In the Best Families

“Hell, he's gone batty, like lots of geniuses, I declared, and got up to go.

Chapter Seven

I drove around for two solid hours, mostly in the park. Now and then, for a change of scene, I left the park for a patrol of the avenues.

I hadn't been able to start thinking in the house, and it might work better on the move. Moreover, I didn't want any more just then of Fritz or Theodore, or in fact of anybody but me. So, in the light of experience and guided by intelligence, I drove around. Somewhere along the way I saw clearly what my trouble was: I was completely out of errands for the first time in years. How could I decide what to do when I had nothing to do? I now believe that the reason I never drove farther north than One Hundred and Tenth Street, nor farther south than Fourteenth Street during those two hours, was that I thought

Wolfe was probably somewhere within those limits and I didn't want to leave them.

When I did leave them it wasn't voluntary. Rolling down Second Avenue in the

Seventies, I had stopped for a red light abreast of a police car on my left.

Just as the light was changing, the cop on my side stuck his head out and called, “Pull over to the curb.

Flattered at the attention as any motorist would be, not, I obeyed. The police car came alongside, and the cop got out and invented another new phrase. “Let me see your licence.

I got it out and handed it to him, and he took a look.

“Yeah, I thought I recognised you. He handed the licence back, walked around the front of my car to the other side, got in beside me, and suggested, “Let's go to the Nineteenth Precinct. Sixty-seven east of Lexington.

“That's one idea, I admitted. “Or what's wrong with the Brooklyn Botanical

Garden, especially on Easter? I'll toss you for it.

He was unmoved. “Come on, Goodwin, come on. I know you're a card, I've heard all about you. Let's go.

“Give me one reason, good or bad. If you don't mind?

“I don't know the reason. All I know is the word that came an hour ago, to pick you up and take you in. Maybe you shouldn't have left the infant on the church steps on Easter Day.

“Of course not, I agreed. “We'll go get it.

I eased away from the curb into traffic, with the police car trailing behind.

Our destination, the Nineteenth Precinct Station, was not new to me. That was where I had once spent most of a night, conversing with Lieutenant Rowcliff, the

Con Noonan of the New York Police Department.