The Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow Page B

of this odd, misplaced policeman, misplaced for life, is an important piece of my story. The way enlightenment comes … is in bits and pieces of humdrum reality, each adding its mosaic bit of glitter to the eventual vision. It is almost mysterious to me now that I sought him out, this carefully stepping creature bowed by his own height. I had other recourses in a city of almost a million souls … and at the beginning of our cooperative inquiry, I admit, I was prepared to go on to them … except that he was so engaged by the problem I had brought as to take possession of it. I saw immediately that his interest had nothing to do with his lack of serious duties. In fact he had all sorts of investigative pursuits of his own that he had not abandoned since leaving his previous command of the woeful, understaffed Bureau for the Recovery of Lost Persons. There was something else, something else … a look of recognition in the eye, as if he might have been waiting for this … waiting for me to arrive … with what he was expecting.
    So now we are in his office, after two or three nights of a so-far-unproductive search for a sign of Eustace Simmons on the waterfront—walking from one tavern to another, along the East River under the looming prows of the packets and clippers that lie at berth with their bowsprits in the chalky night casting shadows on the cobblestone … some hidden language in the sound of creaking mast and groaning hawser … the riverfront stink of fish and ordure suggesting to me a crawl through the city’s nether parts. So, as I say, we are in his office midway through my glorious summer holiday … and I have thought for the first time to tell Donne about Martin’s allusive conversation with Harry Wheelwright at the St. Nicholas Hotel.
    But now a sergeant enters, pushing before him through the gate another diversion—a muscular fellow in a dirty sweater and baggy trousers, white haired and with a face well pounded, the nose and cheekbones flattened, and the ears curled up on themselves like blossoms. He stood before the desk in his considerable redolence, twisting the cap in his hands and smiling at nothing in particular as he waited to be acknowledged.
    Donne had been reading some sort of document—whether to do with my subject or not, I had no idea. He glanced at me, then he arranged the papers neatly on his desk, and only then did he look up at the man before him.
    “Well, look at this. It’s Knucks has come calling.”
    “Yes, Captain,” said this Knucks with a deferential nod.
    “So we’re restored to the good opinion of crime,” Donne said to the sergeant, who laughed in response. “And how is your health?” Donne said to the man, as if they were club members together.
    “Oh, I’m doin’ poorly, thanking you, Captain,” said the old tough, taking the question as an invitation to seat himself on the edge of the chair next to mine. He grinned, showing his gapped and blackened teeth, and his face lit up appealingly, like a boy’s, with the perverse charm that is given sometimes to the brainlessly amoral. “This leg o’ mine,” he said, stretching out the offending limb, and rubbing it vigorously. “It aches terrible and sometimes won’t be trod upon. It ain’t never healed right from the war.”
    “And what war was that?” said Donne.
    “Why, Yer Honor, the War Betwix the States.”
    “I never heard you had gone for a soldier, Knucks. And where did you see your action?”
    “It was on the Fifth Avenue—I took a ball by the steps of the nigger orphanage there.”
    “I see. And were you one of the gallants putting a torch to the place?”
    “I was, Captain, and ’twas one of your own rifles who nicked me in that skirmish when I was fighting for my honor against the illegal cons’ription.”
    “I understand now, Knucks.”
    “Yessir. And withal I p’r’aps have said the wrong thing, given what I am to divulge, with your permission. But I’m an older and wiser sod now,