Shirley by Howard Fast

Author:Howard Fast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

7. Burton

No one simply accepted Shirley. People liked her tremendously or found that they could not tolerate her at all. She evoked numerous and varied responses in people, but not indifference. And in Lieutenant Burton, she produced a diversity of reactions, all of which were disturbing to the lieutenant.

Forty-seven years old, solid, phlegmatic, a career policeman who had not done too poorly with his career, a long-married man with a son in college and a married daughter who would soon present him with his first grandchild, Detective Burton found himself speculating with the notion of what his situation re Shirley would be if he were twenty years younger. Such speculation was uncommon with him. It titillated and depressed him at one and the same time; and when, at dinner that evening, his wife Lucy asked him where and on what cloud he happened to be, he reacted with a meaningless mumble of explanation.

“Well, come back long enough to eat your meat,” his wife reminded him. “It’s rarely enough that I have you at supper now, without watching my cooking go untasted. I suppose you keep your weight up with beer.”

“You know I don’t drink beer any more, Lucy.”

“I know you don’t get fat on my cooking.”

“Peanuts,” said Detective Burton. “You know something, Lucy, if I was down there in Washington with the Food and Drug Administration, I’d make peanuts a worse crime than dope. You can’t stop. Every time I pass a candy stand, I buy peanuts. Then the boys know about it, and they buy a can of the stuff and put it on my desk. That’s death. I can finish a can in one night.”

“It shows,” his wife nodded. “Is that what you’re dreaming about—the Food and Drug Administration?”

“No. No, of course not. I just can’t get my mind off this case and this kid.”

“Shirley?”

“Well—yes.”

“Personally, I don’t like the name. I never did. It always seemed to me that Shirleys are one particular type that I don’t like.”

“It’s just a name. Nobody picks their name. But this is quite a kid, tough, hard as nails, and then she looks at you and gives you the impression that she’s a thousand years old. Still, I like her. I like her a lot.”

“So I’ve gathered,” his wife said.

“Come off it, come off it. I could be her father.”

“But you don’t want to, do you?” Mrs. Burton said, smiling sweetly.

“Look,” Burton said, “in the line of my work, I come into contact with all kinds of people. You know that.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why all this fuss?”

“What fuss?”

“You know damn well that I mean!”

“I like a firm man,” Mrs. Burton nodded. “Strong man, strong words. Absolutely. And as long as I think of you in that lovely little office of yours—”

“So it’s a lousy office.”

“—beating up some poor junkie who hasn’t enough sense or character to do anything about it, I don’t mind. I just say to myself, there’s the old lieutenant, doing his job.”

“Damn it all, Lucy, I don’t beat up anyone in my office, and you know it.

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