The Black Marble by Joseph Wambaugh

Quaaludes? Or hash? That’s it! He was fried on hash oil! He was hearing his own questions somewhere. Who knew from where?
    Siberia. The questions today were coming from a frozen wasteland. The Siberia of his mind. This was a bad day. He knew last night of course that if he drank nearly a fifth of Stolichnaya, well, he would have a hard time today linking sentences together, understanding what people said to him. People would say things and he would hear them, but on these bad days it was so very hard to put the picture in focus. There were little motes of light, the shimmering dots when a flashbulbpops. Like when they photograph a corpse. There would be a picture emerging there among the dots. He could almost get it, and if he did, well, then everything would start to make sense. But then someone would say something to him, talk to him like Natalie was talking to him now, and the shimmering sparkly picture would fade. The Great Secret would not be revealed. Not today. Stolichnaya. Too much vodka. But it was almost as bad other times too.
    She was talking to him.
    â€œI’m terribly sorry,” Valnikov said, smiling that patient, watery-eyed, vacant smile. “What did you say?”
    She had removed her glasses. She was pretty without her glasses, he thought. She was pretty with her glasses, he thought. It might be good to have a partner again. He forgot how long it had been. He truly wasn’t sure right now if it was one month or one year.
    â€œI asked,” she said slowly, “if you were sure Misha and Grisha were boys? You refer to them in the masculine gender.”
    Now that, she thought, was the toughest question she had thrown at him all morning. Let’s see how he handles it.
    Valnikov’s brow wrinkled, and he chewed his lip for a second and scratched the wild cinnamon hair curling over the frayed collar of a white dress shirt. His coat flapped open when he scratched his ribs. Jesus Christ! His inside coat pocket was repaired, not with thread, but with metal staples.
    â€œI’m sure that Grisha is a boy,” he answered finally. “I’m not really positive about Misha.” He looked at her with grave blue eyes and thought that if you look very closely you can see a gerbil’s dick, but not a parakeet’s peter. But he couldn’t say that to her.
    â€œI see,” Natalie said.
    â€œWell now,” Valnikov said cheerfully. “Shall we make our first call on a burglary victim?”
    It was an interminable work day for Natalie Zimmerman. Hollywood had never looked seedier. Even the downtown area, “the sewer” as the cops called it, had never looked this bad to her. She had long since decided that Hollywood is a slum. At least parts of it. The “swells” of filmdom’s Golden Age would be shocked: massage parlor girls flaunting their wares in doorways and windows. Dirty book stores. Clean book stores. More dirty book stores. Magazine stands, mostly dirty. Trolling homosexuals, both butch and queen. Jockers in leather and chains. Hustling black pimps. Listless whores, all colors. Paddy hustlers, pigeon droppers, pursepicks, muggers. Don’t walk the Boulevard at night and expect to see Robert Redford, baby. Hoo-ray for Hollywood!
    Business burglary. She despised it. A public relations job. Ought to hire the Rogers and Cowan Agency. “Unknown suspects broke into victim’s place of business using a half-inch screwdriver. Property missing: IBM Selectric typewriters.” Sell like hell. Every “honest” businessman in town will lay two hundred on a runny-nosed hype, no questions. Roll of stamps: same thing. Easy to peddle. Got to take a discount but what the hell. Took the office petty cash of course. Maybe took an adding machine if he was big and strong. Those goddamn IBMs are heavy. Same old bullshit, over and over. Why the masking tape? The scumbag dropped it. Uses it to tape the window when he breaks it out to reach