Men In Blue

by W. E. B Griffin

  Maybe it was, but Sally hadn’t given it a real try. The minute she got back to Philadelphia, she’d changed doctors again, finding a new one who would prescribe whatever she had been taking in the first place that helped her cope. The real result of her five months in Menninger’s was that she was now on two kinds of pills, instead of just one.

  Now, probably, three kinds of pills. What she had been taking, plus a new bottle of tiny oblong blue ones provided by the doctors when she’d gone over the edge when he’d had to tell her what happened to Jerome.

  They would, the doctor said, help her cope. And the doctor added, it would probably be a good idea if Arthur Nelson took a couple of them before going to bed. It would help him sleep.

  No fucking way. He had no intention of turning himself into a zombie, walking around in a daze smiling at nothing. Not so long as there was liquor, specifically cognac. Booze might be bad for you, but all it left you with was a hangover in the morning. And he had read somewhere that cognac was different from say, scotch. They made scotch from grain, and cognac was made from wine. It was different chemically, and it understandably affected people differently than whiskey did.

  Arthur J. Nelson had come to believe that if he didn’t make a pig of himself, if he didn’t gulp it down, if he just sipped slowly at a glass of cognac, or put half a shot in his coffee, it was possible to reach a sort of equilibrium. The right amount of cognac in his system served to deaden the pain, to keep him from painful thought, but not to make him drunk. He could still think clearly, was still very much aware of what was going on. The only thing he had to do, he believed, was exercise the necessary willpower, and resist the temptation to pour another glass before it was really safe to do so. And there was no question in his mind that he had, in the last twenty-four hours, been doing just that. A lesser man would have broken down and wept, or gotten falling-down drunk, or both, and he had done neither.

  When Staff Inspector Peter Wohl had telephoned, Arthur J. Nelson had been a third of the way through a bottle of Hennessey V.S.O.P., one delicate sip at a time, except of course for the couple of hookers he had splashed into his coffee.

  And he took a pretty good sip, draining the snifter, when he hung up after talking to Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, that miserable arrogant sonofabitch.

  He poured the snifter a third full, and then, carrying it with him, walked upstairs from his den to his bedroom on the second floor. He quietly opened the door and walked in.

  Sally was in the bed, flat on her back, asleep. She looked, he thought, old and tired and pale. Although he hated what the fucking pills had done to her, he was glad, for her sake, that she had them now. And then she snored. It was amazing, he thought, how noisily she snored. It sounded as if she were a 250-pound man, and he supposed she didn’t weigh 100 pounds, if that much.

  He remembered the first time he had seen her naked, held her naked in his arms. She had been so small and delicate he had been afraid that he was going to break her. And he remembered when she was large with Jerome. That had been almost impossible to believe, even looking right at it.

  A tear ran down his cheek, and he brushed at it, forgetting that that hand held the snifter. He spilled a couple of drops on his shirt, and swore, loud enough for it to get through to Sally, who sort of groaned.

  He held himself motionless for a moment, until her regular, slow, heavy breathing pattern returned. Then he left the room as carefully and quietly as he entered it.

  He stood at the top of the stairs. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten. The house had been full of people, and although Mrs. Dawberg, the housekeeper, had seen to it that there had been a large buffet of cold cuts, he just hadn’t gotten around to eating.

  And now all the help was in bed, and he hated to get them out of bed in any case; and especially now, when they would need all the rest they could get to get ready for tomorrow, when the house, all day, would be like goddamn Suburban Station at half past five.

  He walked down the wide staircase, wondering if he really wanted to go into the kitchen and fix himself an egg sandwich or something. He went back in his den and drained what was left in the snifter after he—Jesus, what a dumb thing to do!!!—had spilled it on his shirt, and then poured a little more in.

  To hell with going in the kitchen, he decided. What I’ll do is just get in a car and go find a fast-food joint.

  The idea had a sudden appeal. He realized that what he really wanted was junk food. Hamburgers and french fries. Not what they served these days in McDonald’s or Burger King, but the little tiny ones they used to sell for a dime, the kind they sort of steamed on the grill over chopped onions. In those white tile buildings with no booths, just round-seat stools by a counter, where everything was stainless steel. He could practically smell the damned things.

  He had a little trouble finding where they kept the keys to the cars. He supposed they took them from the ignition last thing when they locked up for the night. He finally found a rack of keys in a little cupboard in the pantry off the garage. They were all in little numbered leather cases, except the key to the Rolls, which had a Rolls insignia on it.

  Which was which?

  He didn’t want to take the Rolls. He was going to go to a hamburger joint and sit on a round stool and eat cheap little hamburgers and french fries, and you don’t take a Rolls-Royce to do that.

  He took one key and worked his way through a Cadillac coupe and a Buick station wagon before it worked in the ignition switch of an Oldsmobile sedan he didn’t remember ever having seen before. He remembered vaguely that Sally had said something about having to get Mrs. Dawberg a new car, and that he’d told her to go ahead and do it.

  He thought he remembered a White Palace or a Crystal Palace or whatever the hell they called those joints about a mile away, but when he got there, there was a Sunoco gas station, so he drove on. When he stopped at a red light, he decided it had been some time since he’d last had a little sip, and pulled the cork from the Hennessey bottle and took a little nip.

  Thirty minutes later, not having found what he wanted, he decided to hell with it. What he would do was go by the Ledger. It wouldn’t be a cheap little White Palace hamburger, but the cafeteria operated twenty-four hours a day, and he could at least get a hamburger, or something else. And it was always a good idea to drop in unannounced on the city room. Keep them on their toes.

  He drove to the back of the building and pulled the nose of the Oldsmobile in against a loading dock, and took another little sip. He could hardly walk into the city room carrying a bottle of cognac, and there was no telling how long he would be in there.

  There was a tap on his window, and he looked out and saw a security officer frowning at him. With some difficulty, Arthur J. Nelson managed to find the window switch and lower the window.

  “Hey, buddy,” the security officer said, “you can’t park there.”

  “Let me tell you something, buddy,” Arthur J. Nelson said. “I own this goddamned newspaper and I can park any goddamned place I please!”

  The security officer’s eyes widened, and then there was recognition.

  “Sorry, Mr. Nelson, I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Goddamned right,” Arthur Nelson said, and got out of the car. “Keep up the good work!” he called after the retreating security officer.

  He entered the building and walked down the tile-lined corridor to the elevator bank. Windows opened on the presses in the basement. They were still, although he saw pressmen standing around. He glanced at his watch.

  It was not quite one A.M. The first (One Star) edition started rolling at two-fifteen. Christ alone knew what it was costing him to have all those pressmen standing around for an hour or more with their fingers up their asses at $19.50 an hour. He’d have to look into that. Goddamned unions would bankrupt you if you didn’t keep your eye on them.

  He got in the elevator and rode it up to the fifth, editorial, floor, and went into the city room.

  He felt eyes on him as he walked ac
ross the room to the city desk.

  Well, why the hell not? I don’t come in here at this time nearly often enough.

  There were half a dozen men and two women at the city desk. The city editor got to his feet when he saw him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Nelson,” he said. “How are you, sir?”

  “How the hell do you think I am?” Nelson snapped.

  “I’d like to offer my condolences, sir,” the city editor said.

  “Very kind of you,” Arthur Nelson said, automatically, and then he remembered that goddamned cop, whatsisname, Wohl.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Nelson said. “The cops have found my son’s car. It was stolen from the garage at his apartment when ... it was stolen from his apartment.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You haven’t heard about it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, I’m telling you,” Nelson said. “And they’re giving me the goddamned runaround. Somewhere in Jersey is where they found it. Some Jersey state trooper found it, but he wouldn’t tell me where.”

  “I’m sure we could find out, sir,” the city editor said. “If that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “Goddamn right,” Nelson said. “Get somebody on it. It’s news, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, sir, of course it is. I’ll get right on it.”

  “I think that would be a good idea,” Nelson said.

  “I was about to go to Composing, Mr. Nelson,” the city editor said. “We’re just about pasted up. Would you like to go with me?”

  “Why not?” Nelson said. “Have you got somebody around here you could send to the cafeteria for me?”

  “What would you like?”

  “I’d like a hamburger and french fries,” Nelson said. “Hamburger with onions. Fried, not raw. And a cup of black coffee.”

  “Coming right up,” the city editor said.

  Nelson walked across the city room to Composing. The Ledger had, the year before, gone to a cold-type process, replacing the Linotype system. The upcoming One Star edition was spread out on slanting boards, in “camera-ready” form. Here and there, compositors were pasting up. ‘

  Nelson went to the front page. The lead story, under the headline “Man Sought In Police Murder Killed Eluding Capture” caught his eye, and he read it with interest.

  If all the goddamned cops in the goddamned city hadn’t all been looking for that guy, they probably could have caught the bastards who killed my Jerome. They don’t give a shit about me, or any other ordinary citizen, but when one of their own gets it, that’s a horse of a different color. That sonofabitch Wohl wouldn’t ‘t even tell me where Jerome ‘s car was found.

  The city editor appeared.

  “Now that the cops have found that pathetic sonofabitch,” Arthur J. Nelson said, “maybe, just maybe, they’ll have time to look for the murderer of my son.”

  “Yes, sir,” the city editor said, uncomfortably. “Mr. Nelson, I think you better have a look at this.”

  He thrust the Early Bird edition of the Bulletin at him.

  “What’s this?” Nelson said. And then his eye fell on the headline, “Police Seek ‘Gay’ Black Lover In Nelson Murder” and the story below it by Michael J. O’Hara.

  “I thought O’Hara worked for us,” Arthur J. Nelson said, very calmly.

  “We had to let him go about eighteen months ago,” the city editor said.

  “Oh?” Arthur J. Nelson asked.

  “Yes, sir. He had a bottle problem,” the city editor said.

  “And a nice sense of revenge, wouldn’t you say?” Nelson said. He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and walked down the line of paste-ups until he found the editorial page.

  He pointed to it. “Hold this,” he said. “There will be a new editorial.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m not going to let the goddamned cops get away with this,” Arthur J. Nelson said. “Not on your goddamned life.”

  ****

  Louise Dutton slipped out of her robe, draped it over the water closet, and then slid open the glass door to her shower stall. She giggled at what she saw.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

  Peter Wohl, who had been shaving with Louise’s pink, long-handled ladies’ razor, heard her voice, but not what she had said, and opened his eyes and looked at her.

  “What?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shaving.”

  “In the shower? With your eyes closed?”

  “Why not?”

  “You look ridiculous doing that,” she said.

  “On the other hand,” he said, leering at her nakedness, “you look great. Why don’t you step into my office and we can fool around a little?”

  “There’s not room for the both of us in there,” she said.

  “That would depend on how close we stood,” he said.

  “Hurry up, Peter,” she said, and closed the door.

  She wiped the condensation from the mirror and bent forward to examine her face closely. She looked into the reflection of her eyes. She felt a sense of sadness, and wondered why.

  Peter came out of the shower.

  “I left it running,” he said, as he reached for a towel.

  Louise gave in to the impulse and wrapped her arms around him, resting her face on his back.

  “The offer to fool around is still open,” Peter said.

  “What’s this?” she asked, tracing what looked like a dimple on his back.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “What is it, Peter?” she demanded.

  “It’s what they call an entrance wound,” he said.

  “You were shot?” she asked, letting him go, and then turning him around so she could look into his face.

  “Years ago,” he said.

  “You’re not old enough for it to be ‘years ago,’ “ she said. “Tell me!”

  “Not much to tell,” he said. “I was working the Ninth District as a patrolman, and a lady called the cops and said her husband was drunk and violent and beating her and the kids up; and when I got there, he was, so I put the cuffs on him, and as I was putting him in the backseat of the car, she shot me.”

  “Why?”

  “She wanted the cops to make her husband stop beating up on her,” Peter said, “but arresting the love of her life and father of her children was something else.”

  “She could have killed you,” Louise said.

  “I think that’s what she had in mind,” Peter said.

  “Did you shoot her?” Louise asked.

  “I don’t even remember getting shot ... I remember what felt like somebody whacking me with a baseball bat, and the next thing I know, I’m being wheeled into a hospital emergency room.”

  “How long were you in the hospital?”

  “About two weeks.”

  “But you’re all right? I mean, there was no permanent damage?”

  “All the important parts are working just fine,” Peter said. He moved his midsection six inches closer to Louise to demonstrate. “See?”

  “Why, you dirty old man, you!” Louise said, and turned and went into the shower.

  When she came out of the shower, she could smell both frying bacon and coffee, and smiled.

  Peter Wohl, she thought, the compleat lover, as skilled in the kitchen as the bedroom.

  Then she went into her bedroom, and saw that he had left his uniform tunic, and his uniform cap, and his gun, on the bed.

  She walked to the bed and picked up the hat first and looked at it, and the insignia on it, and then laid it down again. Then she leaned on the bed and examined the badge pinned to the uniform tunic. And finally, she looked at the gun.

  It was in a shoulder holster, of leather and stretch elastic that showed signs of much use. The elastic was wrinkled, and the leather sweat-stained and creased. She tugged the pistol loose and held it up to the level of her face by holding the grip between her thumb and index finger.

&nbs
p; It was not a new pistol. The finish had been worn through to the white metal beneath at the muzzle and at the front of the cylinder. The little diamonds of the checkering on the grips were worn smooth. She sniffed it, and smelled the oil.

  It’s a tool, she thought, like a carpenter’s hammer, or a mechanic’s wrench. It’s the tool he carries to work. The difference is that the function of his tool is to shoot people, not drive nails or fix engines.

  She put the pistol back into the holster, and then wiped her hands on the sheet.

  Then she got dressed.

  He had made bacon and eggs. He was mopping the remaining yolk from his plate with an English muffin; her eggs and bacon were waiting for her.

  “Your eggs are probably cold,” Peter said.

  “I had to take a shower,” she said, a shade snappishly.

  “Not for me you didn’t,” he said. “You smelled great to me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she snapped, and this time the snappishness registered.

  “Coffee?” he asked, a little coldly.

  “Please,” she said.

  He went to the stove and returned with a pot.

  “Did you ever kill anyone, Peter?”

  His eyebrows went up.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Lovely subject for breakfast conversation.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think otherwise he would have shot me,” Peter said. “Lovely weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?”

  “An interesting scenario popped into my mind in the bedroom,” Louise said.

  “That happens to me all the time,” he said. “You really thought of something we haven’t done?”

  He smiled, and she knew he was pleased that he thought she had changed the subject, but she knew she couldn’t stop now.

  “There I am, sitting in my rocking chair, knitting little booties, in our little rose-covered cottage by the side of the road,” Louise said, “while our three adorable children . . . You get the picture.”