Grief Street

wheel.
    “You’re under arrest, you horny fucking mutt,” the white cop said to the john, a guy who looked like he was born middle-aged and suburban. To his black uniformed partner on the other side of the car, “Haul out dolly, too, Matson. Let’s have us a look at the sweetheart of Sigma Chi.”
    John wore a white shirt, a necktie, and a striped suitcoat. Striped trousers and plaid boxer shorts were drooped down around his ankles. John looked like he would not mind it so much if he should suddenly drop dead.
    Officer Matson, meanwhile, did what he was told. He opened the passenger door and let out a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned number with a bouffant of strawberry blond hair and a shimmery green dress showing lots of thigh. She was the type who had been through the drill more than once, and so she should have been taking the bust in stride. But she was not. She was as jumpy as her client—both looking up at the sky and trying to make sense of the helicopter commotion.
    I started walking toward the car, sticking to the shadows, keeping a watch on the rooflines as I made my way.
    “What’s wrong—you fucking go deaf on me, John?” the white cop asked. John bent down to pull up his pants. The cop grabbed his suitcoat lapels, jerking him back up, and harked, “I say you can do that?”
    “Sorry...”
    The next thing out of John’s mouth reflected neither arrogance nor resistance, merely his ignorance of the departmental reference for a male of the species on the inside of a prostitution collar. As a matter of fact, he was trying to be helpful about something more important than the rented company he kept. But the cop, being that he was ignorant by a different style and uncurious about the helicopters and what had brought them, read John all wrong.
    “My name isn’t John.” The guy with his pants down was out of breath, although not from whatever it was that Sweetheart had earlier been doing to him. “Look, I want to explain, Officer. See, I was scared to get out of the car. I mean, after what I saw coming down off that roof—”
    The cop rammed his fist into John’s breastbone. This would hurt like hell for at least a week, but would leave John with no bruises to show a lawyer, not to mention the Civilian Complaint Review Board. The guy’s knees crumpled and he started bawling and snotting.
    I happened to know this cop who had hammered John’s chest: Larry Webster, one of the charmers out of Manhattan Sex Crimes.
    “John’s got something to say. Let him talk, Webster.” I said this after calling out my name and the color of the day, and making certain the two cops saw my ranking gold shield.
    “So you’re Hockaday.” Matson the rookie said this matter-of-factly.
    “Sure, you’re looking at the famous Detective Hockaday that ratted out Sergeant Kowalski,” Webster said. “Watch he don’t try crowding our collar, Matson.”
    “You’ve got no problem from me,” I said to Webster. There was a snarl on his face. Matson’s face was neutral, the kind I could talk to. So I did. I motioned toward the roof of the National Video Center. “There was a sniper up there. He took out seven down on Forty-second Street while you were putting the drop on John and Sweetheart back here. It sounds to me like John saw something.”
    “My advice, don’t say nothing more until you lawyer up, Webster counseled John.
    “Looking who’s crowding,” I said. “I should say interfering.”
    Webster ignored my threat. He turned to the tall bouffant number and asked, “What do they call you, Sweetheart?’
    “Trixie.”
    “Ain’t that pretty. Matson, come on over here with Miss Trixie. Let’s see if she’s got one.”
    Matson rounded the front of the station wagon. He gave me a little salute off the brim of his hat, and presented Trixie to Webster.
    “It’s showtime, Trixie,” Webster said. “Let’s have a look at what you’re peddling.”
    Trixie was return business, all right. No sense in being difficult. She tossed her head and sighed theatrically, after which she hiked up the front of her shimmery green dress. Underneath, she was outfitted with the same equipment as were the rest of us standing there under the streetlamp. John tried looking away. Webster removed a leather sap from the back of his belt and persuaded him otherwise, after which John attempted to appear surprised. Only Matson was surprised, though, his smooth brown face going somewhat bilious.
    “Oh, the first time’s a