Law and Order

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  Brian stood for a while, heard the train pull in and then depart. He rubbed his hand across his chin over the rough stubble. His mouth tasted dirty and stale and sour. Watching Francis Kelly vomit buckets of soapy water hadn’t done his stomach much good.

  But that wasn’t what was bothering him.

  Brian dug his hands into his trouser pockets and walked slowly along Jerome Avenue with his head bent down. An odd pattern of shadowy tracks and pillars spilled along the gutter from the overhead el. For one odd fleeting moment, Brian stood absolutely still. He had the sensation of being lost, of being somewhere he had never been before without any idea of how he had come to be there.

  He raised his face and tried to fight away the aching dizziness of too much whiskey and too much beer, both unaccustomed. He didn’t particularly like drinking and generally kept to his modest limit.

  He took a few deep breaths and let himself fill with it: They screwed him.

  So they screwed him, so what?

  His family had all been excited and impressed by all the publicity; his mother added his new clippings to the scrapbook filled with clippings about his father. Everyone had made a fuss over the collar; it was a damn good collar. And the captain had told him it was all set: a gold shield.

  Then the captain was absolutely blank-faced. Told him he was going to get a Class A commendation, and the bastard had the nerve to congratulate him. Period. End of discussion, O’Malley.

  Brian dug his feet at the cobbled section of Burnside Avenue, where the trolley tracks were sunk, and walked along, eyes on the shiny track. Sonuvabitching captain. And sonuvabitching Department. The whole goddamn Department was lousy. Someday. Someday he’d show them all. Screw them. Screw all of them.

  The thing that rankled, that burned and throbbed, was the mystery of it all. Who the hell had screwed him and why?

  The captain handed him the heavy package and he had a peculiar look on his thin face. Patrolmen rarely had anything to do with captains and it seemed a good rule to Brian. There were enough sergeants and lieutenants between to keep the captain a myth: the boss who was always teed off about something and to whom, in line, everyone was ultimately responsible.

  When Captain Leary sent for him, there were two sergeants and one lieutenant who felt somehow offended. It certainly wasn’t the captain who would be called upon to soothe their ruffled feathers. Brian felt the heft of the package and it did indeed seem heavy enough to contain two target pistols.

  “Now I want you to get up to that address with them right away. It’s been cleared with your sergeant and the trip up and back will just about take care of the rest of your tour.”

  What Brian wanted to ask was what the hell a patrolman in the New York City Police Department was doing acting as delivery boy, assigned to transport two target pistols which Captain Leary had obtained for Mr. Crowley up to Riverdale. He kept quiet for a moment, then under the slightly quizzical gaze of Captain Leary, he asked, “Captain, uh...who is Mr. Crowley?”

  Captain Leary carefully nibbled on the cuticle of his right thumb, picked the tiny piece of skin from the tip of his tongue, studied it, flicked it away before he answered.

  “Mr. Crowley is a very good man to have as a friend,” he said softly. “And a very bad man to have as an enemy.”

  The house was even more impressive by daylight. What had been shadow now had substance. It was a tremendous handsome structure, with stained-glass windows set in high-rising splendor more suitable for a cathedral than a private residence. As he walked along the broad brick pavement, he studied the house so intently that he didn’t see Crowley’s daughter until he stepped on her hand and she cried out.

  As he bent to comfort her, she started to rise and they crashed into each other, head to head. In an agony of confusion, Mary Ellen Crowley half knelt and seemed to wait for instruction.

  “Let me help you up,” Brian said. Her hand in his was cold. “I didn’t see you down there. Did I hurt you?”

  She shook her head, pushed a lock of pale hair from her cheek. “I was trimming the grass along the edge of the walk. It has to be done by hand.” She held the heavy scissors toward him as though in affirmation of the words.

  “I was so busy looking at your house, I didn’t see you. It’s a great house.”

  Mary Ellen examined the house briefly and shrugged. “I guess. Does Daddy know you’re here?”

  Brian caught the slightly worried, uncertain tone, remembered the night she fled, all pink softness, up the broad stairs.

  She didn’t look like a storybook princess now. She looked real, and reality gave her a fragile, somewhat pale and puzzling expectancy. It was the first good look Brian had had of Mary Ellen Crowley and he studied her intently.

  She was small-boned and delicate, with a long, sloping waist and sharp, narrow hipbones which jutted against the dark-green shorts she wore for gardening. Her firm neat breasts pressed against the starched white school blouse and she fingered the top button nervously, then touched again at the heavy pale hair which had slipped from the band of green ribbon. Her face, heart-shaped, was slightly flushed but the natural pale translucency of fine skin was evident. Her brows were dark in contrast to her light hair and framed her deep-blue, slightly slanted eyes, which were fringed with thick, long, upswept lashes.

  Self-conscious, she faltered under his open appraisal, wiped her damp upper lip with a crumpled handkerchief which she then tucked into the waistband of her shorts.

  She gestured vaguely toward the house but faced him. “Does...is Daddy expecting you?”

  He nodded, then reached out toward her. “You’ve got a smudge on your chin.” She reached up instinctively and Brian caught her wrist. “Hey, watch it, Mary Ellen, you’ll cut yourself.” The scissors nearly made contact with her face.

  Startled by his touch, her mouth opened, then she blinked and regarded the scissors. “Oh. Oh, yes.” She shifted the shears to her left hand. When she bit on her lower lip, a deep dimple appeared in one cheek. “I’m really a mess, aren’t I?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” It was a softly appraising remark and she accepted it without comment.

  “How’s your boy friend?” Brian asked abruptly.

  There was a slight flare of color and a show of spirit. “I told you he wasn’t my boy friend.”

  “That’s right, you did.” Brian pushed his hat off his forehead, rubbed a finger along the pressure line from the hatband, then readjusted it. “But I bet you do have a boy friend. In fact, I’d bet you have a lot of boy friends.”

  Guilelessly, she said, “Oh, but they’re just ‘boys.’” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “The sons of my father’s friends.”

  Unexpectedly, he said, “I’m not the son of your father’s friend.”

  Stillness surrounded them, an intimacy created by the oddly intense meaning of his words. Mary Ellen’s eyes sought the shears; her fingers investigated the sharp points, the cutting edge. She glanced up at Brian quickly, a small smile ready at the corners of her mouth to prove she understood his words were meant in fun, but there was no answering smile.

  “How old are you, Mary Ellen?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “You don’t look it, you look younger.”

  “Oh, no, really,” she assured him earnestly. “In fact, I’m nearly eighteen and a half.”

  “I’m twenty-two,” he said, and again it seemed a great intimacy and she reacted with some confusion. Brian reached over and took the shears from her and ran his fingertips lightly over the blades. “You should be careful with these things. Don’t want to cut yourself.”

  There was a sudden loud banging: wooden stick on glass window. The old man was summoning him to the house.

  Mary Ellen turned quickly. The color left her face. “Daddy’s calling for you. You’d better go. He might know how long you’ve been standing here.”

  Brian moved a hand casually toward the house and returned the shears to her. He readjusted his hat again, hefted the
weight of his package and started for the house. He stopped and turned. She was kneeling, snipping tentatively at the grass. “Will Saturday night be okay? I mean, you haven’t got anything on for this Saturday night that you can’t get out of, have you? You see, I only get Saturdays once in a while. The next one won’t come up for a month.”

  The banging at the window started again. Mary Ellen glanced past Brian, then back again. “Saturday? Me?”

  Brian nodded. “Yeah. With me. You like to go roller skating? I got some passes for the rink on Fordham Road.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and said, as though it was the easiest thing in the world, “Don’t worry, I’ll clear it with your old man. Okay with you?”

  She looked down, nodded, snipped at the grass and cut her finger but held it hidden within the palm of her hand.

  “I’ll call for you at about seven, okay?”

  There was a hard, shattering, crashing sound, followed by the harsh voice shrieking through the broken window, “Goddamn it, O’Malley, if you’ve come to see me, don’t be all day about it!”

  Mr. Crowley thumped himself around, thrust his head forward, squinted his eyes as though to test against an impostor. Finally, he nodded abruptly.

  “Yes, yes. So it is. Yes.” He stood absolutely still for a moment and the only sound was the soft tinkling of stained glass being brushed carefully into a dustpan by Mrs. Crowley. He shouted over his shoulder without looking at his wife, “For Christ’s sake, aren’t you finished with that yet, goddamn it?”

  There was a soft flurry of quick brushing sounds as she hurried, then Mrs. Crowley rose from her knees and hushed apologetic words were aimed nowhere in particular. She left quickly and, with her departure, might never have even been present.

  “Well, well, now, you’ve brought that package for me, have you?”

  Brian extended the package but Crowley kept both hands on his stick and with a jerk of his head indicated where the package was to be placed. Brian hesitated for a moment, then moved carefully across the room and put the package on the huge leather-topped desk. He turned and watched Crowley struggle into his chair; he used more gestures and motions than seemed absolutely necessary, as though he enjoyed putting on a show for whatever purposes.

  “Tell me something, O’Malley,” the old man’s voice crackled and the glittering eyes sought Brian’s in a calculating, sidelong stare, “what the hell is it you find to talk about with her?”

  For a moment, a split second, Brian drew a blank but the jerk of Crowley’s head toward the broken window recalled Mary Ellen, the golden daughter, totally unmatched to either the whispering mother or the appalling father. It was a question asked with candor and apparent curiosity and it was unexpected and threw Brian off balance.

  He debated a quick, smart answer, some fast, fresh wisecrack, but some sense of caution stopped the words in his mouth. Such an answer wouldn’t be honest and the question had been.

  “She’s a very lovely girl, Mr. Crowley,” he informed Mary Ellen’s father.

  Crowley raised his bone of a hand, a long index finger tapped lightly on the broad expanse of tight-skinned forehead. “Not too much up here, I don’t think,” he said confidingly.

  Brian was surprised by the open confidentiality. “She’ll do, Mr. Crowley,” he said protectively.

  Crowley regarded him for a moment, then said, “Ah, well, we’ll see. We’ll see. Well then, now, it seems to me that I’ve been reading something about you in the newspapers, eh? Is that right, eh?”

  He indicated with a jerky wave of his arm that Brian was to be seated. The chair was several inches lower than Crowley’s and the old man stared down at him. There was a slow, slashing exposure of white teeth, a wolflike grin cracked his face and Crowley nodded briskly.

  “Yes, I read about your fine job in catching the murderin’ bastards of the poor old man. Over a hundred was he, or thereabouts? What the hell, an old son of a gun and a damn, damn shame, yes.”

  Brian saw the knowing look, the easy, grinning triumph on Crowley’s face. He wanted to leap from the chair and smash the grin right off his face. He grasped the wooden arms of the chair and leaned forward.

  “It was you,” he said softly. “It was you who shafted me!”

  Crowley’s smile stretched, then his lips sprang together and his teeth disappeared. “Well now, ‘shafted’ is your word, not mine.” He struggled and fussed around with the walking stick, pulled himself to his feet and stood over Brian. “And how do you suppose,” he asked in an innocent, wondering voice, “however in this whole wide world do you suppose that an old cripple like me could shaft a cute little bastard like you, O’Malley? Now why would I want to do a thing like that? Huh? Did you consider that, lad? Motivation. Certainly an important word for a police officer to consider.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Crowley. I’m listening.”

  Crowley peered down at him and nodded briskly, as though he was pleased, as though some previous judgment had just been confirmed. “Ah, I like a lad willing to listen and willing to learn. There are all kinds of lessons to be learned in this world, O’Malley. Yes, indeed.”

  Brian released the pressure in his hands, flexed his fingers and leaned back. He watched with an odd mixture of anger, curiosity and fascination.

  “For instance, what, Mr. Crowley?”

  The old man held a bony finger in the air, then pointed it at Brian. “What would you say is the symbol of power in this room, lad? The most absolute symbol of power? Ah, you’re patting the gun at your hip, eh? Or perhaps the blackjack you carry in your hip pocket? Could knock a man senseless and the gun could shoot him dead. Well, look around.” Slowly, in a shuffling gait, he turned a full circle, his arm thrust out into space as he surveyed the room. “In this vast room, here, without my having to leave this room at all, is the more powerful weapon. There. There!” He pointed a gnarled index finger at the black telephone on the desk, hobbled across the room and let his hand fall caressingly. The other hand idly picked out numbers and spun at random.

  “Any strange collection of spins, any particular combination of letters and numbers, and through the magic of modern science, why God love us, but anyone’s voice at all comes right into my ear and my voice travels the same magical route and ends directly in that other person’s ear. Now wouldn’t you call that a powerful, magic weapon?”

  “I guess it depends on who’s at one end and who’s at the other,” Brian said carefully.

  “I guess you’re right,” Crowley said in a different voice. There was no longer a bantering tone. The tension which emanated from the old man could be playful and stimulating or could turn vicious and mean. The meanness was not the loud, bellowing, bullying display that Crowley had put on previously. It was a cold, sharp, controlled revealing of what lay, ultimately, at the center of him. It was a careful warning rather than a threat.

  “Now, when I am at the end of this instrument and when the Police Commissioner is at the other end, this instrument becomes the weapon which can make or break a man, if you understand me.”

  Brian stood up, licked his lips, sucked in his breath and leaned over the man beneath him. “You’re a real mean sonuvabitch, aren’t you, Mr. Crowley?”

  “I can be, if I set my mind to it.” Suddenly, the smile cracked his face again and he nodded brusquely, then pointed to the chair. “Ah, sit down, sit down. You’ve not finished with the lesson of the day. For there’s more to it than you seem to understand.”

  Patrick Crowley preferred to look down at someone. Aside from any symbolic position of power, it was physically more comfortable for his somewhat twisted neck. He caught the tough, wary expression, the slightly amused, puzzled, angry but curious reaction on the young man’s face and he nodded. He hadn’t underestimated O’Malley; the little bastard was cute and sharp and tough and he liked him.

  “Now someone might think me a man to take offense at a fresh-mouthed young guy who gives me a bit of his lip, lad, but that’s not the case. Oh, no, not with Pat Crowley
it’s not.” He shifted, arranged himself so that the stick was aligned to hold most of the weight of his long, lanky body. His hands moved, one over the other, on the knob of the stick. “I’ve never yet in my entire life run into a third-grade detective who was worth a damn. It’s a bad thing for a bright young lad to get caught up in the Detective Division.”

  Brian’s mouth opened; he started to say something but couldn’t match the words to his confused thoughts. Instead, he made a sound, a laugh, an incredulous gasp, and shook his head.

  “Ah, it’s not the place for a man capable of better things. See, once they get you in the detectives, it’s push and pull, scheme and plan, to get second grade and then the whole damn routine all over again to finally make first, and damn few do make first, and then it’s the rest of your life to hold on to what you got” His tone was warm and friendly and confiding, as though they’d known each other a lifetime.

  Finally, Brian found words. “You trying to tell me, Mr. Crowley, that...that you were doing me a favor?”

  Crowley regarded him for a long moment, then the wolf grin split his face and his head bobbed in a sidewise motion of assent. “Ah, see now, how things can turn about and change just by the mere considering of a different explanation than that which first occurred? Isn’t it interesting though?”

  Impulsively, Brian said, “Well, Mr. Crowley, with you doing me favors, I won’t need to worry about any enemies.”

  There was a deep, rumbling, gagging sound in Crowley’s chest and it was several seconds before it worked its way up to his throat and finally sputtered out of his split lips. The sound turned Crowley’s face purple. Brian was no less alarmed than the first time he’d seen Crowley laugh, but at least this time he knew what it was. The laughter struggled against Crowley’s body for a few seconds, then subsided into a rasping hoarseness.

  “Well, ah, well, there, now, easy does it, eh?” Crowley folded himself into his chair, adjusted his stick, rubbed his nose vigorously and his face froze at the interruption as his daughter tapped lightly on the open door. “Eh? Eh, what the hell do you want?”