Detective

about going into certain neighborhoods, my feelings about the job narrowed down to one specific. It was bloody fucking dull.
    On days I had to turn in stuff to Richard, it was also a pain in the ass.
    I got off the phone with Kathy as quickly as I could, which wasn’t nearly as quickly as I would have liked, but I was so tired the simple expedient of hanging up on her never occurred to me. I ran out to Broadway to the 60-Minute Photomat, and picked up the six rolls of film I’d shot that week. The girl gave me a hassle about my unpaid bill, but I made up some clever excuse like “The check is in the mail,” and got the hell out of there.
    I went back to the office and began to sort through the photos. Some of them were easy to identify. For instance, the first envelope contained the Rabinowitz photos—four pictures of Mrs. Rabinowitz’s injury, and twenty of the defect in the sidewalk. I shoved the whole thing in a different envelope and wrote “Rabinowitz” on the label. Underneath, I wrote “L/A” for “Location of Accident,” followed by the specific street address of the defect. Done.
    The next one was harder. Six clients all on the same roll.
    As I looked at the pictures, my initial reaction was what it always is in these cases: “Who are these people?” Even under good circumstances, six clients on a roll gives me pause, but now, with no sleep, and a few other things on my mind, as I stared at the faces in the pictures my eyes began to glaze over.
    I shook myself awake and got down to basics. The negatives are numbered, and my paysheets, which list the clients’ names and addresses and the time and mileage for each case, are in chronological order, so, theoretically, if I can get one, I can get ’em all.
    All right, the little black kid with the scar on his forehead—is that Chakim Frazier from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn? Beats me. Reconstruct. Let’s see, Throop Avenue, apartment 2R. Yeah. I remember. A three-story frame house, the front door unlocked, 2R stood for second floor right. There were three guys hanging out on the front steps, and I was nervous about going in, but I did, and who lived there? A black kid with a scar on his forehead? No. A black woman with a broken arm. Ah, here’s one. Is it her? Sure, this must be Chakim Frazier from old Bed-Stuy. Great. Four shots of Chakim Frazier. Let’s match ’em up with the negatives, put ’em in an envelope, and—shit! Another black woman with a broken arm. Which one is Chakim Frazier? Check the paysheets. Ah! Starshima Weaver, Jamaica, Queens. Great. So which is which? Check the paysheets. Starshima Weaver was Thursday afternoon. Chakim Frazier was Friday. Check the negatives. Pictures five through eight, and nine through twelve are the black women with the broken arms, so five through eight’s gotta be Starshima Weaver, and nine through twelve’s gotta be Chakim Frazier. So who the hell’s the kid with the scar on his face? He’s one through four. Oh, yeah. I had those four shots in the camera when I turned in my paysheets last time, so I didn’t develop them. He’ll be on last week’s paysheets. Let’s see. Ah yes. Hello, Teddy Robinson.
    Somehow I got it done. Next, the paysheets themselves. I tallied them up, and filled in the amounts on the recapitulation page. 440 bucks for 44 hours’ work, plus $217.95 expenses for gas, tolls, film and developing. If that sounds good, consider this: I turn in my cases bi-weekly, so my average was $220 a week. Try to live on that in New York.
    I shoved the whole mess in my briefcase and stumbled out the door.
    I took a taxi down to West 12th Street. Ordinarily, I’d have taken the subway, but I was too damn tired. I gave the driver the exorbitant amount it cost for the pitifully short ride, tipped him half a buck at which he neither smiled nor sneered, went in, took the elevator up to the 14th floor, rang the bell, and was buzzed into the office of Rosenberg and Stone.
    Richard’s outer office resembled a mail-order shipping house more than a law firm. Twin desks, manned by Kathy and Susan, flanked the doorway. Twin touch-tone switchboards, 20 lines each, sat on the desks. Behind them, the walls were lined with file cabinets, half the drawers of which were pulled open. At the back of the room, two secretaries typed furiously at typing stands. Young, underpaid law students scampered back and forth, emerging from the inner office to the left, pulling documents from the files, thrusting