Blood Relatives

7

He was not looking for trouble.

Patricia Lowery had identified her brother as the killer; the grand jury would undoubtedly indict; there was an excellent chance for conviction even without further evidence. So Carella was not looking for trouble when he went to the bank. But the man in charge of the bookkeeping department was named Jack Armstrong, and he had brown hair and blue eyes. And Carella could not forget that Patricia Lowery — when she’d been lying to protect her brother — had first said the killer was a man as tall as Carella, with blue eyes and hair that was “either brown or black, but very dark.” As he stood opposite Armstrong now and shook hands with him, he was looking directly into the man’s blue eyes, and the top of the man’s brown-haired head was level with his own. He knew there were possibly 2,365,221 dark-haired, blue-eyed men in this city (Patricia had in fact picked one of them out of a lineup when she was still pursuing her initial lie), but it now seemed extraordinarily coincidental that the man who’d been Muriel Stark’s boss also happened to have dark hair and blue eyes. So whereas Carella was not looking for trouble, he nonetheless wondered whether Patricia had ever met Jack Armstrong, and whether this might have triggered an unconscious association. Why, for example, while she was inventing a killer, hadn’t she said his hair was blond and his eyes green; or his hair brown and his eyes brown; or his hair red and his eyes blue? Why dark hair and blue eyes — which Jack Armstrong, Muriel’s boss, most definitely had? He also had the name Jack Armstrong, and he immediately explained to Carella that this had caused him no end of embarrassment over the years.

“We’re both too young to remember this,” he said, “but there used to be a radio show called ‘Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.’ I take a lot of ribbing about it. I’ll meet a man in his forties, he’ll remember the show and begin singing the theme song the minute I introduce myself. Well, not literally, but I’ll always get some comment on it. I’m thirty-four, I grew up mostly on television. But you get some of these older fellows, they can name every radio show that was ever on the air. And Jack Armstrong was one of them, believe me.”

They were sitting in Armstrong’s office at the rear of the bank. A panel of glass some five feet square was on the wall beside Armstrong’s desk, affording him a view of the girls working outside. He was smoking a cigar, which he constantly flicked at an ashtray, even when the ash was short.

“I suppose you’re here about the Stark girl,” he said.

“Yes.”

“A terrible thing. Terrible.”

“How well did you know her?” Carella asked.

“Not well at all, I’m afraid. I was only transferred from our Calm’s Point branch in August, the beginning of August.

We hardly had time to get acquainted. But she seemed like a lovely person.”

“Mr. Armstrong, as you may know, a young man named Andrew Lowery has been arrested and charged with the murder. He’s her cousin, you may have read that in the newspapers.”

“Yes, a terrible shame,” Armstrong said.

“His sister’s name is Patricia Lowery,” Carella said. “She’s the one who’s identified him as the killer.”

“Yes.”

“Had you ever met her?”

“Who?”

“Patricia Lowery.”

“No. How would I have met her?”

“Well, Muriel worked here, I thought perhaps her cousin might have come to the bank one day—”

“No, I never met her,” Armstrong said, and shook his head and flicked his cigar at the ashtray. “I hardly even knew Muriel, it’s not likely I’d have met her cousin. I don’t understand. Is that why you came here? To find out whether or not I knew—?”

“No, no,” Carella said. “Actually, I was interested in talking to some of Muriel’s friends here at the bank, people she might have—”

“You’d want to talk to Heidi then,” Armstrong said. “The Stark girl worked at the desk alongside hers, I’m sure they were friends. That’s Heidi Beck, shall I ask her to come in?”

“Please,” Carella said.

Armstrong buzzed his secretary and asked her to have Miss Beck come to his office. Some three minutes later a tentative knock sounded on the door, and Armstrong said, “Come in.” Heidi Beck was a good-looking blonde in her early twenties. She was wearing form-fitting slacks, and very high platform shoes, and a short-sleeved sweater over a long-sleeved blouse. When Armstrong introduced her to Carella, she seemed relieved that she hadn’t been called to the office for a reprimand. Armstrong came from behind the desk, told Carella to take all the time he needed, and then left the office. Through the glass panel on Carella’s left, he could see Armstrong working his way through the bookkeeping department, stopping to chat with one or another of the girls at their desks.

“Mr. Armstrong tells me you and Muriel Stark were friends,” Carella said.

“Yes,” Heidi answered. “Well, I guess so. I mean, we weren’t close friends or anything, but we’d go out to lunch together every now and then. And we’d talk during the day. I guess we were friends as far as the bank goes, do you know what I mean? We never saw each other away from the bank, except like I said to have lunch every now and then.”

“Did you and Muriel ever discuss personal matters?”

“Well, there was quite a bit of age difference between us,” Heidi said.

“How old are you, Miss Beck?” Carella said.

“I’m twenty-four. Muriel was only seventeen, you know. So we really didn’t talk about too many personal matters.”

“Ever talk about boyfriends?”

“No. We’d say this or that fellow in the bank was cute, something like that, but we never talked about boys we were going out with, no.”

“Did Muriel think any of the boys in the bank were cute?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Who in particular?”

“Well, nobody in particular that I can remember. But she had an eye for the boys, she liked boys. In the beginning, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“When she first started working here.”

“When was that?”

“She began in February. And, like I said, she used to, you know, give the boys more of a once-over when she first started. Then, I don’t know, she didn’t seem too interested any more. I had the feeling she’d found herself a boyfriend.”

“Did she ever mention a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Then what gave you the idea she had one?”

“Well, like I said, fellows would stop at the desk and make a comment to her — she was a very pretty girl, you know, dark hair and really beautiful brown eyes, and a good figure, too — so the fellows would stop to talk to her or, you know, make comments, flirt with her. And in the beginning she used to encourage that a lot, but then it sort of tapered off, she wouldn’t pay too much attention.”

“When was that? When it began tapering off?”

“Oh, I don’t know. April sometime? Yeah, before Easter, I guess it was.”

“That she stopped paying attention to the fellows.”

“Yeah. Well, I mean she didn’t give them the cold shoulder or anything, but you could see she wasn’t really interested.”

“And you think that’s because she found herself a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think. But that’s only my opinion. Like I said, she never mentioned having a boyfriend or anything. I just put two and two together, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well...” Heidi shrugged. “I’m a little embarrassed talking about this.”

“Think of me as a priest,” Carella said, and smiled.

“I’m Jewish,” Heidi said, and smiled back. “Besides, I’d be embarrassed even if you were a priest.”

“Well, give it a try,” Carella said.

“Well, this must’ve been in August sometime, I don’t know exactly when, the beginning of August sometime. Muriel came over to my desk and started hemming and hawing around, and finally asked me if I knew a good gynecologist. Well, I don’t know what that means to you, but to me... well, it meant a lot.”

“What did it mean to you?”

“Well, she’s a seventeen-year-old kid, right, she lives with her aunt, right, so if she’s having some sort of problem a gynecologist should look at, why doesn’t she ask her aunt about it? Instead of coming to a stranger? So I figured it had to be one of two things. I figured either she was pregnant already or else she didn’t want to get pregnant. You know what I mean?”

“I think so,” Carella said.

“I could spell it out for you,” Heidi said, “but it embarrasses me.”

“Did she say why she needed a good gynecologist?”

“She said she had some kind of itch, or... God, listen to me, will you? You’re only a cop, I shouldn’t be talking to you about such things.”

“Muriel was killed,” Carella said simply.

Heidi looked into his eyes, nodded, and then flatly and matter-of-factly said, “She was complaining about a vaginal itch, I think it was. Or a discharge, I’m not sure I remember. I gave her the name of my gynecologist and I also mentioned that he’d fitted me for my first diaphragm. In case that was why she wanted to see him. I didn’t suggest she was seeing him for that reason, but at the back of my mind I figured I’d put her at ease, if that’s what she wanted. Or if she wanted to be put on the pill. She was only seventeen, you know, a kid going to a strange gynecologist. But I’ll tell you, it was my idea she was pregnant. You know why? I shouldn’t have to tell you this, you’re a detective, you probably figured it out already. But when she asked me that morning, she didn’t just say did I know a gynecologist. She said did I know a good gynecologist, you see the difference?”

“Yes,” Carella said, and nodded.

“Because a girl who just wants a diaphragm or some pills, she’ll go to any shlepper, am I right? She’ll pick one out of the phone book, what does she care? But Muriel wanted a good gynecologist, which meant this was something important, never mind a vaginal itch. I figured she was pregnant.” Heidi looked up sharply. “Was she pregnant?”

“The autopsy report didn’t say anything about it,” Carella said. “Normally, they don’t look for something like that unless they’re specifically asked to.”

“It might’ve been worth looking for,” Heidi said, and then immediately added, “Look, who am I to tell you how to do your job? I’m probably wrong, anyway. They were very strict with her, you know, so the chances of her being pregnant were probably—”

“Who was strict with her?”

“Her aunt and uncle. Wouldn’t let the poor girl breathe.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“No, it’s just something else I figured out.”

“On what evidence, Heidi?”

“On the evidence that every afternoon he was waiting outside the bank to take her home from work.”

“Who? Her uncle?”

“No, her cousin. Andrew Lowery. The one who killed her.”

“I took better care of her than I did my own daughter,” Frank Lowery said. “No one can fault me for the way I took care of Muriel.”

It was 3:30 in the afternoon, the men were sitting in Lowery’s auto body shop on Boomer and Third. Outside the small cluttered office, Carella could see workmen restoring fenders and panels. The sharp stench of lacquer and enamel hung on the air, and intermittently the sound of a hammer banging on metal punctuated the conversation.

“Wasn’t an easy thing taking a new member into the family,” Lowery said. “This was two years ago, I didn’t own the shop then, I was struggling to make ends meet as it was. But this was my wife’s niece, I didn’t figure I could turn her out in the cold, there were no other relatives could take her in. Man has responsibilities, don’t he?” Lowery said. “Man loves his wife, he’s got to love her kin, too. I’ll tell you though, may God forgive me, if I’d known it would come to this, I’d have turned her over to a home, I’d have never taken her in. You try to do the Christian thing, and then...” Lowery shook his head.

“Mr. Lowery, what I’m trying to find out is whether there was any indication that something like this might be brewing. Had Muriel and Andrew argued, had they—?”

“Got along beautifully,” Lowery said. “Look, they were brother and sister, that’s it. You can write that down. They were brother and sister, that’s the way I raised them, and that’s what they were. Anybody in the family wanted anything, I considered them all like my own kids. Muriel wanted something, same as if Patricia did. Or Andy. They were all my children, that’s the way I felt about it from the day I took Muriel in my house. She called me Uncle Frank, that’s true, but she could’ve just as easily called me Dad, because that’s what I was to her. And a good father, too, I think. Got her anything she wanted, but I laid down the law, too, that’s part of a father’s job, ain’t it? Laying down the law? Did it for Patricia, still do it for her, and did it for Muriel, too.”

“Laid down the law in what way?” Carella asked.

“Well, dating for one thing. I still won’t let Patricia date boys, she’s too young for that. Now I know you’ve got kids nowadays, they’re going steady at thirteen, twelve some of them, but I won’t permit that, no, sir. I wouldn’t let Muriel date till she reached her seventeenth birthday, and even then I insisted on meeting every boy she went out with. Had to come to the house to pick her up, had to look me right in the eye, shake hands with me. None of this blowing the horn downstairs, anything like that. And she had a strict curfew, too, had to be home by midnight, not a minute after. Night of the party we made sure they’d be coming home by eleven — that’s because they were alone, just the two girls. I’d have gone to pick them up, but I was sick that night, a touch of the flu, and it was raining so bad.” Lowery paused, looked at his hands. In the shop outside, a cloud of green paint struck the fender of a car like a plague of grasshoppers. “I keep thinking... what if I had gone to meet them? What if I’d seen my own son... my... my own son hurting those two girls? Mr. Carella, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, ever. If I live to be a thousand, there’s nothing can happen to me will ever be worse than this. I’ve lost Muriel, who I loved like a daughter, and I’ll be losing my boy, too — he’ll be going to jail for life, I’m sure. And God knows what this whole thing will do to Patricia, what effect it’ll have on the girl’s mind. She’s only fifteen, to have a terrible thing like that happen, seeing what she saw, and then Andy turning on her like a wild animal. Mr. Carella, I don’t think any of us will ever be the same again, after this. Ever. I sometimes believe Muriel is the lucky one, at least she’s out of it. We’ll have to live with this for the rest of our lives, and there are times I wonder if I can make it.”

“Mr. Lowery, I understand your son used to go down to the bank to meet Muriel after work. Is that true?”

“Yes. That’s true. He did.”

“Did you ask him to do that?”

“No, no. I was protective, yes, but I wasn’t a nut on the subject. I mean, a girl coming home from work at five in the afternoon, there’s nothing to fear there, is there? I know there’ve been people killed or raped in broad daylight, but you can’t live your lives that way, you can’t keep hiding in a closet, can you? No, I felt Muriel was perfectly safe coming home from work alone. I guess Andy went down there to get her because they had so much to talk about, you see. He’d been accepted in college, and they were all the time discussing the courses he would take. Never a meal went by in this house without the two of them talking about Andy’s college education. He respected that girl a lot, and her opinions, which is why I can’t... I—”

“Would you say it was his idea to pick her up after work?” Carella said.

“Well, I don’t know. I guess the two of them. I guess it was arranged by the two of them. Andy wasn’t doing anything during the summer, so I guess he didn’t mind driving downtown to get her, and I guess Muriel was grateful she didn’t have to take the train home during the rush hour. I really couldn’t say, Mr. Carella. But it wasn’t my idea, that’s for sure, I had no fear for her safety at five in the afternoon. What did bother me was when she’d call and say she’d be late, either working late at the bank, or else shopping if it was a Thursday night, that’s what got me upset.”

“Did she do that often?”

“Well, often enough. I told her about it, I gave her hell about it. I treated that girl like my own daughter, Mr. Carella. I miss her sorely. I truly miss her. I loved that girl. She was a very dear person to me.”

“Mr. Lowery, on those occasions when your son picked up Muriel at the bank — did Patricia ever go with him?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Had she ever gone to the bank on her own?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then she wouldn’t have known any of Muriel’s fellow workers?”

“No.”

“Never would have seen any of them.”

“That’s right.”

They were silent for several moments. Outside in the shop, the hammer started again, and Lowery waited till it was silent, and then said, “What causes something like this, can you tell me? Where a kid you think the world of, bright and good-looking and gentle as can be, just suddenly goes crazy and does something like this? What causes it, Mr. Carella?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“I’ve been trying to figure it out. Ever since Patricia told us what really happened that night, I’ve been trying to figure what got into Andy. Muriel kept a diary, you know, I went into her room and looked for it, thinking maybe there was something in it that would explain what happened. She kept that thing faithfully, used to write in it every night before going to bed. But I couldn’t find it. Don’t know what could’ve happened to it. I looked all through that room for it, it just isn’t there.”

“Mr. Lowery,” Carella said, “would you mind if I looked for it?”

“Not at all. It’s red leather, I gave it to her for Christmas, in fact. One of those little locks on the front, with a tiny key, do you know the kind I mean?”

“Yes,” Carella said. “Thank you, Mr. Lowery, you’ve been very helpful.”

This time he had something specific to look for, and the something was a diary Muriel Stark had kept. Neither he nor Mr. Lowery had found the diary when they’d separately searched her room, and in his affidavit requesting a search warrant, Carella stated that there was now reasonable cause to believe that the accused, Andrew Lowery, might have stolen the diary on the assumption that it contained incriminating evidence. Wherefore, Carella petitioned, I respectfully request that the court issue a warrant and order of seizure in the form annexed authorizing a search of Andrew Lowery’s room in Apartment 3A at premises 1604 St. John’s Road and directing that if such diary bound in red leather and written in Muriel Stark’s hand, or if any part of this diary or evidence in the crime of murder be found, that it be seized and brought before the court, together with such other and further relief that the court may deem proper.

The warrant was granted.

Carella got back to the Lowery apartment at twenty minutes past 6:00 that evening. Frank Lowery was already home from work, and he and his wife were having their dinner in the kitchen. They explained that Patricia had been sent to her grandmother’s for a week or so. They had not thought it wise to send her back to school just yet, not while the newspapers were playing the story up so big. They asked Carella if he would care to join them for dinner, and he graciously declined their invitation and then searched their son’s room from top to bottom.

He found no trace of the diary.

At 6:45 A.M. the next morning, a Department of Sanitation truck pulled up in front of the building on St. John’s Road. One man was driving the truck and two men were walking behind it. The walkers were also lifting garbage cans and tossing the contents onto the conveyor that dumped the refuse into the truck. These men liked to bang garbage cans around; this was evident in the way they smashed the cans against the metal rim around the conveyor, and also in the way they slammed the cans down on the sidewalk again. The average garbage can on any city street got battered and bruised within the space of a week because these men loved their work so much. (Some people insisted these men also loved the smell of garbage, but that was pure conjecture.) What they loved was banging garbage cans around and griping about being sanitation employees. Sanitation employees were always going on strike or contemplating going on strike. That was because they figured their jobs were as dangerous as policemen’s or firemen’s. Firemen were always complaining that their jobs were more dangerous than policemen’s, but sanitation employees figured their jobs were more dangerous than either of the other two, and therefore they wanted at least the same amount of money for this very dangerous work they did.

“It’s dangerous,” Henry said, “because first of all the fuckin’ people don’t respect us.” Henry was driving the garbage truck. The two men who’d been walking behind the truck were now on the front seat beside him. The truck was full now, the men were heading toward the Cos Corner Bridge, near which they would dump the garbage before continuing with the second leg of their route. A sanitation truck could hold only so much garbage, and once it was full to capacity, the garbage had to be dumped someplace. This was an elementary rule of garbage collection. It was, in fact, the first tenet of the sanitation game: When it’s full, empty it. “They don’t respect us,” Henry said, “because they think of us as garbage men. We are not garbage men. We are sanitation employees.”

“Sanit men,” George said. George was one of the men who’d been walking behind the truck. He was glad to be on the front seat now, being driven to the stretch of land the city was filling in near the bridge. A man could get tired of walking behind a garbage truck and lifting garbage cans and smacking them gleefully against the rim of the conveyor. He was certainly glad to be sitting for a while. Moss sat alongside him. Moss was the truck’s other walker, the only black man on the team. They worked well together, these three, despite their racial differences. They liked to believe, and perhaps it was true, that there was no room for prejudice in the sanitation game.

“That’s exactly what we are, George,” Henry said. “Sanit men.”

“And entitled to respect,” Moss said.

“And the same damn pay the cops and the firemen get,” George said.

“Now that’s the issue,” Henry said. “That’s the issue exactly. And that’s why I think we’ve got to strike again.”

“Do firemen have to handle the waste of an entire city?” George asked.

“All that shit they put in the garbage there?” Moss asked.

“Firemen don’t have to handle that shit,” George said, answering himself.

“Neither do policemen,” Henry said.

“All that slimy shit,” Moss said. “We ought to get paid a fortune for handling all that smelly shit.”

“But every time we ask the city for a raise, you know who gets on their high horse?” Henry said. “The cops. They get on their high horse because they want the city to think they’re the only ones risking their lives on the line out there every day. Well, I ask you, my friends, when’s the last time you heard of a cop getting garbage dumped on his head by the superintendent of a building where Murphy’s been collecting the garbage there for fifteen years! Fifteen years, mind you, and the animal who runs that building turns on him. Like an animal! Dumps a full can of garbage on his head! Murphy still stinks from it.”

“All that slimy shit,” Moss said.

“Should pay us a fortune,” George said.

In the distance they could see the slender lines of the Cos Corner Bridge, and to the left the area the city was filling in with refuse. Gulls winged against the September sky, dipping and wheeling over the garbage dump. Down on the flats, there were several other sanitation trucks unloading. Henry cut off the main highway and let the truck roll down the dirt road to the flats. The gulls were shrieking and cawing and making a terrible racket.

“Do cops have to deal with sea gulls?” George asked.

The traffic manager, standing knee-deep in garbage, signaled for Henry to pull the truck over to the left, which he did. The traffic manager then jerked his thumb skyward, signaling Henry to dump the load. Henry pulled a lever inside the truck, and the back of the truck began tilting, and the refuse from some 150 apartment buildings began tumbling onto the ground, joining the bottles and newspapers and orange rinds and coffee grounds and meat bones and soggy string beans and mashed potatoes and empty cartons and old shoes and cigar butts that had been collected from all over the city in the past weeks and months. Included in the garbage that had been collected that very day at 1604 St. John’s Road was a diary bound in red leather. The strap holding the diary’s clasp to the lock on the cover had been cut.

Fresh garbage kept falling onto it.

Not twelve miles from the Cos Corner Bridge, in another section of Riverhead, Carella was trying to talk an adamant old lady into letting him see her granddaughter. The woman was Matilda Lowery, and she was eighty-four years old, and she insisted that Patricia had had enough to do with policemen. Her parents had sent her here to keep her away from reporters and policemen, in fact, and if Carella didn’t get away from the door, he would get hit on the head with a broom.

Carella explained that he was working for the district attorney’s office, gathering evidence that would help in the prosecution, and there were several questions he wanted to ask Patricia, questions he was certain would be brought up at the trial, when the case finally came to trial. The old lady was seriously raising her broom and seemed ready to crown Carella with it when Patricia called from the other room and said it was all right to let him in. Matilda Lowery shook her head, and went muttering into the kitchen to make herself a pot of tea.

This was still just a little past noon on Friday, September 12. Patricia was wearing blue jeans and a white sweater. Her dark hair was braided into pigtails on either side of her head. She looked much younger than her fifteen years, and seemed quite calm now that the ordeal of accusation was behind her. Her hands were still bandaged, and a piece of adhesive plaster still clung to her right cheek. She asked Carella to sit, and then immediately said, “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Not going back to school yet?”

“Yes, I think that’s the right thing,” Carella said.

“I’m not sure. I don’t want the kids to think I’m a coward.”

“I’m sure they won’t think that,” Carella said.

“They already think I’m a rat,” Patricia said.

“What makes you say that?”

“I got some phone calls. Before I came here to Grandma’s. And also, I received a letter.”

“Have you still got the letter?”

“I threw it away. It frightened me.”

“What did it say?”

“Oh, it just called me all sorts of horrible names for having ratted on my own brother. The phone calls were the same. One man said he would kill me if he ever saw me on the street.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that happening,” Carella said.

“No, I realize a person has to be a little crazy to make a call like that. But—”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I did the right thing? Would you have done it? If you’d seen your brother committing a crime... committing murder... would you have told on him? Do you have a brother?”

“I have a sister,” Carella said.

“Would you have told on her?”

“Yes.”

“I keep wondering,” Patricia said, and sighed heavily. “Anyway, it’s too late, I’ve already done it. There’s no changing anything now.” She sighed again, and then said, “What did you want to ask me?”

“Just a few things, Patricia. First, when we talked to you on the night of the murder, you said a dark-haired, blue-eyed man—”

“I was lying,” Patricia said immediately.

“Yes, I know that. To protect your brother.”

“Yes.”

“But why’d you pick on that particular combination, Patricia? Dark hair and blue eyes? Was there any reason for that?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Do you know a man named Jack Armstrong?”

“No.”

“He was Muriel’s boss,” Carella said. “He has brown hair and blue eyes.”

“I don’t know him,” Patricia said.

“You see, I might as well tell you this, the identification is going to be challenged,” Carella said. “Your brother’s attorneys are certainly going to challenge the identification.”

“Why? I ought to know my own brother,” Patricia said.

“Yes, but you see, Patricia, you were so insistent about the first identification, and it turned out to be a false identification. So the defense is going to try to make something out of that, I’m sure of it. Which is why I wanted to know whether you’d ever met Mr. Armstrong. Because then, you see, in trying to cover up for your brother, you might have unconsciously picked somebody who was in some way connected with Muriel. But you don’t know Mr. Armstrong.”

“No.”

“Your father mentioned that Muriel went out on dates, and the boys came to pick her up at the house. Do you remember any of those boys?”

“Some of them,” Patricia said.

“Would any of them have had black hair and blue eyes? I’m sorry to keep harping on this, Patricia, but I’m positive the identification will be challenged, and anything we can do to help the district attorney—”

“I don’t remember what any of those boys looked like,” Patricia said. “Some of them only went out with her once or twice. I didn’t even know their names, some of them.”

“Well, then that’s the end of that, I guess,” Carella said, and sighed. “There’s just one other thing. Your father mentioned that Muriel kept a diary, said she wrote in it faithfully every night. You shared a room with her, did you ever see her writing in a diary?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Would you describe it to me?”

“It was red leather, with a little strap that locked onto the front cover.”

“When did you last see that diary, Patricia?”

“I guess she was writing in it the night before she was killed.”

“Last Friday night?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she do with it afterward?”

“She locked it and put it back in her drawer. She used to carry the key on a chain around her neck.”

“Which drawer did she keep it in?”

“The top drawer of her dresser.”

“It’s not there now, Patricia. Would you have any idea where it might be?”

“No. That’s where she always kept it.”

“Well,” Carella said, and then shrugged. “Okay, I guess that’s it. Sorry to have bothered you. Thanks a lot, Patricia.”

The man thought of himself as royalty.

He thought of himself as the monarch of all he surveyed. This was his city, and as the reigning potentate he was entitled to his daily tithe. He would have sent menials to collect for him, except that he so enjoyed doing it himself. Especially at this time of year. He had been born in September, guessed that had something to do with it. Baby first sees the light of day in a certain season, why, that’s got to affect the way he feels about life from that minute on. Imagine being born in February or March, coming bare-ass naked into a world so cold, doctor slapping you, drawing that needle-sharp air into your lungs, enough to make even a prince shudder! He loved making the daily rounds in September, when the skies above were invariably blue and the air was like a maiden’s kiss. Oh, how they loved him! Oh, the things they put out for him each day, his loving subjects! Oh, the surprises! He never knew what the tithe would be, never could even hope to guess what gifts he would find in alleyways or mews, curbside container or back-lot carton.

And today — today he had found a mountain of treasure, he could not believe his eyes at first. It was not yet his birthday, and so the barbarian hordes from beyond the city walls were not required to bring a percentage of their plunder through the gates to lay at his feet. Nor was it yet Christmas, when those of the Christian faith who inhabited the lands to the south and to the west were required to bring to him in measure equal to his weight riches beyond imagination. And yet, here upon the Cos Corner plain, his subjects had strewn for his pleasure a carpet of gifts extending to the very horizon, causing him to widen his jaded old eyes in surprise and smack his toothless gums in delight. In the shadow of the bridge he danced upon the endless treasure trove, plucked a skeletal umbrella from one glittering mound, twirled it over his head, trailed a tattered pink boa on the fragrant breeze, poked and picked for trifles and fancies, tried on a pair of pale-blue gloves and a pendant with a broken stone, and then settled back into an easy chair with its stuffing showing, and in the late-afternoon light began to read a book bound in bright-red leather. On the front page of the book, he read the printed words:

And below that, written by hand on the appropriate blank line:

The name sounded familiar, one of his loyal subjects, no doubt — Muriel Stark. Had he read another book about her adventures? Was this a sequel? Muriel Stark. And then he remembered seeing her name in a newspaper he had plucked from a garbage can just a few days ago, and he remembered, too, that she’d been murdered. He got out of the chair and tucked the diary into the pocket of his long black coat. Then, tossing the pink boa back over his shoulder, twirling the stark umbrella over his head, he went looking for a policeman.