Jigsaw

5

It was all happening too quickly and too easily.

If getting seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars was always this simple, Brown was definitely in the wrong racket. He almost wished that he and Weinberg were truly partners. There was something about the big man that Brown liked, despite the fact that he was a felon. He did not leave Weinberg until 2:00 the next morning. By that time, each of the men had consumed a fifth of scotch between them, and were calling each other Artie and Al. They had also decided that Brown should be the one who made the next approach to Geraldine Ferguson. Weinberg had been to her gallery several times with offers to buy the segment he was certain she possessed, but each time she had professed ignorance of the photograph, segmented or otherwise. Weinberg told Brown that he knew the girl had the goods they were after, but he would not reveal how he knew. Brown said that was a hell of a way to start a partnership, and Weinberg said Brown had started in an even worse way, giving him all that bullshit about a lifer at Utah State, man, that was straight out of Mickey Mouse, had Brown expected him to believe it? Brown said Well, I guess we both got our reasons for not wanting our sources known, and Weinberg said Well, maybe when we get to know each other better, and Brown said I hope so, and Weinberg said Man, I never thought I’d be partners with a spade.

Brown looked at him.

It was hip these days, he knew, for white men to call Negroes “spades,” but to Brown this was simply another of the words that had once been considered — and which he still considered — derogatory. Weinberg was smiling in a boozy happy friendly way, and Brown was certain the slur had been unintentional. And yet, the word rankled, the whole fucking thing rankled.

“That bother you?” he asked.

“What bother me?” Weinberg said.

“My being a spade,” Brown said, hitting the word hard.

Weinberg looked him square in the eye. “Did I say that? Did I call you that?”

“You did,” Brown said, and nodded.

“Then I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He extended his hand across the table. “I’m sorry, Artie,” he said.

Brown took his hand. “Forget it.”

“I may be a shit,” Weinberg said. “I may go around beating up people and doing rotten things, but I like you, Artie, and I wouldn’t hurt you by saying no dumb thing like that.”

“Okay.”

Weinberg was just gathering steam. “I may be the crumbiest guy ever walked the earth, I may have done some filthy things, but one thing I wouldn’t do is call you no spade, Artie, not if I wasn’t so piss-ass drunk and didn’t know what I was saying that might hurt a good friend of mine and a partner besides.”

“Okay,” Brown said.

“Okay, excuse it, Artie. Excuse it. I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Weinberg said. “Let’s go home, Artie. Artie, I think we better go home. I always get in fights in bars, and I don’t want to get in no trouble when we got our little deal cooking, okay?” He winked. “Okay?” He winked again. “Tomorrow morning, you got to go visit little Geraldine Ferguson. Tell her she don’t give us that picture, we’ll come around and do something terrible to her, okay?” Weinberg smiled. “I can’t think of nothing terrible right now, but I’ll think of something in the morning, okay?”

On Saturday morning, Brown put the new photo scrap into an envelope together with Geraldine Ferguson’s name and address, sealed the envelope, and dropped it into a mailbox in the hallway of 1134 Culver Avenue, three blocks from the precinct. The name on the box was Cara Binieri, which was Steve Carella’s little joke, carabinieri meaning fuzz in Italian. They had decided between them that Brown was to stay away from the squadroom, and whereas he hoped to call Carella later in the day, he wanted the information to be waiting for him in the mailbox this morning, when he would pick it up on his way to work.

Brown’s own day started somewhat more glamorously.

It also ended in a pretty glamorous way.

Geraldine Ferguson was a white woman, petite, with long straight black hair and brown eyes and a generous mouth. She was in her early thirties, wearing purple bell-bottom slacks and a man-tailored shirt done in lavender satin. She had big golden hoops looped into her earlobes, and she greeted Brown with a smile nothing less than radiant.

“Good morning,” she said. “Isn’t it a beautiful morning?”

“It’s a lovely morning,” Brown said.

“Are you here for the Gonzagos?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Brown said. “What are the gonzagos?”

“Luis Gonzago,” she said, and smiled again. “He’s a painter. I thought you might have wanted to see his stuff, but we’ve already taken it down. Will you be going to Los Angeles?”

“No, I hadn’t planned to,” Brown said.

“Because he’ll be having a show at the Herron Gallery out there starting next Tuesday. On Sepulveda.”

“No, I won’t be going to Los Angeles.”

“That’s a shame,” she said, and smiled.

She was perhaps five-two or five-three, with a perfectly proportioned figure for her size. She moved with a swift feminine grace that he found delightful, her brown eyes flashing in the sunlight that streamed through the front plate-glass window, the smile breaking as sharp and as fast as a curve ball. She threw her arms wide, and said, “But we’ve got loads of other stuff, so if you’d like me to help you, I’d be happy to. Or you can just look around on your own, if you like. What were you interested in? Paintings or sculpture?”

“Well,” Brown said, and hesitated, wondering exactly how he should play this. “Is this your own gallery?” he asked, stalling.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

“Then you’re Miss Ferguson. I mean, this is the Ferguson Gallery, so I guess...”

“Well, Mrs. Ferguson, really,” she said. “But not really,” she added, and the smile broke again, swift and clean. “I was married to Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Harold Ferguson, but Mr. Ferguson and I are no longer sharing bed and board, and so whereas I’m still Geraldine Ferguson, I am no longer Mrs. Ferguson. Oh hell,” she said, “why don’t you just call me Gerry? What’s your name?”

“Arthur Stokes,” he said.

“Are you a cop, Arthur?” she asked flatly.

“No,” he said. “What gave you that idea?”

“You’re big like a cop,” she said, and shrugged. “Also, you carry a gun.”

“Do I?”

“Mm-huh. Right there,” she said, and pointed.

“I didn’t think it showed.”

“Well, Harold was in the diamond business, and he had a carry-permit, and he used to wear this enormous revolver in a shoulder holster, right where yours is. So I guess when your husband wears a gun all the time, you get used to the way it looks, and that’s how I spotted yours right away. Why do you wear a gun, Arthur? Are you in the diamond business?”

“No,” he said, “I’m in the insurance business.”

He figured that was a fair enough beginning, even though he had borrowed the occupation from Irving Krutch who, to his knowledge, did not carry a gun.

“Oh, do insurance men wear guns?” Gerry asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yes,” he said, “if they’re insurance investigators.”

“Don’t tell me!” she squealed. “Someone’s had a painting stolen! You’re here to check on authenticity.”

“Well, no,” he said. “Not exactly.”

“Arthur,” she said, “I think you’re a cop, I really do.”

“Now why would a cop be visiting you, Miss Ferguson?”

“Gerry. Maybe because I charge such exorbitant prices,” she said, and smiled. “I don’t really. Yes, I do really. Would you like to see some pictures while you decide if you’re a cop or not?”

She led him around the gallery. The walls were white, with recessed overhead lighting fixtures that illuminated the hanging paintings and standing pieces of sculpture. Her taste in paintings was a bit far-out for Brown, wildly colorful, non-objective geometric tangles that overpowered the eye and defied analysis. The sculpture was of the junkyard variety, automobile headlights welded to Stillson wrenches, a plumber’s red-cupped plunger wired to the broken handle and frayed-straw brush of a broom.

“I can see we’re hardly eliciting any wild response,” Gerry said, and smiled. “What kind of art do you like?”

“Well, I did have a specific picture in mind,” Brown said.

“Did someone see it here?” she asked. “Would it have been in the Gonzago exhibit?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What kind of a painting is it?”

“It isn’t a painting. It’s a photograph.”

Gerry shook her head. “It couldn’t have been here. We’ve never had a photographic show, not since I’ve owned the gallery, anyway — and that’s close to five years.”

“It’s not even a whole photograph,” Brown said, and watched her.

“Oh-ho,” she said. This time, she didn’t smile. “What happened to the other guy?”

“What other guy?”

“The guy who’s been in here three or four thousand times in the past two months. He’s yay tall, and he’s got blondish curly hair, and he said his name was Al Reynolds the first time he came in, and then forgot what he’d told me and said his name was Al Randolph the second time around. Is he a cop, too?”

“We’re neither of us cops.”

“Mr. Stark...”

“Stokes,” Brown said.

“Just checking,” Gerry said, and grinned. “Mr. Stokes...”

“Arthur...”

“Arthur, I don’t have what you’re looking for. Believe me. If I had it, I’d sell it to you. Assuming the price was right.”

“The price can be made right.”

“How right is right?”

“You name a figure,” Brown said.

“Well, do you see that Albright on the wall there? It’s approximately four feet square, and the gallery gets ten thousand dollars for it. The smaller painting next to it, the Sandrovich, costs five thousand. And the tiny gouache on the far wall costs three thousand. How large is your photograph, Arthur?”

“I have no idea. Are we talking about the whole picture now, or just the piece you have?”

“The whole picture.”

“Five by seven? Six by eight? I’m guessing.”

“Then you’ve never seen the whole picture?”

“Have you?”

“I haven’t even seen the tiny piece you’re after.”

“Then how do you know it’s tiny?” Brown asked.

“How much is it worth to you and your friend, Arthur? Tiny or otherwise?”

“Have you got it?”

“If I told him no, why should I tell you yes?”

“Maybe I’m more persuasive.”

“Sure, look at Superspade,” Gerry said, and smiled. “Faster than a rolling watermelon, able to leap tall honkies in a single bound...”

“...who is in reality,” Brown continued, “mild-mannered Arthur Stokes of Ebony magazine.”

“Who are you really in reality, Arthur?”

“An insurance investigator, I told you.”

“Your friend Reynolds or Randolph or whoever-the-hell doesn’t look or sound like an insurance investigator.”

“No two insurance investigators look or sound alike.”

“That’s right. Only cops and crooks look and sound alike. Are you and your friend cops, Arthur? Or crooks? Which?”

“Maybe one of us is a cop and the other’s a crook.”

“Either way, I don’t have what you want.”

“I think you have.”

“You’re right,” a voice said from the rear of the gallery. “She has.”

“Oh, hell,” Gerry said.

Brown turned to where a blue door had opened in the otherwise white wall. A blond man in a brown suit stood in the open doorway, his hand still on the knob. He was about five feet ten inches tall, wearing a vest under the suit jacket, gold-rimmed eyeglasses, a brown-and-gold striped tie. He walked briskly to where they were standing, offered his hand to Brown, and said, “Bramley Kahn, how do you do?”

“Bram, you’re a pain in the ass,” Gerry said.

“Arthur Stokes,” Brown said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“If we’re going to talk business...”

“We are not going to talk business,” Gerry interrupted.

“I suggest,” Kahn continued in his mild voice, “that we go into the office.” He paused, glanced at Gerry, looked back at Brown, and said, “Shall we?”

“Why not?” Brown said.

They walked to the rear of the gallery. The office was small and simply decorated — a Danish modern desk, a single naturalistic painting of a nude on the wall opposite the desk, a thick gray rug, white walls, a white Lucite hanging light globe, several leather-and-chrome easy chairs. Gerry Ferguson, pouting, sat nearest Kahn’s desk, folding her legs up under her and cupping her chin in her hand. Brown took the seat opposite Kahn, who sat behind the desk in an old-fashioned swivel chair that seemed distinctly out of place in such svelte surroundings.

“I’m Gerry’s partner,” Kahn explained.

“Only in the gallery,” Gerry snapped.

“I’m also her business adviser.”

“I’ve got some advice for you,” Gerry said heatedly. “Keep your nose...”

“Gerry has a temper,” Kahn said.

“Gerry has a jerk for a partner,” Gerry said.

“Oh, my,” Kahn said, and sighed.

Brown watched him, trying to determine whether he was a fag or not. His manner was effete, but not quite feminine; his voice was gently modulated, but there was no evidence in it of characteristic homosexual cadences; his gestures were small and fluid, but he neither dangled a limp wrist, nor used his hands and shoulders like a dancer’s. Brown couldn’t tell. The biggest queen he’d ever known had been built like a wrestler and moved with all the subtle grace of a longshoreman.

“What about the picture?” Brown asked.

“She has it,” Kahn said.

“I haven’t,” Gerry said.

“Maybe I ought to leave you two alone for a while,” Brown said.

“How much are you willing to pay for it, Mr. Stokes?” Kahn asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

Brown said nothing.

Kahn said, “On whether or not it’s a piece you already have, isn’t that the answer?”

Brown still said nothing.

“You do have a piece, don’t you? Or several pieces?”

“Is it for sale or not?” Brown asked.

“No,” Gerry said.

“Yes,” Kahn said. “But you still haven’t made an offer, Mr. Stokes.”

“Let me see it first,” Brown said.

“No,” Kahn said.

“No,” Gerry said, just a beat behind him.

“How many pieces do you have, Mr. Stokes?”

No answer.

“Is the other gentleman your partner? Do you have more than one piece?”

No answer.

“Do you know what the picture is supposed to reveal?”

“Let me ask a few,” Brown said.

“Please,” Kahn said, and offered him the floor with an openhanded, palm-up gesture.

“Miss Ferguson...”

“I thought it was Gerry.”

“Gerry... where did you get the piece you now have?”

“You’re both dreaming,” Gerry said. “I don’t know what either one of you is talking about.”

“My client...”

“Your client, my ass,” Gerry said. “You’re a cop. Who are you trying to kid, Arthur?”

“Are you a policeman, Mr. Stokes?”

“No.”

“The fuzz stench is overpowering,” Gerry said.

“How do you come to be so familiar with that stench?” Brown asked.

“May I answer that one?” Kahn asked.

“Keep your mouth shut, Bram,” Gerry warned.

“Mrs. Ferguson’s sister is a girl named Patty D’Amore,” Kahn said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing,” Brown said.

“Her husband was a cheap gangster named Louis D’Amore. He was killed some six years ago, following a bank holdup.”

“I don’t keep track of such things,” Brown said.

“No, I’ll just bet you don’t,” Gerry said. “He’s a cop, Bram. And you’re a fool.”

“Sicilian blood is much, much thicker than water,” Kahn said, and smiled. “I would imagine that in your childhood, there was plenty of talk concerning the ‘stench of fuzz’ while the lasagna was being served, eh, Geraldine?”

“How would you like to hear a choice Sicilian expression?” Gerry asked.

“I’d love to.”

“Va fon gool,” Gerry said.

“Even I know what that means,” Brown said.

“Sounds Chinese,” Kahn said.

“About the picture...”

“We have it, and we’ll sell it,” Kahn said. “That’s our business. Selling pictures.”

“Have you got any customers who’ll buy a picture sight unseen?” Brown asked.

“Have we got any customers who’ll buy a picture that doesn’t even exist?” Gerry asked.

“Well,” Brown said, “why don’t you give me a ring when you’ve settled this between you, huh?”

“Where can we reach you, Mr. Stokes?”

“I’m staying at the Selby Arms. It’s a fleabag on North Founders, just off Byram Lane.”

“Are you an out-of-towner, Mr. Stokes?”

“Room 502,” Brown said.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t answer any of mine, either,” Brown said. He smiled, rose, turned to Gerry and said, “I hope you’ll reconsider, Miss Ferguson.”

This time, she didn’t ask him to call her Gerry.

On the street outside, Brown looked for a phone booth. The first phone he tried had the dial missing. The receiver on the next phone had been severed from its metal-covered cord, undoubtedly with a wire cutter. The third booth he found seemed okay. He put a dime into the phone and got nothing, no dial tone, no static, no nothing. He jiggled the hook. His dime did not come back. He hung up the receiver. His dime did not come back. He hit the phone with his fist. Nothing. He went out of the booth swearing, wondering when the city was going to crack down on the illegal gambling devices the telephone company had installed all over the city and labeled “Public Telephones.” He supposed a Gaylord Ravenal type would have enjoyed this kind of action — you put your money in the slot and either lost it, or else hit the jackpot and a shower of coins came out of the return chute — but Brown merely wanted to make a telephone call, and the Las Vegas aspects of such an endeavor left him absolutely cold. He finally found a working telephone in a restaurant off Tyler. With a glance heavenward, he put his dime into the slot. He got a dial tone immediately.

The number he dialed was Albert Weinberg’s. Weinberg had given him his new address the night before, a rooming house on North Colman, close to Byram Lane, which was why Brown had checked into the Selby Arms, only three blocks away from Weinberg’s place. When Weinberg came onto the line, Brown related his encounter with the owners of the Ferguson Gallery and said he hoped to hear from them later in the day, was in fact heading back to the hotel right this minute.

“That’s the Selby Arms, right?” Weinberg said.

“Yeah, on North Founders. How’d you make out?”

“I’ve been doing a little asking around,” Weinberg said, “and the way I understand it, whenever some guy’s been knocked off, the cops take his clothes and his belongings downtown to what they call the Property Clerk’s Office. The stuff can be claimed by a relative after the medics, and the lab, and the bulls on the case are finished with it. You think I could pass for Ehrbach’s brother?”

“I sure as hell couldn’t,” Brown said.

“Might be worth a try, save ourselves a few bucks.”

“A fix is safer,” Brown said.

“Let me go on the earie a bit longer,” Weinberg said, “try to find out who runs that office.”

“Okay. You know where to reach me.”

“Right. Let me know if Ferguson or her pansy partner get in touch.”

“I will,” Brown said, and hung up.

In the cloistered stillness of the squadroom (telephones jangling, typewriters clanging, teletype clattering, a prisoner screaming his head off in the detention cage across the room), Steve Carella spread the four pieces of the photograph on his desktop and tried to fit them together.

He was not very good at working jigsaw puzzles.

The way he looked at it, and there were many ways of looking at it, the right-angle pieces were obviously corner pieces, which meant that either of them could go in any one of four places, most rectangles having four and only four corners, brilliant deduction. The simplest of these two corner pieces looked like nothing more than a dark rough surface with something jutting into it from above or below, depending on whether the corner was a top corner or a bottom corner. The something jutting into the dark rough surface strongly resembled a phallus with a string around it. (He doubted very much that it was actually a phallus. If it was, they had an entirely different kind of case on their hands.) The second corner piece, the one with the sweeping curves, seemed to be a section of a wall or a building or a handball court. Which brought him to the two remaining pieces, both with the same rough gray surface. It was the surface that troubled Carella. The more he looked at it, the more it looked like water — but how could that tie in with the wall or building or handball court in the corner piece?

He was not very good at working jigsaw puzzles.

After ten minutes of study, he finally managed to fit two of the pieces together, a task Albert Weinberg had completed in thirty seconds. Ten minutes later, he had fitted another piece into the puzzle. Twenty minutes after that, he was convinced that the fourth piece did not fit against any of the other three. He looked at what he now had:

It could have been anything, anywhere.

In the city, June worked its balmy Saturday afternoon magic.

On Third and Folger, two seventeen-year-old boys stopped a younger boy and asked him if he had any money. This being Saturday, the younger boy had no school carfare, and no lunch money. All he had was an overriding fear that transmitted itself to the older boys like animal musk in a virgin forest. When they discovered he was broke, they beat him up. It is probable that all they wanted to do was beat him up in the first place. They left him senseless, his nose shattered, four teeth knocked out of his mouth. All they took from him was a Ban-the-Bomb button he was wearing on his jacket. Then they went to a movie where John Wayne was starring in The Green Berets.

June.

In Grover Park, an old lady sat on a bench feeding the pigeons. She was wearing a flowered housedress and a woolen shawl. She kept feeding the pigeons and cooing to them gently. Her bag was on the bench beside her. From its open top, a half-completed gray sweater and a pair of knitting needles protruded. A college student with long hair and a straggly beard ambled over, and sat on the bench beside her. He was wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt and scuffed desert boots. He opened a copy of Plato’s Republic and began reading in the sunshine.

The old lady glanced at him.

She threw a handful of bread crumbs to the pigeons, cooed at them, and glanced again at the boy, who was absorbed in his book.

“Don’t you look at me that way,” she said suddenly.

The boy looked sharply to his right, not sure at first that he was being addressed.

“You heard me, you little shit,” the old lady said. “Don’t look at me that way, you bastard.”

The boy stared at the woman for a moment, decided she was crazy, closed his book, and was rising from the bench when she reached into her bag, pulled out one of the knitting needles, and stuck it clear through his eye to the back of his neck. At her feet, the pigeons pecked at the bread crumbs and gently cooed.

June, croon.

On a rooftop several miles away, the sunshine beat down on tar already growing sticky, and four boys held the twelve-year-old girl down against the black melting stuff while a fifth boy pulled off her panties and stuffed them into her mouth so that she could not scream. The girl could not move either, because they had her spread-eagled, arms and legs wide. A boy standing near the closed door of the roof whispered, “Hurry it up, Doc,” and the boy named Doc, the one who had taken off her panties and who now stood over her, tall and large against the blinding sun, unzipped his fly, displayed his masculinity to her terror-ridden eyes, and then plunged himself deep inside her, against the protest of her tearing flesh. The boy standing near the closed door danced an impatient little jig while they took turns with the little girl. By the time it was his turn, they decided they’d better get out of there before somebody caught them. The little girl, bleeding and unconscious, still lay spread-eagled against the melting tar, her panties in her mouth. The boy who had been lookout complained all the way down the stairs to the street. “You bastards,” he kept saying, “you promised I’d get some, too, you promised, you promised.”

June, croon, spoon.

As the afternoon waned, a sweet intoxicating breeze blew in off the River Harb and insinuated itself through the narrow canyons of the city. Dusk was upon the horizon now, the sounds of the day were beginning to blend with the sounds of approaching night. The sky to the west turned blood-red and then swam the color spectrum through purple to blue to black. A thin sliver of moon curled against the stars like a pale lemon rind. In an apartment on a side street not far from the river, a man sat in undershirt and trousers, watching television. His wife, wearing a half-slip and a brassiere, padded in from the kitchen carrying two open bottles of beer and two glasses. She put one beer and one glass down in front of the man, and then poured the other beer into a glass for herself. The crescent moon shone palely through the open backyard window. The woman looked at the television screen and said, “That again?”

“Yeah,” the man said, and picked up his bottle of beer.

“I hate that show,” his wife said.

“I like it,” he said.

Without a word, the woman went to the set, and turned the channel selector. Without a word, her husband got out of his chair, walked up to her swiftly, and hit her eleven times with his beer bottle, twice while she was standing, twice as she slumped to the floor, and another seven times after she was unconscious and bleeding. He turned the television set back to the channel he’d been watching, and he did not call the police until the show was over, forty-five minutes later.

June, croon, spoon, moon.

In a hotel room at the Selby Arms, sixteen blocks to the west, Arthur Brown made three telephone calls in succession, and then sat back to wait for contact from Ferguson and/or Kahn. The first call he made was to his wife Caroline who deplored the fact that they’d had to cancel a dinner date, and then went on to tell Brown that she missed him and that their daughter Connie was coming down with a cold. Brown told his wife he missed her also, to which she replied, “So why don’t you come home and do something about it?”

“Duty calls,” he said.

“Foo,” she answered.

They hung up billing and cooing and humming June, croon, spoon, moon songs.

Brown opened his notebook to the page on which he had jotted Weinberg’s address and telephone number. Weinberg answered on the third ring. As soon as they had exchanged hellos, Weinberg said, “Anything?”

“Not yet.”

“You think they’ll try to reach you?”

“I’m still hoping.”

“I ain’t had much luck, either,” Weinberg said. “You know that Property Clerk’s Office I was telling you about?”

“Yeah?”

“First of all, there must be forty or fifty guys working there, most of them civilians. They get crap from all over the city, anything that’s been involved in accidents or crimes, anything not claimed at station houses — it’s like a regular goddamn warehouse down there.”

“No kidding,” Brown said, as if he didn’t already know.

“Yeah. There’s also cops working there, because naturally they got a lot of weapons in the place, you dig?”

“Um-huh.”

“In order to claim anything after they’re done with it, you got to be a prime relative. It don’t matter if you’re a third cousin, so long as you’re the closest living relative, you dig?”

“That sounds good for us,” Brown said. “You could easily pass yourself off as...”

“Wait a second. You got to get a release from the DA first. You got to go to the DA’s office and get a goddamn release.”

“That’s bad,” Brown said.

“That stinks,” Weinberg said.

“Who runs the whole show down there?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Try to find out. He’s the man we’ve got to reach.” Brown paused. “Unless you’d like to try breaking in some night.”

“Ha!” Weinberg said. “Call me later, will you? Let me know if anything happens.”

“Will you be there all night?”

“All night. I got a sweet bottle of bourbon, and I intend to kill it.”

“Don’t let it kill you,” Brown said, and hung up.

The next person he called was Irving Krutch.

“Well, well,” Krutch said, “this is a pleasant surprise.”

“We’ve decided to make the investigation,” Brown said.

“I thought you would,” Krutch answered. “You found what you were looking for in Ehrbach’s apartment, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But even better than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“We made contact with Weinberg. He has another piece of the picture, and he gave me a copy of it.”

“That’s marvelous!” Krutch said. “When can I have a look?”

“Not tonight. Can you drop by the squadroom tomorrow morning?”

“The squadroom?”

“Yes. Why? What’s wrong with the squadroom?”

“Nothing. I just forgot for a minute that you guys work on Sunday.”

“Ten o’clock or thereabouts,” Brown said. “I won’t be there, but Carella can show you the stuff.”

“Fine,” Krutch said. “Where can I reach you if I need you?”

“I’m at the Selby Arms, room 502.”

“I’ll jot that down, just in case.” There was a pause on the line. “Selby Arms,” Krutch repeated, obviously writing, “room 502, fine. Well,” he said, “we’re certainly off to a good start. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“We all stand to gain,” Brown said. “I’ve got to get off the phone. I’m expecting a call.”

“Oh? Another lead?”

“Yes. The ‘Geraldine’ on your list is a Geraldine Ferguson, sister-in-law of the late Louis D’Amore. She runs an art gallery on Jefferson Avenue.”

“Who gave you that?”

“Weinberg.”

“Has she got anything?”

“I think so, but I’m not sure. That’s what I’m waiting to hear.”

“Will you let me know?”

“As soon as anything jells.”

“Good. Listen, thanks again for calling. This is great news, really.”

“Right, so long,” Brown said, and hung up.

His telephone did not ring that night, nor did Saturday end glamorously for him until close to midnight. He had dozed in the armchair near the telephone when a knock sounded at the door. He was instantly awake.

“Yes?” he said.

“Mr. Stokes?”

“Yes.”

“Desk clerk. Woman just delivered a message for you downstairs.”

“Just a second,” he answered. He had taken off his shoes and socks, and he padded to the door now in his bare feet and opened it just a crack.

The door flew wide, and the glamorous part of Saturday night began.

The man was wearing a glamorous nylon stocking pulled up over his face, flattening his nose, distorting his features. He was holding a glamorous pistol in his gloved right hand and as he shoved the door open with his left shoulder, he swung the gun at Brown’s head, hitting him over the eye and knocking him to the floor. The man was wearing glamorous, highly polished black shoes, and he kicked Brown in the head the moment he was down. A glamorous shower of rockets went off inside Brown’s skull, and then he went unconscious.