Ice

9

Crazies make police work difficult.

When you’ve got a crazy on your hands, you might just as well throw away the manual and work the case by the seat of your pants, because that’s the way the crazy is working his case. There were a lot of crazies in this city, but thankfully most of them were content to walk up and down Hall Avenue carrying signs about doomsday or else muttering to themselves about the Mayor and the weather. The crazies in this city seemed to think the Mayor was responsible for the weather. Maybe he was.

Detective Lieutenant Peter Byrnes seemed to think his squad was responsible for the lack of communication on what now appeared to be three linked murders. Byrnes, when apprised of what Dorfsman had said on the telephone, agreed emphatically with him: Didn’t the guys up here ever talk to each other?

“You get a murder last Tuesday night and another one on Saturday night, Sunday morning, whenever it was,” Byrnes said. “The first one is on Culver Avenue, and the next one is on Silvermine Road, just a few blocks away! Both of them are gunshot murders, but does it ever occur to you masterminds to do an in-house cross-check? I’m not even mentioning the little girl who got killed downtown on Friday night, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning a third gunshot murder to sleuths of such remarkable perception,” Byrnes said, gathering steam, “but does anyone up here even glance at the activity reports, which is why we keep activity reports in the first place, so that every cop in this precinct, uniformed or plainclothes, will know what the hell is going on up here!”

In the squadroom outside, Miscolo and a handful of uniformed patrolmen were milling about apprehensively, listening to Byrnes’s angry voice from behind the frosted glass door to his office, and knowing that someone in there was getting chewed out mightily. Actually, there were four someones in there, but none of the squadroom eavesdroppers knew that because the detectives had been called at home early that Tuesday morning and asked to report at the crack of dawn (well, 7:30 A.M.) and the uniformed force hadn’t begun trickling in until 7:45 A.M., when roll call took place every morning in the muster room downstairs. The four plainclothes someones were, in alphabetical order, Detectives Brown, Carella, Kling, and Meyer. They were all looking at their shoes.

Byrnes’s rage comprised one part pressure from “rank” downtown and one part sheer indignation over the stupidity of men he had hoped, after all these years, could do their jobs with at least a modicum of routine efficiency. Secretly, he suspected Kling was more at fault than any of the others because of the clamlike posture he had developed after his divorce. But he did not want to single out Kling as the sole perpetrator here because that would only serve to embarrass him and perhaps cause disharmony among four detectives who now seemed fated to work together on solving three separate murders. So Byrnes ranted and raved about simple procedures, which — if only followed to the letter — would dispel confusion, eliminate duplication, and (“A consummation devoutly to be wished,” he actually said) maybe solve a case every now and then around here.

“All right,” he said at last, “that’s that.”

“Pete...,” Carella started.

“I said all right, that’s the end of it,” Byrnes said. “Have a piece of candy,” he said, shoving the half-depleted box across the desk toward his surprised detectives. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Not much,” Carella said.

“Is this a crazy we’re dealing with here?”

“Maybe,” Brown said.

“Have you got a line on that .38 yet?”

“No, Pete, we’ve been—”

“Round up your street gun dealers, find out who was shopping for a gun that fits the description.”

“Yes, Pete,” Carella said.

“How does Lopez tie in with these other two?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Were either of them doing drugs?”

“The girl was. We don’t know about Edelman yet.”

“Was Lopez supplying her?”

“We don’t know yet. We do know she was bringing coke in for some of the other people in the show.”

“This last one was a diamond merchant, huh?”

“Precious gems,” Kling said.

“Did he know either Lopez or the girl?”

“We don’t know yet,” Kling said. “But he was held up sometime last summer, and that may be something to go on. We’ll be running it through the computer this morning.”

“Don’t go squeezing them,” Byrnes said to Meyer, who was reaching for a chocolate in the box. “Take all you want, but eat the ones you touch, and don’t go squishing up the whole box.”

Meyer, who had in fact been about to squeeze one of the chocolates, gave Byrnes an offended look.

“What’s with her boyfriend?” Byrnes said. “The girl’s boyfriend.”

“He was on the phone most of last Friday night,” Carella said. “The night the girl was killed.”

“On the phone? Who with?”

“Another student. The boyfriend’s a med student at Ramsey.”

“What’s his name again?”

“Timothy Moore.”

“And his friend’s name?”

“Karl Loeb.”

“You checked with him?”

“Loeb? Yes. They were gabbing till almost two in the morning.”

“Who called who?” Byrnes asked.

“Back and forth.”

“What else?”

“The producer of the show, man named Allan Carter, is playing house with one of the dancers.”

“So what?” Byrnes asked.

“He’s married,” Meyer said.

“So what?” Byrnes asked again.

“We think he’s lying to us,” Meyer said.

“About his little tootsie?” Byrnes said, using one of the quaint, archaic terms that sometimes crept into his vocabulary, for which the younger men on the squad almost always forgave him.

“No, he was straight on about that,” Carella said. “But he claims to have known the dead girl only casually, and it doesn’t smell right.”

“Why would he lie about that?” Byrnes asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Carella said.

“You think they were doing a two-on-one?” Byrnes asked, using one of the more voguish terms that sometimes crept into his vocabulary.

“We don’t know yet,” Meyer said.

“What the hell do you know?” Byrnes asked heatedly, and then gained control of himself once again. “Have some candy, for Christ’s sake!” he said. “I’ll get fat as a horse here.”

“Pete,” Carella said, “this is a complicated one.”

“Don’t tell me it’s a complicated one. Don’t I know a complicated one when I see a complicated one?”

“Maybe it is a crazy,” Brown suggested.

“That’s the easy way out,” Byrnes said, “blaming it on a crazy. You want to know something? In my book, anybody who kills anybody is a crazy.”

The detectives had no quarrel with him there.

“Okay,” Byrnes said, “start vacuuming the street. Or, better yet, call some of our snitches, see if they can come up with a line on that goddamn gun. Bert, Artie, run your computer check on that holdup... have you been to that guy’s shop yet? Edelman’s?”

“Not yet,” Brown said.

“Go there, go through everything in the place. You come across even a speck of white dust, shoot it over to the lab for a cocaine test.”

“We’re not sure cocaine is the connection,” Meyer said.

“No? Then what is? The girl was doing coke and supplying half the cast with it—”

“Not that many, Pete.”

“However goddamn many! I don’t care if she was the star of that show, which I gather she wasn’t. On my block, she was delivering dope, and that made her a mule. We know Lopez was in the business of selling cocaine, he had six grams and eleven hundred bucks in his pocket when he was killed. So find out some more about little Miss Goody Two Shoes. Where’d she get the stuff she was spreading around the cast? Was she turning a profit or just doing a favor? And put the blocks to this producer, whatever the hell his name is, Carter. If he was sleeping with both that other dancer and the dead girl, I want to know about it. That’s it. Call Danny Gimp, call Fats Donner, call any snitch who’s in town instead of in Florida, where I should be. I want this case moved off the dime, have you got that? The next time the Chief calls me, I want to tell him something positive.”

“Yes, Pete,” Carella said.

“Don’t ‘Yes, Pete’ me. Just do it.”

“Yes, Pete.”

“And another thing. I’m not buying this as a crazy until you guys can convince me there was absolutely no connection between the three victims.”

Byrnes paused.

“Find that connection,” he said.

They arranged to meet on a bench in Grover Park, not too far from the skating rink and the statue of General Ronald King, who had once stormed a precious hill during the Spanish-American War, thereby shortening the tenure of the foreign tyrants who (according to William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer) were oppressing the honest Cuban cane cutters and fishermen. A bygone Mayor had commissioned the statue of the general, not because of his indisputable gallantry, but only because King (like the Mayor himself) was reputed to have been a card mayvin whose specialty had been poker and whose favorite game within the genre had been something called “Shove,” which was also the Mayor’s favorite. For his patience in standing out there in bronze in all sorts of weather, the general had been further honored by the city’s Hispanic (though not Cuban) population, who scrawled their names in spray paint across his bold chest and who occasionally pissed on his horse’s legs.

School had been canceled today because of hazardous road conditions. As Carella waited for Danny Gimp on the bench near the statue of the general, he could hear the voices of young boys playing ice hockey on the outdoor rink. He was frozen to the marrow. He was not normally a philosophical man, but as he sat huddled inside his heaviest coat — and his jacket beneath that, and a sweater beneath that, and a flannel shirt beneath that, and woolen underwear beneath that — he thought that winter was a lot like police work. Winter wore you down. The snow, and the sleet, and the freezing rain, and the ice just kept coming at you till you were ready to throw up your hands in surrender. But you hung in there somehow until the spring thaw came and everything seemed all right again — till next winter.

Where the hell was Danny?

He saw him limping slowly up the path, turning his head this way and that to check the snow-covered terrain, just like an undercover agent out in the cold, which — to tell the truth — Danny sometimes fancied himself to be. He was wearing a red-and-blue plaid mackinaw and a red watch cap pulled down around his ears, and blue woolen gloves and green corduroy trousers tucked into the tops of black galoshes, a somewhat garish costume for someone trying to appear inconspicuous. He walked directly past the bench on which Carella sat freezing (there were times when he carried this spy stuff a bit too far), walked almost to the statue of the general, peered around cautiously, and then came back to the bench, sat beside Carella, took a newspaper from the side pocket of his mackinaw, opened it to hide his face, and said, “Hello, Steve. Cold, huh?”

Carella took off his glove and offered his hand to Danny. Danny lowered the newspaper, took off his glove, and reached out for Carella’s hand. They shook hands briefly and put on their gloves again. There were not too many detectives who shook hands with informers. Most cops and their informers were business associates of a sort, but they did not shake hands. Not many cops held snitches in very high regard. A snitch was usually someone who “owed” something to the cops. The cops were willing to look the other way in return for information. Some of the snitches who provided information were among the city’s worst citizens. But if politics made strange bedfellows, criminal investigation made even stranger ones. Hal Willis’s favorite snitch was a man named Fats Donner, whose penchant for twelve-year-old girls made him universally despised. But he was a good and valuable informer. Of all the snitches Carella worked with, he liked Danny Gimp best. And he would never forget that once upon a time, more years ago than he cared to remember, Danny had come to see him in the hospital when he was recovering from a bullet wound. That was why he always shook hands with Danny Gimp. He would shake hands with Danny Gimp even if the Commissioner were watching.

“How’s the leg?” he asked.

“It hurts when it’s cold,” Danny said.

“Just once,” Carella said, “I would like to meet someplace that isn’t Siberia.”

“I have to be careful,” Danny said.

“You can be careful inside.”

“Inside there are ears,” Danny said.

“Well, let’s make this fast, okay?”

“It’s your nickel,” Danny said, inappropriately in that they were not on the telephone, and anyway a nickel telephone call had gone the way of the buggy whip.

“I’m looking for a .38 Smith and Wesson that was used in three murders,” Carella said.

“When was this?” Danny asked.

“The first one was a week ago today, the ninth. The second one was last Friday night, the twelfth. The last one was on Saturday night, the thirteenth.”

“All of them up here?”

“Two of them.”

“Which two?”

“A coke dealer named Paco Lopez — ever hear of him?”

“I think so.”

“And a diamond merchant named Marvin Edelman.”

“Doing business up here?”

“No, downtown. He lived on Silvermine Road.”

“Fancy,” Danny said.

“Who’s the third party?”

“A girl named Sally Anderson. Dancer in a musical downtown.”

“So where’s the connection?” Danny asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Mmm,” Danny said. “Lopez, huh?”

“Paco,” Carella said.

“Paco Lopez,” Danny said.

“Ring a bell?”

“Did he burn some chick’s tits a while back?”

“That’s the guy.”

“Yeah,” Danny said.

“Do you know him?”

“I seen him around. This was months ago. He must’ve been living with the chick, they were together all the time. So he bought it, huh? That’s no great loss, Steve. He was bad news all around.”

“How so?”

“Mean,” Danny said. “I don’t like people who are mean, do you? Did you talk to the chick yet?”

“The day after Lopez got killed.”

“And?”

“Nothing. She told us what he’d done to her—”

“Something, huh?” Danny said, and shook his head.

“But they’d stopped living together two months ago. She didn’t know anything.”

“Nobody ever knows anything when it comes to cops in this neighborhood. Maybe she’s the one who done it. For marking her that way.”

“I doubt it, Danny, but be my guest. Frankly, I’m more interested in knowing whether a .38 changed hands sometime during this past week.”

“Lots of .38s in this city, Steve.”

“I know that.”

“Changing hands all the time.” He was silent for a moment. “The first one was last Tuesday, huh? What time?”

“Eleven o’clock.”

“P.M.?”

“P.M.”

“Where?”

“On Culver Avenue.”

“Inside or out?”

“On the street.”

“Not too many people out doing mischief in this weather,” Danny said. “The cold keeps them home. Murderers and thieves like their comfort,” he said philosophically. “Nobody seen the killer, huh?”

“Would I be here freezing my ass off if we had a witness?” Carella said.

“I’m freezing, too, don’t forget,” Danny said, somewhat offended. “Well, let me see what I hear. How urgent is this?”

“Urgent,” Carella said.

“ ‘Cause there’s a bet I want to place before I get to work.”

“Anything good?” Carella asked.

“Only if he wins,” Danny said, and shrugged.

Brother Anthony and Emma were smoking dope and drinking wine and going over the list of names and addresses Judite Quadrado had given them two days ago. A kerosene heater was going in one corner of the room, but the radiators were only lukewarm, and the windows were nonetheless rimed with ice. Brother Anthony and Emma were sitting very close to the kerosene heater, even though both of them insisted that cold weather never bothered them. They were both in their underwear.

They had smoked a little pot an hour ago, before making love in the king-sized bed in Brother Anthony’s bedroom. Afterward, they had each and separately pulled on their underwear and walked out into the living room to open a bottle of wine and to light two more joints before sitting down again with the list of potential customers. Brother Anthony was wearing striped boxer shorts. Emma was wearing black bikini panties. Brother Anthony thought she looked radiantly lovely after sex.

“So what it looks like to me,” Emma said, “is that he had a dozen people he was servicing.”

“That’s not so many,” Brother Anthony said. “I was hoping for something bigger, Em, I’ll tell you the truth. Twelve rotten names sounds like very small potatoes for all the trouble we went to.” He looked at the list again. “Especially in such small quantities. Look at the quantities, Em.”

“Do you know the joke?” she asked him, grinning.

“No. What joke?” He loved it when she told jokes. He also loved it when she went down on him. Looking at her huge breasts, he was beginning to feel the faintest stirrings of renewed desire, and he began thinking that maybe he would let her tell her joke and then they would forget all about Lopez’s small-time list and go make love again. That sounded like a very good thing to do on a cold day like today.

“This lady is staying at a Miami Beach hotel, you know?” Emma said, still grinning.

“I wish I was staying at a Miami Beach hotel,” Brother Anthony said.

“You want to hear this joke or not?”

“Tell it,” he said.

“So she eats a couple of meals in the dining room, and then she goes to the front desk and starts complaining to the manager.”

“What about?” Brother Anthony said.

“Will you let me tell it, please?”

“Tell it, tell it.”

“She tells the manager the food in the dining room is absolute poison. The eggs are poison, the beef is poison, the potatoes are poison, the salads are poison, the coffee is poison, everything is poison, poison, poison, she says. And you know what else?”

“What else?” Brother Anthony asked.

“The portions are so small!” Emma said, and burst out laughing.

“I don’t get it,” Brother Anthony said.

“The lady is complaining the food is poison—”

“Yeah?”

“But she’s also complaining the portions are too small.”

“So what?”

“If it’s poison, why does she want bigger portions?”

“Maybe she’s crazy,” Brother Anthony said.

“No, she’s not crazy,” Emma said. “She’s complaining about the food, but she’s also telling the manager the portions—”

“I understand,” Brother Anthony said, “but I still don’t get it. Why don’t we go in the other room again?”

“You’re not ready yet,” Emma said, glancing at his lap.

“You can make me ready.”

“I know I can. But I like it better when you’re ready before I make you ready.”

“Sweet mouth,” Brother Anthony said, lowering his voice.

“Mmm,” Emma said.

“So what do you say?”

“I say business before pleasure,” Emma said.

“Anyway, what made you even think of that joke?” he asked.

“You said something about the small quantities.”

“They are small,” Brother Anthony said. “Look at them,” he said, and handed the list to her. “Two or three grams a week, most of them. We ain’t gonna get rich on two, three grams a week.”

“We don’t have to get rich all at once, Bro,” Emma said. “We’ll take things slow and easy at first, start with these people who used to be Lopez’s customers, build from there.”

“How?”

“Maybe the lady can put us onto some other customers.”

“What lady? The one eating poison?”

“The one who was supplying Lopez. His ounce dealer.”

“Why would she want to help us that way?”

“Why not? There has to be a chain of supply, Bro. An ounce dealer needs gram dealers, a gram dealer needs users. The lady puts us onto some users, we buy our goods from her, and everybody’s happy.”

“I think you’re dreaming,” Brother Anthony said.

“Would it hurt to ask?” Emma said.

“She’ll tell us to get lost.”

“Who knows? Anyway, first things first. First we have to let her know we’ve taken over from Lopez and would like to continue doing business with her. That’s the first thing.”

“That’s the first thing, for sure.”

“So what I think you should do,” Emma said, “is get dressed and go pay this Sally Anderson a little visit.”

“Later,” Brother Anthony said, and took her in his arms.

“Mmm,” Emma said, and cuddled closer to him, and licked her lips.

Eileen Burke called the squadroom while Kling was still on the phone with Communications Division. Brown asked her to wait, and then put a note on Kling’s desk, advising him that Detective Burke was on six. Kling nodded. For a moment, he didn’t know who Detective Burke was.

“I’ve got the printout right here in my hand,” the supervisor in the Dispatcher’s Office said. “That was last July twenty-eighth, eight-oh-two P.M., 621 North Greenfield, room 207. Adam Car responded at eight-twelve.”

“What’d they find?”

“Radioed back with a Ten-Twenty. That’s a Robbery Past.”

Kling knew what a 10–20 was.

“Which precinct was that?”

“Midtown East,” the supervisor said.

“Would you know who handled the case there?”

“That’s not on the printout.”

“Okay, thanks,” Kling said, and pressed the lighted 6 button in the base of his phone. “Kling,” he said.

“Bert, it’s Eileen.”

“I didn’t get a chance to look for that earring,” he said.

“Didn’t turn up in the squadroom, huh?”

“Well, we’ve got a lost-and-found box, but there’s nothing in it.”

“How about the car?”

“I haven’t checked the car yet,” he said. “I haven’t used that particular car since Saturday night.”

“Well, if you do get a chance—”

“Sure,” he said.

“It’s just that... they’re sort of my good-luck earrings.”

Kling said nothing.

“I feel naked without them,” she said.

He still said nothing.

“Can’t go around wearing just one good-luck earring, can I?” she said.

“I guess not,” he said.

“Cut my luck in half,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How’s the weather up there?” she asked.

“Cold.”

“Here, too,” she said. “Well, let me know if you find it, okay?”

“I will.”

“Thanks,” she said, and hung up.

On the same slip of paper Brown had placed on his desk, Kling scrawled “E’s earring,” and then put the slip of paper in his jacket pocket. He flipped his precinct directory till he found the number for Midtown East, dialed it, told the desk sergeant there what he was looking for, and was put through to a detective named Garrido, who spoke with a Spanish accent and who remembered the case at once because he himself had been staked out in the back of the Greenfield Street pawnshop when the armed robber walked in trying to hock all the stuff he’d stolen from Edelman two days earlier and three doors south.

“The whole list,” Garrido said, “ever’ting on it from soup to nuts. We had him cold.”

“So what happened?” Kling asked.

“Guess who we got for the jutch?” Garrido asked.

“Who?” Kling asked.

“Harris.”

Kling knew the Honorable Wilbur Harris. The Honorable Wilbur Harris was known in the trade as Walking Wilbur. His specialty was allowing criminals to march out of his courtroom.

“What happened?” Kling asked.

“The kid wass a junkie, first time he did any ting like this. He wass almos’ cryin’ in the cour’room. So Harris less him off with a suspended sentence.”

“Even though you caught him with the goods, huh?”

“All of it!” Garrido said. “Ever’ting on the list! Ah, wha’s the sense?”

“What was the kid’s name?”

“Andrew someting. You wann me to pull the file?”

“If it’s not any trouble.”

“Sure,” Garrido said. “Juss a secon’, okay?”

He was back five minutes later with a name and a last known address for the seventeen-year-old boy who had held up Marvin Edelman the summer before.

The apartment Allan Carter had described as “one of those big old rent-controlled apartments on the park” was in fact on the park, and most certainly old, and possibly rent-controlled, but only a dwarf would have considered it “big.” Lonnie Cooper, one of the two black dancers in Fatback, was almost as tall as the two detectives she admitted into her home that late Tuesday morning; together, the three of them caused the tiny place to assume the dimensions of a clothes closet. Compounding the felony, Miss Cooper had jammed the place chock-full of furniture, knickknacks, paintings, and pieces of sculpture so that there was hardly an uncovered patch of wall or floor surface; both Meyer and Carella felt they had wandered into the business office of a fence selling stolen goods.

“I like clutter,” the dancer explained. “Most dancers don’t, but I do. On stage, I can fly. When I’m home, I like to fold my wings.”

She was even more beautiful than Carella remembered her on stage, a lissome woman with skin the color of cork, high cheekbones, a nose like Nefertiti’s, a generous mouth, and a dazzling smile. She was wearing a man’s red woolen shawl-collared sweater over a black leotard top and black tights. She was barefooted, but she was wearing striped leg warmers over the tights. She asked the detectives if they would like some coffee or anything, and when they declined, she asked them to make themselves comfortable. Carella and Meyer took seats beside each other on a sofa cluttered with throw pillows. Lonnie Cooper sat opposite them in an easy chair with antimacassars pinned to the back and the arms. A coffee table between them was covered with glass paperweights, miniature dolls, letter openers, campaign buttons, and a trylon-and-perisphere souvenir ashtray from New York City’s 1939 World’s Fair. Catching Carella’s glance, she explained, “I collect things.”

“Miss Cooper,” he said, “I wonder if—”

“Lonnie,” she said.

“Fine,” he said. “Lonnie, I—”

“What’s your first name?” she asked.

“Steve,” he said.

“And yours?” she asked Meyer.

“Meyer,” he said.

“I thought that was your last name.”

“It is. It’s also my first name.”

“How terrific!” she said.

Meyer shrugged. He had never thought of his name as being particularly terrific, except once when a lady fiction writer used it as the title of a novel about a college professor. He had called Rollie Chabrier in the DA’s office, wanting to know if he could sue. Chabrier told him he should feel honored. Meyer guessed he’d felt a little bit honored. But it continued to bother him that somebody out there had used the name of a real person for a mere character in a work of fiction. A college professor, no less.

“Are you sure you don’t want any coffee?” Lonnie asked.

“Positive, thanks,” Carella said.

“We’re about coffeed out,” Meyer said. “This weather.”

“Yeah, do you find yourself drinking a lot of coffee, too?” Lonnie said.

“Yes,” Meyer said.

“Me, too,” she said. “Gee.”

There was something very girlish about her, Carella decided. She looked to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven, but her movements and her facial expressions and even her somewhat highpitched voice were more like those of a seventeen-year-old. She curled up in the easy chair now, and folded her legs under her, the way his daughter April might have.

“I guess you realize we’re here about Sally Anderson,” Carella said.

“Yes, of course,” she said, and her face took on the studied, sober look of a child trying to cope with grown-up problems.

“Miss Cooper—”

“Lonnie,” she said.

“Lonnie—”

“Yes, Steve?”

Carella cleared his throat. “Lonnie, we understand there was a party here a week ago last Sunday, that would’ve been the seventh of February. Do you recall such a party?”

“Yeah, wow,” she said, “it was a great party!”

“Was Sally Anderson here?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And Tina Wong?”

“Yep.”

“And Allan Carter?”

“Sure, lots of people,” Lonnie said.

“How about Mike Roldan and Tony Asensio?” Meyer asked.

“You guys really do your homework, don’t you?” Lonnie said.

Meyer had never thought of it as homework; he smiled weakly.

“They were here, too, Meyer,” Lonnie said, and smiled back — dazzlingly.

“From what we’ve been able to determine,” Carella said, “there was some cocaine floating around that night.”

“Oh?” she said, and the smile dropped from her face.

“Was there?”

“Who told you that?”

“Several people.”

“Who?”

“That’s not important, Miss Cooper.”

“It’s important to me, Steve. And please call me Lonnie.”

“We’ve had it from three different sources,” Meyer said.

“Who?”

He looked at Carella. Carella nodded.

“Tina Wong, Mike Roldan, and Tony Asensio,” Meyer said.

“Boy,” Lonnie said, and shook her head.

“Is it true?” Carella said.

“Listen, who am I to contradict them?” Lonnie said, and shrugged and grimaced, and then shifted her position in the chair. “But I thought this was about Sally.”

“It is.”

“I mean, is this going to turn into a cocaine thing?”

“It’s already a cocaine thing,” Meyer said. “We know Sally was doing coke that night, and we also know—”

“You’re talking about last Sunday?”

“A week ago last Sunday, yes. You do remember that Sally was doing coke, don’t you?”

“Well... yes. Now that you mention it.”

“Plus some other people as well.”

“Well, a few others.”

“Okay. Where’d the stuff come from?”

“How would I know?”

“Miss Cooper—”

“Lonnie.”

“Lonnie, we’re not looking for a drug collar here. Sally Anderson was murdered, and we’re trying to find out why. If cocaine had anything to do with her death—”

“I don’t see how it could have.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she’s the one who brought the coke.”

“We know that. But where’d she get it, would you know?”

“Uptown someplace.”

“Where uptown?”

“I have no idea.”

“How far uptown? Are we talking about below the park or—”

“I really don’t know.”

“How often did she bring the stuff in?”

“Usually once a week. On Monday nights, before the show. We’re dark on Sunday—”

“Dark?”

“No performances. So she usually got the stuff on Sundays, I guess, went uptown for it on Sundays, or else had it delivered, I really don’t know. Anyway, she brought it to the theater on Monday nights.”

“And distributed it among the cast.”

“Those who wanted it, yes.”

“How many of those were there?”

“Half a dozen? Seven? Something like that.”

“How much money was involved here, would you say?”

“You don’t think she was in this for the money, do you?”

“Why was she in it?”

“She was doing us a favor, that’s all. I mean, why duplicate the effort? If you’ve got a good contact and he delivers good dust, why not make one big buy every week instead of six or seven small buys from dealers you maybe can’t trust? It only makes sense.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“Well, doesn’t it?”

“So what are we talking about here?” Meyer said. “For the six or seven grams, what’d she—”

“Well, sometimes more than that. But she only charged what she herself was paying for it, believe me. I know street prices, and that’s all she was getting.”

“Nothing for all the trouble of having to go uptown?”

“What trouble? She had to go anyway, didn’t she? And besides, maybe the man was delivering it, who knows? You’re really barking up the wrong tree if you think that’s how Sally—”

She stopped suddenly.

“How Sally what?” Carella asked at once.

“How she... uh—”

Lonnie grimaced and shrugged as though utterly baffled as to how she might finish the sentence she had started.

“Yes?” Carella said. “How she what?”

“Earned her living,” Lonnie said, and smiled.

“Well, we know how she earned her living, don’t we?” Meyer said. “She was a dancer.”

“Well, yes.”

“Then why would we think she earned her living some other way?”

“Well, you’ve been talking about coke here, and asking how much money was involved—”

“Yes, but you told us she wasn’t making any profit on the coke.”

“That’s right.”

“Was she earning extra cash someplace else?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know anything about any extra cash.”

“But there was extra cash someplace, wasn’t there?”

“Gee, did I say that?” Lonnie said, and rolled her eyes.

“You seemed to indicate—”

“No, you misunderstood me, Steve.”

“Where’d she get this extra cash?” Carella asked.

“What extra cash?” Lonnie said.

“Let’s start all over again,” Carella said. “What did you mean when you used the words ‘how she earned her living’?”

“As a dancer,” Lonnie said.

“That’s not what I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“I’m asking you where she earned additional income.”

“Who said she did?”

“I thought that’s what you implied.”

“Anyway,” Lonnie said, “sometimes a performer will do a nightclub gig or something. While she’s still in a show that’s running.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said. “Was Sally doing nightclub gigs?”

“Well... no. Not that I know of.”

“Then what was she doing?”

“I only said—”

Lonnie shook her head.

“You said she was doing something that earned her a living. What was it?”

“It goes on all over town,” Lonnie said.

“What does?”

“If Sally was lucky enough to get cut in on it, more power to her.”

“Cut in on what?”

“It isn’t even against the law, that I know of,” Lonnie said. “Nobody gets hurt by it.”

“What are we talking about?” Meyer asked. It sounded as if she’d been describing prostitution, but surely she knew that was against the law. And besides, who said nobody got hurt by it?

“Tell us what you mean,” Carella said.

“I don’t have anything else to tell you,” she said, and folded her arms across her chest like a pouting six-year-old.

“We can subpoena you before a grand jury,” Carella said, figuring if the ploy had worked at least a thousand times before, it might work yet another time.

“So subpoena me,” Lonnie said.

When Brown went out back to where the precinct’s vehicles were parked, he was surprised first to see that it was the same rotten decrepit automobile they’d pulled last Saturday night, and next to see Kling on his hands and knees in the back seat.

“I told them I didn’t want this car again,” he said to Kling’s back. “What are you doing?”

“Here it is,” Kling said.

“Here’s what?”

“Eileen’s earring,” he said, and held up a small gold circle.

Brown nodded. “You want to drive?” he asked. “I hate this car.”

“Sure,” Kling said.

He put the earring in his coat pocket, dusted off the knees of his trousers, and then climbed in behind the wheel. Brown got in beside him on the passenger side. “This door doesn’t close right,” he said, slamming and reslamming the door until it seemed at last to fit properly into the frame. He turned on the heater at once. The heater began rattling and clanging. “Terrific,” he said. “Where we headed?”

“Diamondback,” Kling said, and started the car.

“Terrific,” Brown said.

A police department adage maintained that the best time and place to get killed in this city was at 12:00 midnight on a Saturday in the middle of August on the corner of Landis Avenue and Porter Street. Brown and Kling were happy that they reached that particular corner at 12:00 noon on a freezing day in February, but they weren’t particularly delighted to be in Diamondback at all. Brown appreciated their destination even less than did Kling. Diamondback, in the 83rd Precinct, was almost exclusively black, and many of the residents here felt that a black cop was the worst kind of cop in the world. Even the honest citizens up here — and they far outnumbered the pimps, pushers, junkies, armed robbers, burglars, hookers, and assorted petty thieves — felt that if you had any kind of law trouble it was better to go to Whitey than to one of your own brothers. A black cop was like a reformed hooker who’d gone tight and dry.

“What’s this kid’s name?” Brown asked.

“Andrew Fleet,” Kling said.

“White or black?”

“Black,” Kling said.

“Terrific,” Brown said.

The last known address for Fleet was in a row of grimy tenements on St. Sebastian Avenue, which started at the eastern end of Grover Park, and then ran diagonally northward and eastward for a total of thirteen blocks between Landis and Isola avenues, to become — inexplicably — another thoroughfare named Adams Street, presumably after the second president of the United States, or perhaps even the sixth. St. Sab’s, as it was familiarly called by everyone in the neighborhood, looked particularly dismal that Tuesday afternoon. You could always tell a neighborhood of poor people in this city because the streets were always the last to be plowed and sanded, and the garbage, especially in bad weather, was allowed to pile up indefinitely, presumably as an inducement to free enterprise among the rat population. It was not unusual in Diamondback to see rats the size of alley cats striding boldly across an avenue at high noon. It was ten minutes past 12:00 when Kling pulled up alongside a snowbank outside Fleet’s building. There was not a rat in sight, but all the garbage cans along the street were overflowing, and the sidewalks were cluttered with the loose debris of urban waste, much of it frozen into the icy pavement. Up here, people didn’t use plastic garbage bags. Plastic garbage bags cost money.

Two old black men were standing around a fire in a sawed-off gasoline drum, warming their hands as Brown and Kling approached the front stoop of the building. The men knew immediately that Brown and Kling were detectives. There’s a smell. Brown and Kling knew immediately that the men around the gasoline drum knew immediately they were detectives. There’s a symbiosis. The two men didn’t even look up at Brown and Kling as they climbed the front steps. Brown and Kling didn’t look at the two men. The unspoken rule was that if you hadn’t done anything wrong, you had no bona fide business with each other.

In the small vestibule, they checked the mailboxes. Only two of them had nameplates.

“Have we got an apartment for him?” Brown asked.

“3-B,” Kling said.

The lock on the inner vestibule door was broken. Naturally. The socket hanging from the ceiling just inside the door had no lightbulb in it. Naturally. The hallway was dark and the steps leading upstairs were darker, and there was the aggressive aroma of tight cramped living, a presence as tangible as the brick walls of the building.

“Shoulda taken a flash from the car,” Brown said.

“Yeah,” Kling said.

They climbed the steps to the third floor.

They listened outside the door to Fleet’s apartment.

Nothing.

They listened some more.

Still nothing.

Brown knocked.

“Johnny?” a voice said.

“Police,” Brown said.

“Oh.”

“Open it up,” Brown said.

“Sure, just a second.”

Brown looked at Kling. Both men shrugged. They heard footsteps inside, approaching the door. They heard someone fumbling with a night chain. They heard the tumblers of a lock falling. The door opened. A thin young black man wearing blue jeans and a tan V-necked sweater over a white undershirt stood in the doorframe, peering out into the hallway.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Andrew Fleet?” Brown said, and showed him his shield and ID card.

“Yeah?”

“Are you Andrew Fleet?”

“Yeah?”

“Few questions we’d like to ask you. Okay to come in?”

“Well, uh, sure,” Fleet said, and glanced past them toward the stairwell.

“Or were you expecting somebody?” Kling asked at once.

“No, no, come on in.”

He stepped aside to allow them entrance. They were standing in a small kitchen. A single ice-rimed window opened onto the brick wall of the tenement opposite. There were dirty dishes stacked in the sink. An empty wine bottle was on the small table. A clothesline was stretched across the room from one wall to the wall opposite. A single pair of Jockey shorts was draped over the line.

“It’s a little chilly in here,” Fleet said. “The heat’s slow coming up today. We already called the Ombudsman’s Office.”

“Who’s we?” Brown asked.

“A guy on the tenants’ committee.”

Through an open door off the kitchen, they could see an unmade bed. The floor around the bed was heaped with dirty clothes. On the wall over the bed, there was a framed picture of Jesus Christ with his hand hovering in blessing over his exposed and bleeding heart.

“You live here alone?” Brown asked.

“Yes, sir,” Fleet said.

“Just these two rooms?”

“Yes, sir.”

He was suddenly all “sirs”; the formality was not lost on the two detectives. A glance passed between them. They were both wondering what he was afraid of.

“Okay to ask you a few questions?” Brown said.

“Sure. But... uh... you know, like you said, I was kind of expecting someone.”

“Who?” Kling said. “Johnny?”

“Well, yeah, actually.”

“Who’s Johnny?”

“A friend.”

“You still doing heroin?” Brown asked.

“No, no. Who told you that?”

“Your record, for one thing,” Kling said.

“I ain’t got a record. I never done time in my life.”

“Nobody said you did time.”

“You were arrested last July,” Brown said. “Charged with Rob One.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You walked, we know.”

“Well, it was a suspended sentence.”

“Because you were a poor, put-upon junkie, right?” Brown said.

“Well, I was hooked pretty bad back then, that’s true.”

“But no more, huh?”

“No. Hey, no. You gotta be crazy to fool around with that shit.”

“Uh-huh,” Brown said. “So who’s this friend Johnny?”

“Just a friend.”

“Not a dealer by any chance?”

“No, no. Hey, come on, man.”

“Where were you last Saturday night, Andrew?” Kling asked.

“Last Saturday night?”

“Actually Sunday morning. Two o’clock on the morning of the fourteenth.”

“Yeah,” Fleet said.

“Yeah what?”

“I’m trying to remember. Why? What happened last Saturday night?”

“You tell us,” Brown said.

“Saturday night,” Fleet said.

“Or Sunday morning, take your choice.”

“Two o’clock in the morning,” Fleet said.

“You’ve got it,” Kling said.

“I was here, I think.”

“Anybody with you?”

“Is this an Article 220?” Fleet asked, using the penal law number for the section defining drug abuses.

“Anybody with you?” Kling repeated.

“Who remembers? That was... what was it? Three days ago? Four days ago?”

“Try to remember, Andrew,” Brown said.

“I’m trying.”

“Do you remember the name of the man you held up?”

“Yeah.”

“What was his name?”

“Edelbaum.”

“Try again.”

“That was his name.”

“Ever see him since the holdup?”

“Yeah, at the trial.”

“And you think his name is Edelbaum, huh?”

“That is his name.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“No. Where does he live?”

“No idea where he lives, huh?”

“How would I know where he lives?”

“Do you remember where his shop is?”

“Sure. On North Greenfield.”

“But you don’t remember where he lives, huh?”

“I never knew where, so how can I remember where?”

“But if you wanted to find out where, you’d look it up in the phone book, right?” Brown said.

“Well, sure, but why would I want to do that?”

“Where were you on February the fourteenth at two in the morning?” Kling asked.

“I told you. Right here.”

“Anybody with you?”

“If this is an Article—”

“Anybody with you, Andrew?”

“We were shooting a little dope, okay?” Fleet said. “Is that what you want to know? Fine, you got it, man. We were shooting dope, I’m still a junkie, okay? Big deal. Go through the place if you want to, you won’t find anything but a little pot. Not enough for a bust, that’s for sure. Go ahead, take a look.”

“Who’s we?” Brown asked.

“What?”

“The person who was with you on Saturday night.”

“It was Johnny, okay? What are we gonna do here, get the whole world in trouble?”

“Johnny who?” Kling asked.

A knock sounded on the door. Fleet looked at the two cops.

“Answer it,” Brown said.

“Listen—”

“Answer it.”

Fleet sighed and went to the door. He turned the knob on the lock and opened the door.

“Hi,” he said.

The black girl standing in the hallway couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. She was wearing a red ski parka over blue jeans and high-heeled boots. She was not unattractive, but the lipstick on her mouth was a shade too garish, and her cheeks were heavily rouged and her eyes were made up with shadow and liner that seemed far too nocturnal for twenty minutes past noon.

“Come in, miss,” Brown said.

“What’s the beef?” she asked, recognizing them immediately as cops.

“No beef,” Kling said. “Want to tell us who you are?”

“Andy?” she said, turning her eyes to where Fleet was standing.

“I don’t know what they want,” Fleet said, and shrugged.

“You got a warrant?” the girl asked.

“We don’t need a warrant. This is a field investigation and your friend here invited us in,” Brown said. “Why? What’ve you got to hide?”

“Is this an Article 220?” she asked.

“You both seem pretty familiar with Article 220,” Brown said.

“Yeah, well, live and learn,” the girl said, shrugging.

“What’s your name?” Kling said.

She looked at Fleet again. Fleet nodded.

“Corrine,” she said.

“Corrine what?”

“Johnson.”

The dawn broke slowly. It illuminated first Brown’s face, and then Kling’s.

“Johnny, is it?” Brown asked.

“Yeah, Johnny,” the girl said.

“Is that what you call yourself?”

“If your name was Corrine, would you call yourself Corrine?”

“How old are you, Johnny?”

“Twenty-one,” she said.

“Try again,” Kling said.

“Eighteen, okay?”

“Is it sixteen?” Brown said. “Or even younger?”

“Old enough,” Johnny said.

“For what?” Brown asked.

“For anything I’ve got to do.”

“How long have you been on the street?” Kling asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a hooker, aren’t you, Johnny?” Brown asked.

“Who says?”

Her eyes had turned to ice as opaque as that on the window. Her hands were in the pockets of the ski parka now. Both Kling and Brown were willing to bet her unseen fists were clenched.

“Where were you last Saturday night?” Kling asked.

“Johnny, they—”

“Shut up, Andrew!” Brown said. “Where were you, miss?”

“When did you say?”

“Johnny—”

“I told you to shut up!” Brown said.

“Last Saturday night. Two A.M.,” Kling said.

“Here,” the girl said.

“Doing what?”

“Shooting up.”

“How come? Was it slow on the street?”

“The snow,” Johnny said angrily. “Keeping all the Johns in they own beds.”

“What time did you get here?” Brown asked.

“I live here, man,” she said.

“Thought you lived here alone, Andrew,” Kling said.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to get anybody else in trouble, you know, man?”

“So you were here all night, huh?” Brown said.

“I didn’t say that,” the girl answered. “I went out around... what was it, Andy?”

“Never mind Andy. You tell us.”

“Ten o’clock, musta been, usually that’s when the action starts. Damn streets was empty as a hooker’s heart.”

“When did you get back?”

“Around midnight. We started partying around midnight, wasn’t it, Andy?”

Fleet was about to answer, but Brown’s stare silenced him.

“And you were here from midnight till two?” Kling asked.

“I was here from midnight till the next morning. I told you, man, I live here.”

“Did Andrew leave the apartment at any time that night?”

“No, sir,” Johnny said.

“No, sir,” Fleet repeated, nodding emphatically.

“Where’d you go the next morning?”

“Out. See if I could score.”

“What time?”

“Early. Around eleven o’clock, I guess it was.”

“Did you score?”

“Snow’s hinderin’ the traffic,” she said. She was not talking about automobile traffic. “You get your junk comin’ up from Florida, minute they hit North Carolina, they’re ass-deep in snow. I tell you two things it don’t pay to be in this weather, man. One’s a hooker, the other’s a junkie.”

Brown could think of a lot of other things it didn’t pay to be in this weather.

“Bert?” he said.

Kling looked at the two kids.

Then he said, “Yeah, let’s go.”

They walked down to the street in silence. The two old men were still standing around the gasoline drum, trying to warm themselves. When Kling started the car, the heater began rattling and clanging.

“They look clean, don’t you think?” Brown asked.

“Yeah,” Kling said.

“Didn’t even know the man’s name,” Brown said.

They drove downtown in silence. As they were approaching the station house, Brown said, “It’s a goddamn crying shame,” and Kling knew he wasn’t talking about the fact that they’d come up blank on the Edelman killing.