Thrown-away Child

had cooked him bacon and eggs. He was now sitting around in a terry cloth robe. But Kenny was still jumpy, especially with me in the picture.
    A skel who is jumpy has not yet lost his faculties to booze and drugs and sleeping under the urban stars. Kenny was no exception. Claude was having a hard time getting him to repeat his story, to give up the details he knew he needed. Claude and I knew this drill without having to discuss it. Kenny did, too. We all had our roles: Claude was a good cop, I was the bad cop, Kenny wanted something in return for what he could tell either one of us.
    Kenny lit up a cigarette and blew a stream of blue smoke into Claude’s face. He curled a hand around the coffee mug in front of him, and repeated himself. “Uh-huh, got a right to my privacy.”
    “Man got a right to decent air in his own gott-damn house, too,” said Joe Never Smile. He took up his cane and gimped over from the stove to the kitchen table where Kenny was sitting and yanked the cigarette from his mouth. “This shit’s poison to you and everybody round you. What’s the matter with you fool?”
    “I’m cool, that’s what. Cool as that humpy Joe Camel. Gimmie that back, old man.”
    I got up from my place at the table and took the cigarette away from Joe Never Smile. I held it up in front of Kenny. It was still burning.
    “You want to smoke, Kenny?” I asked him. He took a swipe at the cigarette, missing the prize. “Then let’s be considerate enough to answer Officer Bougart’s questions.”
    “C’mon, man.”
    “What’s the last name?”
    “I already told you ’bout my privacy.”
    I pushed the cigarette into Kenny’s coffee mug and fizzled out the burning butt. I let go of the thing and it floated on top of Kenny’s coffee.
    Kenny protested, “Hey, I ain’t got another of those one, man!”
    “Say the word, Kenny, and I’ll trot out to Claude’s car and bring back a whole fresh pack. What brand you smoke, Claude?”
    “Pall Mall.”
    Kenny liked the sound of that. “Name’s Kenneth Lambert.”
    “You live at the dump off Paris Avenue, Kenny?” Claude asked.
    “Where’s my cigarettes?”
    Claude took a red packet of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket and gave them to Kenny, who lit one. Bougart apologized to Joe Never Smile, “I’m hoping you’ll be forbearing, sir.”
    Joe clumped around and grumbled. He went back to his stove and busied himself by wiping the top down with a wet sponge.
    “Mr. Lambert, now tell us what you saw this morning,” Claude said. “You know, about the three men.”
    Kenny looked over at me and said, “Saw these three ofays. They were wearing masks.”
    “What kind of masks?” Claude asked him.
    “One, he look like a bum. Second ofay, he like a Barbary Coast pirate.” Kenny sneered at me. “Last one, he look just like you.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “The peckerwood have him lipstick lips and a crown like a queen wear.”
    “No need to be insulting, Kenny. Unless you want to learn about New York-style cop hell.”
    “Mr. Lambert, when I happened to spot you, it seemed to me you were running off from all those bodies.” Bougart gave me a wink. “Is that because the cops were turning up?”
    “Sure that’s it.”
    “Or maybe it was something else,” I said. “Maybe you were hustling away what you took off those bodies. Say Kenny, where’d you leave your clothes?“
    “Ain’t no concern of yours.”
    “I think it is. I think I’m going to go have a look through your clothes.”
    “Okay, so you find something ain’t mine. So what if I swiped some T-bird wine off a dead guy or something like that. He ain’t going to be wanting wine no more.”
    “Kenny, you fooled me. I thought you were a bright guy. I thought you knew what happens if I find a dead man’s stash on you.”
    “Mr. Lambert, I feel I have to tell you the consequences,” Claude said sympathetically. “If we find stolen property in your possession that traces to a murder
    victim, it means we can close the rap on your head no problem. That means you wind up in Angola waiting to get a lethal injection. You die like an old cat.“
    “Living at the dump, that’s better than dead?“
    “That’s right,” I said.
    I grabbed up Kenny’s packet of Pall Malls, took out the nineteen remaining cigarettes, ripped them up and dumped loose tobacco all over Kenny’s head. Then I yanked him up from his chair by the collar of his robe. “You’re smelling so sexy