Kiss

2.

Five feet eight inches tall, blonde and buxom and blue-eyed and bursting with red-cheeked health, Birgitta Rundqvist marched into the station house at three o'clock on the afternoon of December 28, the Friday before the big New Year's Eve weekend. It was eight degrees Fahrenheit outside, but she was wearing only a lightweight red parka over a red reindeer-patterned sweater, a short black mini, red pantyhose, and little cuffed black boots. The desk sergeant thought she looked like Little Red Riding Hood. Birgitta told him she wanted to talk to a detective. When he asked her why, she said she had just witnessed a murder attempt.

This was a rarity. Someone in this city actually coming to the police to report having witnessed a crime.

The desk sergeant figured if you lived long enough, you saw everything. He buzzed the squadroom.

Upstairs, Detective Meyer Meyer was sitting at his desk, minding his own business, typing up a report. Across the room, Andy Parker and Fat Ollie Weeks were talking about the new police commissioner. Parker and Weeks got along fine together. That's because they were both bigots. Weeks was perhaps a bigger bigot than Parker, but nobody can be only a little bit pregnant, although Weeks did in fact look a little bit pregnant-in fact about three months gone.

Obese and a trifle smelly, his belly hanging over his belt buckle, his fat, round face set with little pig eyes, Weeks was here visiting his good old buddies at the Eight-Seven, his own bailiwick being the Eight-Three, all the way uptown in Diamondback. Parker was always happy to see him. In Weeks's presence, and by comparison, Parker seemed nattily dressed-even though he was sporting a three-day beard stubble and a wrinkled suit. Whenever anyone questioned Parker's appearance, he told them he was on a stakeout. Whenever anyone questioned Weeks's appearance, he told them to go fuck themselves. Parker liked him a lot.

"The new commissioner's a scholar," Weeks said.

"A professor," Parker said, nodding in agreement.

"Used to teach criminology down there in that shitty little town the mayor snatched him from.”

"He always refers to himself as we, you notice that? We this, we that. We feel the number of policemen on the street has nothing to do with crime prevention ...”

"We have learned over the years that community interaction is paramount. ...”

"We this, we that.”

"Like he's two people," Weeks said, and turned suddenly to look at Meyer. "You listening to this?”

he asked.

"No," Meyer said.

"You ought to," Weeks said. "You might learn a few things about this new commissioner we got.”

"I know enough about the new commissioner," Meyer said.

"Without your people," Weeks said, "there wouldn't be this new commissioner.”

The new police commissioner was black.

So was the new mayor.

Weeks was saying that if it hadn't been for the Jews in this city, a black mayor wouldn't have been elected, and if a black mayor hadn't been elected, there wouldn't now be a black police commissioner. Meyer himself hadn't voted for the new mayor, but neither the new mayor nor the new commissioner was on anyone's Top Ten list at the moment, and it was always easy to blame the failings of one minority group on yet another minority group. Crouched behind his typewriter, pecking out his report with the index fingers of both hands, blue eyes squinting at the page in the roller, bald head gleaming in the late afternoon light that streamed through the grilled windows, Meyer wanted nothing less than an argument about either the new commissioner or the new mayor. He busied himself with indifference.

"Maybe the new commissioner can show your people where Bethtown is," Weeks said, and nudged Parker with his elbow.

Bethtown was the city's smallest sector, across the River Harb and reached either by ferry or bridge. Weeks was making a joke. The new commissioner had been quoted in yesterday's papers as asking his driver where Calm's Point, one of the city's largest sectors, was located. Meyer agreed that the man was a small-town hick in bib overalls, so why was Weeks virtually insisting that Meyer defend him? He was about to tell Weeks to stuff the new commissioner up his ass when the telephone rang.

"Eighty-Seventh Squad," he said, "Detective Meyer." He listened for a moment, raised his eyebrows in surprise, said, "Send her up," and then put the receiver back on the cradle. Birgitta came into the squadroom some three minutes later. Weeks looked her up and down. So did Parker. Meyer offered her the chair alongside his desk.

She told him who she was, told him she worked as a nanny for a Mrs. David Feinstein on Barber Street in Smoke Rise ...

"I'm from Stockholm," she said.

Which was why she was dressed for the tropics, Meyer supposed.

... told him she was just wheeling the baby into the house when she saw this automobile come roaring around the corner ...

Across the room, Parker burst out laughing at something Weeks had just said. What Weeks had just said was that he loved eating Danish. He had overheard the girl's faint accent and had mistaken her for Danish. Parker found this hysterical.

"... aiming straight for this woman," she said.

"What woman?" Meyer asked.

"This woman walking on the sidewalk.”

"The car was aiming for her?”

"Yes, sir," Birgitta said. "It jumped onto the curb, it tried to run her over.”

"When was this?”

"Just before lunch. I had to wait for Mrs.

Feinstein to get back before I could come here.”

"What kind of car was it?”

"A Ford Taurus."

"What color?”

"Gray. A sort of metallic gray.”

"Did you notice the license plate number?”

"I did.”

A proud little nod. She watched television a lot, Meyer guessed. He supposed they had television in Sweden, didn't they? They certainly had it in Smoke Rise.

"Can you tell me the number, please?" he said.

"DB 37 612," Birgitta said.

He wrote it down, showed it to her, and said, "Is this it?”

"Yes," she said. "Exactly.”

"It wasn't an out-of-state plate, was it?”

"No, no.”

He wondered if they had states in Sweden.

Sweden had Volvos, that he knew.

"Did you see who was driving the car?”

"I did.”

"Man or woman?”

"A man.”

"Can you tell me what he looked like?”

"Not really. It all happened very fast. He turned the corner, and aimed the car at her, and tried to hit her. And she threw herself over this low wall in front of the house next door to ours, and he just drove off.”

"Was he white or black, did you notice?”

"White.”

"Can you tell me anything else about him?”

"He was wearing a red woolen hat.”

Big day for red, Meyer thought.

"How about the woman?" he said. "Anyone you know?”

"No.”

"Not anyone you might have seen in the neighborhood? Before this, I mean.”

"No, I'm sorry.”

"Did you talk to her at all?”

"No. I took the baby inside the house, and when I came out again, she was gone.”

"What'd she look like, can you tell me that?”

"She had blonde hair. Like mine. But longer. And she was a little shorter than I am.”

"How old would you say she was?”

"In her thirties.”

"Did you notice the color of her eyes?”

"I'm sorry.”

"What was she wearing?”

"A mink coat. No hat. Dark boots.

We still have snow on the ground up there.”

Smoke Rise. Like the country up there. Hard to believe it was part of the Eight-Seven, but it was. Big, expensive houses, rolling woodlands, even a stream running through some of the choicer lots. Smoke Rise. Where a man driving a gray Ford Taurus had tried to run down a blonde woman in a mink coat.

"Anything else you can tell me?" Meyer said.

"That's all," Birgitta said. "He was trying to kill her. Will you do something about it?”

"Of course," he said.

The first thing he did was call Motor Vehicles to request a computer check on the license plate number Birgitta had given him. The MVB reported that the car in question was registered to a Dr. Peter Gundler who lived downtown in the Quarter. Meyer wrote down the doctor's address and then called Auto Theft.

The detective he spoke to there took down the license plate number, the name and address of the registered owner, asked for the year and make of the car, settled for the make alone, and told Meyer he'd get back to him in ten minutes. He got back in seven to report that the good doctor's car had been reported stolen on Christmas Day, nice present, huh? Meyer thanked him and hung up.

Easy come, easy go, he thought.

There were times when Detective Steve Carella looked positively Chinese. As he sat in the sunlight that angled through the grilled squadroom windows, the light touching his face in a way that made his dark eyes appear more slanted, pondering the Ballistics report on his desk like a Buddhist monk studying a prayer scroll, it seemed conceivable that he'd been left on his parents' doorstep by a silk merchant from the Orient. He looked up from the report, glanced at the clock. Five minutes to eleven. Ballistics wouldn't be out to lunch yet. He was picking up the phone to dial, when she came down the corridor and stopped just outside the gate in the slatted-rail divider.

His first impression was one of paleness.

A tall, slender blonde woman wearing a long gray cavalry officer's coat.

Taking a crumpled tissue from her pocket now, blowing her nose, returning the tissue to the pocket, hesitating outside the gate.

"Mrs. Bowles?" he said.

"Yes?”

"Come in, please," he said, and put the phone back on its cradle.

She had found the latch on the gate. She opened it and walked to his desk. Long, firm strides, pale horse, pale rider. He asked if he could take her coat ...

"Yes, please.”

... and then carried it to the rack in the corner, near the water cooler. Under the coat, she was wearing a black sweater, a pleated watch-plaid skirt, and black stockings. She resembled a student at a private girl's school.

"Please sit down," he said, and offered her the chair alongside his desk. She looked very grave. Straight blonde hair sitting on her head like a burnished helmet. Dark eyes solemn. Face raw from the wind outside.

"Someone's trying to kill me," she said.

"Yes," he said, and nodded.

She had called not a half hour earlier. When a woman on the phone tells you someone has made two attempts on her life, you ask her to come in immediately. She was here now. And now she was telling him how she'd been coming from a baby shower on Silvermine Oval and was waiting on the subway platform at Culver and Ninth to take a train uptown to Smoke Rise, the Barber Street station up there, do you know it? In Smoke Rise? Waiting for the train when a man pushed her onto the tracks. This was two weeks ago, a little more than two weeks ago. And then, yesterday, he'd tried to kill her again. Tried to run her over with an automobile. The same man.

Closer to home this time.

This was all news to Carella.

The Transit Authority cop to whom Emma Bowles had sobbingly poured out the information on the night of December twelfth hadn't filed a report with the Eight-Seven, and Meyer hadn't told Carella about his visit from the Swedish nanny yesterday. So he listened now while Emma told him that she'd gone out for a little walk before lunch yesterday, strolling up Barber Street and into Smoke Rise, and suddenly this - gray car that might have been a Lincoln Continental came tooling around the corner and climbed the sidewalk chasing her, and would have hit her if she hadn't jumped over this little stone wall bordering one of the houses.

"The same man was driving the car," she said.

"The one who pushed me off the platform.”

"Are you sure?”

"Positive," she said. "And I know who he is.”

Carella looked at her.

"It came to me yesterday, when he tried to run me over," Emma said. "I suddenly remembered.”

"Who is he?" Carella asked.

"He used to drive my husband.”

"Drive him?”

"Martin is a stockbroker. He works all the way downtown, a car picks him up in the morning and takes him home again at night.”

"When you say this man used to drive him ...”

"Yes. He doesn't any longer.”

"When did he stop?”

"Last spring. I don't know what happened then, but Martin got another driver.”

"You're sure this is the same man?”

"Yes, he drove us to the theater once. I know it's the same man.”

"But you didn't recognize him when he shoved you off that subway platform.”

"No, I didn't make the connection. But yesterday he was in a car. And it rang a bell.”

"Good," Carella said. "What's his name?”

Martin Bowles was a man in his late thirties, tall and slender, with thick dark hair, deep brown eyes, and the solid build of someone who worked out regularly. Every New Year's Eve, he wore a dinner jacket. Didn't matter where they were going, big party, small one, private home, restaurant, didn't even matter if they were going anywhere at all. They could be staying home, just the two of them, enjoying a quiet candlelit dinner, Bowles would nonetheless put on a dinner jacket. To him, New Year's Eve was an occasion. To Emma, it was like any other day of the year. She therefore found it mystifying that her husband went through the ritual of dressing up each year, and she was somewhat amused by the way he preened before a mirror each time he put on his ruffled shirt and black tie.

His posturing might have appeared foolish on any other man, but he was truly strikingly handsome, and never as good-looking as when he was wearing formal attire. Tonight, he looked spectacularly elegant.

"I've hired a private detective," he said.

She was sitting at the bedroom vanity, fastening a pearl earring to her ear. She almost dropped it.

"A private detective?" she said. "What for?”

"To get to the bottom of this," he said.

She looked at him. He had to be kidding. The bottom of this was Roger Turner Tilly, the man who used to drive him to and from work. Once the police found him ...

"The police don't seem to be doing anything about this," he said. "A man pushes you off a subway platform, and the same man ...”

"Well, yes," she said. "But I know who he is, I told you who he ...”

"Well, you don't know for certain," he said.

"But I do know," she said. "It was Tilly.”

"The thing is, the police are treating these two incidents ...”

"Incidents?" she said. "He tried to kill me.”

"I know that. Why do you think I'm so concerned?

The thing is, they're treating attempted murder like any ordinary occurrence. When was the first time? How long ago was that?”

"The twelfth.”

"Exactly. And again last week. So what have they done, Emma? Nothing. Man tries to push you under a subway train," he said, and shook his head in disbelief. "Same man tries to run you over. Well, I don't want to wait for a third attempt. I've hired a private detective.”

"I really don't think we need ...”

"Man named Andrew Darrow, supposed to be excellent.”

"A private detective," she said, and shook her head. "Really, Martin, let's leave this to the police, okay? The man I spoke to up there seemed ...”

"The police are underpaid and overworked," Bowles said, as if quoting from an editorial - he'd read. "I don't want to trust your life to them.”

"That's very sweet of you, darling, really," she said, and stood up and turned to him. "But ...”

"You look beautiful," he said.

She was wearing a shimmering white gown cut low over her breasts. Her long blonde hair was piled on top of her head. Drop pearl earrings dangled from her ears.

"Thank you," she said. "But, Martin, what would this man do? I mean ...”

"Stay with you. Protect you. Try to get to the bottom of this.”

"Let's go on a vacation instead," she said.

"Use the money you're paying him ...”

"We can do both," he said. "Soon as we resolve this thing, we'll take a nice long trip to the Caribbean, how does that sound?”

"I can taste it," she said.

Smiling, he put his arm around her and walked her out to the entrance foyer. He took her mink from the closet, helped her into it, put on his own coat, and draped a white silk scarf around his neck.

"I don't want anything to happen to you," he said.

"Nothing will happen to me," she said.

"I love you too much.”

"I love you, too.”

"He'll be starting next week," Bowles said. "Case closed.”

The intercom buzzer sounded from the lobby downstairs. He went to the wall speaker, pressed the TALK button.

"Yes?”

"Your car's here, Mr. Bowles.”

"Thank you," he said. "We'll be right down.”

"The car," he said, and came back to her and took her in his arms, and offered her his lips.

"Kiss?" he said.

When Carella was a kid, his mother used to serve lentils shortly after midnight on New Year's Day. It had something to do with an Italian tradition her grandparents had brought over from the Old Country. Louise Carella didn't know what the tradition was-"Something to do with good luck," she explained to her son with a shrug -and neither did Carella's father. For that matter, Carella's grandparents couldn't - remember, either. His mother and father, his grandparents on both sides of the family, had all been born here; the ties to forebears who had arrived at the turn of the century were already dim and uncertain. But after midnight, when the New Year was scarcely minutes long and everyone had already banged away to his heart's content on pots and pans at open windows, his mother used to serve cold lentils. She didn't know why they had to be cold, either. Cold lentils with a little olive oil. "For good luck,”

she said.

And on New Year's Day, they would all go over to Grandma's house for the big feast prepared by all the women in the family. There'd be Grandpa and Grandma and his mother's sister Josie and her husband Mike, and his mother's brother Salvatore, whom everybody called Salvie, and his wife Dorothy, whom Carella loved to death. And the kids, all Carella's cousins, and sometimes Uncle Freddie who lived in Las Vegas and who was a casino dealer who occasionally came East on the holidays and who once gave Carella a silver ring with a turquoise stone, which he said he'd won from a wild Apache Indian in a poker game. This was the old neighborhood -Carella's parents had already moved out of it to Riverhead, but Grandma and Grandpa refused to leave, even though more and more often you saw signs announcing BODEGA or LECHERÍA rather than SALUMERIA or PASTICCERIA.

Carella's father used to bring the pastry.

Baked in his own shop.

The meal would start with antipasto-sweet red peppers his grandmother had roasted over the gas jets on the kitchen stove, and ripe black olives, and anchovies and eggplant and crisp celery stalks and imported olive oil into which you dipped the crusty bread his grandfather sliced from a big round loaf. And then there was the pasta, always with a delicate tomato sauce, either spaghetti or rigatoni or penne, which he loved to smother with the grated Parmesan cheese he spooned from the bowl passed around the table-"Take a little more cheese, Stevie," his grandmother used to say sarcastically, scowling at him with a smile, he always wondered how she managed that trick.

And then there'd be the roast chicken and the roast beef and the potatoes and the green beans and the fresh peas he'd seen the women shelling in the kitchen, the Italian part of the meal magically seguing - into what was essentially American, the way the immigrants had magically segued into their new lives here, I pledge allegiance. And there'd be fruit and cheese and coffee-and the pastries his father had baked in his own shop and carried downtown in little white thin cardboard boxes fastened with white string.

His Uncle Salvie was a great storyteller.

He used to drive a cab all over the city, and he had a thousand stories about all the crazy passengers he carried. Grandma kept saying he should have been a writer. Salvie used to shrug this aside, though Carella suspected this was really a secret ambition of his, the stories he told.

It was Carella's sister, Angela, who was always scribbling away. She seemed to have more homework than anybody in the entire world. Any holiday they spent at Grandma's house, Angela had books with her. All the cousins would be running around the apartment chasing each other and yelling at each other and laughing, and Angela would be curled up in a chair in the living room, reading a book, and then writing into her notebooks. "The Homework Kid," Uncle Mike called her.

She always smiled shyly when he said this, he was her favorite.

Aunt Dorothy had a ribald and bawdy sense of humor. She was always telling jokes Carella at first suspected, and later realized, were sexual in content. Every time she started to tell one, Grandma would warn, "I creaturi, i creaturi," scowling at her without a smile, gesturing with her head in the direction of the children.

Aunt Dorothy would wave aside Grandma's warnings and plunge right ahead with whatever joke she'd started. When Carella turned twelve, thirteen, whenever it was that he began seriously noticing girls and realizing what his aunt's jokes were all about, he would grin in knowledgeable embarrassment whenever she delivered a punch line, and she would wink at him in defiance of Grandma's disapproving scowl.

He never could understand how she'd learned about Margie Gannon. But she'd sensed unerringly- or perhaps his mother had tipped her to the fact-that he was enjoying what to him at the time was a wildly erotic relationship with the little Irish girl who lived across the street from him in Riverhead, and she teased him mercilessly about her, referring to her as Sweet Rosie O'Grady, God alone knew why.

The family would sit around the table, joking and laughing, drinking coffee and eating the pastries his father had baked. The cannoli and the sfogliatelli and the zeppoli and the strufoli and the Napolitani and the sfingi di San Giuseppe.

Aunt Josie was the one who always suggested, "Why don't we play a little poker?”

"Good idea," Uncle Freddie would say.

Uncle Freddie always won, even though they only played for pennies. Aunt Josie was a sore loser, Louise could never understand how her sister had developed such a temper. If she drew to an inside straight and failed to pull the card she was looking for, she'd throw her cards on the table and start swearing at whoever was dealing.

"Vergogna, vergogna," Grandma would scold, another of the few Italian expressions she had picked up from her mother, long dead.

Grandma herself was dead now. Grandpa, too.

Aunt Josie and Uncle Mike had moved to Florida, and they never came North anymore. Uncle Salvie died of cancer shortly after Carella joined the force. Aunt Dorothy remarried almost immediately afterward, and the family lost touch with her. Carella missed her and her dirty jokes.

At his father's funeral last July, there were no uncles or aunts who'd known Carella when he was small. There were a handful of cousins he hardly remembered, all of them expressing condolences over this terrible thing that had happened, one of them asking if Carella could fix a speeding ticket for him, the jackass. Behind their sad countenances, there lurked the unspoken thought that if such a thing could happen to a cop's father ...

On New Year's Day this year, there were no pastries baked by Tony Carella. Tony Carella had been gunned down in his shop on the night of July seventeenth, and never again would there be pastries baked by him. Carella's mother was still in mourning. Black dress, black stockings, black shoes, honoring a tradition virtually gone in the land from which it had come; except in the most remote sections of Italy, widows rarely wore black for very long. But Louise was a woman who still served cold lentils after midnight on New Year's Day.

This was not a joyous Tuesday. The weather, chill and bleak and gray, seemed to echo the - sense of loss that pervaded the house in which Carella and his sister had both grown up. A fierce and icy wind rattled the windows in the old house. There were cooking smells, yes, just as there had been on all the holidays Carella could remember, but there was no laughter, and even the children seemed oddly hushed. Only the immediate family-and not even all of it-was here today. The feast seemed somehow paltry; you did not celebrate when the funeral meats were not yet cold upon the table.

His mother was a blunt, plainspoken woman.

"I want to come to the trial," she said.

This was after the midday meal. Carella was due in the squadroom at a quarter to four; the Police Department had no respect for holidays. The family was sitting at the dining-room table under which he and Angela used to hide when they were children.

Long tablecloth hanging almost to the floor.

Giggling because they thought the grown-ups didn't know they were listening. I creaturi. The dishes had been cleared, they were drinking coffee. His mother dressed in black, her hands folded on the table, her slender gold wedding band tight on the ring finger of her left hand. Carella and his sister sitting side by side, both of them dark-haired and dark-eyed, the eyes slanting downward, their father's legacy. Teddy Carella sat beside her mother-in-law, raising her eyes from the knitting needles in her hands; she was knitting sweaters for the new twins in the family. Cynthia and Melinda, Angela's daughters, born on the twenty-eighth of July last year, eleven days after his father's murder; what the Lord taketh away, the Lord giveth back. Carella didn't much care for either name. He visualized one of them growing up as Cindy and the other as Mindy. He knew that his sister had unilaterally named them. His brother-in-law, Tommy, was conspicuously absent today. There were problems here, too.

Carella sometimes felt overwhelmed.

Louise was waiting for an answer. She saw her son's eyes click with her daughter's, brown against brown, in the secret communication she recognized from when they were children. Teddy was watching Carella's lips.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," he said.

"Why not?”

"Mom, there's going to be testimony ...”

"I want them to know he had a wife. I want the jury to know that.”

"They'll know that anyway, Mom.”

Teddy's eyes flashed from lips to lips, reading the words on them. Her world was a silent one.

She had been born deaf and had never uttered a word in her life. Teddy knew how to sign, but her mother-in-law tried it only occasionally, both she and Angela preferring to speak with exaggerated lip motions they hoped Teddy could decipher.

Except at times like now, when they were intent on the urgency of their own messages.

"Mom," Angela said, "Steve's ...”

"No, don't Mom me. ...”

"But he's right. There's going to be stuff you won't want to hear.”

"I want to hear it all. I want them to know I'm there listening to it all.”

"Mom ...”

"Especially that sfasciume who killed him.”

Carella automatically looked to see where the children were. He was never quite certain what the word sfasciume meant, but he suspected it was obscene and something i creaturi shouldn't hear coming from their grandmother's lips. His daughter was curled up with a book, reminding him of Angela at that age, and in fact resembling her somewhat.

His son was working intently on a model airplane that had been a Christmas gift.

Mark and April. Sensible names for twins, never mind Miffy and Muffy or whatever his sister's kids would grow up to be called. Angela's three-year-old, Tess, her brow furrowed in concentration, was working on a coloring book.

Bringing Teddy more completely into the conversation, signing as he spoke, Carella said, "Mom, this is a decision you have to make for yourself, but ...”

"I know it is. ...”

"... but I've testified in cases where the victim's spouse was present ...”

"The victim's spouse," Louise said, almost spitting the word.

"... and I can tell you it's not an easy thing to live through.”

"He's right, Mom," Angela said.

"They'll be showing pictures, Mom. ...”

"I saw what he looked like, the pictures can't be any worse.”

"Mom, that was a long time ago, you don't have to relive it all over again.”

“It was yesterday," Louise said.

"It was last ...”

"It'll always be yesterday," she said.

Teddy missed this. Carella signed it to her.

She nodded.

"Until I can look that bastard straight in the eye," Louise said.

Carella had already looked that bastard straight in the eye. Had rammed the muzzle of his service revolver into the hollow of Sonny Cole's throat, had heard Detective Randy Wade whispering beside him, "Do it." He had not squeezed the trigger, although in the narrow corridor of a house surrounded by vacant lots this would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. He had not done it.

Now, seeing the look in his mother's eyes, he wondered if he'd been right.

"I'm coming to the trial," she said, and nodded curtly.

"Mom ..." Angela started.

"What time next Monday?" she asked.

"Nine o'clock," Carella said, and sighed heavily. "The Criminal Courts Building downtown.”