Grief Street

checkered pants and union jacket, puffing a cigar stub, fingers laced over his small belly. He was scratching pink skin on the closed side of his head as I walked up to him. He looked like he had been up all night, which figured. His expression was sour.
    “What do you hear, Eddie?”
    “Not much since after I seen this morning’s Post.”
    “That’s a disappointing answer.”
    “So what do you want out of me anyways?”
    “You and me—we’re friends for a long time, right?”
    “Sure, whatever you say.” Eddie the Ear held up a couple of crossed fingers. “We’re just like that. Got us a Damon and Pythias thing going here.”
    “What’s with the sarcasm?”
    “Friends, they look out for each other. Like since I am a guy with confidential knowledge about what’s going down in the Kitchen, maybe my friend ought to be tossing business my way sometimes—especially when my friend’s a cop who needs to know what’s going on.”
    “You’re angry at me that I don’t cut you into the department squeak budget?” Here I had planned a mild confrontation with Eddie the Ear and he was turning the tables on me. “So you want to cause me trouble, you go whispering to Slattery?”
    “The Post splashes ink, what’s it got to do with me?”
    “I can think of three things, any one of which tells me it’s your big mouth. One—you’re the guy who told Slattery the play was sent to Ruby. How you know, that’s another question.” I paused for a moment to see how Eddie would take this. Like a poker player he took it. “Two—you’re Slattery’s source on Marv being a friend of mine. Three— you get it to Slattery just before the final edition that I’m rousted downtown. This was either before Baize came into my house and nearly busted down my door, or else when you were waving at me as I drove off.”
    Before responding to all this, Eddie slid the horn-rims down off his bumpy nose and cleaned the lenses. Then he put his glasses back on and puffed his cigar a few times.
    “There’s flaws in your thinking,” he finally said. “The writer himself, he could of told Slattery about sending Ruby
    that play—what-do-you-call-it, Grief Street. Plenty of cops in the department know you was friends with Marv—on account of you doing that alkie penance at his soup kitchen. And that cop who picked you up in the Chrysler? What’d you call him—Baize? He could of told Slattery lots sooner than me.”
    “Are you denying you talked to Slattery?”
    “I ain’t confirming, I ain’t denying.”
    “As long as I’ve known you, Eddie, you’re always looking to sell what you know. And you haven’t been subtle about it.”
    “A guy’s got to keep himself in walking-around money.” Eddie the Ear’s face wrinkled into a gloat. “One way or another, you know?”
    “A friend doesn’t sell out a friend.”
    “Yeah? Let me ask you, is a friend supposed to have enough respect to be interested in his pal’s life?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You and me, Hock. Only whenever we talk, it’s all about you—and nothing about me. You notice I got respect enough to listen? When do you ever listen? Tell me something you know about Eddie Mallow.”
    “Well, I don’t know, there’s . .
    I stopped myself from telling Eddie that he and his missing ear were the stuff of long-ago secret nun talk, urgent sex whisperings we boys were afraid to know.
    “Tell me one thing about Eddie Mallow besides he is a guy with one ear missing, which you don’t even bother to know how that happened. Start simple, Hock. Where does Eddie Mallow live?”
    Many years ago at Police Academy, just before graduation and assignment to my first foot post, I was taught Lesson Number One in surviving the streets as a rookie beat cop. I recollected the face of my instructor on this point, if not the name. I have remembered the words, if not the importance of applying the meaning to my own circumstances: Know the people on your beat—where they live, what they do, when they do it. Some big-time gold shield detective I turned out to be. I cannot even keep to Lesson Number One. So who am I to have bullied the rookie Baize?
    “Eddie, I’m sorry. I see you just about every day, but I don’t know where you live.”
    “What cops don’t know could fill a jail.”
    “Be that as it may—”
    “To you, I’m just funny-looking wallpaper...”
    “For crying out loud—mea culpa.”
    “I’m like some gabby old broad underneath a hair