He flipped it on and settled with his knee against the dash. “It’s too cold for junkies on the streets, it’ll be a quiet night.”
They listened to a rookie call and immediately cancel a signal 13 at Seventy-second and Amsterdam. But you can’t cancel an assist officer call just like that. Guys would move in on him anyway and then rib him about it later. “What made him jump, you suppose?” Wilson asked. He didn’t really expect an answer and Becky didn’t talk. Who the hell cared about some rookie and his erroneous 13. Becky headed the car east across Central Park on the Seventy-ninth Street transverse. She was heading toward a Chinese restaurant in her home neighborhood the other side of the park. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but they had to eat. And what they would do after that, how they would pass the night she had no idea. And what about the days and nights to come, what about the future?
“What the hell are they going to do about us?”
“Do, Becky? Not a damn thing. They’re just gonna leave us hanging on this here string. Hey, where’re you going—you live over here, don’t you?”
“Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not taking you to my place. We’re going to stop for a little supper. We need to eat, remember.”
“Yeah. Anyway, the brass isn’t going to do a damn thing about us. They’re too busy pushing paper and worrying—who has this division, who has that precinct, who’s moving up, who’s getting flopped. That’s their whole career, that and figuring who has the biggest hook, who
“Bitter boy. I think maybe Underwood actually thinks we belong on the case. He respects us.”
“Who belongs on a closed case? Oh Jesus, Becky, this is a Szechwan restaurant—I can’t eat here.”
She double-parked the car and pulled out the key. “You can eat here. Just ask them to hold the hot sauce on your chow mein.”
“I can’t even get Goddamn chow mein in a place like this,” he sulked.
She got out of the car and he followed reluctantly. They entered the dimly lit restaurant knocking snow off their clothes. “Getting heavier?” the coat-check girl asked.
“Heavier,” Wilson said. “Becky, this place is going to cost a fortune. It’s got a hatcheck girl. I never eat in places with hatcheck girls.” He followed her into the restaurant still complaining, but he subsided into subvocal grumbling when he received the menu. She could see the gears turning over as he calculated whether he could eat for less than two dollars.
“I’ll order for both of us since I’ve been here before,” she said, taking his menu. “I’ll get you out for five bucks.”
“Five!”
“Maybe six. I hope you’re not too hungry though, because it’ll only be one dish.”
“What?”
The waiter came. She ordered prawns in garlic sauce for Wilson and Chicken Tang for herself. At least she would enjoy what could easily be her last meal. But she stopped that line of thought—you think that way, it happens. She also ordered a drink, and Wilson got beer. “A buck for a Bud,” he muttered. “Goddamn Chinks.”
“Come on, relax. You’ll enjoy the food. Let’s talk about it.”
“What Ferguson said?”
“What he said. What ideas did it give you?”
“We could set up living quarters in Evans’s meat locker.”
“It gave me a better idea than that. It’s something I think we’ve got to do if we’re going to survive. Obviously it’s only a matter of time before our friends see their chance and move in. Sooner or later the two of us are going to join DiFalco and Houlihan.
“Insufficient evidence, that’s what’s got the wheels gummed up. We have provided theories, hearsay, suppositions and a funny-looking piece of plaster of Paris made by Doctor Whozis.”
“So why not provide photographs. Pictures. It’s not a cadaver but it sure would improve our case.”
“How do you photograph what you never see? If there’s light enough for a picture there’s too much light. These things won’t get close to us in light Although we
“I’ve got a better idea. Narcotics has been experimenting with computerized image intensification equipment, stuff developed during the Vietnam war. We can get a really super picture even in total darkness with it. Dick’s unit’s been using it experimentally.”
“What’s involved, a support truck or something?”
“Not at all. The whole thing looks like an oversize pair of binoculars. Camera’s built in. You just look through the thing and what you can see you can photograph.”
“What you can see? There’s the hole in the idea. We have to be close enough to see them.”
“Not so close. You’ve got a five-hundred-millimeter lens.”
“My God, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of. We could be a quarter of a mile away.”
“Like staked out on the roof of my building watching the alley, watching for them to come back.”
“Yeah, we could do that. We could get our pictures and pull out before they even started climbing the terraces.”
“There’s only one small hitch. Dick’s got to be convinced to help us. He’s got to give us the equipment, and it’s classified.”
