Beauty Queen

right away," said Rice.
    When the others had left, Winkler lingered, pouring himself another glass of soda.
    "Tom," she said, "do you still believe in me?"
    "Of course I do," he said. "If I didn't, I wouldn't be sitting here drinking this crap."
    That same afternoon, Mary Ellen visited the two other people on the force that she knew were gay. She didn't see them in her day-to-day work, so she made efforts to stay in touch with them. The first one she visited was an older officer, Sam Rauch, who was always on duty at Pier 36, on Canal Street.
    When she went off duty, she dropped by the A&P and bought a bag of cat chow. Then she stopped at the White Tower on Canal Street, and ordered two coffees to go and a cheeseburger with lots of onions. You never had to ask Sam Rauch if he wanted a cheeseburger with lots of onions.
    Then she drove under the West Side Highway, and parked on the worn cobblestones in front of the pier.
    Pier 36 was the limbo of towed-away cars in New York City. When a car was first towed, it went to the modem brightly lit Pier 95 at 36th Street, owned by the United States Lines and leased to the New York Police Department for auto storage. There the Police Department maintained a bustling 24-hour-a-day office always jammed with people desperate to get their cars back. If the car was unclaimed at Pier 95, a tow truck dragged it downtown to Pier 36. After thirty to sixty days, the registered owner was sent a letter, and if the car was still unclaimed, it was sold at public auction.
    Carrying the sack, Mary Ellen strode over mud puddles to the cavernous entrance to the pier. Its towering brick facade was grimy and sooty, its windows broken or boarded up. The only sign of life was the battered sign by the doorway, PROPERTY CLERK'S OFFICE.
    She walked along the echoing passageway, which was as dank and dark as a catacomb tunnel.
    The half-mile-long interior was dimly lit by a few high-watt bulbs. She could see the rows on rows of cars, gleaming dully under their dust and grime. She tried to imagine happy ship passengers streaming in and out, luggage crammed with souvenirs, bands playing, baskets of fruit being delivered to staterooms. But she couldn't. Here was nothing but death and decay. The only sign of life was a battle-scarred gray cat with a bobtail, who was creeping shyly away under the nearest car.
    As she came up to the office, an ear-splitting burglar alarm went off—she had tripped it via electric eye. Quickly she stepped aside, and the alarm stopped ringing.
    On the battered office was a sign: DO NOT LET CATS IN OFFICE—THESE ARE PIER CATS.
    Sam opened the office door and peered out. Pulled down over his ears was the red wool ski cap he wore winter and summer. He had his gold shield pinned to a gray sweatshirt— the place was so dirty that Sam never wore a uniform when on duty.
    "Hiya, sweetheart, come on in," he said. He spotted the sack "You're a doll. I didn't get to buy cat food yet today."
    In the office, Sam patiently explained to a furious young couple that if they didn't have their car registration with them and if it wasn't in the glovebox of the car, then they would have to apply to the motor-vehicle bureau for a replacement registration, but in any case, that was not the Police Department's problem, as the car had been locked until the couple had come on the pier, so the registration couldn't have walked away by itself.
    "And when we get the registration, then what?" the young man asked between his teeth.
    "Then," said Sam pleasantly, "you go back to the office up at Pier Ninety-five, and you show them your driver's license and registration, and you prove you're not a scofflaw, and you pay what you owe for storage, and they give you a release card, and then you come back down here, and I release the car to you."
    "Fucking bureaucrats," said the girl.
    "Filthy language will get you nowhere," said Sam pleasantly.
    The couple left in a huff.
    Silently, with a grin, Mary Ellen handed him the warm sack of human food.
    "You're a doll and a sweetheart," said Sam. "If it wasn't for my friends, I'd starve and die of thirst in this lousy place."
    The bare little office had a battered green metal desk in it, and a big ledger. More such ledgers were lined up, dusty, in a cupboard. Sam's paper-shuffling was basically simple. All he had to do was take the auto release cards, and note the release in his ledger, together with the claimant's driver's license number.
    Sam was ripping open the sack