Habit of Fear by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

dark-complexioned by your description. That’s vital information, Julie. If they chum together in the neighborhood, we ought to be able to bring them in.”
    “Why do you keep thinking they’re in the neighborhood? They had a car.”
    “Could the witness describe the car? I suppose it’s too much to hope for a license number.”
    “A lot too much. A small car that looked like an egg. I’d say a Volkswagen. But no color. Whatever that means.”
    “That’s going to be the trouble. She’s not what you’d call a reliable witness.”
    “There isn’t one good witness between us,” Julie said.
    “That isn’t so. You’ll be a better witness than you realize once you make up your mind you want to do it. How about it?”
    Julie escaped by looking around the dreary, ill-lit room. It was the old interrogation room, and they sat at one end of a long table, where someone had written “Fuck the Commissioner” in the dust. Not much happened in the precinct house since the booking of suspects had become a central operation located downtown at Number One Police Plaza. There were great empty spaces in the building. They exposed the dirty floors and walls, the dangling ceiling plaster. As though cops didn’t have a depressing enough job without working out of an 1890s ruin. “Yes!” she said with emphasis. “I want to do it.”
    “Good girl.” Russo got to his feet. “Wait till I sign out and I’ll buy you a beer at McGowen’s.”
    She doubted that McGowen’s was his regular bar. It was the hangout mostly of the Irish-Americans. Julie sometimes went there with Mary Ryan. “You didn’t tell me why you think they might be local men,” Julie said.
    “A hunch, them being around here on a Sunday morning. They’re not on the work-site payroll, as far as we know. We’ll try again. If they are on the project, there can’t be too many redheads besides him. How about the beer?”
    “Thank you,” Julie said.
    Billy McGowen himself was behind the bar. He almost always was. He recognized Julie and gave the detective a nod of tentative recognition. There wasn’t much warmth in the keen blue eyes.
    “Shall I introduce you?” Julie said. McGowen was mid-bar, drawing the beer. Several regulars were at the other end, watching the television above Julie’s and Russo’s heads.
    “He’ll soon get to know me,” Russo said.
    And sure enough, returning, McGowen said, “Here you are, Detective.” He stood for a moment, his hands spread on the bar, as though waiting for what would come next.
    Julie said, “I thought maybe Mrs. Ryan would be here.”
    McGowen straightened up and took a cloth to where the sweating glasses had ringed the bar. “She hasn’t been in since she lost that unfortunate mutt of hers.”
    There was talk then about the advantages and disadvantages of getting another dog when you were Mrs. Ryan’s age. “The thing is, you don’t get a puppy,” the detective said.
    McGowen said, “You want to know what size it’ll be when it grows up.”
    “And you want it trained.”
    “That’s the main thing,” McGowen said. “You’ll never train a dog if you can’t be quick with it. And she’s an old lady.”
    Russo laid a five-dollar bill on the bar. McGowen motioned it away, but the detective let it lie there. When the barman left them to check his other customers, Russo indicated the picture centered over the back-bar mirror and asked Julie, “Who’s that?”
    By now she knew well, having asked the question herself sometime before. “Bobby Sands. He was an IRA hunger striker who died in prison.”
    Russo sighed heavily. Julie didn’t want any more of her beer, but she didn’t say so. McGowen came back to pick up the conversation where they’d left off. “I’d take up a collection and buy her a real pedigreed frankfurter if I thought it was the right thing to do.”
    “Mutts are better dogs,” Russo said. “McGowen, have you seen a couple of young guys around here lately that might be