Reborn

3

It took Becker most of the early afternoon to track down anything on the Jasmine Cordeau murder. After all, as the cops told him time and again until he was sick of hearing it, the case was nearly twenty years old.

Yeah, so what? he wanted to shout.

But he kept his cool, kept smiling in their faces. After all, his press card could only take him so far, especially with his long hair and all. Longhairs tended to call cops pigs, and cops didn't take too kindly to that.

A desk cop took him to the basement and pointed to a jumble of filing cabinets and told him that if the file on that old murder was still around—and no one was saying it was—it would be in one of those.

Maybe.

More scut work.

Gerry had spent the morning in the New York Public Library's periodical section, spinning through an endless stream of microfilmed pages, scanning the obits and local news, determined to find Jazzy Cordeau.

Because Jazzy Cordeau was Jim Stevens's mother.

No doubt about it. Something deep inside Becker was as sure of that as he was sure of his own name. And that wasn't all. The journal's casual mention of her "pitiful attempt at blackmail" left little doubt that there was something ugly between Hanley and the Cordeau broad. Something juicy.

But what?

That was what made this search so intriguing, what had kept his burning eyes fixed on the screen all morning, fighting vertigo as the pages whirred by.

Finally he had found it, buried in the lower right-hand corner of the October 14 late edition, a single paragraph:

WOMAN STABBED IN MIDTOWN ALLEY

THE BODY OF A YOUNG WOMAN, WHO WAS LATER IDENTIFIED AS ONE JASMINE CORDEAU, WAS DISCOVERED IN AN ALLEY OFF FORTIETH STREET BETWEEN EIGHTH AND NINTH AVENUES EARLY THIS MORNING. SHE DIED OF MULTIPLE STAB WOUNDS. HER PURSE WAS MISSING.

That was it! Jasmine—Jazzy—it had to be!

Excitement still quivered through him. Stabbed to death. Why had she been killed? To shut her up? To put an end to another "pitiful attempt at blackmail?"

He rubbed his sweaty hands together as he approached the filing cabinets. Despite the drudgery ahead, the thrill of the hunt began to work its spell on him. This was going to be good!. There was something really rotten here. Even twenty years later he could still catch a whiff of the stink.

After two hours of bending and kneeling and pulling and sifting until his hands were filthy and his back was killing him, Becker found a single sheet on Jazzy Cordeau. And that was by accident. It was folded between two other files, as if it had dropped there by accident.

He held it up to the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and cursed after he read it. This was no damn good! It was a summary face sheet from the coroner's report, saying Jasmine Cordeau had died from a deep laceration to the left carotid artery and multiple stab wounds to the anterior chest causing lacerations to the anterior wall of the myocardium.

So? She'd had her throat cut and was stabbed in the heart. That didn't tell him anything new, other than the fact that someone seemed to have wanted Jim Stevens's mother dead real bad. Who? That was what he wanted to know. Who was Jazzy Cordeau, and who had killed her?

He took the face sheet up to the Records Department. The sergeant there wasn't too surprised that the file couldn't be found. He took one look at the sheet and grunted.

"When'd y'say dis happened?"

"October 14, 1949. On West Fortieth."

"Kelly might be able to help yiz. Used to walk dat beat."

"And where do I find this Kelly?" Becker said.

"Dat's Sergeant Kelly. Right here. He's on d'next shift. Be here'n a coupla minutes."

Becker took a seat and wondered what kind of cop was walking a beat twenty years ago and was now only a sergeant in the Records Department. When the balding, overweight Kelly finally strolled in, Becker got a pretty good idea why: The whole department was suddenly redolent of cheap Scotch.

He gave the shifts a chance to change, gave Sergeant Kelly a chance to settle in, then approached him. He showed him his press card and the coroner's face sheet.

"I was told you might be able to help me find the rest of this file."

"You was, was you?" Kelly said, eyeing him briefly, then glancing at the sheet. He started, then laughed. "Jasmine Cordeau? It's an old one you've got here! I knew that one well! What's the likes of you doing looking up the likes of Jazzy?"

Becker decided a piece of the truth might appeal to this old rummy. "A friend of mine, an orphan, has reason to believe she might be his mother."

"You don't say? Jazzy a mother? It don't seem likely. She was one of the top whores in midtown in her day."

"Whore?" Becker felt the blood start to race through his vessels. Stevens's mother had been a prostitute! What a story! "You're sure?"

" 'Course I'm sure! Had a record a mile long!"

This was too good to be true. And getting better by the minute.

"Did they ever find her killer?"

Kelly shook his head. "Nah! Some John did a hit-and-run on her. Cut her up and took her roll."

Something didn't fit here.

"If she was such a high-priced piece, what was she doing in an alley off Fortieth?"

"She started off high-priced, but she got on the H and began the slide. At the end she was doing b-j's in alleys. Shame. She was a beautiful woman in her prime."

"What happened to her file?"

"You wanna see it?" Kelly said, rising from behind his desk. "C'mon, I'll show you."

It was back down to the musty old cellar, but this time to a secluded corner where Kelly pulled a dust cloth off a relatively new file cabinet.

"My personal files," he said. "Any case I had anything to do with, any victim or perpetrator I knew, I keep the files here."

"Far out!" What a stroke of luck! "How come?"

"For my book. Yeah, I'm gonna write me a book about walking a beat in midtown. Think it'll sell?"

"Depends on how it's written," Becker said, sensing which way the conversation was going and dreading it.

"Say, you're a writer, right? Maybe you could help me."

"Sure. That's cool. Sounds real interesting," Becker said as sincerely as he could. "But do you have that Cordeau file?"

"Sure."

Kelly unlocked his private cabinet, flipped through the top drawer—Becker noticed a half-empty fifth of Scotch at the rear—then pulled out a manila folder. He opened it and started paging through the contents. It was all Becker could do to keep from snatching it away.

"Is it all there?"

"Looks like it. I just wanted to see if I still have that eight-by-ten glossy she had done when she was a dancer, before she found out there was more money in hooking. Yep. Here it is." He handed Becker the photo. "Wasn't she a piece?"

For a moment Becker stared at the picture in mute shock. And then he couldn't help himself—despite the crushing disappointment, he began to laugh.