The Policewomen's Bureau

by Edward Conlon

  The telephone in the kitchen rang, but the door of Charlie’s bedroom was half-closed. Marie called out to her, “Should I get it, Charlie?”

  “No, just unplug it. I don’t want to talk to him.”

  Marie went into the kitchen and pulled the cord from the box. She’d thought Gino was already out of the doghouse. Had there been another spat since? She washed and dried the dishes and returned to the bedroom to hurry Charlie along. She was tempted to make the bed, but she resisted the urge. “Not taking any calls?”

  “Not from you-know-who.”

  “What’s the problem? I thought you patched things up.”

  “We did. And then yesterday, he called me by his wife’s name.”

  Marie wasn’t sure if she was being sisterly or coppish as she chose her words. “Well, I’m sorry. But you know, whenever you’re not talking to him, you’re stopping the clock. It’s going to be that much later, that much longer, until you don’t have to talk to him at all.”

  “And when do you suppose that great day will finally arrive?”

  “Soon. I’ll sit down with Paulie, push for him to make a move. A week, maybe two. We’ve got weeks of your diaries. Did you notice anything about when the deliveries happen?”

  “To be honest, I don’t pay attention. I just write down where and when, like you said.”

  “Well, Thursday seems to be the day for the big stuff. And when it doesn’t happen Thursday, it’s on Friday.”

  “Was yesterday Thursday?”

  “It was.”

  Charlie nodded. Her mouth tightened as she glared in the mirror. “We were in Brooklyn when he called me . . . Giaconda. That fat cow!”

  Marie tried to block out Paulie’s voice in her head, telling her that Charlie was just another stool pigeon, to be controlled and exploited. This was getting trickier, but Marie thought she could say something useful that was nonetheless true. “Giaconda is his wife?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Was he mad at you at the time?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Look, if he said her name when you were being intimate, it’s an insult. But if you were arguing about something—if you were driving him nuts, if he hated you, just for a second—and that was what came out of his mouth? That’s not so bad. You know what I mean?”

  Charlie laughed, and then her expression shifted to something like pity. “Thank you, sweetie. I wish you didn’t have so much practice, looking on the bright side of shitty situations. I go back and forth about missing Gino, when this is over. But I will miss you. Can we stay in touch? We really are friends, aren’t we?”

  Marie was sorry for both of them, but she managed to force a smile. “I think of us as friends, Charlie. And let’s talk about your plans, over lunch.”

  “You’re paying?”

  “The city is.”

  “Then let’s go somewhere nice. And I’m having champagne.”

  “I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”

  This was city business, and champagne for Charlie was a better investment than most of the two-bit buys the boys made, but Marie would never submit the receipt. She’d pay out of her own pocket, and maybe she’d have a few glasses herself. As they collected their purses and put on their coats, someone began to pound on the front door. Neither doubted who was outside. A rapid traffic of meaningful glances ensued. Him? “Yeah.” Really—“I know!”

  When the banging stopped, they heard Gino call, “Come on, Charlie! Let me in! I know you’re in there! Let me in!”

  Charlie rolled her eyes, and Marie shrugged, but their indifference was affected. Something of consequence was about to happen, they knew. Neither moved their feet, so the floorboards wouldn’t betray them. They barely whispered as they spoke. “Do you want me to answer, Marie?”

  “Is he gonna smack you around? If he is, let’s go out the fire escape.”

  “No, he’s sorry, I can tell. He’s gonna throw himself at my feet, swear how he loves me. He’ll cry like a baby and beg me to take him back. Doesn’t Sid do that?”

  Marie thought of the weeks of avoidance from Sid after the bad nights, the shopping sprees of compensatory clothes. The only tears shed were hers. She and Charlie were not as alike as she’d assumed. “Yeah.”

  “I’ll let him in. I’ll talk to him for five minutes, and then I’ll send him on his way. But don’t leave, okay? Promise me you won’t leave. I want to have lunch with you. You promise?”

  “I promise. But promise me, Charlie, not to fight. Settle him down. You’ll get him back, but good. Make it count. Next week, or the week after. Are you with me?”

  Charlie nodded and yelled at the door, “Relax already! You’re gonna get the cops here on us!”

  Marie wasn’t sure whether to disappear or to join Charlie at the door, in case Gino became violent. She had her gun in her purse, but she’d taken out bigger men than him without it. She decided to remain in the parlor, withdrawing ten or fifteen feet, so she’d be seen without appearing confrontational. When Charlie undid the lock, Gino pushed inside and began to yell, “You’re driving me crazy, you crazy bitch! I told you, I’m sorry! I love you, Charlie! How many times I gotta tell you? Are you crazy, you—”

  Gino never noticed Marie. He grabbed Charlie, kissing her face all over. And then he fell to his knees, clasping his arms around her waist. “You’re killing me, Charlie. You kill me, when you do this.”

  Charlie raised a hand to strike him. The fist clenched, unclenched, clenched again. She held it up for a time, as if struggling to bear the weight. As if she knew that she had the power to shatter him, but the blow would break them both. And then she lowered it, unsteadily, to muss his hair, stroke his cheek. Marie could barely stand. She wasn’t sure if what she’d seen was love, but it was more like it than anything she’d ever known. Charlie twisted Gino’s ear. “You hurt me, Gino.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Get up. Marie’s here.”

  Gino lifted his head from Charlie’s hips, peeking across the room, even as he held her. Though he remained in genuflection, his height made him seem less childish than his smile, which was that of a boy lost and found. “Hey, Marie!”

  “Hey, Gino.”

  “I gotta talk to Charlie for a couple of minutes. Do you mind?”

  As Gino stood, he began to playfully push Charlie toward the bedroom, pinching and patting her, still humble in his approach, but needy, and greedy, and grateful. Marie didn’t know who she wanted to shoot most. Should she start with herself? Charlie turned to her as she led Gino by the hand. “This is gonna be a very short talk, honey. Remember what you promised. Me and you, we’re going out for lunch. And the champagne’s on you.”

  They disappeared into the bedroom and the door slammed shut. Marie sat down on the couch. The door opened again for the dog to be let out. It barked in protest, and then it charged Marie’s feet until she picked it up and put it in her lap. A pretty little thing. Why hadn’t she ever asked its name? She needed to read something, to pass the time. Marie knocked over the magazines she had just stacked on the table back to the floor. It wasn’t her job to clean up here. She heard grunts and groans from inside the bedroom. Wasn’t there a radio she could turn on? Marie slid the dog off her lap and went in the kitchen to wash the dishes again. She really had just given them a casual rinse before. Now, she’d give them a scrubbing. Marie opened the tap to full flow and began to sing to herself as she worked. La donna è mobile, qual piuma al vento, muta d’accento e di pensiero.

  After the dishes were done again, and the pots and pans were pulled from the cabinets to be properly scoured, and the last rotten half-head of lettuce was dumped from the bottom drawer of the icebox, and the drawer was cleaned as well, Marie returned to the sitting room. She didn’t hear any boudoir festivity, which was a relief. When she heard the shower go on, she hoped that it was Gino, cleaning up. If it was Charlie, she didn’t have the patience to wait for another half-hour of makeup. And then she heard someone
else banging on the door.

  That was confusing. Had Gino been locked out somehow? No, she knew that it wasn’t Gino at the door. Marie knew she was falling into old, bad habits of believing something wasn’t true because she wished it wasn’t so. The oak door wasn’t thick enough to stifle the war cry of a wronged wife, baying for blood. “Open the door, you prick! I know you’re in there! I’ll kill you both!”

  It occurred to Marie that, while Mrs. Gino—Giaconda, wasn’t it?—was aware of a rival, she might not know her face, and that was one more reason, aside from the obvious ones, why Marie shouldn’t be the party to receive the uninvited guest. Marie went to the bedroom door and pounded it with her fist. When there wasn’t an immediate response, she turned around and began to kick it with her heel. Gino opened the door, just a crack. “What is it?”

  “Company.”

  “What?”

  “It isn’t the goddam milkman!”

  Gino smiled, and he opened the door. He was naked, which shouldn’t have been as surprising to Marie as it was at the time. “I seem to be a popular guy today.”

  Marie didn’t care about what a smart cop might do, how Paulie would have called this play. This was not a circumstance that she was prepared to address. Did Giaconda understand that Marie wasn’t Charlie? That Marie was also a wife, at least as dutiful in her vows, perhaps even more wronged than Giaconda? No, that might not be apparent, at first glance. Marie ran to hide behind one of the club chairs. Gino didn’t put on shorts or a bathrobe. Marie was ashamed to see his nakedness, but she had to keep watching. It wasn’t his physique that held her eye, but the confidence in his body. He walked to the door and threw it open, shouting, “What the hell are you doing here? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Giaconda said nothing, at first. Marie was embarrassed by her own first reaction: She really is as fat as Charlie said. And then Giaconda found her voice: “You bastard! You stupid cafone! How could you embarrass me like this, in front of everybody! Where is she, your bitch! Let me see her, with my own eyes, and let me tell her—”

  Giaconda tried to charge past Gino, but he blocked her. He slapped her, and she slapped him back. He laughed as she screamed. There was a flurry of uselessly flapping hands before he shoved her away. “Get the hell out of here!”

  Giaconda lunged forward again, but she’d lost heart. “Just let me see her, just let me in. Let me see the putan’ who’s taking my family from me, who makes my children grow up without a father—”

  Gino struck her again—quickly, twice, in the face—and then shouted, “Who’s watching my kids? Did you leave those kids alone? What kind of woman are you, who would leave little babies alone? You call yourself a mother? If anything happens to those kids, I swear I’ll kill you! Who’s watching them?”

  He kept on slapping her, and the she started to cry. “I’m sorry, Gino, I shouldna left ’em, I’m sorry—”

  Giaconda tried to embrace her husband, but he shoved her away. She fell to her knees, as Gino had done, but he refused to forgive her as he’d just been forgiven. He pulled her up by her hair and threw her against the wall. “You disgust me. Go home and take care of my children. If anything happens to them, it’s on you. You better say a prayer, not a hair on their heads is out of place. I’ll kill you if something happens to them. You should die of shame, as it is.”

  “I’m sorry, Gino, I’m so sorry—”

  “Get the hell out of here. I’ll deal with you later. Go home.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  Gino slammed the door. When he turned and walked toward Marie, who was still crouching behind the chair, she looked down at the floor. She could hear his footsteps, and then she could smell his sweat as he knelt down to set a beckoning hand on her shoulder. He stroked her gently, back and forth. “Come on up, honey. I’m sorry you had to see that. Are you okay?”

  His hand moved through her hair.

  “I’m okay. I have to go.”

  “You want to come lie down with me and Charlie? Just for a little while?”

  Marie reached for her purse, touching the outline of her gun. She wanted to shoot him. She couldn’t, could she? She wanted to run after Giaconda, and to keep on running. The two of them, they could run away together. And then she heard Charlie screech from the bedroom doorway, “It’s about goddam time, Gino! Tell that fat bitch off!”

  Ten dead seconds passed before Charlie laughed again. “Not you, Marie! I didn’t mean you. If I had your body . . .”

  Marie hadn’t thought that Charlie was talking about her. Even if she had, her feelings wouldn’t have been hurt. The only aspect of her appearance that concerned her was her hair, which had the hand of a naked man in it. Nothing Charlie could have ever said hurt as much as the fact that she said nothing, for nearly forever, before she shouted, pretending to be shocked, “Gino, leave her alone! What kind of animal are you? Get the hell over here, come back to bed! Marie, let’s have lunch tomorrow, honey. Gino!”

  Gino pinched Marie’s ear, as Charlie had pinched his, and he walked away. The bedroom door closed, and Marie threw up. There wasn’t much in her stomach, but it made an ugly, sticky stain on the carpet. She didn’t want to come back here, ever again, but she supposed that she’d have to, at some point. She’d clean it up then.

  AS IT HAPPENED, Marie visited one more time. Charlie had put off meeting for days, complaining of the flu, headache, cramps. When Marie dropped by with homemade soup, Charlie said she hadn’t seen Gino since the last time the three of them were together. Marie didn’t think Charlie looked ill, but she was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt until she noticed that the house was spotless. Marie apologized for the intrusion and said she’d be on her way after she put the soup in the refrigerator. When she did, she saw soda and beer, cold cuts, cheeses, a tray of lasagna. As Marie left, Charlie withdrew to the bedroom, thanking her for the soup, waving her away without a handshake or an embrace.

  “Don’t come close. Believe me, you don’t want to catch what I have.”

  Marie stared at Charlie, hoping that there would be some recognition of what had happened between them, what was happening now. Nothing needed to be said, as long as there was some small sign that they knew it was over, that they respected each other enough not to lie. With that one little gesture, it would be so much easier for Marie to look back on all of this as . . . what? Maybe just as a story that wasn’t so sad. But Charlie looked down and away. Marie left. She didn’t think that what Charlie had was catching, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  The show was over: Radio Free Charlie will be concluding its final broadcast this evening . . . Charlie had abandoned the case, the cause, but to call her a traitor wasn’t quite true, or fair. She reminded Marie of the POWs paraded before cameras in North Korea, stammering scripted denunciations of Uncle Sam. Regardless, she was lost forever behind enemy lines. Marie left a message with the switchboard for Paulie, telling him that she needed to see him, right away, and he was waiting for her in front of the First Precinct when she arrived. They walked around to the back of the building as a sour, icy wind washed over them from the river. She said that Gino had moved in with Charlie, and that they could no longer rely on her. Paulie said that he’d heard.

  All in all, he said, it had worked out much better than anyone could have expected. “With women like that? You look at who they’re with, it tells you who they are. They think they can change, but they never do. The habit they have, being with the wrong guy? The way they fool themselves, they’d be better off on heroin.”

  The remark pierced Marie, and she shivered, grateful that the river wind made it seem as if she’d reacted to the cruelty of the elements instead of the opinion.

  Paulie spat in the street. “These snitches, they gotta know, if they cross us, they’re finished.”

  That brought Marie back to the matter at hand. “How do you mean, finished? She’s finished with me, with us, right? That’s all you mean, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t under
stand, Marie. That’s what you came here to tell me, isn’t it? You caught her in a lie, and you want to cut her loose. Me, I’d do the same thing. But just because you’re done with her, doesn’t mean we are. We didn’t really have anything on her when she started cooperating. Now, we got some real leverage. She don’t decide when the music stops.”

  Marie wasn’t cold any more. When Paulie said “we,” she knew she wasn’t included. She wasn’t even a helper anymore, big or little. Though she realized her news about Gino wasn’t news to Paulie, she couldn’t berate him for holding back on her—again—until she understood what he meant by leverage, and how it might be applied. It sounded more like blackmail. “What are you telling me, Paulie? What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, we sit down with her, remind her who her friends are. Tell her that she can’t just back out whenever she feels like it. Tell her that if Gino found out—”

  “Paulie! You wouldn’t! That would be a death sentence, and you know it!”

  Paulie shrugged. “She’ll know it, too. You gotta show ’em who’s in control. Sets a bad example if you don’t.”

  “Who’s she gonna tell? Why would she ever say anything to anybody? Ex-snitches aren’t like ex-drunks, they don’t have meetings in church basements.”

  “I can’t say what’s gonna happen, Marie, but I do know we won’t protect her. She moves packages with Gino, and we’re gonna lock him up, sooner or later. If she gets collared with him, she gets collared. No special treatment.”