Policewoman

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “This guy, this window cleaner,” he said, “three times now it’s happened. I told the girls not to be so careless with their pocketbooks, with the petty cash. They think this is home; you know, it’s not like an office—the carpeting, the couches, the upholstered chairs.” Mr. Leo seemed to be expressing disapproval, and he was hunching forward, talking very quietly and glancing around from time to time. “They get comfortable, they relax, they forget, so they leave things around. My secretary, she lost her watch; my father’s assistant, her wallet with sixty-seven dollars. A cigarette lighter, a junk jewelry ring, you know. And every time, that window cleaner was in here.”

  Hank Ludlow couldn’t seem to settle his long frame on the foam rubber lounge. “How come you didn’t call us before?”

  Mr. Leo shrugged heavily, hunching his shoulders around his ears. “The old man ...” He looked toward his father’s office. “My father, he thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. He was gonna catch the guy. He’d throw him outta the window.” Mr. Leo scowled like a stocky monkey. “Big deal—we’re on the second floor. He’s been playing detective, but nothing happens when he’s around. The guy only takes something when the girls are in there alone—or the place is empty. Nobody seen ... saw him take.” He looked over his shoulder again. “He’s been playing games, the old man. He’s got a thing about being young, ya know?”

  Mr. Leo held up his hand in a gesture that indicated we had some mutual understanding of what the “old man” was like. Leo had the beaten-down look of the son of his father.

  Mr. Leo showed me to my desk. It was a huge, glass-topped, free-form thing, and I could see my feet sitting there on the floor, exposed to view, trying to settle themselves neatly. Everyone in the place seemed to have a big thing for feet, or rather for shoes. The girls all watched each other’s shoes with hard, critical, professional eyes. Apparently, it was a rule that you didn’t wear the same pair twice in a row. They knew immediately where I had bought mine and what I had paid for them, and I knew I didn’t rate too highly with them on that account alone. There was a bright pink typewriter on my desk, looking like a toy. It was electric, and the keys danced wildly when I set my fingers on them.

  The window-washer with the light fingers was due in the office sometime that day. He was finishing up the third floor and he always worked Kensington—it was his section. They didn’t know exactly when he’d arrive, but I was hoping it would be soon.

  Hank had asked why the girls hadn’t complained to the man’s boss, confront him with the accusation, even press charges, but the old man had insisted that he be caught in the act. Mr. Mac liked action, liked things done right, so there I sat at that crazy little pink typewriter and fooled around with the magic keys. Hank was in an adjoining office—the offices outside the executive suites were linked by airy, lacy white room dividers.

  I did a few finger exercises to get the feel of the machine. I could see Hank looking over the sample shoes displayed on the wall-to-ceiling display case, fingering the fragile, needle-heeled high-style things with his large, unaccustomed hands. He held a shoe up to me, grinning; somebody’s secretary, floating past, caught our amusement and froze in my direction, glancing quickly down. I tried to hide my feet but there they were on display under the glass desk. Then she raised her eyes to my face and looked right through me.

  They spoke to each other in voices that were carpeted: soft, thick and expensively trained at one of those how-to-succeed schools which I had learned Mr. Mac insisted upon. He wanted them not only young but of a particular pattern. The only loud voice in the company was Mr. Mac’s, and when he blasted forth on the small pink intercoms placed here and there on shelves about the room, everyone stood stock still, breathless, until he finished speaking. It seemed he had a technique all his own. Only when he finished the message would he announce the name of the person for whom it was intended. After an hour of these sudden pronouncements, I found myself listening intently, along with the others, as though it might be meant for me. “Those g.d. drawings are all smudges and smears and crappy, and I want the whole g.d. mess drawn up again. And play down the red edges. Marion!” “I want that showroom in one hundred per cent perfect order and no speck of dust showing and those new slippers—the pink ones and the off-green ones in K-13 case—right now. Harold!” It was a little upsetting.

  There was no conversation with these girls. I was someone who was just not there. They continued their quiet little gossipy huddles of office talk over drawings of shoes, pictures of shoes clipped from the best magazines—the kind that have a woman’s face all over the page, sinking mysteriously into some kind of foggy background, and one word printed neatly in a corner, the name of a firm manufacturing some cosmetic or miraculous rejuvenation lotion. They might have stepped from some similar fog, and with their veiled, mean little glances, have wondered where I had stepped from. They knew I was a policewoman and drew certain inferences from this—probably that I was depraved and jaded from contact with the unspeakables of some remote and barely existent world.

  I was wearing a little black dress, my “nothing” dress, with one small gold pin—a little owl Tony had found in the sand at Montauk—that was all grubby and chipped but had “Tiffany—14 k” engraved near the safety catch. He had had it cleaned and polished for me, and that little pin gave me a certain courage even if their rigid poise and rightness were somewhat unnerving. They all had noticed my feet with my unacceptable shoes, just plain black pumps and not expensive, but none of them had even looked at my good little gold owl. The hell with them. I would have lasted about a day in that place. I could feel the delicate wallpaper and antique picture frames—placed around little shelves of silly looking shoes—and the air of arduous refinement strangling me.

  The window-washer came in from the reception room, wordless, and went directly to his task. As had been prearranged, the girls vaporized soundlessly without any sign of emotion, like a bunch of cardboard dolls floating effortlessly away. Mr. Mac thundered from the walls for his secretary, and she glided over the carpet staring straight ahead, her notebook against her narrow, bony thigh. Hank was handling the shoes again, but he was watching me now, and I knew that he would keep his eyes on me until he received a signal.

  I was typing some paragraph from some shoe newspaper, fascinated by the weirdness of the machine. It was typing with some strange power of its own, barely relying on my ringers. My back was to the window, but there was a lovely, wide-framed mirror perched on one of the room dividers that gave me a perfect view of the suspect. I could glance up from my machine easily and observe him. He was smearing a squeegee over the pane of window from outside the building. He hadn’t strapped on his safety belt, and he seemed to hang by the tip of one finger. I could hear him making grunting noises as he hefted himself inside the window frame and sloshed his arm up and down. I kept my fingers on the keys and they clicked furiously, in a frenzy of noise and activity. He had his back to me, bending over his bucket and rags and equipment, straps and buckles hanging from all sides of him. He ran a dirty gray rag over the back of his neck, then stuffed it into a back pocket. He leaned heavily on the desk alongside of him, rested his hand on the surface of the desk, and without looking behind him, toward me, pocketed the diamond engagement ring that had been left next to the pink telephone.

  As I touched my hair, my left hand on the clicking keys of the machine, Hank started for the room. The window-washer reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette and was placing it between his lips when Hank walked in and caught my nod and motion toward an imaginary pocket on my dress. I don’t think Hank realized he was carrying the purple shoe in his left hand. He seemed a little surprised and let it drop to the floor as he took the window-washer’s arm and stuck his shield in the man’s face.

  Hank was a tall man, deceptively swift while appearing almost motionless. He had the suspect against a wall, or the latticework that passed for a wall, before I could even stand up.

  “Put the bucket down, pal. Police.”<
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  Hank had one hand on the man’s shoulder, and he jerked his head at the prisoner. “Okay, buddy, take the ring out of your pocket.”

  The man stared motionless but there was a whiteness coming over his face. Hank pushed the man’s chest. “Take out the cigarettes and the ring. C’mon, c’mon, put everything on the desk.”

  “I got no ring,” the man said tensely, his eyes wandering around the room, then back to Hank’s face. He bit his lip, seemed to be weighing things, making some decision. “Not me, pal, I’m not your man.”

  Hank reached roughly into the pocket, tossed the cigarettes on the desk, then fished the ring out and held it before the man’s eyes. “This yours?” he asked softly.

  Hank motioned to me; the suspect seemed surprised to see me. He hadn’t even noticed me. “I’m a policewoman. I saw you take the ring from the desk and put it in your pocket.”

  The voice of Mr. Mac suddenly boiled into the room, seeming to come from the ceilings and the floors. He had apparently been tuned in on us, and he was howling furiously about what he was going to do to the “bum.” In the instant it took us to realize what the sudden sound was, the prisoner shoved Hank into me and lunged across the room. He crashed into the room divider and through the glass doors of the reception room into the hallway. I raced after Hank, grabbing my pocketbook from the desk, and saw Hank catch the glass door on his shoulder, fighting it back open. I heard the commotion on the stairway, a sound of ugly scuffling. Hank was hanging onto the straps that were dangling from the window-washer’s pants, and the man kicked up with his heavy booted feet at Hank’s legs. The stairway was hard steel, fireproof, and dangerous with sharp, point-edged steps. Hank had the man by the collar and I managed to grab a loose strap, but he shook me off with an elbow. I hadn’t realized what a hugely powerful man he was, with arms and shoulders and back hardened by years of labor. He was a heavy-set man with no scrap of fat on him, and he made thick, grunting sounds. Hank was tall and wiry, but in the scuffling he lost his footing and tumbled on the stairs. The three of us fell together, Hank on the bottom, the prisoner on top. I fell clear of the men, pulled along by the strap which had gotten tangled around my wrist. I was clutching my pocketbook as though it were part of me, and I felt no pain even though I was aware of being pulled down the stairs. We all stood up together, still clinging to each other in one way or another, and fell against the brass door that opened onto the lobby of the building.

  We exploded into the lobby into the midst of startled office workers on their way to lunch: three grappling, grasping figures. I had lost my shoes somewhere. I felt the cut on my leg, I heard the terrible sounds of blows—he was actually hitting me. My face felt the impact of the blow, but I felt no pain, just an awareness of having been struck. There was a terrible tangle of arms and legs; my hair was being pulled and I felt a hand inside my mouth, roughly scraping the roof of it.

  “The gun,” Hank gasped, unable to reach his own. “For Christ’s sake, Dot, pull the gun.”

  I let loose my hold on the strap and dug the gun out, dropped my pocketbook somewhere. Hank managed to shove the man against the wall with his shoulder, holding him, leaning against him, trying to hold himself up, and I pointed the gun in the man’s face. But I could see that the glazed, pale eyes did not recognize the weapon. It made no impression on him and his blank transparent expression was genuine.

  “Sit still, you sonuvabitch, or I’ll shoot you!”

  He managed a kick at Hank’s shinbone. I held the gun flatly in my palm, the finger off the trigger, as I felt myself being shoved halfway across the lobby. I landed against a candystand, and some face stuck itself in mine, some frantic candy-clerk face, saying words to me, hysterical words: “Lady, please, lady, get off my merchandise. Lady, you’re messing up my papers and my magazines.” I heard the words and the voice and saw the sickening face, the arms outstretched over the shelves of candy bars and gum, the voice wailing in grief for his magazines and newspapers and nickel and dime merchandise. I saw all the faces all around us, a horrified, fascinated group of faces, openmouthed, wide-eyed, drawing back, yet too intrigued to move away—watching.

  “Call the police!” I said in a thin, faraway, unknown voice. “We’re police officers; for God’s sake, someone make a call!”

  Hank and the prisoner were grappling, and the powerful man, using the advantage of his weight and conditioned strength and those murderous dusty boots, delivered a terrific blow and kick at the same time. As Hank held on to him, pulling him down too, I cracked the butt of my gun at the base of his skull as hard as I could. It was a horrible, loud, unimaginable sound, unreal. The window-washer seemed to move in slow motion; he aimed a kick at Hank, missed his footing, slipped to his knees, swung his arm out wildly at Hank, who grabbed it and forced him down. The back of his head, balding but with thin strands of blond hair, began to ooze bright red from a long gash. I kicked at his stomach, the sharp pain telling me I didn’t have any shoes on. He gave another animal lunge at me, and I slipped backward, my feet skidding along the slippery polished floor. I felt myself making contact with something, with someone, and some hands pushed me angrily away. I turned. A woman, standing in back of me, her face outraged, contorted, had pushed me. She was pregnant, I could see that, it registered, but I couldn’t understand why she had pushed me. The prisoner and Hank were on the floor, each making motions, reaching for the other. As I moved toward them, some man, some red-faced, tough-faced old man, some skinny wiry old guy in a bank guard’s uniform shoved his face at me.

  “Cop?” That’s all he said. I nodded, and he reached down and gave the window-washer a terrific punch in the face,, and the prisoner settled down on the floor. Then the man caught Hank’s arms and pulled him to a sitting position and pushed his own face at Hank.

  “Okay? Okay, officer?”

  Hank nodded, not seeing the face before him, just nodding, maybe just trying to shake it off, to focus. He reached for his handcuffs, but the old guy snatched them away.

  “I’ll do it, pal.” Quickly, professionally, he slipped the handcuffs on the prisoner, who was reviving, twisting. He cuffed the man’s hands behind his back, explaining as he did so, “Six years off the force and I haven’t lost the old speed. Heard the commotion. I’m at First National—right in the building. You okay, girlie? 70th Precinct in Brooklyn last ten years on the job. Hey, you okay, girlie?”

  I nodded, not looking at him but at the crowd, at the faces that were watching us, watching us, talking about us, pointing at us, at Hank and the prisoner and the bank guard and me. I saw the uniformed cops come in through the revolving doors—four of them, then three more, then a sergeant, a big, fat sergeant with great big cheeks.

  The uniformed cops grabbed everyone; the sergeant had my arm. I was still holding my gun. “Policewoman—sergeant—that’s my partner, and this man here, he helped us.”

  The spectators moved a little closer, wanting to hear some more of it. They knew nothing of what was happening. Some woman, some woman from the crowd, whom I had never seen, kept calling to the sergeant, telling him she wanted to talk to someone in charge. She saw his stripes and kept on calling and calling until finally, with a heave of annoyance, he turned to her.

  “Lady, what is it? Whassa matter—what d’ya want? C’mon, you men, get these people outta here—show’s over—go to lunch.” The woman, eyes blazing, pointed at us.

  “I was a witness,” she said in a high, shrill voice, and everyone came closer for a better look. “I want to know who to talk to here.”

  “Lady,” the sergeant said, in his old-timer’s growl, “what d’ya want?”

  “I want to report an incident of police brutality,” she said indignantly and shaking with rage. “I saw the whole thing: this girl hit that man on the head with a blackjack or a gun or something, and he was on his knees, helpless. Then this man, this bank guard, came and beat him mercilessly, and all the time his hands were handcuffed behind his back.”

  I started to speak, to
shout. I knew the words were terrible, shocking, all the dirty words the kids at the settlement house had tried out on me, all the words the men tried to cut out of their daily conversations if I was assigned to work in a squad room. They felt good and satisfying and appropriate and expressive. They were a release and a pleasure, and I didn’t care who heard me. I advanced on the woman, but the sergeant held my arm firmly and gave quick orders to the men. The uniformed officers mingled into the crowd and cleared everyone out.

  The prisoner started to fight again, hands behind his back. He kicked out wildly, throwing his body against the blue uniforms, oblivious to the pain of the blows he received, unaware of them. Five officers pitted themselves against him, but he had some maniac strength, some desperate wild power, and they clobbered him repeatedly before they could drag him out of the building and into the paddy wagon.

  “C’mon, holy terror,” the sergeant said, “let’s get up to that office and clean you two up. You got your coats up there?” And then he looked at my feet. “And your shoes?”

  He had me by one hand and Hank by the arm with his other hand. Hank was dazed and wincing with pain. “Hey,” he mumbled, “where’s that little guy, that bank guard? He’s a former cop.”

  But he had vanished, gone back to his own work.

  There was complete silence when we entered the hallowed premises of the Kensington Shoe Company. I thought it was because I was carrying my shoes, which I had retrieved from the stairway. Then I realized they were looking at Hank and that his face was covered with blood. A uniformed man ran into the office, holding my pocketbook out to me. I checked that nothing was missing: shield, wallet, keys, make-up kit, address book. I dug for a comb. They just looked at me, those immaculate girls, speaking wordlessly to each other but saying nothing to me.