on account of you couldn't tell age or anything at first, just this naked woman with blood everywhere, the sheets soaked, the blanket, all this very dark blood-'
His face was white tinged with green. I said, 'Easy, Lew.'
'I'm all right.'
'I know you are. Put your head down between your knees. C'mon, swing out from behind the table and put your head down. You're all right.'
'I know.'
I thought he might faint, but he got hold of himself. He kept his head lowered for a minute or two, then sat up straight again. He had some color in his face now. He took a couple of deep breaths and a long swig of beer.
He said, 'Jesus Christ.'
'You're okay now.'
'Yeah, right. I took one look at her lying there and I had to puke. I seen dead people before. My old man, he had a heart attack in his sleep, and I was the one walked in and found him. And since I joined the force, you know. But I never seen one like this and I hadda puke and I'm handcuffed to this asshole and he's still got his dick hanging out. I dragged the stupid bastard over to the corner and I just puked in the corner of the room, just like that, and what I did next, I had a fit of the giggles. I just couldn't help it, I stood there giggling like an idiot, and this guy cuffed to me, so help me God, he stops all this yelling of his and he asks me,
`What's so funny?' Can you believe it? Like he wants me to explain the joke to him so he can laugh, too. `What's so funny?' '
I poured the rest of my bourbon into my coffee and stirred it with a spoon. I was getting bits and pieces of Richard Vanderpoel. So far they didn't begin to fit together, but they were fragments of what might ultimately be a full picture. Or they might never add up to anything real. Sometimes the whole is a lot less than the sum of its parts.
I spent another twenty minutes or so with Pankow, going back and forth over places we'd already been without getting anything much from him. He talked a little about his reactions to the murder scene, the nausea, the hysteria. He wanted to know if you ever got used to that sort of thing. I thought of the photograph I had taken from the file. I hadn't felt much looking at it. But if I had walked into that bedroom as Pankow had done, I might have reacted in very much the same way.
'You get used to some of it,' I told him, 'but every once in a while something new comes along and knocks you on your ass.'
When I had all I was going to get, I put a five on the table for the drinks and passed him twenty-five dollars. He didn't want to take it.
'C'mon,' I said. 'You did me a favor.'
'Well, that's all it was, was a favor. I feel funny taking money for it.'
'You're being stupid.'
'Huh?' The blue eyes were very wide.
'Stupid. This isn't graft. It's clean money. You did somebody a favor and made a couple of bucks for it.' I pushed the bills across the table at him. 'Listen to me,' I said. 'You just made a good collar. You wrote a decent report, and you handle yourself well, and pretty soon you'll be in line to get off the beat and into a prowl car. But nobody's going to want you in a car with him if you've got the wrong kind of reputation.'
'I don't get you.'
'Think about it. If you don't take money when somebody puts it in your hand, you're going to make a lot of people very nervous. You don't have to be a crook. Certain kinds of money you can turn down.
And you don't have to walk the streets with your hand out. But you've got to play the game with the cards they give you. Take the money.'
'Jesus.'
'Didn't Koehler tell you there would be something in it for you?'
'Sure. But that's not why I came here. Hell, I generally drop in for a couple of beers when my shift ends. I usually meet my girl here around ten thirty. It's not like-'
'Koehler's going to expect a five-dollar bill for steering twenty-five your way. You want to pay him out of your own pocket?'
'Jesus. What do I do, just walk into his office and hand him five dollars?'
'That's the idea. You can say something like, `Here's that five you loaned me.' Something like that.'
'I guess I got a lot to learn,' he said. He didn't sound delighted at the prospect.
'You don't have to worry about it,' I said. 'You've got plenty to learn, but they make it easy for you.
The system takes you through it a step at a time. That's what makes it such a good system.'
* * *
HE insisted on buying me a drink out of his new-found wealth. I sat there and drank it while he told me what it meant to him to be a police officer. I nodded at the right times without paying very much attention to what he was saying. I couldn't keep my mind on his words.
I got out of there and walked crosstown on Fifty-seventh to my hotel. The early edition of the Times was just in at the newsstand on Eighth Avenue. I bought it and took it home with me.
There were no messages for me at the desk. I went up to my room and took my shoes off and stretched out on the bed with the paper. It turned out to be about as gripping as Lewis Pankow's conversation.
