“A little,” Officer Crater confessed.
Officer Palmerston reached toward the stack of bills on the bar and carefully pulled two twenties and a ten from it.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Jesus, Bill, I don’t like this.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Palmerston said. “It’s not like you’re doing something wrong.” Then Palmerston had a second thought. “Anybody see her give this to you?”
Crater shook his head.
“Then don’t worry about it,” Palmerston said. “Nobody’s getting hurt. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask around.”
“Ask around about what?”
“I wonder why this lady is being so nice to you. It sure isn’t because of the size o
f your cock. If I come up with something, I’ll let you know.”
Two weeks later, as Officer Crater was walking his beat, an unmarked car pulled to the curb beside him.
“Get in the back, Charley,” Officer Palmerston, who was in the front passenger seat beside the driver, said.
Charley got in the backseat.
“This is Lieutenant Meyer,” Palmerston said.
“How are you, Crater?”
“How do you do, sir?”
“I work for the Lieutenant, Charley,” Palmerston said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Bill tells me you’re an all-right guy, Crater. Not too smart, but the kind of a guy you can trust.”
Palmerston laughed.
“He also told me about your lady friend, the one you helped out, the one who’s been showing her gratitude to you.”
For a fleeting moment, Charley was very afraid that Bill Palmerston had turned him in for taking the hundred dollars from Marianne every week. But that passed. The Lieutenant wouldn’t be talking the way he was if he was going to arrest him or anything like that.
“That’s what I meant about you not being too smart, Charley,” Lieutenant Meyer said.
“Sir?”
“You really don’t know much about your lady friend’s business, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you what I found out after Bill came to me. What Bill and I found out. Your friend works for a woman named Harriet Osadchy. Her sheet shows three busts for prostitution here, and she has a sheet in Hazleton—you know where Hazleton is, Charley?”
“Out west someplace, in the coal regions.”
“Right. Anyway, this Osadchy woman has a sheet as long as you are tall in Hazleton, mostly prostitution, some controlled-substance busts, all nol-prossed, even a couple of drunk and disorderlies. But she’s smart. You got to give her that, right, Bill?”
“Yes, sir,” Officer Palmerston said.