The Witness

I-"

"Then you what?"

"I think of you taking a shower."

"Those are carnal thoughts."

"You bet your ass they are," Charley said. "About as carnal as they get."

There was a long silence.

"I guess I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."

"You think you could live six weeks the way things are?"

"What happens in six weeks?"

"The semester's over. I could skip a semester. I wouldn't want to be a just-married, and work a full shift, and try to go to school. But I could skip a semester."

"Jesus, baby, you mean it?"

"I'll call my mother in the morning and tell her we don't want to wait anymore."

"Jesus! Great!"

"I get those thoughts too, honey," Margaret said. She reached over and caught his hand.

At the hospital, when she kissed him, she kissed him on the mouth and gave him a little tongue, something she didn't hardly ever do.

Where the fuck am I?

I was thinking about that, and what she said about her having those kind of thoughts, carnal thoughts too, and drove right across Broad Street without thinking where I'm supposed to be going.

"Shit!" he said, and slowed abruptly, and made the next left.

There's Holland's body shop. That means I'm behind Holland PontiacGMC, just a block off North Broad. That's not so bad. I could have wound up in Paoli or somewhere not thinking like that.

And then something wrong caught his eye. There was a guy sitting in a beat-up old Mustang in an alley.

If I hadn't been looking to see where the fuck I was, I would never have seen him.

What's wrong about it? Well, maybe nothing. Or maybe he's drunk. Or dead. Or maybe not. Now that I think of it, he was smoking a cigarette. People don't sit in alleys smoking cigarettes at midnight. Not around here.

He made the next right, and the next, and pulled to the curb.

Fuck it, McFadden. It ain't any of your business, and you ain't Sherlock Holmes.

Fuck fuck it!

Charley turned off the headlights and got out of the car. He took his wallet ID folder from his pocket and folded it back on itself, so the badge was visible, and then he took the snub nose from its holster, and held it at arm's length down along his leg so that it would be kind of hard to see,

Then he went in the alley, and sort of keeping in the shadows walked down close to the Mustang.

Piece of shit, that car.

Moving very quickly now, he walked up to the driver's window. He tapped on the window with his badge.

He scared shit out of the guy inside, who jumped.

The window rolled down.

"Excuse me, sir. I'm a police officer. Is everything all right?"

"I'm a Three-Six-Nine," the man said. "Everything's okay. On the job."

Oh, shit. He's probably a Central Detective on stakeout. Why didn't you mind your own fucking business?

Fuck fuck fuck it. Maybe he ain't.

"Let me see your folder, please," Charley said, and pulled the door open so the light would come on. It didn't.

Lieutenant Jack Malone thinking,This big fucker, whoever he is, smells something wrong, and he's got his gun out, very slowly and nonthreateningly found his badge and photo ID and handed it to Officer Charles McFadden.

"Lieutenant, I'm sorry as hell about this."

"Don't be silly. You were just doing your job. I suppose I did look a little suspicious."

"I didn't know what the fuck to think, so I thought I'd better check. Sorry to bother you, sir."

"No problem, I told you that," Malone said. "But I don't want this on the record. You call it in?"

"No, sir. I'm in my own car. No radio."

"Just keep this between ourselves. What did you say your name was?"

"McFadden, sir."

"You work this district?"

"No, sir. I'm Highway."

"Well, I'll certainly tell Captain Pekach how alert you were. But I don't want anyone else to know you saw me here. Okay?"

"Yes, sir. I understand. Good night, sir."

Charley stuffed his pistol back in its holster and walked back up the alley.

Nice guy. I really could have got my ass in a crack doing that. But he understood why I did it. Malone was his name. I wonder where he works. He said he knows Captain Pekach.

And then he got back in the Volkswagen, and there was still a faint smell of Margaret's soap, and he started to think about her, and her in the shower, and what she had said about her having those kinds of thoughts too, and Lieutenant Malone and the rusty piece of shit he was driving were relegated to a far corner of his mind.