get right down to it, can they ‘use’ it for?” He studied her and added, “I’m too talkative tonight. I guess I’m excited. We haven’t had a night out in a long while. And you look beautiful. Don’t you get tired of my saying that?”
Teddy shook her head, and there was a curious tenderness in the movement. He had grown used to her eyes, and perhaps he missed what they were saying to him, over and over again, repeatedly. Teddy Carella didn’t need a tongue.
They walked to the car, and he opened the door for her, went around to the other side, and then started the motor. The police radio erupted into the closed sedan.
“Car Twenty-one, Car Twenty-one, Signal One. Silvermine at North Fortieth…”
“I’ll be conscientious and leave it on,” Carella said to Teddy. “Some pretty redhead may be trying to reach me.”
Teddy’s brows lowered menacingly.
“In connection with a case, of course,” he explained.
Of course, she nodded mockingly.
“God, I love you,” he said, his hand moving to her thigh. He squeezed her quickly, an almost unconscious gesture, and then he put his hand back on the wheel.
They drove steadily through the maze of city traffic. At one stoplight, a traffic cop yelled at Carella because he anticipated the changing of the light from red to green. The cop’s raingear was slick with water. Carella felt suddenly like a heel.
The windshield wipers snicked at the steady drizzle. The tires whispered against the asphalt of the city. The city was locked in against the rain. People stood in doorways, leaned out of windows. There was a gray quietness to the city, as if the rain had suspended all activity, had caused the game of life to be called off. There was a rain smell to the city, too, all the smells of the day captured in the steady canopy of water and washed clean by it. There was, too, and strange for the city, a curious sense of peace.
“I love Paris when it drizzles,” Carella said suddenly, and he did not have to explain the meaning of his words because she knew at once what he meant, she knew that he was not talking about Paris or Wichita, that he was talking about this city, his city, and that he had been born in it and into it, and that it, in turn, had been born into him.
The expensive apartment houses fell away behind them, as did the line of high-fashion stores, and the advertising agency towers, and the publishing shrines, and the gaudy brilliance of the amusement area, and the stilled emptiness of the garment district at night, and the tangled intricacy of the narrow side streets far downtown, the pushcarts filled with fruits and vegetables lining the streets, the store windows behind them, the Italian salami, and the provolone, and the pepperoni hanging in bright-red strings.
The tattoo parlor nestled in a side street on the fringe of Chinatown, straddled by a bar and a Laundromat. The combination of the three was somewhat absurd, ranging from the exotica of tattooing into the nether world of intoxication and from there to the plebeian task of laundering clothes. The neighborhood had seen its days of glory, perhaps, but they were all behind it. Far behind it. Like an old man with cancer, the neighborhood patiently and painfully awaited the end—and the end was the inevitable city housing project. And, in the meantime, nobody bothered to change the soiled bedclothes. Why bother when something was going to die anyway?
The man who ran the tattoo parlor was Chinese. The name on the plateglass window was Charlie Chen.
“Everybody call me Charlie Chan,” he explained. “Big detective, Charlie Chan. But me Chen, Chen. You know Charlie Chan, Detective?”
“Yes,” Carella said, smiling.
“Big detective,” Chen said. “Got stupid sons.” Chen laughed. “Me got stupid sons, too, but me no detective.” He was a round, fat man, and everything he owned shook when he laughed. He had a small mustache on his upper lip, and he had thick fingers, and there was an oval jade ring on the forefinger of his left hand. “You detective, huh?” he asked.
“Yes,” Carella said.
“This lady police lady?” Chen asked.
“No. This lady’s my wife.”
“Oh. Very good. Very good,” Chen said. “Very pretty. She wants tattoo, maybe? Do nice butterfly for her on shoulder. Very good for strapless gowns. Very pretty. Very decorative.”
Teddy shook her head, smiling.
“Very pretty lady. You very lucky detective,” Chen said. He turned to Teddy. “Nice yellow butterfly, maybe? Very pretty?” He