'Like a priest?'
'Something like that. Not exactly, because it's not rare for a cop to lose the faith and go on being a cop.
He may never have had it in the first place. What it amounted to was that I found out I didn't want to be a cop anymore.' Or a husband, or a father. Or a productive member of society.
'All the corruption in the department? That sort of thing?'
'No, no.' The corruption had never bothered me. I would have found it hard to support a family without it. 'No, it was something else.'
'I see.'
'You do? Hell, it's not a secret. I was off duty one night in the summer. I was in a bar in Washington Heights where cops didn't have to pay for their drinks.
Two kids held up the place. On their way out they shot the bartender in the heart. I chased them into the street. I shot one of them dead and caught the other in the thigh. He's never going to walk right again.'
'I see.'
'No, I don't think you do. That wasn't the first time I ever killed anyone. I was glad the one died and sorry the other recovered.'
'Then-'
'One shot went wide and ricocheted. It hit a seven-year-old girl in the eye.
The ricochet took most of the steam off the bullet. An inch higher and it probably would have glanced off her forehead. Would have left a nasty scar but nothing much worse than that. This way, though, nothing but soft tissue, and it went right on into her brain. They tell me she died instantly.' I looked at my hands. The tremor was barely visible. I picked up my cup and drained it. I said, 'There was no question of culpability. As a matter of fact, I got a departmental commendation.
Then I resigned. I just didn't want to be a cop anymore.'
* * *
I sat there for a few minutes after he left. Then I caught Trina's eye and she brought over another cup of laced coffee. 'Your friend's not much of a drinker,'
she said.
I agreed that he wasn't. Something in my tone must have alerted her because she sat down in Hanniford's chair and put her hand on top of mine for a moment.
'Troubles, Matt?'
'Not really. Things to do, and I'd rather not do them.'
'You'd rather just sit here and get drunk.'
I grinned at her. 'When did you ever see me drunk?'
'Never. And I never saw you when you weren't drinking.'
'It's a nice middle ground.'
'Can't be good for you, can it?'
I wished she would touch my hand again. Her fingers were long and slender, her touch very cool.
'Nothing's much good for anybody,' I said.
'Coffee and booze. It's a very weird combination.'
'Is it?'
'Booze to get you drunk, and coffee to keep you sober.'
I shook my head. 'Coffee never sobered anybody. It just keeps you awake.
Give a drunk plenty of coffee and you've got a wide-awake drunk on your hands.'
'That what you are, baby? A wide-awake drunk?'
'I'm neither,' I told her. 'That's what keeps me drinking.'
I got to my savings bank a little after four. I stuck five hundred in my account and took the rest of Hanniford's money in cash. It was my first visit since the first of the year, so they entered some interest in my passbook. A machine figured it all out in the wink of an eye. The sum involved was hardly large enough to warrant wasting the machine's time on it.
I walked back on Fifty-seventh Street to Ninth, then headed uptown past Armstrong's and the hospital to St. Paul's. Mass was just winding up, and I waited outside while a couple dozen people straggled out of the church. They were mostly middle-aged women. Then I went inside and slipped four fifty-dollar bills into the poor box.
I tithe. I don't know why. It's become a habit, as indeed it has become my habit to visit churches. I began doing this shortly after I moved into my hotel room.
I like churches. I like to sit in them when I have things to think about. I sat around the middle of this one on the aisle. I suppose I was there for twenty minutes, maybe a little longer.
Two thousand dollars from Cale Hanniford to me, two hundred dollars from me to St. Paul's poor box.
I don't know what they do with the money. Maybe it buys food and clothing for poor families. Maybe it buys Lincolns for the clergy. I don't really care what they do with it.
