Slob

'Amen.'

'Amen.'

'Once upon a time, there was a little Eskimo boy named Icky—'

'A girl, Mom,' she corrected as Edie took a deep breath.

'Once upon a time there was this cranky little Eskimo girl named— '

'Cranky? Come on, Mom!'

'I'm sorry. Okay. Now close your eyes and I'll start over. Once upon a time, way up north, there was this little Eskimo named Icky and she had this beautiful baby reindeer named Caribou. It had always wanted to be one of Santa's reindeer, but it was a caribou, so Icky named it Caribou so that it would know what kind of animal it was. But she couldn't pronounce the word caribou because Icky was just a little Eskimo girl and so she could only say Boo-boo and that was the reindeer's name.' She thought to herself, Is it a reindeer that wants to be a caribou or the other way around. I've forgotten how Ed used to tell this.

'And Boo-boo went to Santa Claus's workshop to apply to be a Christmas reindeer. But Mr. and Mrs. Claus were out, so he asked to speak to Rudolph'—and Lee Anne was already breathing deeply, thank the Lord, because she had no idea what she was saying at this point.

She got off the bed as soundlessly as she could and tiptoed over to the light switch. She put the room in darkness and started easing the door closed and a little voice came out softly, muffled by the covers and sleepiness.

'Mom, you get that story all messed up. Boo-boo's a caribou not a reindeer.'

'Okay. You can tell me about it tomorrow. 'Night angel.'

'G'night, Mom. I love you thiiiissssss much.'

'I love you this much too, sweetheart,' she said, shutting the door softly.

Jack Eichord—the Cop

You know how to get a nigger out of a tree in Mississippi?'

'How's that?' Eichord dutifully responded to the big cop standing next to him in Curley's, the cop bar where every-body in the 18th Division hung out. The guys off the four-to-midnight tour were coming in, all raunchy and thirsty, and Jack was nursing a Stroh's Light in between two guys from Property Crimes, longtime partners, standing on either side of him. The big one in the leather coat had a silk shirt on that must have cost seventy-five dollars, big, bad Fu Manchu, gold chains, ID bracelets, a miniature Mr. T, and the black one built like a fireplug, another open shirt and lots of chains, the white cop looking at Jack but talking to his partner, jiving around with him like they always did.

'You get a goddamn knife and CUT him down.' Everybody at the bar laughed, Eichord laughing politely as he felt a tap on his right arm and turned.

'You know how to tell a plane in the Polack air force?'

'Shit, you dumb cacknacker don't you even know how to tell a joke fer' Chrissakes, it's how do you tell a Polish airplane not how do you tell a plane in the Polack fuckin' air force you wooly-headed Watusi midget.'

'Listen, ya' big, smelly chuck piece of dog shit, if it's good enough for ya' Mammy it's good enough for you. Anyway, ya' know how to tell a Polack airplane?' Eichord's smile muscles are still bunched up and he shakes his head in the negative. 'It's the one with the hair under its wings!' The black cop just about gets a hernia laughing. Eichord has heard all this stuff a hundred times.

'Ya' know what you call six niggers in a Volkswagen?' the big cop asks the bar.

'A stinkbug!' Everybody roars.

'You know why it takes a hundred lawyers to change a light bulb?' Curley, the bartender, interjects.

'It takes one to put in the bulb, and the other ninety-nine to make sure it gets SCREWED!'

When he first quit drinking Jack wouldn't even walk by a saloon but after he'd stayed off the sauce a few months he realized that was a little absurd. You were either under control or you weren't. It was just that simple. If you could walk into a package store and stare all that Daniel's and I. W. Harper and Seagram's right in the face and walk out with a sixpack, you could do the same thing in a noisy, smoke-filled tavern. The kind of work he was in you had to go into bars frequently, and if you didn't you could miss something here and there. Also, he knew how important it was to appear sociable. And he could go into the drunkest joint in town, sip a couple of Oly Lights or whatever, and enjoy himself, go home and maybe top the night off with a strong cup of instant and hit the sack.

Curley's was typically dark, salty, and noisy. A little heavy on the groupie action, more than he was used to anyway, and the fact that these guys he didn't know from up in Prop Crimes asked him along was an okay sign, the word was getting out that he was all right. He was waiting because Bill Joyce, one of the homicide detectives who'd drawn Sylvia Kasikoff, was going to stop by and have a drink with him.

The 18th Division, they didn't call them precincts in the windy, was a fairly high-crime division that embraced a good part of the downtown Chicago area. The vast Chicagoland Megaplex was divided into areas, those then subdivided into divisions which were led, on paper, by division commanders. Eichord was on loan to the homicide unit in the 18th, a division that shared most of the town with the First. They had explained to him where all the jurisdictional lines were but after so many 'Eleventh and State's' shot back and forth like ping-pong balls he tuned out on all of it. He was just starting to remember his way around after a lot of years. The main thing he knew was, it was a lot of city to get lost in.

'Walk south till yer hat floats,' the white cop was saying and everybody was laughing at a cop story. Eichord smiled and tried not to look over at the clock.

The Property Crimes dude in the leather coat was in the middle of a slightly loud and rather embarrassing recounting of an amorous adventure in which he'd starred when Bill Joyce came in and motioned toward Jack Eichord. Eichord whispered see-ya'-laters, patted both his drinking partners on their backs, and left a couple of bills and change on the wet bar.

'What's up?'

'Come on.' He followed Joyce out to the car. Joyce had the light bar going but no siren. 'They caught another one. Over in the First this time.'

'Four Ocean Six,' the police radio crackled.

'Four Ocean Six responding, over.'

'Four Ocean Six, please switch to Tac-two, over.'

'Four Ocean Six, switching to Tac-two.' He reached over automatically, turning the scanner and switching the setting to Tactical/two for a personal. This would enable the car to transmit and receive a message that you could not monitor on the open channel. He squeezed the handset.

'Four Ocean Six in service, over.'

'Jack, is that you over?'

'That's Gomez,' Joyce said.

'That's a rog.'

'They caught a bad one over here. Same MO as

Sylvia Kasikoff and the others. Female Cauc, mid thirties, ME's just pulling in, gotta' go. Out.'

A minute or so passed as they navigated the Chicago streets. The radio spat again.

'Four Ocean Six, what's your twenty over?'

'I'll get it,' Bill Joyce said, taking the handset.

'Hey, Gomer, we'll be there in about five, six minutes.' He gave him the location. 'Is Lou there yet?' he got an affirm and signed off saying, 'We'll see ya' in a couple of minutes kay.' They were there and Eichord found