“Best thing you can do to keep yourself sharp to what’s going on is to keep your eye on everything and try to profile everything and everybody you see.”
Jack Clark wore his tartan-plaid beret with tassel today, the one he likes to wear on wintry gray days. He’d been following a strange act for an hour, but he’d come up empty. “He looked real good, though. Thought I really had something there, but he went down into the subway and that’s all she wrote. He’s somebody else’s problem now.”
So he sat resting in the burglary unit car, on Lexington Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, watching the passing parade.
“Okay, look at that,” he said.
Clark pointed to a tall, slender, effeminately dressed man in his mid-twenties looking at a window display of pastries.
“Here we have Bruce Stronghart. He tends bar at a straight place somewhere here on the Upper East Side, so he trades in his Ralph Lauren kerchief for a bow tie. This is the time of year when he’s just soooo-ooo bored. He looks with disdain at his customers from those rose-tint glasses in the red horn rims and says, ‘Oh, I’ve seen it all, you know.’ And he just can’t wait for summer to come so he can go to Fire Island with the boys.”
Clark looked at the Korean stacking up fruit outside his shop.
“Now that guy,” Clark said. “You’d probably think to look at him like all he wants out of life is just to stack up oranges. Don’t you believe it. At home, he’s got a huge collection of Marilyn Chambers films on Betamax. In Korean, yet! He plays them every morning before he goes to work and then he comes here and stacks up fruit. He’s got a full life, I’m telling you.”
He started up the car.
“Too slow here and I don’t like to sit around one place too long,” he said.
He drove down Lexington and cut over at Seventy-sixth Street toward Third Avenue. Halfway down the block, he stopped the car, unable to get around a Porsche double-parked in front of a town house. The owner of the car, who stood talking with a young woman on the stoop of the town house, looked over at Clark in the unmarked car, then continued talking to the woman. He wore a sheepskin coat and designer jeans.
“Watch what happens when the driver of a banged-up Chevy toots his horn at the man from Vegas over there,” Clark said.
He tapped the horn.
“Hey, what’s the problem?” the Vegas man shouted.
“Move the car, huh?”
“I’ll be there. Hold on.” He continued talking to the woman.
“It’s just too easy,” Clark said. “I’m not going to do it. I’d just shoot up my blood pressure, you know? The guy wants to look like big shit to pussy there, so why not? Who needs a test of manhood, the guy with the beat-up Chevy or the guy with designer jeans?
“And look at that car, will you? I swear, these assholes think you pay over twenty-five thousand for a damn car and you’re allowed by the state of New York to do whatever you want with it. That comes under the Elite Motor Act, I guess.”
Mr. Vegas sauntered to his Porsche and waved at Clark, waiting at the head of what was now a long and impatient line of cars trying to make it through the street.
Clark leaned out the window. “Oh, mister, will you come here just a minute?” He crooked a finger. Designer Jeans sauntered over and Clark showed him his shield.
“I didn’t want to say anything while you were making time, friendly, but now I’m telling you that I’d like you to move your butt and move it fast, okay? Some cops are real mean about this sort of thing. Me, I’m a lover. I understand. But move it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have a nice day.”
“Thanks.”
Clark drove through Third Avenue, then turned downtown on Second Avenue. An elderly black man wearing two or three coats was rooting through a trash can.
He pulled the car up next to him, on the east side of the avenue, rolled the window down and called out his name.
“Howard, my man!”
Howard turned slowly around and squinted his eyes at the skinny Irish face with the plaid beret.
“Hey, Jack boy, what’s goin’, eh?” The old man walked slowly to the car.
“You behavin’ yourself, Howard?”
“Sure as shit, Jack. You wouldn’t want to help me out a little, would you?”
“Hey, come on, Howard. You know what that’d make me?”
“Chump.”
Clark explained to Valentine, “Howard here taught me a lesson not long ago. I find we have a little problem with old people like him. We tend to overlook them. Human, eh? But you know, you have to think like the victim of a guy like Howard here.”
“’At’s right, Jack.” Howard’s breath filled the front seat of the car.
“Well, you’re out with your wife, say, and you get back to your car at the end of the night, and it’s been robbed. What the hell do you care how old the thief is? You want him nailed, right?”
“’At’s right!” Howard said, pounding the window frame for emphasis.
“Glad to see you agree, Howard,” Clark said. He turned back to Valentine. “Howard, here, boosts from cars, you see. I know that because not so long ago I watched him break into a car right along here and take a motorcycle helmet and some gloves.”
“’At’s right!”
“Howard, you’re getting on my nerves, pal.”
“Ooooh. Howard shut his trap.”
“Thanks.” He spoke to Valentine. “So I bust him and take him in and seeing as how he’s an old guy and pretty gentle and what he stole was under two hundred and fifty dollars, we let him go with a desk summons.”
Clark turned to Howard. “That about right so far, Howard?”
“Sounds familiar.” Howard grinned.
“Then he starts complaining to me that he hasn’t got any carfare and he needs to get home and all, so I reach into my pocket and I give him a dollar.”
Howard reached into his own pocket now and handed over a dollar bill to Clark, who took it and stuck it into his shirt. “Much obliged, old pal.”
“Guess what happened thirty minutes after I’d given him the dollar?” Clark asked Valentine. “I’ll tell you. I see him about four blocks from the station house breaking into another car.”
“’At’s right. Jack here got me fair and square.”
“Howard, what do you know?” Clark asked him.
“Don’t know much of nothin’, I guess.”
“Oh, well, I was hoping here you could help me round up a bad guy or two today.”
“I don’t hang’round no trouble, you know that, Jack.”
“Yeah, right. Howard, I’ll see you now, okay? Take care, man.”
“You, too, Jack.”
Clark reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved the dollar bill. He handed it to Howard.
“Keep it, man. And keep a warm memory of yours truly, okay?”
“You better believe it, Jack.”
Howard stood on the corner waving to the car as Clark drove off.
“I tell you, the great cartoon never stops.”
Now for the second time, Mairead Keenan found herself floating through what she believed was a magical evening. The play was a wondrous thing, even Tommy had enjoyed it. And now, with the same strolling violinists, she was sitting in Mama Leone’s.
The baby kicked.
While Mairead and Tommy Keenan ordered an antipasto and studied their menus, Dory Smith decided to make a telephone call, her first to Keenan’s home up in River-dale.
The baby-sitter took down her name and number. Dory said she was an old friend of Mairead’s.
“And where were the two of them off tonight?” Dory asked.
The baby-sitter told her.
Clark picked up Carl Trani at the corner of Third Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street, then pulled the magnetic flasher-siren out of the glove compartment and set it on top of the car.
“Burglary in progress call,” he told Trani. “East Sixty-six, number four-twenty.”
“Got it,” Trani said.
A couple of uniforms had just arrived on the scene when Clark and Trani drove up.
“One of you here and one in back, if there’s a court,” Clark said.
He and Trani took the stairway to the fourth floor, where the burglary had been called. They took the stairs two at a time, opened the door slowly on the fourth and walked through the corridor.
Nothing.
They crept up the stairway to the fifth floor, the top of the building, and again found nothing. Clark went up onto the roof, where there were no traces of anyone having left the building. Down below, in a small courtyard, was the uniformed officer, who didn’t look like he’d run across anything, either.
“Come and gone, or it’s a false alarm,” Trani said when Clark rejoined him on the fifth floor.
“We do a floor-by-floor now,” Clark said.
Nothing on any floor, no paint chips, no signs of a jimmy being used against a door. The few people at home didn’t report seeing or hearing anything.
Down in the lobby, a woman in her early twenties carrying two pies saw Clark’s shield on the chain around his neck.
“Oh, my God! What’s going on?” she asked.
“Did you call about a burglary, miss?” Clark asked.
“Oh, my God, a burglary now?”
“I didn’t say that. I asked you if you called about a burglary.”
“Oh, my God, this building sucks. I mean, it really sucks. Here, hold my pies.” She placed them in Clark’s hands while she rummaged through her handbag, searching for keys. “Oh, the pies are for later.”
“God, my boy friend was shot in here. This building sucks. You hear me?”
“Yes,” Clark said. “The building sucks.”
“Did you tell my friend up on the fifth floor?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know—”
“That’s who the pies are for. God, this building sucks. We all think so.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, my God.”
Trani tapped Clark on the shoulder. “Give her back her pies, Jack. That’s a hell of a thing for a cop to do, steal a lady’s pies.”
Clark extended his hands, but the young woman didn’t seem interested.
“Who can eat at a time like this?” she asked.
A cab deposited her at the door.
All the way over, she was bound and determined just what she had set out to do. But now that she was here, actually here with all the people around her, she felt hot and her blood raced and her heart pumped.
She sat in the back of the cab fumbling in her purse for the money. Then she held a ten in her hand and just sat there in the seat, looking out the window.
“Lady, you want to pay up or what?” the driver asked.
“Yes. Oh, here,” she said. She handed over the ten.
Then she opened the door and left. The fare on the meter was just over five dollars. She didn’t care.
She walked past a doorman. Then she encountered the maître d’.
“Yes, madam?”
“I haven’t got a reservation,” she said.
“You’re … alone?”
She laughed. “No, I’m here to meet someone,” she said. “They’re probably already seated. I’ll just step in and take a look if you don’t mind.”
The maître d’ seemed greatly relieved.
She stood just inside the huge dining room and saw them toward the back. She had never seen his wife before and she was startled by her appearance. She’d pictured her as a redhead, but she didn’t know why. Instead, she was black-haired, with dark brown eyes. And she was laughing at something he said. She thought she somehow never laughed, that she only cleaned and took care of babies and gabbed with housewives in the park. But here she was in a theater restaurant, unchic as it might be, laughing the night away. And maybe for once in his life he’d be all right later that night, maybe for once he wouldn’t behave like he was committing some terrible sin just because he was doing something men have been doing ever since the creation.
Again, she was resolute. She would do it, by God, and she would do it up with style.
She reached inside the large handbag she carried and fished out a large piece of folded cardboard. Attached at two ends of the cardboard was a bit of string, so that she could place the cardboard across her chest, as a sign, suspended by the string around her neck.
A startled strolling violinist was the first to notice the sign. He stopped playing and dropped his bow. A busboy stepped on it.
Then a woman with something green in her mouth stopped chewing and gasped, nearly choked.
“Oh Tommy!” she called across the room.
A few hundred heads turned. The violinists stopped, one by one. The conversation died in waves. She waited for almost complete silence and then shouted again.
“Tommy! Tommy Keenan!”
She waved and began walking toward the Keenans’ table.
Just before she reached the table, she turned around so all sides of the room could see her and read her sign. She placed her hand on the back of a chair and said, “Tommy, how nice to see you. And you have your lovely wife along as well.”
Tommy Keenan’s face was scarlet. Mairead Keenan’s was stone.
Dory Smith stood at their table, smiling, with a large white sign with big block lettering: “I’m the other woman.”
Mairead’s voice was cool, quiet but powerful. She said to Dory, “Please sit down, dear.”
And Dory Smith did.
“It’s been like this all night,” Clark said to Trani. “Lots of nothing. Everybody’s behaving themselves tonight. That’s nice, I guess.”
Trani adjusted his vest. It always scratched. Clark drove down Second Avenue.
“What’s the guy at the can?” Trani said.
“Jesus, it’s just old Howard again. He’s only doing garbage tonight. Maybe he’s gone straight.”
In another block, they snapped to attention. Both had seen the same thing. Clark pulled the car over to the curb, as unobtrusively as possible. Trani slipped out the door and walked nonchalantly toward a young man hurrying from a building, a black bag over his shoulder.
He was perfect. Twenty years old, tops. Hispanic. Didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Climbing out a ground-floor window of an apartment building. Seemed in a hurry. Clark stepped out of the car and skipped through the traffic as Trani fell into step behind the perp.
“Hold it!” Trani said. “Police.”
The perp turned around fast and dropped the bag.
Clark joined Trani and stepped behind the perp.
“What’s going on?” Clark asked.
The perp turned toward Clark.
“Just keep looking at the arresting officer,” Clark said. “What’s in the bag?”
“My clothes,” the perp said.
“Where do you live?” Trani asked him.
“Over there,” the perp said. He pointed to the apartment building he’d climbed out of.
“You live there?” Clark said from behind. “Sure you weren’t just visiting a little bit?”
“Am I under arrest?” the perp asked.
“What were you doing climbing out the window?” Trani asked.
“I got a key broken in the door. I live there,” the perp said.
“A key broken in the door?”
“Yeah. The super’s fixing it from out in the hallway. Meanwhile, I can’t get in or out and I’ve got to do my laundry, which is in that bag.”
Clark groaned. “You got some identification?”
“Sure,” the perp said. He pulled a billfold from his back pocket. It was jammed with credit cards and two pieces of picture identification. Clark looked it over and then handed it back to him. “Satisfied?”
“What’s the super’s name?” Clark asked.
“José.”
“Let’s go,” said Trani.
The two officers and the man who was probably telling the truth walked to the lobby of the apartment building. They rang the super’s bell and in a few minutes a middle-aged Puerto Rican man responded.
“Your name José?” Clark asked.
“Yes.”
“You know this guy?” Clark pointed to the perp with the laundry bag.
“Yes. Mr. Sante.”
“Tell me about Mr. Sante’s door,” Clark said.
“What about his door?”
“Any problems?”
“I’m fixing it.”
Clark put his hand on Sante’s shoulder. “We’re ever vigilant, sir, as you can plainly see. Sorry for the inconvenience. Rest easy tonight, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sante said.
Clark and Trani walked quickly out the lobby to the street. Clark said to Trani, out of the corner of his mouth, “Let’s get the hell out of here as fast as possible. Jesus, I was afraid of something like this sometime.”
“I can understand your wanting to spoil my husband’s evening,” Mairead said to a very stunned Dory Smith, “but why would you do this to me? Have I hurt you in some way?”
“No, I—”
“Do you have some reason for wanting to humiliate me?”
Dory Smith hung her head. Keenan felt the heat of every eye in the place burning through his skin.
“No, of course not,” Dory said. “I’m Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
Keenan looked at his wife. “What is this?” he asked her.
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping to find out,” Mairead said. She started to say something to Dory Smith, but the baby kicked and she lost her breath.
“What is it?” Dory asked.
“Oh, it gets you in the windpipe,” Mairead said. She took a sip of water. “My baby kicked.”
Dory hung her head again and started crying. Keenan wanted desperately to leave the table for the comforts of the men’s room.
“What’s wrong with you, dear? I’m pregnant. That’s my excuse.”
Mairead stared at the troubled woman. Her crumpled white sign lay on the table in front of her. And Dory Smith didn’t look much better than the sign herself.
Mairead turned to her husband. “Tommy, can it be? She’s pregnant, too, isn’t she?”
The answer yes blazed in Tommy Keenan’s face.
“And you’re the one who thinks I’m a silly twit,” Mairead said. “Have you never heard of prevention, Tommy? And you being a cop in Sex Crimes for so long. You should be ashamed of yourself, man.”
He was. But more than that, he was amazed by his wife.
“Now then,” Mairead said, drawing her hands together below her chin, “we’re going to have to figure out what we’re going to do about our problem, aren’t we?”
On the way back to the house, when they’d decided to call it quits for the tour, Clark and Trani spotted a woman standing near a car on Lexington Avenue at Sixty-third, her hands waving. As they drove closer, they heard her shouting.
Inside the car was a man, also shouting.
“Easy does it, Carl,” Clark said. “Looks like a domestic. You know how these things go. They can blow up like nothing else in the business.”
“Yeah, I know. Just watch your mouth, Jack.”
Clark shrugged. He stopped the car parallel to the black Mercedes. Trani walked slowly around the front of the car, noting the license plate. He pulled his shield from under his shirt and let it hang from the chain.
“Police officers, ma’am,” he said.
He thought he heard her snarl.
Clark, meanwhile, motioned for the man at the wheel to roll down the passenger-side window. The procedure in a domestic was to separate the parties and talk calmly, one officer to each in order to defuse the situation.
The man rolled down his window.
“Look, we’re just having a little argument here, Officer,” he said. “Nothing serious.”
“Sure sounds serious, pal. Can I help?” Clark asked.
“Well, no. We just broke up tonight, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s pretty tough sometimes. You going to be all right? She doesn’t sound at all well.”
He looked back over his shoulder. Trani was talking to her quietly, hands in the pockets of his jacket.
“She’s the nervous type.”
Clark laughed.
“What’s so funny?” the woman shouted. “I heard that! Whose side you want to be on, anyway? You’re all fucking alike. Men! Feh!”
Trani told her to hush.
“Don’t tell me to keep my voice down!” she screamed. “This is New York Fucking City and it’s the noisiest fucking place on planet Earth and I’ll do my part to make it a little fucking noisier if you don’t fucking mind!”
Clark said to the man in the Mercedes, “Yeah, see what you mean. Can’t you take this someplace else, like your apartment or something?”
“Are you nuts, Officer?”
“Well, hell, look what I’m doing for a living.”
The woman walked around Trani to get a better view of Clark in the unmarked police car.
“You two boys having a pretty good fucking laugh about all this, huh?” she shrieked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Don’t ‘no ma’am’ me!”
Trani tried talking to her, reached out a hand to touch her arm. “Listen—”
The woman spun around and clawed him. She managed to sink her nails into the top of his wrist, caught them there and squeezed, embedding her nails even deeper into his skin.
“Jesus Christ!” Trani yelled.
The woman clawed at him with her other hand. Blood spattered her coat and face.
Clark jumped out of the car and ran around the front of the car. He grabbed the woman’s elbows and pressed them together behind her back. She bucked backward, raised her foot and tried to kick Clark in his testicles.
Trani had the cuffs out, snapped her up and then he and Clark each took an arm and led her, screaming and cursing, to the squad car. They bent her double over the rear deck.
“You’re going to have to be quiet if you want to hear your rights, lady,” Clark said.
“My God, you’re going to actually arrest her?” the man in the Mercedes said.
“You got it, pal,” Clark said. “Stick around a minute, we’re going to need your name.”
“Oh, my God.”
“You’re telling me,” Clark said.
The woman calmed herself. She went completely limp, actually. Clark radioed for a backup unit and when it arrived placed the handcuffed woman in back and had her run into the station house and held in the women’s lockup until he got there to do the paperwork.
“Carl,” he said to Trani, “I think we’d better get a look at that.”
After taking the particulars from the man in the Mercedes, Clark took Trani to Lenox Hill Hospital at Park and Seventy-seventh. He radioed over the PTP for Laffey and called him to join the watch at the hospital.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Laffey said as he held Trani’s hand in his, turning it over. “But these things have a way of spreading down to the worst places. Heard of a guy who lost his limbs and it started just this way.”
Trani’s eyes grew. He was a bit of a hypochondriac, but he lived, after all, in a city where more people are bitten each year by human beings than by rats.
“Listen, Carl. You got clean underwear?” Laffey asked.
Trani pulled his hand away.
“Aw, it’s not going to be all that bad,” Laffey said. “The doctors will probably tell you you can’t jerk off for a few days. What do they know?”
Back at the station house, Clark worked up the paper. Laffey ordered a booking charge of felonious assault, since the victim was a police officer. Otherwise, it would have been simple assault at best.
“But you know what the hell’s going to happen,” Laffey said. “She’ll get it busted down. She’ll show up in court with a nice skirt and white gloves and she’ll be sugar and spice and everything nice.”
But the booking would be good enough to get her jailed overnight, which was the idea.