“You buy and sell goods without taking last names, is that it?” Ollie said.
“So I didn’t ask her last name, so sue me,” Irving said. “She gave me the case, I gave her five bucks, end of transaction.”
“What’d she look like?” Ollie asked.
“Like any other hooker comes in here.”
“Oh, she was a hooker, huh?”
“Yes.”
“She marched in and said, ‘Hi, I’m a hooker, I have this Gucci dispatch case, I want to…”
“Please, I don’t know a hooker when I see one? They come in here day and night, night and day. Black, white, Puerto Rican, Chinese, they all look the same.”
“What was this one?”
“Puerto Rican. Short skirt, high heels, net stockings, purple blouse, a hooker.”
“Describe her.”
“I just did.”
“What color eyes, hair…?”
“Brown eyes, blond hair.”
“A blond Puerto Rican, huh?”
“Bleachedblond. Frizzy. Long earrings, thick lipstick, tits out to here.”
“When did this bona fide purchase for value take place?” Ollie asked.
“I told you. Monday afternoon.”
“And you sold the case when?”
“Tuesday.”
“Who bought it?”
“I don’t know her name.”
Ollie looked up at the ceiling again. “Man runs a hock shop, he doesn’t take last names, he doesn’t takeanynames,” he said to the hanging instruments, and shook his head in disbelief.
“You know what my profit was on this transaction?” Irving asked. “After overhead and incidentals?”
“What incidentals?”
“Incidentals, incidentals. Items stolen from this shop every day of the week, night and day, day and night.”
Ollie looked at him.
“Are you making fun of me playing the piano?” he asked.
“Why would I make fun of a cop who plays piano?”
“You think I’m kidding, don’t you?” Ollie said. “If you had a piano in here, I’d play it for you.”
“Too bad you don’t play trombone,” Irving said. “I got lots of trombones.”
“What happened?” Ollie asked, looking up at the ceiling. “Did the Philharmonic go bust?”
“The point is,” Irving said, “I make a lousy two-dollar profit on a shitty dispatch case, you come hokking my tchynik. A diamond bracelet gets stolen from one of my display cases, it takes you guys three months to get here cause you’re too busy writing a mystery book or playing the piano. Do me a favor.Goafter my license. Please. It would be a mitzvah.”
“What’d she look like, this woman who bought the case?” Ollie asked. “Would you remember?”
“She wasfat,” Irving said—putting undue emphasis on the word, Ollie felt.
“What else? Wasshea hooker, too?”
“No, she didn’t look like a hooker.”
“Whatdidshe look like?”
“An opera singer.”
“What color opera singer?”
“White.”
“Hair, eyes?”
“Brown hair, brown eyes.”
“Ever in here before?”
“No.”
“Ever see her around the neighborhood?”
“No.”
“Here’s my card. If she comes in again, call me.”
“Sure. I got nothing else to do.”
Ollie looked at him.
“Irving,” he said, “I’m very serious here. Call me if she comes in again.”
“A lousy dispatch case,” Irving said, shaking his head.
“A dispatch case that maybe has that blond hooker’s fingerprints on it.”
“And mine, too, don’t forget,” Irving said.
“Ah yes,” Ollie said. “Butyoudidn’t steal my book.”
“Thanks God,” Irving said.
OLLIE TOLD HIMSELFhe did not wish to become engaged in any long boring conversations with any of the know-it-all sergeants or other pompous assholes who’d supervised the search for the murder weapon. He much preferred discussing the whys and the wherefores with a simple and straightforward individual like Officer P. Gomez who, by her own admission, had been present when the weapon was “recovered at the scene,” as she’d put it, and whose breasts besides looked very perky and alert in her fresh-out-of-the-Academy blues.
He checked the Thursday duty roster for uniformed cops, and learned that an Officer Patricia Gomez had signed in at 7:45 that morning, for foot patrol in the Eight-Eight’s Adam Sector. Since Adam Sector was where King Memorial was located, and since there was a very good diner on St. Sab’s and Thirty-second, not two blocks away from the hall, Ollie drove over there on the offchance that Officer Gomez might be enjoying her noon repast along about this time. As fate would have it, she was not. Or at least, she was not taking her lunch break here in the Okeh Diner.
Ollie cased the joint, and sighed when he realized she wasn’t there—but what would the odds on that have been, anyway? Then, so it shouldn’t be a total loss, he took a booth near one of the windows and ordered four hamburgers, two sides of fries, two glasses of milk, and a blueberry pie with a double scoop of vanilla ice cream. On his way out, he bought a Milky Way from the display on the counter near the cash register. He knew many cops who would not have paid for the Milky Way. But whereas there once was a time, ahyes, when Ollie might have considered himself a so-called coffee-andcruller cop, those days were gone forever. It was not that he was now more honest than he used to be. It was merely that cops all over the U.S.A. had been under such close scrutiny in recent years that the booty wasn’t worth the risk. Although he had to admit that cops were being looked at in a more favorable light ever since all the World Trade Center heroics. So perhaps a return to the good old days was in sight, who knew? Meanwhile, he paid for the candy bar. Munching on it contentedly, he walked back to the car and began cruising the sector in search of Officer Patricia Gomez.
He found her strutting up the avenue with that peculiar sidelong gait of hers, the Glock in its holster thrusting her right hip forward a bit sooner than the left one. A lot of Hispanic males, so-called, affected a similar walk, which they thought made them look deadly. On Officer Patricia Gomez, it merely looked sexy as hell. The males, they thought it wasmuy machoto make kissing sounds on the air and yell “Hey, mama,mira, mira!” whenever a good-looking babe walked by. Ollie was willing to bet two cents and a collar button that Officer Patricia Gomez would break the head of any young spic who kissed the air and yelled“mira, mira”at her.
Just for the hell of it, he rolled down the window on the street side, and yelled,“Mira, mira!”but he didn’t kiss the air. Officer Patricia Gomez stopped dead in her tracks, the left hip catching up with the right one, her right hand going to the Glock in the holster on her right hip—damn if she wasn’t about to shoot him!
“It’s me!” he yelled. “Ollie Weeks! I’m just practicing my Spanish.”
He pulled the car over to the curb, and she walked over to it with that same sidelong gait, gun hip leading, visored cap tilted kind of saucily, he noticed, sooty black ringlets showing below it, brown eyes sweeping the sidewalk as she came toward the car, checking the perimeter, she’d be a good cop one day, maybe already was one. The uniformhadto be hand-tailored, the way it fitted her so snugly here and there.
