Grief Street

Nineteenth PDU.
    “Hockaday, what the—?”
    I hushed Souza. “My wife, she’s asleep.” Krai wheezed through the door behind Souza and started to say something. Souza shut him up. I asked, “Where’s the inspector?”
    “On his way... he’s right behind us.” Souza said this in a low tone, puffing through the words like a cigarette smoker after a hundred-yard dash. Krai stood beside him, with both hands on his banging chest. Souza said, “Neglio pulled us off a Park Avenue burglary follow-up for this. Which you can imagine how that pleased the hell out of the snoots that got hit for a collection of some kind of Chinese dynasty teacups or whatever. Neglio, he told us never mind about the bric-a-brac, we got to triple-time it over here to the West Side. So what’s the big goddamn emergency, Hockaday? Say—what the hell happened to your wife?”
    Before I could answer, there was more clattering in the hallway. I was warming to the mayor’s inspiring style of command.
    “Hock—!”
    “The lady’s sleeping here,” Souza rasped, pointing to Ruby, hushing up Neglio. Ruby snorted and turned onto her side. I was afraid she might wake up. But she stayed conked out.
    “Jesus, Ruby looks awful,” Neglio said. “She going to be all right?”
    “That depends,” I said. “Is she going to get justice?”
    “Don’t play around with me, Hock.”
    “Let me remind you how it’s been for me, Inspector.” I was now righteously steamed, and about to be insubordinate. And I thought, So be it, I can always put in for early retirement. Not to mention I could cash in on tales told out of school, just as I had threatened in the mayor’s office. “I go through channels with an official beef on a rabid cop. What happens? I get wreathed—twice. It’s not enough they hang rats on my locker at the station house, these wrong cop creeps bring it to where I live. Then besides, they tell me I should watch my back. Station house crap, you call it. Don’t take it serious, you tell me. But today Ruby gets mugged. Is that serious enough for you? You think I’m playing around?”
    “Look, Hock—!”
    “This is how it’s going to be, starting right now tonight—”
    “Don’t be pushing buttons again.”
    “Interrupt me again, Tommy, and I’ll push the two biggest buttons in town.”
    “Are you threatening me, Hockaday?”
    “That’s right, Tommy. If I don’t get things my way, the first thing I’ll do is ring up your pal, Dick Tracy.” I picked up the telephone and held my fingers over the dial. “I’U have to tell him I can’t nail this nun-raping killer because you’re standing in my way, Tommy. I’ll have to tell Hizzoner he should start thinking up some ass-saving comments for when the press calls him. Because the next button I push is this: I phone up Slattery at the Post . .
    I took a breather. Neglio looked at my kneecaps, like he wanted to break them.
    “You want me to continue. Inspector? Or you want to waste time?”
    “Hang up the goddamn phone, Hockaday.”
    “As I was saying, gentlemen, here’s how it goes.” I put the phone down. “The three of you have got two important jobs. First, you’re going to take very good care of Ruby until you hear from me. Which means I don’t want any cop in the city anywhere near my wife but the three of you. Cap-ice, Tommy?”
    “Yeah, yeah.”
    “Also you set up a command post right here for an internal investigation you’re going to conduct in a real big hurry. No foot dragging, no charm school, no excuses.”
    “Anything else?”
    “You put the collar on King Kong Kowalski. You remember this Sergeant Becker I told you about?”
    “I remember.”
    “Pick him up, too. Sweat the pig bastards until they give up the grunts who wreathed me. Also I want the names of the ski masks who did it to my wife.”
    “Ski masks?”
    “Ruby will tell you about that when she wakes up. I want these pigs in particular. I want every rabid cop ass that ever crossed me. Capice, Tommy?
    “I get it, for crying out loud.”
    “Just to make sure, on my way out I’ll call up Tracy with a memo on what we agreed. Good night, gents. I’ll see you later.”
    “Where are you going, Hock?”
    “In pursuit of happiness.”

Thirty-eight

    T here was I, hunkered down in the dank grit of West Thirty-seventh Street, around the corner from where the late Rosie Rosenbaum was born again as kosher sausage. And this was what it had come to: a stakeout for a rank-smelling