Grief Street

mouth full of opinions shut tight for once, his pig blue eyes empty of the usual contempt for all they saw.
    Kowalski suddenly returned from wherever he had gone visiting. He asked, “How old are you, Matson?”
    “Twenty-two.”
    “I got hemorrhoids that old.”
    Matson laughed this time. His voice was deep and creamy, like a bass in a gospel choir. Maybe the beauty of it irritated the sergeant. That was just the sort of thing that could set him off, as everybody at the squad knew only too well.
    “What’s so funny?” Kowalski spat flecks of tobacco leaf from his lips. “I got hemorrhoids? That’s freaking hilarious to you?”
    “No, Sarge, I only—”
    “Back when things was still right, a cop like you, he wouldn’t be getting in the face of a cop like me. Know what I’m saying?”
    “I think so.” Being a black cop and having to deal with his share of a certain type of white cop, Officer Matson knew to keep his responses cursory. This path of least resistance was bad for the digestion maybe, but good for the record.
    “Sure you do. For instance—you’d hear on your radio up there a CFN call and you’d know to keep your mouth shut about how we used to have a what-do-you-call it...” Kowalski paused to resume smoking his cigar. “A shorthand Way of saying stuff.”
    ‘‘What’s a CFN?”
    "Car full of niggers. I don’t mean that personal.”
    "You people never do.”
    “One of my people says nigger nowadays, it’s like some kind of a sin. We got persuaded to talk different. But guess what? I look around, I see the world ain’t any better off for us being so freaking politically correct. I ask you, Officer Twenty-two Years Old—how come?”
    “I’d be too young to answer that, Sarge.” Matson cranked down the driver side window, which gave him something to do with his hands besides grab King Kong Kowalski by the neck. A pall of blue-gray Te-Amo smoke whooshed out from the car.
    “Yeah, way too young. Any chance of you being a religious man?”
    “I call myself God-fearing.”
    “Good answer. Me, I belong to the Holy Name Society of the Church of the Blessed Agony. That’s out in Queens, It’s Catholic.” Kowalski pronounced it cat-lick. “Which you could say’s ironic.”
    “How so?”
    “Because of my personal take on this philosophical question we’re discussing. Which is how come it ain’t all sunshine and lollipops now that white cops for instance ain’t allowed to be saying sinful things in public. Want to hear what think?”
    “Do I ever.”
    “The world goes stone evil when there’s no sin.”
    “I’ll bear that in mind.”
    “Yeah, do that!” Kowalski laugh-barked.
    Having worked himself into a minor rage, Kowalski sucked furiously on his cigar. The car filled with more smoke clouds, and Kowalski coughed. He searched his coat pockets for candy bars, but came up empty-handed. He sighed and shifted on hips as wide as a rowboat until he sat sideway, his boiler pipe legs flopped up in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Ashes curled off his cigar, dropping to his round lap and rolling down to the littered floor.
    “Understand, Officer Matson, I’m the what-do-you-call ecumenical type.” The sergeant had grown reasonably calm “Meaning if I go saying nigger and sheeny and wop, then likewise I don’t mind hearing polock.”
    “These ideas you got from reading your paper?”
    “People don’t like hearing what they are, it ain’t my fault,” Kowalski said, ignoring the question. “Take your queers. I ain’t even allowed to say that—and you ain’t neither, brother. It’s like they passed some law up in Albany, you got to call them gay. The inspector, he says if I want I can say homosexual. But that don’t feel right in my mouth. Feels like my mouth’s gone to someplace unholy.”
    “You and the inspector, you talked about temperate language?”
    “Can you believe it? Neglio calls me on the carpet, says I have to quote Get your ass to charm school unquote.”
    “Where?”
    “Jesus H. Christ. Charm school, Matson! That’s over to Diagnostic and Counseling Services, where they run you through the freaking squirrel cage.”
    “Oh.”
    “Like I’m foaming from rabies.”
    “Why would anybody think that?”
    “All I know, it’s on account of this official beef filed against me by one Detective Neil Hockaday of the SCUM patrol. Just because I do that little number of mine on the ballerinas.”
    “Oh, the dickprint?”
    “Yeah, that.”