First Avenue Read Online Free PDF

sharp-eyed about their business, turned and walked away when they saw the blue-and-white car approaching. Pimps, dopers, and small-time hustlers pretended to ignore them while customers glanced at them uncomfortably and fleetingly.
    There were already drunken leaners outside the door of the Seafarers Tavern. A shout rose, hung in the air, and vanished when
Mike
drove through the parking lot.
    When they drove by the Donald Hotel ,
Katherine
felt a sharp pain in her chest. She tugged at her bulletproof vest. The pain burned for a while, then dulled like a wound frequently rubbed.
    Dancing girls jiggled in the window booths across the street from the Donut Shop and waved to them as they crept along Pike Street . The Donut Shop was closed. She had hardly noticed it before, but now she looked carefully into the dark windows.
Mike
waved back to the dancing girls.
    An hour into the shift, after their third meaningless call, Mike pulled to the curb in front of their coffee spot and punched the button to release the portable radio. “Coffee?” he asked. It was an announcement rather than a question.
    “Sure,” she said, repeating her part flawlessly.
    Mike liked to stop early in the shift for coffee.
Katherine
had no preference herself, and even if she did, it would not have mattered. He was senior to her by five years, as he frequently pointed out, and his wishes on such matters prevailed. When two cops formed a partnership from a mutual interest, there was give-and-take. Not with
Mike
. There had been no interest from either of them.
    He sat across the booth from her in the modest but respectable hotel coffee shop that was popular with the sector cars and looked at his calendar. He kept it in his shirt pocket. After writing the overtime hours from the previous night on his calendar, he added the numbers aloud. He re-added the numbers each night, even if they had not changed, as though somehow they might have disappeared or increased clandestinely. He added four and three-fourths hours from the previous night.
    He used the extra money for his toy fund, as he called it, and she imagined he kept it in a can hidden in his garage and took it out and counted it every night when he went home. His wife, who worked part-time in a health insurance office, used her wages for groceries. If there was extra, she could use the surplus as she pleased. It seemed like a strange way for married people to live, but what did she know?
    “Eight hours already this period,”
Mike
said as he put the well-worn calendar back in his pocket. “Not bad, partner.”
    He must be feeling good to call her partner. That was held in reserve for the times he felt expansive. They were not really partners, not like some who worked together year after year and knew each other’s habits, weaknesses, strengths, loves, hates, hopes, fears, families, friends, enemies. They had tolerated each other for the past three months, and that was all. She couldn’t go to the sergeant and request a change because she was only eleven months out of the academy.
Mike
couldn’t because no one else wanted to work with him. It could be worse, she told herself, again and again.
    Katherine wondered if
Sam
would ever come back to the Third Watch. He had not criticized her or laughed at her or rolled his eyes when she could not push her feelings down into some emotionless cavern. He gave her his towel, offered her a drink, let her sleep undisturbed on his deck. When she awakened, she was glad she was not alone. Around him it seemed unnecessary to conceal that she was a woman, although it was difficult to tell when she put on the bulletproof vest that flattened her breasts and the wool pants designed for men and tailored to the point of absurdity.
    Since that night a month earlier when
Sam
had brought in her briefcase and put it on the counter in the report room,
Katherine
had wondered about him. He dismissed her apologies for overlooking the time and not removing it from the car. He