“Sorry, Detective! I coulda sworn I stopped a kidnapping . . .”
The three of them stood there for a moment. The young patrolman had a look of frozen confusion, and Marie guessed she wore one as well. He prodded Shep with the toe of his shoe, but he didn’t respond. Now that Marie knew Shep hadn’t been shanked, she supposed he’d fainted, mistaking the crack of the club for the bullet he thought she was saving for him. She regarded the prone form with more pity, maybe, than was warranted. Shep, at least, had no doubts that she was a cop.
“I didn’t even lay a finger on him,” the patrolman said, looking sky-ward in bafflement. “Maybe something dropped from a plane? A Russian Sputnik? If it was one of those space gadgets, I hope it was one of ours.”
16 YOU’LL KNOW WHEN I NEED YOU TO KNOW
Use your gun as you would your lipstick. Use it only when you need it, and use it intelligently. Don’t overdo either one.
—Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia Address to policewomen, 1943
OCTOBER 24, 1963
0830 HOURS
Once Marie realized that the only person who truly loved her was the one she’d made, the idea of having a new baby became less ominous, less oppressive. Now, there would be two of them. Still, she resisted the reckoning every day she could. She had resolved to tell Ed and Al about the pregnancy every Friday for the last seven weeks. Seven stolen weeks of stakeouts and chases, the camaraderie of inside jokes and outdoor adventure. Seven weeks of paychecks.
Shep had confessed to the murder. Her hand swelled up badly after being hit by the nightstick, but she didn’t report the injury to the Medical Division, as the department surgeon might see through her bra stuffing. When she asked Ed why the cop clubbed her instead of him, he deliberated a while before replying, “Try to think of it as a blow for equality.” The young patrolman’s last words—I hope it was one of ours—became Ed’s catchphrase for weeks. He said it when they heard a car backfire, when a waiter dropped a tray of glasses, and when a pigeon unloaded a ribbon of excrement on Al’s shoulder. Marie wondered when the joke would get old, but it hadn’t, not yet.
Today, she would tell them. She swore she would. As she stood in the kitchen, finishing the breakfast dishes, she realized that she hadn’t had a weekday dinner at home in weeks. She worked during the day, mostly, as did most burglars, hitting apartments while the tenants were at work. TV and TV dinners had reduced the opportunities for evening break-ins, as bachelors and career girls opted increasingly for Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore as dining companions. Marie took some comfort in the idea that her late start would make her last day last a little longer. She took off her rubber gloves and looked down at her stomach. “Hurry up, kid. If you’re out by Christmas, you get an extra year of presents.”
Sometime after New Year’s was a better bet. She had to stay home for one hundred and eighty days after the birth, which put her back to work in June. Marie looked out the window at the trees. All the crimson and ginger of the early turning was gone; the leaves that still clung to the branches were the wan brown of lunch bags. She wished a wind would blow them away. She went upstairs and dressed. Dee had given her a few outfits from her maternity collection, roomy and designed to distract from the abdomen with padded shoulders and the like. Marie chose a black suit, as befit her mood of mourning. She decided to offset it with her favorite hat, the fedora with a leopard-skin print.
It was nine-thirty, and Marie was making a cup of coffee when she heard the car pull into the back. She was surprised. Katie had taken the car for a dental appointment, and she wasn’t due back for a while. And Sid was surprised when he walked in and saw his wife in the kitchen. The absence of her car might have led him to make assumptions, too. Could it be that both of them scanned the driveway with the same anxiety when they returned home? They were like the hoboes who looked for scratched signs on fence posts, warning of farmers with shotguns, dogs that bite. Marie felt the muscles of her jaw tighten.
“Hey, honey,” he said with a winsomely naughty grin, as if they’d woken up together after an evening of too many cocktails. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
His tie was loose, and he tossed his fedora on the table beside hers. He was unshaven, and his shirt, his suit, looked like they’d spent the night in a pile on the floor. He was a looker still, all shoulders and smile, as long as you didn’t look too close. She’d neither forgiven him nor forgotten what he’d done. But she was stuck with him until next June, at least, and she’d do what she could to keep the peace until the real battle began. She took a breath and forced her jaw to relax. “I’m heading out in a little while. You want coffee?”
“Sure. Let me take a quick shower first, I gotta head right back out.”
As Marie added water to the coffeepot, Sid gave her a kiss on the cheek. He was in a better mood than she’d seen in some time. She wondered if she could somehow take advantage of it, or simply enjoy his unaccustomed goodwill. He went upstairs and returned when the coffee was ready, shaven and in a clean suit. “Thanks, honey, this hits the spot. They had us running around all night, taking down horse rooms.”
Marie believed him. He didn’t talk about work with her and neither of them thought it wise to discuss where he’d slept the night before. He sipped and glanced at her, up and down, when she stood to put the cream back in the refrigerator. “You look great. I mean, you’re due kinda soon, right? It doesn’t really show.”
Marie laughed. It was something a neighbor would say. Not even a next-door neighbor, but someone she’d run into now and then at the supermarket. “Yeah, well, I still got ’em fooled at the squad, but it won’t last much longer,” she replied, deciding to keep things vague about her last day. “And then . . . well, it’s not the most important thing, but we will have to economize a little, tighten up the budget.”
Sid looked up from his coffee. “Why?”
“Because they don’t pay me when I’m out on maternity. Once I go out, and then for six months after the birth.”
“What? They don’t pay you? That’s lousy!” Sid sputtered. “You’d think with all you do, with all the money this city has . . . This job is one raw deal after another!”
This time, Marie didn’t laugh. The image of her husband as champion of equality in the workplace was too beautiful to ruin by thinking about it. Sid took a last slug of coffee and stood up. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet, extracting two, three, four . . . Hesitating for a moment, he took out a fifth hundred-dollar bill and set it on the table. “There, that should hold you a while. Get yourself something nice, too. You deserve it.”
Sid gave her a kiss and walked out of the kitchen. Marie stared at the money. She shook her head and said aloud, “I’m in the wrong line of work.”
A tough night at the office, Sid had told her. Locking up gamblers, he’d said. And now he had a wallet full of hundred-dollar bills. As far as she knew, cops weren’t supposed to take tips. She pocketed the cash, accounting it as alimony in advance. A time would come when his debts might not be settled with such dispatch. Still, Marie couldn’t help but be affected by his largesse. She was ashamed she could be bought off so cheaply, but she didn’t care. She had so few happy memories with her husband. If she fooled herself for an hour, a day, believing that he wasn’t so bad, it brought her an hour, a day, closer to when she’d be back at work, and free to act.
Marie looked out the window into the backyard, smiling and waving as so many housewives did when their husbands left for the office. Sid didn’t look back, and his pace was brisk. As he opened the driver’s side door, she saw that there was a passenger in the car. His partner? No, she thought, not when she saw Sid lean over for a kiss. Was it Carmen? Marie couldn’t tell. She wasn’t sure if it mattered. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but even as the car pulled out of the driveway, she kept on waving goodbye.
Three hours later, Marie was with Ed and Al at a restaurant in Chinatown. She’d insisted on it, as moo goo gai pan was hard to come by in the subu
rbs. At first, she entertained some fatuous hope that she might find an opportunity to work the subject of pregnancy into the conversation, so they wouldn’t make a big fuss about it. As they sipped their egg drop soup, there was a possibility, she thought, when Ed and Al discussed the weight gain of a sergeant they knew. “He got fat.”
“Not really. He used to be really skinny, though.”
“Not fat-fat, but built like the one from last week, the one we caught taking the shoes off the Swedish tourist who fainted.”
“Portly,” Marie offered.
“Portly. Just the word.”
Marie decided to pass. So too when Al beckoned the waiter. “What is this stuff about Year of the Rabbit? What does it mean?”
“Chinese Zodiac. 1963, Year of the Rabbit.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Chinese Zodiac.”
That would have to do for Al, and it wouldn’t do for Marie. Besides, they didn’t use rabbits any more for pregnancy tests. Maybe she should just come out with it. And then Ed pointed out an article in the paper about how a fugitive American had just been arrested in France. “Lothringer, comma, Harvey. Abortionist who cut up a girl who died on his table, stuffed the parts in the drain. Didn’t you work this case, Marie?”
“That I did,” she replied. “What does it say?”
“Let’s see. He was living with his girlfriend under the names Mr. and Mrs. Victor Rey, in a tiny country called ‘Andorra,’ in between France and Spain. Population six thousand, four hundred. How about that!”
Al muttered dubiously, his mouth full of chow mein, “Six thousand people in a country? Can’t be. There’s more people than that in the Queensbridge Houses.”
“Shush, Al, and chew your food. Go on, Ed.”
“Well, they think they’re a country,” Ed related. “And they don’t have an extradition treaty with us. French police grabbed them when they went over the border. ‘The doctor said that the girl was five months pregnant, and he tried to talk her parents out of it by doubling the price, to a thousand dollars.’ And then, he says, the parents ‘crossed me up’ when they agreed to pay. Died of an air bubble in her bloodstream, early in the operation. Crazy that a woman would risk that.”
Al shook his head. “Disgusting.”
Marie shook her head, unwilling to ask which one he was talking about. She’d wait for the subject to change from Harvey Lothringer before she broke the news of her baby. “Yeah, he was a beauty,” she said, glancing casually over at the paper, as if Lothringer were just another case. “I went to the Queens DA to get a wiretap on him. They told me they don’t do taps on doctors. When the girl died, they did backflips to say how hard they tried to get him. Next thing I know, I’m out of the Women’s Bureau and in the Detective Division.”
“Whoever said two wrongs don’t make a right never worked in the police department,” Ed reflected.
They finished the entrées without talking. Marie wondered if the fortune cookies might give her an opportunity and ordered coffee. Ed popped an antacid and wore an expression of worn patience. “As long as you hit the can before you go, Marie. I thought maybe we’d take a walk along the Bowery today, to look for someone I know who used to broker a lot of scrap metal, mostly copper. The jakes at the flophouses might not pass muster with you and your hoity-toity tastes.”
“Funny you should mention the waterworks,” Marie began, hesitantly. This wasn’t the ideal segue, but if she delayed any further, she’d wind up delivering the baby on a stoop during a surveillance. “After today, think I can guarantee that’s not gonna be such a big deal anymore. That’s the good news. The bad news is, you guys are going to make do without any feminine intuition for a while. Mama Marie is taking a little time off, to be a mama again.”
Both of the men were stunned for a moment, and then Ed jumped up and hugged her, and Al followed suit. “Sweet Jesus,” Ed cried out. “I hope it’s one of ours!”
Marie slapped his shoulder, trying to look angry. “My God, though, you’re right. This one’s gonna keep the office gossips busy for a while.”
“You didn’t tell Macken yet, did you?” Al asked. “He’s gonna act like you should have asked his permission first.”
“No, boys,” she reassured them. “You’re the first to know. But he ought to be next. By the end of the day. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in the spring, like the swallows at Capistrano. And we have time to walk around the Bowery, Ed, if you want, but I’ll use the ladies’ room here.”
“If you think we’re going to hit Skid Row, you’re nuts.” Ed said. “We’ll take a nice slow drive back to the office, and then you can tell Macken. We won’t wait till the end of the day, because you might need to explain the facts of life to him first.”
When they returned to the car, Marie took the wheel, as she had the first day, and most others. Despite Ed’s protest, she drove up the Bowery first, and then cut west, to the Village, just because she felt like it. The weather was warm for the season, and Ed and Al dozed after the heavy meal. She was so fond of them that she could have chucked their chins. So she’d be stuck at home for a while. She’d be able to take Sandy out trick-or-treating next week, and they could spend days making her Halloween costume. That would be nice. Then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and then the baby. She tried to cheer herself up by thinking that it would be almost summer when she came back. Anno Domini 1964, the Year of the Dragon. Marie took a meandering and roundabout route, in no hurry to see the day end.
West 10th Street was a handsome block of old brownstone townhouses and fine old elms, their leaves gilt and bronze. No one was out except for two men, at the head and foot of a flight of stone steps in front of one of the houses. The one at the top—the taller one, with a rolled-up newspaper under his arm—turned away from the door, shaking his head, and the one at the bottom eyeballed the street, back and forth, back and forth. Given the stillness of the street, they practically vibrated. They were Puerto Ricans on the darker side, or Negroes on the lighter side, and Marie insisted to herself that race prejudice didn’t shape her perception as much as their hungry, jumpy looks and the dirty undershirts that hung on their bony arms. She didn’t slow down when she passed them. Circling the block, she found them in the same position at another townhouse, three doors down. “Naptime’s over, boys.”
Marie pulled over once she rounded the corner and shook Al awake in the back seat. “You got a couple of daytime flat burglars, midblock, south side.”
Al rubbed his eyes and made a face. “I was having the most beautiful dream. If you weren’t a lady, I could tell you about it.”
When Al slammed the door behind him, Ed stirred and cracked his neck. He looked over to her and frowned. “I won’t let you take crazy chances, Marie. And it’s crazy to take any. Let’s go in.”
Marie should have been less sharp in her reply. “Come on, old man, if I’m not bellyaching about my belly, you can’t, either. Let’s take care of business.”
Ed’s lips tightened. “I should handcuff you to the wheel. You better not get out of the car. Promise me you won’t.”
Marie didn’t answer, and the hint of discord lingered in the air. A gust of wind lifted scraps of newspaper off the sidewalk to eddy at eye level. Ed was right, she knew. It was foolish to risk getting slugged or kicked, let alone being bitten, or stuck with a needle. But she was so resistant to being told what to do, whether by her body or her employer—Almost a year without pay!—that she pushed back, no matter how wise and well-meaning the advice.
Al returned and rapped on the window: “They’re on the move. They hit one house, and somebody calls out a window, ‘Who you looking for?’ One of them says, ‘Is this the Fleishman residence?’ And the guy says, ‘No, they’re two doors down, closer to Fifth. They should be home.’ So guess what they do?”
“They don’t go to the Fleischman’s,” Ed replied.
“Every house but. They’re moving uptown on Fourth. They haven’t made me, I’m going back after them.”
“Damn all these one-way streets,” Ed fumed. “You follow them, Al, we’ll go up to 14th, then back down Broadway. We’ll find a spot to wait above 13th.”
They drove up again, over again, and down again on Broadway, where Ed chased a taxi from a hydrant, shattering the driver’s dream of three minutes of peace with his pretzel. Marie scanned the far side of the street. “You see anyone?”
“Yeah, I make Al at the phone booth, northeast corner, and he’s staring across the street at the truck right ahead of us. So the other two have to be . . .”
Marie saw a white box truck double-parked a few car lengths ahead of them. The back door was padlocked. And then she saw the taller of the pair walk past, approach the truck from behind, and pull out a foot-long crowbar from his rolled-up newspaper. Ed elbowed her. “You see this guy? Would you look at this knucklehead!”
Marie was about to say, “Too easy!” but she knew she’d jinx the grab. “I see.”
The man stuck the crowbar in the lock and began to yank it around. Midday, on Broadway! But whether the teamster had a guardian angel or the thief did, someone shouted—Hey! Watch it!—and the tall man slipped his crowbar back into his newspaper and hustled back uptown. He passed their car without looking up. The teamster emerged from the cab of the truck to check the padlock and drove down Broadway. Marie watched Al wander north and circled the block again. They’d go to the park.
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