Dead Street

“Oh, I wangle that in when I can. Shot me a robber last week. Just a nick, but it sure scared the hell out of him.”

“What were you aiming for?”

“The spot right where I hit him,” he told me. “Hell, I didn’t want to take him down permanently.”

“Pal, you’re an oddball cop, you know that?”

“Sure I do. Did you know I’m up for a promotion?”

“Great!”

“I won’t take it unless I can stay right here.”

After a few seconds I asked, “What do you do with all your dough, Paul?”

“Send decent kids to college who couldn’t afford it otherwise. Two of them are going into the Academy this year.”

“You are some recruiter, buddy.”

“Get that pipe up to me fast, okay?”

“You got it,” I said.

With FedEx you make one phone call and they have it on the way in no time. Not every change has been for the worse.

Just most of them.

It’s odd to watch a blind person prepare supper.

You expect them to break a dish or shake in something that doesn’t belong there or not find the filter basket with a spoonful of coffee and spill it all over the counter. The TV was on the evening news but I wasn’t bothering to watch it. Bettie’s body was in beautiful motion, the way I had always thought it would be. There was grace in every movement and whatever she did had deliberate thought behind it.

I sat across the table and she knew I was studying her, watching every move she made and storing it away in my memory banks. I didn’t have to tell her. She knew. When she cleared away the supper plates and set a fat piece of fresh apple pie in front of me, she asked me, “Jack... how did this all happen?”

“Kismet,” I said.

“Oh? Simple fate?”

“Not so simple.”

“You’re thinking something else, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“It had to happen.”

“Why?”

“Kismet,” I repeated.

Outside, the sun was setting in the west and some shore birds were cutting streaks through the darkening sky. Bettie and I rocked in unison in the big wicker-backed chairs and my mind was a million miles away from the cacophony of sounds that made New York City the Big Apple. It was a great nickname until you remembered that people took bites out of big apples and if one of those bites nipped your rear end, it shouldn’t be a total surprise.

Darris Kinder’s Batman car turned the corner, pulled up in front of Bettie’s house and he cut the engine. He came out of the vehicle, took a casual look around the area and walked up to the porch.

I stood up and said, “Captain, it’s good to see you. What’s happening?”

“Got to make sure all our new guests are comfortable.”

“Can’t you tell?”

Kinder looked at the two of us and grinned. “Oh, yeah. I can see that.”

I pulled over another rocker and said, “Have a seat. This is the first time we’ve had any real company.”

His face had a bland expression, but I had seen bland expressions before and the look I gave him said I got the implication of what he was thinking.

“It’s a quiet night,” I offered.

He nodded in agreement. “We’ve always had quiet nights,” he said, but there seemed to be some almost-silent emphasis on the word “quiet.”

He went on: “The guys at the Station House had a meeting earlier. They want to get you ‘initiated.’ “

“I already signed up.”

“That’s not being initiated.”

“Darris, it’s great to be here, but I’m not the ‘joiner’ type. You know?”

“Sure, but tell your old buddies that, not me.... Say, you remember Pudgy Gillespie, don’t you?”

“From the thirty-second? Yeah.”

“Well, he’s thinking of moving down here.” Darris passed me a sheet of small notepaper. “Here’s his number. Give him a call.”

His voice was friendly and bland, but there was a funny tone in it and I nodded and said, “Sure thing, I’ll get him later.”

When he left, Kinder looked back at me for a quick second and his eyes were telling me something that Bettie couldn’t see.

But Bettie had been blind for a long time. Sight wasn’t a total necessity for her vision any longer. There were other ways she could see, and when Kinder drove off Bettie very quietly asked, “What was that all about, Jack?”

Her inquiry was so loaded with suggestion that I couldn’t lie to her. “Something’s happening,” I told her.

“What?” she demanded.

“It’s a cop thing, doll.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because you’re not a cop.”

“Are you?”

“I was.”

“... Can you tell me?”

“I can.”

“Will you?”

So you love the girl. She’s old enough to be a woman but she was born twenty years ago, even if she’s forty-something, so she’s a girl, who’s been through her own hell. She’s still in it, but beginning to see the light shining through the murk. You’ve kissed her and tasted her and you’re in total love with her and now she wants to be more a part of you than ever before.

I said, “I will.”

“Then tell me.”

“Something happened at Credentials where you worked. It was a computer business, so it had to do with the machinery you operated there. Computers, can you remember that? Ray Burnwald was your boss.”

“Poor Mr. Burnwald. You said he was... injured?”

“Yes. He’s recovering.”

“Mr. Burnwald was nice.”

“Do you remember your job there?”