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along.”
    “Right. And thanks for the coffee.”
    He winked and left. I finished filing the papers, marked them for proper distribution and called for Cassidy to take care of them. Then I phoned Marta and told her I’d be over about two and to have lunch ready. She called me a housemaid-hugging flatfoot and hung up.
    Sunday on the street was a day of truce. The week had been fought to a smashing climax on Saturday night and now the troops had withdrawn and cleared the field for a little while. But the signs of battle were still there, the bright flakes of broken bottles, the vomit splashes by the walls, a garbage can on its side in the curb.
    Traffic was negligible, but the kids had that uneasy Sunday feeling that couldn’t make up into a stickball game. The young girls were out, purses swinging, jaws chewing, taking this one day to prove their respectability while their opposites tried hard for masculine worldliness with smelly vestibules and dirty stoops for a background. None of it came off. It was still a battlefield.
    The bars had opened at one and so far were almost empty. The three I stopped in had just been mopped down and smelled of furniture polish. The hell with the house, but take care of that bar! In each place I asked if Al Reese had been in, and when they said no I told them to pass the word I was looking for him and was going to beat the crap out of him when I found him. I did him a little dirty by hinting that he was a stoolie of sorts, and in that neighborhood even a rumor like that can get a guy in pretty deep water. But at least they were taking it right. I was the tough cop came back to the street where he used to live to see a broad he grew up with. So long as everybody stayed in line, what they did was no business of mine. None at all. Anybody plays it wise, they get rapped and I could make it stick. They were getting to know that part in a hurry. That’s the way they had it figured, and that’s just what we wanted them to think.
    At five minutes of two Marta opened the door for me and I could smell lunch on the table. This time she had on a dress with a billowy skirt and regular whore shoes. Only on her the combination looked great.
    We ate without saying much, went out to a crummy movie house and saw a picture we had both seen a year ago. At seven we had supper at Smith’s Bar and Grill, then went back to the neighborhood for a few beers before calling it a night
    Two days and the pattern was working out The word ran like a swift river in those parts and wherever we stopped conversation stopped too. Words were guarded and eyes could evade mine for no reason except I was cop. On the street the lushes and the panhandlers would throw a halfhearted ingratiating smile, then scurry away quickly.
    On the way back to the apartment I saw the beat cop and crossed over to his side, holding Marta’s arm. I had never seen him, but he knew who I was and touched his cap. “Evening, Lieutenant”
    “Hi.” I stuck out my hand and he took it. “Mack Brissom told me to look you up.”
    He flushed and grinned. “Didn’t think he’d remember me. He was one of the instructors at the academy. By the way, I’m Hal McNeil.”
    “This is Marta Borlig.”
    He nodded. “I’ve seen you often, Miss Borlig.”
    I nudged her in the ribs, “See, like a sore thumb.”
    “Oh, pipe down,” she said pleasantly.
    “Quiet around the beat?” I asked him.
    “Usual stuff. Last few days a mysterious prowler scared a couple of old ladies. Guy with a face full of whiskers. Big fight two blocks over a week ago and a running feud with three families involved ever since.”
    “Hard to handle?”
    He shrugged and said seriously, “Nothing the rule book can’t cope with.”
    “Well, good to see you, McNeil. Keep an eye on my gal here, okay?”
    “That’s an easy job, sir,” he chuckled back. He walked off trying store fronts and nodding to upstairs residents. Good boy, that.
    On the way to the apartment Marta stopped at