I GOT OUT OF POLICE headquarters without wearing handcuffs. What I did wear was guilt and a distinct sense of the world closing in on me.
I put it back on Miller. He and I had lunched, right? He'd bellyached about how the Scum Front stuff was eating away at the morale of the police department. Then—strictly coincidentally— my prints had come up and a cop came around. It would have been actively obstructive, quite apart from simply stupid, to give a cop a hard time in circumstances like that. Even a bad cop.
Right?
Don't I know the difference between something serious and something I can joke about?
Wasn't the fact that Miller was giving me a hard time evidence that I was right to take Ryder's crap, because the Scum Front was driving all cops crazy? If I'd made a crack with Ryder he'd probably have shot me.
Right?
I wore Miller down. Eventually he began to realize that what he'd thought of as a perception was actually the mental aberration of a restless policeman whose home life was nearly as complicated as his professional life.
And once I got him onto Janie, I was in the clear. Before I left he told me a joke that was circulating in the department: what is the difference between a wife and a terrorist?
“I don't know, Jerry. What is the difference between a wife and a terrorist?”
“You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
I laughed for him.
On the answering machine there was a message from Bobbie Lee. She asked when and how I would like to take possession of the color version of her drawing.
I called back immediately. I got her answering machine, who coughed to clear her throat and sounded about eighty. She said, “Bobbie Lee is not to home just now. You want to leave a message, I'll tell her soon as she sets foot inside the door. I got a pencil.”
I left my name and suggested that Bobbie Lee might come by my office on the way to her evening assignment.
And I thanked the machine, who said, “Oh, 'tain't no problem,” and then hung up.
I sat in my chair for a minute and doodled to see if I could think about what I should be doing. But brain activity was an uncomfortable process and my doodles were all dress-shaped and faceless.
I went outside, down the stairs and around to the luncheonette. It was early for lunch. I ordered food anyway.
But not the chili. I needed all the love I could get.
While Norman poked at my cooking food as if it were already me, I played the pinball machine.
When he slapped the plate on the counter I lost my final ball. I ate in silence and left a ten-cent tip.
On the way back upstairs my brain made its play. I decided to put the hanky in the window again and give it an hour. If there was no call I would go out to Cecil Redman's house and try to make some progress there.