Bread

9

It was still Friday. It had been Friday forever.

Legal Aid sent over an attorney to make certain that none of The Ancient Skulls’ rights were being violated. At the same time the detectives — figuring they had hooked into real meat — called the District Attorney’s office and asked that a man be sent over before they messed up the legal ramifications by asking any further questions. By 11:00 P.M. everyone was assembled. By ten minutes to 12:00 they all realized they were going to get nowhere, since the Skulls’ appointed attorney advised them to keep silent. The man from the DA’s office felt they had a good case, nonetheless, and so the Skulls were booked for acting in concert on one count of homicide and one count of assault, and were taken downstairs to the detention cells to await transportation to the Criminal Courts Building for arraignment. The lawyers shook hands with each other and the detectives, and everybody left the squadroom at a few minutes past midnight. It was Saturday at last. Ollie Weeks had cracked his case in less than twelve hours, and one might have expected him to go home and sleep the sleep of angels secure in the knowledge that he had performed admirably and well.

Carella’s bedside phone rang in the middle of the night. He fumbled for the receiver, lifted it, and said, “Hullo,” not sure he was talking into the right end.

“Carella? This is Ollie Weeks.”

“Ollie?” Carella said. “Oh, hullo, Ollie. How are you? What time is it, Ollie?”

“I don’t know what time it is,” Ollie said. “Carella, I can’t sleep.”

“That’s too bad,” Carella said, and squinted at the luminous dial on the alarm clock near his bed. It was ten minutes past 4:00. “Have you tried counting sheep, Ollie?”

“I’ve been thinking about this guy,” Ollie said.

“What guy, Ollie?”

“This guy Oscar Hemmings. The third guy in Diamondback Development.”

“Oh, yes,” Carella said. “Yes, what about him?”

“I’ve been thinking if I wait till morning, he’s liable to be not there.”

“Well,” Carella said, and hesitated. It seemed to him that Ollie had just uttered a choice non sequitur, but he couldn’t be quite certain because he was still half asleep.

“At his apartment, I mean,” Ollie said. “At the address I have for him.”

“Yes, there’s always the chance he’ll be out,” Carella said, and looked at the clock again.

“Unless I go there now,” Ollie said.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” Carella said. “It’s twelve past four.”

“That’s the idea,” Ollie said. “Nobody’s not home at four in the morning. It’s too late to be out on the town and too early to be getting out of bed. If I go there now, I’m sure to nab him.”

“Okay,” Carella said. “Fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go there. Go nab him.”

“You want to come with me?” Ollie said.

“No,” Carella said.

“Aw, come on.”

“No,” Carella said. “Listen, are you crazy or something, waking me up at four o’clock, four-fifteen, whatever the hell it is? What’s the matter with you? You cracked your case, you’ve got your...”

“Those guys up there bother me.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve got eight hundred thousand dollars in their safety deposit box. Where’d those jigs get money like that if it ain’t dirty money?”

“I don’t know where, Ollie.”

“Ain’t you even interested? Harrod worked for them, and Harrod knew Reardon, and Reardon is dead, and Hawes tells me Harrod’s gun killed him. Now ain’t that interesting to you?”

“It’s interesting. But Harrod’s also dead, and I can’t arrest a dead man for killing another dead man.”

“Why are all these guys getting knocked off?” Ollie said.

“The homicides aren’t connected,” Carella said patiently. “You’ve got the punks who killed Harrod, and if Harrod killed Reardon, it was because Reardon knew about an arson in which Harrod may or may not have been... Damn it, Ollie, you’re waking me up! I don’t want to wake up! I want to go back to sleep. Goodnight, Ollie.”

Carella hung up. Beside him, his wife Teddy lay asleep with one leg twisted in the sheet. She could not, and therefore had not, heard the ringing telephone or the ensuing conversation, and for that he was grateful. He untangled the sheet, and was snuggling up close to her when the phone rang again. He snapped the receiver from its cradle and shouted, “Yes, damn it!”

“Steve?”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s me. Cotton.”

“What do you want, Cotton?”

“Did Ollie Weeks just call you?”

“Yes, Ollie Weeks just called me! And now you’re just calling me! Why don’t you two guys get married and stop bothering me in the middle of the goddamn night? I’m trying to sleep here. I’m trying to get some sleep here. I’m trying...”

“Steve?”

“What?”

“You want to go with him?”

“No, I don’t want to go with him.”

“I think we ought to go with him,” Hawes said.

“You like him so much, you go with him,” Carella said.

“I don’t like him at all, but I think maybe he’s right,” Hawes said. “I think maybe Diamondback Development has something to do with Roger Grimm’s fires, and I think we’re not going to get anything out of Worthy and Chase right now, but maybe we’ve got a chance to get something out of the third guy if we go up there in the middle of the night and surprise him. I think Ollie’s right.”

There was silence on the line.

“Steve?” Hawes said.

There was more silence.

“Steve?”

“Where do you want to meet?” Carella said wearily.

They met in an all-night diner on Ainsley Avenue at a quarter to five. They sat in a corner booth and quietly discussed their next move. What they were about to do was risky in that they did not have a court order to enter the premises occupied by one Oscar Hemmings at 1137 St. Sebastian, and if Hemmings so chose, he could tell them to run along and go play cops and robbers elsewhere. America was not yet a police state, and the Gestapo could not break down your door in the middle of the night and haul you out of bed. They could question Hemmings, true, because they were seeking information about a crime of which they had knowledge, but they couldn’t question him unless he agreed to being questioned. If he refused, they could tell him they’d be back with a subpoena and he could answer questions before a grand jury, the choice was his, and that might scare him into cooperating. But they didn’t want to go that route with Hemmings, and so they concocted a ruse in the diner, and they hoped the ruse would work. If he bought their story, he might talk to them and reveal something important. If he did not buy it, he was within his rights to slam the door in their faces.

The ruse they concocted was a good one and a simple one.

They assumed that Hemmings, being a partner in Diamondback Development, already knew that Charlie Harrod was dead. However, no matter how fast the Diamondback grapevine worked, he probably did not yet know that The Ancient Skulls had been picked up and charged with Harrod’s murder. The several assumptions they had made about Roger Grimm’s warehouse fire were that (a) Reardon had doped the booze the night watchmen later drank, and (b) Reardon had been killed because he might talk about his role in the arson. They knew, in addition, that Reardon had been visited two or three times in the week or so before the fire by two black men — one of whom had been Charlie Harrod; that Reardon had deposited $5,000 into his savings account five days before the fire; and that Elizabeth Benjamin had spent the two nights preceding the fire in Reardon’s apartment, presumably to add a little sexual persuasion to the financial inducement he’d already received. A positive identification of Harrod and Elizabeth would have to be made by Barbara Loomis, who had seen them both. In the meantime, her descriptions seemed to jibe, and so they worked on the assumption that Reardon was the connecting link between Harrod and the warehouse fire.

What they wanted to know, and this was why they were visiting Hemmings in the early hours of the morning, was why Harrod had been involved in arson. Assuming he had contacted Reardon to engage his services in helping to administer the Mickey, and assuming Reardon had been paid $5,000 for those services, and assuming Elizabeth had been sent to him to sweeten the pot — why had Harrod wanted to burn down Grimm’s warehouse in the first place? What was his motive? Was he working for Diamondback Development or for himself? Worthy and Chase had already said all they would ever say about Charlie Harrod. Good photographer, mother lives alone, girlfriend a bit flashy, blah, blah, blah. Hemmings hadn’t yet told them anything, and now they hoped he would — if their little ruse worked.

This was the structure upon which they based their plan:

Hemmings knew that Harrod had been killed.

Hemmings did not know The Skulls had been charged with Harrod’s murder.

Worthy and Chase knew both Ollie and Hawes.

Worthy and Chase had undoubtedly told their partner, Hemmings, about the visit from the two cops, and may have also described them.

The only cop Worthy, Chase, and Hemmings did not know was Steve Carella.

This was the scenario they evolved:

Ollie and Hawes would knock on Hemmings’s door. They would apologize for awakening him so early in the morning, but they had a man with them who, they suspected, had killed Charlie Harrod that afternoon. They would then produce the man, in handcuffs. The man would be rather tall and slender, with brown hair and brown, slanted eyes, an altogether unimpressive nebbish, but nobody says you have to look like John Wayne in order to be capable of committing murder. The man in handcuffs would be Steve Carella.

Ollie and Hawes would tell Hemmings that the man, whose name they decided would be Alphonse Di Bari (over Carella’s objections, since he didn’t think he looked particularly Italian), had claimed he would never have murdered Charlie Harrod, because he was a close friend of his and had, in fact, worked together with him at Diamondback Development. It was essential to the case they had against Di Bari that someone from Diamondback Development either positively identify him as an employee, or else put the lie to rest. Hemmings, of course, would say he had never before seen this Alphonse Di Bari (Carella still objected to the name, this time on the grounds that he didn’t particularly look like an Alphonse). Then the detectives would get sort of chummy with Hemmings and explain how they had tracked Di Bari to his apartment and found the murder weapon there, and Carella (as Di Bari) would protest all along that they had the wrong man, and would beg Hemmings to please tell these guys he legitimately worked for Diamondback Development, that Charlie Harrod had hired him to take photographs of a warehouse belonging to a man named Roger Grimm, please, mister, will you please tell these guys they’re making a mistake?

Everybody would be watching Hemmings very closely at this point, hoping he would by his manner or by his speech drop something revealing (like perhaps his teeth) the moment the warehouse was mentioned. If he did not react immediately, they would keep hammering at the warehouse story, supposedly enlisting Hemmings’s aid, listening all the while for telltale little clues, actually questioning him while making him believe they were in reality seeking information that would disprove Di Bari’s lie.

It was not a bad scenario.

Listen, this was 5:00 in the morning, and they weren’t shooting a picture for Twentieth Century-Fox.

With Carella in handcuffs (he felt stupid), the detectives went into the building on St. Sebastian Avenue and began climbing the steps to the fourth floor.

Even at this early hour of the morning, Ollie was no rose garden, but then again, he had never promised anybody he was. Cotton Hawes had a very sensitive nose. He hated firing his pistol senselessly because the stench of cordite almost always made him slightly nauseous. During his naval career this had been a severe handicap, since somebody or other always seemed to be firing a gun at somebody else or other. Ollie did not smell of cordite. It was difficult to place his smell.

“I thought they renovated this dump,” Ollie said. “It’s a garbage heap, that’s what it is.”

Yes, Hawes thought, that’s it.

They stopped outside Hemmings’s door and knocked on it. And knocked on it again. And again, and again, and again. Nobody answered.

“What now?” Hawes asked.

“You think he’s in there?” Ollie said.

“If he is, he’s not letting us know about it.”

“He should be in there,” Ollie said, frowning. “It’s five o’clock in the morning. Nobody’s not in bed at five o’clock in the morning.”

“Except me,” Carella said.

“What do you think?” Ollie said.

They held a brief consultation in the hallway outside Hemmings’s door, and decided to call off the movie. They removed the handcuffs from Carella’s wrists, and were starting down the steps to the street when Ollie said, “What the hell are we pussyfooting around for?” and went back to the door and kicked it in without another word.

Carella and Hawes looked at each other. Hawes sighed. Together, they followed Ollie into the apartment.

“Look at this joint, willya?” Ollie said.

They were looking at it. They were, in fact, looking at it bugeyed. For whereas 1137 St. Sebastian was a tenement, and whereas the stairway leading up to the fourth floor had been as littered and as noisome as any to be found in the slums, and whereas the chipped and peeling door to Oscar Hemmings’s apartment looked exactly like every other door on the floor, the apartment inside came as a series of surprises.

The first surprise was a small entrance foyer. You did not ordinarily find entrance foyers in Diamondback. Entrance foyers were for Marie Antoinette. In Diamondback, you stepped immediately into a kitchen. But here was an honest-to-God entrance foyer, with mirrors running around it on all three surrounding walls, optically enlarging the space and reflecting the images of three dumbfounded detectives. Ollie, who was already peeking past the foyer into the rest of the apartment, was thinking it resembled a place he had once seen on a science-fiction television show. Carella and Hawes, who were beside him, weren’t thinking anything at the moment. They just stood there looking like a pair of baggy-pantsed Arabs who had accidentally wandered into a formal reception at the Israeli Embassy.

To the right of the entrance foyer was a kitchen, sleek with Formica and walnut, brushed chrome, white vinyl tile. The thick pale blue carpet that began in the entrance foyer ran completely through the rest of the apartment. Knee-deep in it, or so it seemed, the detectives waded into the living room, where a lacquered white sectional couch nestled into the right-angle corner of the room, its cushions a deeper blue against drapes the color of the carpet. A huge modern painting, all slashes and streaks, reds, blacks, whites, and varying shades of blue, hung over one section of the couch, illuminated by a pale white sculpted floor lamp operated from a mercury switch at the door. There was a walnut bar lined with glasses unmistakably designed in Scandinavia, glistening against a bottled backdrop of expensive whiskeys and liqueurs. Floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves covered the wall opposite one section of the couch, stacked with titles Ollie had meant to read but had never got around to.

A record turntable, a tape deck, an amplifier and a pair of speakers at either end of the room comprised Hemmings’s stereo system, and one long shelf on the bookcase wall contained at least two hundred long-playing albums and as many tape cartridges. At the far end of the room, serviced through a swinging door that led to the kitchen, was an oval walnut table with four chairs around it. A hanging buffet, waist-high, walnut and black Formica, was on the wall behind the table. A second painting hung just above the buffet, positioned off-center, starkly abstract, repeating the color combinations of the larger painting across the room — red, black, white, and blue.

The bedroom was spartanly furnished, a low king-sized white lacquered bed with dark blue spread, pale blue carpet growing all around it, pale blue matching drapes at the window, a walnut dresser with a white Formica top, a small, low easy chair upholstered in nubby black, a closet with slatted doors painted white and occupying the entire far wall of the room. The bathroom was entirely white. White tile, white fixtures, white shower curtain, white shag oval rug near the tub, white towels.

That was it. The apartment had most likely been composed of five rooms before the walls were knocked out and the space redivided. There were now three rooms and a bath, in addition to the small foyer. The renovation had undoubtedly cost Diamondback Development thousands and thousands of dollars.

“Nice,” Ollie said.

“Yeah,” Hawes said.

“Mmm,” Carella said.

Each man was thinking of his own salary.

“Let’s check out the closets and drawers,” Hawes said.

They were starting for the bedroom again when Ollie stopped dead in his tracks. “Somebody’s coming,” he whispered. Neither Hawes nor Carella had heard a thing. They listened now, heard footsteps on the stairs outside, the clatter of high heels approaching the kicked-in entrance door. Ollie had moved swiftly to the left of the door, and was standing against the mirrored wall, pistol drawn. He motioned Carella and Hawes to get out of sight.

In the hallway outside, they heard a small exclamation of surprise.

“Get in here,” Ollie snapped.

A girl stepped into the entrance foyer. She was a tall, attractive redhead, white, perhaps twenty-five years old. She was wearing a long green evening gown and green satin slippers, Cinderella returning from the ball at five in the morning to find the place full of burglars, or so it must have seemed to her. “Take anything you want,” she said immediately, “but don’t hurt me.”

“We’re police officers,” Ollie said, and the girl’s mood and temperament changed at once.

“Then get the hell out of here,” she said. “You’ve got no right breaking in here.”

“What’s your name?” Ollie said.

“What’s yours?” she answered.

“Detective First Grade Oliver Weeks, 83rd Squad,” he said, and holstered his gun and showed his identification. “I still don’t know your name.”

“Rosalie Waggener,” she said, and walked past the detectives and into the living room, stepping out of her shoes as she went and padding barefooted to the bar, where she immediately poured herself a brandy snifter full of Courvoisier.

“You live here, Rosalie?” Carella asked.

“I live here,” she said wearily, and tilted the snifter to her lips. Her eyes matched the color of the cognac in the glass.

“Does Oscar Hemmings live here?” Hawes said.

“No.”

“The apartment is listed in his name,” Ollie said.

“Where’s it listed?” the girl asked.

“In the phone book.”

“That only means the phone’s listed in his name. The apartment is mine.”

“Why’d you list the phone in his name?”

“Because a young girl living alone gets all kinds of phone calls.”

“Do you get all kinds of phone calls?” Ollie asked.

His question was transparent to Hawes and Carella — and to the girl as well. A pad like this in the heart of Diamondback spelled only one thing to the cops, and the girl knew exactly what they were thinking. But she chose to ignore the deeper meaning of the question. “I don’t get all kinds of phone calls because the phone is listed in Oscar’s name,” she said simply, and sipped some more cognac.

“You live here alone?” Ollie asked.

“I do.”

“Been out tonight?”

“What do you think? I don’t usually get dressed like this to bring in the milk.”

“Why do you get dressed like that?” Ollie asked.

Again, the question was transparent. And again, the girl chose to ignore its implications.

“I went to a party,” she said.

“Where?”

“On Silvermine Oval. Downtown.”

“What kind of party?”

“A private party.”

“Must’ve been a good party,” Hawes said.

“It was an excellent party,” Rosalie answered, and polished off the remainder of the cognac. Immediately, she poured herself another full snifter. “Would you like to tell me what you’re doing here?” she said.

“We’re investigating an arson,” Carella said, deciding to play it at least partially straight; they were also investigating the business affairs of Diamondback Development, Inc.

“Tell us about Oscar Hemmings,” Ollie said.

“Oscar’s not involved in any arson,” Rosalie said.

“Nobody said he was. Tell us about him.”

“He’s a friend,” Rosalie said.

“Must be a very good friend, to let you list the phone in his name. You got a lease for this place?”

“I have.”

“Mind if I see it?”

“I don’t keep it here.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“At my mother’s house. In Riverhead,” she said quickly, and they knew immediately she was lying.

“Lease in your name?”

“Of course.”

“What’d it cost you to redecorate this place?”

“A lot.”

“How much?”

“I forget. I’m very bad on figures.”

“You must like living up here in Diamondback.”

“I like it fine.”

“Must’ve cost you thousands of dollars to fix up an apartment in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city,” Ollie said.

“Yeah, well, I like it here.”

“Got a lot of jig friends, have you?” Ollie asked.

“Listen, Ollie,” Hawes said, “how about...?”

“Black friends, do you mean?” Rosalie interrupted.

“That’s what I said, ain’t it?”

“Yes, I have some black friends.”

“You must have a lot of them, living in this neighborhood.”

“I have enough of them,” Rosalie said.

“White ones, too, I’ll bet.”

“Yes, white ones, too.”

“You a call girl, Rosalie?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell are you doing in this place, huh? You want to tell us that?”

“I’ve already told you. I live here.”

“Where does Oscar live?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you said he was a good friend. How come you don’t know where he lives?”

“He recently moved.”

“From where?”

“He used to live up on the Hill. I don’t know where he lives now.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Oh, must be two or three weeks, at least.”

“Let’s take a look at some of your things, okay, Rosalie?”

“No, it’s not okay,” she said.

“Rosalie,” Ollie said, slowly and softly and patiently, “if you are running a whorehouse up here, we are going to hound your ass till we find out about it. Now how about cooperating? We’re not trying to bust up the prostitution racket in this city. We’re working on an arson.”

“I’m not a prostitute, and I don’t care what you’re working on.”

“No, you’re just a Vassar graduate, right? Living here in Spade-land for the fun of it, right?”

“I can live where I like. There’s no law against living wherever I want to live.”

“Correct,” Ollie said. “Now tell us exactly where you were tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because all of a sudden this has become an investigation into illegal prostitution.”

Rosalie sighed.

“We’re listening,” Ollie said.

“Go ahead,” she said, “look through the place. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Ollie and Hawes went into the bedroom. Rosalie poured herself another drink, and then said to Carella, “You want some of this?”

“No, thank you.”

She sipped at the cognac, watching him over the rim of the glass. In the bedroom, Carella heard drawers being opened and closed. The girl grimaced and jerked her head toward the sound, trying to share with Carella her sense of outrage at this invasion of privacy. Carella gave no sign that he understood what she was trying to convey. The setup, to say the least, stank to high heaven; he, too, believed that Rosalie was a call girl.

Hawes came back into the living room. He was holding an American passport in his hands. “This yours?” he asked.

“If you found it in my dresser, it’s mine.”

Hawes opened the passport and began leafing through it. “Travel a lot, Miss Waggener?” he asked.

“Every now and then.”

“Want to take a look at this, Steve?” he asked, and handed Carella the passport.

Carella studied the page to which it was opened. According to the stamped information on that page, Rosalie Waggener had entered West Germany through Bremen Flughafen on July 25, and had returned to the United States on July 27. Carella looked up from the passport. “I see you’ve been to Germany lately,” he said conversationally.

“Yes.”

“How come?”

Ollie, who had been listening in the bedroom, said in imitation of an SS officer, “I varn you not to lie, Fräulein. Ve know you haff relatives in Chermany.” Ollie, it appeared, was a man of many talents.

“I do have relatives in Germany,” Rosalie said, half to the bedroom and half to Carella and Hawes, who were watching her intently. “The family name used to be Wagner. It got bastardized.”

“Vatch your language, Fräulein!” Ollie called from the other room.

“Do you speak German?” Carella asked, again conversationally.

“Yes.”

“And you have relatives in Bremen, is that it?”

“In Zeven,” Rosalie said. “Just outside Bremen.” The hand holding the brandy snifter was trembling.

“Well, nothing wrong with visiting relatives,” Carella said, and handed the passport to her. “Short trip, though, wasn’t it?”

Rosalie took the passport. “I only had a few days,” she said.

“Vacation, was it?”

“Yes.”

“From your job?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you work?”

“Diamondback Development,” she said. “Part time.”

“What sort of work do you do for them?”

“Secretarial work,” she said.

Carella looked at the trembling hand holding the brandy snifter. The fingernails on that hand were long and pointed, and painted an emerald green that matched Rosalie’s gown and slippers. “Oscar Hemmings is a partner in that company, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Did he get the job for you?”

“He recommended me for it. As I told you, he’s a good friend.”

“Do you work directly under him?” Ollie shouted from the other room, and laughed obscenely.

“I work for all three partners,” Rosalie said.

“But only part time.”

“Only when they need me to take dictation or do filing. Like that,” she said.

“Sounds okay to me,” Carella said. “How we doing in there, Ollie?”

Ollie came back into the living room, perspiring. “I thought you lived here alone,” he said to Rosalie.

“I do,” she said.

“Then what’re all those men’s clothes doing in the closet and the dresser drawers?”

“Well,” she said, and shrugged.

“Shirts monogrammed O. H.,” Ollie said. “That’d be for Oscar Hemmings, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Rosalie said.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your real relationship with Hemmings?” Ollie asked.

“We’re engaged.”

“In what?” Ollie said, and laughed.

“He’s my fiancé.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble were you thinking about?”

“You said something about arson.”

“Well, as you can see,” Ollie said, “we ain’t trying to get him in any trouble at all. Nor you, either.”

“Mmm,” Rosalie said.

“We’re sorry to have bothered you,” Carella said. “We’d like to keep in touch, though, so don’t leave the city or anything, okay?”

“I don’t plan on leaving the city.”

“What he means is don’t go visiting no relatives in Germany,” Ollie said.

“I know what he means. Who’s going to pay for having my lock fixed?”

“What lock is that?” Ollie said.

“On the door” Rosalie said. “What the hell lock do you think?”

“Gee,” Ollie said innocently, “that was busted when we got here.”

It was beginning to look like something — but they didn’t know what.

They only knew that the case was getting very hot, and the best way to solve a case that’s beginning to sizzle is to stick with it as advised in the Detective Division’s mimeographed flyer titled Investigation of Homicides and Suspicious Deaths: “This is your case... stick with the investigation and don’t do unimportant jobs.” Whether or not the Detective Division would have considered the examination of a World Atlas an “important” job was open to question. But a glance at that book revealed immediately that not only was Bremen close to Zeven (where Rosalie Waggener claimed she had relatives), it was also close to Bremerhaven — where a man named Erhard Bachmann ran a firm called Bachmann Speditionsfirma.

It may have been coincidental that Rosalie had arrived in Bremen on July 25, and that Bachmann had received payment for packing Grimm’s little wooden beasts the very next day, according to his letter of July 26, written to Grimm. It may also have been coincidental that Charlie Harrod’s gun had killed Frank Reardon, who had worked for Roger Grimm, who was in turn doing business with a firm in Bremerhaven, some fifty kilometers from Bremen. And the biggest coincidence of all may have been that yet another man associated with Diamondback Development had served time at Castleview State Penitentiary while Roger Grimm himself was incarcerated there. Alfred Allen Chase’s first year at Castleview had overlapped Roger Grimm’s last year there. In effect, the men had served concurrent terms for that period of time. All these seemingly related facts may only have been trains passing in the night. But it didn’t look that way to the detectives.

None of the three had had much sleep, but they had all eaten hearty breakfasts in the 83rd’s squadroom. They were now ready to head out into the city again, in an attempt to unravel some of the knots. They agreed that their telephone drop would be the 87th’s squadroom, and then they left the 83rd. Carella was carrying police photos of Charlie Harrod’s dead body. Ollie was carrying a Polaroid camera, and police photos of the members of The Ancient Skulls. Hawes wasn’t carrying anything.

It was now 8:30 A.M.

Elizabeth Benjamin was awake and being fed intravenously because her jaw was wired and she could not open her mouth. Neither could she nod or shake her head in answer to police questions. So Ollie stuck a pencil in her right hand and propped up a pad for her, and then asked his questions. Willingly but awkwardly, Elizabeth wrote her answers onto the pad.

“These are police photographs,” he said, “of six members of a street gang called The Ancient Skulls. We took these pictures up in the squadroom last night when we arrested these guys, and we’d like you to look at them now and tell us if any of them were involved in beating you up. This is a young man named Lewis Coombs. Was he one of your attackers?”

“This is a young man named Avery Evans. Was he one of your attackers?”

“This punk... this young man is named Felix Collins. Was he in on the attack?”

“How about this one? His name is John Morley.”

“This one? Jamison Holder?”

“Here’s the last one. Timothy Anderson.”

“Okay now, that was very good, Miss Benjamin,” Ollie said, “and I know you’re tired and I don’t want to keep you any longer than I have to. There’s just one other thing I need, and that’s a picture of you. That’s for the district attorney,” Ollie said, “to help in preparing his case against these punks who hurt you so bad. I can take a picture with this Polaroid I got here, but you’re all wired up and all, and I’d prefer having a picture that resembles you more like when you were more yourself, if you know what I mean. Would you have such a picture?”

Elizabeth watched him out of puffed and swollen eyes, picked up the pencil again, and wrote on the pad:

Ollie asked the nurse to fetch Elizabeth’s wallet, and when she brought it to him, he gave it to Elizabeth. Both her legs were in casts to the hip, her broken jaw was wired, her broken ribs taped, and there were bandages covering her bruised face and arms. It was only with great effort that she located the snapshot in the plastic gatefold, extracted it, and handed it to Ollie.

In the photo, she was standing in front of a Diamondback tenement wall, smiling into the sunshine. She was wearing a simple yellow frock and low sandals. She looked quite pretty.

“Thank you,” Ollie said, “I will show this to the DA.”

He had no intention of showing it to the DA.

From a telephone booth across the street from the tenement in which Rosalie Waggener’s sumptuous pad was located, Cotton Hawes called the number listed in the Isola directory and waited for Rosalie to answer the phone. When her voice came onto the line at last, it was fuzzy with sleep.

“Hello?” she said.

“Rosalie?” he said.

“Mmm.”

“My name’s Dick Coopersmith, I’m from Detroit. I was talking to a man in a bar who said I might enjoy meeting you.”

“What man?” Rosalie said.

“Fellow named Dave Carter. Or Carson. Fm not sure which.”

“You’ve got the wrong number,” Rosalie said, and hung up.

Hawes shrugged, put the receiver back on the hook, and walked out of the booth. He had only been trying to ascertain whether or not Rosalie was still in the apartment, but he’d figured he might as well take a whack at establishing her occupation at the same time. Some you win, some you lose. He took up position in a doorway some fifteen feet from the phone booth, and hoped Rosalie wouldn’t sleep too late and that eventually she’d come out of the building and lead him straight to Oscar Hemmings.

In his own squadroom, at his own desk, Steve Carella put in a long-distance call to the prison at Castleview-on-Rawley, and asked to talk to someone in Records. The man who came onto the line identified himself as Peter Yarborough.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“This is Detective Steve Carella, the 87th Squad, down here in Isola. I’m looking for a record of correspondence to and from a man who...”

“Who’d you say this was?”

“Detective Steve Carella, 87th Squad.”

“Put it in writing, Carella,” Yarborough said. “We can’t answer telephone requests.”

“This is urgent,” Carella said. “We’re investigating homicide and arson.”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Carella. Steve Carella.”

“Where you calling from, Carella?”

“The squadroom.”

“What’s the number there?”

“Frederick 7-8024.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Yarborough said, and hung up.

Carella looked at the mouthpiece and then slammed the receiver down onto the cradle. The phone rang twenty minutes later. He lifted the receiver. “87th Squad, Carella,” he said.

“This is Yarborough.”

“Hello, Yarborough,” Carella said.

“I wanted to call you back because how did I know you were really a detective?” Yarborough said.

“That’s right, you did the right thing,” Carella said.

“I did better than the right thing. I first called Headquarters down there in the city and made sure this number was really the number of a detective squadroom.”

“You did very well,” Carella said. “Can you help with that record of correspondence?”

“I’ll try,” Yarborough said. “What was the prisoner’s name?”

“Alfred Allen Chase.”

“When was he here?”

“Started serving his sentence five years ago. Served three and a half.”

“What were you interested in, Carella?”

“I want to know if there was any correspondence between him and a man named Roger Grimm, who’s also one of your graduates.”

“Yeah, we get ’em all here, sooner or later,” Yarborough said dryly. “Any special time period? Some of these lists are a mile long, take me all morning to go through ‘em.”

“Grimm was paroled in June, four years ago. Can you start there?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Yarborough said reluctantly. “Let me get back to you.”

At ten minutes to 10:00 Fat Ollie Weeks walked into the second-floor offices of Diamondback Development. There were two men seated at the long table in front of the wall of photographs. One of them was Robinson Worthy. The other was a black man Ollie had never seen before.

“Good morning,” Ollie said cheerily. “Just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”

“Good morning,” Worthy said. His voice was frosty, his eyes wary.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Ollie said to the other man.

“This is my other partner,” Worthy said. “Oscar Hemmings.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hemmings,” Ollie said, and extended his hand.

Hemmings was a handsome man of perhaps fifty, impeccably dressed in a brown lightweight business suit, beige shirt with a button-down collar, simple tie of a deeper shade of brown. His face was craggy, a strong sledgehammer nose, well-pronounced cheekbones, a firm mouth, a square jaw. His hair was turning gray, styled to hide the fact that it was thinning a bit. His handshake was firm. He smiled thinly and said in a very low voice, “Nice to meet you, Detective Weeks.”

Ollie did not miss the fact that Hemmings knew who he was. This meant that Worthy and Chase had discussed him with their partner. He filed away the information, and said, “I really didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood. I came up here deliberately.” Worthy and Hemmings said nothing. “First of all, I wanted to apologize,” Ollie said. “I really behaved like an asshole yesterday, Mr. Worthy. I don’t know what got into me.” The Diamondback partners still said nothing. “Also, I wanted to tell you we got the people we think killed Charlie Harrod. Least of all, we know they beat up Harrod’s girlfriend. I just came from the hospital, where I got positive identification on four of them, so I thought you’d be happy to hear that.”

“Yes, we’re very happy to hear that,” Worthy said.

“You fellows put in a long week, don’t you?” Ollie said. “Work Saturdays and all, huh?”

“So do you, it seems,” Hemmings said, and again smiled his razor-blade smile.

“No, no, I’m off today,” Ollie said. “Think I’ll take in a ball game or something.” He paused, and then said, “By the way, Mr. Hemmings, we stopped by at an apartment we thought was yours because we were trying to locate you this morning...”

“Oh?” Hemmings said.

“Yeah, when we picked up these guys, you know, who we think killed Harrod.”

“Yes?” Hemmings said.

“Yes,” Ollie said. “Yes. We wanted somebody in the company to know about it, and I was a little embarrassed about contacting Mr. Worthy here because of the way I hassled him yesterday.” He smiled in apology. “So we went over to the apartment on Saint Sebastian.”

“Why didn’t you simply telephone?” Hemmings asked.

“Well, it was close by, no sweat.” Ollie paused. “We met the girl living there.”

“Yes?” Hemmings said.

“Yes. Girl named Rosalie Waggener. Nice girl.”

Hemmings said nothing.

“She ought to get the door fixed,” Ollie said. “The lock’s busted.” He smiled again. “Well, just thought I’d let you know everything’s all wrapped up, and I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time. I’ll see you, huh? Keep up the good work here in Diamondback.” He chopped his beefy hand into the air in farewell, and went out. In the hallway outside, he put his ear to the frosted-glass door and listened. Someone was dialing a telephone. He expected that would be Oscar Hemmings trying to reach his little white bimbo. Ollie smiled and went downstairs and out of the building.

The streets were already beginning to blister under the onslaught of the early-morning sun. Ollie walked two blocks up Landis, turned left, and continued walking north toward the River Harb. A green panel truck was parked in front of an abandoned warehouse facing the river. The man at the wheel of the truck was dozing, a cap pulled down over his eyes, a matchstick between his teeth. Ollie rapped on the partially closed window, and the man jerked suddenly awake.

“I’m Weeks,” Ollie said. “You the guy from the Motor Pool?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “Halloran.”

Ollie stepped back and looked over the truck. “They sent a good one for a change,” he said. “It must be a miracle. Most of these goddamn trucks, everybody in the neighborhood knows it’s taking pictures. This is a nice one, company name painted on the side and everything. Even a phony telephone number. Real classy.”

“The number’s hooked into a phone at Headquarters downtown,” Halloran said. “Anybody calls it to check whether this is a phony truck, a guy answers and gives the name of the company painted on the side there.”

“Ah yes,” Ollie said in his W. C. Fields voice, “very classy, very classy indeed.” In his natural voice he said, “I got to make a phone call, Halloran. Soon as I’m done, we’re heading for 2914 Landis. Okay?”

“Sure, why not?” Halloran said, and shrugged.

When the telephone rang on Carella’s desk, he thought it might be Yarborough calling back from Castleview. Instead, it was Ollie Weeks.

“Carella,” he said, “this is Ollie. Has Hawes called in yet?”

“No. Why?”

“I found Oscar Hemmings, there’s no need for him to stick with the girl.”

“I’ll tell him if he calls.”

“There’s one other thing,” Ollie said. “He was up there alone with Worthy, which means I can’t get nothing on Chase. You want to handle that from your end?”

“You thinking of the IS?”

“Yeah, Chase has a record, so they’re sure to have mug shots of him.”

“Will do,” Carella said.

“I got to get moving,” Ollie said. “Before my jigaboo friends decide to leave without me.”

Rosalie Waggener came down the front steps of 1137 St. Sebastian at a little past 10:30. She was wearing bell-bottomed, hip-hugger tan pants, a scoop-necked, horizontally striped top, and brown low-heeled shoes. In her right hand, she was clutching a small brown pocketbook, which she waved frantically at a passing taxicab the moment she stepped onto the curb.

Cotton Hawes, watching from the doorway across the street, did not know that a call to the squadroom would have advised him to drop the tail. He knew only that he had better get to his car damn fast, because the cab had already squealed to a stop just ahead and was now backing up to the curb to pick up Rosalie. Hawes’s car was parked halfway up the block. He began walking swiftly, turning once to see Rosalie getting into the taxi. He had just climbed behind the wheel, and was starting the car, when the taxi flashed by.

With a little luck, Hawes figured he would catch up at the next traffic light.

In the rear of the panel truck, sitting behind a camera equipped with a telescopic lens and mounted on a tripod, Ollie Weeks sat behind the equivalent of a one-way-two-way mirror, waiting to take photographs of Worthy and Hemmings the moment they came out of the building across the street. Ollie was looking through a clear pane of glass. The other side of the glass was painted green, like the side of the truck, and then lettered over in yellow paint with the name of the fake company, its address, and the telephone number of the phone downtown at Headquarters.

There was a steady stream of traffic, mostly women, into 2914 Landis. Ollie figured they were heading up to BLACK FASHIONS on the third floor. Ollie watched the women through the telescopic lens. One thing you had to say for black broads, they had good legs.

Hemmings and Worthy did not come out of the building until twenty minutes past 11:00. The moment they appeared at the top of the steps, coming through the door, Ollie began taking pictures. He cocked the camera and pressed the shutter release a total of thirteen times before they reached the sidewalk, and then he got three more shots of them moving away in profile. Ollie nodded in satisfaction and rapped on the panel leading to the front of the truck.

Halloran slid it open. “Yeah?”

“I need to go downtown to the IS,” Ollie said.

“You finished here?” Halloran asked.

“Yeah. But I got to get this stuff developed and printed.”

“I’m supposed to take the truck back when you’re finished.”

“You can take me downtown first.”

“This ain’t a goddamn taxi,” Halloran said, but he started the truck and pointed it downtown.

“Carella?”

“Yes?”

“This is Yarborough. I got that information you want.”

“Go ahead,” Carella said.

“This Roger Grimm character was paroled four years ago. Chase was still here at the time, had already served a year and a little more of his sentence.”

“Right, I’ve got that already.”

“Okay. The minute Grimm got out, he began writing to Chase. Correspondence was hot and heavy for about six months. Chase wrote to Grimm, and vice versa, at least once a week, sometimes twice. Then all at once, the correspondence stopped. You know what I think? These guys maybe had a thing here in prison, you know what I mean? Lovers, you know? You’d be surprised what goes on up here.”

“Yes, I’d be surprised,” Carella said.

“I’m only speculating,” Yarborough said. “Maybe they were just friends, who knows? You know the one about the lady with the monkeys?”

“No, which one is that?” Carella said.

“This lady comes into a taxidermist with two dead monkeys, you know, and she says she wants them stuffed. So the taxidermist says, ‘Yes, lady, I’ll stuff the monkeys. You want them mounted, too?’ And the lady thinks for a minute and says, ‘No, they were only friends. Just have them shaking hands.’ ” Yarborough burst out laughing. Carella, who had remembered the joke after the first line, chuckled politely. “So maybe Grimm and Chase were only friends, who knows?” Yarborough said, still laughing. “Anyway, they wrote to each other a lot after Grimm got out.”

“You wouldn’t know whether or not they were cellmates, would you?”

“That’s another department,” Yarborough said.

“When did the correspondence between them stop?”

“Six months after Grimm got paroled.”

“Okay,” Carella said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Wait a minute,” Yarborough said. “Two other things.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were...”

“They began writing to each other again just before Chase got paroled. Chase wrote the first letter, and then Grimm answered, and then they exchanged maybe a dozen more letters before Chase finally left this joint. That’s the first thing.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“The second thing is I need a letter from you formally requesting this information.”

“You already gave me the information,” Carella said. “Why do you need a letter from me requesting it?”

“To cover me. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“I don’t know what. Just in case. Send me the letter, Carella.”

“Okay,” Carella said, and sighed. “Thanks again.”

“How’s it down there in the city?” Yarborough asked.

“Hot,” Carella said.

“Yeah, here too,” Yarborough said, and hung up.

Carella pressed one of the buttons in the receiver rest, held it down for a second, and then released it, getting a dial tone. He called the Identification Section and told the man he spoke to that he urgently needed some eight-by-ten glossies of Alfred Allen Chase’s mug shots.

The man listened to the request, and then said, “This is Saturday, pal.”

“Yeah, it’s Saturday here, too,” Carella said.

“I don’t even know if there’s anybody next door in the Photo Unit.”

“Find somebody,” Carella said.

Downtown on High Street, the man in the Photographic Unit took the roll of film from Ollie’s hand and said, “You’re gonna have to wait. I just got a rush order from next door.”

“Yeah, well make it snappy, willya?” Ollie said. “This is a rush order, too.” He went down the hall to the phone booths, dialed the 87th, and when he got Carella, said, “I took more’n a dozen pictures, we’re bound to get one or two good ones. You heard from Hawes yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“What the hell’s the matter with him? Don’t he know he’s supposed to check in?”

“I guess he’s busy,” Carella said.

“What’d you find out at Castleview?”

“Chase and Grimm knew each other. They corresponded regularly.”

“Just what we figured,” Ollie said. “Did you get those pictures from the IS?”

“Should be here in a little while, I hope.”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon,” Ollie said.

He had not told Carella where he was, and Carella did not think to ask. Nor did the man in the Photographic Unit tell Ollie that the rush order from next door was earmarked for a detective named Steve Carella of the 87th Squad. He did not tell Ollie because it was none of Ollie’s business. Ollie didn’t ask him anything about the rush order because all Ollie wanted was his own damn pictures and fast. Besides, Carella had already assured him the mug shots of Chase should be up at the squadroom in just a little while. Ollie left High Street with his own eight-by-ten glossies at a quarter to one. The package to Carella from the PU (as it was affectionately called by any detective who’d ever had to wait for photographs) did not arrive at the squadroom until almost 1:30. They had still not heard from Hawes, so they decided to hit Reardon’s landlady all by their lonesomes.

Rosalie Waggener’s taxi had traveled directly up Ainsley Avenue until it reached the Hamilton Bridge. Actually there were two Hamilton Bridges in the city, one of them on the northern side of Isola, crossing the River Harb into the next state, and formally called the Alexander Hamilton Bridge. This was not to be confused with the plain old Hamilton Bridge, which crossed the Diamondback River up around Piney Hill Terrace (upon which there was not a single pine tree) and connected Isola and Riverhead, which were both parts of the same state and, in fact, the same city. If you asked anyone in the city for directions to the Hamilton Bridge, they would invariably give you directions to the Alexander Hamilton Bridge. In fact, odds were nine-to-five that nobody in the city even knew there was a bridge simply called the Hamilton, less than a block long and spanning the Diamondback River, which incidentally became the River Dix a little further west — it was all very complicated, though not as complicated as the city of Bologna, Italy.

The cab continued south into Riverhead, crossing the old College Road and then turning and proceeding west on Marlowe Avenue for several blocks. It finally pulled up before a red-brick apartment building on Marlowe, a few blocks from the elevated train tracks on Geraldson Avenue. Hawes pulled his own car into the curb, cut the ignition, and watched as Rosalie, some seven car lengths ahead, got out of the taxi and went directly into the building. He waited a respectable five minutes, figuring a building so tall had to be an elevator building, and not wanting her to be waiting in the lobby when he went inside. At the end of that time, he went in, found the mailboxes, and began checking out the nameplates.

There were ten stories in the building, with six apartments on each floor. According to the nameplates, Oscar Hemmings did not live in the building.

But on the mailbox for Apartment 45, there was a plate engraved with a name Hawes recognized.

He squinted at the name, and then scratched his head.

“My husband is downtown buying hardware,” Barbara Loomis said. “Anything I can do for you?”

She was wearing very tight, very short navy-blue shorts and a pink shirt with the tails knotted just under her breasts. “Come in,” she said, “come in. Nobody going to bite you.”

They went into the apartment and sat at the kitchen table. Fat Ollie kept trying to look into her blouse. He was sure she wasn’t wearing a bra, and the top three buttons of the blouse were unbuttoned. Carella spread the photographs on the tabletop — the mug shots of Alfred Allen Chase; the police photographer’s shots of Charlie Harrod in death, eyes wide and staring up at the camera; the snapshot of Elizabeth Benjamin standing against the tenement wall, smiling; and the front and side shots Ollie had taken of Robinson Worthy and Oscar Hemmings that morning.

“Recognize any of these people?” he asked Barbara.

“Yeah, sure I do,” Barbara said. “What happened to the big redheaded cop? How come he didn’t come back with these?”

“Won’t we do?” Ollie said, and grinned.

“Which of them do you recognize?” Carella asked.

“You fellows want a beer?” Barbara said.

“No, thanks,” Carella said.

“I wouldn’t mind one,” Ollie said, and watched Barbara’s behind when she rose and walked to the refrigerator. He winked at Carella and grinned again.

Barbara came back to the table, set the beer before Ollie, and then looked down at the pictures. “This is the girl Frank shacked up with those two nights,” she said, and pointed to the picture of Elizabeth Benjamin.

“And the others?” Carella said.

“Two of those men came to see Frank at the end of July.”

“Which ones?” Carella asked.

“This one and this one,” Barbara said, her forefinger tapping first Charlie Harrod’s head and then Robinson Worthy’s.

“Recognize the other man in that picture?” Carella asked.

“This one?” she asked. She lifted the picture Ollie had taken, and peered at Oscar Hemmings. “No,” she said. “Never saw him here. That doesn’t mean he’s never been here, it just means I never saw him.”

“Okay. How about this man?” Carella asked, and shoved the picture of Alfred Allen Chase across the table.

“Nope, never saw him either,” Barbara said, and turned to Ollie and smiled. “How’s the beer?” she asked.

“Delicious,” Ollie said. “Just delicious, m’little chickadee,” and Barbara giggled girlishly.

In the car riding uptown to the squadroom, Carella said, “Worthy and Harrod. They’re definitely the ones who made contact with Reardon, which means Diamondback Development burned out Grimm.”

“Right,” Ollie said. “I think that lady can be banged, you know that?”

“I don’t get it,” Carella said.

“You know what she said to me?”

“What?” Carella asked absently.

“She said her bedroom is air-conditioned. I tell you that lady can be banged, Carella.”

“It was Rosalie Waggener who went to Bremen, right?” Carella said. “And she’s Hemmings’s girlfriend, right?”

“Right,” Ollie said. “Yep, I think that lady can very definitely be banged.”

“Rosalie flew to Bremen on the day before Grimm’s packer acknowledged receipt of payment. Grimm’s check couldn’t have got there by then, so somebody must’ve made payment in person. And that had to be Rosalie.”

“I think I’ll give that lady a call tonight.”

“But what’s the connection, Ollie? Why the hell would Hemmings’s girl be paying Grimm’s bills while Hemmings’s company is planning to burn down Grimm’s warehouse? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense at all.”

It made even less sense when they got back to the squadroom. Hawes was waiting for them there, and he reported that Rosalie Waggener had spent almost an hour in an apartment on Marlowe Avenue before heading back to Isola again.

The mailbox in the Marlowe Avenue lobby had carried a plate with the name Alfred Allen Chase engraved on it.