
“That’s all, I guess.”
“I’m no doper,” said Boyle.
“Neither am I.” The Doc shrugged. “Neither is my assistant. But we use these all the time. They’re simple pep pills. Everyone needs a lift at some point during the day. You can’t always get to a cup of coffee.”
Boyle reached for his wallet. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Please. Like I said, I’m Just looking to help you out. Maybe you can do the same for me some time.”
Boyle hesitated for a moment, then turned and left the store.
The Doc put fire to a cigarette. He coughed a little, felt a rawness in his throat. His assistant came up next to him, snatched a cigarette for himself from the house pack. The Doc struck a match, held it out.
“You and me are just smoking up a storm,” said the Doc.
“It’s these pills. They make you crave it.”
“Brother, you said it.”
The assistant drew in hungrily on the cigarette. “You fix him up?”
The Doc nodded. “He needs to lose a little weight.”
“I’ll say.”
The two of them laughed.
“How much you give him?”
“About twenty tablets.”
The Doc smiled. “He’ll be back.”
“I give him about a week,” said the assistant.
“Yeah,” said the Doc. “That’s one thing about this Benzedrine — you start likin’ it real good and quick.”
By the time Boyle had changed into his uniform and left the locker room for his foot patrol, he had started to feel pretty damn good. The Doc had been right about the energy, but he hadn’t mentioned the incredible wave of confidence, the notion that he could kick right through a brick wall. It had come on him slowly, beginning with a tickling sensation at the back of his head married to a powerful thirst. He hadn’t thought about food once in the last hour, either, and when he did force himself to consider it the notion sickened him, maybe for the first time in his life. If one tablet had done this for him, imagine how good he would have felt had he swallowed two.
On the walk west, Boyle had gone through Temperance Court near 12th and T, where any variety of dope or weapon could be bought, and he had seen a known tea smoker named Russell Edwards making a buy. Boyle had called Edwards’s name, chased him on foot, lost the younger, thinner man two blocks south. Afterwards, he laughed at his own uncharacteristic tenacity while catching his breath. To go after a man in the Court unassisted was foolish, and mainly a waste of time. It was not something Boyle would normally do.
Boyle headed down U toward 14th, twirling his baton as he walked. He smiled at the sight of a young Negro on the sidewalk talking softly to a woman who leaned out of a second-story row house window. The young man was dressed to the nines, moving his hands elegantly, pleading his case in a very poetic way. Boyle looked at the woman, the fine chocolate skin of her thin arms, the curl of her lips, her teeth... he didn’t blame the young man, understood the inspiration for his poetry and desire. Since Negroes couldn’t come to see the shows in the white venues, but whites could go to the Negro houses, Boyle often went to the Howard Theatre to catch the revues. On those occasions, he spent more time studying the women in the audience than he did the acts. His preference was just another aspect of his character that would have to remain hidden from the departmental brass.
Boyle stopped at the head of an alley, noticed three men shooting dice against the bricks. The man running the game stood to the side, dollars fanned out in one tight fist. He was a jockey-sized man, balding, a Jew with a knotted nose and a glass eye. Boyle knew him as Matty Buchner.
“Buchner!” said Boyle, rapping his baton against the wall.
The three men collected what they could from the ground, bolted off down the alley, booked right at the T. Buchner stopped to collect the money they had left, then began to follow their path. His short wheels didn’t take him far. Boyle caught up to him without effort and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. He spun Buchner around, backed him up against the bricks.
“Matty, where you think you’re goin’? I know where to find you anyway, you know that.”
“I wasn’t runnin’ from you, officer, honest. I just wanted to catch up with those guys, they left a few scoots lyin’ around on the ground.”
“That’s you, Matty, a Boy Scout all the way.”
Buchner’s good eye moved toward the T of the alley. The glass eye didn’t follow. “I almost made it,” he muttered.
“You weren’t even close,” said Boyle.
“You gonna take me in?”
“Depends. You got anything for me today?”
Buchner wiggled his closed mouth. He was a nervous little guy, a cold-finger man and gamer who had done a stretch for hitting the coatroom at the Shoreham during a high-society wedding reception in ’46. Buchner had been going through unattended coats and purses for fifteen years before he had been caught. It was said around Shaw that Buchner had run his hands through more fur pieces in those fifteen years than Sinatra had in his whole career. All cops had informants, some more reliable than others. Boyle had Matty Buchner.
“What do you hear about the murder?” said Boyle.
“Which murder?”