nodded, building steam. “In fact, I’m thinking of having some medals cast
off, so I can hand them out to you guys. Boy, am I lucky to have this job! I
may come to work without pay from now on. I may just refuse my salary, this job
is so enriching. I want to thank you guys. You make me recognize the real
values in life.”
“He
makes a nice speech,” Hawes said.
“He
should run the line-up. It would break the monotony. How come you don’t run the
line-up, Meyer?”
“Steve,
I been offered the job,” Meyer said seriously. “I told them I’m needed right
here at the Eighty-seventh, the garden spot of all the precincts. Why, they
offered me chief of detectives, and when I said no, they offered me
commissioner, but I was loyal to the squad.”
“Let’s
give him a medal,” Hawes said, and the telephone rang.
Meyer
lifted the receiver. “Eighty-seventh Squad. Detective Meyer. What? Yeah, just a
second.” He pulled a pad into place and began writing. “Yeah, I got it. Right.
Right. Right. Okay.” He hung up. Carella had walked to his desk. “A little
colored girl,” Meyer said.
“Yeah?”
“In a
furnished room on South Eleventh.”
“Yeah?”
“Dead,”
Meyer said.
* * * *
2
The city doesn’t seem to be
itself in the very early hours of the morning.
She is
a woman, of course, and time will never change that. She awakes as a woman,
tentatively touching the day in a yawning, smiling stretch, her lips free of
color, her hair tousled, warm from sleep, her body richer, an innocent girlish
quality about her as sunlight stains the eastern sky and covers her with early
heat. She dresses in furnished rooms in crumby rundown slums, and she dresses
in Hall Avenue penthouses, and in the countless apartments that crowd the
buildings of Isola and Riverhead and Calm’s Point, in the private houses that
line the streets of Bethtown and Majesta, and she emerges a different woman,
sleek and businesslike, attractive but not sexy, a look of utter competence
about her, manicured and polished, but with no time for nonsense, there is a
long working day ahead of her. At five o’clock a metamorphosis takes place. She
does not change her costume, this city, this woman, she wears the same frock or
the same suit, the same high-heeled pumps or the same suburban loafers, but
something breaks through that immaculate shell, a mood, a tone, an undercurrent.
She is a different woman who sits in the bars and cocktail lounges, who relaxes
on the patios or on the terraces shelving the skyscrapers, a different woman
with a somewhat lazily inviting grin, a somewhat tired expression, an
impenetrable knowledge on her face and in her eyes: she lifts her glass, she
laughs gently, the evening sits expectantly on the skyline, the sky is awash
with the purple of day’s end.
She
turns female in the night.
She
drops her femininity and turns female. The polish is gone, the mechanized
competence; she becomes a little scatterbrained and a little cuddly; she
crosses her legs recklessly and allows her lipstick to be kissed clear off her
mouth, and she responds to the male hands on her body, and she turns soft and
inviting and miraculously primitive. The night is a female time, and the city
is nothing but a woman.
And in
the empty hours she sleeps, and she does not seem to be herself.
In the
morning she will awake again and touch the silent air in a yawn, spreading her
arms, the contented smile on her naked mouth. Her hair will be mussed, we will
know her, we have seen her this way often.
But now
she sleeps. She sleeps silently, this city. Oh, an eye open in the buildings of
the night here and there, winking on, off again, silence. She rests. In sleep
we do not recognize her. Her sleep is not like death, for we can hear and sense
the murmur of life beneath the warm bedclothes. But she is a strange woman whom
we have known intimately, loved passionately, and now
off, so I can hand them out to you guys. Boy, am I lucky to have this job! I
may come to work without pay from now on. I may just refuse my salary, this job
is so enriching. I want to thank you guys. You make me recognize the real
values in life.”
“He
makes a nice speech,” Hawes said.
“He
should run the line-up. It would break the monotony. How come you don’t run the
line-up, Meyer?”
“Steve,
I been offered the job,” Meyer said seriously. “I told them I’m needed right
here at the Eighty-seventh, the garden spot of all the precincts. Why, they
offered me chief of detectives, and when I said no, they offered me
commissioner, but I was loyal to the squad.”
“Let’s
give him a medal,” Hawes said, and the telephone rang.
Meyer
lifted the receiver. “Eighty-seventh Squad. Detective Meyer. What? Yeah, just a
second.” He pulled a pad into place and began writing. “Yeah, I got it. Right.
Right. Right. Okay.” He hung up. Carella had walked to his desk. “A little
colored girl,” Meyer said.
“Yeah?”
“In a
furnished room on South Eleventh.”
“Yeah?”
“Dead,”
Meyer said.
* * * *
2
The city doesn’t seem to be
itself in the very early hours of the morning.
She is
a woman, of course, and time will never change that. She awakes as a woman,
tentatively touching the day in a yawning, smiling stretch, her lips free of
color, her hair tousled, warm from sleep, her body richer, an innocent girlish
quality about her as sunlight stains the eastern sky and covers her with early
heat. She dresses in furnished rooms in crumby rundown slums, and she dresses
in Hall Avenue penthouses, and in the countless apartments that crowd the
buildings of Isola and Riverhead and Calm’s Point, in the private houses that
line the streets of Bethtown and Majesta, and she emerges a different woman,
sleek and businesslike, attractive but not sexy, a look of utter competence
about her, manicured and polished, but with no time for nonsense, there is a
long working day ahead of her. At five o’clock a metamorphosis takes place. She
does not change her costume, this city, this woman, she wears the same frock or
the same suit, the same high-heeled pumps or the same suburban loafers, but
something breaks through that immaculate shell, a mood, a tone, an undercurrent.
She is a different woman who sits in the bars and cocktail lounges, who relaxes
on the patios or on the terraces shelving the skyscrapers, a different woman
with a somewhat lazily inviting grin, a somewhat tired expression, an
impenetrable knowledge on her face and in her eyes: she lifts her glass, she
laughs gently, the evening sits expectantly on the skyline, the sky is awash
with the purple of day’s end.
She
turns female in the night.
She
drops her femininity and turns female. The polish is gone, the mechanized
competence; she becomes a little scatterbrained and a little cuddly; she
crosses her legs recklessly and allows her lipstick to be kissed clear off her
mouth, and she responds to the male hands on her body, and she turns soft and
inviting and miraculously primitive. The night is a female time, and the city
is nothing but a woman.
And in
the empty hours she sleeps, and she does not seem to be herself.
In the
morning she will awake again and touch the silent air in a yawn, spreading her
arms, the contented smile on her naked mouth. Her hair will be mussed, we will
know her, we have seen her this way often.
But now
she sleeps. She sleeps silently, this city. Oh, an eye open in the buildings of
the night here and there, winking on, off again, silence. She rests. In sleep
we do not recognize her. Her sleep is not like death, for we can hear and sense
the murmur of life beneath the warm bedclothes. But she is a strange woman whom
we have known intimately, loved passionately, and now
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