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to run for cover and telephone for the squad cars several times. It had been his orders from the precinct captain to keep himself in fit condition for action, and to summon assistance at once in all circumstances in which he thought a gun might be used. Well and good, but Clarence had finally asked to be transferred, not out of fear, but because he felt about as useful as a streetlamp on that patrol beat. The Upper West Side precinct where he was now based was little better, but for different reasons: the fellows were not so friendly, nor were the superior officers. Clarence was no longer a rookie. At the same time he was still young and idealistic enough not to accept kickbacks, even the two-dollar-a-week kickbacks some stores offered cops in order not to be fined for, or to correct, petty infractions. Some cops got a lot more, Clarence knew, some up to eight hundred or a thousand dollars a month from pay-offs. Clarence had always known pay-offs existed in the force, and he wasn’t trying to reform anyone or to inform on anyone, but it became known that he didn’t take kickbacks and so the cops who did—the majority—tended to avoid Clarence. He wasn’t fraternity material. Clarence was consistently polite (no harm in that) but he was afraid to be chummy unless the other cop was chummy first. The cops in Riverside Drive precinct house were not a chummy lot. Clarence did not want to ask for another transfer. A man had to make his own opportunities. To stay in a rut was easy for everyone, Clarence thought, and the majority lived out their lives in a secure groove, not venturing anything. If he didn’t like the force in another year, Clarence intended to quit.
    Because he mistrusted routine—ruts could never reveal an individual’s destiny—he had telephoned Edward Reynolds, who had seemed to him a decent man with an interesting problem which his precinct wasn’t going to pay much attention to. Such people as Edward Reynolds didn’t turn up every day. In fact the main reason for Clarence’s boredom was the similarity of the crimes and the criminals, the petty house robberies, the car thefts, the handbag snatches, the complaints of shoplifting, the muggers who were never caught—and neither were most of the shoplifters caught, even if they were seen by a dozen people running down the street with their loot.
    When Clarence had taken the personnel job at the bank, he had leased an apartment on East 19th Street, a walk-up on the fourth floor. This one-room, kitchenette and bath he still had, and the rent was cheap, a hundred and thirty-seven dollars per month. Clarence kept most of his clothes here, but for the past three or four months he had been spending most nights with his girlfriend Marylyn Coomes, who had an apartment on Macdougal Street in the Village. Marylyn was twenty-two, had dropped out of NYU, and was a freelance secretary-typist, though she took a regular job often enough to augment her income considerably by claiming unemployment after she quit it. “Soak the Government, they’re loaded,” said Marylyn. She got away with murder. Marylyn plainly lied, and Clarence did not admire her ethics, and tried to put them out of his mind. Marylyn was very left, much more so than Clarence, and he considered himself left. Marylyn believed in destroying everything and starting everything afresh. Clarence thought that things could be improved, using the structures that already existed. This was the great difference between them. But far more important, Clarence was in love with Marylyn, and she had accepted him as her lover. Clarence was the only one, of that he was ninety-nine percent sure, and he often thought the one percent doubt was only his imagination. Clarence had had two affairs before, neither worth mentioning by comparison with the apricot-haired Marylyn. The other girls—one had been young, timid, acting as if she were ashamed of him, and the second had been a bit tough and casual, and Clarence had