Heat

6

It was worse up here than it was anywhere else in the city. Even in the Marine Tiger section of Riverhead, there was sometimes a breeze coming in off the River Dix and rushing through the comparatively higher plateau of what had once been fertile farmland. But here in Diamondback, at the farthermost reaches of the city’s central island, the heat was insufferable — even at ten past midnight, when Halloran came up out of the subway.

The heat had been baking into the brick walls and the tarred roofs of the buildings all day long. The buildings themselves stretched row upon row, block after block, six and seven stories high, forming a grid that trapped the heat and held it motionless, a giant stifling canopy of heat. The windows in the apartments were open, but the air was still and the heat within was equally balanced with the heat outside, so that the people who lived here felt they were moving through a vast, viscid, impenetrable, virtually blinding force field. They sat on the fire escapes hung with clothing that refused to dry because of the humidity. They sat on the front stoops of buildings eroded by time and abuse. They lounged listlessly on the street corners. They played checkers in the light of the streetlamps. It was past midnight in Diamondback, but it could just as well have been high noon. The streets were thronged. There would be no sleeping tonight, not with this heat. Tomorrow morning, many of the residents here would travel downtown to work in air-conditioned offices, restaurants, shops, and stores. But tonight, there was only the heat, and the roaches, and the rats.

Halloran could hear the rats foraging in the empty lots as he walked along the avenue toward the address Jimmy Baker had given him. He could see their eyes gleaming in the dark. He could hear their teeth gnawing. The lots were piled with garbage. It was easier to throw your garbage out the windows in this neighborhood, into an empty lot, than to pack it neatly in plastic bags at the curb. The Sanitmen weren’t as particular about Diamondback as they were about some of the city’s better sections. The garbage would sit outside the buildings for days, waiting for collection. The rats would gnaw through the plastic. In packs, the rats would cover the sidewalks instead of the empty lots. It was safer to throw your garbage into the lots. You kept the rats off the sidewalks that way. You created little pockets of rat zoos, the rats waiting for feeding time, chewing up the scattered garbage instead of the faces of infants in cribs.

Halloran was only one of a very few white men abroad in Diamondback that night. It was an axiom of urban survival that if you were white you did not walk the streets of Diamondback after dark. The white men up there after dark were either junkies looking for a fix or out-of-towners looking for black pussy. Either was fair game to many of the people who lived here. The ones who went to work downtown each morning would sit on their fire escapes and look down into the streets where a man was getting rolled or mugged, and they would shake their heads in despair, and curse the accidental skin coloration that caused honest men and women to be equated with thieves, prostitutes, and pimps. They would sigh deeply, recognizing forlornly that this was a condition of life, however unfair, and in the morning they would dress in the clothing they had purchased in any one of the better stores downtown, and be ready at nine sharp to take dictation or to sell a negligee or to drive a passenger from the airport to his apartment in Stewart City on the River Dix, where a doorman in livery would open the door of the taxi and say, “Good morning, sir, sorry about this heat, sir.” That would be in the morning. This was the night.

Halloran was a big man who looked like he might have been a detective out of the Eight-Three up here, and this was in his favor. Moreover, there was a sense of menace about him, a certain emanation that this man was street-smart, and it would not be wise to tangle with him. There were easier marks, it wouldn’t pay to jump a honkie who might turn out to be either a cop or some cock-sucker wanted for murder in fourteen of the fifty states. Halloran walked the crowded midnight streets unmolested.

Jimmy Baker had been his cellmate up at Castleview, until last October anyway, when Jimmy was paroled after serving ten on an armed robbery rap. Together, he and Jimmy had shared some of the choicest young meat inside the prison. The way they worked it, they would pick out a baby-faced little doll riding up, and then Halloran would put the muscle on the kid, coming on like the big bad wolf about to eat him alive, and Jimmy — who was slender and slight — would stand up for the kid, facing Halloran down, telling him he’d cut off his balls if he didn’t leave the kid alone. The kid in gratitude would sidle up to Jimmy, who’d be fucking him before the week was out, threatening to throw him to the beast who was Halloran if he didn’t put out. A classic Mutt-and-Jeff situation. But by the end of the second week, both of them would be alternating with the kid, who by then had realized he’d been conned, but who figured two stir-wise operators like Halloran and Jimmy would keep all the other animals away. There were as many animals up at Castleview as there were rats foraging in the lots of Diamondback.

The pool hall Jimmy Baker owned and operated was in the middle of the block, set between a storefront Baptist church and a beauty parlor advertising hair straightening and skin lightening. There were two dozen young black guys shooting pool when Halloran walked through the front door at a quarter past midnight. Fuckin’ niggers got nothing to do but shoot pool in the middle of the night, Halloran thought. My fuckin’ daughter’s married to a nigger, he thought. Oddly, he did not think of Jimmy Baker as a nigger. Jimmy Baker was simply his cellmate, and a nicer guy you’d never want to meet in your life. The exception to the rule, Halloran thought. Enjoyed more damn two-on-ones with Jimmy up there at Castleview. Jimmy was okay. Black or white, he was okay. In his presence, Halloran never used the word “nigger.” Even if he was one.

The guys shooting pool all looked up when he came in. Their eyes caromed off each other’s like the balls on the tables. They were figuring him for a cop. Next few minutes, there’d be an “Up against the wall, motherfuckers.” A fat black guy reading the early edition of the city’s tabloid newspaper looked up from where he was sitting behind a high counter just inside the entrance door. A sign behind his head advised what the hourly rates were for a table. He was chewing on a cigar. He went back to his newspaper, deciding to ignore Halloran. If he was fuzz, he’d make his intentions known soon enough.

“I’m looking for Jimmy Baker,” Halloran said without preamble.

“Who wants him?” the black man asked.

“Jack Halloran.”

“What for?”

“We celled together at Castleview,” Halloran said.

“Just a sec,” the man said, and lifted the receiver of a phone on the counter. He dialed a single number and waited. “James,” he said, “they’s a man named Jack Halloran out here, wants to see you.” He listened, nodded, and then put up the phone. “Go right on back,” he said. “Red door there, far end of the room.”

“Thanks,” Halloran said.

The man went back to chewing his cigar and reading his newspaper. All around the room, billiard balls clicked. There was the low murmur of conversation, “Three ball in the side... Nice shot, man... Bank the four down here.”

Halloran walked to the red door and opened it.

Jimmy Baker was sitting behind a desk cluttered with papers. There were two phones on the desk. He had put on a little weight since Halloran had last seen him, but he was the same old Jimmy, big white teeth gleaming in his mouth as he grinned across the desk, and then came around it, both hands extended, his hair cut in an Afro now instead of the closer prison cut, still grinning, shaking his head in wonder. He was wearing tailored jeans, a black silk shirt unbuttoned to the waist, and a gold medallion hanging from a gold chain around his neck.

“Hey, man,” he said, and took both Halloran’s hands in his own. “Man, man, you a sight for sore eyes, I gotta tell you.”

“What’s this James shit?” Halloran asked, grinning, really happy to see him.

“I’m the big honcho here,” Jimmy said. “Anybody calls me anything but James — or sometimes Mr. James,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I kick his ass for him. When was you sprung, man?”

“A week ago today. What’s today?”

“By the feel of it, or the clock?” Jimmy asked. “By the clock, it’s Tuesday, the twelf’ of August. By the feel, it’s still Monday night, man, till the sun comes up, at least. Sit down. You want somethin’ to drink? Hey, man, you look terrific, I gotta tell you. A week ago today, huh? You want a beer? I got some cold beer. You want somethin’ stronger? Name it, man. Jee-sus, it is good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you, too, Jimmy,” Halloran said. He was still grinning. “How’s it treatin’ you out here?”

“Comme ci, comme ça,” Jimmy said. “I got the pool parlor, I got me a little numbers runnin’, I got me a little dope dealin’, it ain’t been too bad a’tall. I’m still lookin’ aroun’ for a big score someplace, just bidin’ my time, somethin’ll come along sooner or later. How about you?”

“Well, I just got out, you know. Lots of business to take care of, you know.”

“Sure, gettin’ adjusted. It’s a big motherfuckin’ hassle out here, ain’t it? Times I wisht I was back inside, where evythin’s taken care of for you. You want some beer? Lissen, have a bottle of beer, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Halloran said.

Jimmy went to a small refrigerator set under a counter against the far wall. He pulled out two bottles of beer and uncapped them.

“Here’s to the fuckin’ Castle,” he said.

“Cheers,” Halloran said, and took only a sip. He didn’t want to get piss-eared drunk the way he’d been yesterday when that whore picked him up.

“How you like this fuckin’ heat?” Jimmy asked. “City arranged a nice big welcome for you, dinn it? Reg’lar home-comin’ celebration. Fuckin’ heat you could die in.”

“Yeah,” Halloran said.

“So you come up here to see old Jimmy, huh?” he said, grinning again. “Man, it is so good to see you, man.”

There was a long silence.

“I need a piece,” Halloran said.

“Uh-huh,” Jimmy said, and his eyes narrowed.

“I figured you might know where I could get one.”

“What’ve you got in mind? Anythin’ might interest me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“’Cause, like I said, I been lookin’ for some kind of score.”

“No, this isn’t anything like that.”

“So why you need a piece, man? I mean, I’ll hep you get one, shit, we’ll get one for you in a minute. But whut you need it for?”

“Some guy I have to see.”

“Need a piece for it, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What kinda weapon you have in mind?”

“Something he won’t walk away from,” Halloran said.

“Who’s the lucky dude?” Jimmy asked, and laughed.

“Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you,” Halloran said. “Be safer for you that way.”

“Whut I doan know won’t hurt me, huh?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Well, sure, man, we goan get you a piece put a big hole in the motherfucker. Put a monstrous hole in the man. Let me jus’ make a few calls, all right? See whut the market looks like this fine summer night. Finish your beer, man, this won’t take but a minute.

The market that fine summer night looked bullish.

Before they left the pool hall, Jimmy made three phone calls, and by one that morning, they were sitting with a short black man who looked like an accountant, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up over his forearms, the collar of the shirt open, his face sweating behind thick, rimless eyeglasses. Jimmy introduced him simply as Sam. On the table before Sam was an arsenal of some forty automatics and revolvers.

They were in a third-floor apartment on Carlton Street. Years ago, during the Depression, the building had housed a speakeasy on the ground floor. Next door, there used to be a jazz joint frequented by whites who would drift uptown in their diamonds and furs. That was during the Depression. Now the building was a rat-infested tenement. Sam sat under a naked light bulb in the kitchen of his apartment, the oiled weapons gleaming on the enamel-topped table in front of him. In the next room, Halloran could hear someone snoring lightly. Sam’s wife, he guessed. Sweat glistened on Sam’s face and on his exposed forearms.

“What kind of job you hope to do with this piece?” he asked.

“Well, that don’t matter,” Jimmy said at once.

“’Cause if it’s something where you need to keep the gun out of sight when you walk in, then I’d recommenn maybe the .38 here, with the snub nose.”

“He needs a piece’ll do the job,” Jimmy said.

“I was only tryin’ to fine out—”

“The whole job,” Jimmy added.

“Then you want somethin’ with lots of power, is that it?”

“Yes,” Halloran said.

“An’ it don’t matter whether the piece’ll show under your coat, or nothin’ like that?”

“No.”

“You be doin’ this job durin’ the day or at night?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“’Cause if it’s durin’ the day, then you got to keep the piece hid, man, and some of these bigger mothas, like the Ruger Magnum there, they gonna stand out like a hard-on under your clothes.”

“Well, maybe I’ll do it at night then.”

“You can’t beat the Ruger for power,” Sam said.

“Which one is the Ruger?” Halloran asked.

“This one right here.”

“Looks like a fuckin’ cannon,” Jimmy said.

“Shoots like one, too,” Sam said. “Some states, they won’t even ’low the pigs to use a Magnum. Pig shoots at some guy runnin’ out of a grocery store, bullet can go right thu the guy an’ hit some preggint lady doin’ her shoppin’ besides. This gun is one mighty fuckin’ pow’ful pistol, man. You say you want to do the whole job, this gun’ll do the whole job an’ then some.”

“How much would something like that cost me, that gun,” Halloran asked.

“Give him a good price now, man,” Jimmy said.

Sam figured they’d been asshole buddies in jail. Man gets in with a cellmate, ain’t too long before they’re behaving like man and wife. That’s what Sam figured this relationship to be.

“I has to get a hun’ fifty for that piece,” he said.

“That’s too high,” Jimmy said at once.

“Cost you two hunnerd in a store,” Sam said. “That piece is brand-new, ain’t been fired once. I has to get at least a hun’ fifty.”

“Make it a hun’ twenty-five,” Jimmy said. “An’ thow in whutever ammo the man’s gonna need.”

“The ammo ain’t a problem,” Sam said, shaking his head. “But I has to get a hun’ fifty. James, the thing cost me a hunnerd, I swear on my mother’s eyes. A fifty-dollar profit ain’t hardly no profit at all.”

“Whutchoo think, man?” Jimmy asked Halloran.

“I haven’t got that kind of bread,” Halloran said.

“How much you got, man?”

“About a hundred.”

“Well, now, that’s impossible,” Sam said, and rose from where he was sitting, and stretched, signaling that the negotiations were over.

“You want that piece?” Jimmy asked.

“It looks like it could do the job,” Halloran said.

“Blow a man’s head off, that fuckin’ piece,” Sam said.

“So you want it or not?” Jimmy asked.

“I haven’t got a hun’ fifty,” Halloran said. He picked up the gun and hefted it on the palm of his hand.

“Fires either .44 Magnum or .44 Special cartridges,” Sam said. “I got both in stock, you don’t need to worry none.”

“It’s a nice piece,” Halloran said.

“Seven-and-a-half-inch barrel on that motha,” Sam said. “Beats the .357 Magnum all to shit. You got twice the killing power with this pistol that you got with the .357 Magnum.”

“Yeah,” Halloran said.

“They calls that gun there the Super Blackhawk,” Sam said. “Same caliber as a carbine, that gun. Cost you two hunnerd dollars you try to buy it in any store. All I’m askin’ is a hun’ fifty.”

“I just haven’t got that kind of bread,” Halloran said.

“If you want the gun, you got it,” Jimmy said. He turned to Sam. “You’re thowin’ in the ammo, am I right?”

“However many rouns the man wants.”

“Then you got yourself a deal, you fuckin’ thief,” Jimmy said, laughing and reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a roll of bills fastened with a rubber band, slipped off the rubber band, pulling it onto his wrist, and then peeled off three fifties. Still laughing, he said, “You way too high, man. I shoulda taken him to Nicky Garters.”

“Nicky ain’t got no Rugers,” Sam said.

“Jus’ wait the next time you come in my pool parlor,” Jimmy said, handing him the bills. “Coss you twenny dollars an hour nex’ time you want to play.”

“Man, a hunnerd of this is whut I already laid out for that piece.”

Halloran hefted the gun again. His eyes met Jimmy’s. Very softly, he said, “Thank you, Jimmy.”

Asshole buddies, Sam thought. Just like he figured.

The air conditioner was humming in the second-floor bedroom of the brownstone. The room was cool, but Kling could not sleep. It was two in the morning, and he wasn’t due back at work till four this afternoon, but he’d hoped to get up early again in the morning, in time to leave the apartment when Augusta did. He wanted to see if she visited her pal on Hopper Street again. Wanted to see if visiting her pal was a regular lunch-hour thing with her, quick matinee every day of the week when she wasn’t out screwing around instead of eating in a Chinese restaurant. He was tempted to confront her with it now, tell her he’d followed her to Hopper Street, tell her he’d seen her go into the building at 641 Hopper Street, ask her what possible business she could have had in that building. Get it over with here and now. He remembered what Carella had advised him.

“Augusta?” he whispered.

“Mm.”

“Gussie?”

“Mm.”

“You awake?”

“No,” she said, and rolled over.

“Gussie, I want to talk to you.”

“Go t’sleep,” Augusta mumbled.

“Gussie?”

“Sleep,” she said.

“Honey, this is important,” he said.

“Shit.”

“Honey...”

“Shit, shit, shit,” she said, and sat up and snapped on the bedside lamp. “What is it?” she said, and looked at the clock on the table. “Bert, it’s two o’clock, I have a sitting at eight-thirty, can’t this wait?”

“I really feel I have to talk to you now,” he said.

“I have to get up at six-thirty!” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but, Gussie, this has really been bothering me.”

“All right, what is it?” she said, and sighed. She took a pack of cigarettes from beside the clock, shook one free, and lighted it.

“I’m worried,” he said.

“Worried? What do you mean?” she said

“About us,” he said.

“Us?”

“I think we’re drifting apart.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said.

“I think we are.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, we... for one thing, we don’t make love as often as we used to.”

“I’ve got my period,” Augusta said. “You know that.”

“I know that, but... well, that didn’t used to matter in the past. When we were first married.”

“Well,” she said, and hesitated. “I thought we were doing fine.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head.

“Is it the sex, is that it? I mean, that you think we don’t have enough sex?”

“That’s only part of it,” he said.

“Because if you, you know, if you’d like me to...”

“No, no.”

“I thought we were doing fine,” she said again, and shrugged, and stubbed out the cigarette.

“You know this girl who’s with the agency?” he said. Here it is, he thought. Here we go.

“What girl?”

“Little blonde girl. She models junior stuff.”

“Monica?”

“Yeah.”

“Monica Thorpe? What about her?”

“She was out there at the beach that night of the party. On the Fourth. Do you remember?”

“So?”

“We got to talking,” Kling said.

“Uh-huh,” Augusta said, and reached for the pack of cigarettes again. Lighting one, she said, “Must’ve been fascinating, talking to that nitwit.”

“You smoke an awful lot, do you know that?” Kling said.

“Is that another complaint?” Augusta asked. “No sex, too much smoking, are we going to go through a whole catalogue at two in the morning?”

“Well, I’m only thinking of your health,” Kling said.

“So what about Monica? What’d you talk about?”

“You.”

“Me? Now there’s a switch, all right. I thought Monica never talked about anything but her own cute little adorable self. What’d she have to say? Does she think I smoke too much?”

“She said she’s seen you around town with a lot of guys,” Kling said in a rush, and then caught his breath.

“What?”

“She said—”

“Oh, that rotten little bitch!” Augusta said, and angrily stubbed out the cigarette she’d just lighted. “Seen me around, seen me—”

“One guy in particular,” Kling said.

“Oh, one guy in particular, uh-huh.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Which guy?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, Gussie.”

“This is ridiculous,” Augusta said.

“I’m only repeating what she said.”

“And you believed her.”

“I... listened to her. Let’s put it that way.”

“But she couldn’t tell you which guy, in particular, I’m supposed to have been seen around town with, is that it, Bert?”

“No. I asked her, but—”

“Oh, you asked her. So you did believe her, right?”

“I was listening, Gussie.”

“To a juvenile delinquent who’s only been laid by every photographer in the entire city, and who has the gall—”

“Calm down,” he said.

“—to suggest that I’m—”

“Come on, Gussie.”

“I’ll kill that little bitch. I swear to God, I’ll kill her!”

“Then it isn’t true, right?”

“Right, it isn’t true. Did you think it was?”

“I guess so.”

“Thanks a lot,” Augusta said.

They were silent for several moments. He was thinking he would have to ask her about 641 Hopper Street, about why she’d gone this afternoon to 641 Hopper Street. He was thinking he’d done what Carella had suggested he should do, but he still wasn’t satisfied, he still didn’t have the answers that would set his mind at ease. He had only opened the can of peas, and now he had to spill them all over the bed.

“Gussie...” he said.

“I love you, Bert,” she said, “you know that.”

“I thought you did.”

“I do.”

“But you keep going places without me...”

“That was your idea, Bert, you know it was. You hate those parties.”

“Yeah, but still...”

“I won’t go anywhere else without you, okay?”

“Well...”

What about during the day? he wondered. What about when I’m out chasing some cheap thief, what about then? What about when I have the Night Watch? What will you be doing then? he wondered. The parties don’t mean a damn, he thought, except when you tell me you had dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a whole bunch of people, and Mr. Ah Wong himself tells me there was no redhead in Miss Mercier’s party. You should have been a brunette, Gussie, they don’t stand out as much in a crowd.

“I promise,” she said. “No place else without you. Now lie down.”

“There are still some things...”

“Lie down,” she said. “On your back.”

She pulled the sheet off of him.

“Just lie still,” she said.

“Gussie...”

“Quiet.”

“Honey...”

“Shh,” she said. “Shh, baby. I’m gonna take care of you. Poor little neglected darling, Mama’s gonna take good care of you,” she said, and her mouth descended hungrily.

When you’re working a homicide, or what may turn out to be a homicide, the schedule doesn’t mean a damn. You go to the office, and you nag the thing to death, around the clock sometimes, because the killer has an edge you do not have, and time only hones that edge to razor-thin sharpness.

Carella wasn’t due back at the office till four that Tuesday afternoon, but he came in at ten in the morning, and nobody working the Day Tour was surprised. Carella had caught a suicide last Friday, and almost every cop on the squad was experienced enough to know that a suicide without a suicide note was like a pastrami sandwich without a pickle. Carella had briefed Lieutenant Byrnes on the persistent problem of the heat in that damn apartment, and Byrnes had filled in the other men on the squad, just in case any of them might come up with a brilliant idea about why an air conditioner had been turned off during the middle of the hottest week that summer. None of them had any brilliant ideas.

They did, however, have a great deal of sympathy for Carella, who was here at the office at 10:00 a.m. on a day when he wasn’t supposed to arrive till four. They had all been in his boots before. They had all worked cases that drove them bananas, catching a few hours’ sleep at night on one of the Swing Room cots, working the damn case like a terrier with a half-dead rat, shaking it and shaking it and shaking it till it lay still and lifeless and ready to be buried as closed. They talked softly to Carella, and offered to bring him coffee from the Clerical Office. They knew he was extremely troubled. They thought he was only troubled about the absence of a suicide note and the further absence of air conditioning in an apartment as hot as the Sahara. They did not know, because Carella had not yet told Byrnes, and Byrnes had not in turn briefed the others on it, that Carella was also troubled about an apparent suicide victim who was supposed to have swallowed twenty-nine Seconal capsules when the man wouldn’t have been caught dead within a hundred yards of an aspirin.

The first call Carella made that morning was to the Police Lab downtown on High Street. The man he spoke to there was the technician who’d been in charge of the team that had gone through the Newman apartment. He was a detective 3rd/grade and his name was John Owenby. He started Carella’s day with a bang by telling him they weren’t ready with their reports yet.

“What do you mean?” Carella said. “This is Tuesday, you were there Friday morning, what’s the delay?”

“The heat is the delay,” Owenby said.

“What’s the heat got to do with...?”

“What have you got here, Carella?” Owenby said. “What does it look like you’ve got here.”

“A suicide,” Carella said.

“Right, a suicide.”

“Although there are circumstances—”

“Don’t give me with circumstances,” Owenby said, “this ain’t a court of law. You’ve got what looks like a suicide, you’ve got an empty bottle of Seconal—”

“Almost empty,” Carella said.

“On my block,” Owenby said, “if there’s only a single capsule left in a bottle, and a guy swallowed the rest of them, then the bottle is empty.”

“So what’s taking you so long up there? The M.E.’s already given us a cause of death, he had to carve up a whole damn corpse to—”

“Priorities,” Owenby said. “Maybe the M.E.’s got different priorities than we got up here. Let me tell you something about priorities, Carella. When we get—”

“Instead, why don’t you tell me whether you found any wild prints in that apartment?”

“We found a great many latents, and they are now with the Fingerprint Section. I spoke to them just this morning, and they haven’t had a chance to compare them yet against the dead man’s and the ones you sent down for his wife. It’s priorities, Carella. A homicide takes precedence over a suicide, an armed robbery takes precedence over a burglary, an assault takes precedence over spitting on the sidewalk. You know how many damn homicides we’ve got with this heat? This heat is bringing them out of the woodwork. And there’s supposed to be a full moon this Friday night. You know what that’ll do, don’t you? It’ll bring out every bedbug in the city. We’ll be jammed up here with more shootings, knifings, axings, stranglings, and suffocations than you can shake a stick at. You know what you can do with your measly suicide, don’t you? I’ll call you when the report is ready.”

“Where’s Captain Grossman?” Carella said. “I want to talk to him.”

“Going over my head isn’t going to—”

“Where is he?”

“In court. He’ll be in court the rest of the week, Carella. Testifying on a homicide. Which takes precedence over a suicide. Priorities, Carella.”

“When do you think I can have your report?”

“In a day or so.”

“Make it tomorrow morning.”

“I said in a day or so. We’re working on what we vacuumed up, we’re running our tests on that capsule—”

“The M.E.’s already identified the drug—”

“We have to do it here, too. As soon as we get the package together—”

“Shoot for tomorrow, okay?”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Owenby said, and hung up.

The manila envelope from the telephone company was hand-delivered not ten minutes later. The patrolman who brought it up to the squadroom waited while Carella signed for receipt, and then tossed it onto the desk, where it landed on a pile of junk that included a mimeographed sheet announcing the PBA’s annual Labor Day picnic and dance, a flyer from the Three-One asking for information regarding any shooting involving a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, a bolo from the cops in Sarasota, Florida, and a stack of eight-by-ten glossies the Photo Unit had enlarged from the ones they’d taken in the Newman apartment last Friday.

Carella opened the envelope.

There were four photocopied pages in it, listing all the calls made from the Newman apartment since the last billing in July. In this city, as in most American cities, a telephone-company bill was broken down into columns that recorded the date of any long-distance call, the city to which that call had been made, the number called in that city, the time the call was made, the duration of the call in minutes, and finally the charge for the call.

Carella started with the last page first.

Anne Newman had left the Silvermine Oval apartment at a quarter to nine on the morning of August first, and had not returned home till the eighth. Presumably, then, any calls made from the 765-3811 number during that time span had been made by Jerry Newman himself, while he was still alive.

The last listing read:

On the seventh of August, then, Jerry Newman had placed a call to Beverly Hills at 6:21 p.m., local time, which would have made it 3:21 p.m. on the Coast. He had spoken for three minutes and the call had cost him eighty-five cents. Carella didn’t know what the “B” following the “3” in the minute column meant, but the number Newman had called seemed familiar to him. He dialed California Information, and asked for the number of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The operator read it off to him: 213-275-4282. He thanked her, and then dialed the Business Office, hoping he would not get either Miss Corning or Miss Shulz. He spoke to a nameless operator, instead, who told him that the “B” following the “3” simply meant the call had been placed either in the evening or on the weekend, when the rates were lower. He thanked her and hung up.

Jerry Newman had presumably been alive at 6:21 p.m. on the night before his body was discovered. He had called the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and had presumably spoken to his wife at 3:21 p.m. Pacific Daylight Saving Time. Carella took out his notebook. At 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Saving Time, that same day, Anne Newman had called her mother-in-law to tell her she was contemplating divorce. She had then presumably packed and had later gone to the airport to catch a ten-thirty plane scheduled to arrive here the next morning at six-thirty. But if she’d spoken to her husband on Thursday, why had she told Carella she’d spoken to him for the last time on Tuesday, when she’d called to give him her travel plans?

He lifted the receiver again, and dialed Susan Newman’s number. He let the phone ring a dozen times, and was about to hang up when a breathless voice he recognized as Anne’s said, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Newman?”

“Yes, just a moment, please.”

He waited.

When she came back onto the line, she said, “I’m sorry, I was in the shower. Who’s this, please?”

“Detective Carella.”

“Oh, hello, how are you?”

“If this is an inconvenient time for you...”

“No, that’s all right,” she said. “What is it?”

“Mrs. Newman, I have a phone bill here that indicates your husband placed a call to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on August seventh — that would have been Thursday evening at six-twenty-one our time, three-twenty-one on the Coast.”

“Yes?” she said.

“When I talked to you last Friday, you told me the last time you’d spoken to your husband was on Tuesday, August fifth, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, that’s exactly when I did speak to him.”

“But apparently he called the Beverly Wilshire on Thursday, the seventh.”

“At what time, did you say?”

“Three-twenty-one in California.”

“I was out,” she said.

“You were out.”

“Yes, I was out walking.”

“I see. What time did you get back to the room?”

“It must have been a little before five.”

“Just before you called your mother-in-law, is that right?”

“Yes. I’d been doing a lot of thinking that afternoon, I wanted to talk to her about what I’d decided.”

“I see. Was there a message that your husband had called?”

“If there was, I didn’t get it.”

“Then you didn’t know he’d tried to reach you.”

“Not until just now. Are you sure he...?”

“Well, I have the telephone bill right here,” Carella said.

“Then he was still alive on Thursday,” Anne said.

“It would seem so, yes.”

“God,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “thank you, I just wanted to check this, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not at all,” she said, and hung up.

Carella debated whether or not the city would start screaming about the number of long-distance calls he was making, decided the hell with the city, and dialed the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles. The desk clerk he spoke to informed him that one copy of any telephone message was placed in a guest’s box within minutes of its receipt, and another copy was slipped under the guest’s door shortly thereafter. He could see no reason why a guest coming back to the hotel at a little before five would not have seen at least one copy of a message received at three twenty-one.

Carella thanked him and hung up.

The call from Probate came a half hour later. The clerk with Probate Division was a woman named Hester Attinger, who at Carella’s request yesterday had checked to see whether any attorney had filed a will following Jeremiah Newman’s death. In this state, the law required that a will be filed within ten days after knowledge of a death. Most attorneys kept a daily watch on the newspaper obituary columns to see if any of their clients had kicked the bucket overnight. And whereas most laymen did not know about the law’s requirements, chances were that if they were in possession of a will, or even if they had been witnesses to the signing of a will, they would call their own attorney to ask what they were supposed to do. Most wills — except for those hidden at the bottom of a well or under the floorboards of a house — found their way to Probate. Jeremiah Newman’s will had been filed there yesterday.

“The will is now a matter of public record,” Miss Attinger said, “so you can come down here anytime you want to look at it.”

“Do you think you could read it to me on the phone?” Carella asked.

“Well...” she said.

“This is a homicide I’m working,” he said, forgiving himself the lie. In his own mind, he had already begun classifying it as a homicide. “You’d save me a lot of time.”

“I’ve only scanned it,” Miss Attinger said. “Without going into detail, I think I can tell you the will leaves everything to a man named Louis Kern.”

“As sole beneficiary?”

“Yes.”

“Any alternate beneficiaries.”

“Kern’s wife and two children.”

“Who filed the will, would you know?”

“Someone named Charles Weber, I’m assuming he’s an attorney. The will’s in a blue legal binder, and the name of the firm on the binder is Weber, Herzog, and Llewellyn. That’s a double L in—”

“Herzog, did you say?”

“What?”

“Is one of the partners named Herzog?”

“Yes, Herzog.”

“Can you spell that for me, please?”

“H-E-R, Z-O-G,” Miss Attinger said.

“Is there an address?”

“There is an address. 847 Hall Avenue, here in Isola.”

“Thank you kindly,” Carella said.

“No trouble at all,” Miss Attinger said, and hung up.

The law offices of Weber, Herzog, and Llewellyn were on the twenty-eighth floor of a building in the heart of midtown Isola. The building was delightfully cool inside, its windows sealed shut, the entire forty-two-floor structure air-conditioned from top to bottom. This was very convenient when there were no power failures. It became inconvenient only when the electric company experienced an overload at any of the upstate plants servicing the city, a common occurrence during the dog days of summer. Whenever that happened, it was impossible to open any of the windows, and the building became a forty-two-story steam bath. It was also somewhat difficult to commit suicide by defenestration in the edifice at 847 Hall.

Carella had called Charles Weber at a little past ten, and was told the busy lawyer could spare only a half hour before lunch that day. When Carella arrived, Weber was with a client. He did not buzz his secretary and ask her to show Carella in until almost a quarter to eleven. He was a portly man, in his early fifties, Carella guessed, with graying brown hair and penetrating blue eyes. He was wearing a pale-blue tropical that matched the color of his eyes, a darker-blue silk tie fronting his white shirt. The monogrammed initials C.P.W., in navy against the white, peeked from under the left-hand lapel of his suit jacket. He sat behind a large, uncluttered desk in a vast two-window office overlooking both the avenue and the western end of Grover Park, smiled pleasantly, glanced at his watch to remind Carella that this would have to be brief, and then said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Carella?”

“Mr. Weber, I’m investigating the apparent suicide of Jeremiah Newman, and I understand—”

“Apparent?” Weber said.

“Yes, sir, apparent.”

“It was my understanding that he’d died of an overdose of barbiturates.”

“Yes, that’s true, sir. But the case hasn’t yet been officially closed out as a suicide.”

“I see.”

“Mr. Weber, I understand you filed his will with Probate yesterday.”

“I did.

“Were you the attorney who prepared the will?”

“I was.”

“If I’m correct, the will leaves everything to a man named Louis Kern?”

“It does.”

“Who is Mr. Kern, sir?”

“The owner of the Kern Gallery.”

“An art gallery?”

“A very important and influential one.”

“Where?”

“Here in the city. Right up the street, in fact.”

“Can you tell me how much Mr. Kern stands to inherit?”

“I don’t believe I’m obliged to do that, Mr. Carella.”

“I already know Mr. Newman inherited several million dollars’ worth of paintings when his father died. That was only two years ago. Can I safely assume...?”

“I don’t want to be difficult,” Weber said, and smiled. “I think you can assume, if you wish, that the estate is worth at least two million dollars, yes.”

“And Mr. Newman left all that to Louis Kern.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t understand your question, Mr. Carella. A man is certainly entitled to decide upon his own beneficiary.”

“To the exclusion of his wife? Or his mother? Or his brother?”

“His wife is adequately taken care of in an insurance policy.”

“What’s the face amount of the policy?”

“A hundred thousand dollars.”

“So he left a hundred thousand to his wife and in excess of two million to a stranger.”

“Mr. Kern isn’t what you would call a stranger. When Lawrence Newman was alive, he exhibited all his work at the Kern Gallery. It was Mr. Kern, in fact, who appraised the paintings after he died, and later handled the sale of them for Jerry.”

“So Jerry was grateful, naturally.”

“Yes.”

“To the tune of two million dollars.”

“We only prepared the will,” Weber said. “We had nothing to do with any of its directives. Mr. Newman chose his own beneficiaries. We executed the will as per his wishes. I wasn’t pleased with what he asked us to do, but—”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the statutes regarding inheritance in this state...”

“No, I’m not.”

“I’ll explain them to you as simply as I did to Mr. Newman. In this state, if a man changes his will to exclude his wife, she’s still entitled to a share of his estate not less than it would have been if he’d died intestate. Intestate means—”

“Yes, without leaving a will.”

“Exactly. In other words, even if he changed his will to exclude her, she’d still be entitled to half his estate if she chose to assert her right of election.”

“And you explained all this to Mr. Newman?”

“Yes.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He seemed intent on a punitive course of action.”

“Punitive?”

“Yes. He insisted on eliminating her as beneficiary of his will. Considering his vehemence on the subject, I suggested an alternate possibility.”

“And what was that?”

“A circumventive maneuver, if you will. A minimum amount could have been settled on his wife to satisfy her elective right. If her share of the estate would have come to more than twenty-five hundred dollars — as of course it would have, in this case — then it would have been within the law for him to have left her twenty-five hundred in cash, with half the remainder of the estate put in trust for her and providing an income for life.”

“But he chose not to accept this alternative.”

“He said he didn’t want to leave her a penny. He told me he’d have to take his chances on her not asserting election. He insisted that his entire estate go to Louis Kern.”

“And that’s the way you drew the will.”

“That’s the way I drew it. A lawyer’s responsibility is to advise. A client, of course, isn’t obligated to accept the advice. I believe he made a mistake. Under my suggested alternative, she’d have got only the same half she’ll now get if she asserts her elective right. Besides, it would have been more in keeping with the punitive action he had in mind.”

“In what way?”

“Well, the money would have been doled out over the years, you see. The income from the trust. She would never have seen it in a lump sum of cash. Of course, asserting her right now will entail legal fees and delays and whatnot, and perhaps that was what he had in mind. Causing her as much trouble as he possibly could.”

“Why would he have wanted to cause her trouble, Mr. Weber?”

“I have no idea.”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“I’m not a marriage counselor.”

“Was the marriage in trouble?”

“Mr. Newman was a drunk.”

“I know that. But from what I understand, Anne Newman was a devoted and loving wife who—”

“I did not ask Mr. Newman why he wanted to change his will. I simply advised him on the law, and then followed his wishes.”

“When did he make this new will, Mr. Weber?”

“Last month sometime.”

“In July?”

“Yes.”

“Can you let me have the exact date?”

“Certainly,” Weber said, and pressed a toggle on his intercom. “Miss Whelan,” he said, “can you get me the execution date of Jeremiah Newman’s will, please?” He clicked off without waiting for a response.

“Does Louis Kern know he’s about to inherit such a large sum of money?” Carella asked.

“I’m sure he’s been informed.”

“Who informed him?”

“The Trust Department of First Liberal, I would guess. The bank that was named executor of the will.”

“When would that have been?”

“Yesterday. I called them yesterday to inform them of Mr. Newman’s death and to remind them they’d been named as executor.”

“And you believe they, in turn, would have called Louis Kern.”

“That’s my belief. You’re thinking of the movies, Mr. Carella, where everyone sits in a lawyer’s office while a will is being read. In actual practice, that rarely ever happens. The beneficiary is usually informed by letter, or sometimes by telephone. Even in a case such as this, where Mr. Newman instructed that the will be kept confidential until after his death—”

“Was it kept confidential?”

“Of course.”

“Mr. Weber, is someone named Herzog a member of your firm?”

“Yes, he’s one of our senior partners.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Martin.”

“Martin Herzog.”

“Yes.”

“Any relation to Jessica Herzog?”

“She’s his sister.”

“I see.”

“It was Martin who introduced her to Jerry, in fact. Oh, this was many years ago.” Weber suddenly smiled. “Is that a conflict-of-interest look I see on your face, Mr. Carella? There was none, believe me. A man who was a client asked that we prepare a will for him. The fact that he was once married to the sister of one of our firm’s partners had no bearing on either the will’s directives or our determination to see that our client’s needs were served.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“We have a standing rule here, in fact, that neither the firm itself nor any individual working for the firm may be named as executor of any will we prepare. The rule was designed precisely to avoid even a suggestion of conflict.”

“It’s your belief, then, that Miss Herzog knew nothing at all about this will.”

“That’s my firm belief.”

“You don’t think Mr. Herzog might have mentioned it to his sister.”

“Of course not.”

The buzzer on the intercom sounded. Weber flipped the toggle.

“Yes?” he said.

“I have that execution date, sir,” a woman’s voice said.

“Yes, Miss Whelan?”

“It was the eighteenth of July, sir.”

“Thank you,” Weber said, and clicked off. “The eighteenth of July,” he said to Carella.

“Exactly three weeks before he was found dead in his apartment,” Carella said.

“Yes, it would seem so,” Weber said.

“Well, thank you very much,” Carella said. “I appreciate your time.”

“Not at all,” Weber said, and looked at his watch.