A Touch of Infinity by Howard Fast Page B

worse in some places.”
    â€œBut in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, places like that?”
    â€œIt’s sunny. When there’s no smog.”
    â€œWhat the hell,” said McCabe, “no overcoats, no snow—I got six more years, and then I think I’ll take the wife and head west.”
    We stopped, and Robinson wrote out a ticket for a truck parked in front of a fire hydrant.
    â€œYou go through the motions,” he said. “I guess that’s the way it is. Everyone goes through the motions.”
    â€œYou ever deliver a baby?” I asked him.
    He grinned his slow, pleasant grin and looked at me in the rearview mirror.
    â€œYou ask McCabe.”
    â€œWe did seven of them,” McCabe said. “That’s just since we been together. I ain’t talking about rushing them to the hospital. I’m talking about the whole turn, and that includes slapping them across the ass to make them cry.”
    â€œOne was twins,” Robinson said.
    â€œHow did you feel? I mean when you did it, and there was the kid crying and alive?”
    â€œYou feel good.”
    â€œHigh as a kite,” said Robinson. “It’s a good feeling. You feel maybe the way a junkie feels when he can’t make a connection and then finally he’s got the needle in his arm. High.”
    â€œDoes it make up for the other things?”
    There was a long pause after that before McCabe asked me, “What other things?”
    â€œOne son of a bitch,” Robinson said slowly, “he put his gun into my stomach and pulled the trigger three times. It don’t make up for that.”
    â€œGun misfired,” McCabe explained. “Three times. A lousy little Saturday night special—happens maybe once in a thousand times.”
    â€œIt don’t make up for being black,” Robinson said.
    We cruised for the next ten minutes in silence. Possibly it was the last thing Robinson said; perhaps they resented having me in the back seat. Then they got a call, and McCabe explained that it was an accident in a house on 118th Street.
    â€œIt could be anything,” Robinson said. “The floors collapse, the ceilings fall down, and the kids are eaten by rats. I grew up in a house like that. I held it against my father. I still hold it against him.”
    â€œWhere can they go?”
    â€œAway. Away is a big place.”
    â€œYou can’t just write about cops,” McCabe said. “Cops are a reaction. A floor falls in and they call the cops. What the hell are we supposed to do? Rebuild these lousy rattraps?”
    We rolled into 118th Street, and there were half a dozen people standing in front of one of the tenements, and one of them told us that it was Mrs. Gonzales who put in the call and that her apartment was in the back, four flights up.
    â€œWhat happened there?” McCabe wanted to know.
    â€œWho knows? She don’t let us in.”
    â€œIs she hurt?”
    â€œShe ain’t hurt. She don’t let us in.”
    We started up the stairs, McCabe and Robinson pushing their coats behind their guns, and myself allowing them to lead the way. A couple of the men outside started to follow us, but McCabe waved them back and told them to clear out. We climbed four flights of stairs, walked to the back of the narrow old-law tenement, and Robinson knocked on the door.
    â€œWho is it?”
    â€œPolice,” Robinson said.
    She opened the door to the length of the safety chain, and Robinson and McCabe identified themselves. Then she let us in, through the kitchen, which is where the door is in most of the old-law tenements. The place was neat and clean. Mrs. Gonzales was a skinny little woman of about forty-five. Her husband, she told us, worked for Metropolitan Transit. Her son worked in a butcher shop on Lexington Avenue. She was all alone in the apartment, and she was on the verge of hysteria.
    â€œIt’s all right now,” McCabe said with surprising