“I was just teasing, “ she said. “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t tease you.”
“I understand,” he said. “I don’t think you’re half as clever, or as sophisticated as you do, but I understand you.”
“Oh, damn you,” she said, and opened the door all the way. “You don’t understand me at all.”
She walked within six feet of him and stopped, and looked into his eyes.
“Come on, Peter,” she said. “Loosen up.”
“Is there anything else I can get you?” Peter asked.
Louise unbuttoned her jacket, and then shrugged out of it.
She raised her eyes to his.
“What do I have to do, Peter?” she asked, very softly. “Throw you on the white couch and rip your clothes off?”
****
Officer Charley McFadden pulled into a gas station and called Jesus Martinez and told him what he had in mind. Hay-zus’s mother answered the phone and with obvious reluctance, after she told him Hay-zus was asleep, got him on the phone.
“You want to help me catch Gerald Vincent Gallagher?”
“I thought you were working with Homicide,” Hay-zus said.
“The detective with the job let me very politely know that he didn’t need my help, thank you very much.”
There was a long pause.
“Where do you think he is?” Hay-zus asked.
“I want to look for him at the Bridge Street Terminal,” McFadden said.
The Bridge Street Terminal, which is the end of the line for the Market Street Elevated, a major transfer point for people traveling to and from Center City and West Philadelphia.
“In other words, you don’t have the first fucking idea where he is,” Martinez said.
“I got a feeling, Hay-zus,” Charley McFadden said.
Gerald Vincent Gallagher, Charley McFadden had reasoned, would have hidden someplace for a while. Then he would want to get out of the Northeast. He didn’t have a car—few junkies did—but he would have the price of bus or subway fare, if he had to panhandle for it.
There was a long pause.
“Ah, shit,” Jesus Martinez said. “I’ll meet you there.”
And then he hung up.
McFadden parked his Volkswagen fifty feet from the intersection of Frankford and Bridge Streets. He went to a candy store across the street and bought two large 7-Ups to go (lots of ice); two Hershey bars; two Mounds bars; two bags of Planter’s peanuts; and a pack of Chesterfields.
He carried everything back to the Volkswagen, and arranged it and himself on and around the front seat. He slumped down on the seat, and lit a cigarette.
It was liable to be a long wait for Gerald Vincent Gallagher. And, of course, he might not show.
If he didn’t show, McFadden decided, he would not put in for overtime. Nobody had told him
to stake out the terminal.
But he might. And he would really like to catch the despicable shit, so he would wait.