Grief Street

pressing the bureau for a disciplinary hearing into King Kong Kowalski and his savage circus on the overnight shift, wreathings were maybe only tribulations. Maybe the real trouble lay ahead. It was anybody’s guess if I was eventually going to be hammered by some rabid cop of the street, who would at least be mercifully quick to the point, or by some inconvenienced bureau type who could do serious damage to the brass ring in the merry-go-round of a cop career: retirement benefits, should I live to collect.
    Somebody in my position, therefore, needed buffers. Such as hero status in the press. Or so Officer Baize apparently believed. I put his name down on a list I had started, the one with King Kong Kowalski at the top.
    “What for?” Baize asked. He seemed more nervous than hostile. But one never knows.
    “These days it pays to remember anybody who looks at me funny,” I told him.
    “I’m only saying—”
    “Skip it, Baize. You make the list.”
    He skipped it the rest of the way downtown to One-Pee-^ee, where trouble waited in pinstripes. Not the kind the Yankees wear.

Fifteen

    T he fat man at the bar finished off a glass of beer and shoved away a greasy plate with the leavings of bone and gristle and catsup in it. Then he sucked at his teeth, making squeaky noises, and said, “Nothing like a couple-a-pound sirloin to put away a lousy stinking morning.” He pronounced it sir-uh-loin.
    The blond bartender looked up from the newspaper laid out between his elbows. He brushed lazily at an earring, and asked, “More tough lessons at charm school, sweety?”
    “Like I said, don’t be calling me that in here.”
    “It’s just the two of us. Loosen up.”
    “Loose, that’s your brand. I ain’t the type.”
    “Whatever. We’re both children of God.”
    “Don’t start. We were getting along good.”
    “Sorry.” The bartender closed his paper. He smiled brightly. “I’ll make it up to you.”
    “A free drink?”
    “Better.”
    “Nothing’s finer than booze you don’t got to pay for.”
    “Have we read today’s crime blotter?”
    “You mean in the Post about them murders and some cockamamie mystery play?” „
    “Let’s not forget your friend—that cute Mr. Hockaday-“The rat bastard. Him and his wife with their freaking mug shots, they went and spoiled the whole paper for me, including Joey Adams. Give me a drink.”
    “Remember my regular?” The bartender picked up the fat man’s glass and filled it with another draught of beer, and set it back down. He poured a shot of white label and set that down, too. “The chaser’s on the house.”
    “Thanks. See, we’re getting along grand. What are you talking, your regular?”
    “My friend. You know, he was here the other day when you dropped by. Stuart. He’s such a sophisticate—”
    “Stuart? The one you kissed on the button? Jesus!”
    “Let’s behave ourselves.”
    “Yeah, let’s do.”
    “Anyway—my friend is in the theater, you see.”
    “I bet he said thespian before mama or dada.”
    “Stuart Godwin is no mere actor! He’s an impresario.”
    “That mean he’s rich?”
    “Very. Stuart has a town house on the Upper East Side. He bought it from Nixon.”
    “Freaking Nixon. So, your rich squeeze—he does his slumming here?”
    “Don’t be evil.”
    “Tell that to your friends.”
    “Knock it off, sweety. I’m trying to be helpful.”
    “Say what you got to say.”
    The bartender opened the paper again, to a page full of photos surrounding a story by William Slattery. He pointed to a paragraph.
    “It says here the script of this play, Grief Street, has been sent around town to a cast of actors—your cute friend’s wife being one.”
    “Yeah...?” The fat man was suddenly interested.
    “It says there’s going to be a reading of the play. But we don’t know when, or where.”
    “And you do?”
    “Oh, sure. Stuart mentioned it...”

Sixteen

    T he mayor of the city of New York nowadays—as the inspector says, Hizzoner himself, he’s always thinking he’s the police commissioner —is called Dick Tracy behind his back. This is because he is forever rushing to crime scenes where nobody needs him.
    I myself do not call the mayor Dick Tracy behind his back. I call him Fearless Fosdick.
    Hizzoner’s résumé includes being a United States district attorney in New York at a fortuitous time when a lot of city detectives happened to be making righteous cases against a lot of elderly mafiosi, cases that