by Nocturne
Curly Joe was bothered that someone had drowned poor Richie Cooper.
“Richie was a close friend of mine,” he said.
So close you didn’t know he hated being called Richie, Ollie thought, but did not say. The man had come all the way over from Ainsley and Eleventh, six in the morning, he deserved a hearing, even if he was bald. Ollie ate another donut and listened.
Curly Joe sipped at his coffee and told him how on Saturday night he was sitting with Richie in one of the window booths at the Silver Chief Diner, both of them having coffee, when all at once Richie jumps up and yells, “Look at that, willya?”
“Look at what?” Curly Joe said.
“Out there. Those three guys.”
Curly Joe looked.
Three big guys in hooded parkas were standing at the curb, pissing in the gutter. This was not such an unusual sight up here, so Curly Joe couldn’t understand why Richie was so upset by it. But he certainly was annoyed, jumping up out of the booth, and putting on his black leather jacket …
“He was dressed all in black,” Curly Joe said. “Black jeans, black shirt, black boots, the black jacket …”
“Yeah, go on,” Ollie said.
… putting on the jacket, and tossing a couple of bucks on the table as his share of the bill, and then storming out of the diner and walking over to where the three guys were still standing there, shaking out their dicks. From where Curly Joe watched through the diner window, he saw, but could not hear, the conversation taking place between the four of them, Richie dressed all in black and appearing before them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all three of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close.
—— Now what do you call this?
—— We call it pissing in the gutter.
—— I call it disrespect for the neighborhood. That what the letter P stand for? Pissing?
—— Join us, why don’t you?
—— My name is Richard.
Big white guy zipping up and extending his hand to Richie.
—— So is mine.
Second white guy holding out his hand, too.
—— Me, too.
Third guy holding out his hand.
—— As it happens, my name is Richard, too.
Richie holding out his hand, shaking hands with the three white guys, one after the other. And now there’s a serious conversation at the curb, Richie probably explaining that what he did up here in Diamondback was sell crack cocaine to nice little boys like the three preppies here in their hooded parkas. In a minute or so, he begins leading them up the street, past the diner where Curly Joe is still sitting in the window booth, probably taking them to a place called the Trash Cat, which is an underground bar where there are plenty of girls all hours of the night, just like the Harley here.
They stop again not far from the diner, like at an angle to it, for another serious conversation Curly Joe can see but not hear.
—— You dudes interested in some nice jumbo vials I happen to have in my pocket here? You care for a taste at fifteen a pop?
And now Curly Joe sees crack and money changing hands, black to white and white to black, and all at once a taxi pulls up to the curb, and a long-legged white girl in a fake-fur jacket and red leather boots steps out. She looks familiar but Curly Joe doesn’t recognize her at first. The driver’s window rolls down, he’s got like a dazed expression on his face, as if he just got hit by a bus.
—— Thanks, Max.
The girl blows him a kiss and swivels onto the sidewalk, a red handbag under her arm …
—— Hey, Yolande, you jess the girl we lookin for.
… and Curly Joe recognizes her all at once as a hooker Jamal Stone fixed him up with one time when Jamal laid two bills on a pony and was a little short of cash. Her name was Marie St. Claire, she’d given Curly Joe the best blow job he’d ever had in his lifetime, did Ollie ever hear of a Moroccan Sip? So now there’s another big conference at the curb, Curly Joe watching but not hearing, Richie’s hands flying, Six hundred for the three preppies here, whutchoo say? Two hundred apiece for the next few hours, head bobbing, you take me on, I’ll throw five jumbos in the pot, whutchoo say, girlfriend?—big summit meeting here on Ainsley Avenue—We all go up my place, do some crack, get down to realities, sistuh, you hear whut I’m sayin?
—— Well, I’ve been out since eleven last night, it’s been a long one, bro. So maybe we ought to just pass unless we can sweeten the pot a little, hm?
—— Whutchoo mean sweeten it? How sweet do you wish to sweeten it?
—— If you’ll be joining the party, I’ll need ten jumbos …
—— No problem.
—— And a grand from the college boys here. Though you’re all so cute, I might do it for nine.
—— Make it eight.
—— I can’t do it for less than nine. Hey, you’re all real cute, but …
—— How about eight-fifty?
—— It has to be nine or I’m out of here.
—— Will you accept traveler’s checks?
—— Done deal.
“… and they all start laughing. They musta concluded their negotiation, don’t you think?” Curly Joe said. “Cause next thing you know, she’s looping her hands through two of the guys’ arms, and they’re all marchin off toward Richie’s buildin, her in the red jacket, and Richie in his black leather, and the three kids with these hooded blue parkas got big white Ps and footballs on the back of them.”
Daybreak is aptly named.
Unlike sunset, where colors linger in the sky long after the sun has dropped below the horizon, sunrise is heralded by a similar flush, but the display is brief, and suddenly it is morning. Suddenly the sky is bright. Day literally breaks, surprising the pinkish night, setting it to rout.
From the windows of the squadroom on the second floor of the old precinct building, they watched the day break over the city. It was going to be cold and clear again. The clock on the squadroom wall read seven-fifteen.
At a little past seven-thirty, the detectives began drifting in for the shift change. Officially this was called the eight-to-four, but it started at seven forty-five, because many uniformed cops were relieved on post, and detectives—all of whom had once pounded beats—honored the timeworn tradition. They hung their hats and coats on the rack in the corner, and exchanged morning greetings. Complaining about the vile coffee from the pot brewing in the clerical office down the hall, they sat nonetheless on the edges of their desks and sipped it from soggy cardboard containers. Outside the wind raged at the windows.
They double-teamed this one because it was now more than thirty-one hours since they’d caught the Dyalovich squeal and they were not very much closer to finding the person or persons who’d killed her. It was also two full days since they’d discovered the body of Yolande Marie Marx in the alleyway on St. Sab’s and First. But whereas the Marx murder was officially theirs under the First Man Up rule, they had been informed that Fat Ollie Weeks of the Eight-Eight had caught a related double murder, and they were more than content to leave the three-way investigation to him. A hooker, a pimp, and a small-time ounce dealer? Let Ollie’s mother worry.
So here they all were, those legendary stalwarts of the Eight-Seven, gathered in Lieutenant Byrne’s sunny corner office at ten minutes to eight that Monday morning, Carella and Hawes telling the others what they had so far, and hoping that someone in this brilliant think tank would offer a clue or clues that would help them crack the case wide open.
“What it sounds like to me,” Andy Parker said, “is you have nothing.”
Parker was a good friend of Ollie Weeks. That’s because they were both bigots. But whereas Ollie was also a good detective, Parker only rarely rose to heights of deductive dazzle. He was almost as big a slob as Ollie, however, favoring unpressed shirts, soiled suits, unpolished shoes, and an unshaven look he believed made him resemble a good television cop. Parker figured there were only two kinds of television cop show
s. The lousy ones, which he called The Cops of Madison County, and the good ones, which he called Real Meat Funk.
As a detective, albeit not a very good one, Parker knew that the word “funk” descended from the word “funky,” which in turn evolved from a style of jazz piano-playing called “funky butt,” which translated as “smelly asshole.” He was amused the other day when a radio restaurant critic mentioned that the food in a downtown bistro was “funky.”
Not many things amused Parker.
Especially so early in the morning.
“Well, we do have the guy’s name,” Hawes said.
“What guy?”
“The guy who bought the murder weapon.”
“Who you can’t find.”
“Well, he moved out yesterday,” Carella said.
“So he’s in flight, is that what you figure?” Willis asked.
He was poised on the edge of the lieutenant’s desk like a gargoyle on Notre Dame cathedral, listening carefully, brown eyes intent. Byrnes liked him a lot. He liked small people, figured small people had to try harder. Willis had barely cleared the minimum-height requirement for policemen in this city, but he was an expert at judo and could knock any cheap thief flat on his ass in less than ten seconds. His girlfriend had been shot and killed only recently, by a pair of Colombian goons who’d broken into her apartment. Willis never much talked about her, but he hadn’t been the same since. Byrnes worried. He worried about all of his people.
“Day after the murder, he powders,” Kling said, “it’s got to be flight.”
Worried a lot about Kling, too. Never had any luck with women, it seemed. Byrnes understood he’d taken up with a black woman, a deputy chief in the department, no less, as if the black-white thing wasn’t difficult enough. Byrnes wished him the best, but it remained to be seen. Next chapter, he thought. Life is always full of next chapters, some of them never written.
“Maybe he’s already back in Italy,” Brown said.
Scowling. Always scowling. Made it look as if he was angry all the time, like a lot of black people in this city were, with damn good cause. But in all the years he’d known Brown, he’d never seen him lose his temper. Giant of a man, could have been a linebacker for a professional football team, reminded him a lot of Rosie Grier, in fact, though Grier was now, what, a minister? He tried to imagine Brown as a minister. His imagination would not take him quite that far.
“Maybe,” Carella said.
“Where in Italy?” Meyer asked.
“Don’t know.”
“What’d you find when you tossed her apartment?” Byrnes asked.
“Me?”
“You.”
“Dead cat lying alongside her,” Carella said.
“Skip the cat.”
“Fish bones all over the kitchen floor.”
“I said skip the cat.”
“Savings account passbook in a dresser drawer, hundred and twenty-five thou withdrawn the morning before she got killed.”
“What time?”
“Ten twenty-seven a.m.”
“Cash or bank check?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do you know?” Parker asked.
Carella merely looked at him.
“We know the guy’s name,” Hawes said.
“If he killed her,” Parker said.
“Whether he killed her or not, we know his name.”
“But not where he is.”
“Check the airlines,” Brown suggested. “Maybe he did go back to Italy.”
“And we’ve got a clear chain of custody on the murder weapon,” Carella said.
“Running from where to where?”
“Registered to a private bodyguard named Rodney Pratt, stolen from his limo on the night before the murder …”
“Who boosted it?” Kling asked.
“Guy named Jose Santiago.”
“The famous bullfighter?” Parker asked.
This was a line he’d used before. The expression was his way of putting down anyone of Hispanic descent. Byrnes had heard rumors—which he tended to disbelieve—that Parker was now living with a Puerto Rican girl. Parker? Sleeping with a famous bullfighter?
“The famous cockfighter,” Hawes corrected.
“He fights with his cock?” Parker asked.
No one laughed.
Parker shrugged.
“So what do you figure?” Byrnes asked. “An interrupted burglary?”
“If the hun-twenty-five was in the apartment, yes.”
“What’d you find when you tossed it?”
“Us?” Meyer asked.
“You.”
“Dead fish stinking up the joint.”
“Piss, too,” Kling said.
“Cat piss.”
“Are we back to the cat again?” Byrnes asked.
He was not noted as an animal lover. When he was ten, a pet turtle named Petie had suddenly died. Also a canary named Alice when he was twelve. And when he was thirteen, his mother gave away his pet dog named Ruffles. For peeing all over their apartment. Which apparently Svetlana Dyalovich’s cat had been fond of doing, too. He did not want to hear another word about the dead woman’s dead cat.
“Be nice if cats could bark, huh?” Parker said.
“Be nice if we could get off the goddamn cat,” Byrnes said. “What else did you find?”
“Us?” Kling asked.
“You.”
“Nothing.”
“No money, huh?”
“Nothing.”
“So maybe it was a burglar.”
“The cat could explain those stains on the mink,” Carella said.
“What stains?” Brown asked.
“The fish stains. They could’ve got on the coat that way.”
“There were fish stains on the coat?” Brown asked.
Byrnes was watching him. Eyes narrowing, scowl deepening. He was looking for something. Didn’t know what yet, but looking.
“If she fed the cat raw fish, I mean,” Carella said.
“How do you know there were fish stains on the coat?” Byrnes asked.
“Grossman,” Willis said. “I took the call.”
“She was wearing a mink while she fed the goddamn cat?” Parker said.
“Are you saying the cat might’ve rubbed up against her?” Brown asked.
“No, these were near the collar,” Carella said.
“Near the collar?”
“I took the call,” Willis said again.
“Well, what’d Grossman say, actually?” Byrnes asked.
“He said there were fish stains on the coat.”
“Near the collar?” Brown asked again.
“High up on the coat,” Willis said, and opened his notebook. “These are his words,” he said, and began reading. “ ‘Stains inside and outside, near the collar. From the location, it would appear someone held the coat in both hands, one at either side of the collar, thumbs outside, fingers inside.’ Quote, unquote.”
“I can’t visualize it,” Brown said, shaking his head.
“Okay to use this?” Willis asked.
“Sure,” Byrnes said.
Willis picked up a magazine from Byrnes’s desk, handed it to Brown.
“Hold it with your fingers on the front cover, thumbs on the back cover.”
Brown tried it.
“That’s how Grossman figures the coat was held.”
“You mean there were fingerprints?”
“No. But he thinks somebody with fish oil on his or her hands held the coat the way you’re holding that magazine.”
Brown looked at his hands on the magazine. Everyone in the office was looking at his hands on the magazine.
“Didn’t you say she was wearing a wool coat?” Kling asked.
“Yeah. When she went down to buy the booze.”
“When was that?” Byrnes asked.
“Eleven o’clock that morning.”
“The day she was killed?”
“Yes. Half an ho
ur after she made the bank withdrawal.”
“Something’s fishy here,” Byrnes said, not realizing he was making a pun, and not realizing how close he was, either.
When Priscilla and the boys drove up in a taxi at eight that morning, the superintendent of Svetlana’s building was out front with the garbage cans, wondering if the Sanitation Department would ever start pickups again. Priscilla told him she was Svetlana’s granddaughter, and he expressed his deepest sympathy, clucking his tongue and shaking his head over the mysteries and misfortunes of life. They chitchatted back and forth for maybe three or four minutes before he finally mentioned that Mrs. Helder’s closest friend in the building was a woman named Karen Todd, who lived just down the hall from her.
“Probably there right this minute,” he said. “Doesn’t leave for work till about eight-thirty.”
Georgie fell in love at once with the slender young woman who opened the door to apartment 3C. He guessed she was in her mid-twenties, a very exotic-looking person who reminded him of his cousin Tessie who once he tried to feel up on the roof when they were both sixteen. Tessie later married a dentist. But here was the same long black hair and dark brown eyes, the same bee-stung lips and high cheekbones, the same impressive bust, as Georgie’s mother used to call it.
Karen was just finishing breakfast, but she cordially invited them into the apartment—batting her lashes at Georgie, Priscilla noticed—and told them she had to leave soon, but she’d be happy to answer questions until then. Although, really, she’d already told the police everything she knew.
Priscilla suggested that perhaps the police hadn’t asked her the same questions they were about to ask.