Grief Street

real shock, ain’t it?” Webster said, taunting John.
    “Well, yeah, it—”
    “Pull up your pants, you lying mutt.” Webster whapped him gently on the buttocks with his sap when he bent over. “We take you downtown and pull up your rap sheet, I bet a thousand bucks it turns out you’re a recidivist.”
    “Sure he is, so what?” I said, trying to place myself between Webster and John. Webster was not having it. Matson moved in. He put a calming hand on his partner’s sap arm, but Webster shook it off. So I laid it out for both officers. “Here’s how it goes down, men: you’ve got your Mickey Mouse collar; plus, if I’m the type who would rat out a fellow cop, then there’s the matter of interfering with a detective’s investigation of a homicide.”
    “He’s the type,” Matson said to Webster, defusing the situation. I liked the way the rookie handled himself.
    “Good.” I turned to John. “You were saying, about some-thing coming down off a roof?”
    “This big shadowy thing, smelly as shit—”
    Webster cut in and again reminded John, “I told you, can it until you’re lawyered up.”
    “All right, we’ll do it the long way.” I said to Matson, Go on and get the unit, I’ll be riding with you to the party.”

    I had not laid eyes on Sergeant Joseph Kowalski since shortly before I filed the brutality complaint against him. His appearance had not improved with time. The man was well beyond the upper limits of the departmental weight rule. King Kong was a table set for two. No doubt this was why the overnight trick was Kowalski’s shift of choice. Snap inspectors from IAD rarely work such hours themselves.
    There he sat now: up behind the massive booking desk, with a commanding view of the squad room, his steel halfframe glasses glinting under fluorescent lights as he pored over a pile of muster reports; a necktie full of stains stretched between a collar that could not be closed; his great mastiff hound jaws pulverized the contents of a box of Russell Stover chocolates at his elbow. I felt sorry for the chocolates.
    Our party entered, noisily. First Trixie and John, linked with NYPD bracelets. Then Webster and Matson, with me trailing along behind.
    Trixie and John were arguing back and forth on the equity of partial payment for personal services not fully rendered. Webster prodded them with his sap and yelled at them. Matson saw opportunity in the distraction. He turned to me and whispered urgently, “Step light here, Detective. I’m warning you, the sergeant’s out for your ass. Told me so himself yesterday when I was driving him back from where you know you got him sent. You have one ally in this station house, that’s namely me. And I’m not enough.”
    “Thanks.” Mine was a thin response, not at all to an ally’s satisfaction.
    “You’d best listen close. I’m not kidding around with you-I admire what you did, understand? My whole life I been familiar with cops like the ones on this detail. They soon as kill you, and nobody’s going to see justice done if they get riled enough to do you. These boys, they’re the established injustice.”
    “What are you doing here among the rabid, Matson?"
    “Me...?” Matson turned and glanced up at the booking desk Buddha. “The sarge, he’d say I’m the nigger in the woodpile.” He put a finger to his lips, and I also quickly shut up.
    Kowalski’s head swiveled on his neck at our approach. He looked like a toad hoping the buzz he heard was a nice, fat fly. Looking straight past the familiar faces of the quarrelsome Trixie and John, and Officers Webster and Matson, Kowalski trained his fly-roving eyes on mine.
    “Well, well—if it ain’t freaking Neil Hockaday,” he said. “Rat bastard newspaper pinup boy. What's keeping you out so late?”
    Webster snorted, “The detective here, he was prowling rubber alley back of the bus terminal, right when we’re picking up these couple of lovebirds.” Webster planted a knee in the small of John’s back and slammed him up against the booking desk. John’s nose went red and runny.
    Kowalski picked a chocolate from his box and casually lifted it to his mouth. “Jesus H. Christ, Hockaday. You want a piece of Trixie here, you ought to be discreet. For one thing, you don’t want that pretty wife of yours knowing about your filthy-hearted sins...” Kowalski paused, then smiled and asked Matson, “You know Hockaday here went and married one of your kind?”
    “He did, sir?”