Dead Street

“It’s an SCS place.”

When he scowled, I added, “Special Civil Service. A lot of the retired civil servants from the big city wind up their retirements there. Now they got the Jersey troops and the firemen in for neighbors.”

“What else have you heard?” he asked me.

“Hell, they even have their own fire stations down there and the old cops are playing around with the kind of equipment we used to beg for. Man, the power of retirement voters.”

“Florida loves them,” Brice told me. “The cops all carry badges, legal but generously given, have permits to carry weapons; the firemen have all the best equipment and a real playground to spend their retirement years in.”

“Who pays for all this?”

He didn’t tell me. He simply said, “You’d be surprised.”

We stared at each other across the table.

I finally said, “And she’s there.”

Dr. Brice looked at me sagely and nodded.

“She’s safe?”

“Surrounded by experienced ex-officers, I’d say yes, quite safe. They think she is the wife of a former officer who died in the line of duty. And believe me, those ex-cops take care of their own.”

“But she’s blind....”

“Yes, and she lives alone. But her neighbors know her special needs, and those needs are surprisingly small. Anyone outside of this closed community of cops, well, she could fool into thinking she’s sighted.”

“Don’t shit a shitter, Doc.”

He shook his head. “I assure you, I’m not. Her physical actions... and reactions... are incredible. Her response to voices and sounds belies her blindness. She has a dog... not an ordinary seeing-eye dog, but a greyhound that had used up his running life on a racetrack. They were going to dispose of it until she took him in. That dog is her right hand and as friendly as it is, I’d hate to be a person who tried to attack her.”

“Has anyone tried?”

“Not so far.”

When the waitress came by again, I waved her off. Across the table Brice was watching me closely. But this was an old game with me and I played all my cards right.

I asked, “She lives alone, you say?”

“My late father bought a home outright, deeded it to her, established some investments that feed a healthy account in a local Florida bank that should take care of all her needs for... for as long as she lives.”

The doctor didn’t know that I could read eyes as well as I could. A tight grin was twitching at my mouth when I said, “But that’s the issue, right, doc? As long as she lives? What’s the rest of the story?”

A subtle smile turned the corner of his mouth up and he remarked, “I’m playing in your back yard now, aren’t I?”

I just nodded. There are times when it’s better not to say anything.

“My father left money in a trust and gave me instructions, in the event that I thought it necessary to... well, I bought you the house right next door, Captain Stang.”

“What?”

He slid the folder he had been carrying over to me. “All the paperwork is in there. You also have a bank account opened in your name for one hundred thousand dollars. That and your pension should set you up pretty well. Just sign the papers and turn them in. I’m sure you’ll know what to do.”

I didn’t bother to look. Crazy as it sounded, I knew what he was telling me was the truth and small shivers were beginning to run up my back. Not the money shivers. Not shivers from the owning of property. Just shivers from knowing that she was alive. She was twenty years older. She had a seeing-eye dog and now she was living next door to me. At Sunset Lodge. Damn.

Only I was twenty years older, too. And I’d always been older than Bettie, and...

No. Hell no. Age was gone. Age was something that was starting all over again. Starting now.

I grinned and wouldn’t let Dr. Brice pay the tab. Not after his father’s generosity — and his own. I laid a ten- dollar bill on the waitress’ check, and we walked out.

On the sidewalk we shook hands solemnly and Brice said, “For a minute there I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“For a minute there,” I said, “I was.”

Maybe he thought I was just fooling, but there was a cloud in his eyes. When I grinned at him the cloud bled away and he smiled back.

I know I slept that night. I didn’t think it possible, but I did. I dreamed wild, exotic dreams that had vicious overtones because a face kept appearing that I recognized but couldn’t identify and hot, mean hatred crept into that mental picture and I knew I would have to find that face because twenty-some years of life had been twisted into nothingness to satisfy his ambitions.

No, not ambitions — that wasn’t the word at all. It was too damn scholarly.

Desires? No. It was more of a primitive, unhealthy demand. Like rape. Disgusting, unnatural, vicious. Temporarily satisfying to the rapist but it was going to kill him eventually.

The face was there in my head and I couldn’t make out the features at all. But I would. I would.

In the morning I went to the offices that housed the old files of known criminals, stuff that hadn’t ever made it onto the computers, and sat at a table with three mugbooks dating back to twenty-some years ago and opened the dusty cover on the earliest.

Duffy Gross gave me a big smile and wanted to know if he could be of any help. I told him I just wanted to refresh my memory and saw him wink at Hump Bailey, another near-retirement cop, and knew what they were thinking. The retired ones never really come off the Job, they were thinking. Someone was always out there they had to catch. After the real heart-stoppers of wild chases and riotous shootouts, TV was dull, plain civilian life too damn quiet.

I said, “Don’t laugh, wise guys — I might have a million-dollar joker in mind.”

Hump muttered, “Sure, Jack.”

Duffy did better than that. He added, “I still got three on my mind.”

It was like going through an old photo album. There were a lot of faces you recognized, but today most of them would be dead or shriveling up behind bars. A few had gotten too old to be troublesome and were rotting away in a rocker somewhere on a back porch where the neighbors couldn’t see them. Lucky neighbors.

I didn’t find anybody I was looking for. I closed the last of the battered old books and put them back on the shelves and went downstairs to have lunch. But the face was still there. It was blank, but there was a word that could describe it.

Damn. Now I had to find a name for it and I didn’t even know what it was.

Patience is something that cops learn. The initial eagerness of putting on a uniform is like training a puppy. All bounce and yips with lots of circles to run in. Ambitious, but without direction. Impatient, and after a lot of snags and pratfalls, he learns to look where he’s going. He may get to use the acquired knowledge for a while, then all of a sudden he gets the retirement party and he becomes a sleepwalker people have to watch out for.

And Hump and Duffy were thinking that was just what I was, an old sleepwalker who couldn’t get off the Job.

I went downstairs and walked over to Maxie’s shooting range in the sub-basement of the Bryant Building, fired off a box ... .45’s, cleaned up and went back on the street again.

It was starting to rain.

A New York miracle happened on the corner when a cab stopped, disgorged a passenger and took me in before I had a chance to get wet. I gave him my address and leaned back against the cushions. There was a curious scent in the compartment, a mix of stale perfume, a touch of cigar smoke and the penetrating bite of gunpowder that still hung in my suit. It was a real city odor.

At my address I paid off the driver, said hello to the doorman and went up to my single-bedroom apartment. I turned the TV on to the weather channel, then kicked off my clothes, took a shower, half dressed again and eased