'Let her go,' Slab said. 'She wants to.'
'You've slammed her around,' yelled Rachel. 'You trying to total her? It didn't work with me so you had to pick on somebody as weak as you are. Why couldn't you confine your mistakes to paint and canvas.'
One way or another the Whole Sick Crew was giving the cops a busy night. Whistles started blowing. The area between the rail and the DC-3 was swelling into a small-scale riot.
Why not? It was August and cops do not like Puerto Ricans. The multimetronome clatter from Cucarachita's rhythm section turned angry like a swarm of locusts turning for the approach on some rich field. Slab began shouting unkind reminiscences of the days he and Rachel had been horizontal.
Profane meanwhile was trying to keep from being clobbered. He'd lost Esther who was naturally using the riot for a screen. Somebody started blinking all the lights in that part of Idlewild which made things even worse.
He finally broke clear of a small knot of wellwishers and spotted Esther running across the airstrip. She'd lost one shoe. He was about to go after her when a body fell across his path. He tripped, went down, opened his eyes to a pair of girl's legs he knew.
'Benito.' The sad pout, sexy as ever.
'God, what else.'
She was going back to San Juan. Of the months between the gang bang and now she'd say nothing.
'Fina, Fina, don't go.' Like photographs in your wallet, what good is an old love - however ill-defined - down in San Juan?
'Angel and Geronimo are here.' She looked around vaguely.
'They want me to go,' she told him, on her way again. He followed, haranguing. He'd forgotten about Esther. Cucarachita and father came running past. Profane and Fina passed Esther's shoe, lying on its side with a broken heel.
Finally Fina turned, dry-eyed. 'Remember the night in the bathtub?' spat, spun, dashed off for the plane.
'Your ass,' he said, 'they would have got you sooner or later.' But stood there anyway, still as any object.
'I did it,' he said after a while. 'It was me.' Schlemiels being, as he believed, passive, he could not remember ever having admitted anything like this. 'Oh, man.' Plus letting Esther get away, plus having Rachel now for a dependent, plus whatever would happen with Paola. For a boy not getting any he had more woman problems than anybody he knew.
He started back for Rachel. The riot was breaking up. Behind him propellers spun; the plane taxied, slewed, became airborne, was gone. He didn't turn to watch it.
VI
Patrolman Jones and Officer Ten Eyck, disdaining the elevator, marched in perfect unison up two flights of palatial stairway, down the hall toward Winsome's apartment. A few tabloid reporters who had taken the elevator intercepted them halfway there. Noise from Winsome's apartment could be heard down on Riverside Drive.
'Never know what Bellevue is going to turn up,' said Jones.
He and his sidekick were faithful viewers of the TV program Dragnet. They'd cultivated deadpan expressions, unsyncopated speech rhythms, monotone voices. One was tall and skinny, the other was short and fat. They walked in step.
'Talked to a doctor there,' said Ten Eyck. 'Young fella named Gottschalk. Winsome had a lot to say.'
'We'll see, Al.'
Before the door, Jones and Ten Eyck waited politely for the one cameraman in the group to check his flash attachment. A girl was heard to shriek happily inside.
'Oboy, oboy,' said a reporter.
The cops knocked. 'Come in, come in,' called many juiced voices.
'It's the police, ma'am.'
'I hate fuzz,' somebody snarled. Ten Eyck kicked in the door, which had been open. Bodies inside fell back to provide the cameraman a line-of-sight to Mafia, Charisma, Fu and friends, playing Musical Blankets. Zap, went the camera.
'Too bad,' the photographer said, 'we can't print that one. ' Ten Eyck shouldered his way over to Mafia.
'All right, ma'am.'
'Would you like to play,' hysterical.
The cop smiled, tolerantly. 'We've talked to your husband.'
'We'd better go,' said the other cop.
'Guess Al is right, ma'am.' Flash attachment lit up the room from time to time, like a spell of heat lightning.
Ten Eyck flapped a warrant. 'All you folks are under arrest,' he said. To Jones: 'Call the Lieutenant, Steve.'
'What charge,' people started yelling.
Ten Eyck's timing was good. He waited a few heartbeats. 'Disturbing the peace will do,' he said.
Maybe the only peace undisturbed that night was McClintic's and Paola's. The little Triumph forged along up the Hudson, their own wind was cool, taking away whatever of Nueva York had clogged ears, nostrils, mouths.
