steak with a glass of red wine or two with that, and then maybe a nightcap or something afterward.
What he did was what he could afford to do. He went to Colonel Sanders's and bought the special (a half breast, a leg, a couple of livers, a roll, and a little tub of coleslaw) for $1.69 and took it back to the St.Charles. There he took off his clothes and ate it in his underwear, watching the TV, washing it down with a glass of water from the tap.
He fell asleep watching a rerun ofI Love Lucy and woke up to the trumpets and drum roll announcingNine's News at Nine.
He could taste all of the Colonel's Seventeen Secret Herbs and Spices in his mouth, and his left leg had gone to sleep. He hobbled around the room flexing and shaking his left leg.
He put the remnants of the $1.69 Special in the wastebasket under the sink in the toilet, and then tested the water. It ran rusty red for a couple of seconds, burped, and then turned hot.
He took a hot shower, thinking that simply because there was hot water now there was no guarantee that there would be hot water in the morning.
He was now wide awake. He knew that even if he could force himself to go to sleep, he would almost certainly wake up at say half past four and, if that happened, never get back to sleep.
He put on a pair of blue jeans and a sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers and left the room.
There was a tavern on the corner of 18^th and Arch. He certainly could afford a beer.
He pushed open the door and looked inside and changed his mind. A bunch of losers sitting around staring into the stale, getting warm beer in their glasses. Nobody was having a good time.
He acted like he was looking for somebody who wasn't there, and went back out onto 18^th Street.
He knew where he wanted to go, and what he wanted to do, and walked to where he had parked his car and got in it.
Am I doing this because I didn't want to belly up to the bar with the other losers, or is this what I really wanted to do in the first place?
He drove up North Broad Street until he came to the Holland PontiacGMC showroom. The lights were on, but there was no one in the showroom. They closed at half past nine.
He turned left and made the next left, which put him behind the Pontiac-GMC showroom building and between it and a large concrete block building on which was lettered,HOLLAND MOTOR COMPANY BODY SHOP.
It was a factory-type building. The windows were of what he thought of as chicken wire reinforced glass. They passed light, but you couldn't see through them.
The Holland Motor Company Body Shop was going full blast.
It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation. Part of this was because they fixed the entire GM line of cars in this body shop, not just Pontiacs and GMCs. And part of it was because, to help the working man who needed his car to drive to work, you could bring your crumpled fender to the Holland Motor Car Body Shop in installments, leaving it there overnight and getting it back in the morning. They would straighten the fender one night, prime it the second, and paint it the third night, or over the weekends.
And the other reason they were open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Lieutenant Jack Malone was convinced, was because the Working Man's Friend had a hot car scam of some kind going.
Malone had no facts. Just a gut feeling. But heknew.
I don't care if he and Commissioner Czernick play with the same rubber duck, the sonofabitch is a thief. And I'm going to catch him.
He circled the block, and then found a place to park the rusty old Mustang in the shadow of a building where he would not attract attention, and from which he could keep his eyes on the door to the Holland Motor Company Body Shop.
Something, maybe not tonight, maybe not this week, maybe not this fucking year, but something, sometime, sooner or later, is going to happen, and then I'll know how he's doing it.
He lit a cigarette, saw that it was his next to last Fuck it, I smoke too much anyway And settled himself against the worn-out and lumpy cushion and started to look.
NINE
When Officer Charles McFadden finished his tour at four, he went looking for Officer Matthew Payne. When he went through the door marked HEADQUARTERS, SPECIAL OPERATIONS, Payne was not at his desk. And there was no one sitting at the sergeant's desk either.
Charley sat on the edge of Payne's desk, confident that one or both of them would turn up in a minute;somebody would be around to answer the inspector's phone.
A minute or so later, the door to the inspector's office opened and a slight, fair-skinned, rather sharp-featured police officer came out. He was in Highway regalia identical to Officer McFadden's, except that there were silver captain's bars on the epaulets of his leather jacket. He was Captain David Pekach, commanding officer of Highway Patrol.
McFadden pushed himself quickly off Payne's desk.
'Hey, whaddaya say, McFadden?' Captain Pekach said, smiling, and offering his hand.
'Captain,' McFadden replied.
'Where's the sergeant?' Pekach asked.
'I don't know,' Charley said. 'I came in here looking for Payne.'
'The inspector's got him running down some paperwork. I don't think he'll be back today. Something I can do for you?'
'No, sir, it was- I wanted to see if he wanted to have a beer or something.'
'You might try him at home in a couple of hours,' Pekach said. 'I really don't think he'll be coming back. Do me a favor, Charley?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Stick around for a couple of minutes and answer the phone until the sergeant comes back. He's probably in the can. But somebody should be on that phone.'
'Yes, sir.'
'The inspector's gone for the day. Captain Sabara and I are minding the store.'
'Yes, sir,' McFadden said, smiling. He liked Captain Pekach. Pekach had been his lieutenant when he had worked undercover in Narcotics.
The door opened and a sergeant whom McFadden didn't know came in.
'You looking for me, sir?'
'Not anymore,' Pekach said, tempering the sarcasm with a little smile.
'I had to go to the can, Captain.'
'See if you can find Detective Harris,' Pekach said. 'Keep looking. Tell him to call either me or Captain Sabara, no matter what the hour.'
'Yes, sir.'
Pekach turned and went back into the office he shared with Captain Mike Sabara. Then he turned again, remembering two things: first, that he had not said 'So long' or something to McFadden; and second that McFadden and his partner had answered the call on the shooting at Goldblatt's furniture.
He reentered the outer office just in time to hear the sergeant snarl, 'What do you want?' at McFadden.
'Officer McFadden, Sergeant,' Pekach said, 'for the good of the Department, you understand, was kind enough to be standing by to answer the telephone. Since, you see, there was no one else out here.'
The sergeant flushed.
'Come on in a minute, Charley,' Pekach said. 'You got a minute?'
'Yes, sir.'
Pekach held the door open for Charley and then followed him into the office.
Captain Michael J. Sabara, a short, muscular, swarthy-skinned man whose acne-scarred face, dark eyes, and mustache made him appear far more menacing than was the case, looked up curiously at McFadden.
