Tricks

CHAPTER 9

The more Parker presented himself as a fake cop, the more he began feeling like a real cop. Everybody at the party kept telling him he could pass for a detective anywhere in the city. Everybody told him his shield and his gun, a .38 Smith & Wesson Detective Special, looked very authentic. One of the women—a sassy brunette dressed as a Las Vegas cigarette girl, in a flared black skirt and a flimsy top, high-heeled black shoes, and seamed silk stockings—wanted to hold the gun but he told her cops didn't allow straights to handle dangerous weapons. He had deliberately used police jargon for "honest citizens." In this city, a straight was anyone victimized by a thief. In some cities, victims were called "civilians." In any city, a thief was anyone who wasn't a cop, a straight, or a civilian. To the cops in this city, most thieves were "cheap" thieves.

A homosexual wearing a blonde wig, a long purple gown, and amethyst earrings to match, objected to the use of the word "straight" to describe an honest citizen. The homosexual, who said he was dressed as Marilyn Monroe, told Parker that all the gays he knew were also honest citizens. Parker apologized for his use of police terminology. "But, you see," he said, "I ain't a real cop." And yet he felt like one. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt like a bona fide detective on the world's finest police force.

It was peculiar.

Even more peculiar was the fact that he was having such a good time.

Peaches Muldoon had a lot to do with that.

She was the life of the party, and some of her exuberance and vitality rubbed off on Parker. She told everyone stories about what it was like growing up as a victim on a sharecropper's farm in Tennessee. She told them incest was a way of life on the farm. Told them her first sexual experience was with her father. Told them her brother's first sexual experience—other than with the sheep who was his steady girlfriend—had been with his sister Peaches Muldoon one rainy afternoon when they were alone together in the house. She told everyone that she'd enjoyed her brother more than she had her father. Everyone laughed. They all thought she was making up victim stories. Only Parker knew that the stories were true; she'd told him ten years earlier that her priest-killing son was the bastard child of her relationship with her brother.

The stories Peaches told encouraged Parker to tell some stories of his own. Everyone thought he was making them up, the way Peaches had made up her stories about the Tobacco Road dirt farm. He told them the story about the woman who'd cut off her husband's penis with a straight razor. He said, "I substituted the word penis for cock, because I didn't want to offend anybody here who might be a vigilante for the Meese Commission." Everyone laughed at the story and also at his comment about the Meese Commission. Somebody wondered out loud if the Attorney General considered it pornographic that the unauthorized sale of arms to Iran had provided unauthorized funds for Nicaraguan rebels.

This was straying into intellectual territory beyond Parker's scope.

He laughed, anyway.

Pornography was something he dealt with on a daily basis, and he believed straights ought to keep their noses out of it, period. Complicated and illegal arms deals were something else, and he never wondered about them except as they might effect his line of work. When you dealt with cheap thieves day and night, you already knew that they weren't only in the streets but also in the highest reaches of government. He didn't say this to anyone here at the party because he was having too good a time, and he didn't want to get too serious about cause and effect. He didn't even think of it consciously as cause and effect. But he knew, for example, that when a star athlete was exposed as a coke addict, the kids playing pickup ball in the school yard thought, "Hey, I gotta try me some of that shit." He also knew that when somebody high up in government broke the law, then your punk dealing grams of crack in the street could justify his actions by saying, "See? Everybody breaks the law." Cause and effect. It only made Parker's job harder. Which was maybe why he didn't work too hard at the job anymore. Although tonight, playing at the job, he felt as if he was working harder at it than he had in years.

It was really very peculiar.

He told everybody that one day he was going to write a book about his experiences.

"Ah-ha!" somebody said, "you're a writer!"

"No, no, I'm a cop," he protested.

"So how come you want to be a writer?" someone else said.

" 'Cause I ain't got the guts to be a burglar," Parker said, and everyone laughed again.

He'd never realized he was so witty.

At a little after eleven, Peaches suggested that they move on to another party.

Which is how Parker got to meet the wheelman and one of the midgets on the liquor-store holdups.

There were a lot of things bothering Brown about the Sebastiani case.

The three most important things were the head and the hands. He kept wondering why they hadn't turned up yet. He kept wondering where Jimmy Brayne had dropped them.

He also wondered where Brayne was right now.

The blues from the Two-Three, armed with the BOLO that had gone out all over the city, had located the blue Citation in the parking lot of an A&P not far from the River Dix. The techs had crawled over the car like ants, lifting latent prints, collecting stain samples, vacuuming for hairs and fibers. Anything they'd got had already been bagged and sent to the lab for comparison with whatever had been recovered from the Econoline van. Brown had no illusions about the lab getting back to them before sometime Monday. Meanwhile, both cars had been dumped—which left Brayne without wheels. His last location had been in the Twenty-Third, where he'd dropped the Citation, way over on the south side of the city. Was he now holed up somewhere in that precinct? Had he crabbed east, west, or north to a hotel someplace else? Or was he already on an airplane, bus, or train heading for parts unknown?

All of this bothered Brown.

He also wondered why Brayne had killed his mentor and employer.

"You think they're making it?" he asked Hawes.

"Who?"

"Brayne and the woman."

"Marie?"

The possibility had never occurred to Hawes. She had seemed so honestly grieved by her husband's disappearance and death. But now that Brown had mentioned it—

"I mean, what I'm looking for is some motive here," Brown said.

"The guy could've just gone beserk, you know. Threw those tricks all over the driveway, ran off in the Citation…"

"Yeah, I'm curious about that, too," Brown said. "Let's try to dope out a timetable, okay? They come into the city together, Brayne in the van, Marie and her husband in the Citation…"

"Got to the school around a quarter past three."

"Unloaded the car and the van…"

"Right."

"And then Brayne went off God knows where, said he'd be back at five, five-thirty to pick up the big stuff."

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, they finish the act around five-fifteen. Sebastiani changes into his street clothes, goes out back to load the car while Marie's getting out of her costume. She comes out later, finds the stuff all over the driveway and the Citation gone."

"Right."

"So we got to figure Brayne dumped the van on Rachel Street sometime between three-thirty and five-fifteen, grabbed a taxi back to the school, and cold-cocked Sebastiani while he was loading the car."

"That's what it looks like," Hawes said.

"Then he chops up the body—where'd he do that, Cotton? Blood stains in the Citation's trunk, you know, but nowhere else in the car."

"Coulda done it anywhere in the city. Found himself a deserted street, an abandoned building…"

"Yeah, you could do that in this city. So he chops up the corpse, loads the pieces in the trunk, and starts dropping them all around town. When he gets rid of the last one, he leaves the car behind that A&P and takes off."

"Yeah."

"So where's the motive?"

"I don't know."

"She's an attractive woman," Brown said.

Hawes had noticed that.

"If she was playing house with Brayne in that apartment over the garage…"

"Well, you've got no reason to believe that, Artie."

"I'm snowballing it, Cotton. Let's say they had a thing going. Brayne and the woman."

"Okay."

"And let's say hubby tipped to it."

"You're thinking movies or television."

"I'm thinking real-life, too. Hubby tells Brayne to lay off, Brayne's still hungry for her. He chops up hubby, and him and the woman ride off into the sunset."

"Except Brayne's the only one who rode off," Hawes said. "The woman's…"

"You think she's home yet?" Brown asked, and looked up at the clock.

Ten minutes past eleven.

"Half hour or so to Collinsworth," Hawes said. "She was catching the ten forty-five."

"Whyn't we take a ride out there?" Brown said.

"What for?"

"Toss that apartment over the garage, see we can't find something."

"Like what?"

"Like maybe where Brayne's heading. Or better yet, something that links him to the woman."

"We'll need a warrant to toss that garage."

"We haven't even got jurisdiction across the river," Brown said. "Let's play it by ear, okay? If the lady's clean, she won't ask for a warrant."

"You want to call her first?"

"What for?" Brown said. "I love surprises."

Kling waved so long to them as they headed out of the squad. He looked up at the clock. The graveyard shift should be here in half an hour or so—O'Brien, Delgado, Fujiwara and Willis Fill them in on what had gone down on the four-to-midnight grab one of the sedans, and head for Calm's Point. Make himself invisible in the Zone, just another John looking for a little Friday-night sport. But keep an eye out for Eileen.

He thought she was dead wrong about this one.

His being there in the Zone could only help an undercover situation that had been hastily planned and recklessly undermanned.

This time, he was the one who was dead wrong.

They sat at the table talking in whispers, just another hooker and a potential trick. Negotiating the deal, Larry figured. Never seen the guy with the broken arm in here before, wondered who'd be on top in the sack, might get a little clumsy with that arm in a sling. Wondered about that and nothing else. The place was still busy, there was booze to be poured.

"Howie Cantrell is his real name," Shanahan whispered. "Used to be with Vice in Philly, that's all straight goods. Went off his rocker six years ago, first started beating up hookers in the street, then began preaching salvation to them. The Philly P.D. didn't so much mind the beatings. Worse things than beatings go down in Vice. But they didn't like the idea of a plainclothes minister on the force. They sent him up for psychiatric, and the shrinks decided he was under considerable stress as a result of his proximity to the ladies of the night. Retired him with full pension, he drifted first to Boston, then here, started his missionary work all over again in the Zone. Everybody calls him the Preacher. He looks for the young ones, spouts Jesus to them, tries to talk them out of the life. Takes one of them to bed every now and then, for old times' sake. But he's harmless. Hasn't raised a hand to anybody since Philly let him go."

"I thought he was our man," Eileen said.

"We did, too, at first. Dragged him in right after the first murder, questioned him up and down, but he was clean as a whistle. Talked to him again after the second one, and again after the third. Alibis a mile long. We shoulda warned you about him. Be easy to make the mistake you made. How's it going otherwise?"

"I almost lost my virginity, but Alvarez bailed me out."

"Who'd he send?"

"Guy named Ortiz. Narcotics."

"Good man. Looks eighteen, don't he? He's almost thirty."

"You coulda told me I'd have help."

"We're just full of tricks," Shanahan said, and smiled.

"You gonna plant yourself in here?" Eileen asked.

"Nope. I'll be outside. Watching, waiting."

"Who grizzled up your hair?" she asked.

"The Chameleon," he said, and grinned.

"I hope you can see through that eye."

"I can see just fine."

"And I hope our man doesn't want to arm wrestle," she said, glancing at the cast.

Across the room, Annie was coming back into the bar. She walked to where Larry was standing, put four dollars on the bar-top and said, "Your end, pal."

"Why, thank you, honey," he said, "much obliged," and tucked the bills into his shirt pocket, figuring the four represented twenty percent of whatever she'd got for her last trick. I do love an honest hooker, he thought, and immediately wondered if she'd short-changed him.

Annie wandered over to where Eileen and Shanahan were sitting.

"Your blond friend went home," she said. "Caught a bus on the corner."

"That's okay," Eileen said, "I'm still waiting for Mr. Right."

Annie nodded, and then walked over to a table on the other side of the room. She wasn't alone for more than a minute when a big black guy sat down next to her.

"She needs help," Eileen whispered.

"Bring her outside," Shanahan said, and then rose immediately and said in a voice loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear, "I'll see you around the corner, honey."

Eileen went over to Annie and the black man.

"I got a one-armed bandit waiting in a car around the corner," she said. "He's looking for a hands-on trio, me driving, him in the middle, both of us dancing his meat around the block. You interested in a dime for ten minutes' work?"

"Dimes add up," Annie said, and immediately got to her feet.

"Hurry on back, hear?" the black man said.

"I did not appreciate all the shooting," Quentin Forbes said, looking petulant. He was still wearing the dress, pantyhose, and low-heeled walking shoes he'd worn while driving the station wagon, but the long blonde wig was hooked over the arm of a ladder-backed wooden chair. "There was no need for such violence, Alice. I warned you repeatedly…"

"It was only insurance," she said, and shrugged.

"The costumes were all the insurance we…"

"The costumes were bullshit," Alice said.

She was a beautiful little blonde woman in her late thirties, blue eyes and a Cupid's-bow mouth, perfect legs and breasts, four-feet two-inches tall and weighing a curvaceous seventy-one pounds. In the circus, she was billed as Tiny Alice. This went over big with homosexual men. She had changed out of the clown costume they'd worn on the last two holdups, and was now wearing a dark green dress and high-heeled pumps. To Forbes, she looked wildly sexual.

"Did you want the cops to think three separate gangs of kids were holding up those stores?" she asked.

"I wanted to confuse the cops, was all," Forbes said. "If you want to know what I think, Alice, I think your shooting spree was what brought them down on us, is what I think."

"We should have finished them off," she said. "If you hadn't started honking the horn…"

"I honked the horn to warn you. The moment I saw them coming from the back room…"

"We should have finished them off," she said again, and took a tube of lipstick from her handbag and went to the mirror on the wall.

"The point of the costumes," Forbes insisted, "was to…"

"The point was you wanted to put on a dress," Alice said. "I think you enjoy being in drag."

"I do indeed," Forbes said. "First time I've been in a woman's pants in more than a month."

"Braggart," Corky said.

She was slightly taller than Alice, a bad failing for a midget, but she was prettier in a delicate, small-boned, almost Oriental way. She, too, had changed into street clothes, a black skirt and a white silk blouse, a pink cardigan sweater, high-heeled patent leather pumps. She looked like a tiny, young Debbie Reynolds.

The two men who'd been in on the holdups were sitting at the table, still wearing their clown suits, counting the money.

"That's five thousand here," one of them said.

High Munchkin voice, wearing glasses, brown eyes intent behind them. His name was Willie. In the circus, he was billed as Wee Willie Winkie. Next month, he'd be down in Venice, Florida, rehearsing for the season. Tonight he was helping to stack and count the money from four stickups—well, three actually, since they hadn't got anything but cops on the last one. The stickups had been Forbes' idea, but Corky was the one who talked Willie into going along, said it'd be a good way to pick up some quick off-season change. Corky was his wife, and Alice was her best friend. This made Willie nervous. Alice was the only one who'd shot anyone tonight. The others had all fired their pistols all over the heads of the store owners, the way Forbes had told them to.

"What we should do," Willie said to the other man at the table, "we should both of us count each stack."

His hands were sweating. He was still very nervous about this whole thing. He was sure the police would come breaking in here any minute. All because of Alice. He had never heard of a midget doing time in prison. Or getting the electric chair. He did not want to be the first one in history.

"Can I trust you little crooks to give me a true count?" Forbes asked.

"You can help count it, you want to," the other man at the table said.

He was older than the other midgets, shorter and more delicate than even the women. His name was Oliver. In the circus, he was billed as Oliver Twist. He never understood why. He had red hair and blue eyes, and he was single, which was just the way he wanted it. Oliver was a great ladies' man. Full-sized women loved to pick him up and carry him to bed. Full-sized women considered him too darling for words, and they were never threatened by his tiny erect pecker. Full-sized women were always amazed that they could swallow him to the hilt without gagging. In some ways, being a midget had its benefits.

"Here's another five," Willie said, and slid the stack to Oliver, who began riffling the bills like a casino dealer.

"My rough estimate," Forbes said, "is we took in something like forty thousand."

"I think that's high," Alice said.

Standing at the mirror, putting on her lipstick. Lips puckered to accept the bright red paint, pretty as a little doll. Forbes had tried making her last year when they were playing the Garden in New York. She'd turned him down cold, said he would break her in half, although he knew she was sleeping with half the Flying Dutchmen. Corky watched her intently, as if hoping to pick up some makeup tricks.

"Twelve, thirteen thousand each store," Forbes said, "that's what I figure. Thirty-five, forty thousand dollars."

"There wasn't any thirteen in that store with the lady owner," Oliver said.

He was the one who'd cleaned out the register after Alice shot that lady in the third store. They weren't supposed to talk in the stores, but he'd yelled, "Hold it open, Alice!," because Alice's hands were trembling, and the bag was shaking as if there was a snake in it trying to get out.

"Mark my words, forty," Forbes said.

"Here's another five," Willie said.

"Fifteen already," Forbes said. "Mark my words."

Turned out, when all was said and done, that there was only thirty-two thousand.

"What'd I tell you?" Alice said.

"Somebody must be skimming," Forbes said, and winked at her.

"What does that come to?" Corky asked. "Five into thirty-two?"

"Something like sixty grand apiece," Oliver said.

"You wish," Alice said.

"Six, I mean."

Willie was already doing the long division on a scrap of paper.

"Six-four," he said.

"Which ain't bad for a night's work," Forbes said.

"We should've finished those cops," Alice said idly, blotting her lipstick with a piece of Kleenex. Willie shivered. He looked at his wife. Corky was staring at Alice's mouth, a look of idolatrous adoration on her face. Willie shivered again.

"What I'm gonna do right now," Forbes said, "is get out of this dress, and put on my own clothes, and then I'm gonna go partying. Alice? You wanna come along?"

She looked him up and down as if seeing him for the first time.

Then she shrugged and said, "Sure. Why not?"

She called her mother-in-law the moment she was in the house.

The place felt empty without him.

"Mom," she said. "This is Marie."

Crackling on the line to Atlanta.

"Honey," her mother-in-law said, "this is a terrible connection, can you get the operator to ring it again?"

Terrific, she thought. I'm calling to tell her Frank is dead, and she can't hear me.

"I'll try again," she said, and hung up, and then dialed the operator and asked her to place the call. Her mother-in-law picked up on the second ring.

"How's that?" Marie asked her.

"Oh, much better. I was just about to call you, this must be psychic." Susan Sebastiani believed in psychic phenomena. Whenever she held a seance in her house, she claimed to converse with Frank's father, who'd been dead and gone for twenty years. Frank's father had been a magician, like his son. "What it is," she said, "I had this terrible premonition that something was wrong. I said to myself, 'Susan, you'd better call the kids.' Are you okay? Is everything all right?"

"Well… no," Marie said.

"What's the matter?" Susan said.

"Mom…"

How to tell her?

"Mom… this is very bad news."

"What is it?"

"Mom… Frank…"

"Oh, my God, something's happened to him," Susan said at once. "I knew it."

Silence on the line.

"Marie?"

"Yes, Mom."

"What happened? Tell me."

"Mom… he's… Mom, he's dead."

"What? Oh, my God, my God, oh, dear God," she said, and began weeping.

Marie waited.

"Mom?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"I'm sorry, Mom. I wish I wasn't the one who had to tell you."

"Where are you?"

"Home."

"I'll come up as soon as I can. I'll call the airlines, find out when there's… what happened? Was it an automobile accident?"

"No, Mom. He was murdered."

"What?"

"Someone…"

"What? Who? What are you talking about? Murdered?"

"We don't know yet, Mom. Someone…"

She couldn't bring herself to tell his mother that someone had chopped up his body. That could wait.

"Someone killed him," she said. "After a show we did this afternoon. At a high school up here."

"Who?"

"We don't know yet. The police think it might have been Jimmy."

"Jimmy? Jimmy Brayne? Who Frank was teaching?"

"Yes, Mom."

"I can't believe it. Jimmy?"

"That's what they think."

"Well, where is he? Have they questioned him?"

"They're still looking for him, Mom."

"Oh, God, this is terrible," Susan said, and began weeping again. "Why would he do such a thing? Frank treated him like a brother."

"We both did," Marie said.

"Have you called Dolores yet?"

"No, you're the first one I…"

"She'll have a heart attack," Susan said. "You'd better let me tell her."

"I can't ask you to do that, Mom."

"She's my daughter, I'll do it," Susan said.

Still weeping.

"I'll tell her to come there right away, you'll need help."

"Thank you, Mom."

"What is it from her house? An hour?"

"Tops."

"I'll tell her to get right there. Are you okay?"

"No, Mom," she said, and her voice broke. "I feel terrible."

"I know, I know, sweetie, but be brave. I'll come up as soon as I can. Meanwhile, Dolores will be there. Oh, my God, so many people I'll have to call, relatives, friends… when is the funeral going to be? They'll want to know."

"Well… they'll be doing an autopsy first."

"What do you mean? Chopping him up?"

Silence on the line.

"You didn't give them permission to do that, did you?"

Opportunity right there to tell her he was already chopped up. She let the opportunity pass.

"They have to do an autopsy in a murder case," she said.

"Why?"

"I don't know why, it's the law."

"Some law," Susan said.

Both women fell silent.

Susan sighed heavily.

"All right," she said, "let me call Dolores, let me get to work. She'll be there in a little while, will you be okay till then?"

"I'll be fine."

Another silence. "I know how much you loved him," Susan said.

"I did, Mom."

"I know, I know."

Another sigh.

"All right, honey, I'll talk to you later. I'll try to get a plane tonight if I can. You're not alone, Marie. Dolores will be right there, and I'll be up as soon as I can."

"Thank you, Mom."

"All right now," Susan said, "I have to go now. Call me if you need me."

"Yes, Mom."

"Good night now, honey."

"Good night, Mom."

There was a small click on the line. Marie put the receiver back on the cradle. She looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. Only forty minutes left to what had been the longest day of her life.

The clock ticked noisily into the stillness of the empty house.

The clock on the hospital wall read twenty-five minutes past eleven.

Lieutenant Peter Byrnes had not yet called the wives. He would have to call the wives. Speak to Teddy and Sarah, tell them what had happened. He was standing in the corridor with Deputy Police Commissioner Howard Brill, who'd come uptown when he'd heard that two detectives had been shot in a liquor-store stakeout. Brill was a black man in his early fifties; Byrnes had known him when they were both walking beats in River-head. About the same size as Byrnes, same compact head and intelligent eyes; the men could have been cast from the identical bullet mold, except that one was black and the other was white. Brill was upset; Byrnes could understand why.

"The media's gonna have a ball," Brill said. "Did you see this?"

He showed Byrnes the front page of one of the morning tabloids. The headline looked as if it had been written for a sensational rag that sold at the local supermarket. But instead of

MARTIAN IMPREGNATES CAMEL or HITLER REINCARNATED AS IOWA HOUSEWIFE, this one read:

MIDGETS 2—COPS 0

POLICE CAUGHT SHORT

"Very funny," Byrnes said. "I got one cop in intensive care, and another one in surgery, and they're making jokes."

"How are they?" Brill asked.

"Meyer's okay. Carella…" He shook his head. "The bullet's still inside him. They're digging for it now."

"What caliber?"

"Twenty-two. That's according to the slugs we recovered in the store. Meyer took two hits, but the bullets passed through."

"He was lucky," Brill said. "They're worse than a goddamn forty-five, those low-caliber guns. Hit a man where there's real meat, the bullet hasn't got the force to exit. Ricochets around inside there like it's bouncing off furniture."

"Yeah," Byrnes said, and nodded bleakly.

"Lot of shooting tonight," Brill said. "You'd think it was the Fourth of July, 'stead of Halloween. Your man clean on that other one?"

"I hope so," Byrnes said.

"Four teenagers, Pete, the media loves kids getting shot. What's the report on their condition?"

I haven't checked it. I ran over here the minute…"

"Sure, I understand."

Byrnes guessed he should have checked on those kids before he'd come over here—not that he really cared how they were, except as their condition reflected on his squad. On his block, if you were looking for trouble with a cop, you should be happy you found it. But if Genero had pulled his gun without prudent care and reasonable cause, and if one of those punks died, or worse yet ended up a vegetable…

"How smart is he?" Brill asked.

"Not very."

" 'Cause they'll be coming at him, you know."

"I realize that."

"Where is he now?"

"Still downtown. I think. I really don't know, Howie. I'm sorry, but when I heard about Meyer and Carella…"

"Sure, I understand," Brill said again.

He was wondering which of the incidents would cause the Department the biggest headache. A dumb cop shooting four kids, or two dumb cops getting shot by midgets.

"Midgets," he said aloud.

"Yeah," Byrnes said.

Tricky, he thought.

I know that.

Coming back to the same bar a fourth time.

But that's part of the fun.

Look the same, act the same, makes it more exciting that way. Big blond guy is who they're looking for, so Heeeeeere's Johnny, folks! No description in the newspapers yet, but that's the cops playing it tricky, too.

Tricks all around, he thought.

Suits me fine.

By now they're thinking psycho.

Some guy who once had a traumatic experience with a hooker. Hates all hookers, is systematically eliminating them. They ought to boot up their computer, check with Kansas City. In Kansas City, it was only two of them. Well, when you're just starting, you start small, right? In Chicago, it was three. Good night, folks! Do my little song and dance in each city, listen to the newspaper and television applause, take my bow, and shuffle off to Buffalo. Slit their throats, carve up their pussies, the cops have to be thinking psycho. I'll do four of them here, he thought, and then move on. Two, three, four, a nice gradual escalation.

Let the cops think psycho.

A psycho acts compulsively, hears voices inside his head, thinks someone's commanding him to do what he's doing. Me, I never hear voices except when I'm listening to my Sony Walkman. Comedians. Walk along with the earphones on, listen to their jokes. Woody Alien, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Henny Youngman…

Take my wife. Please.

For our anniversary, my wife said she wanted to go someplace she'd never been. I said, How about the kitchen?

My wife wanted a mink coat, and I wanted a new car. We compromised. I bought her a mink coat and we keep it in the garage.

Walk along, listen to the comics, laugh out loud, people probably think I'm nuts. Who cares? There isn't anyone commanding me to kill these girls—

Ooops, excuse me, I beg your parmigiana. Mustn't get the feminists on my back, they'd be worse to deal with than cops. Next city, maybe I'll do five. Get five of them and then move on. Two, three, four, five, nice arithmetical progression. Keep moving, keep having fun, just the way Mother wanted it. What's the sense of life if you can't enjoy it? Live a little, laugh a little, that's the thing. These women—got it right that time, Ms. Steinem—are fun to do.

Try to dope that one out, officers.

Keep on looking for a psycho, go ahead.

When all you're dealing with is somebody as sane as Sunday.

Larry's Bar,

Welcome home, he thought, and opened the door.

"What'll it be?" Larry asked him.

"This guy comes into a bar, has a little monkey on his shoulder."

"Huh?" Larry said.

"This is a joke," he said. "The bartender asks him 'What'll it be?' The guys says, 'Scotch on the rocks,' and the monkey says, 'Same for me.' The bartender looks at both of them and says, 'What are you, a ventriloquist?' The monkey says, 'Were my lips moving?' "

"That's a joke, huh?" Larry said.

"Gin and tonic," he said, and shrugged.

"How about your monkey?"

"My monkey's driving," he said.

Larry blinked.

"That's another joke."

"Oh," Larry said, and looked at him. "You been in here before?"

"Nope. First time."

" 'Cause you look familiar."

"People tell me I look like Robert Redford."

"Now that's a joke," Larry said, and put the drink in front of him. "Gin and tonic, three bucks, a bargain."

He paid for the drink, sat sipping it, eyes on the mirror.

"Nice crop tonight, huh?" Larry said.

"Maybe."

"What are you looking for? We had a Chinese girl in here ten minutes ago. You dig Orientals?"

"This samurai comes home from the wars," he said.

"Is this another joke?"

"His servant meets him at the gate, tells him his wife's been making it with a black man. The samurai runs upstairs, breaks down the bedroom door, yanks out his sword, yells, 'Whassa this I hear, you make it with a brack man?' His wife says, 'Where you hear such honkie jive?' "

"I don't get it," Larry said.

"I guess you had to be there."

"Where?"

"Forget it."

"We got some nice black girls in here tonight, if that's what you're lookin' for."

Larry was thinking about his twenty-percent commission. Drum up a little trade here.

"This old man goes into a whorehouse…"

"This ain't a whorehouse," Larry said defensively.

"This is another joke. Old guy, ninety-five years old. He tells the madam he's looking for a blowjob. The guy's so frail he can hardly stand up. The madam says, 'Come on, mister, you've had it.' He says, 'I have? How much do I owe you?'"

"Now that's funny," Larry said.

"I know a hundred jokes about old people."

"That funny, it wasn't."

"This old guy is sitting on a park bench, crying his heart out. Another guy sits next to him, says…"

"Hi."

He turned.

A good-looking blonde girl was sitting on the stool next to his.

"My name's Sheryl," she said. "Wanna party?"