Dead Street

“Oh? What kind?”

“A bubble pipe,” I lied.

“The hell it is,” she contradicted me softly. “Let me feel it.”

I dropped it in her palm and watched the way she rolled it around before handing it back to me.

I said, “So?”

“Carved horn or ivory, probably the latter. The engravings are still fairly sharp-edged, so it isn’t antique, is it?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to be a woman, isn’t it? With a curvy figure?”

“Not as curvy as yours.”

She sniffed it. “Smells like hash.”

“You got it, doll. It’s not even an interim action any more. It becomes a dependency, but an affordable one. If you got wealthy patrons, you got it made. If not, you can steal, rob or merchandise the junk until you get slapped into a jail cell.” Then I put in, “Or killed. I almost forgot the tag line. Captain Kinder says, despite the money clientele coming in, some youth gangs still operate out of here. Maybe one of those punks dropped that pipe.”

This time Bettie wasn’t looking toward my face. She was staring straight ahead watching a mental picture flash through her mind. I kept quiet, letting her focus on her thoughts, wondering what direction it was taking.

She finally said, “Credentials,” and her right hand was squeezed into a tight fist. She draped one arm over the back of the car seat and let Tacos lick her skin.

I nudged her memory and softly said, “Credentials,” until her head bobbed in acknowledgment and she said, “There was an employee there. A young man. He had a pipe like that. I can even remember... remember what it smelled like.”

“Who, Bettie? What was the young man’s name?”

She shook her head. The big black cloud had come over her again.

“I don’t know,” she murmured.

I had handled enough blackout cases who were behind bars for some wild criminal activity and watched them dissolve into total ignorance under pressure. You had to let it alone until some semblance of memory came back and they were able to talk about it. It could be frustrating as hell, but you were the cop and you stayed with it until the door opened on their thoughts and you got another little piece that made sense.

I cut over to the main thoroughfare and steered to the entrance gate. On the way out there was no query by the guard, just a short wave, then we were on the highway again. In the back of the car the greyhound knew we were going home and gave out a cheery yip to tell us about it.

At the house I walked Bettie up the steps, my arm around her waist. She wanted me to stay for supper. I begged off, telling her I had a lot of work to catch up on, but I’d see her later.

This time she smiled gently, licked her lips and held her face up to mine.

I said, “Somebody might be watching.”

“Nobody’s around, Jack. Tacos would have seen them if there were.”

So what’s an old cop to do?

Her mouth was warm and damp and quivering and things began happening to me so that I untangled myself gently. She knew what I was feeling. She let me go. Her eyes still had that blankness, but she knew.

When Tacos went in the front door ahead of her, I went down the steps and across to my house. My notebook was on the end table beside the big chair and when I’d made myself comfortable, I uncapped my ballpoint pen and started writing down events of the day with my own little interpretations of them.

I took the ivory pipe, wrapped it in a couple of tissues and put it on the shelf in the secret cabinet with my guns. I wasn’t concerned with prints on the surface. The carved engravings were too intricate to have picked up any full impressions. But whoever had made the piece might have left an identification in his own fancy artwork.

A half hour later I caught Davy Ross as he was coming off duty and asked him who was handling identifying unusual criminal artifacts and he gave me the phone number and office address of the right department and I dialed it into the phone. It was after office hours, but cops with a scientific bent don’t hold to absolute schedules.

The officer that answered the phone the squad used to make a joke out of because he came from a wealthy family, had two degrees from major universities and all he had ever wanted was to be a cop. He worked and studied his way to sergeant, had a chest full of awards he was embarrassed to wear because he thought unusual heroics in enforcing the law was what he had been hired for. Then finally, when he provided some super cop with super rank certain critical scientific evidence that resulted in some grand busts, he was installed in the slot he had always wanted. His name was Paul Burke and he was glad to hear from me.

I said, “Hi Paul, Jack Stang from...”

“Come on, Jack, you’re still a legend around here. What’s going on?”

“I found what looks to be a finely tooled ivory hash pipe. It may have some significance, but it doesn’t appear to be the kind just any punk would have.”

“Intricate carvings?”

“Very.”

“Can you send it up here FedEx?”

“Consider it shipped. You still at the same location?”

“Right between the microscopes and the test tubes.”

“No street work anymore?”

“Oh, I wangle that in when I can. Shot me a robber last week. Just a nick, but it sure scared the hell out of him.”

“What were you aiming for?”

“The spot right where I hit him,” he told me. “Hell, I didn’t want to take him down permanently.”

“Pal, you’re an oddball cop, you know that?”

“Sure I do. Did you know I’m up for a promotion?”

“Great!”

“I won’t take it unless I can stay right here.”

After a few seconds I asked, “What do you do with all your dough, Paul?”

“Send decent kids to college who couldn’t afford it otherwise. Two of them are going into the Academy this year.”

“You are some recruiter, buddy.”

“Get that pipe up to me fast, okay?”

“You got it,” I said.

With FedEx you make one phone call and they have it on the way in no time. Not every change has been for the worse.

Just most of them.

It’s odd to watch a blind person prepare supper.

You expect them to break a dish or shake in something that doesn’t belong there or not find the filter basket with a spoonful of coffee and spill it all over the counter. The TV was on the evening news but I wasn’t bothering to watch it. Bettie’s body was in beautiful motion, the way I had always thought it would be. There was grace in every movement and whatever she did had deliberate thought behind it.

I sat across the table and she knew I was studying her, watching every move she made and storing it away in my memory banks. I didn’t have to tell her. She knew. When she cleared away the supper plates and set a fat piece of fresh apple pie in front of me, she asked me, “Jack... how did this all happen?”

“Kismet,” I said.

“Oh? Simple fate?”

“Not so simple.”

“You’re thinking something else, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“It had to happen.”

“Why?”

“Kismet,” I repeated.