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“You’re kidding, right?”
“It’s not like she bribed you, is it? All you did was what you thought was the right thing to do in that situation, right? I mean, you didn’t catch her doing something wrong, right? You didn’t say, ‘For two hundred bucks, I’ll let you go,’ did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“You did her a favor, she appreciated it. Keep the money.”
“You’d keep it?”
Officer Palmerston, in reply, extended his hand, palm upward, to Officer Crater.
“Try me.”
“All right, goddamn you, Bill, I will,” Officer Crater said, and took two of the fifties from the condom pocket in his wallet and laid them in Officer Palmerston’s palm. Officer Palmerston stuffed the bills in his shirt pocket, then called for another round.
“I’ll pay,” Officer Palmerston said, and laid one of the fifties on the bar.
The next time, several days later, Officer Crater saw the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service he could not, of course, give her the two hundred back, since he’d given half of it to Officer Palmerston.
She came up to him right after he started walking his beat, where he was standing on the corner of Ninth and Chestnut streets.
“Hi, Charley,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hi,” he replied, thinking again that Marianne didn’t really look like a hooker.
“You ever get a break?” she asked. “For a cup of coffee or something?”
“Sure.”
“I was about to have a cup of coffee. I’ll buy,” the lady said.
He seemed hesitant, and she saw this.
“Charley, all I’m offering is a cup of coffee,” she said. “Come on.”
Why not? Officer Crater reasoned. I mean, what the hell is wrong with drinking a cup of coffee with her?
They had coffee and a couple of doughnuts in a luncheonette. He never could remember afterward what they had talked about until Marianne suddenly looked at her watch and said she had to go. And offered her hand for him to shake, and he took it, and there was something in her hand.
“The lady I work for says thank you, too,” Marianne said, and was gone before he could say anything else, or even look at what she had left in his hand.
When he finally looked, it was a neatly folded, crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Jesus Christ!” he said aloud, before quickly putting the bill in his trousers pocket.
When he got off work that night, he went to Dave’s Bar before going home, in the hope that he would run into Bill Palmerston.
Palmerston was already in Dave’s Bar when he got there, and when he bought Palmerston a drink, he paid for it with the hundred-dollar bill.
Palmerston looked at the bill and then at Crater.
“Where’d you get that?”
“The same place I got the fifties,” Crater said.
“Lucky you.”
Palmerston watched as the bartender made change, and when he had gone, looked at Crater and asked, “Don’t tell me your conscience is bothering you again?”
