The Black Marble by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

inside. No falling glass. Watch out for scumbags who carry masking tape, dearie. They can also tape up your little mouth and eyeballs and then start operating your Selectric. (Why scare the shit out of the victim? Because she was so miserable , that’s why.) Sixty-six thousand burglaries in this town last year, lady. No, that doesn’t count car theft. That doesn’t count robbery. That doesn’t count half a dozen other kinds of larceny. That’s just burglary. Just breaking and entering! How many detectives work burglary? Oh, in the whole damn city about two hundred, maybe. How’s your math? Two hundred divided into sixty-five thousand is what? Not to mention the other larcenies the same dicks handle. And the arrestees they have to process. And the long days in court. Solve the crime! Recover your stolen property? How’s your math, lady?
    A dreary endless slogging death march. That’s business burglary with Valnikov. Unknown suspects. Who ever saw a burglar? Like fighting ghosts. And Valnikov. A ghost himself.
    Gas stations. A guy doesn’t pay for his gas, peels out and beats the proprietor out of eight bucks. Who gets the crime reports? Business burglary. Trouble is there’s always a suspect. The victims get his license number. Run the license, call the suspect. Where was your car Tuesday night at ten o’clock? Your son, Harvey? Uh huh. And how old is the little zit-faced, coke-snorting, hash-smoking son of a bitch? Seventeen? Yes, well he didn’t pay for his gas at Seymour’s Shell Station, corner of … Yes, that’s right, little Hah-vey just didn’t pay. (God, she hated transplanted New Yorkers.) No, no mistake. They took his license number. Yes, you take care of it with Seymour and we can close out our report. We won’t arrest Hah-vey this time. Thank you very much.
    A collection agency. Furniture movers. Paper shufflers. Business burglary. What a thrill. And this was only the first day! Why me!
    But Valnikov didn’t mind. He leisurely passed the time of day with every victim of every petty crime report they handled. Natalie was mad enough to spit. Especially, when they were an hour and a half past what should have been their lunch break and he gave twenty minutes to the sixty-five-year-old proprietor of a second-hand store on Western Avenue. She’d been burglarized three times in five weeks. Every time she picked up some decent merchandise, a hit-and-run window smash.
    â€œSergeant,” the Filipino woman said, “I can’t go on like this. I can’t make enough to pay my utilities even. Do you think I could get a job with the police, maybe?” She brightened and said, “Maybe a crossing guard for school kids. I ain’t too old, am I?”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so. I see lots of old people,” Valnikov said. “I can check. I can get an application sent to you.”
    Natalie was leaning against a ramshackle dress rack, smoking, bored stiff, when she heard the tea pot whistle. She walked over to turn it off and saw a dish behind the hot-plate burner. There was a fork on the plate and what looked like corned beef hash. There was a half-empty can of dog food beside the hot plate.
    The woman saw Natalie looking at it and scurried behind the counter, pushing everything back and covering it with a towel.
    â€œMy dog … my doggie’s outside … I … well …”
    â€œYes, of course, Mrs. De la Cruz,” Valnikov said, with his weary nod of the head. “I was telling Sergeant Zimmerman just this morning that every business person around here should have a watchdog. Wasn’t I, Natalie?”
    And Natalie had a dash of resentment to add to her frustration because a rummy like this saw something quicker than she did.
    â€œI’ll be very grateful if you could send me the application, Sergeant,” she said to Valnikov, her dentures clicking. “I could dye my hair, pass for