Dark Maze

unzipped at a urinal one over from mine, recog-oized me, smiled and said, “Is this where the dicks hang out?” He had himself a husky laugh, after which he asked, ‘What brings you to the murder beat, Hock?”
    I explained how I was doing an override on the Celia Furman case, a homicide in my own personal neighborhood, and how Logue was the detective of record. Mogaill rolled his head and sniffed, “Oh, yeah, that lovely one in the barroom—a nine-to-fiver.” I further told him that the guy we wanted for questioning in the Celia Furman case was now also implicated in the day’s sole murder. Which caused Mogaill to whistle admiringly. “Now that one,” he said, “is going to be grabbing them headlines big and black.”
    We zipped up at the same time and moved to the sinks to wash our hands.
    “I’m waiting for Logue now,” I said.
    “He’s coming in after hours? I’m impressed.”
    “He told me to make myself at home in his office.“
    “His office, is it? That’s a bit of a grand word for what he has. But come along with me.”
    Logue’s office turned out to be a corner of the file room that nobody else wanted because it had no window. Logue had arranged a dozen or so cabinets at right angles to the walls to form an enclosed space, inside of which he had a standard-issue green steel desk spilling over with papers and also a credenza spilling over with papers. There was a lamp on his desk and a Norelco electric coffee maker on a stand next to it. “Welcome,” Captain Mogaill said.
    I picked up a pile of manila folders off a side chair, stacked them on the floor and sat down.
    “How long’s it been since you and me had a jar together, Hock?” Mogaill asked.
    I thought back and said, “It had to have been at Nugent’s, uptown in the Thirty-fourth.”
    “Jaysus, that long ago?”
    “It was long ago, wasn’t it?”
    “I remember it being always so full of cops, along with writers and poets and such layabouts living there in Inwood on account of the cheap rents. And the juke—it was heavy on ‘Ireland United,’ and Bushmill’s or Paddy’s was a half-dollar the shot. Oh, I wonder what ever happened to the glorious place.”
    “I still go there sometimes.”
    Mogaill was amazed.
    I said, “I remember the first time we met at Nugent’s and I thought you were one of the house poets.”
    “I remember it, too. I was in my cups pretty good and thinking about the other side, trying to drive sweet memories away..
    “And what you said was, ‘Ain’t it loveliness to be here in a grand dark pub in New York, so bless’t far removed from the bloody peat bogs and all them smelly farmers’ tweeds?’ „
    “Yes…” Mogaill’s eyes grew to their brightest blue. “And also I was thinking how Brendan put it on the topic of New York, and I stole his line: ‘I feel I’m a lonely flea what finally found his dog.’ ”
    “Naturally, I took you for a poet.”
    “You were a classy one that long-ago night, sending the barkeep over with the gift of whiskey and the thanks of a fellow admirer of the Borstal Boy. I saluted you then, and I salute you now, Hock. Even though you were so very wrong.”
    “About what?”
    “Wrong about us. It turns out you’re the poet.”
    “No, I’m a cop.”
    “That’s so, but I know about cops like you, and cops like me. Which is why I rose to captain and why you never shall, my friend. It means you’re the one cursed with being forever curious about what it is that people choose to hide from the world; it means you’re a trespasser.”
    He added, “Did you never hear it told, Detective Hockaday, of the poet’s natural right of trespass?”
    Mogaill interrupted. “See them manila folders on the floor, Hock? And all them folders on that credenza back of the desk?”
    “Yes.”
    “Come here a moment.” I followed him out of Logue’s Makeshift office to the wider space of the file room. Mogaill stepped to a long wall filled with steel shelves and he ran his hand along the bindings of big books that bulged with more manila folders, and perforated computer print-out sheets. He said, “And see all this here?”
    “Yes.”
    “This here’s an office full of names that belong to people who don’t talk too much because they’re dead. At first, I tried like hell to remember the names, even if they were only John Doe or Mary Roe.
    “But, Hock, they started gaining on me. And every year, I forgot more and more names. Then I went mostly by the numbers.