“It would be better than what you’re doing,” his mother said.
“Mom, you don’t get promoted guarding school crossings,” Charley said. “Or riding around some district in a car on the last out shift.”
“I don’t see you getting promoted,” Agnes McFadden said.
“Leave him alone, Agnes,” Kevin McFadden said. “He hasn’t been with the cops long enough to get promoted.”
“The detective’s examination is next month, and I’m going to take it,” Charley said. “And for your information, I think I’m going to pass it. If I can arrest this Gallagher punk, I know I ‘d make it.”
“You’re getting too big for your britches,” Agnes McFadden replied, aware that she was angry and wondering why.
“Yeah? Yeah? My lieutenant, Lieutenant Pekach, you know how old he is? He’s thirty years old, that’s all how old he is. And he’s a lieutenant, and he’s eligible to take the captain’s examination.”
“That’s young for a lieutenant,” Kevin McFadden said. “I suppose they do all right on payday.”
“You can do it,” Charley said. “Pop, when I went to identify the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, down to the medical examiner’s, where they were autopsying her, Lieutenant Pekach introduced me to Staff Inspector Wohl.”
“Who’s he? Am I supposed to know what that means?” Kevin McFadden asked.
“A staff inspector is higher than a captain,” Charley explained. “All they do is the important investigations.”
“So?” Agnes McFadden said.
“So, Mom, so here is this Staff Inspector Wohl, wearing a suit that must have cost him two hundred bucks, and driving this brand-new Ford LTD, and he ain’t hardly any older than Lieutenant Pekach, that’s what!”
“He must have pull, then,” Agnes McFadden said. “He must know somebody.”
“Ah, Jesus Christ, Mom!” Charley said, and stormed out of the kitchen.
“You shouldn’t have said that, Agnes,” Kevin McFadden said. “Charley’s ambitious, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
The front door slammed, and a moment later, they could hear the whine of the Volkswagen starter.
“Talk to me about ambition,” Agnes replied, “when they call up and tell you they’re sorry, some bum shot him. Or stuck a knife in him.”
****
Peter Wohl started the LTD and looked across the seat at Louise Dutton.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I have seen faster typists.”
He chuckled. The typist who had typed up her statement had been a young black woman, obviously as new to the typewriter as she was determined to do a good, accurate, no strike-over, job.
“Where to now?” he asked.
“I’ve got to go to work, of course,” Louise said. “But I think I had better get my car, first. On the way, you can drop off your uniform.”
“Not that I don’t want your company,” he said, “but I could drop you at the station, and we could get your car later. For that matter, I could bring it to the station.”
“I thought about that,” she said. “And decided that since you live in Timbuctoo, I’d rather get it now. On the long way back downtown, I’ll have time to think, to come up with a credible reason why I was such a disgrace to journalism last night.”
“Huh? Oh, you mean they expected you to come in and—what’s the term?—write up what happened to Nelson?”
“Yes, they did,” Louise said. “And when I didn’t, I confirmed all of Leonard Cohen’s male chauvinist theories about the emotional instability of female reporters. Real reporters, men reporters, don’t get hysterical.”
“You weren’t hysterical,” Peter said. “You were upset, but you had every right to be.”