Grief Street

Matson’s face remained carefully composed. “The detective married a man?”
    “Oh, Jeez—that’s a good one!” Kowalski’s face reddened with laughter, and a gob of chocolate spit flew from his mouth. Webster laughed, too, and sent Trixie smashing nose-first against the desk. Kowalski said, “You’re okay, Matson.”
    1 took a pen and my case notebook from my jacket pocket and started writing.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Kowalski barked.
    “Making contemporaneous notes on what goes on at your house, Sergeant. Go ahead, think of something else stupid to say. I take shorthand.”
    “Stop it, Hock. You’re scaring me so freaking bad it’s taking my panties bunch.”
    “You think this is funny?”
    “I’ll tell you funny. Guy comes in here earlier tonight, I got to print him. No problem with the left hand. But then I pick up his right hand and the freaking guy’s only got stubs. So I as’t him, ‘One question, brother—how in hell do you whack off?’ ”
    Everybody laughed, including the nose-bleeding John and Trixie.
    “See, that’s funny,” Kowalski said. “But you, Hockaday— you ain’t funny at all.”
    “I’m not in a funny mood, being that it’s a sacred day.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “Okay. You’re familiar with the Way of the Cross parade they have every year up at Holy Cross parish?”
    “Sure I am.”
    “Somebody blasphemed tonight’s pageant. And your boys here, Webster and Matson—they went for this cheap collar they brought you instead of attending to a sin right in God’s face.” I was sorry I had to include Matson, but it was for the greater good in every way. Matson cut me a look that said he understood the game play. A game it was. Finally I had Kowalski—fellow Catholic, staunch member of the Holy Name Society of his own parish out in Queens—exactly where I wanted him: steaming mad. Not only that, by this time the back-and-forth between Kowalski and me had attracted a fair audience of the established unjust, as Matson saw it. “I’d better make a note of this failing. Inspector Neglio’s a Catholic, too, you know.”
    Kowalski's moon face shook as he put an accusatory question to Webster. “What freaking happened out there?”
    I spoke up before Webster could open his mouth. “Somebody murdered the seven guys carrying the cross, Sergeant. Sniper on a rooftop. The victims were good Catholic men, like you and me. I tried telling your boys all about it. Actually, so did John here. Isn’t that right, John?”
    “Well now, I did see somebody come rushing down oft that roof with a rifle,” said John, patting his soggy nose-Good for John, he realized without my having to tell him that his best course now was to blurt out everything he had seen. “Somebody in black, I couldn’t see his face, he ran by the front of the car and I looked up—and there he was-staring at me, and puffing really putrid breath. Oh my Lord, I thought he was going to shoot us! I closed my eyes and prayed. Next thing I knew, the whole car was shaking. Somebody was kicking at it. I was so afraid...!”
    John had himself very worked up. He was hyperventilating, in fact, and inhaling blood that glistened on his upper lip. Trixie, on the other hand, seemed bored. I spotted a paper napkin up on the rim of Kowalski’s desk, grabbed it, and gave it to John. John wiped himself, and said to Kowalski, as if the sergeant were a judge, “My name’s Ralph Irvine, your honor, and I’m head of the New Jersey chapter of the Christian Coalition.” I could not have prayed for more.
    Webster protested, “He’s a mutt faggot’s what he is.”
    “You’re all witnesses,” I said, turning my back on Kowalski, addressing the audience of idle station house cops. I counted ten of them. “You have just heard a Christian gentleman say he witnessed a suspected killer in flight. All right now, Mr. Irvine, tell us who was kicking your car.”
    John fingered Webster.
    “And tell us, please, how did Officer Webster respond when you tried explaining about the killer you saw.”
    “He punched me in the chest—real hard—and I fell down.”
    “You noticed me at the scene of your arrest, on West Forty-first Street. Isn’t that right, Mr. Irvine?”
    “Yes, and I—”
    Webster shoved past John and moved in close to me. Close enough so I could tell that his dinner included something in tomato sauce and onions. Just in case, I made a quick physical assessment: Webster was