Grief Street

way—for God’s sake, who needs a personal trainer?”
    “You do. As long as you’re going to sweat, you should have someone make you like it.”
    “How long have you been plotting this torture?”
    “Don’t think of it that way.”
    “What do you call exercise in a gym?”
    “A simple pleasure. Good medicine for the strain of a complex life.”
    “Unless you’re a thief, running around is unnatural.” Besides which, I thought to myself, the closest thing I’ve ever known to a personal trainer is Brother Earl.
    Wanda returned with breakfast. This did not make things any easier. Ruby watched my every bite, rolling her eyes whenever my knife went for the butter.

    I ate with resentment. Going to this gym of Ruby’s would interfere with plans I had for slipping into the Royal Bijou to catch Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, and Jack Webb in the 1948 semidocumentary cop flick He Walked by Night. hatching other cops go through hell on a case sometimes helps, even if they are only movie cops.
    “Don't forget, we’re going to Stuart Godwin’s house to-n'ght,” Ruby said.
    “We are?”
    “For the staged reading.”
    “But I can’t do that and the gym, too.” Aha! My way out. “I’ve got a whole lot of housekeeping on this case, and I have to get it done before I pick up the car and leave town tomorrow, and—”
    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “I told you, there’s somebody I have to see.”
    “The hermit? A woman I could understand. But you can’t be just an ordinary jerk husband, can you, Irish? You have to go off and see some wacko on a mountain.”
    “The name is Creepy Morrison.”
    “Of course. Only you would have an appointment with someone named Creepy.”
    “It’s Father Gerald Morrison actually. I need his help.”
    “How come?”
    “I’m just a cop. Cops know only so much about evil. Creepy Morrison’s a Jesuit.”
    “I see.” From the way she said that, it did not sound as if Ruby saw. At least not yet.
    “Good, I’m glad you understand how I’ve got a lot on my mind. How I haven’t got time for playing around in some gym this afternoon.”
    “Make time, belly boy. I’ll be calling you at the station house with marching orders.”
    “Any percentage in my arguing the point?”
    “In another life, I made the trains in Italy run on time.”
    “I always suspected something like that. So while I’m sweating today, what’s your plan?”
    “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

    The six flights did me in. I collapsed at my desk and used a paper towel to wipe my face and neck. I suppose Ruby was right about the gym, not that it made the idea any more acceptable to me.
    Lieutenant Rankin’s pungent aroma hung over the squad room—body odor mainly, but also the stink of a half-gone Winston left burning in a tin ashtray. Rankin himself was temporarily absent. It was not hard to guess his location, what with all the flushing going on in the hallway lavatory. I picked up a pencil and made a list of housekeeping tasks on a fresh pad. This took a minute, after which I went to the top of the list and made my first phone call.
    Officer Tyrone Matson was pulling a day shift. A piece of luck, I was able to talk with a friendly source. I caught him in the middle of running some nervous victims through mug shot albums. He was in a talkative mood. Talkative like King Kong Kowalski can get.
    “You don’t stay a rookie for long at Sex Crimes,” Matson said. “A little birdy told me I’d get hard-assed on this job. Well, a great big birdy. Anyhow, he was right.”
    “What do you have?”
    “Private party at a commuter bar.”
    “Usual suspects? Usual short-con?”
    “Who else but a bunch of suits from Jersey?” This was a rhetorical question, requiring no response from me. “So anyhow, the suits are lured into the back room by working girls who nuzzled them for private drinkies away from the crowd. Pretty soon, the suits are blasted and the girls claim they’re all of a sudden in love and start stripping.”
    “And the suits, so to speak, follow suit?”
    “The old story, right. The working girls help the johns get comfortable by taking off their pants and hanging them up over chairs near the door. The suits are now prancing around in their boxers, and they’re not watching the door.”
    “Frolic ensues, after which the suits go home to Jersey with big smiles on their faces.”
    “Right. Then they get undressed in their nice Jersey bedrooms with the wall-to-wall