Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [154]
Dr. Talc put down his paper and his glass and covered his face with his hands. He would have to live with that note. He would deny everything.
IV
Miss Annie looked at her morning newspaper and turned red. She had been wondering why it was so quiet over at the Reilly household this morning. Well, this was the last straw. Now the neighborhood was getting a bad name. She couldn’t take it anymore. Those people had to move. She’d get the neighbors to sign a petition.
V
Patrolman Mancuso looked at the newspaper again. Then he held it to his chest and the flashbulb popped. He had brought his own Brownie Holiday camera to the precinct and asked the sergeant to photograph him against certain official backdrops: the sergeant’s desk, the steps of the precinct, a squad car, a traffic patrolwoman whose specialty was school zone speeders.
When there was only one exposure left, Patrolman Mancuso decided to combine two of the props for a dramatic finale. While the traffic patrolwoman, pretending to be Lana Lee, climbed into the rear of the squad car grimacing and shaking a vengeful fist, Patrolman Mancuso faced the camera with his newspaper and frowned sternly.
“Okay, Angelo, is that all?” the patrolwoman asked, eager to get to a nearby school before the morning speed zone hours ended.
“Thank you very much, Gladys,” Patrolman Mancuso said. “My kids wanted to get some more pictures to show to they little friends.”
“Well, sure,” Gladys called, hurrying out of the precinct yard, her shoulder bag bursting with black speeding tickets. “I guess they got a right to be proud of they poppa. I’m glad I could help you out, honey. Anytime you want to take you some more pictures, just gimme the word.”
The sergeant tossed the last flashbulb into a trash can and clamped his hand on Patrolman Mancuso’s vertical shoulder.
“Single-handed you break up the city’s most active high school pornography racket.” He slapped his hand on the incline of Patrolman Mancuso’s shoulder blade. “Mancuso, of all people, brings in a woman even our best plainclothesmen couldn’t fool. Mancuso, I find out, has been working on this case on the q.t. Mancuso can identify one of her agents. Who’s the person really been going out on his own all the time looking for characters like those three girls and trying to bring them in? Mancuso, that’s who.”
Patrolman Mancuso’s olive skin flushed slightly, except in limited areas scratched by the Peace Party auxiliary. There it was simply red.
“Just luck,” Patrolman Mancuso offered, clearing his throat of some invisible phlegm. “Somebody gimme a lead to the place. Then that Burma Jones told me to look in that cabinet under the bar.”
“You staged a one-man raid, Angelo.”
Angelo? He turned a spectrum of shades between orange and violet.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you was to get a promotion for this,” the sergeant said. “You been a patrolman a pretty long time. And just a couple days ago I was thinking you was a horse’s ass. How’s about that? What do you say to that, Mancuso?”
Patrolman Mancuso cleared his throat very violently.
“Can I have my camera back?” he asked almost incoherently when his larynx was at last clear.
VI
Santa Battaglia held the newspaper up to her mother’s picture and said, “How you like that, babe? How you like the way your grandson Angelo made good? You like that, darling?” She pointed to another photograph. “How you like poor Irene’s crazy boy laying there in the gutter like a washed-up whale? Ain’t that sad? That girl’s gotta get that boy put away this time. You think any man’s gonna marry Irene with that big bum laying around the house? Of course not.”
Santa snatched at her mother’s picture and gave it a moist smack. “Take it easy, babe. I’m praying for you.”
VII
Claude Robichaux