gun. I would have liked all six of them but settled for three.
Sergeant Rink was very carefully examining a letter opener.
He looked up.
“A sight for sore eyes,” he said.
“What do you need a letter opener for?” I said, slipping into the genre. “You know that reading isn’t one of your gifts.”
“Still selling dirty pictures?” he said, smiling. “Tijuana valentines? The ones for dog lovers?”
“No,” I said. “Too many cops kept asking for samples. They cleaned me out.”
The private detective business was very slow one time when the Worlds Fair was going on over at Treasure Island in ’40, so I supplemented my income by selling a few “art” photographs to the tourists.
Sergeant Rink always liked to kid me about them.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I haven’t been proud of, but the worst thing I ever did was getting as poor as I was now.
“This is a murder weapon,” Rink said, dropping the letter opener on his desk. “It was found in a prostitute’s back early this morning. No clues. Only her body in a doorway and this.”
“The murderer was confused,” I said. “Somebody should have taken them to a stationery store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.”
“Oh, boy,” Rink said, shaking his head.
He picked up the letter opener again.
He turned it very slowly over in his hand. Watching him play with a murder weapon wasn’t getting me any closer to some bullets for my gun.
“What do you want?” he said, staring at the letter opener, not bothering to look up at me. “You know the last time I loaned you a buck I said that was it, so what do you want? What can I do for you except give you directions to the Golden Gate Bridge and a few basics on how to jump? When are you going to give up this silly notion of you being a private detective and get a paying job and out of my hair? There’s a war going on. They need everybody. There must be something you can do.”
“I need your help,” I said.
“Ah, shit,” he said, finally looking up. He put the letter opener down and reached into his pocket and took out a handful of change. He very carefully selected two quarters, two dimes and a nickel. He put them down on the desk and then pushed them toward me.
“That’s it,” he said. “Last year you were worth five bucks, then you dropped to one. Now you’re a seventy-five-center. Get a job. For Christ’s sake. There must be something you can do. I know one thing for sure: detective work isn’t it. Not many people want to hire a detective who’s only wearing one sock. You could probably count them on your hand.”
I was hoping that Rink wouldn’t notice that, but of course he had. I was thinking about Babylon in the morning when I got dressed and didn’t notice that I was only wearing one sock until I walked into the Hall of Justice.
I was going to tell Rink that I didn’t need the seventy-five cents, which of course I did, but what I really wanted was some bullets for my gun.
I tried to size up the situation.
I had limited options.
I could take the seventy-five cents and be ahead of the game or I could say: No, I don’t want the money. What I want is some bullets for my gun.
If I took the seventy-five cents and then asked him for the bullets, he might really blow his stack. I had to be very careful because as I said earlier: He was one of my friends. You can imagine what the people who didn’t like me were like.
I looked at the seventy-five cents on his desk.
Then I remembered a minor criminal I knew who lived in North Beach. As I remembered he had a gun once. Maybe he still had it and I could get some bullets for my gun from him.
I picked up the seventy-five cents.
“Thank you,” I said.
Rink sighed.
“Get your ass out of here,” he said. “The next time I see you I want to be looking at an employed man who’s eager to repay eighty-three dollars and seventy-five cents to his old friend Rink. If I see anything that resembles you the way you are now, I’ll vag you and make sure you get thirty days. Pull yourself together and get the fuck out of here.”
I left him playing with the letter opener.
Maybe it would give him an idea for a lead that would solve the case of the murdered prostitute.
Also, maybe, he could take it and shove it up his ass.
Adolf Hitler
I left the Hall of Justice and walked up to North Beach to see if I could get some bullets out of the minor criminal I knew who lived on Telegraph Hill.
He lived in an apartment on Green Street.
Just my luck the minor crook wasn’t home. His mother answered the door. I had never met her before but I knew it was his mother because he had talked a lot about her. She took one look at me and said, “He’s gone straight. Go away. He’s a good boy now. Find somebody else to break into places with.”
“What?” I said.
“You know what,” she said. “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with guys like you. He goes to church now. Six o’clock Mass.”
She was a little old Italian lady about sixty. She was wearing a white apron. I think she misunderstood what type of person I was.
“He’s gone down to join the Army,” she said. “He can, you know. He never got into any real trouble. Just little things. Guys like you made him do it. He’s going to fight Adolf Hitler. Show that son-of-a-bitch what’s what.”
Then she started to close the door.
“Get out of here!” she yelled. “Go join the Army! Make something of yourself! It’s not too late! The recruiting office is open right now! They’ll take you if you haven’t been in the pen!”
“I don’t think you know who I am. I’m a private—”
SLAM!
It was an obvious misunderstanding.
Amazing.
She thought I was a crook.
I’d just come there to borrow a few bullets.
Mustard
Still no bullets, and I was getting hungry. The nutrition from the stale doughnut I had cadged from my landlady was rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
I
