But it was very early for him—not yet seven-thirty in the morning—and his eyes were still full of sleep. He opened the apartment door and blinked at me, standing there in my gray uniform, and said, “Yeah? What can I do for you?” “You can back up, Dink,” I said. “And you can keep your hands where I can see them.” “What?” He still didn’t recognize me, but he understood the line of patter. Dink has never been an aggressively violent type—though like most of us he can turn and fight if he has to—so he did as I’d ordered, backing away from his apartment door into the middle of the living room, keeping his hands well out and away from his body, but saying, “Are you kidding? You think I carry heat in my pajamas?” He was wearing pale blue pajamas and a maroon robe; he looked like something from a VA hospital. A short man, almost as short as Linda, Dink Campbell has an air of comic loser about him, a fatalistic easygoing acceptance of the disasters flesh is heir to.
