The job was more of a grind than they had anticipated, and for a while she made plans to work at it only a year and go on to something else. The Friday before Labor Day she got the afternoon off to see him graduate and be photographed for the newspapers with the twenty-four other rookies. That evening they took the train to Manitou again, this time to stay at a resort. That night, or the next, or the one after, he made her pregnant, and even if there had been no war, the course of their lives had begun its irreversible turning.

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tuesday afternoon, he reported early to the Fifth Precinct for briefing. Uniformed officers worked three shifts, the one advantage they had over the detectives and plainclothesmen. As a rookie, Joe Leland drew no permanent assignment. His education wasn’t completed. On-the-job training in a precinct as busy as the Fifth had to be accomplished any way it could be fitted in.

The first two evenings he was taken around on patrol in a few mild blocks in Westlake and on the third night he covered the beat alone. The feeling of newness was wearing off, he recognized many of the faces, and later, when the streets had cleared for the night, he investigated some of the things he had noticed in the two nights before. He wrote a couple of parking tickets, waiting until his relief came at a quarter to twelve, and by twelve-thirty, he was on the streetcar home.

The next evening he read on the board that he was to replace a sick man in one of the cars. It was a choice assignment and he would not have drawn it if he did not need the experience. Probably he would wait six months before getting a car again.

His partner for the night, Carl Krolevich, drove. He was an overweight, curly-haired man in his forties, pleasant and a little shy. He knew Joe’s father. There was not much to a prowl car, he said. All they had to do was ride around, watch, and listen to the radio. Leland took a more serious view and felt uncomfortable with Krolevich because of it. Nothing happened and the time seemed to drag. Slowly they covered the streets of Westlake up to the precinct border. At seven-thirty they had a call about a disturbance in a building on Florida Street. The wife answered the door. She looked as if she had been fighting, but said that there was nothing the matter. Going down the stairs again, Krolevich said that he had expected it. Experience would show Leland that there was nothing to these calls ninety-nine percent of the time.