Calypso

10

Just as Meyer had felt A Plethora of Daisies would have been a magnificent title for a novel about, for example, a man who is stabbed through the heart with the stem of a frozen daisy, the murder weapon thereafter melting in the eighty-degree heat, if only something like that hadn’t been done in Dick Tracy when Meyer was just a kid being chased around the goddamn neighborhood by friendly goyim, he now felt similarly — and in agreement with Mrs. Hawkins — that Caribou Corner was perhaps the worst name ever devised for a restaurant, and especially for a steak joint. In trying to think up names that were potentially worse when it came to attracting customers to an eatery, he could think only of The Hairy Buffalo. The hero of A Plethora of Daisies would take his girlfriend to a steak joint called The Hairy Buffalo. Somebody there would shoot at him from behind a purple curtain. The hero’s name would be either Matthew, John, Peter, Andrew, Thomas, Jude, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, or James the Greater or Less since most good guys in fiction were named after the twelve apostles, the exception being anybody named Judas Iscariot who — five would get you ten — turned out to be a bad guy, and who had already been replaced by Matthias, anyway. Sometimes good guys were named after Paul or Barnabas, alternate apostles. Sometimes they were named after other biblical chaps like Mark, Luke, or Timothy. Bad guys were generally called Frank, Randy, Jug, Billy Boy, or Baldy. Nice wishy-washy guys were called Larry, Eugene, Richie, and Sammy (but not Sam). Schlemiels were called Morris, Irving, Percy, Toby, and — come to think of it — Meyer, thank you, Pop.

The man who owned Caribou Corner was called Bruce Fowles.

The name Bruce — in fiction and according to Meyer’s research — had only two connotations. Bruce was either a fag, or Bruce was a hairy-chested macho villain working against the stereotype of the pantywaist. Bruce Fowles, in real life, was a white man in his late thirties, perhaps five feet nine inches tall and weighing a hundred and sixty, with sandy-colored hair going slightly bald at the back of the head (Meyer noticed this at once). He was wearing blue jeans and a purple T-shirt imprinted with the head of a shaggy elk, or moose, or something at any rate with a great pair of antlers spreading over pectorals and clavicles and threatening to grow wild around Bruce Fowles’s throat. He came out of the restaurant kitchen drying his hands on a dish towel. If Meyer were naming him, he’d have called him Jack. Bruce Fowles looked like a Jack. He extended his hand, and took Meyer’s hand in a good Jack Fowles grip, never mind this Bruce crap.

“Hello,” he said, “I’m Bruce Fowles. My waitress says you’re from the police. What’s the violation this time?”

“No violation that I know of,” Meyer said, smiling. “I’m here to ask some questions about a girl who worked for you back in March, according to our information.”

“Would that be Clara Jean Hawkins?” Fowles asked.

“You remember her then?”

“Read about her in the newspaper the other day. Damn shame. She was a nice girl.”

“How long did she work here, Mr. Fowles?”

“Look, we don’t have to stand here, do we? Would you like a cup of coffee? Louise,” he called, gesturing to a waitress, “bring us two coffees, will you please? Sit down,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Detective Meyer,” Meyer said, and reached into his pocket for identification.

“I don’t have to see your badge,” Fowles said. “If ever anybody looked like a cop, it’s you.”

“Me?” Meyer said. “Really?” He had always thought he looked somewhat like an insurance agent, especially since he’d bought the Professor Higgins hat. The hat was on his head now, soggy and shapeless from the rain outside. Both men sat at a table near the swinging door leading to the kitchen. The time was twenty minutes to twelve, a little early for the lunch hour.

“Cops have a distinctive cop look,” Fowles said. “Restaurateurs, as it happens, also have a restaurateur look. It is my firm belief that people either choose their occupations because of the way they look, or else they evolve into what they look like because of the occupation they’ve chosen. Tell me the truth, if you saw me walking along on the street, wouldn’t you know immediately that I owned a restaurant? I mean, you wouldn’t arrest me for a pusher, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Meyer said, and smiled.

“Similarly, I didn’t have to know you were a cop to spot you as one. Even if Louise hadn’t told me there was a cop outside to see me, I’d have known what you were the minute I came through that door. Where’s the coffee, by the way? Service in this place is terrible,” he said, smiling, and signaling to the waitress again. When she came to the table, he said, “Louise, I know we have to send across the street for the coffee, but do you think we might have two cups before midnight?”

“What?” she said.

“The coffee,” Fowles said with infinite patience, “the coffee I asked you to get us. Two coffees, please. Detective Meyer here just came in out of that typhoon, and he’s drenched to the skin, and he would like a cup of coffee. I wouldn’t particularly like one, but since I’m the alleged boss here, I think it might be nice if I were offered one just for the hell of it. What do you think, Louise?”

“What?” Louise said.

“Coffees, two coffees,” Fowles said, and shooed her away with his hands. “Louise’ll be a waitress till the day she dies,” he said to Meyer. “She’ll be seventy-eight and doddering around here with a bewildered expression on her face, blinking her eyes, a trifle slack-jawed, lotsa muscle but no brains,” Fowles said, and tapped his temple with his forefinger.

“How about Clara Jean Hawkins?” Meyer said.

“A different breed of cat,” Fowles said. “I knew she’d leave one day, and it didn’t surprise me when she did. Waitressing is usually a stopgap job for most girls. At least, waitressing in a place like this, which is a combination between a cafeteria, a greasy spoon, and a local hangout. I thought of calling it The Ptomaine Ptent, with a ‘P’ in front of the ‘tent,’ decorate it like a circus tent, put things on the menu like elephant steak and tiger piss. If anybody asked for an elephant steak, we’d explain it had to be for at least a party of twelve because we’d have to kill the whole elephant — what do you think of that name, The Ptomaine Ptent?”

“I like it only a little better than Caribou Corner.”

“Awful, right? There’s something perverse in me, I know it. Maybe it’s the fact that I started this place with my wife’s money. Maybe I want it to fail, do you think that’s a possibility?”

“Is it failing?”

“Hell, no, it’s a roaring success.” He glanced at his watch. “You’re here early. If you came in at twelve-thirty, we’d have to seat you in the men’s room. And dinnertime is a madhouse. Listen, I shouldn’t kick,” Fowles said, and rapped his knuckles on the wooden table.

“Tell me more about Clara Jean Hawkins.”

“To begin with, smart. That attracts me in a woman, doesn’t it you? Brains?”

“Yes, it does,” Meyer said.

“Speaking of geniuses, where’s Louise?” Fowles said, and turned toward the swinging door and bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Louise, if you don’t bring that coffee in three seconds flat, I’m going to have you arrested for loitering!”

The swinging door flew open at once. Louise, looking harried and flushed, came out of the kitchen carrying a tray upon which were two cups of coffee. Meyer could well imagine her trying to serve tables at the height of the lunch or dinner hour. He wondered why Fowles kept her on.

“Thank you, Louise,” Fowles said, and moved the sugar bowl closer to Meyer’s side of the table. “Sugar?” he asked. “Cream? Thank you, Louise, you can go back in the kitchen and bite your nails now, go on, thank you very much.” Louise pushed her way huffily through the swinging doors. “Total idiot,” Fowles said. “She’s my niece. My wife’s brother’s daughter. A trombenik, do you understand Yiddish? You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Meyer said.

“So am I, my maiden name is Feinstein, I changed it to Fowles when I went into show biz. The Bruce is genuine, my mother’s brilliant idea, she used to be in love with Bruce Cabot when he played Magua in Last of the Mohicans. Two hundred years before I’m born, right, but she remembers old Bruce Cabot, and she names me Bruce Feinstein, terrific, huh? I did some television work four or five years ago, never really made it, decided to open a restaurant instead. Anyway, that’s when I became Bruce Fowles, when I landed the part of Dr. Andrew Malloy on Time and the City. You are doubtless familiar with Time and the City? No? You mean the police force doesn’t spend its time in the day room watching soap operas on television?”

“Swing room,” Meyer said.

“I thought it was day room. We did an episode — some episode, it lasted six months — where some cops were quarantined inside the station house, one of them had the plague or some damn thing, and the writers called it the day room.”

“Swing room,” Meyer said.

“I take your word for it. Where were we?”

“We were talking about smart girls like Clara Jean Hawkins.”

“Right. She lasted here longer than I thought she would. Smart, young, and pretty besides. Clean for this shitty neighborhood. By which I mean no fooling around with dope. We get enough pushers in here during the lunch hour to supply the entire city of Istanbul for two weeks in August.”

“How about pimps?” Meyer asked.

“We get our share. This is Diamondback, you know. Would that I were operating a place downtown, but I’m not.”

“Know anybody named Joey Peace?”

“No, who is he?”

“A pimp.” Meyer hesitated. “Clara Jean Hawkins’s pimp.”

“You’re kidding me,” Fowles said. “Is that how she ended up?”

“Yes,” Meyer said.

“I can’t believe it. Clara Jean? Never in a million years. Hooking? Clara Jean?”

“Hooking,” Meyer said. “Clara Jean.”

“How the hell did she ever get into that?” Fowles said, shaking his head.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Meyer said. “Ever see her in deep conversation with anyone who might’ve been discussing career opportunities?”

“No, never. She was cheerful and friendly with everybody, but I didn’t see any pimps sounding her. You know how they come on, they usually look for drifters, do you know what I mean, lost souls. Clara Jean had a look of confidence about her. I can’t believe she ended up this way. I honestly cannot believe this.”

“Are you sure about the dope angle?” Meyer asked.

“Why? Was she a user when she died?”

“Not according to the autopsy.”

“Not according to me, either. One hundred percent clean.”

“Any of the dealers make noises around her?”

“When don’t they? If a nun came in here saying her beads, they’d sound her about a free fix. That’s their business, isn’t it? Without addicts, there are no dealers. Sure, they came on about junk joy...”

“Junk...?”

“Joy,” Fowles supplied. “Shit City — but she wasn’t buying, she saw clear through them. Look, Mr. Meyer, she was born and raised in this sewer called Diamondback. If a girl gets to be nineteen and she isn’t pregnant, or hooking, or supporting a habit — or sometimes all three — it’s a fuckin miracle. Okay. Clara Jean was her own person, not quite free, how the fuck can you be in Diamondback? Not quite twenty-one, and never going to be white — but with a good head on her shoulders and a hell of a lot going for her. So how does she end up a hooker bleeding out her life on a sidewalk at four o’clock in the morning? Isn’t that what the newspaper said? Four A.M.?”

“That’s what it said.”

“I should’ve realized right then. I mean, what kind of woman is out on the street alone at four in the morning?”

“Maybe she wasn’t alone,” Meyer said. “Maybe whoever killed her was a client. Or even her pimp.”

“Joey Peace, is that what you said his name was?”

“Joey Peace.”

“Changed from what? Joseph Pincus?”

“That’s possible,” Meyer said. “Lots of pimps...”

“I went to school with a kid named Joseph Pincus,” Fowles said idly. “Joey Peace, huh?” He shook his head. “It just doesn’t ring a bell. I know most of the customers who come in here, and that name just isn’t familiar to me.”

“Okay, let’s get off that for a minute. Maybe you’ll remember something later on. You said Clara Jean didn’t have much to do with your seamier customers...”

“Just a smile and a nice word or two, right.”

“Ever get a man named George Chadderton in here?”

“Chadderton, Chadderton. No, I don’t think so. White or black?”

“Black.”

“Chadderton. The name sounds familiar, but...”

“He was a calypso singer.”

“Was?”

“Was. He got killed Friday night, about four hours before Clara Jean bought it with the same pistol.”

“Maybe I read about it,” Fowles said. “I don’t think I know the name from the restaurant here.”

“He was supposed to meet Clara Jean here at twelve last Saturday. That would’ve been the sixteenth.”

“No, I can’t help you there.”

“Okay, how about while she was working here? Did she have any boyfriends? Anybody ever pick her up after work? Anybody call her on the phone?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Have you got any waiters here?”

“Just waitresses.”

“Busboys?”

“Four.”

“How about the kitchen? Any male help?”

“Yeah, my cooks and my dishwashers.”

“Was she friendly with any of them?”

“Yes, she was a friendly person by nature.”

“Was she dating any of them, is what I mean.”

“I don’t think so. I’d have noticed something like that, I’m in the place day in and day out, either in the kitchen or at the cash register. I’d have noticed something like that, don’t you think?”

“Anybody named Joey work here?” Meyer asked suddenly.

“Joey? No. I’ve got a Johnny washing dishes, and I once had a busboy named José — well, I suppose that’s a Joey, huh?”

“When was this?”

“José worked here... let me see... in the spring sometime.”

“March, would it have been?”

“March, April, something like that.”

“When Clara Jean worked here?”

“Well... yeah, come to think of it.”

“When did he quit the job?”

“Well... about the same time she did, as a matter of fact.”

“Uh-huh,” Meyer said. “José what?”

“La Paz,” Fowles said.

Some ten blocks from where Meyer Meyer was discovering that “Peace” was the English equivalent of the Spanish word Paz, Steve Carella was discovering that Ambrose Harding was a very frightened man. He had come there only to ask Chadderton’s business manager whether or not he knew anything about an album the singer might have discussed with Clara Jean Hawkins. Instead, Harding immediately showed Carella a corsage that had arrived not ten minutes earlier. There had been a knock on the door, and when Harding opened it — he did not take off the night chain — there was the box sitting outside in the hall. It was not the sort of box a corsage normally came in. Not a white, rectangular box with green paper inside it and a florist’s name imprinted on the top surface. Not that kind of a box at all.

Looking at it, Carella thought it resembled some sort of gift box from one of the city’s larger department stores. In fact, the box looked instantly recognizable to him, though he couldn’t yet pinpoint the name of the department store. The box was perhaps five inches long by three inches wide by four inches deep. It was imprinted with an overall fleur-de-lis design in blue against a green field. The corsage inside the box was a pink orchid.

“Why does it scare you?” Carella asked.

“Because first of all,” Harding said, “who the fuck would want to send me an orchid?”

He was sitting in an easy chair in his own living room, the window behind him lashed now with rain that seemed determined to set the city afloat. The time was only a little past noon, but the sky outside looked more like the 5:00 P.M. sky of a winter’s day. The pink orchid sat on the coffee table in front of him, inside the box with the blue and green fleur-de-lis design. It looked innocuous enough. Carella could not understand why it seemed to terrify Harding.

“Any number of people might want to send you flowers,” Carella said. “You were hurt, after all, they knew you were in the hospital...”

“Flowers, yeah,” Harding said, “a bouquet of flowers. But not a corsage. I’m a man. Why would anyone want to send me a corsage?”

“Well, maybe... well, I don’t know,” Carella said. “Maybe the florist made a mistake.”

“Which is another thing,” Harding said. “If somebody’s gone to all the trouble of buying me a corsage — an orchid, no less — how come it’s delivered by somebody who vanishes before I can open the door? How come it isn’t in a florist’s box? How come there’s no card with it? How come the corsage just arrives like that — knock, knock on the door, ‘Who is it?’ and no answer, and there’s the box sitting outside the door. How come is what I’d like to know.”

“Well... what do you think it is?” Carella asked.

“A warning,” Harding said.

“How do you read a warning into... a... well... a... a corsage?”

“There’s a pin stuck in it,” Harding said. “Maybe somebody’s tryin to tell me I’m gonna get somethin stuck in me, too, man. Maybe somebody’s tryin to tell me I’m gonna end up like Georgie did.”

“I can understand how you might feel that way—”

“You’re damn right, considerin somebody tried to empty a pistol in my head...”

“But a flower,” Carella said, “a corsage...” and let the sentence trail, and shrugged.

“You take that thing with you,” Harding said.

“What for?”

“Give it to your lab people. See if it’s poisoned or anything.”

“I’ll do that, sure,” Carella said, “but I really don’t think—”

“Somebody tried damn hard to kill me, Mr. Carella,” Harding said. “And missed out. Cause the gun was empty. Okay. Maybe that same party is sendin me flowers before the funeral, Mr. Carella, you understand me? I’m scared. I’m out of the hospital now, where I ain’t protected no more by nurses and doctors and people all around me. I’m home now, all by my little lonesome, and all at once I get a pink orchid left outside my door, and I can tell you it scares the shit out of me.”

“Let me talk to the lieutenant,” Carella said. “Maybe we can get a man up here.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Harding said. “And have somebody look at that flower.”

“I will,” Carella said. “Meanwhile, there are some questions I want to ask you.”

“Go ahead,” Harding said.

“Do you know anyone named Clara Jean Hawkins?”

“No. Who is she?”

“Someone who knew George Chadderton. Did you know all of his business associates?”

“I did.”

“But not Clara Jean Hawkins.”

“Is she a business associate?”

“Apparently she was talking to George about doing some kind of album.”

“Is she in the record business?”

“No, she was a hooker.”

“A hooker? And she was talking to George about doing an album?”

“George never mentioned it to you?”

“Never. What kind of an album?”

“Based on her experiences as a prostitute,” Carella said.

“I can just see that in the top forty, can’t you?” Harding said, and shook his head.

“The girl seemed convinced the album would be made.”

“By who?”

“By someone who was going to charge her three thousand dollars for the privilege.”

“Ah,” Harding said, and nodded. “Vanity recording.”

“What’s that?” Carella asked.

“It’s where a company charges you anywhere from two to three hundred dollars for what they call a test pressing, or some such bullshit. After that, they—”

“A test pressing, did you say?”

“Yeah. If the company’s so-called judges like what they hear, they’ll recommend a major pressing.”

“For more money?”

“No, no, all included in the fee. There’s still plenty of profit, believe me. The major pressing is usually an album, okay? Eight or nine songs on each side of it, all by suckers like yourself. That’s eighteen songs at two, sometimes three hundred bucks a throw, that comes to four, five thousand dollars. So they’ll press fifteen hundred albums — which in a legit operation might cost you twenty-five hundred bucks — and they’ll give ten each to the eighteen ‘songwriters’ on the album, and the rest they’ll send to disc jockeys, who’ll throw them in the garbage, or to record stores around the country, who won’t even open the package. A racket, pure and simple. This was sposed to be an album, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And George was involved in it? I can’t believe George would’ve got himself involved in a vanity operation. Lots of these houses supply the suckers with lyricists or composers free of charge, all part of the hype. But George? Are you sure about this?”

“He met with the girl four times in the past month. The words ‘In the Life’ were doodled in his notebook. It’s our guess they planned to use that as the title.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. He never mentioned it to me. I know he was itchin for bigger money than he’d been gettin lately, be a way for him to get Chloe to quit that job of hers. So maybe he got this girl involved with some vanity label, and maybe... I just don’t know. If George was gettin a kickback, it might still have been worth the company’s while. Stead of havin to scrounge around for eighteen separate suckers, they’d have one sucker puttin up a full three grand, give George some of that, still make a profit. Yeah, maybe. I just can’t say for sure.”

Carella took out his notebook, and opened it to the page of names he had copied from Chadderton’s appointment calendar. “I’ve got two names here that Chloe couldn’t identify,” he said. “Would either of them be connected with vanity labels?”

“Let me hear them,” Harding said.

“Jimmy Talbot?”

“Nope, he’s a bass player. Damn good one, too.”

“Harry Caine.”

“You got it, mister. Owns a label called Hurricane. He’s a crook if ever there was one.”

“Thanks,” Carella said, and closed the notebook.

“Don’t forget to talk to your lieutenant about sendin a man up here.”

“I won’t,” Carella said.

“And get that flower tested,” Harding said.

The round-the-clock on Ambrose Harding’s apartment did not go into effect until 3:45 P.M. that afternoon. The reasons for the almost four-hour delay were many, and all of them authentic. To begin with, Carella did not go directly back to the office but instead went all the way downtown to Crescent Oval, where the offices of Hurricane Records were located. Crescent Oval was in that section of the city known as The Quarter, and number 17 Crescent Oval was a three-story brownstone set between a sandal maker’s shop and a store selling health foods. A brass escutcheon to the right of the doorbell carried only the engraved legend HURRICANE RECORDS. Carella rang the bell and waited. An answering buzz sounded within seconds. He opened the door, and moved into a paneled ground-floor landing, a flight of stairs angling upward dead ahead, a narrow corridor on the right of the steps, a door almost immediately to his right. On the door, another brass escutcheon engraved with the words hurricane records. No bell. Carella knocked on the door, and a woman’s voice said, “Come in.”

The door opened onto an informal reception room painted in varying shades of purple, all of them muted, complementary, and rather soothing to the eye. The girl sitting behind a white Formica-topped desk was eighteen or nineteen, he supposed, a good-looking black girl wearing a plum-colored suit that further complemented the coloring of the walls and the carpet. She smiled warmly and said, “May I help you, sir?”

“I’m a police officer,” Carella said, and immediately showed his shield.

“Oh,” the girl said, and smiled. “And here I thought you were a rock singer.”

“Is Mr. Caine in?” Carella asked.

“Let me check,” she said, and picked up the phone receiver. She punched a button in the base of the instrument, waited, and then said, “A police officer to see you, Mr. Caine.” She listened, laughed, said, “I don’t think so,” listened again, and then said, “I’ll send him right in.”

“What’d he say that was funny?” Carella asked.

“He wanted to know if you were tagging his car. He found a space up the block, but it’s alternate side of the street parking, and today is the other side of the street. But it’s raining and he didn’t want to go shlepping all the way over to the garage on Chauncey. I told him I didn’t think you were tagging the car. You’re not, are you?”

“I’m not,” Carella said.

“Okay, friend, pass,” the girl said, and smiled and indicated a door just beyond her desk. “Make a right when you’re inside,” she said. “It’s the second door in the corridor.”

Harry Caine was perhaps twenty-three years old, a dark-skinned black man wearing pearl gray trousers and a pink shirt, the sleeves rolled up over narrow wrists and slender forearms. He rose and extended his hand as Carella came into the room. Carella estimated his height at about five eleven. Thin, with narrow hips and shoulders, he could easily have passed for a teenage boy. The rock and roll album sleeves that decorated the walls all around his desk enlarged the initial impression — Carella might have been in some kid’s room someplace; all that was missing was the blare of a stereo.

“I’m sorry,” Caine said, “my secretary didn’t tell me your name. I’m Harry Caine.”

“Detective Carella,” he said, and took Caine’s hand.

“I’m illegally parked,” Caine said, and smiled. “I know it.”

“I’m here about another matter.”

“Phew!” Caine said, and wiped his hand across his brow in exaggerated relief. His eyes, Carella noticed for the first time, were almost yellow. Extraordinary eyes. He had never seen anyone with eyes like that in his life. “Sit down, please,” Caine said. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Carella said.

“What can I do for you?”

“You had lunch with George Chadderton last Thursday,” Carella said.

“Yes?” Caine said.

“Yes, at one P.M.”

“Yes?”

“Did you?”

“I did,” Caine said.

“What’d you talk about?”

“Why do you want to know?” Caine said, looking extremely puzzled.

Carella looked back at him. “Don’t you know he’s dead?” he asked.

“Dead? No. George?”

“He was killed Friday night.”

“I’ve been out of town, I just got home last night. I didn’t know, I’m sorry.” He hesitated. “What happened to him?”

“Someone shot him.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Well, I’m... I’m shocked,” Caine said. “I can’t say I feel any real grief — George wasn’t the sort of person one felt much affection for. But I respected him as an artist and — I’m genuinely shocked.”

“How long had you known him, Mr. Caine?”

“Oh, six months, I would say. We’ve talked record possibilities on and off for the past six months.”

“Is that what you talked about this past Thursday?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. George called me last week sometime, said he had an album idea he wanted to discuss. Well,” Caine said, and smiled, “George always had an album idea to discuss. The problem, of course, was that he wanted to do calypso, which is about as vital to the record industry as buggy whips are to transportation.”

“Was this in fact another calypso album he wanted to discuss?”

“Yes. But with a twist.”

“What was the twist?”

“Well, to begin with...” Caine hesitated. “I’m not sure I should mention this. I wouldn’t want you to think Hurricane Records is a vanity label. It isn’t.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“Although from time to time, in order to help launch the careers of individuals who might not otherwise be granted a forum...”

“Uh-huh...”

“...we will charge a fee. But only in order to defray the cost of recording, packaging, and distribution.”

“I see,” Carella said.

“But even in those instances, we pay royalties the same as Motown or RCA or Arista or any other label you might care to mention.”

“It’s just every now and then...”

“Yes, every so often...”

“...that you’ll accept a fee.”

“Yes, to reduce our risk.”

“It’s our understanding that C.J. Hawkins... does that name mean anything to you?”

“Yes, that’s the girl George and I discussed.”

“...was ready to put up three thousand dollars...”

“Yes.”

“...to have an album made by your company.”

“Yes.”

“Was George Chadderton supposed to get any of that money?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“A thousand.”

“And Hurricane Records was to get the remaining two thousand, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that low? It’s my understanding that most companies charging fees will get somewhere between two and three hundred dollars a song.”

“That’s right,” Caine said.

“What does Hurricane charge per song?”

“Two fifty.”

“And how many songs do you normally put on an LP?”

“Eight or nine on each side.”

“Which would come to, oh, four thousand dollars an album, isn’t that right?”

“More or less.”

“But Hurricane was willing to do C.J.’s for two thousand.”

“Three thousand all together.”

“Your share was only two. Eighteen songs for two thousand bucks. How come?”

“Well,” Caine said, “not eighteen.”

“Ah,” Carella said. “How many?”

“This was to be more like a demo album. As opposed to an album for distribution to disc jockeys and retail outlets.”

“How many songs on it?”

“We planned to press only one side.”

“Nine songs?”

“Eight.”

“For a three-thousand-dollar fee.”

“Hurricane’s share was only two.”

“Why were you giving a thousand to Chadderton? Because he brought the girl to you?”

“No, he was getting paid for writing the songs and recording them.”

“What kind of songs?”

“Well, calypso, of course. That’s what George wrote and performed. Calypso.”

“Which would suddenly become vital to the record industry, huh?” Carella said.

Caine smiled. “Not vital perhaps, but worth a shot. Miss Hawkins had a great deal of information George was prepared to put into the songs.”

“Were they going to collaborate on them, is that it?”

“That part of it hadn’t been worked out yet. I think it was George’s intention only to pick her brain. Apparently, she had hundreds of stories to tell. She’d only been in the life since April, from what I understand, but apparently one learns very quickly in the streets.”

“Too bad she didn’t learn a little more quickly off the streets,” Carella said.

“I’m sorry,” Caine said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean you were charging her three thousand bucks to record eight songs, which on my block comes to three hundred and seventy-five bucks a song, or a hundred and twenty-five more than you usually charge.”

“George was getting a thousand of that.”

“I see. You were getting only your usual fee, right?”

“If you care to look at it that way.”

“How would you care to look at it, Mr. Caine. Together, you were leading that kid straight down the garden.”

“She wasn’t a virgin,” Caine said, smiling.

“No,” Carella answered, “but usually she charged for the screwing.”

The smile dropped from Caine’s face. “I’m sure you’ve got a million things to do,” he said. “I don’t want to keep you.”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Caine,” Carella said, and walked out of the office. He stopped at the desk in the reception room, and asked the girl there what kind of car Mr. Caine drove. The girl gave him the year, make, and color, and then said, “Uh-oh, did I do something wrong just then?” Carella assured her she had not.

Outside in the pouring rain, he searched the street from end to end till he found the car answering the girl’s description. From a phone booth on the corner, he called Communications and asked for a computer check on the license plate. Within minutes, he learned that the car was registered to a Mr. Harry Caine, who lived in Riverhead, and that it had not been reported stolen. For the next ten minutes, Carella walked in the rain looking for the beat cop. When he found him, he identified himself and then led him back to where Caine’s car was illegally parked on the wrong side of the street.

“Ticket it,” he said.

The patrolman stared at him. The rain was drumming on Carella’s uncovered head, the rain had soaked through his coat and his shoes and his trouser legs; altogether he looked like a drowned rat. The patrolman kept staring at him. At last he shrugged and said, “Sure,” and began writing out the summons. The time he scrawled into the righthand corner was 1:45 P.M.

Carella did not get back to the office until two-thirty that afternoon, at which time the lieutenant had a reporter from the city’s morning paper in with him, wanting to know not about the relatively obscure calypso singer found dead in the 87th Precinct this past Friday night, nor even about the more obscure hooker found dead in Midtown South four and a half hours later, but instead about a rash of jewelry-store robberies that seemed to have leaped the dividing line that separated the scuzzy Eight-Seven from its posh neighboring precinct to the west. The reporter was asking Lieutenant Byrnes whether he felt the robbers who’d held up a store on Hall Avenue just west of Monastery Road were the same thieves who’d been raising havoc in the Eight-Seven for, lo, these many months. Byrnes refused to admit to any reporter on earth that any damn thieves were raising havoc in his damn precinct, and besides, he didn’t consider six jewelry-store hold-ups to be havoc, nor did he even consider them to be a rash. In any event, he was occupied with the reporter until a quarter to three, at which time Carella gained access to his office, carrying with him a box with a blue and green fleur-de-lis design. A handkerchief tented over his head, Carella lifted the lid from the box.

“You have to stop bringing me flowers,” Byrnes said. “The men are beginning to talk.”

“Left outside Harding’s apartment a little while ago,” Carella said. “He thinks it means something.”

“Mm,” Byrnes said.

“Whether it does or not isn’t important,” Carella said. “He’s damn scared, and I think he may have a point. Whoever tried to blow him away—”

“May try it again,” Byrnes said, and nodded.

“Can we spare a patrolman up there?”

“For how long?”

“At least till we pick up Joey Peace.”

“Have you talked to Meyer yet?”

“Yes, and he told me it’s José La Paz. I’ve already called the Gaucho to let him know.”

“How long do you think it’ll be before we flush him out?”

“I’ve got no idea, Pete. It could be ten minutes, it could be ten days.”

“How long do you want the cover on Harding?”

“Can you let me have a week? Round-the-clock?”

“I’ll check it with the captain.”

“Would you, Pete? I want to get this down to the lab. Sam promised me a report by morning if I can get it to him right away.” Both men looked at their watches. Byrnes was picking up the phone receiver as Carella left the office.

Captain Frick enjoyed being in command of the entire Eight-Seven, including those plainclothes cops who inhabited the ruckus room on the second floor of the station house. There were 186 patrolmen assigned to the Eight-Seven, and together with the sixteen detectives upstairs, the small army under Frick’s command constituted a formidable bulwark against the forces of evil in this city. Byrnes was now asking that three men in the uniformed ranks be taken from active duty elsewhere to be placed outside the door of a black business manager (not that his blackness mattered) on a round-the-clock basis, one man for every eight hours, three men each and every day of the week for the next week. Frick did not want to take this responsibility upon himself. Frick felt that three men fewer against the forces of evil were three men more on the side of the forces of evil. He told Byrnes he would get back to him, and at exactly one minute past 3:00, he placed a call to the Chief of Field Services in Headquarters downtown on High Street, and asked if he might feel free to release three patrolmen each day for the next week for a round-the-clock on a black business manager whose client had been a homicide victim this past Friday night up here. The C.O.F.S. wanted to know what the business manager’s blackness had to do with a goddamn thing on God’s green earth, and Frick said, at once, “Nothing, sir, it has nothing whatever to do with anything whatever,” and the C.O.F.S. granted permission to assign the three men on a round-the-clock. It was by then 3:09 P.M., and it was still raining.

Frick knew, from his years of duty on the streets before he made desk sergeant and then lieutenant and then captain, that the 8:00-to-4:00 tour of duty ended at 3:45 P.M., when the relieving patrolmen stood roll call in the muster room, after which the preceding shift was supposed to be relieved on post. He further knew that any smart criminal in this city should have planned the commission of his crimes for the fifteen minutes preceding 8:00 A.M., 4:00 P.M., and 12:00 midnight, since it was then that an overlap took place between those patrolmen who were returning prematurely to the station house, and those patrolmen who were standing roll call prior to going out on the street to “relieve on post.” A tour of duty is a long eight hours, and one can perhaps forgive a bit of eagerness on the part of men who’ve been pounding a beat. Anyway, Frick knew it would be senseless to assign an off-going patrolman to the first watch on Harding’s apartment, so he called down to the desk and asked that the sergeant assign a man from the 4:00-to-midnight to the first segment of a round-the-clock that would continue through the next week at least, or certainly until further notice.

The first patrolman assigned to Harding’s apartment was a rookie named Conrad Lehmann. He was also the last patrolman assigned there, since when he got there, he found the door ajar and a black man lying dead on the kitchen floor with two neatly spaced bullet holes in his face.