Kiss

11.

At eight o'clock that Sunday morning, the thirteenth day of January, Meyer and Carella went downtown to where Executive Limousine kept its cars. The garage was in a narrow street on the Calm's Point side of the Old Seawall Tunnel, conveniently situated between a gasoline station and a company selling wholesale tires. A painted sign ran across the top of the garage, the words EXECUTIVE LIMOUSINE running across it in black letters on a white field. Meyer wondered how many limousine companies in cities across the length and breadth of this fair nation were called Executive Limousine. Were there any limousine companies called Office Boy Limousine? Or Garbageman Limousine?

"Or Bag Lady Limousine?" he asked out loud.

"Huh?" Carella said.

"Just wondering," Meyer said.

There were three arched entranceways to the garage, all wide enough to accommodate the trucks that used to pull in here when the neighborhood was still part of the thriving Calm's Point Market. Those days were gone forever. Where now there were stacks of new tires outside the building on the left of Executive Limousine, and men rolling whitewalls inside to where automobiles stood hoisted on lifts or jacks, there used to be rows of stands selling fresh fruit and vegetables trucked in from the farms out on Sands Spit or in the state across the River Harb. Where now there were self-service pumps and cars lined up bumper to bumper at the gasoline station on the other side of the garage, there once used to be stands of fresh fish pulled daily from the River Dix or netted far out on the Offshore Reaches, arranged neatly on ice each morning for restaurant buyers who sometimes came from as far as a hundred miles away.

Here in the surrounding side streets, Old World merchants once sold everything from furniture to plumbing supplies, dry goods to shoes, corsets to chandeliers. Day in and day out there had been the lively hue and cry of a loud and busy place of commerce. The area had survived the First World War, and the Crash, and the Depression, and the Second World War, and a handful of foolish adventures in the Far East and in Central America, but it could not survive crack. What had once been a thriving market was now a slum ridden and riven by narcotics. The tenements that had once housed shops on their street-level floors were now abandoned. Where people once had come to buy the goods that sustained their daily lives, they now came to buy the substance that was destroying them and America both.

Here was where the limousines were garaged.

The manager of Executive Limousine was a man named Marty Guido. They were in a glass-enclosed space that looked down on the constant automobile traffic moving in and out of the garage. In this city, the radio-car companies operated stretch limos and also what were called "black cars," even though many of them were actually white. These so-called black cars were town cars like Caddies or Lincoln Continentals. They ran you twenty-eight bucks an hour as opposed to the thirty-five for a stretch. Like sharks, the black cars and the limos were in constant motion within their sectors. If they parked, a zealous son-of-a-bitch cop would give them a summons.

So they kept moving, waiting for the radio dispatcher to come up with a call in the neighborhood they were cruising. Behind Guido and the detectives, the dispatcher kept throwing out street locations, trolling for takers. The babble was constant. It sounded like code.

"Three-Seven Morris, who's up?

Anybody up near Three-Seven Morris?

Let me hear from you, I've got a lady going uptown from Three-Seven Morris.”

On and on the dispatcher's voice droned behind them.

It was like trying to be heard in a steel mill.

"Roger Turner Tilly," Meyer said.

"Used to work here as a driver.”

"Why, what'd he do?" Guido asked.

"Nothing," Carella said.

"Then why you looking for him?”

"We're not looking for him. Do you know him?”

"I know him. He got in some trouble here a little while back. This was when I first started here.”

"That's what we want to know about," Meyer said.

"The trouble.”

"Why?”

"Do you know what the trouble was?”

"One of the drivers called him a - fag. So he beat him up. That was the trouble.”

"Yes, that was the trouble," Carella said. "Do you know who that driver was?”

"One of the Spanish guys.”

"We checked Tilly's record ...”

"Who's headed out to B. Franklin? I got a pickup at United Airlines, who's running out that way? Anybody on the way to the airport? Or heading back? Anybody want a United Airlines coming into the city? Let me hear it, who wants it? Pickup at United, who wants it?”

Meyer waited for a lull.

"We checked Tilly's record," he said at last, "and apparently the driver he beat up ...”

"A man named Hector Ruiz," Carella said.

"... went back to Puerto Rico shortly after Tilly got convicted.”

"Yeah?”

"That's the information we have," Meyer said.

"So?”

"Did you know Ruiz?”

"I knew him.”

"Is it true he went back to Puerto Rico?”

"Why you want to know?”

"Mister, what's troubling you?" Carella said.

"Nothing's troubling me. I get two cops in here asking about an employee, I'm naturally ...”

"Oh?" Meyer said.

"Is Ruiz still an employee?" Carella said.

"He's driving for us again, yes. Which is why I want to know ...”

"When did he get back?" Carella asked.

"October sometime, musta been.”

"Just about when Tilly got out of the slammer,”

Meyer said to Carella.

"Is that when he started working here again?”

Carella asked.

"October, November, in there," Guido said.

"Did he know Tilly was out of jail?”

"I never asked him.”

"Did Tilly ever come around here again? After he got out?”

"Not that I saw him.”

“Ruiz ever mention Tilly to you?”

"Never.”

"Does he have many pickups on Ainsley Avenue? Up in Diamondback?”

"None that I know of.”

"Any idea what he'd be doing up there? If it was him up there?”

"Whyn't you ask him yourself?" Guido said, and gestured through the glass panel toward where a black stretch limo was just pulling into the garage.

Meyer and Carella started for the stairs just as the front door of the limo opened. A tall, burly man wearing a chauffeur's livery and cap stepped out onto the concrete. He took off the hat almost immediately, revealing a shock of intensely black hair that matched the thick mustache under his nose. He was walking toward a door marked MEN when Carella and Meyer came out onto the street-level floor.

"Mr. Ruiz?" Carella said.

"Hector Ruiz?" Meyer said.

"Police officers," Carella said, flashing the tin. "We'd like to ask you ...”

Ruiz took one look and began running.

Straight out the middle arched door in the bank of three, hanging an immediate right toward the gas station, turning the corner there, and running for the river as Meyer and Carella came out of the building.

They pounded along behind him, closing the gap as they cut through the gas station, angling off the corner just as Ruiz had, shortest distance between two points, Ruiz some fifty feet ahead of them now and still headed for the river.

There was a lot of early-morning boat traffic plying its way up and down the river or back and forth between Isola and Calm's Point. Behind Ruiz and across the river, the city's skyscrapers stretched upward toward a bleak gray sky.

Smoke billowed up on the air from rooftop chimneys. Smoke floated up from the stacks of tugboats and ferries. Smokelike vapor trailed from the mouths of the men as they ran along the river's edge, passing joggers moving in both directions, none of them paying the slightest bit of attention to the man in black and the two men chasing him.

Ruiz was young and fast, and they never would have caught up with him if he hadn't taken a quick look back over his shoulder to see how close they were. In that instant-less than an instant, thirty seconds, ten seconds, the time it took for him to snap a backward glance at them and then turn his head forward again-he collided with a jogger coming from the opposite direction on his blind side. The jogger was a woman wearing red, and for an instant there was a checkerboard effect, Ruiz and the woman meeting in startled red-and-black collision, arms and legs flying as they both tumbled to the sidewalk.

"You stupid bastard!" the woman screamed.

But Ruiz was already scrambling to his feet.

He snapped another look over his shoulder.

This time he saw a .38 Detective Special three feet from his nose.

If a man began running when you yelled cop, that didn't necessarily mean he'd done anything. In certain parts of this city, the very sight of a blue uniform was enough to cause frantic scampering in all directions. So the detectives weren't particularly interested in learning why Ruiz had begun running the moment they'd announced themselves. On the other hand, Ruiz seemed perfectly willing to offer various inventive explanations for his curious behavior.

He first told them that he'd suddenly remembered leaving his wallet in a diner where he'd stopped for a cup of coffee before driving into the garage. Their sudden appearance had nothing to do with his sudden flight. It was just that he remembered about the wallet. This despite the fact that his wallet was in his back pocket, the sucker pocket in that any pickpocket could have relieved him of it by slitting the bottom of the pocket with a razor blade, but that was neither here nor there.

He then said it wasn't that wallet he was talking about, it was the wallet he usually kept in the limo's glove compartment, a wallet into which he normally placed all the signed vouchers from his trips. Not a wallet, really. More like a pouch.

A soft leather pouch. This was what he'd thought he'd left in the diner, which turned out to be a mistake because there it was, right where it was supposed to be, right there in the limo's glove compartment.

On the way uptown to the station house, he told them that as a young boy he'd been frightened by two detectives who set fire to the mattress of the hooker who used to live next door to his family in apartment 44 at 7215 Corchers Boulevard in Majesta. He'd been afraid of detectives ever since. And now, in the ten A.M. privacy of the squadroom, surrounded by more detectives than he'd ever hoped to see in his entire lifetime, Ruiz told them that he'd begun running because he thought they were going to question him about the gypsy cab drivers who were getting shot all over this city, "This is some crazy city, eh, man?" he said, and smiled like one of the banditos in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

None of the detectives smiled back.

There were four of them, each one bigger than the other. Meyer, Carella, Hawes, and Brown.

All of them looking stern and disapproving.

"This ain't right, you know?" Ruiz said.

"Draggin' me in here, I d'in do nothin'.was "We think you did something," Hawes said.

Ruiz figured he was the meanest one in the bunch. Even meaner than the black cop. They were both about the same size. He wouldn't want to tangle with either one of them. He figured the bald cop was the easy mark. It was the bald cop who'd read him his rights and asked if he'd wanted an attorney. He told them he didn't need no attorney if he didn't do nothin'. He figured that was the smart way to play it. You ask for a lawyer, they right away think you done something. "Tilly," Carella said. "Roger Turner Tilly.”

He was thinking Ruiz could come up with a thousand and one explanations for why he'd run, and maybe nine hundred and ninety-nine of them would have at least a slight bearing on the truth, but a possible reason he wasn't yet mentioning was that he'd shot Tilly in the back of the head and strung him up from the ceiling. Which was a very good reason to run when cops came around asking questions.

"I don't know this name," Ruiz said.

"Hoo boy," Brown said.

"Let's start by telling the truth, okay?”

Hawes said. "We'll all save a lot of time that way, okay, Hector?”

"Tilly," Ruiz said, nodding, seemingly thinking it over. "Roger Tilly, huh?”

"Roger Turner Tilly," Hawes said.

"The man who broke your nose and both your arms last March," Carella said.

"The man who sent you to the hospital," Brown said.

"Oh, him," Ruiz said. "What about him?

He's in jail, ain' he?”

“No, he's not in jail," Carella said.

"Take it easy, fellas," Meyer said.

"There's no need to jump all over the man this way.”

Playing Good Cop to all these big mean Bad Cops, all of them glaring at him as if to say, "Keep out of this, we know how to handle punks.”

Ruiz nodded to him in silent gratitude.

"You were spotted uptown, cruising in your limo," Carella said, expanding on the truth a bit in that Carmen Sanchez had not positively identified the driver of the limo that seemed to be casing the building on several occasions, "in the vicinity of ten-sixty-five Ainsley Avenue, are you familiar with that neighborhood?”

"I hardly ever go up there," Ruiz said. "You mus' be mistaken.”

"But you do go up there sometimes, huh?" Brown said.

"Very rarely," Ruiz said, savoring the word rarely as if it were a word he rarely used. "Very rarely," he said again, rolling it around his tongue like sweet wine.

"Were you up there on January seventh?”

Hawes asked.

"When was that?”

"Monday, the seventh. Were you up there in your nice long limo?”

"No.”

"Around twelve, twelve-thirty," Carella said. "Looking for Tilly?”

"Tilly's still in jail, ain' he?”

The same line again, or a reasonable facsimile of it. The same bandito grin.

Ruiz was very handsome, and he knew it. Thick black macho hair and mustache, grin like a gay caballero. Even with the broken nose, he was handsome. Maybe even handsomer than he'd been before Tilly rearranged it for him.

"No, he's not in jail," Carella said again, both of them circling the same old mulberry bush.

"He got out in October," Hawes said.

"When'd you come back from Puerto Rico?”

Brown asked.

"I don't remember.”

"Guido says you started working for him again in October, November sometime.”

"If Guido says so, then it mus' be,”

Ruiz said, and shrugged, and smiled innocently at his good old pal Detective Meyer.

"The man's clean," Meyer said, "why are you giving him all this bullshit?”

"Gracias, amigo," Ruiz said.

"De nada," Meyer said, and patted his shoulder reassuringly.

"Why'd you come back here?" Carella asked.

"Because you knew Tilly was out?”

"I thought he wass still in," Ruiz insisted.

"Because you wanted to pay him back?" Hawes asked.

"Get him for what he did to you?”

"Shaming you that way ...”

"Little guy like that breaking your nose and your arms ...”

"Big macho guy like you ...”

"I don' know what you mean," Ruiz said, and again looked soulfully at Meyer.

"He doesn't know what you guys mean,”

Meyer said. "And neither do I. What if he was up there last Monday ...?was "Thass right," Ruiz said. "What if I wass?”

"Does that mean he killed Tilly?”

"No," Ruiz said, shaking his head, "it don' mean I killed him. How could it mean that? I di'n even know he wass dead. I thought he wass still in jail.”

"If you thought he was still in jail, why'd you shoot him?" Carella said.

"I di'n shoot nobody.”

"Try this on for size," Hawes said, and suddenly tossed a tagged .32-31liber pistol on the desk. The gun landed with a solid thunk, slid across the desk toward Ruiz, and skidded to a stop, leaving a grayish-white residue behind it.

Ruiz looked at it as if an abandoned bastard had suddenly returned home.

"What's that?" he asked pleasantly.

"What do you think it is?" Brown asked.

"It looks like a gun.”

"Yes, it is a gun," Brown said.

"Mmm," Ruiz said, looking at the gun in wonder and amazement.

"It's a thirty-two-caliber Hi-Standard Sentinel," Hawes said.

"Mmm," Ruiz said again.

"Ever see that gun before?" Carella asked.

"Does the man look like someone who'd - be familiar with guns?" Meyer asked testily.

"Ever see it?”

"No, wait a minute," Meyer said. "I asked you a question, Steve. Does this man ...?was "I never seen that gun in my life," Ruiz said.

"Thank you," Meyer said.

"De nada," Ruiz said.

"We found that gun at the murder scene,”

Carella said, pointing to it. "Ten-sixty-five Ainsley Avenue, where Tilly was shot and killed.”

"Right there at the scene," Brown said.

"Tilly hanging from the ceiling, a bullet hole in his head," Hawes said.

Painting the picture for him. Broad brush strokes.

Ruiz merely shrugged and looked at Meyer as if he didn't have the faintest idea what any of these people were talking about.

"Okay, let's go," Carella said.

"Go?" Ruiz said. "Go where?”

"Take some fingerprints," Carella said.

"What for?”

"Because we lifted some good prints from that gun, and we want to check yours against them.”

He was lying. The gun had been covered with ashes, was still covered with ashes, and they hadn't retrieved a single good print from it.

"I don't have to let you do that," Ruiz said.

"Take my fingerprints.”

"Yes, you do," Carella said, "read your Miranda. Let's go.”

"Anyway, how ...?was Ruiz said, and stopped short.

"How what?" Brown said.

"Nothing.”

"What were you about to say? How what?”

"There's ashes all over it," Ruiz said.

"How could there be fingerprints?”

"There were fingerprints," Carella said, lying again.

"And how do you know those are ashes?" Brown said.

"Well, you can see they're ashes," Ruiz said.

"No, it just looks like some gray shit all over the gun, how do you know it's ashes?”

"I just figured ...”

"Yeah, what'd you figure?”

"It just looks like ashes, that's all," Ruiz said, and shrugged, and turned to Meyer. "Don' it look like ashes to you?" he said.

"Of course," Meyer said, and smiled encouragingly.

"Hass to be ashes," Ruiz said, more confidently now.

"But how'd you know right off it was ashes?”

Brown said, closing in.

"Well, you said you found the gun at the scene, ain' that what you said?”

"Yeah?”

"So I figured there could be ashes down there, am I right?" he said, turning to Meyer, smiling again. "In a basement, am I right? There could be ashes. Depending on what kind of ...”

"Who said we found it in a basement?" Meyer asked.

He was no longer smiling.

"Well, you ...”

"Who said the word basement?”

Ruiz looked at Meyer as if his own mother had just stabbed him in the heart. He turned to the other detectives. None of them was smiling, either. The entire squadroom had gone utterly still.

"Well, you said ...”

He was trying hard to remember what they'd said.

Hadn't they said they'd found the gun at the murder scene? Down there in the basement? Tilly hanging from the ceiling? He was sure that's what they'd said.

But- "You want a lawyer?" Carella asked.

"Should I get a lawyer?" Ruiz asked Meyer.

Meyer wasn't permitted to advise him, but he nodded discreetly.

The clock on the squadroom wall read ten minutes to eleven.

Outside, it was beginning to snow again.

The world was white.

They had slept the morning away, and had made love again before rising, and now-at a little past noon-they came out into a fairyland of crystal peaks and minarets, spun-sugar towers and domes.

In a city not particularly famous for its cleanliness, there was now a thick carpet of white that disguised and obscured. There was, too, a stillness that created a false sense of serenity.

The few automobiles in the streets moved past silently on tires cushioned by the snow. Even the rumble of the train on the elevated structure in the distance seemed muffled somehow, as though the snow underfoot, the snow on the rooftops and chimneys, the snow still swirling in the air, had woven an acoustic cocoon in which the only sound was the murmur of a heart.

Andrew knew he had to kill her, he was being paid to kill her. He knew, too, that he should have killed her last night. Killed her after the second time they'd made love, while she slept on her back with an odd, pleased smile on her mouth, dark eyes closed, blonde hair against the pillow, should have killed her then. Taken a knife from the kitchen and slit her throat.

Instead, he'd fallen asleep himself.

"Something?" she asked.

She was smiling.

She'd been smiling when they woke up this morning, and she hadn't stopped smiling since.

Turned toward him expectantly now, arm looped through his, smile on her face, brows arched in anticipation, waiting for an answer.

Something? she had said. Penny for your thoughts? And now she waited.

"I was just thinking of what we did last night,”

he said.

Which in a way was true. He'd been thinking of how he'd let pleasure interfere with business.

Last night would have been the perfect time to do it.

Bowles out of town, the lady's assassin right there in her fuckin bed. Last night was when he should have- "What did you like best?" she asked, and hugged his arm.

"Everything," he said.

Which was also true.

He liked women, there was no question about that, but usually he wanted to go home after the second time around. Sometimes even after the first time. Wanted to get dressed and get out, thanks, it was great, see you around the bowling alley. Or if they were in his apartment, he wanted them to put on their panties and run for a taxi, here's the fare, darling, I'll call you. Next summer. Last night, all he'd done afterward was fall fast asleep.

"What do you mean by everything?" she asked.

Still clutching his arm. Snow flying everywhere around them, the city hushed. Snow clinging to the long gray cavalry coat and the blue woolen hat. Dark eyes squinted against the swirling snow. Face fresh and shining and wet with snow.

"Tell me," she said.

Lots of women liked you to talk dirty to them.

While you were doing it, sometimes even after you'd done it. He knew the patter, knew what turned these women on, knew which obscenities to whisper in their ears, all the wetcunt talk, the bigcock talk, incitement to riot in the stillness of the night. Or better yet in broad daylight with a hand under a tablecloth and under a skirt, damptalk, he knew these women, he had met a thousand of these women in his lifetime. But he didn't think Emma was asking for an instant replay now, didn't think she wanted to buy his feelthy peectures, meester. She wasn't asking for that. He didn't know what the hell she was asking for, and he didn't care. He'd been hired to kill this woman.

"Cat got your tongue?" she asked.

Pussytalk? Licktalk?

Was that what she wanted?

"How far is this place?" he asked.

"Still five or six blocks," she said. "But it's worth it.”

"I hope so," he said. "I'm starving.”

"Best waffles in town.”

"Long way to go for waffles," he said.

"But it's such a beautiful day," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"I forgot to ask you last night," she said, and turned away from him, looking off into the falling snow. "Are you married?”

"No," he said.

"You don't have to ask me, do you?”

"No, I know you're married," he said.

"Would you like it better if I weren't?”

"I like it fine the way it is," he said.

He hated this kind of talk.

"Have you ever been married?" she asked.

"Never.”

"Ever come close?”

"Never. Never even thought of it.”

"How about any serious involvements? Have you ever been seriously involved with a woman?”

He really hated this kind of bullshit talk.

"Well, I've known women I liked a lot," he said.

"When you say you ...”

“Women I've been involved with, yes.”

"Lived with?”

"One woman, yes.”

"When was that?”

"Oh, a while back.”

"How long were you together?”

"Two, three years, something like that.”

"Don't you know how long?”

"Not exactly.”

"What happened?”

"It just ended, that's all. Things end, you know.”

"They don't have to, do they?”

"Well, it'd be very unnatural if they didn't.”

"Still ... there are people who stay together forever.”

"Well ...”

"Because they're good for each other," she said, and hesitated. "Because they love each other.”

"Well, I guess.”

"Did you love this woman?”

"I don't know.”

"What was her name?”

"Katie.”

“That's a nice name.”

"Yeah.”

"Who ended it? You or her?”

"She did.”

"Why?”

"I don't know why.”

"Well, there must have been a reason. ...”

"No, I don't think there was a reason. It just ended, that's all. It was time for it to end, and it ended.”

He'd never expected Katie to do what she'd done to him. Never. Twenty years old when he'd met her, a virgin, would you believe it? Hardly older than that when they started living together, taught her everything she knew. Katie Briggs.

Dark-haired girl, part English, part Scottish. Brown eyes. Complexion like milk in a dipper. Beautiful girl. So he came home one night ...

He'd been out playing poker the night Katie Briggs ended it. Left the poker game early because he wasn't feeling too hot, thought maybe he was coming down with the flu or something, and since he'd been losing, nobody complained when he told them he was splitting.

... came home that night and put his key in the door latch and walked in and found her in bed with two guys. One black, and one white, an equal-opportunity employer was young Katie. Naked and pale, with the black guy's cock in her mouth and the white guy's cock up her ass, that was the way Katie Briggs ended it, that was the way little Katie Briggs said farewell.

"Do you know what I liked best about last night?" she asked.

Back to last night again. Maybe she did want to tell him how much she loved fucking. You got some of these repressed housewives, they wanted to tell you all their rape fantasies, all their fantasies about being fucked by the entire prison population of Joliet, Illinois.

Maybe he'd figured her wrong. Go ahead, he thought, run with it, babe.

"What'd you like best?" he asked. "Your gentleness," she said.

My what? he thought, and almost burst out laughing.

She was looking up at him. No smile on her mouth. Looking up into his face, searching his face, seemingly waiting for him to say something.

He kissed her instead. When in doubt.

"I love you," she said.

This is going to be too easy, he thought.

"You understand he's a shmuck, don't you?" the lawyer said.

"Uh-huh," Carella said.

The lawyer had been appointed by Legal Aid to represent Hector Ruiz, who had decided on the advice of his good pal Detective Meyer Meyer that he needed an attorney after all, considering the fact that the police seemed to think his fingerprints were all over the gun that had killed Roger Turner Tilly. The lawyer was maybe thirty-seven, thirty-eight years old, and he was already going bald, which made him seem sympathetic to Meyer, who had gone totally bald when he was still very young. The lawyer was already trying to cop a plea even though a district attorney was nowhere in sight and he knew the detectives had no authority to strike such bargains.

"This is a macho thing with these people," the lawyer said.

His name was Morris Weinstein. He represented a great many Hispanic offenders, but he still referred to them as "these people." He also referred to blacks as "these people." He probably had no idea that a great many WASPS in this country referred to Jews as "these people." This was a funny country, America.

"He calls some shrimp a fag, and all at once the shrimp turns around and beats the shit out of him," Weinstein said.

"M/'ve been a big surprise," Carella said understandingly. He was thinking they were going to throw the fucking book at Ruiz for shooting and hanging Tilly.

"Terrible thing to happen," Weinstein said. "In terms of the macho sensibility.”

"Yeah, terrible," Carella said.

"I'm thinking a 125.20," Weinstein said.

Meyer blinked.

"Manslaughter One," Weinstein said, as if they didn't know.

Meyer blinked again.

"In that this was a cultural thing committed under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance.”

"Uh-huh," Carella said.

"Over which he had no real control," Weinstein said.

"Uh-huh," Carella said.

"So what are you thinking?”

"We're thinking Murder Two," Carella said. "In that he went uptown with the express purpose ...”

"Well, we don't know that, do we?”

Weinstein said.

"... of putting a bullet in Tilly's head.”

"Well, if you're going to put it that way,”

Weinstein said.

Carella tried to think of another way to put it.

"You have to understand these people," Weinstein said.

"Uh-huh.”

"I read a book about Mexico," Weinstein said, "that explained wall-writing as a cultural trait. This is why you see so much graffiti in Hispanic neighborhoods.”

"Is that why?" Carella said.

"Yes. It's a cultural thing.”

Carella was happy to learn that writing on walls was a cultural thing.

"He's admitted to shooting Tilly,”

Weinstein said. "The important thing is to understand why.”

"Yes, well, perhaps you can explain why at the trial," Carella said.

"Why are you being such a shit?" Weinstein asked.

"Because what we have here is a confession of murder," Carella said.

"Oh well, that," Weinstein said.

"Yes, oh well, that. You were there when he admitted seeing Tilly ...”

"Yes, but ...”

"... standing outside the building waiting for someone ...”

"We don't know that for a fact ...”

"... forcing him to go down to the basement at gunpoint ...”

"Yes, but ...”

"Shooting him in the back of the head ...”

"Yes ...”

"And then stringing him up.”

"That's what I mean about the cultural aspect.”

"Yeah, that's very cultural," Meyer said.

"Hanging a man from the ceiling after you've shot him.”

"As a matter of fact, it is.”

"We've already had people hanging from lampposts,”

Carella said.

"What?" Weinstein said.

"Up here," Meyer said. "Young girls hanging from lampposts.”

"Track stars," Carella said. "Hanging from lampposts.”

"And it wasn't cultural," Meyer said.

"This was. Tilly had to be punished, don't you see? Not only shot, but punished, hanged from the ceiling as an example to others. Which is exactly why I'm looking for Manslaughter One. This man was in the grip of an emotional ...”

"Bullshit," Meyer said. "He was in the grip of coming up here and shooting somebody in cold blood.”

"Because this person had humiliated him. You heard him say that, didn't you? That he'd been humiliated?”

"Yes, we heard him say it. We also heard him say ...”

"Humiliation," Weinstein said. "An important thing in the countries these people come from.

Face. Losing face. The whole cultural macho thing.”

“It's a pity that isn't the culture here,”

Carella said. "Because here, we're going to ask the D.A. for Murder Two.”

"I guess I'll have to discuss that with him when he gets here," Weinstein said, and sighed deeply.

"Yes, you discuss it.”

"Because you heard my client say, didn't you ...?was "We heard him say he went up to Diamondback to blow Tilly away. Those were his exact words, to blow Tilly away. We've got them on tape.”

"Exactly my point. Cultural bragging.”

"Bullshit," Meyer said again.

"I'll admit to a Class-B and get him off with a year," Weinstein said. "He'll be out in four months.”

They knew he was right.