'Til Death (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,46

this—I want to be a cop.

Not because someone has to clean the streets. Maybe no one has to clean the streets at all. Maybe civilization would move along just as briskly if the streets were filthy as hell.

But the destroyers make me angry. When the destroyers take life from a man like Birnbaum, they make me mad as hell! And so long as destruction makes me angry, I’ll continue to be a cop, I’ll continue commuting to a scroungy squadroom in perhaps the world’s worst neighborhood, listening to bum jokes delivered by other cops, listening to corny humor, and telephones ringing, and complaints from the gentle people who—though they may not all be creators—are not destroyers.

In the deepening darkness, he grinned wanly.

You may not have realized it, Father Paul, he thought, but you had a very religious man in your rectory today.

He left Ben Darcy lying on his back, and he went to the house for some water and some damp rags.

The wedding jokes were beginning.

Standing before the long bridal table upon which rested the trays of dolci and the huge wedding cake and—at the far end—two bottles of wine marked separately and respectively for the bride and the groom, Tommy listened to the wedding jokes with mixed feelings. He was embarrassed by them, but he was also secretly pleased by them. He knew he was supposed to be embarrassed by them, but he was also secretly pleased by them. He knew he was supposed to be embarrassed and so each new joke brought a flush to his boyish features. But at the same time, he secretly felt as if he had achieved manhood at last. Finally, he was being granted admission to a worldwide fraternity as a junior member. Years from now, perhaps, he would attend someone else’s wedding and tell the same ritual jokes. The knowledge pleased him, even though he’d heard most of the jokes before. The jokes had started with that hoary old standby of the man who leaves his umbrella in a hotel room that is later occupied by a honeymoon couple. About to retrieve the umbrella as they enter the room, he ducks into a closet and is forced to listen to their cooing lovemaking. Finally in desperation, after listening to the groom asking the bride questions like “And whose eyes are these?”—”Yours, darling”—”And whose lovely lips are these?”—”Yours, sweetheart”—on and on, sparing no part of the anatomy, the joke tinged with the delicious unsavoriness of total possession and the anticipation of an outerdirected striptease, the man in the closet shouts, “When you get to the umbrella, it’s mine!”

Tommy laughed. The joke had a beard, but he laughed anyway and he blushed slightly, and he watched his brother-in-law emerge from the bushes at the side of the property and rush toward the house, and then another joke started, the one about the midget who marries the circus fat lady, and this was followed by another, and then another, and then the jokes left the realm of scripted humor and took on an ad lib quality, each prankster, both married man and bachelor, coming up with top-of-the-head advice on the proper hotel-room behavior. Someone threw in the hoary story about the white horse who married a zebra and spent the entire honeymoon trying to take off her striped pajamas, and Tommy laughed, and someone advised him to bring along a lot of magazines because Angela would undoubtedly spend three hours in the bathroom preparing herself for the biggest moment of her life, and someone else said, “He only wishes it were the biggest moment,” and though Tommy didn’t quite get this one, he laughed anyway.

“What hotel are you going to, Tom?” one of the circle of jokesters asked.

“Uh-uh,” Tommy said, shaking his head.

“Come on!” someone shouted. “You don’t think we’d barge in on your honeymoon, do you?”

“I do,” Tommy said.

“Old pals like us? Don’t you want us to visit you?”

“No!”

“No? Why not? Have you made other plans for this evening?”

And so it went. And all the while, Jody Lewis scampered around the circle of jokesters, catching the expression on Tommy’s face each time a new joke was told, the shutter clicking, clicking, to preserve the blush or the grin or the fleeting look of realized manhood for posterity, Our Wedding Day.

“Don’t forget that wine when you leave!” someone shouted.

“What wine?”

“Somebody brought you wine. At the end of the table. One for the bride and one for the groom.”

“But don’t drink too much, Tommy. Too much