Calypso

9

There is nothing cops like better than continuity, even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it. Before Alex Leopold raised his baffled head, Carella and Meyer were looking for a connection between the dead George Chadderton and his missing brother, Santo. Now, thanks to a few .38-caliber Smith & Wesson slugs, they were looking for a connection between a dead calypso singer and a dead hooker, both of them black, both of them from Diamondback, both of them possibly killed with the same weapon. Now that the preliminary connection had been made, Carella asked Ballistics to compare the bullets that had slain Clara Jean Hawkins with the bullets that had slain George Chadderton in an attempt to pinpoint positively whether or not the same weapon had been used in both murders. He asked for a rush on the comparison tests, and Gombes promised he’d get back to him by four that afternoon, saying he would ordinarily have tackled the job sooner except that they’d just got what seemed like a breakthrough in a sniper case that had been baffling the Three-Six for months, and he had to get to that first. He called back at ten minutes to five. He called to report that the same gun, most likely a .38 Smith & Wesson, either the Regulation Police or the Terrier, had very definitely been used in both murders. He asked Carella if there was anything else he could do for him at the moment. Carella told him no, and thanked him, and then hung up and sat staring at the phone for several moments.

He had by that time spent most of the afternoon with Leopold and Meyer, doing all the leg work he’d earlier suggested. Together they had hit all of Midtown South’s hot-bed hotels and massage parlors, and had talked to most of the pimps in the precinct’s Lousy File, but they still had not come up with a make on Joey Peace. Sighing, Carella picked up the phone again and called first Danny Gimp and then Fats Donner, both highly valued police informers, to ask if they know a hooker named Clara Jean Hawkins or a pimp named Joey Peace. Fats Donner, who was rather more sexually oriented than Danny Gimp, laughed when he heard the pimp’s name, and then asked if it was spelled P-I-E-C-E, which he thought might be a singularly good name for a pimp. He had nonetheless never heard of a gentleman of leisure who called himself by such a moniker. Neither had Danny Gimp. Both men promised to go on the earie, but each expressed doubt that he’d come up with anything. “Very often,” Fats said in his most unctuously oily, pale blubbery way, “a pimp will use a nickname known only to the girls in his own stable. This as protection against other pimps, not to mention the law.” Carella thanked him for the invaluable insight into the world’s oldest profession, and then hung up.

He was feeling testy and irritable. According to George Chadderton’s appointment calendar, the singer had seen Clara Jean Hawkins a total of four times before each of them was killed, and was scheduled for another meeting with her on the day after the murders. The first two calendar entries had called her “Hawkins,” and the remaining three had called her “C.J.” It was possible that these androgynous jottings, considering the lady’s occupation, were designed to throw Chloe Chadderton off the track. But if the singer had been enjoying the dead girl’s professional services, why would he have risked listing his appointments with her at all? If their relationship had been purely sexual, would he, for Christ’s sake, have put it in writing? Frowning, Carella went to where Meyer was typing up his report on the visit to Mrs. Hargrove.

“I think it’s time we had a meeting on this damn case,” he said.

It was, in fact, time to put on the old thinking caps, time to become deductive detectives, time to become reasoning raisonneurs, time to look into that old crystal ball and dope this thing out. So they got together in a police ritual as old as time, hoping to snowball the case — throw in ideas and suppositions, shoot down some theories, elaborate on others. The men involved in the crap game were Carella and Meyer, the detectives officially assigned to the Chadderton case; Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, who was in command of the squad and who had every right to know what his men were up to; Detective Cotton Hawes, whose puritanical upbringing often succeeded in bringing back to stark Bostonian reality any theory that was veering too far from magnetic north; and Detective Bert Ming, whose boyish good looks masked a mind as innocent as a baby’s backside.

“He’s got to be new on the job,” Meyer said.

“No arrests yet,” Carella said.

“Which is why there’s nothing on him down at I.S.,” Kling said.

“Or in the various Lousy Files around town,” Carella said.

“And which is why he’s only got four chicks in his stable,” Hawes said, totally unaware that he’d mixed a metaphor. He was perched on the edge of Meyer’s desk, the rain-soaked windows tracing a slithering pattern across his face, lending to it a somewhat frightening look. The look was strengthened by the fact that Hawes had a white streak running through his red hair, just above the left temple, a memento from a knife-wielding building superintendent away back then when Hawes was but a neophyte cop who never mixed his metaphors.

“Nothing in the phone book, huh?” Kling asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” Byrnes said, somewhat brusquely, “so far you’re handling Leopold’s case brilliantly. You’re tracking down the pimp the girl worked for, wonderful, you’ll probably find him one of these days, and maybe you’ll learn he didn’t like the way she was doing her nails or combing her hair, so maybe he put a couple of .38 slugs in her last Friday night, great. If you’re right, you’ve solved Leopold’s case and he’ll get a promotion to detective/first, great. Meanwhile, what are you doing to find Chadderton’s killer?”

Byrnes delivered this somewhat lengthy (for Byrnes) speech in a tone of voice entirely devoid of sarcasm. His blue eyes were without the slightest trace of malicious amusement, his mouth betrayed neither smirk nor snarl, his words were in fact as mild as the balmy zephyrs of spring, which warm breezes all the detectives gathered around Meyer’s desk would have preferred to the blustery rain outside the squadroom this very moment. But they all knew Byrnes pretty well, they had all over the years grown accustomed to his flat delivery and his no-nonsense appearance, the iron-gray hair and the blue eyes that followed you like tracer bullets in the night. They heard each word fall soddenly now, like the raindrops outside, ploppity-plop-plip onto Meyer’s desk top and onto the worn green linoleum around the desk, ploppity-plip-plop all over their case like a big puppy pissing on paper under the kitchen sink.

“Well, what we thought...” Carella said.

“Mm, what did you think?” Byrnes asked, again without sarcasm, but somehow his words kept dampening things.

“We thought the connection between the girl and the pimp...”

“Mm-huh?”

“Is... uh... Chadderton wrote a song about a hooker.”

“He did, huh?” Byrnes said.

“Yes, sir,” Carella said. “In which he exhorts her—”

“Exhorts?” Byrnes said.

“Yes, sir. Exhorts, right?” Carella said to Hawes.

“Sure, exhorts.”

“Exhorts her to quit being a whore, you know.”

“Uh-huh,” Byrnes said.

“So what we thought...” Meyer said.

“What we thought,” Carella said, “is that if this Joey Peace is the one who killed the girl, then since it’s the same gun and all, since Ballistics has nailed it as the same gun, then maybe he also killed George Chadderton because Chadderton was trying to convince the girl to get out of the life and all.”

“Where does it say that?” Byrnes asked.

“Say what?”

“That Chadderton was trying to convince the Hawkins girl to get out of the life.”

“That’s just a supposition,” Carella said.

“Ah,” Byrnes said.

“But he did write a song about a hooker,” Hawes said.

“Where does it say the song’s about this particular hooker?” Byrnes said.

“Well... I don’t know,” Hawes said. “Steve, is it about this particular hooker?”

“Not according to Harding.”

“Who’s Harding?” Kling asked.

“Chadderton’s business manager. He says Chadderton’s songs weren’t about anybody in particular.”

“Then he wasn’t writing about the Hawkins girl,” Byrnes said.

“Well, I... guess not,” Carella said.

“Then where’s the connection?”

“I don’t know yet. But, Pete, they were killed with the same damn pistol. Now that’s connection enough, isn’t it?”

“It’s connection enough,” Byrnes said, “yes. And it’ll be very nice if when you find this Joey Peace, you also find a Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special...”

“No, either a Regulation or a Terrier,” Carella said.

“Whatever,” Byrnes said. “It’ll be very nice if you find the murder weapon tucked in his socks or his undershorts, and it’ll be very nice if he admits he killed the girl and also killed Chadderton in the bargain because Chadderton wrote a song about somebody who could’ve been the Hawkins girl. So yes, it’ll be very nice if Joey Peace is your man. But, gentlemen, I can tell you after too many damn years in this lousy business that nothing is ever as easy as it seems it might be, nothing ever is. And if it stops raining this very goddamn minute, I for one will be very goddamn surprised.”

It did not stop raining that very goddamn minute.

The only thing that ended that minute was the meeting. Hawes and Kling went home, Byrnes went back into his office, and Meyer went back to his desk to finish typing up his report. Carella phoned Midtown South and asked to speak to Detective Leopold, intending to report to him on the positive finding from Ballistics. He was advised by a detective named Peter Sherman that Leopold had left for the day. Carella hung up, checked his personal phone listings for the name “Palacios, Francisco,” and dialed the number.

Francisco Palacios owned and operated a store that sold medicinal herbs, dream books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards, and the like. Gaucho Palacios and Cowboy Palacios ran a store behind the other store, and this one offered for sale such medically approved “marital aids” as dildoes, French ticklers, open-crotch panties, vibrators (eight inch and ten inch), leather executioner’s masks, chastity belts, whips with leather thongs, and ben-wa balls in both plastic and gold plate. The sale of these items was not illegal in this city; the Gaucho and the Cowboy were breaking no laws, this was not why they ran their store behind the store owned and operated by Francisco. Instead, they did so out of a sense of responsibility to the Puerto Rican community. They did not, for example, want an old lady in a black shawl to wander into their shop and faint dead away at the sight of the playing cards featuring men, women, police dogs, and midgets in fifty-two marital-aid positions, fifty-four if you counted the jokers. Both the Gaucho and the Cowboy had community pride to match that of Francisco himself. Francisco, the Gaucho, and the Cowboy were, in fact, all one and the same person, and they were collectively a police informer.

“Palacios,” a voice said.

“Cowboy, this is Steve Carella, I need some help.”

“Name it,” the Gaucho said.

“I’m looking for a pimp named Joey Peace. Ever hear of him?”

“Not offhand. Is he from here in El Infierno?”

“Don’t know anything about him but his name. Supposed to have had four hookers in his stable, one of them murdered this past Friday night.”

“What’s her name?”

“Clara Jean Hawkins.”

“White? Black?”

“Black.”

“Okay, let me check around. You gonna be there tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here,” Carella said.

“I’ll call you.”

“Thanks,” Carella said, and hung up. It was still raining. He walked to where Meyer was busily typing at his own desk, and told him he was heading uptown to Diamondback to talk to the dead girl’s mother — did Meyer want to come along? Considering the tone of Carella’s voice, Meyer thought it might be best to accept the invitation graciously.

Dorothy Hawkins was a light-complexioned black woman in her early fifties, Carella guessed, her body sinewy rather than slender, her face gaunt rather than finely chiseled; even Meyer, with his new-found novelistic turn of mind, might have chosen those more severe descriptive adjectives to define the woman who opened the door for them and let them into her Pettit Lane apartment. The time was 6:30 P.M. Mrs. Hawkins explained that she had just got home from work. She worked assembling transistor radios in a factory out on Bethtown. A shot glass of whiskey sat on the kitchen table before her; she explained that it was bourbon and asked the detectives if they would care for some.

“Take the chill off this mis’able rainy weather,” she said.

When the detectives declined, she drank the whiskey neat and in a single swallow, and then went to the cabinet, took down the half-full bottle and poured herself another shot. The detectives sat opposite her at the kitchen table. A wall clock threw minutes into the room. There were no cooking smells in the apartment; Carella wondered if Mrs. Hawkins planned to drink her dinner. Outside, neon tinted the slanting rain, transmogrifying the windowpane trickles into nests of disturbed green snakes.

“Mrs. Hawkins,” Carella said, “my partner and I are investigating a case we feel is linked to your daughter’s death, and we’d like to ask you some questions about it. If you feel you’d like to answer them, we’d be most appreciative.”

“Yes, anythin,” she said.

“First off,” he said, “do you know anyone named George Chadderton?”

“No,” she said.

“We have reason to believe that he knew your daughter. Did she ever mention him in your presence?”

“I don’t recall hearin his name, no.”

“Nor Santo Chadderton, is that right?” Meyer asked.

“Nor him neither,” Mrs. Hawkins said.

“Ma’am,” Carella said, “you told Detective Leopold that your daughter was a prostitute...”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“How did you know that for a fact?”

“Clara Jean told me.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“Two, three weeks ago.”

“Until that time, did you have any idea she was...”

“I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure. She kept tellin me she was workin nights some hotel downtown. Doin some kind of clerkin work downtown.”

“Did she mention any hotel by name?” Carella asked at once.

“She did, but I forget it now.”

“Downtown where?”

“I don’t remember. I ain’t too familiar with the other parts of the city ’cept Diamondback here.”

“When did she stop living here, Mrs. Hawkins?” Meyer asked.

“Oh, got to be six months at least. Told me she needed t’live closer to the job, the hotel where she was clerkin nights. Said it was dangerous takin the subway uptown here after she finished work, three, four o’clock in the mornin. I could unnerstan that, it seemed reasonable to me.”

“And you didn’t suspect anything at the time?”

“No, she was always a good girl, never had no trouble with her. Never hung aroun the street gangs like some of the other girls in this neighborhood, never messed with dope. She was a good girl, Clara Jean.”

“You’re sure about the dope, are you?” Meyer said.

“Positive. You go ask the doctor done the autopsy. You go ask him did he find any dope inside my little girl, did he find any marks on her arms or legs, you just ask him. I used to watch her like a hawk, search her arms an legs every afternoon when she come home from school, every night when she come home from a date. If I’da seed so much as a pinprick, I’da broke her head.”

“Where’d she go to school, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“Right here in Diamondback. Edward Victor High.”

“Did she graduate?”

“Last January.”

“Then what?”

“She took a month off, said she wanted a li’l rest before she started lookin for work. In March, she got a job waitressin here in Diamondback, but she wasn’t makin much money at it, so she left that in April musta been, and took the job clerkin at the hotel downtown — leastwise that’s what she tole me. Moved out of here in May. How many months is that?”

“Five, ma’am.”

“I thought it was six. I tole you six before, didn’t I?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, it’s five then.” She shook her head. “Seems longer.”

“Where was she waitressing?” Meyer asked.

“Caribou Corner, here in Diamondback. That’s a steak joint, I don’t know why they give it such a god-awful name. A caribou’s some kind of big moose or somethin, ain’t it?”

“I think so,” Meyer said.

“Name like that don’t make me want to eat no steak, I can tell you that.”

“Caribou Corner,” Carella said. “C.C.”

“Pardon?” Mrs. Hawkins said.

“Right, that’s what it meant,” Meyer said. “Clara Jean at Caribou Corner.”

“Mrs. Hawkins,” Carella said, “are you certain your daughter never mentioned anyone named George Chadderton?”

“I’m positive.”

“When she moved out, did she take everything she owned with her? All her personal possessions? Diaries, address books...”

“Didn’t keep no diary. But she took all her other things with her, yes. You mean where she kept her phone numbers an all?”

“Yes.”

“Took ’em with her.”

“Did she leave anything of hers here?”

“Well, some nightgowns an a few bras and panties, like that. So if she come up to spend a day and she needed somethin to sleep in, or a fresh change of underthings, they’d be handy.”

“Did she come here often?”

“Ever now and then.”

“When did you last see her alive?”

“Thursday.”

“She was here this past Thursday?”

“Well, past two months, she been comin home ever Thursday.”

“Why’s that?”

“Just to see her mama, I guess,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and suddenly avoided Carella’s eyes.

“Mm-huh,” he said. “This is something new, though, huh? The Thursday visits?”

“Well, past couple of months.”

“You say she moved out in May...”

“Yes, May.”

“And this is September.”

“That’s right.”

“So if she started visiting you on Thursdays a couple of months ago...”

“That’s right, Thursdays.”

“That’d mean she started visiting you in July, is that right?”

“I spose,” Mrs. Hawkins said.

“Had she come to see you at all in May and June?”

“No, that’s when she just moved out, you know.”

“But in July she started coming up here every Thursday.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Hawkins said. Her eyes still would not meet his. She rose suddenly, went to the cabinet, took down the bottle of bourbon and poured herself another shot. She drained the glass at once, and poured it full again. Silently, the detectives watched her.

“Mrs. Hawkins,” Carella said, “have you got any idea why your daughter suddenly started coming up here every Thursday?”

“I tole you. To see her mama,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and lifted the shot glass again.

“What time did she usually get here?”

“Oh, in the mornin sometime.”

“What time in the morning?”

“Oh, sometime before noon. I’d be at work, you see, but I’d usually call on my lunch hour, and she’d be here.”

“Sleeping?”

“What?”

“When you called, would she be sleeping?”

“No, no, wide awake.”

“Did she ever mention having worked the night before?”

“Well, I never asked her. When she first started comin, I thought she was workin for that hotel, you see. Wednesday night was when she got paid, she tole me, an Thursday was when she come uptown to see her mama.”

“With her paycheck?”

“Well, no, it was cash.”

“How much cash?”

“Well... two hundred dollars ever Thursday.”

“And you never suspected that this money might be coming from prostitution?”

“No, I never did. Clara Jean was a good girl.”

“But finally she told you.”

“Yes.”

“Just two or three weeks ago.”

“Yes.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“That she was prostitutin herself, and that the man takin care of her and three other girls was somebody named Joey Peace.”

“Confessed all this to you, huh?”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“We was feelin close that day. I had taken sick and didn’t go to work, and when Clara Jean come to see me, she made me some soup an we sat in the bedroom watchin television together. Just before she went to the—” Mrs. Hawkins cut herself short.

“Yes?” Carella said.

“Down to the grocery,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “She tole me what she’d been doin these past months, the prostitutin herself, you know.”

“Did she say anything about that two hundred dollars every week?”

“Well, no, she didn’t.”

“She didn’t mention, for example, that this might be money she was keeping from Joey Peace?”

“No, she never said nothin about that.”

“Because you know, I guess, that most pimps demand all of a girl’s earnings,” Carella said.

“I woulda guessed that.”

“Yet your daughter came around with two hundred dollars in cash every Thursday.”

“Yes. Well, yes, she did,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and lifted the shot glass again.

“Did she leave that money with you, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“No,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and hastily swallowed the bourbon remaining in the glass.

“Did she take it with her when she left?”

“Well, I... I just never asked her what she done with it.”

“Then how’d you know she had it with her each week?”

“She showed it to me one time.”

“Showed you two hundred dollars in cash?”

“That’s right, yes.”

“Just the one time?”

“Well... I guess more than one time.”

“How many times, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“Well, I guess... I spose ever time she come here.”

“Every time? Every Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Showed you two hundred dollars in cash every Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I... I don’t unnerstan what you mean.”

“Why did she show you two hundred dollars in cash every Thursday?”

“Well, she didn’t exactly show it to me.”

“Then what did she do?”

“Just tole me she had it, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“So I’d know what... so I’d... so in case anythin happened to her...”

“Did she think something was about to happen to her?” Meyer asked at once.

“No, no.”

“Then why’d she want you to know about the money?”

“Well, just in case, that’s all,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and reached again for the bourbon bottle.

“Hold off on the sauce a minute,” Carella said. “What was your daughter doing with that two hundred bucks a week?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and shrugged.

“Was she hiding it here from her pimp?” Meyer asked.

“No,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and shook her head.

“Then where was she keeping it?” Carella asked.

Mrs. Hawkins did not answer.

“If not here, where?” Meyer said.

“A bank?” Carella said.

“What bank?” Meyer said.

“Where?” Carella said.

“A bank, yes,” Mrs. Hawkins said.

“Which one?”

“The State National. On Culver and Hughes.”

“A savings account?” Carella asked.

“Yes.”

“Where’s the passbook?”

“I don’t know. Clara Jean kept it in her pocketbook, she always had it in her pocketbook when she come up here.”

“No, she didn’t keep it in her pocketbook,” Meyer said. “It wasn’t in her pocketbook the night she was killed.”

“Well then maybe it’s in that apartment she lived in with the other girls.”

“No, if she was hiding the money from her pimp, she wouldn’t have kept the passbook in that apartment.”

“So where is it, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“Well, I just got no idea.”

“Mrs. Hawkins, is it here? Is the passbook here in this apartment?”

“Not to my knowledge. Not unless Clara Jean left it here without tellin me about it.”

“Mrs. Hawkins,” Carella said, “I think it’s here in this apartment, and I think you know it’s here, I think you know exactly where it is, and I think you ought to go get it for us because it might—”

“Why?” Mrs. Hawkins said, suddenly and angrily. “So you can go to the bank and take out all the money?”

“How could we possibly do that?” Carella asked.

“If you got the passbook, you could take out all the money.”

“Is that what you plan to do?” Meyer asked.

“What I plan to do is my business, not yours. I know the police, don’t think I don’t know the police. Firemen, too, we don’t call them the Forty Thieves for nothin in this neighborhood. I had a fire in my apartment on St. Sebastian once, they stole everthin wasn’t nailed to the floor. So don’t tell me about the police an the firemen. You done that autopsy on her ’thout checkin with me, didn’t you? Her own mother, nobody ast was it all right to cut her up that way.”

“An autopsy is mandatory in a homicide,” Carella said.

“Ain’t nobody ast me was it all right,” Mrs. Hawkins said.

“Ma’am, they were trying to—”

“I know what they was trying to do, don’t you think I know about bullets an all? But they shoulda ast. Was I a white woman livin on Hall Avenue, they’da ast in a minute. So you think I’m gonna turn over a bank account got twenty-six hundred dollars in it? So somebody can go draw out all the money, and that’s the last I’ll see or hear of it? I know the police, don’t think I don’t know how you operate, all of you. Take me six months to earn that kinda money after taxes.”

“Mrs. Hawkins,” Meyer said, “the passbook is worthless to us. And possibly to you as well.”

“Worth twenty-six hundred dollars, that passbook.”

“Not unless it’s a joint account,” Meyer said.

“Or a trust account,” Carella said.

“I don’t know what neither of those mean.”

“Whose name is on the passbook?” Carella asked.

“Clara Jean’s.”

“Then, ma’am, the bank simply will not honor any signature but hers without letters testamentary or letters of administration.”

“Clara Jean’s dead,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “Ain’t no way she can sign her name no more.”

“That’s true. Which means the bank’ll hold that money until a court determines what’s to be done with it.”

“What you think’s gonna be done with it? They was only me an Clara Jean in the family, I’m all who’s left now, they’ll give the money to me, that’s what.”

“I’m sure they will. But in the meantime, no one can touch it, Mrs. Hawkins. Not you, not us, not anybody.” Carella paused. “May we see the passbook? All we need is the account number.”

“Why? So you can get the bank to pay over the money to you?”

“Mrs. Hawkins, you surely can’t believe that any bank in this city would turn over money in a personal savings account—”

“I don’t know what to believe no more,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and suddenly began weeping.

“Where’s the passbook?” Carella asked.

“In the... there’s a vase on top of the television set in my bedroom. It’s in the vase. I figured nobody’d search in the vase,” she said, drying her eyes and suddenly looking across the kitchen table to Carella. “Don’t steal the money,” she said. “If you got ways of stealing it from me, please don’t. That’s my daughter’s blood in that account. That’s the money was gonna buy her out of the life.”

“What do you mean?” Carella said.

“The record album,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “That’s the money was gonna get that album made.”

“What album?” Meyer said.

“The idea she had for an album.”

“Yes, what album?”

“About all her experiences in the life.”

“‘In the Life,’” Carella said, and looked at Meyer. “There it is. There’s the connection. Who was going to do this album, Mrs. Hawkins? Did she say?”

“No, she only tole me she needed three thousand dollars for it. Said she was gonna get rich from it, take us both out of Diamondback, maybe move to California. So... please don’t steal that money from me. If... if a court’s got to decide, like you say, then let them decide. I was thinkin, you see, of maybe goin west, like Clara Jean wanted for us, but if you steal that money from me...”

And suddenly she was weeping again.

They did not take the passbook when they left Dorothy Hawkins’s apartment because they frankly weren’t sure of their right to do so, and they didn’t want any static later about misappropriation, especially this month when fourteen cops at the Two-One in Majesta had been arrested by departmental shooflies for selling narcotics previously appropriated from sundry arrested addicts and pushers. Carella and Meyer were too experienced to go begging for trouble, not when they knew that all they needed was the passbook number and a court order asking the bank to release to them a duplicate statement on the account from the day of initial deposit to the present date.

Early Tuesday morning, in a teeming rain that was causing all the city’s forecasters to crack jokes about arks, they drove downtown to High Street, and requested and obtained an order from a municipal judge. At ten minutes to eleven that same Tuesday morning, September 19, the manager of the State National Bank on Culver Avenue and Hughes Street in Diamondback read the order and promptly asked his secretary to have a duplicate statement prepared for “these gentlemen from the Police Department.” Carella and Meyer felt vaguely flattered. The photocopy was made within minutes; they left the bank at precisely 11:01, and went to sit in Carella’s automobile, where together they looked over the figures. The day was not only wet, it had turned unseasonably cold as well. The engine was running, the heater was on, the windshield fogged over as the men read the statement.

Clara Jean Hawkins had opened the account on June 22, with a deposit of two hundred dollars. There had since been twelve regular weekly deposits of two hundred dollars, up to and including the last one made on September 14, just before her death. Thirteen deposits in all, for a balance of twenty-six hundred dollars. A glance at Carella’s pocket calendar showed that the dates of deposit were all Thursdays, corroborating Mrs. Hawkins’s statement that her daughter visited every week on that day. That was all they learned from Clara Jean Hawkins’s savings account.

It seemed like a hell of a long way to have come for very little.