“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant. Then, hurriedly: “I mean, uh-”
“And if not coffee and Danish,” said the captain, “then whatever they can do
for us we’ll appreciate. Will you tell them that, Lieutenant?”
“Uh … I will, sir.”
“Thank you,” said the captain and leaned back in the corner to brood out the
window at the rain.
The lieutenant got out of the car and was immediately drenched right through
his uniform raincoat. It was really pouring, really and truly coming down like
nobody’s business. Lieutenant Hepplewhite slogged through puddles toward the
diner, noting just how closed it looked. Besides the hand-lettered CLOSED
sign in one window, there was the absence of any lights in there.
The whole structure had an aura about it of being not yet ready to do
business. Charred and blackened remnants of the previous diner were all around
the new one, not yet cleared away. The new one was still on its wheels, with no
skirting of any kind; looking through the underneath space, Lieutenant
Hepplewhite could see the wheels of a car and a truck parked behind the diner,
the only indication that there might be somebody around here after all.
What struck the lieutenant most about this diner was an atmosphere of failure
all around it. It was the kind of small business you looked at, and you knew at
once they’d go bankrupt within six months. Partly, of course, it was the ram and
the general gloom of the day that did that, and partly it was the new diner sitting
on the ashes of the old; but it was also the windows. They were too small.
People like a diner with big windows, the lieutenant thought, so they can look
out and watch the traffic.
There were two doors in the front of the diner, but no steps up to either one.
The lieutenant splashed along to the nearest and knocked on it and anticipated
no answer at all. In fact, he was just about to turn away when the door did open
slightly and a thin middle-aged woman stood looking out and down at him. She
had a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, which waggled as she said, “What do
you want?”
“We were wondering,” the lieutenant said, “if we could get some coffee and
Danish.” He had to put his head back and look up when talking to her, which
was uncomfortable under the circumstances. The bill of his cap had protected
his face from the rain, but now he was practically drowning in it.
“We’re closed,” the woman said.
Another woman appeared, saying, “What is it, Gertrude?” This one was
shorter and wore a neck brace and looked irritable.
“He wanted coffee and Danish,” Gertrude said. “I told him we were closed.”
“We are closed,” the other woman said.
“Well, we’re police officers,” the lieutenant started.
“I know,” said Gertrude. “I could tell by your hat.”
“And your car,” said the other woman. “It says ‘Police’ on the side.”
The lieutenant turned his head and looked at the patrol car, even though he
already knew what it said on its side. He quickly looked back and said, “Well,
we’re on duty here, and we were wondering if you could maybe sell us some
coffee and Danish even if you aren’t one hundred percent open.” He tried a
winning smile, but all he got for it was a mouthful of rain.
“We don’t have any Danish,” the irritable woman in the neck brace said.
Gertrude, being more kindly, said, “I’d like to help you out, but the fact is, we
don’t have any electricity yet. Nothing’s hooked up at all. We just got here. I’d
like a cup of coffee myself.”
“It’s getting damn cold in here,” said the irritable woman, “with that door
open.”
“Well, thanks anyway,” said the lieutenant. Gertrude said, “Come around
when we’re open. We’ll give you coffee and Danish on the house.”
“I’ll do that,” said the lieutenant and slogged back through the puddles to
report, saying, “They don’t have any electricity, Captain. They’re not set up for
anything yet.”
“We can’t even pick a hilltop right,” the captain said. To the radio man he
said, “You!”
“Sir?”
“Find out if there’s any patrol cars around here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We want coffees and Danish.”
“Yes, sir. How do you like your coffee?”
“Light, three sugars.”
The radio man looked ill. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant?”
“Black, one Sweet ‘n Low.”
“Yes, sir.”
While the radio man took the driver’s order, the captain turned to the
lieutenant and said, “One sweet and what?”
“It’s a sugar substitute, sir. For people on diets.”
“You’re on a diet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I weigh about twice as much as you, Lieutenant, but I’m not on a diet.”
The lieutenant opened his mouth, but once again no response seemed exactly
right, and he didn’t say anything.
But silence, this time, was also a mistake. The captain’s brows beetled, and
he said, “Just what do you mean by that, Lieutenant?”
The radio man said, “I put in the order, sir.”
It was a timely distraction. The captain thanked him and subsided again and
brooded out the window for the next ten minutes, until another patrol car
arrived, delivering the coffee and Danish. The captain cheered up at that, until
the second patrol car arrived two minutes after the first, bringing more coffee
and Danish. “I should have guessed,” the captain said.
When the third and fourth patrol cars with shipments of coffee and Danish
arrived simultaneously, the captain roared at the radio man, “Tell them enough!
Tell them to stop, tell them it’s enough, tell them I’m near the breaking point!”
“Yes, sir,” said the radio man and got to work on the phone.
Nevertheless, two more patrol cars arrived with coffee and Danish in the next
five minutes. It was the captain’s belief that discipline was best maintained by
never letting the ranks know when things louse up, so they had to accept and
pay for and say thank you for each and every shipment, and gradually the mobile
headquarters was filling up with plastic cups of coffee and brown paper bags full
of Danish. The smell of the lieutenant’s wet uniform combined with the steam of
diner coffee was becoming very strong and fogging up the windows.
The lieutenant pushed several wooden stirrers off his lap and said, “Captain, I
have an idea.”
“God protect me,” said the captain.
“The people working in that diner don’t have any electricity or heat, sir.
Frankly, they strike me as born losers. Why don’t we give them some of our
extra coffee and Danish?”
The Captain considered. “I suppose,” he said judiciously, “it’s better than me
getting out of the car and stamping all this stuff into the gravel. Go ahead,
Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The lieutenant gathered up one carton-four coffees, four Danish-and
carried them from the car over to the diner. He knocked on the door, and it was
opened immediately by Gertrude, who still had a cigarette stuck in the corner of
her mouth. The lieutenant said, “We got more food delivered than we wanted. I
thought maybe you could use some of-”
“We sure could,” Gertrude said. “That’s really sweet of you.”
The lieutenant handed up the carton. “If you need any more,” he said, “we’ve
got plenty.”
Gertrude looked hesitant. “Well, uh …”
“Are there more than four of you? I mean it, we’re loaded down with the
stuff.”
Gertrude seemed reluctant to say how many of them were in the diner-probably because she didn’t want to strain the lieutenant’s generosity. But finally
she said, “There’s, uh, there’s seven of us.”
“Seven! Wow, you must really be working in there.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We really are.”
“You must be in a hurry to open up.”
“We really want to open it up,” Gertrude said, nodding, the cigarette waggling
in the corner of her mouth. “You couldn’t be more right about that.”
“I’ll get you some more,” the lieutenant said. “Be right back.”
“You’re really very kind,” she said.
The lieutenant went back to the patrol car and opened the rear door. “They
can use some more,” he said and assembled two more cartons.
The captain gave him a cynical look. He said, “You’re delivering coffee and
Danish to a diner, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“It doesn’t strike you as strange?”
The lieutenant paused in his shuffling of coffee containers.
“Sir,” he said, “my basic feeling about this whole business is that I’m actually
in a hospital somewhere, undergoing major surgery, and this day is a dream I’m
having while under the anesthetic.”
The captain looked interested. “I imagine that’s a very comforting thought,” he
said.
“It is, sir.”
“Hmmmmm,” said the captain.
The lieutenant carried more coffee and Danish to the diner, and Gertrude met
him at the door. “How much do we owe you?”
“Oh, forget it,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll take a free cheeseburger some time