A Dog's Ransom (23 page)

“But—I must see you. Just for five minutes. I’m very near just now. I’ll meet you—even on a street corner. Please, Marylyn!”

Marylyn refused.

Clarence went on in a daze to Macy’s. He found the gadget that Greta wanted. He telephoned Greta to say he had succeeded (she was going to stay in and work, painting, that afternoon) and then he went to a film just to take his mind off Marylyn, and also to leave his room free for Greta, although she had said she could work as well in the living-room.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
T
HURSDAY
, Clarence had thought to leave the Reynoldses and go to his apartment, but it happened to be Greta’s birthday. Eric Schaffner and Lilly Brandstrum were coming for dinner, and Greta said she hoped Clarence would stay for dinner, too, and it would be silly to go to his apartment late at night, so why not stay another night? So Clarence had agreed. He bought for Greta a silver chain necklace at a shop on 8th Street, a fairly expensive present but not so expensive, Clarence hoped, that it could be considered a wrong thing to do. Buying the present for Greta made him feel more optimistic, and he telephoned Dannie’s apartment, hoping a note of cheer in his own voice could make Marylyn agree to see him.

This time she answered.

“I don’t want to see you but I will. But just for five minutes.”

They were to meet at once on the corner of 11th Street and Sixth Avenue. Clarence hurried.

Marylyn had only a block or so to walk, and she arrived when he did, on the northwest corner. Her face looked angry and pinched. He didn’t recognize her fringed suede jacket, and because it was too big for her, he assumed it was Dannie’s.

“Hello,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere? Somewhere we can sit?”

“No.” She was restless in her moccasins, hands in her pockets, stiff as if with cold though it was not very cold. She wore no socks. Marylyn was always careless about socks and scarves when it was too cold to go without them. “There’s a fair chance we’re being watched anyway, so if we walk or go somewhere, what’s the dif?”

“You’re cold.”

“Something conked out with the heating at Dannie’s this morning.”

“Oh.” Clarence was inwardly glad it wasn’t the luxury establishment he had envisaged.

They walked, Marylyn with her stubborn, short steps, her head down. They walked downtown.

“I’m completely sick of this fascist pig,” Marylyn said.

“I know. Dannie said he telephoned.”

“He turned up! Last night. Called up first, all right, but he was there before we could get out of the house. How could we get out and why should we? Dannie had guests. He said he’d just seen Mr. Reynolds. Well, how interesting!”

“He’s lying. What time did he come?”

“Around eight. He said Mr. Reynolds was protecting you and so was I and that you—you know. Seven or eight people heard it. I told him to shove it but what good does
that
do? Dannie’d tried to keep him outside the door, but just because he’s a pig, he muscled in. Dannie said have you got a search warrant, and the pig said no, because he wasn’t searching for anything. No, he’s only heckling. It’s a fascist state, Clare! You can’t even fight them.
They’ve
got the guns!—You’re in a spot, I know, but don’t drag
me
into it.”

Clarence was thinking that Ed hadn’t seen an author last night, he had seen Manzoni. Now Clarence realized that Ed had seemed uneasy, a little cool, at the restaurant last night. Ed had probably had enough, too, like Marylyn.

“I never meant to drag you in.”

“No? I told them you were with me that night, for Christ’s sake. You told them that, too. And you didn’t mean to drag me in!”

Clarence knew. It was true he had dragged her in.

“I’d be better off in the Bronx or Long Island. But a lot of my work’s down here. I’ve got to stay.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Marylyn.”

“You’re always sorry. Let Mr. Reynolds protect you, but get it off my back, will you?—Only you can’t.” She added sarcastically, “We shouldn’t look like we’re quarreling in case we’re being watched. This wop lives on Jane, you know, God knows when he’s off duty. We ought to be just casual friends. Medium-like.”

Marylyn’s sarcasm was something new. They had stopped at the corner of the Women’s House of Detention, where five busy streets met.

“Maybe they’re letting you recuperate,” Marylyn said, “but that cop said they’re going to question you again.”

“Look, Marylyn, I’m going to pull through this, I’m sure of it.”

“Really? I’ve heard they beat people up.”

“I can take it.”

Marylyn turned to the right, onto Greenwich Avenue, walking slowly back uptown. Clarence walked beside her.

“It’s not that I want to be a bitch, Clare. But you can’t blame me if I can’t take it, can you?”

He understood. He wanted to say words of comfort and strength and couldn’t find them. “But you will see me later, I hope—when this has blown over.”

She shrugged evasively. “Sure, maybe. Now and then.”

Less than a minute later—Marylyn did not want him to walk back with her to 11th Street—Clarence was alone, walking back down Greenwich Avenue towards the Reynoldses’.
Now and then
. It was somehow worse than if Marylyn had broken off completely. She neither loved nor hated him. She was in between. What it seemed to mean was that she had never loved him and never would.

Greta was busy with her dinner much of that afternoon, and Ed came home at four to do some work. He said he worked the entire day at home two or three days a month. Clarence was happy to go out, twice, for something that Greta had forgotten to buy at the grocery store. Greta in the afternoon went to the piano and began to play a Chopin waltz, and when Clarence came to listen at closer range, she smiled mischievously and launched into “Second-hand Rose,” which she sang, making Clarence laugh.

“What we sing,” Greta explained, pounding away, “when one lousy poet after another gets up to read his stuff.”

This was followed by “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place,” until Ed yelled, “What is this, old Sammy’s on the Bowery? She’s going to break the lease!”

“On my birthday I can risk to break the lease!” Greta retorted.

The apartment filled with the aroma of baking ham, cloves, and brown sugar. By seven, the sparkling table held a plate of rollmops in sour cream.

The guests arrived, by accident in the same elevator. Eric brought flowers, Lilly a large flat box of chocolates, and there were wrapped presents as well. Greta told them that Clarence was staying until tomorrow, as their house guest. Lilly and Eric greeted him in quite a friendly way. Cocktails and canapés. Greta opened her presents. From Lilly, a box to hold paints and brushes which seemed to please Greta enormously, and Lilly explained that it was the latest and most efficient paint box, designed in Denmark, to hold the maximum in minimum space. Eric’s present was a pair of Italian candlesticks of wrought iron. Ed’s gift was a startling jacket of silvery green which shimmered with sequins—for evening wear. Greta exclaimed over each gift. It was a pleasure for Clarence to watch her. Of Clarence’s necklace she said, “Oh, Clarence! It’s so glamorous!” And she put the necklace on.

Clarence began to feel easier. They were evidently not going to refer to the Rowajinski affair. But also he felt like an outsider looking in. The Reynoldses and the other two were such old friends, like a family, despite the German accents of Greta and Eric versus the New York accents of Ed and Lilly. They were all pleasant to Clarence. The difference was only in Ed: Clarence felt that Ed avoided looking at him.

“Oh, Greta said you were in the hospital,” Lilly said to Clarence during dinner. “I haven’t extended sympathies. Wounded in the course of duty, Greta said.” She wasn’t cynical now. She was merry on the dinner and the wine.

“What we call a little shoot-up,” Clarence said. “Nothing serious.”

“Some people were shooting up glass doorways,” Ed said. “Uptown in our old neighborhood.”

“And what’s the news about the man with the Polish name? Didn’t you say he was murdered, Greta? Yes!” said Lilly, as if it had slipped her mind.

“Yes,” said Greta, and bit into a celery heart. “I told you that a couple of weeks ago.”

“Of course. I heard,” Eric said. “I heard it on the TV before Greta told me.”

“Do they know who did it?” Lilly asked.

“No,” Greta said. “Someone on the street. Who knows?”

“That
Verrückter
! He was asking for it!” Eric declared.

“Did you say stabbed or shot?” Lilly asked.

“Just beaten up,” Greta said.

“Clobbered,” Ed added.

“What a subject,” Eric said, “what a subject for a birthday party!”

“More wine!” Greta got up to fetch another bottle from the kitchen.

Ed took a long time lighting a cigar. The subject was not exactly changed by anyone, but it drifted off to something else. Lilly remembered that she had brought an electronic record for them to hear. They played it while they had coffee. Eric chuckled and made comments. The few words, said in German by a female voice, were interspersed by eerie, owl-like moaning and screeching. Clarence’s thoughts drifted. He saw a garden of metal flowers, then a dark tunnel, an airless hell in which anything could happen, or spring out. It was an unknown world, yet completely known, as one knew one’s own dreams, and yet did not know them—because one could not completely interpret them, but not because one did not know them and their peculiar atmosphere. Clarence was thinking of Marylyn: she had her way of life, and suppose it was essentially incomprehensible to him? If she had a lurking doubt that her life was incomprehensible to him, she would sense it and reject it, Clarence was thinking. She would reject him. As perhaps she had already done. He wished he had seized her in his arms that morning and somehow impressed upon her—how?—that they must be together and stay together. As usual, he had not done the right thing at the right time.

Eric was the first to leave, kissing Greta on both hands, exchanging German pleasantries with her. Then Lilly left, bearing her mysterious record under her arm.

It was nearly midnight. Clarence complimented Greta on her dinner and said good night to her and Ed, thinking that they might want to be alone.

Ed knocked on Clarence’s door half an hour later. Ed was in pajamas on dressing-gown. “Hello, Clarence. I saw your light.”

“Come in!” Clarence had been reading in bed.

Ed sat down. “Well. All this—I gather you’re not out of the woods yet?”

“No.” Clarence sat up higher in bed. “I heard you saw Manzoni last evening.”

“Oh?”

“Marylyn told me. I saw her this morning.”

“How did she know?” Ed asked, and at once knew how.

“Manzoni came to see her. Where she’s living. She’s fed up with the police questioning, of course. I hate it—for her.”

“There’ll be more questions, I understand.”

“Yes. And they’ll try to break Marylyn down, too. I don’t mean they’ll be rough but—It’s mainly because I said I spent the night there, you know, and Marylyn said so, too.”

“I know. Of course.” Ed’s mind formed sentences, then they disappeared and he was lost again.

“I’m sure Manzoni wasn’t pleasant,” Clarence said, “because he knows I’m staying here.”

“True, and I was thinking—for your own good it might be better if you didn’t appear to be too friendly with us. For obvious reasons. If it isn’t already too late.” Until it blows over, Ed thought of adding, but would it blow over? If they kept hammering at Clarence, wouldn’t he finally break? Didn’t people always break? “I certainly don’t mind your staying here now. Neither does Greta. But I mean in the future—”

“I understand.” Clarence felt wretched, unable to get out of the house, now, because of the hour, because it would be awkward. And even tomorrow morning, at best, would be a retreat because of what Ed had just said.

“Marylyn’s friendly?” Ed asked.

Clarence almost choked. “She doesn’t like Manzoni visiting her. In fact, she’s furious about it. So I won’t be visiting her, seeing her either. That’s inevitable.”

Ed stood up, unable to look at Clarence’s unhappiness any longer, unable also to find any reassuring words to say. “Yes, inevitable. For the time. I’m tired. I’ll say good night.”

“Good night, Ed.”

In the bedroom, to Greta, Ed said, “I’ve made the worst mistake of my life.”

“It is not so serious. Think about it tomorrow, Eddie.”

Ed lay in bed with his eyes open in the darkness. “It’s not just tonight that I think about it. I’ve thought about it days ago.” He spoke softly, imagining Clarence in the room across the hall. “I can’t stand the sight of him. I don’t know what it is.—Yet I do know what it is. I don’t trust him.”

“Why? Eddie—” Greta found his hand, patted it and held it.

“I don’t know what went wrong. I should never have said—It was that time in the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I had the feeling then. Keep away, I thought. There’s something odd about him. And here I am protecting him, just as this—this Manzoni said.”

“What’s odd about him? He got angry, Eddie.”

Ed closed his eyes. Angry. It was something more than that. Greta’s attitude was a funny one for a woman to have, Ed thought. But Greta often saw things in a different way from him. She had seen more than he. More brutality. It had struck close in her family. All right, but had she ever had one of the cool killers as a guest in her house? Or had possibly one of her own family retaliated in like manner against a German killer? Had Greta heard about it with maybe a sense of justice? Maybe. But Ed couldn’t completely fathom it. That had been war, anyway. This wasn’t.

23

C
larence went to his 19th Street apartment by taxi on Friday morning. He had been up and dressed in time to say his thanks and good-bye to Ed before Ed went to work. He had drunk two or three cups of coffee with Greta (she had a passion for coffee) in the course of his packing. Greta had been cheerful, optimistic, and also realistic. Thinking over their conversation as he rode in the taxi, Clarence wondered how she had managed it. “Marylyn might not be the girl for you . . . You are in a state of shock, you can’t realize it all yet . . . Never mind Eddie. He is complicated . . . So? Yes. If you have such a temper, you must control it, really.” Clarence had devoured her words, weighed them, savored them, and it was no effort for him to commit them to memory. He felt that Greta was wise. Not because she was on his side, in fact she wasn’t entirely. He had said his temper got the better of him. He had said his temper had been bad enough the time he called on Rowajinski at his Morton Street room. “You must not let it ruin your life . . . Look at the murders in New York! Who cares? They say the cops do their best. Maybe they do, but what about the people the cops kill? Who does their best for
them
—if one speaks about human life?” Clarence had pointed out that he killed Rowajinski for a personal reason, and that he hadn’t been shooting a robber in the act of running from the scene.

The conversation with Greta, inconclusive as it may have been, was of the greatest comfort to Clarence. He felt he would have collapsed—maybe not confessed, but somehow collapsed—if he had not been able to talk about his problems to someone like Greta.

Because of Greta, he now had morale.

Clarence turned on his radio for company and set about unpacking, straightening his apartment, dusting and sweeping, shopping, starting the fridge which his mother had evidently cut off. Larry Summerfield, a college chum who lived in Manhattan, had written a note: where was he? His telephone wasn’t answering. And Nolan, of all people, had written a friendly note on a postcard with a soppy picture of a pair of brindle kittens in a basket: “Get well soon. The old shithouse misses you. Bert.” The postcard had been enclosed in an envelope.

Clarence picked up his laundry, which included the shirt he had worn the night of Rowajinski. Clarence did not examine the shirt but put it with his others in a drawer. He was thinking that he ought to ring his parents today. They wanted him to come out for Thanksgiving next Thursday. His leave lasted till December 4, which was three weeks after his hospital discharge.

His telephone rang around 3 p.m. A man’s voice said that he was Detective somebody of Fifth Division, and could Clarence come tomorrow morning, Saturday, to the Fifth Division Headquarters at 10 a.m.? Clarence said he could come.

C
LARENCE WAS THERE AT 9:50 A.M
., and was asked to wait. He had brought the
Times
and a book, and he read for half an hour. Just after 11 a.m., Clarence was ushered into a room with Detectives Morrissey and Fenucci, Fenucci appearing to have other things to do, because he paid no attention to Clarence. Fenucci gathered papers from the desk in the room. Clarence was offered a seat on a straight chair. Morrissey wore a dirty shirt, Clarence noticed, and looked as if he had been up all night—Clarence was pretty sure not because of him.

“Waiting for someone,” said Morrissey to Clarence, and helped Fenucci assemble the papers he was looking for.

It occurred to Clarence that he hadn’t called his mother, and that this was an absurd thing to be thinking of now. He would have called his parents last evening, but he had not wanted to tell them he had been summoned for another police interview this morning, and he might have told them, if his mother had pressed him to come out to Astoria at once for the weekend, and to stay through Thanksgiving.

Just before noon, a big man whom Clarence didn’t recognize at first—the landlord of Rowajinski on Morton Street—came into the room, looking frightened and aggressive. His eyes fixed on Clarence’s face for a couple of seconds, then he did not look at Clarence again.

“Well,” said Morrissey, rubbing his hands together. “Mr.—” He faced the landlord. “Philip—”

“Liebowitz,” said the man.

“Philip Liebowitz. And this is Clarence Duhamell. Patrolman Duhamell. Mr. Liebowitz says,” Morrissey said, addressing Clarence, “that you came to his house on Morton Street Wednesday, October twenty-eighth to see Kenneth Rowajinski. Right?”

“That’s true,” said Clarence, not sure of the date.

“Mr. Liebowitz is the landlord there, as you may know. Mr. Liebowitz says you beat Rowajinski up. True?”

“I told you,” Clarence said, “that I shook him. I wanted to scare him. I did push him and he fell on the floor. I did not beat him up.”

“That is not the way Mr. Liebowitz reported it,” Morrissey said with a tired, wide grin. “Tell him, Mr. Liebowitz, maybe he’s forgot.”

“Well, there was a lot of scuffling like, I heard it. I was right in the hall. I heard a thud. This guy Rawinsk—”

“Rowajinski,” said Morrissey, who was standing up between them.

“Rowajinski, he was all upset, wanting to use the bathroom just afterwards, I remember.”

“How long did Patrolman Duhamell stay?” asked Morrissey.

“Oh, a good ten, fifteen minutes.”

More like five, Clarence thought. Clarence blinked his eyes, watching Liebowitz. Had Liebowitz been told what to say? The interview was probably being taped, Clarence thought, by a machine in some part of the desk.

Morrissey began politely in tone, “Patrolman Duhamell, to repeat the circumstances which you already know, you had reason to dislike Rowajinski, he accused you of taking five hundred dollars to let him escape in October, and when he was recaptured, charged, and released on probation, he began annoying your friend Marylyn Coomes and wrote her an unsigned letter saying things against you. You were in the neighborhood of Barrow Street the night Rowajinski was beaten about the head and left dead in the foyer of a house on Barrow Street near Hudson Street. You had already called on Rowajinski for no apparent reason except personal resentment, and knocked him down on the floor. The only support you have for your story of having spent all night in a house on Macdougal is your own statement plus that of your friend Marylyn Coomes. She might be expected to back you up, no? It’s natural. We offer you a chance, Patrolman Duhamell, to tell us what you really did that night. So what have you got to say?”

“I have nothing more to say. No changes in my statements,” Clarence said.

Someone brought in coffee, awful coffee in limp paper cups.

The blond fellow who ran the coffee-shop below Marylyn’s arrived. He greeted Clarence with a nod and a flicker of a smile. He was in bell-bottom black trousers, and a fur jacket. Teddie his name was, Clarence remembered.

“Theodore Hackensack,” he said to Morrissey.

Morrissey established his residence, place of work, the fact that he knew Marylyn Coomes at least by sight, and also Clarence Duhamell by sight.

“You have said . . .”

Morrissey had evidently already questioned Teddie, and Teddie had said he had not seen, or couldn’t remember seeing Clarence leaving Marylyn’s house the evening of November 3, Tuesday, around 10:30 or midnight or any other time that evening. He also hadn’t seen him arrive. Teddie looked unshaken and unshakable.

“Do you remember ever seeing Rowajinski, that evening or any other time?”

“Yeah, I told you about his coming into my shop and asking if there was a cop living next door.”

“Yes. I think we established that as around twenty-eighth October,” said Morrissey. “And you told him what?”

“I told him I didn’t know,” Teddie said, squirming in his chair, irritated by the questioning or the memory of Rowajinski. “Why should I give him any information? I didn’t like his looks.”

“But you knew Patrolman Duhamell came frequently to Marylyn Coomes’s house?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve seen him around.”

“For how long? How long a time has he been visiting Miss Coomes?”

Teddie shook his head, amused. “I really didn’t keep track.”

“Do you know Miss Coomes well?”

“No,” said Teddie.

“How well? She’s just an acquaintance or what?”

“She’s just a neighbor. A couple of times she’s come in for coffee. We say hello.”

“She never said anything about marrying Patrolman Duhamell?”

Teddie shook his head tolerantly. “Now why would she tell me that?”

“Or that she’s broken off with this man now?” He indicated Clarence.

“No,” said Teddie, bored. He looked in another direction and reached for his cigarettes.

“She has.—Have you any reason to fear Patrolman Duhamell, Theodore?” asked Morrissey.

Teddie’s blue eyes showed annoyance, then he smiled again.

“A shakedown? I don’t cater to junkies or pushers. They may come
in
. They’re not my chums. If you know what I mean.” He added, “I mind my own business. So far I don’t have to take guff. From cops or anybody else.”

Morrissey nodded. He had removed his jacket and loosened his tie. The room was overheated. “Did you ever talk alone with Patrolman Duhamell? Face to face?”

Teddie and Morrissey looked at each other. Morrissey was still smiling, but the smile had become nothing more than a slightly open mouth.

“No,” Teddie said. “I’d remember that.”

Clarence realized that Morrissey was trying to get Teddie to say he’d accepted some kind of a rake-off, and to imply that for this reason Teddie might be afraid to say anything against him. Morrissey finally got nothing out of Teddie but scowls and silence. Teddie was allowed to leave.

“Miss Coomes is arriving soon,” said Morrissey, and took the telephone and ordered sandwiches and coffee. “Oh—four, I suppose.”

Philip Liebowitz sat like a forgotten heap on a straight chair, frowning and looking puzzled.

Morrissey turned to Liebowitz and said, “Any other people you ever get in a hassle with Rowajinski, Mr. Liebowitz?”

“No, I told you. Just this fellow.”

“Patrolman Duhamell, we’ll see how your story holds up when your girlfriend arrives. We know you’re not telling the truth and neither is she. But you wouldn’t want to put her through a lot of unpleasant questioning, would you—even if she has broken it off with you?”

Clarence wanted to ask who had said she had broken it off? But he reminded himself that the less he said the better, and that to become angry might be disastrous.

“She’s due any minute,” said Morrissey with his smile that had now become ghoulish. “There’s time for you to say now—yes, I took a walk. Came
back
to Macdougal maybe. But you went out and clobbered that guy round about midnight, no? So why not admit it, Duhamell, and save yourself a lot of trouble—pain in the ass questions?” Morrissey took a cigarette, holding it between his teeth.

Clarence felt unpleasantly warm, shifted slightly, and said nothing.

“She’s not the only one turning up. Your friend Edward Reynolds is coming too. Just after Miss Coomes.” Morrissey looked at his wrist-watch. “At three-thirty.”

“Fine,” Clarence said.

But 2 o’clock came, and still Marylyn hadn’t arrived. Liebowitz had been dismissed with hearty and phony thanks from Morrissey.

“You told Detective Fenucci you didn’t have your gun with you that night,” Morrissey said when he and Clarence were alone. “We think you did. We think you used it to clobber Rowajinski. Isn’t that true?”

“That gun was examined. That gun wasn’t used for anything,” Clarence said, feeling on safe ground—or if the ground wasn’t safe it was time they told him.

“Oh, you could’ve washed the gun. Why did you have it at home, if you weren’t carrying it that night?”

“I take my gun occasionally when I leave the precinct house after 4 a.m. So do a lot of patrolmen.”

“Patrolmen,” Morrissey said in a mocking way. “You’re the polite type, eh Dummell? Nasty subject murder, no? Not used to talking about it, eh Dummell?”

Clarence said nothing. He wanted a cigarette and didn’t take one.

Marylyn arrived at ten to three. Now she wore a skirt, a wide, longish black skirt embroidered in red at the hem. She nodded and gave a faint smile to Clarence who was still sitting on the straight chair.

“Do sit down, Miss Coomes,” said Morrissey. “Is that chair comfortable?”

“Yes, but it’s full of smoke here,” Marylyn said.

Morrissey opened a window, pulling it with difficulty down from the top. “Well now, Miss Coomes—we are making progress. Are you still prepared to say that Clarence Duhamell spent the entire night of November third-fourth at your house on Macdougal Street? Never went out even briefly—and maybe came back?” He smiled.

Marylyn, looking tense, took a deep breath and answered quite calmly, “He spent the whole night. Why should I change my story?”

“Your story? Is it true?”

“I wouldn’t bother lying,” Marylyn said with superb contempt, and Clarence imagined “to pigs” that might have ended her statement.

“I understand you’ve broken off with Duhamell, Miss Coomes. Isn’t it because you know he’s guilty—guilty of having bashed a man to death?”

“And who said I’ve broken off? I’m perfectly friendly with Clare. As friendly as ever. After all, we’re not married. And what business is it of yours?” She got out her cigarettes. “I gather it’s okay if I smoke,” she said, casting an eye up at the murky ceiling.

“Pete Manzoni told me you’d broken off,” said Morrissey. “Clarence Duhamell hasn’t spent any nights on Macdougal since the—”

“Manzoni can shove himself. He’s a fascist pig—a—disgrace! You issue uniforms and guns to people like that? I intend to report that wop pig but I’m still gathering my dossier so I can really slam him. I wouldn’t be proud, if I were you, to have such shit as a colleague.”

Morrissey was momentarily silenced, and Marylyn added:

“This wop is a heckler and he’s the kind who feels women up. Crime, we’ve plenty of it, so why doesn’t he go after it instead of knocking on my door and crashing in, hoping he can find me in the middle of dressing—or undressing. This whole bloody town,” she said, looking straight at Morrissey, “is rolling in dope and the pigs are rolling in dough from it, and you waste your time trying to find out who killed a creep. What side are you on, anyway? I’ll tell you. The cops are on the
creeps’
side!”