Fiddlers

2.

THE TWO DETECTIVES met for lunch in a diner on Albermarle, two hours after Carella received the telephone call. He figured he knew what Kramer wanted. He wasn’t wrong.

‘The thing is,’ Kramer was telling him, ‘we don’t catch many homicides up the Nine-Eight. This is more up your alley, you know what I mean.’

Low crime rate in the Nine-Eight, was what Kramer was saying. As compared to the soaring statistics uptown in the asshole of creation, was what Kramer was saying. What’s another homicide more or less to you guys, Kramer was saying. Carella was inclined to tell him, Thanks, pal, but our platter is full right now. If only it weren’t for the First Man Up rule.

Kramer wouldn’t have called if the Ballistics match hadn’t come through so fast. You get a blind man shot dead outside a nightclub Wednesday night, and then Friday night, at the other end of the city, you get a woman killed cooking an omelet in her own apartment, there’s no connection, right? Unless Ballistics calls early Monday morning to tell you the same nine-millimeter Glock was used in both shootings. That can capture a person’s attention, all right. It had certainly caught Kramer’s, who was now munching on a ham and egg sandwich while trying not to be too aggressive about the department’s time-honored First Man Up rule. Hence his song and dance about the Nine-Eight’s inexperience with matters homicidal.

‘So what do you say?’ he asked Carella. ‘I’ll turn over our paper to you, the Eight-Seven can pick it up from there. This should be a snap for you guys, you already got a gun match.’

A snap, Carella thought, and wondered how many nines were loose in the city.

‘I’d have to check with the Loot,’ he said, ‘see if he thinks we can take on another homicide just now.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Kramer said, and then casually added, ‘but he’s familiar with FMU, of course.’ And further added, ‘Which is the case here. You caught your blind guy two days before we caught the omelet lady. So what do you say?’ Kramer asked again.

He knew he had Carella dead to rights on FMU. He was just being polite.

Carella hoped he’d at least pay for the lunch.

* * * *

‘Way I understand this,’ Parker said, ‘is we’re now the garbage can of the Detective Division, is that it?’

There were only five men in the lieutenant’s office and Parker had the floor. He was dressed this Monday afternoon the way he usually dressed for work: like a bum. Unshaven. Blue jeans and a T-shirt. Short-sleeved Hawaiian-print shirt over that, but only to hide the automatic holstered at his right hip.

‘I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,’ Carella said.

‘No? Then what does it mean when any murder done with a Glock gets dumped on us?’

‘Not every Glock. Just the ones that match the blind-man kill.’

‘Which we caught,’ Lieutenant Byrnes explained again. Bullet-headed, gray-haired, square-jawed, he looked like an older Dick Tracy sitting behind his comer-office desk. ‘Which means First Man Up prevails,’ he explained further.

‘Like I said,’ Parker continued, undeterred. ‘We’re the DD’s garbage can.’

‘How many have there been so far?’ Genero asked. Curly-haired, brown-eyed, the youngest man on the squad, he always sounded tentative. Or maybe just stupid.

‘Just two, counting the omelet lady.’

‘That ain’t so many,’ Genero said. ‘Can you run them by us?’ he said, trying to sound executive.

‘The blind guy is the one we caught,’ Meyer said. ‘Ten thirty last Wednesday night.’

Bald and burly, shirtsleeves rolled up and shirt collar open because the squadroom’s air conditioner wasn’t working again on one of the hottest days this June, he hunched over Carella’s desk, consulting the DD report.

‘That would’ve been?’

‘June sixteenth.’

‘Fifty-eight years old. Two in the head,’ Meyer said.

‘From a Glock?’

‘A Glock. Apparently, nothing was stolen from him. His wallet still contained a check for three hundred dollars, and a hundred and change in cash, presumably tip money.’

‘And the next one?’

Carella walked over from the watercooler. He moved like an athlete, though he wasn’t one, his skills limited to stickball when he was a kid growing up in Riverhead. He picked up the Nine-Eight’s report, and studied it again, together with the other detectives this time. Standing side by side, reading the report, the men could have been accountants looking over a client’s weekly payroll report - if only it weren’t for the shoulder holsters.

And the nine-millimeter Glocks in them.

Just like the one that killed the omelet lady and the blind guy.

‘Friday night,’ Carella said. ‘Calm’s Point. The Nine-Eight phoned this morning, right after they got a Ballistics match.’

‘Sure, the word’s out,’ Parker said. ‘Dump it on the Eight-Seven.’

‘Perp climbed in the window and shot her while she was cooking an omelet,’ Meyer said.

‘What kind of omelet was it?’ Genero asked.

Parker looked at him.

‘I’m curious.’

‘Who was the vic?’ Parker asked.

‘Woman named Alicia Hendricks. Fifty-five years old.’

‘Point is,’ Byrnes said, ‘Steve and Meyer can’t handle it alone. We’re looking at overtime here. Two homicides in as many…’

‘Like I said, we’re the garbage can here,’ Parker said.

‘How do you want us to divvy this, Loot?’ Carella asked.

‘I thought Andy and Richard could get on the latest one…’

‘Who caught it again?’ Genero asked.

‘The Nine-Eight. Detective up there named Kramer.’

‘Like in Seinfeld?’

‘There’s other Kramers in this world, Richard.’

‘Like I didn’t know, Andy.’

‘You and Meyer stick with the violin player. And head up the team.’

‘We better hope there ain’t another one,’ Parker said.

‘Another violin player?’ Genero asked.

‘Another anybody,’ Parker said.

This was truly a pain in the ass.

* * * *

Calm’s Point could have been a foreign nation. Took them forty minutes downtown from the Eight-Seven and then over the bridge to the Nine-Eight, where the most recent Glock murder had occurred. Was what they were already calling them: the Glock Murders. In the dead woman’s apartment now, the inheriting detectives felt like they’d just crossed the Euphrates.

The body had been removed long ago, but its chalked outline was still on the kitchen floor. Frying pan on the stove, cold mushrooms and eggs in it, lady’d been cooking an omelet. Big carving knife on the floor, where she’d dropped it when the killer aced her. Fire-escape window open wide, they assumed this had been the point of entry.

What troubled them was that this time he - or she -had been invasive. The blind violinist had been shot on the street. This time, the killer had entered the vic’s living space, which meant this wasn’t just a random killing, this was a chosen target. Which could or could not mean that the previous vic had been deliberately selected as well. In which case, the killer had so far picked targets in disparate parts of the city. The blind guy all the way uptown in the Eight-Seven’s turf, and now the omelet lady, here in her own apartment in Calm’s Point.

No apparent theft this time, either. Lady’s jewelry still in her top dresser drawer, money in her handbag. Credit cards ID’d her as one Alicia Hendricks. Neighbors told them she worked for some cosmetics company in ‘The City’ - which meant back across the river and into the trees again. One of the neighbors thought the name of the firm was Beauty Blush. But a laminated card in her wallet identified her as a sales rep for a firm called Beauty Plus, at 165 Twombley, in midtown Isola, and a phone call confirmed that she was indeed an employee of the company.

* * * *

The salesman was telling him that the sticker price on the car was $74,330…

‘Standard features include the four-point-two-liter V-8, two-hundred and ninety-four horsepower engine…’

Baldy kept circling the car like some kind of hawk about to pounce on a rabbit.

‘… six-speed automatic transmission with overdrive, four-wheel antilock brakes

Guy didn’t look like he could afford seventy-four bucks, no less seventy-four grand…

‘… side-seat-mounted air bags, driver and passenger-side air-bag head extension…’

‘What colors does it come in?’ Baldy asked.

‘I have the chart right here,’ the salesman said. ‘Your exteriors come in the Topaz, the Ebony, the Midnight, the Radiance, the Seafrost…’

Guy kept circling the car, running the palm of his hand over the fenders, the hood, the sleek sides…

‘For the interiors, you have a choice of the Cashmere, the Dove, the Ivory…’

‘When can I take delivery?’

‘Depends on whether you plan to buy or lease…’

‘Lease,’ Baldy said.

‘… and whether we can find the vehicle in the colors you…’

‘Find it,’ he said.

* * * *

The sales manager of Beauty Plus’s Lustre Nails Care Division was a man named Jamie Dewes. He was surprised to find two detectives from uptown on his doorstep at four P.M. that twenty-first day of June, because he’d already been visited by detectives from Calm’s Point last week.

‘Terrible thing,’ he told Parker and Genero. ‘Why would anyone want to kill Alicia?’

But in the very next breath, he told the detectives that Alicia thought someone was following her. Veronica Alston, his assistant, confirmed this.

‘Some creepy bald-headed guy,’ she said.

‘When did she tell you this?’ Genero asked.

‘Last week sometime?’ Jamie said.

‘No, before then,’ Veronica said. ‘Around the beginning of the month.’

‘What a month,’ Jamie said. ‘Hottest damn June I can remember.’

‘Said someone was following her?’ Parker said.

‘Said she’d spotted this guy following her, yes.’

‘Where, did she say?’

‘Just following her.’

‘Here? This neighborhood? Or where she lived?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘How many times did she spot him?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘Did she confront him?’

‘No. Well, I don’t think so.’

‘Did she report any of this to the police?’

‘No. Ronnie? She didn’t call the police, did she?’

‘No,’ Veronica said.

‘Just mentioned it to each of you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Either of you notice any bald guys lurking around outside?’ Parker asked.

They both shook their heads.

‘Know anything about anyone she might’ve been seeing?’ he asked. ‘Any boyfriends?’

‘She recently broke up with this stockbroker guy,’ Veronica said.

‘Would you know his name?’

‘No. Harold something.’

‘When was this?’

‘Breaking up? Around Easter time.’

‘Been dating anyone since?’

Jamie shrugged.

So did Veronica.

‘This Harold something? He wouldn’t be bald, would he?’

‘Don’t know what he looks like,’ Veronica said, and shrugged again.

‘Would anyone else in the office know his last name?’

One of the other sales reps did.

* * * *

Harold Saperstein was a man in his early fifties, they guessed. Wearing eyeglasses and a business suit. He had thick curly black hair, they noticed.

He was just leaving his office when they caught up with him at five that Monday afternoon. They identified themselves, told him they were investigating the murder of Alicia Hendricks…

‘Yeah, I figured you’d be around,’ he said.

… and asked if he would mind answering a few questions. They walked over to a pocket park near his office. The three men sat on a bench, Saperstein in the middle. A waterfall streamed down a tan brick wall behind them. It made the day seem cooler.

‘So tell us how you happened to break up,’ Parker said.

‘You know about that, huh?’

‘Tell us, anyway,’ Genero said.

‘It was The Passion.’

They thought he was talking about the heat of their love affair.

‘The Mel Gibson movie,’ he explained. ‘I told Alicia it was anti-Semitic. She disagreed. I’m Jewish, we got into an argument.’

‘So whose idea was it to split up?’

‘My mother’s. I live with my mother. She said if we were going to fight already over a fecockteh movie, that was just the beginning.’

‘When was this?’

‘Around Easter time. When the fever was at its pitch.’

‘When’s the last time you saw her?’

‘Passover. At my mother’s.’

‘Ever talk to her since?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Couple of weeks ago. She phoned to tell me some guy was following her.’

‘And?’

‘She wanted to know what she should do. I told her to call the cops.’

‘Did she?’

‘I have no idea. That’s the last time we ever spoke.’

He was silent for a while. Behind them, the water cascaded down the wall.

‘I hate Mel Gibson,’ he said.

* * * *

‘This would’ve been a long time ago,’ Meyer said.

‘Forty years or more.’

‘Around the time of the Vietnam War.’

The woman they were talking to was Abigail Nelson, Director of Music Studies at the Kleber School of Music, Dance and Drama. She was perhaps forty years old, a trim-looking woman who wore her darkish brown hair in a feather cut. Blue pinstripe suit, like what you’d expect on a bank manager. Alert blue eyes behind oversized glasses.

They were sitting at a long table in the school’s clerical office. Filing cabinets lined the room. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows. Down the hall, they could hear distant music from rehearsal rooms.

‘The sixties sometime?’ Abigail asked.

‘Mid-sixties, probably. We have him in Vietnam during the late sixties.’

‘So this would’ve been before then.’

‘Yes.’

“We wouldn’t even have been in this building. In the sixties, we were still uptown, on Silvermine Drive, near Tenth.’

‘Close to our turf,’ Meyer said. ‘The precinct.’

‘Yes,’ Abigail said, not completely sure she’d understood. ‘He was a violin major, did you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alexei Kusmin would have been heading Violin Studies.’

‘Yes, so we understand. Mr. Sobolov was one of his students.’

‘Kusmin was first desk at the philharmonic back then. But he also taught here. Your man would have played violin day in and day out for four years. Well, not just violin. He’d have taken piano as his second instrument, all students in the music department do, even today. And L and M, of course, which is Literature and Materials. He’d also have played in one of the orchestras. There were only two back then, the Concert and the Rep. We have four now. And he’d have taken courses in music history, and - since he was a string musician - he’d have been assigned to chamber music as well.’

‘He’d have been busy,’ Carella said.

‘Oh yes. Our students are expected to be serious about music. Here at Kleber, it’s music - or dance or drama, of course - all day long, every day of the week. Lessons, or practicing, or performing in this or that orchestra… it’s a life, gentlemen. It’s a full life.’

The detectives nodded.

Carella was wondering if he ever really could have become a famous actor.

Meyer was thinking his uncle Isadore had once told him he made nice drawings.

As she led them across the room, Abigail explained that Max Sobolov’s options after a four-year course of study here would have been numerous.

‘We’ve got several major symphony orchestras in this city, you know,’ she said, ‘plus the two opera companies, and the three ballets. There are something like thirty, thirty-five violin chairs in any given orchestra - well, count them. Eighteen fiddles in the first section, another fifteen in the second. That’s thirty-three chances for a job in any of the city’s orchestras. Plus there’s nothing to say he couldn’t have applied to an orchestra in Chicago, or Cleveland, or wherever. A good violinist? And one of Kusmin’s students? His chances would have been very good indeed.’

She pulled open one of the file drawers.

‘Let’s hope his records haven’t already been boxed and sent up to Archives,’ she said. ‘Soboloff, was it?’

‘Sobolov,’ Carella said. ‘With an o-v.’

‘Ah. Yes,’ she said, and began riffling through the folders. When she found the one for SOBOLOV, MAX, she placed it on top of the filing cabinet, and opened it. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘an excellent student. Brilliant future ahead of him.’ She paused, reading. ‘But you see, gentlemen, he never finished the course of study here. He left after only three years.’

‘The Army,’ Meyer said.

‘Vietnam,’ Carella said.

* * * *

‘A pity,’ Abigail said.

‘This would’ve been a long time ago, you understand,’ the woman in the clerical office was telling them.

Her name was Clara Whaitsley. Parker thought she was British at first, the name and all, and this was mildly exciting because he’d never been to bed with a British girl. But she had a broad Riverhead accent, and he’d been to bed with lots of Riverhead girls in his lifetime. So had Genero. Well, a few, anyway. All business, they merely listened to her.

‘We’re talking a girl in her teens,’ Clara said. ‘They enter high school in the tenth grade, you know, when they’re fifteen, going on sixteen. According to our records, Alicia Hendricks came into Harding directly from Mercer Junior High, some forty years ago.’

‘Long time ago,’ Genero observed sagely.

‘The usual progression is Pierce Elementary to Mercer Junior High to Harding High,’ Clara said. ‘We have her leaving Harding at sixteen.’

‘Any follow-up on that?’

‘We wouldn’t have anything on her after she left our school.’

‘Went into the workforce, looks like,’ Genero said.

‘That’s awfully young to be starting work.’

‘I started work when I was fourteen,’ Parker said.

He was tempted to add that he’d got laid for the first time when he was sixteen.

‘You know,’ Clara said, ‘while I was looking through the files for you…’

Both detectives suddenly gave her their undivided attention.

‘…I came across the records for another Hendricks. I don’t know if they’re related or not, but he was here at about the same time, entered a year later.’

‘What’ve you got on him?’ Parker asked.

* * * *

Karl Hendricks was still serving the twelfth year of a fifteen-year rap. He’d been denied parole twice - the first time because he’d physically abused a prison guard, the second because he’d stabbed another inmate with a fork. He could not have been older than fifty-three or -four, but at six thirty that Monday evening, when he shuffled into the room where Genero and Parker were waiting for him, he looked like an old man.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘Your sister was murdered,’ Parker told him subtly.

‘Yeah?’ Hendricks said.

He seemed only mildly interested.

‘When’s the last time you saw her?’ Genero asked.

‘Be a real miracle if I did it, now wun’t it?’ Hendricks said. ‘Sittin up here in stir.’

‘We’re wondering who did,’ Parker said.

‘Who cares?’

‘We do.’

‘I don’t.’

‘So when did you see her last?’

‘She came to visit on my forty-fifth birthday. Brought me a cake with candles on it. No file inside it, mores the pity.’

Sometimes, in prison, a man developed a sense of sarcastic humor. Sometimes the humor was funny.

‘When was that, Karl?’

‘Nine years ago. I’d just started serving this bum rap.’

In prison, everyone was serving a bum rap. Nobody’d ever done the crime for which he’d been convicted. Nobody.

‘Nine years ago,’ Genero said, and nodded, thinking it over.

It seemed unlikely that Alicia Hendricks would have mentioned anyone following her nine years ago. Nine years was a long time to be following someone. Nine years was what you might call a Dedicated Stalker. Genero asked, anyway.

‘She mention anyone following her?’

Hendricks stared at him blankly.

‘Some bald-headed guy following her?’

‘No,’ Hendricks said, and shook his head unbelievingly. ‘That why you came all the way up here? Cause some bald-headed guy was following her?’

‘We came all the way up here because your sister got murdered,’ Parker said.

‘I’m surprised somebody didn’t kill her a long time ago,’ Hendricks said.

‘Oh?’

‘The friends she had. The company she kept.’

‘What kind of company?’

‘Half of them should be in here doing time.’

‘Oh?’

‘In fact, her first husband did do time, but not here.’

‘Husband? We’ve got her as single.’

‘Married twice,’ Hendricks said. ‘Both of them losers.’

‘Went back to using her maiden name, is that it?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Tell us about these guys.’

‘The first one did time in Huntsville. One of the state prisons down there.’

‘That be in Texas?’

‘Texas, yeah.’

‘For what?’

‘Delivery and sale. Copped a plea, got off with two years and a five-grand fine.’

‘You ever meet this winner?’

‘No. Alicia told me about him.’

‘So this had to be longer ago than nine years, right?’

‘Huh?’

‘If the last time she came to visit…”

‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘So this first husband is bygone times, right?’

‘Right.’

‘When did he do his time? Before or after Alicia knew him?’

‘Before. He was out by the time they met.’

‘Living up here by then?’

‘I guess. Otherwise how would she’ve met him?’

‘That his only fall? The one in Texas?’

‘Far as I know.’

‘And his name?’

‘Al Dalton.’

‘For Albert?’

‘Who the hell knows?’

‘How about the second husband? Has he got a record, too?’

‘No. What makes you think that?’

‘Well, you said he was a loser.’

‘One thing has nothing to do with the other. I’m in jail, for example, but I’m not necessarily a loser.’

Parker nodded sympathetically.

‘But this second husband was a loser, you said.’

‘A loser, how?’ Genero asked.

‘Bad investments, like that. Also, he did dope.’

‘Ah,’ Parker said. ‘And Alicia?’

‘She dabbled.’

‘Ah.’

‘What’s his name? The second husband?’

‘Ricky Montero. For Ricardo.’

‘A spic?’ Parker said.

‘Dominican.’

‘What kind of bad investments?’

‘You name them.’

‘Is he still here in this country, or did he go back home?’

‘Who knows? She divorced him, it’s got to be ten, twelve years ago. I never liked him. He played trumpet.’

‘Is that why you didn’t like him?’

‘I got nothing against trumpet players. I’m just saying he played trumpet, is all.’

‘So that’s the bad company she kept, right?’ Genero said. ‘These two husbands. Al Dalton and Ricky Montero.’

‘I didn’t say “bad.” That’s your word.’

‘You said half of her friends should be in here doing time.’

‘That don’t make them bad.’

‘No, that makes them sweethearts.’

‘I’m doing time, and I ain’t bad.’

‘No, all you did was stab somebody twelve years ago, and then stab somebody else, right here in jail, two years ago.’

‘That don’t make you bad at all,’ Genero said.

‘That makes you an angel,’ Parker said.

‘You done breaking my balls? Cause I don’t know who killed my sister, and I don’t give a shit who did.’

‘Sit down,’ Parker said.

‘Sit down,’ Genero said.

‘Tell us who these other friends of hers were.’

‘From days of yore.’

‘These people who should be in here doing time.’

‘My sister started young,’ Hendricks said.

‘Started what young? Dabbling in dope?’

‘Started everything young. You consider thirteen early?’

‘You consider junior high early?’

‘That would’ve been Mercer, right? You both went to the same junior high, right?’

‘I was a year behind her.’

‘Where’d she go after she left high school?’

‘She got a job. My father was dead, my mother…”

‘Job doing what?’

‘Waitressing.’

‘Where, would you know?’

‘A neighborhood restaurant.’

‘What neighborhood?’

‘The Laurelwood section of Riverhead.’

‘That where you were living at the time?’

‘That’s where.’

‘Remember the name of the restaurant?’

‘Sure. Rocco’s.’

‘What’d you do after high school?’

‘I went to jail.’

The detectives looked at each other.

‘I was sixteen when I took my first fall.’

‘What for?’

‘Aggravated assault. I’ve been in and out all my life. Fifty-four years old, if I spent twenty of those years on the outside, that’s a lot.’

‘Tell us some more about these friends of your sister’s.’

‘Go ask her husbands,’ Hendricks said.

* * * *

Kling was hovering.

It was close to eight P.M. and he was still in the squadroom, wandering from the watercooler to the bulletin board, glancing toward Carella’s desk, where he was busy rereading his DD reports, trying to make some sense of this damn case. Strolling over to the open bank of windows, Kling looked down into the street at the early evening traffic, shot another covert glance at Carella, walked back to his own desk, began typing, stopped typing, stood up, stretched, started wandering the room again, hovering. Something was on the man’s mind, no question.

Carella looked up at the clock.

‘I’d better get out of here,’ he said.

‘Me, too,’ Kling answered, too eagerly, and immediately went to Carella’s desk. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Nothing yet,’ Carella said. ‘But we’re on it.’

‘Give it time,’ Kling said.

Idle talk. Not at all what was really on his mind.

‘Sure,’ Carella said.

Both men fell silent. Kling pulled up a chair, sat. ‘Mind if I ask you something?’ he said.

Carella looked across the desk at him.

‘I’ve had a serious argument with Sharyn.’

Carella nodded.

‘I thought she was running around behind my back. Turned out she and this colleague, handsome black doctor, were trying to help another colleague, a woman who… well, it’s a long story.’

‘What was the argument about?’

‘Sharyn thinks I betrayed her.’

‘How?’

‘By following her. By not trusting her.’

Carella nodded again.

‘You agree with her, huh?’

‘I’ve never followed Teddy in my life. Never will.’

‘Yeah,’ Kling said. ‘But I thought…’

‘Whatever you thought.’

‘Yeah.’

They were silent for another moment.

‘She doesn’t want me to call her.’

‘So don’t.’

‘For a while, anyway.’

‘Is that what she said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s a good sign.’

He was thinking, Man, you don’t tail a woman you love.

‘I want this to work,’ Kling said.

‘Then make sure it does,’ Carella said.

‘I love her, Steve.’

‘Tell her.’

Again and again and again, he thought.

‘When do you think I should call her again?’

‘Was me?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’d call her every minute of every hour of every day until she knew how much I loved her.’

‘I’m afraid she’ll…”

He shook his head.

‘I’m afraid I’ll lose her,’ he said.

‘Tell her.’

Kling nodded.

He was already trying to think what he might say the next time he phoned.

* * * *

Ollie Weeks was still thinking about last Friday night. The dinner with Patricia and her family. Or, more accurately, what had happened in the parking lot after dinner. That was almost a week ago, and all he could do was still think about Patricia Gomez.

To tell the truth, he was beginning to feel a bit conflicted, so to speak. This was probably because Patricia had kissed him good night on the lips. This after her brother had clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘You got cool chops, dude.’ Meaning the way he played piano. This after her father had told him, ‘I like a man with a hearty appetite.’ Meaning the way he ate.

Ollie had told Patricia she didn’t have to come downstairs with him, it was late, and she’d said, ‘Hey, I’m a cop.’ Took the elevator down with him, the hallways and the elevator doors all covered with graffiti, salsa music coming from inside all the apartments. Walked him to his car, and kissed him before he even unlocked the door. On the lips. With her mouth open. And her tongue working.

Which was why he felt so conflicted, so to speak, this Monday evening, when he was about to call Patricia to propose a quiet little dinner alone in his apartment, which he himself would prepare.

Was he merely out to lay Patricia Gomez?

Or was this something more serious, God forbid?

He wished he had someone he could discuss this with.

He wished he knew Steve Carella better.

Only other person he could think of was Andy Parker.

* * * *

The two men met for a drink at nine that night. Parker suspected something was on Ollie’s mind, but he couldn’t imagine what it was until Ollie began talking about this great Spanish dinner he’d had last week up Patricia Gomez’s house.

‘You still seeing her, huh?’ Parker said.

‘Well, yeah, every now and then,’ Ollie said.

‘Is that why you’re on this diet of yours?’

‘What diet?’ Ollie asked.

‘Or maybe not, a Spanish dinner.’

‘Patricia says it’s okay to go off it every now and then.’

‘So it was her idea, is that right?’

‘No, no, her idea. Come on.’

‘Then whose idea was it, if not hers? If she’s the one can say it’s okay to stay on it or go off it, then whose idea was it? The Pope’s?’

‘So we talked about me losing a few pounds, so what?’

‘Looks to me like you lost a lot more than a few pounds. I hardly recognized you when you walked in here.’

‘Really?’ Ollie said, pleased.

‘You gotta be careful, losing so much weight so fast.’

‘Ten pounds is all,’ Ollie said.

‘That’s a lot. She must have some grip on you, this girl.’

‘Naw, come on, whattya mean, grip. Come on. We just see each other every now and then.’

‘So long as it’s just that,’ Parker said, and nodded emphatically. ‘You drinking beer cause of the diet?’

‘Well, hard liquor has a lot of empty calories,’ Ollie explained.

‘You want another beer?’

‘I’m okay with this,’ Ollie said.

‘I’ll have another scotch, if it won’t offend you, that is.’

‘Why should it offend me?’ Ollie said.

‘Who knows, these days?’ Parker said, and signaled for a refill and then gulped it down in almost a single swallow. ‘You hear the one about the Caddys?’ he asked.

‘Which one is that?’

‘If a white man driving a white Caddy is white power,’ Parker said, ‘and two black men driving a black Caddy is black power…” He grinned in anticipation. ‘What’s three Puerto Ricans driving a maroon Caddy?’

‘Puerto Rican power?’ Ollie guessed.

‘Grand Theft, Auto,’ Parker said, and burst out laughing.

Ollie nodded, sipped at his beer.

‘What’sa matter?’ Parker asked.

‘Nothing. Why? What’sa matter?’

‘You din’t think that was funny?’

‘Not very.’

‘Grand Theft, Auto? You din’t think that was funny?’

‘I thought it was Grand Theft, Auto, is what I thought it was. It coulda been any three guys driving the car, that woulda been Grand Theft, Auto, if they stole the car.’

‘Yeah, but these were three spics, which is what made it Grand Theft, Auto, which is what makes the joke funny.’

‘Okay, so it’s funny,’ Ollie said. ‘Ha ha.’

‘You know what’s wrong with you all at once?’ Parker said, and jabbed his finger across the table at him.

‘I didn’t realize anything was wrong with me all at once,’ Ollie said.

‘Yes, all at once you are losing your you-ness.’

‘My what?’

‘Your essential Ollie-ness.’

‘And what is that, my essential Ollie-ness?’

‘Your capacity to laugh at niggers and spies and wops and kikes…”

‘I told you “ha ha,” didn’t I?’

‘Yes, but you didn’t mean it. You are losing your ris de veau.’

‘My what?’

‘Your ris de veau. That’s French for “joy of living.” When the French say a person has ris de veau, it means he enjoys life.’

‘Too bad I ain’t French.’

‘I got another story to tell you,’ Parker said.

‘What’s this one?’ Ollie said. ‘Four Jews in a blue Caddy?’

‘No, it’s about this puppy dog walking along the railroad tracks…’

‘Is he white, black, or Puerto Rican?’

‘He is a little white puppy dog, and this train comes along, and the wheels run over his tail, and he loses the end of his tail. And he’s very sad about this. So he puts his head down on the tracks and he begins crying his heart out, and not paying any attention. And just then another train comes along, and runs him over again, cutting off his head this time. You know the moral of that story, Ollie?’

‘No, what’s the moral?’

‘Never lose your head over a piece of tail.’

The table went silent.

‘You understand me?’ Parker said.

Ollie figured maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, after all.