Kissing, she said.


Scuffing through the leaves.


Touching, she said.


He held his breath.


Making love, she whispered.


And stopped on the path.


And turned to him.


And lifted her face to his.


That was the first time.


He had been with her a total of fourteen times since that October night, the fifteenth of October, the night he'd accepted the industry's coveted award, the night he'd been gifted, too, with this girl, this woman, this unbelievably passionate creature he'd coveted since September. Fourteen times. Including their hurried coupling on New Year's Eve.


His eyes brimmed with tears.


For Christmas he'd given her a small lapis pendant on a gold-


'You saw it,' he said. 'It was on the floor. Beside her. The chain must have broken when . . . when ... do you remember it? A small teardrop-shaped piece of lapis with a gold loop holding it to the chain? I bought it in an antiques shop on Lamont. She loved it. She wore it all the time. I gave it to her for our first Christmas together. I loved her so much.'


She had broken off with Handler by then.


Told him she no longer wished to see him. This was when he came down for the Thanksgiving holiday. Told him it was over and done with. Said she wanted nothing further to do with him. He accused her of having found a new boyfriend. Told her he'd kill them both.


Hodding was in bed with her when she reported this to him.


A room he'd rented in a hotel near the Stem.


Hookers running through the hallway outside.


They both laughed at Handler's boyish threat.


On New Year's Eve . . .


He covered his face with his hands.


Wept into his hands.


Meyer felt no sympathy. Neither did Carella.


On New Year's Eve ...


* * * *


14


The Assistant District Attorney was a woman named Nellie Brand, thirty-two years old and smart as hell. Sand-colored hair cut in a breezy flying wedge, blue eyes intently alert. Wearing a brown tweed suit, a tan turtleneck sweater, and brown pumps with sensible high heels, she sat on the edge of the long table in the Interrogation Room, legs crossed, a pastrami sandwich in her right hand. A little cardboard dish of soggy French fries was on the table beside her, together with a cardboard container of Coca-Cola.


'Willing to risk a quickie, huh?' she said, and bit into the sandwich.


She was married, Carella noticed. Gold wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand. He was drinking coffee and eating a tuna and tomato on toast.


'According to what he told us,' Meyer said, 'he simply had to see her.' He was still angry. Seething inside. Voice edged with sarcasm. Carella had never seen him this way. Nor was he eating anything. He was trying to lose seven pounds. This probably made him even angrier.


'Ah, l'amour,' Nellie said and rolled her blue eyes.


In some countries, women wore the wedding band on the right hand. Carella had read that someplace. Austria? Maybe Germany. Or maybe both. Nellie Brand was a married woman who, Carella suspected, might not appreciate a married man her age playing around with a sixteen-year-old kid. He further suspected she might have preferred dining with her husband to eating deli with two weary detectives who'd spent most of the afternoon and evening with a man who may have killed his own baby daughter and the sixteen-year-old who'd been sitting with her. But here she was at eight o'clock on a cold and icy Friday night, trying to determine whether they had anything that would stick here should they decide to charge him. They would have to charge him soon or let him go. Those were the rules, Harold. Miranda-Escobedo. You played it by the rules or you didn't play at all.


'Got there at?' Nellie said.


'Quarter past one at the outside,' Carella said.


'Doorman told you this?'


'Yes.'


'Reliable?'


'Seems so.'


'And left when?'


'Quarter to two.'


'Half-hour even,' Nellie said.


'Had to see her,' Meyer said. Steaming. About to erupt. Thinking about his own daughter, Carella figured.


'How long did he say this'd been going on?'


'Since October.'


'When?'


'The fifteenth,' Carella said.


'Birth date of great men,' Nellie said, but did not amplify. 'Told you all this, huh?'


'Yeah. Which troubles us, too. The fact that he . . .'


'Sure, why would he?'


'Unless he's figuring . . .'


'Yeah, there's that.'


'You know, the . . .'


'Sure, show 'em the death and they'll accept the fever,' Nellie said.


'Exactly. If he thinks he's looking at murder, he'll settle for adultery.'


'He gives us the old Boy-Meets-Girl . . .'


'Pulls a Jimmy Swaggart . . .'


'Tearfully begs forgiveness . . .'


'And walks off into the sunset.'


Nellie washed down a fry with a swallow of Coke. 'He knew what the autopsy report said, is that right?'


'About sperm in the . . . ?'


'Yeah.'


'Yes, he was informed earlier.'


'So he knew one of the possibilities was rape-murder.'


'Yes.'


'And now you've got him up here, and you're asking questions about New Year's Eve . . .'


'Oh, sure, he's no dummy. He had to figure we were thinking he was our man.'


'Which you're still thinking,' Nellie said.


'Otherwise we wouldn't have invited you here for dinner,' Carella said, and smiled.


'Yes, thank you, it's delicious,' Nellie said, and bit into the sandwich again. 'So let me hear your case,' she said. 'You can skip means and opportunity, I know he had both. Let me hear motive.'


'We'd have to wing it,' Carella said.


'I've got all night,' Nellie said.


Carella repeated essentially what Hodding had told them in this very room not an hour earlier.


If it had not been so cold on New Year's Eve, he would have planned to walk Annie home, the way he'd done that first time in October and several times since. Make love to her in the park. Annie standing under a tree with her skirt up around her hips and her panties down around her ankles, Hodding nailing her to the tree. His words. But it was so damn cold that night. He and his wife had virtually frozen to death just waiting for a taxi to take them over to the Kerr apartment, and Hodding knew that lovemaking in the park was out of the question, however strong his desire. He had it in his head that he and Annie had to usher in the new year by making love. An affirmation-


'Really gone over this kid, huh?' Nellie asked.


'Totally,' Meyer said.


-an affirmation of their bond. To seal their relationship. Fuck her senseless at the start of the new year. His words again. And the more he drank-


'Was he really drunk? Or do you think that was an act? To get out of the place.'


'I think he was really drunk,' Carella said.


'Probably sobered up on the way over to the apartment,' Meyer said.


'Doorman says he was sober.'


'So you have him sober at the scene of the crime.'


'Yes.'


'Okay, go ahead.'


The more he drank, the more the idea became an obsession with him. He had to get to his apartment, had to make love to Annie. When he talked to her on the phone at twelve-thirty, he whispered what he wanted to do ...


'Did he tell you this?'


'Yes.'


'That he whispered to her?'


'Yes.'


'Said what?'


'Said, "I want to fuck you."'


'The son of a bitch,' Meyer said.


'Uh-huh,' Nellie said. 'And she said?'


'She said, "Good. Come on over."'


'Precocious.'


'Very.'


'He told you all this?'


'We have it on tape.'


'What was his response?'


'He said, "In a little while."'


'You've got all this on tape?'


'All of it. We've also got his hostess overhearing him. Chastity Kerr. We've got a statement from her.'


'The exact words he gave you.'


'Yes. Telling Annie, "In a little while."'


'Okay. Go ahead.'


At one o'clock he leaves the Kerr party, ostensibly to clear his head. By the time he gets to his own building, four blocks uptown, he's cold sober. He goes upstairs, finds Annie waiting for him with nothing on under her skirt. They make passionate love on the living room couch, he goes in to kiss his baby daughter on her rosebud cheek, and then he leaves. The doorman clocks him coming out of the elevator at a quarter to two.


'Wham, bang, thank you, ma'am,' Nellie said.


'That's how his story goes,' Meyer said.


'And your version?'


'I think the strain of the relationship was beginning to tell on him,' Meyer said. 'The very fact that on New Year's Eve, he would risk running back to his apartment for a quick assignation . . .'


'Well, you yourself said he was totally gone on her.'


'Exactly my point. And getting in deeper and deeper. On Christmas, for example, he . . .'


'No puns, please,' Nellie said, and smiled.


Carella returned the smile. Meyer did not.


'On Christmas, he gave her a gift. Our first Christmas together,' Meyer said, bitterly repeating Hodding's words. 'And he caused her to break up with a decent . . .'


'What kind of a gift?' Nellie asked.


'Lapis pendant on a gold chain.'


'Expensive?'


'I would guess moderately expensive.'


'Well, there's cheap lapis, too,' Nellie said.


'He bought this on Lamont.'


'Okay, expensive,' Nellie said.


'What I'm saying, this was a man out of control . . .'


'Uh-huh.'


'Falling in love with a teenager to begin with ...'


'Uh-huh.'


'Getting in way over his head, buying her expensive gifts, making love to her in the park, for Christ's sake, meeting her in cheap hotels off the Stem, hookers parading the halls, taking risks no man in his right . . .'


'Detective Meyer, excuse me,' Nellie said. 'Why'd he kill her?'


Because he couldn't see any other way out.'


'Where'd you get that?'


'From everything he said.'


'He told you he was in over his head?'


'No, but . . .'


'Told you he couldn't handle this?'


'Well . . .'


'Couldn't see any other way out?'


'Not in those exact words.'


'What words then?'


'Mrs Brand, excuse me,' Meyer said. 'He was in that apartment making love to this girl between one-fifteen and a quarter to two. When he got home with his wife, forty-five minutes later, the girl is dead. Stabbed. Are we supposed to believe someone else got into that apartment during those forty-five minutes? Isn't it more reasonable to assume that Hodding either figured this was a good time to end his goddamn problems with this girl, or else he . . .'


'What problems? How did he indicate to you in any way that he considered this relationship a problem?'


'He said he had to see her, had to . . .'


'I don't see that as a problem. In fact, he was seeing her regularly. Seeing her was not a problem, Detective Meyer.'


'Okay, then let's say they argued about something, okay? Let's say they made love and she told him she didn't want to see him anymore. She'd bounced her boyfriend in November, why couldn't she now do the same thing with Hodding? Over and done with, goodbye. Only he wasn't having any of it. Not after all the deception of the past few months. So he flies off the deep end, goes out to the kitchen for a knife - he knows where they are, he lives in this . . .'


'I've granted you means,' Nellie said.


'And comes back and stabs her,' Meyer said.


'Uh-huh,' Nellie said.


'He was in that apartment for a half-hour,' Meyer said.


'Okay, let's say all this happened,' Nellie said. 'They made love and she told him thanks, it was nice, but that's the last dance, goodbye and good luck, and he stormed out into the kitchen and grabbed the knife and did her in. Okay? Is that your scenario?'


'Yes,' Meyer said.


'Let's say all of that - which you can't prove, by the way - is true. Then answer me one other question.'


'Sure.'


'Why'd he then kill his own daughter?'


And to that, there was no answer.


* * * *


Henry Tsu did not enjoy being bad-mouthed.


As far as he was concerned, he was a trustworthy businessman and he did not like people spreading rumors about him. That his business happened to be illegal had nothing to do with whether or not he conducted it like a gentleman. True, Henry had been forced on occasion to break a few collarbones and heads, but even when force had been called for, the business community understood that such action had been an absolute necessity. Henry had a good reputation. He hated to see it going down the toilet because of a little spic cocksucker.


José Domingo Herrera, who years ago used to do some work for the Chang people when they had what was called the Yellow Paper Gang in Chinatown. Henry had heard that Herrera was very good at what he did. What he did was a secret between himself and Chang Tie Fei, otherwise known as Walter Chang here in this city. Then again, Henry's full and honorable name was Tsu Hong Chin. How he had got to be Henry was a mystery even to himself. Perhaps it was because he looked very much like Henry Fonda when he was young. With Chinese eyes.


Putting together the pieces, Henry figured that Herrera had served as a liaison between the Chang people and certain Colombian interests eager to establish a foothold here in the city. The Colombians were sick to death of having to deal with the wops in Miami, who thought they owned the whole fucking world. They didn't want to start dealing with them all over again up here so they went to the Chinese instead. The Chinese needed somebody who could understand these people who looked and sounded either like sombreroed and raggedy-assed bandidos in a Mexican movie or else pinky-ringed and pointy-lapeled gangsters in a movie about Prohibition days. So they landed on Herrera as a go-between.


Was what Henry figured.


Little José Domingo Herrera, building himself a rep with the Chinese and the Colombians as well.


How Herrera had got involved with a Jamaican posse was another thing.


Which was why Henry on this bleak Saturday morning, the twenty-first day of January, was talking to a man named Juan Kai Hsao, whose mother was Spanish - really Spanish, from Spain - and whose father was from Taiwan. The two men were speaking in English because Henry had no Spanish at all and Juan's Chinese was extremely half-assed, his father having come to this country at the age of two.


'Let me tell you what I suspect,' Henry said.


'Yes,' Juan said. 'Please.'


He had exquisite manners. Henry figured the manners were from his Chinese side.


'I believe Herrera is spreading this rumor in order to serve his own needs. Whatever they maybe.'


This rumor that around Christmastime . . .'


'The twenty seventh.'


'Yes. That on the twenty-seventh, your people intercepted a shipment earmarked for the Hamilton . . .'


'Not the shipment. The money intended to pay for the shipment.'


'Coming from where, this shipment?'


'How do I know?'


'You said . . .'


'I said that's the rumor. That I knew about this shipment. Knew where it would be delivered, and intercepted the money for it.'


'Stole it.'


'Yes, of course, stole it.'


'From the Hamilton posse.'


'Yes.'


'Was this supposed to be a big shipment? In the rumor?'


'In the rumor, it was supposed to be three kilos.'


'Of cocaine.'


'Of cocaine, yes.'


'But you don't know from where?'


'No. That's not important, from where. It could be Miami, it could be Canada, it could be the West - up through Mexico, you know - it could even be from Europe through the airport in a suitcase. Three kilos is a tiny amount. Why would I even bother with such a small amount? Three kilos isn't even seven fucking pounds. You can buy a Thanksgiving turkey that weighs more than that.'


'But which doesn't cost as much,' Juan said, and both men laughed.


'Fifty thousand,' Henry said. 'In the rumor.'


'That you are supposed to have stolen.'


'Not the cocaine.'


'No, the money.'


'Yes.'


'From Herrera.'


'Yes, this little . . .'


Henry almost said 'spic,' but then he remembered that his guest was half-Spanish.


'This little person Herrera, who by the way used to do work for the Chang people. When they had the Yellow Paper Gang. This was before your time.'


'I've read a lot about Walter Chang,' Juan said.


He was only twenty-four years old and still making a rep. He figured it didn't hurt to say he'd read a lot about every famous gangster this city had ever had. Make everyone think he had gone out of his way to learn such things. Actually, though, he did know about the Yellow Paper Gang because his father had once leaned on some people for them. Juan's father was six feet three inches tall and weighed two hundred and forty pounds, which was very large for a Chinese. Everybody joked that there must have been a eunuch in his ancestry someplace. Juan's father found this comical. That was because he had a keen reputation as a ladies' man.


'So as I understand this,' Juan said, wanting to get the entire story straight before he went out of here on a wild pony, 'you'd like to know what really went down on the night of December twenty-seventh.'


'Yes. And why Herrera is saying we cold-cocked him.'


'And stole the fifty.'


'Yes. The story on the street is that Herrera went to take delivery of this lousy three keys . . .'


'Where? Do you know where?'


'Yes, in Riverhead. Where isn't important. Herrera is saying he went there with fifty dollars of Hamilton's money, to make the buy and take delivery, and as he was going in the building he was jumped by two Chinese men he later . . .'


'Your people? In the rumor?'


'Yes,' Henry said. 'I was about to say that he later identified them - this is all in the rumor that's going around - as two people who work for me.'


'And none of this is true.'


'None of it.'


'And you think it's Herrera who's spreading the rumor?'


'Who else would be spreading it?'


'If it's someone else, you want to know that, too.'


'Yes. And why? There has to be a reason for such bullshit.'


'I'll find out,' Juan promised.


But he wasn't sure he could.


It all sounded so fucking Chinese.


* * * *


The way Hamilton had found out was through a person he'd done a favor for in Miami three years ago. The favor happened to have been killing the man's cousin. The man was a Cuban heavily involved in dealing dope. His name was Carlos Felipe Ortega. You kill a man's cousin for him, without charging him anything for it, the man might be grateful later on, if he could find an opportunity. Or so Hamilton thought at first.


The information was that the Tsu gang up here was going to take delivery on a million-dollar shipment of coke.


A hundred keys.


On the twenty-third of January.


The reason Ortega was calling - this was two weeks before Christmas - was that he'd found out the Miami people were insisting on a very low profile. They had gone along with Tsu's bullshit about testing and tasting five keys of the stuff in one place and taking delivery of the rest someplace else, but they didn't want a big fucking Sino-Colombian mob scene up there. In the first instance, they were insisting that one guy from the Chinese side meet one guy from their side, fifty grand here, five keys there. You test, you pay, you take the high road, we take the low, it was nice seeing you. If the stuff tested pure, you sent two other guys to pay for and pick up the rest of the shit. No more than two guys. No crowds from the Forbidden City. Two guys who'd come and go in the night, thank you very much, and so long. Tsu had agreed to the terms. Which meant, Ortega said, that instead of a thousand guys standing around with automatic weapons in their hands and threatening looks on their faces, you had a one-on-one in the first instance, and only two people from each side when the later exchange took place.


'Which sounds very thin to me,' Ortega had said.


'Very,' Hamilton said.


'Unless, of course, there are no thieves in your city.'


Both men chuckled.


'Do you want to know where all this is going to take place, Lewis?' Ortega asked.


'That might be nice to know,' Hamilton said.


'But no messing with the Miami people, please,' Ortega said. 'I live here.'


'I understand.'


'Whatever you decide to do is between you and the Chinese.'


'Yes, I understand.'


'And if a little happens to fall my way . . .'


Ortega's voice shrugged.


'How much do you think should fall your way, Carlos?' Hamilton asked, thinking You cheap bastard, I killed somebody for you. As a fucking gift.


'I thought ten percent,' Ortega said. 'For the address of where the big buy is going down.'


'You have a deal,' Hamilton said.


'Ten keys, correct?'


'No, that's more than ten percent.'


'No, it's ten percent of a hundred keys.'


'You told me five keys would be someplace else.'


'I know. But ten keys is the price, Lewis.'


'All right.'


'Do we have a deal?'


'I said all right.'


'You deliver.'


'No. You pick up.'


'Certainly,' Ortega said.


'The address,' Hamilton said.


Ortega gave it to him.


This was back in December.


Two weeks before Christmas. The tenth, the eleventh, somewhere in there.


Ortega had told him that the shipment would be arriving in Florida on the twenty-first of January. In Florida, there had to be at least eight zillion canals with private boats on them. A lot of those boats were Cigarette types - high-powered speedboats like an Excalibur or a Donzi or a Wellcraft Scarab that could outrun almost any Coast Guard vessel on the water. Zipped out to where the ship was waiting beyond the three-mile limit, zipped back in to their own little dock behind their own little house. Did it in broad daylight. Safer in the daytime than at night, when the Coast Guard might hail you and stop you. During the daytime, you were just some pleasure-seeking boaters out on the water to get some sun. Out there on the briny, you sometimes wouldn't see another vessel for miles and miles. Your ship'd be standing still out there, you lay to in her shadow, you could load seven tons of cocaine, there'd be nobody to see you or to challenge you. Coast Guard? Come suck my toe, man. What you needed to stop dope coming into Florida on either of its coasts was a fleet of ten thousand US Navy destroyers and even then they might not be able to do the job.


The shipment would be coming up north by automobile.


No borders to cross, no Coast Guard vessels to worry about.


You drove straight up on interstate highways with the shit in the trunk of your car. You obeyed the speed limit. You drove with a woman beside you on the front seat. A pair of married tourists on vacation. White people, both of them, pure Wonder Bread. No blacks, no Hispanics. Nothing to raise even the slightest eyebrow of suspicion. You later met these people at a prearranged place in the city, usually one of the apartments you rented on a yearly lease for the specific purpose of using it as a drop, you paid them the money, you walked off with the shit.


This big shipment coming up was the reason Hamilton had hired Herrera.


What Herrera hadn't known, of course-


Well, maybe he had known, considering it in retrospect.


'I still don't know why you trusted that fucking spic with fifty dollars,' Isaac said.


This was language the gangs had picked up from fiction.


It was funny the way life often imitated art.


None of the gangs in this city had ever read a book and they would never have heard of Richard Condon's Prizzi's Honor if there hadn't been a movie made from it. They liked that picture. It showed killers in a comical light. It also introduced real-life gangs to something Richard Condon had made up, the way his hoodlums talked about money in terms of singles instead of thousands. If Condon's crooks wanted to say five thousand dollars, they said five dollars. It was very comical. It was also an extension of real-life criminal parlance where, for example, a five-dollar bag of heroin became a nickel bag. That was when heroin was still the drug of choice, later conceding the title to cocaine and then crack, admittedly a cocaine derivative. A five-dollar vial was now a nickel vial. And when a thief said fifty dollars, he meant fifty thousand dollars. Which was the sum of money Lewis Randolph Hamilton had entrusted to José Domingo Herrera on the twenty-seventh day of December last year.


'Why?' Isaac asked now.


He knew he was risking trouble.


Hamilton was angry this morning.


Angry that Herrera had run off with fifty dollars belonging to him. Angry that Andrew Fields, who'd been sent out once again to dispatch the little spic, had been unable to find him anywhere in the city. Angry that he himself, Lewis Randolph Hamilton, had bungled the execution of the blond cop. Angry that the cop had taken a good look at him. All of these things were like a cluster of boils on Hamilton's ass. Isaac should have known better than to ask about Herrera at a time like this. But Isaac was still somewhat pissed himself over the way a week, ten days ago Hamilton had appropriated both of those German hookers for himself.


In many ways, Isaac and Hamilton were like man and wife. They each knew which buttons to push to get the proper response from the other. They each knew what the kill words were. Unlike most married couples, however, they did not fight fair. A marriage was doomed when either partner decided he or she would no longer fight fair. Hamilton had never fought fair in his life. Neither had Isaac. They weren't about to start now. But this was not threatening to their relationship. In fact, they each respected this about the other. They were killers. Killers did not fight fair.


'Not of the blood,' Isaac said, shaking his head in exaggerated incredulity. 'To have chosen someone not of the blood . . .'


'There's Spanish in you, too,' Hamilton said.


'East Indian maybe, but not Spanish.'


'A Spanish whore,' Hamilton said.


'Chinese maybe,' Isaac said, 'but not Spanish.'


'From the old days,' Hamilton said. 'From when Christopher Columbus was still there.'


'That far back, huh, man?' Isaac said.


'Before the British took over.'


'Oh my, a Spanish whore,' Isaac said. He was letting all this roll off his back. This wasn't dirty fighting, it wasn't even fighting. Hamilton was just feinting, seeing could he get a rise without exerting too much effort. Isaac was the one with the power to punch below the belt today. Isaac was the one who insisted on knowing why Hamilton had handed fifty big ones to a spic.


'I thought you knew the Spanish were not to be trusted,' Isaac said


Of course, Hamilton might just tell him to fuck off.


'A race that writes on walls,' Isaac said.


'You are not making sense, man,' Hamilton said.


'It's a cultural thing,' Isaac said. 'Writing on walls. They also stare at women. It's all cultural. Go look it up.'


'Come look up my asshole,' Hamilton said.


'I might find a dozen roses up there,' Isaac said.


Both men laughed.


'With a card,' Isaac said.


Both men laughed again.


This was a homosexual joke. Neither of the men was homosexual, but they often made homosexual jokes, exchanged homosexual banter. This was common among heterosexual men, Harold. It happened all the time.


'To have trusted a spic,' Isaac said, shaking his head again. 'Whose credentials you never thought to . . .'


'He was checked,' Hamilton said.


'Not by me.'


'He was checked,' Hamilton said again, hitting the word harder this time.


'If so, he was . . .'


'Thoroughly,' Hamilton said.


And glared at Isaac.


Isaac didn't flinch.


'If I had checked the man . . .' he said.


'You were in Baltimore,' Hamilton said.


'It could have waited till I got back.'


'Visiting your Mama,' Hamilton said.


'There was no urgency . . .'


'Running home to Mama for Christmas.'


He was getting to Isaac now. Isaac did not like to think of himself as a Mama's Boy. But he was always running down to see his mother in Baltimore.


'Running home to eat Mama's plum pudding,' Hamilton said.


Somehow he made this sound obscenely malicious.


'While you,' Isaac said, 'are having a spic checked by ... who checked him, anyway?'


'James.'


'James!' Isaac said.


'Yes, James. And he ran the check in a very pro . . .'


'You picked James to do this job? James who later used baseball bats on this very same . . .'


'I didn't know at the time that lames would later fuck up,' Hamilton said frostily. 'You were in Baltimore. Someone had to do the job. I asked James to check on him. He came back with credentials that sounded okay.'


'Like?'


'Like no current affiliations. A freelancer. No police record. A courier once, long ago, for the Chang people. I figured . . .'


'Chinks are not to be trusted, either,' Isaac said.


'No one is to be trusted,' Hamilton said flatly. 'You didn't know what the situation was, you were in Baltimore . I had to operate on my instincts.'


'That's right, I didn't know what the situation was.'


'That's right.'


'And I still don't.'


'That's right, too.'


'All I know is Herrera stole the fifty.'


'Yes, that's all you know.'


'Do you want to tell me the rest?'


'No,' Hamilton said.


* * * *


The Ba twins had been Hamilton's idea, too.


They were named Ba Zheng Shen and Ba Zhai Kong, but people outside the Chinese community called them Zing and Zang. They were both twenty-seven years old, Zing being the oldest by five minutes. They were also extraordinarily and identically handsome. It was rumored that Zing had once lived with a gorgeous redheaded American girl for six months without her realizing that he and his brother were taking turns fucking her.


Zing and Zang knew that if the Chinese ever took over the world -which they did not doubt for a moment would happen one day - it would not be because Communism was a better form of government than democracy; it would be because the Chinese were such good businessmen. Zing and Zang were young and energetic and extremely ambitious. It was said in Chinatown that if the price was right, they would kill their own mother. And steal her gold fillings afterward. The very first time the Ba twins had killed anyone was in Hong Kong five years back when they were but mere twenty-two-year-olds. The price back then had been a thousand dollars American for each of them.


Nowadays, their fee was somewhat higher.


Back in December, for example, when Lewis Randolph Hamilton first contacted them regarding a courier named José Domingo Herrera, he'd offered them a flat three thousand dollars for messing up the little Puerto Rican and retrieving the fifty thousand dollars he would be carrying. Zing and Zang looked Hamilton straight in the eye - they were more inscrutable-looking than most Chinese, perhaps because they carried their extraordinary good looks with a defiant, almost challenging air - and said the price these days for moving someone around was four thousand for each of them, a total of eight thousand for the job, take it or leave it. Hamilton said he wasn't looking for God's sake, mon, to dust the little spic, he only wanted him rearranged a trifle. Eight thousand total, the Ba boys said, take it or leave it. Hamilton rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. But he took it.


Which made them wonder.


What they were wondering was the same thing Herrera had wondered when he'd been hired by Hamilton to carry the fifty K: Why is this man not using one of his own people to do this job? Why is he paying us eight thousand dollars for something his own goon squad can handle?


They also wondered how they could turn this peculiar situation to their own advantage.


The first way they figured they could pick up a little extra change was to contact the intended victim, this José Domingo Herrera character, and tell him they were supposed to move him around a little on the twenty-seventh of December, which was two days after Christmas.


'New Year you be on clutches,' Zing said.


They both spoke English like Chinese cooks in a Gold Rush movie. This did not make them any less dangerous than they were. Pit vipers do not speak English very well, either.


Herrera, who was already wondering why Hamilton had hired him as a courier, now began wondering why these two fucking illiterate Chinks were telling him about the plan to cold-cock him. He figured they were looking for money not to beat him up. Play both ends against the middle. Which meant that the possibility existed he would lay some cash on them and they would beat him up, anyway. Life was so difficult in this city.


Herrera listened while they told him they wanted eight thousand dollars to forget their little rendezvous two weeks from now. Herrera figured this was what Hamilton was paying them to ambush him and take back his money. He'd been planning to steal the fifty he was delivering for Hamilton. Vanish in the night. Fuck the goddamn Jakie. But now these Chinks presented a problem. If they beat him up, they would take the fifty and return it to Hamilton. Leaving Herrera cold and broke in the gutter. On the other hand, if he paid them the eight . . .


'We have a deal,' he said, and they all shook hands.


He trusted their handshakes as much as he trusted their slanty eyes.


But, oddly, Herrera started wondering in Spanish the same things the Ba brothers began wondering in Chinese.


Out loud and in English, Herrera said, 'Why is he setting me up?'


Out loud, and in his own brand of English, Zang said, 'Why use-ah two Chinese?'


They pondered this together.


It was obvious to all of them that Herrera was indeed being set up. At least to take a beating. And even though he had to admit that ten thousand dollars was a good price for getting roughed up - in this city, prizefighters had taken dives for less - he still wondered why. And why did the two men beating him up have to be Chinese?


Because . . .


Well . . .


They all looked at each other.


And then Herrera said, 'Because something Chinese has to be coming down!'


'Ah, ah,' Zing said.


Herrera was grateful he hadn't said, 'Ah so.'


'You want to go partners?' he asked.


The Ba brothers looked at him inscrutably. Fuckin' Chinks, he thought.


'You want to go in business together?'


'Ah, biz'liss, biz'liss,' Zing said, grinning.


This they understood. Money. Fingers flying over the abacuses in their heads.


'Find out why he wants me hurt,' Herrera said.


Everyone smiled.


Herrera figured the Ba brothers were smiling because maybe they'd stumbled on a way to become big players instead of handsome goons. Herrera was smiling because he was thinking he could maybe get out of this city not only alive but also rich.


Smiling, they shook hands all over again.


Eleven days later, the twins came back to him.


Frowning.


On Christmas Eve, no less.


No respect at all.


They were beginning to have misgivings about this new partnership. They had been to see Hamilton again, and he had paid them the agreed-upon fifty percent down payment for the job. But they were supposed to receive the remaining four thousand when they made delivery of the dope-cash Herrera would be carrying three nights from now.


'Now we no bling-ah cash, we no catchee monee!' Zang shouted.


"We lose-ah monee aw-relly!' Zing shouted.


'No, no,' Herrera said patiently, 'we can make money.'


'Oh yeah how?' Zing asked.


The way he said it, it sounded like a Column B choice on a Chinese menu.


'If we can figure it out,' Herrera said. 'The deal.'


The twins looked at him sourly and handsomely.


Fuckin' Chinks, Herrera thought.


'Did he say anything about why? he asked patiently.


'He say we tell you Henny say hello.'


A throw-away line.


'Henny?' Herrera asked.


'Henny Shoe.'


Was what it sounded like.


He realized they were talking about Henry Tsu.


What they were saying was that when they beat him up on the twenty-seventh, they were supposed to give him Henry Tsu's regards, which would make it look as if two Chinks from Henry's big Chinatown gang had stolen Hamilton's money.


Ah so, he thought, and realized he was going native.


* * * *


15


Sunday was not a day of rest.


Not for the weary, anyway.


Jamie Bonnem of the Seattle PD was trying to sound patient and accommodating but he came over as merely irritated. He did not like getting called at home so early on a Sunday morning. Early for him, anyway. For Carella it was already ten o'clock. Besides, his case was still cold and Carella's call only reminded him of that bleak fact.


'Yes,' he said brusquely, 'we talked to the Gillette kid. We also talked to the other old boyfriend. Ain't that standard where you work?'


'It's standard here, yes,' Carella said pleasantly. 'How'd they check out?'


'We're still working Gillette.'


'Meaning?'


'He's got no real alibi for where he was on the night of the murder.'


'Where does he say he was?'


'Home reading. You know any twenty-year-old kid stays home reading at night? Eddie Gillette was home reading.'


'Does he live alone?'


'With his parents.'


'Where were they?'


'At the movies.'


'Did you ask him where he was on New Year's Eve?'


'We asked both of them where they were on New Year's Eve. Because if this is tied to your kid kill . . .'


'It may be.'


'The point ain't lost, Carella. We haven't been eliminating anyone just 'cause he was here in Seattle that night, but on the other hand, if somebody tells us he was roaming the Eastern seaboard . . .'


'What'd Gillette tell you?'


'He was right there on your turf.'


'Here? Carella said, and leaned in closer to the mouthpiece.


'Visiting his grandmother for the holidays.'


'Did you follow up on that?'


'No, I went out to take a pee,' Bonnem said. 'You might want to check Grandma yourself, her name is Victoria Gillette, she lives in Bethtown, is there such a place as Bethtown?'


'There is such a place,' Carella said.


'I talked to her on the phone, and she corroborated Gillette's story.'


'Which was what?'


'That they went to the theater together on New Year's Eve.'


'Gillette and Grandma?'


'Grandma is only sixty-two years old. And living with a dentist. The three of them went to see a revival of ... what does this say? I can't even read my own notes.'


Carella waited.


'Whatever,' Bonnem said. 'The dentist corroborates. The three of them went to see whatever the hell this is, Charlie's Something, and afterward they went out in the street with the crowd, and walked over to a hotel called the Elizabeth, is there such a hotel?'


'There is such a hotel,' Carella said.


'To the Raleigh Room there, where Grandma and the dentist danced and Eddie tried to pick up a blonde in a red dress. All this according to Eddie and Grandma and the dentist, too, whose name is Arthur Rothstein. We do not have a name for the blonde in the red dress,' Bonnem said drily, 'because Gillette struck out.'


'Where was he between one-forty-five and two-thirty?'


'Pitching the blonde.'


'The dentist and Grandma . . .'


'Corroborate, correct.'


'How about the other boyfriend?'


'Name's Harley Simpson, she dated him in her junior year, before she met Gillette. He has an alibi a mile long for the night she was killed. And he was here in Seattle on New Year's Eve.'


'Mmm,' Carella said.


'So that's it,' Bonnem said.


'How's the old man taking this?'


'He doesn't even know she's dead. He's heavily sedated, on the way out himself'


'Is there anyone else in the family? Any other brothers or sisters?'


'No. Mrs Chapman died twelve years ago. There were just the two sisters. And the husband, of course. Melissa's husband. You want my guess, they'll be out here settling a will before the week's out.'


'He's that bad, huh?'


'Be a matter of days at most.'


'How do you know there's a will?'


'Do you Know any zillionaires who die intestate?'


'I don't know any zillionaires,' Carella said.


'I know there's a will because I've been following an idea of mine out here. I'll tell you the truth, Carella, I don't think this is linked to your New Year's Eve case. I think what we have here are two separate and distinct cases. I guess you've been a cop long enough to know about coincidence . . .'


'Yes.'


'Me, too. So while I ain't forgetting what happened there, I also have to treat this like a case in itself, you follow me? And I started thinking love or money, those are the only two reasons on God's green earth, and I started wondering if the old man has a will. Because you see, he was playing house with this younger woman before he got . . .'


'Oh?'


'Yeah, before he got sick. Her name's Sally Antoine, good-looking woman runs a beauty parlor downtown. Thirty-one years old to his seventy-eight. Makes you wonder, don't it?'


'It'd make me wonder,' Carella said.


'About whether she's in the old man's will, right? If there is a will. So I started asking a few questions.'


'What'd you find out?'


'Miss Antoine told me she has no idea whether she's in the old man's will. In fact, she said she saw no reason why she should be. But when I get an idea in my head, I ain't about to let go of it that easy. Because if the lady is in his will, and if the younger daughter found out about it somehow . . .'


'Uh-huh.'


'. . . then maybe she came out here to pressure the old man into changing the will while he could still sign his own name. Get the bimbo out of it. Though she isn't a bimbo, I can tell you that, Carella. She's a decent woman, divorced, two kids of her own, came up here from LA, been working hard to make a go of it. I can hardly see her pumping two shots into Joyce Chapman.'


'Did you take a look at the will?'


'You ought to become a cop,' Bonnem said drily. 'What I did, I couldn't ask the old man if there's a will because he's totally out of it. So I asked his attorney


'Who's that?'


'Young feller who took over when Melissa and her husband moved east. Hammond used to be the Chapman attorney, you know. Got the job shortly before Melissa married him, little bit of nepotism there, hmm? Met her when he got back from Vietnam, used to be in the army there, next thing you know he's the old man's lawyer.'


'Did he draw the will for him?'


'Hammond? No. Neither did the new lawyer. Said he had no know ledge of it. Protecting his ass, I suppose. So I asked him who might have knowledge of it, and he suggested that I talk to this old geezer here in town, name's Geoffrey Lyons, used to be Chapman's attorney, retired just before the son-in-law took over. He told me he'd drawn a new will for Chapman twelve years ago, yes, right after Mrs Chapman died, but a will's a privileged communication between attorney and client, and there was no way I could compel him to waive that privilege.'


'Does he know you're investigating a murder?'


'Tough.'


'Does Chapman have a copy of the will?'


'Yes.'


'Where?'


'Where do you keep your will, Carella?'


'In a safe deposit box.'


'Which is where Miss Ogilvy told me the old man keeps his. So I go for a court order to open the box, and the judge asks me if I know what's in this will, and I tell him "No, that's why I want to open the box." So he says "Do the contents of this will provide probable cause for the crime of murder," and I tell him that's what I'm trying to find out, and he says "Petition denied."'


'Who typed the will?' Carella asked.


'What do you mean? How the hell do I know who typed it?'


'You might try to find out.'


'Why?'


'Legal typists have long memories.'


The line went silent. Bonnem was thinking.


'Find the secretary or whoever,' he said at last.


'Uh-huh,' Carella said.


'Ask her does she remember what's in the will.'


'It'd be a start.'


'And if she says the will does name Sally Antoine . . .'


'Then you've got to go see Miss Antoine again.'


'Won't that be fruit of the Poison Tree?'


'Once the old man dies, which you say is any day now…'


'Any day.'


'Then the will goes to Probate and becomes a matter of public record. In the meantime, you're working a murder.'


'Yeah. But you know, the Antoine woman was here in Seattle on New Year's Eve. So that would let out any connection with your case. Even if she is in the will.'


'Let's see what the will says.'


'The husband's back east, you know. Why don't you ask him?


'Hammond? Ask him what?'


'What's in the will.'


'How would he know?'


'Well, maybe he won't. But if I'm going to bust my ass looking for a person typed a will God knows how many years ago, the least you can do is pick up a telephone. Which, by the way, are you guys partners with AT&T?'


Carella smiled.


'Let me know how you make out,' he said.


'I'll call collect,' Bonnem said.


* * * *


There had been times during the past month when Herrera wished his partners were Puerto Rican, but what could you do? The roll of the dice had tossed him two Chinks who, as agreed, had not given him either a beating or Henry Tsu's regards on the twenty-seventh day of December. Instead, on that day, Herrera had disappeared with the dope money, and Zing and Zang had gone back to Hamilton - seemingly shamefaced - to return his deposit. By the twenty-eighth of December, the year was running out through the narrow end of the funnel and Herrera was still sitting on the fifty K, hoping to turn it into a fortune overnight. He knew that the only way to do that was through dope. Any other way of turning money into more money was dumb. In America, there were no streets of gold anymore. Nowadays, the streets were heaped with cocaine. Coke was the new American dream. Herrera sometimes figured it was all a Communist plot. But who gave a shit?


On the twenty-eighth day of December, the Ba brothers came to report what they had learned.


At peril to their own lives, they said.


'Velly dange-ous,' Zing said.


'Henny Shoe fine out, tssssst,' Zang said, and ran his forefinger across his throat.


'You want to be wimps or winners?' Herrera asked.


The Ba brothers giggled.


Somehow, their laughter made them seem even more menacing.


Zing had done most of the talking. His English, such as it was, sounded a bit better than his younger brother's in that he never said ain't. Herrera listened intently. Partly because Zing was difficult to understand if you didn't listen intently and partly because the content of Zing's report was causing Herrera's hair to stand on end.


Zing was talking about a million-dollar dope deal.


'Millah dollah,' he said.


A hundred kilos at ten thousand per. Discounted because Tsu was making a quantity buy.


'Hunnah kilo,' Zing said.


The shipment was coming up from Miami by automobile.


On the twenty-third of January.


'Tessa-tay one play, pee up-ah ress not same,' Zing said.


'What?' Herrera asked.


'Tessa-tay one play, pee up-ah ress not same,' Zing repeated, exactly as he had said it the first time. He showed Herrera a slip of paper upon which several addresses were written in English in a spider-like hand. 'Tessa-tay play,' he said, indicating the first address.


'What?' Herrera asked.


'Tessa-tay.'


'What the fuck does that mean?'


Through a series of pantomimes, Zing and his brother managed at last to transmit to Herrera the idea that the first address on the slip of paper was an apartment where the testing and tasting would take place. . .


'Fi' kilo,' Zing said, and held up his right hand with the fingers and thumb spread.


'Five kilos,' Herrera said.


'Yeh, yeh,' Zing said, nodding.


'Will be tested and tasted at this place . . .'


'Yeh, tessa-tay play.'


'And if it's okay, the rest'll be picked up at this second place.'


'Yeh,' Zing said, 'pee up-ah ress not same,' and grinned at his brother, letting him know the benefits of a second language.


'Where only some of the bags will be tested at random.'


'Yeh, ony some.'


'What if the first stuff tests bad?' Herrera asked.


Zing explained that the deal would be off and the Miami people and the Tsu people would go their separate ways with no hard feelings.


'No har feeyin,' he said, and nodded.


'But if the girl is blue . . .'


'Yeh,' Zing said, nodding.


'Then they hand over the five keys and Tsu's people hand over fifty thousand.'


'Fiffee tousen, yeh.'


'And then they go to this next address to do some random testing and pick up the rest of the shit'


'Yeh, ressa shit.'


Herrera was thoughtful for several moments.


Then he said, 'These Miami people? Are they Chinese?'


'No, no, Spanish,' Zing said. Which was what Herrera figured.


'I need to know how to get in touch with them,' he said. 'And I need to know any code words or passwords they've been using on the phone. Can you get that information for me?'


'Velly har,' Zang said.


'Velly dange-ous,' Zing said.


'You wanna make velly big money?' Herrera asked.


The Ba brothers giggled.


Herrera was thinking that if he could buy those five measly keys set aside for testing and tasting . . .


Buy those five shitty little keys with the money he'd stolen from Hamilton . . .


Why then he could turn the pure into fifty thousand bags of crack...


At twenty-five bucks a bag . . .


Jesus!


He was looking at a million and a quarter!


Which if he split with the Chinks as they'd agreed . . .


'Velly big money, you bet,' Zing said, laughing.


'You bet,' Herrera said and smiled at them like a crocodile.


Now - at twelve noon on the twenty-second day of January - Herrera made a long-distance call. Just dialing the 305 area code made him feel like a big shot. Spending all this money to make a telephone call. Then again, it was Hamilton's money he was spending.


The person who answered was a Colombian.


The two men spoke entirely in Spanish.


'Four-seven-one,' Herrera said. The code numbers the resourceful Ba brothers had supplied. Chinese magicians.


'Eight-three-six,' the man said.


The counter code.


Like spy shit.


'A change for tomorrow night,' Herrera said.


'They're already on the way.'


'But you can reach them.'


'Yes.'


'Then tell them.'


'What change?'


'For the test. A new address.'


'Why?'


'Heat.'


'Give it to me.'


'705 East Redmond. Apartment 34.'


'Okay.'


'Repeat it.'


The man read it back.


'See you tomorrow,' Herrera said.


The man said, 'And?'


'And?' Herrera said, and realized in a flash that he'd almost forgotten the sign-off code.


'Three-three-one,' he said.


'Bueno,' the man said, and hung up.


* * * *


The Cowboy's shop was closed on Sundays, and so he met Kling in a little tacos joint off Mason Avenue. At a quarter past one that afternoon, the place was packed with hookers who hadn't yet gone to sleep. Palacios and Kling were both good-looking men, but none of the women even glanced in their direction. Palacios was eager to get on with the business at hand. He did not like having his Sunday ruined with this kind of bullshit. Besides, he was not at all happy with what he'd come up with.


'There is no ship coming in tomorrow,' he told Kling. 'Not with dope on it, anyway. You said from Colombia?'


'That's my information.'


'Scandinavian registry?'


'Yes.'


'Nothing,' Palacios said. 'I talked to some people I know, the ports are dead right now. Not only for dope. I'm talking bananas, grapefruits, automobiles. There's people saying a strike's in the wind. Ships are holing up at home, afraid to make the trip, they get here there's nobody to unload.'


'This one would be unloading outside.'


'I know, you told me. A hundred keys. A million bucks' worth of coke. Aimed for a Jamaican posse.'


'That's what I've got.'


'Who gave you this? Herrera? Who, by the way, I know where he is.'


'You do?' Kling said, surprised.


'He's shacked up with a chick named Consuelo Diego, she works for you guys.'


'She's a cop?'


'No, she answers phones down 911. Civil service. She used to work in a massage parlor, so this is better. I guess. They moved into a place on Vandermeer a coupla days ago.'


'Where on Vandermeer?'


'Here, I wrote down the address for you. After you memorize it, swallow the piece of paper.'


Kling looked at him.


Palacios was grinning.


He handed Kling the slip of paper upon which he'd scrawled the address and apartment number. Kling looked at it and then slid it into the cover flap of his notebook.


'How reliable is this guy?' Palacios asked.


'I'm beginning to think not very.'


'Because something stinks about this, you know?'


'Like what?'


'You say this is a Jamaican buy, huh?'


"That's what he told me.'


'A hundred keys.'


'Yes.'


'So does that ring true to you?'


'What do you mean?'


'The Jamaicans aren't into such big buys. With them, it's small and steady. A kilo here, a kilo there, every other day. They step on that kilo, they've got ten thousand bags of crack at twenty-five bucks a bag. That's a quarter of a million bucks. You figure a key costs them on average fifteen thou, they're looking at a profit of two-ten per. Still want to be a cop when you grow up?'


Palacios was grinning again.


'So what I'm saying, you get a Jamaican posse making even a five-kilo buy, that's a lot for them. But a hundred keys? Coming straight up the water instead of from Miami? I'll tell you, that stinks on ice.'


Which was why Kling liked hearing stuff that didn't come from police bulletins.


* * * *


Henry Tsu was beginning to think that Juan Kai Hsao would go far in this business. Provided that what he was telling him was true. There was an ancient Chinese saying that translated into English as 'Even good news is bad news if it's false.' Juan had a lot of good news that Sunday afternoon - but was it reliable?


The first thing he reported was that the name of the Hamilton posse was Trinity.


'Trinity?' Henry said. This seemed like a very strange name for a gang, even a Jamaican gang. He knew there were posses called Dog, and Jungle, and even Okra Slime. But Trinity?


'Because from what I understand,' Juan said, 'it was started in a place called Trinity, just outside Kingston. In Jamaica, of course. This is my understanding.'


'Trinity,' Henry said again.


'Yes. And also it was three men who started it. So trinity means three. I think. Like in the Holy Trinity.'


Henry didn't know anything about the Holy Trinity.


And didn't care to know.


'Was Hamilton one of these three?' he asked.


'No. Hamilton came later. He killed the original three. He runs the posse now, but he takes advice from a man named Isaac Walker. Who has also killed some people. In Houston. They are both supposed to be very vicious.'


Henry shrugged. From personal experience, he knew that no one could be as vicious as the Chinese. He wondered if either Hamilton or Walker had ever dipped a bamboo shoot in human excrement and stuck it under the fingernail of a rival gang leader. Shooting a gun was not being vicious. Being vicious was taking pleasure in the pain and suffering of another human being.


'What about Herrera?' he asked. He was getting tired of all this bullshit about the Hamilton posse with its ridiculous religious name.


'This is why I'm telling you about Trinity,' Juan said.


'Yes, why?'


'Because Herrera has nothing to do with it.'


'With what? The posse?'


'I don't know about that.'


'Say what you do know,' Henry said impatiently.


'I do know that it's not Herrera who's spreading this rumor. It is definitely not him. He has nothing to do with it.'


'Then who's responsible?' Henry asked, frowning.


'Trinity.'


'The Hamilton posse?'


'Yes.'


'Is saying we ambushed Herrera and stole fifty thousand dollars from him?'


'Yes.'


'Why?'


'I don't know why,' Juan said.


'Are you sure this is correct?'


'Absolutely. Because I talked to several people who were approached.'


'What people?'


'Here in the Chinese community.'


Henry knew he did not mean legitimate businessmen in the Chinese community. He was talking about Chinese like Henry himself. And he was saying that some of these people . . .


'Who approached them?' he asked.


'People in Trinity.'


'And said we'd stolen . . .'


'Stolen fifty. From the posse. That a courier was carrying for them. Herrera.'


'How many people did you talk to?'


'Half a dozen.'


'And Hamilton's people had reached all of them?'


'All of them.'


'Why?' Henry asked again.


'I don't know,' Juan said.


'Find out,' Henry said, and clapped him on the shoulder and led him to the door. At the door, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a money clip holding a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, peeled off five of them, handed them to Juan and said, 'Go buy some clothes.'


Alone now, Henry went to a red-lacquer cabinet with brass hardware, lowered the drop-front door on it, took out a bottle of Tanqueray gin, and poured a good quantity of it over a single ice cube in a low glass. He sat in an easy chair upholstered in red to match the cabinet, turned on a floor lamp with a shade fringed in red silk, and sat sipping his drink. In China, red was a lucky color.


Why bad-mouth him?


Why say he'd stolen what he hadn't stolen?


Why?


The only thing he could think of was the shipment coming up from Miami tomorrow night.


A hundred kilos of cocaine.


For which he would be paying a million dollars.


In cash, it went without saying. In this business, you did not pay for dope with a personal check.


Did the Hamilton posse have its eye on that shipment? Trinity, what a ridiculous name! But assuming it did . . . why bad-mouth Henry? Assuming the worst scenario, a Jamaican hijack of a shipment spoken for by a Chinese gang, why spread the word that Henry had stolen a paltry fifty thousand dollars?


And suddenly the operative words came to him.


Jamaican.


And Chinese.


If Hamilton had planned to knock over a shipment destined for another Jamaican gang, say the Banton Posse or the Dunkirk Boys, both far more powerful than his shitty little Trinity, he'd have done so without a by-your-leave. Go in blasting with his Uzis or his AK-47 assault rifles, Jamaican against Jamaican, head to head, winner take all.


But Henry was Chinese.


His gang was Chinese.


And if Hamilton's Jamaican people started stepping on Chinese toes, Buddha alone knew what reverberations this might cause in the city.


Unless.


All thieves understood retaliation.


In all cultures, in all languages.


If Henry had actually stolen fifty thousand dollars from the Hamilton posse, then Hamilton would be well within his rights to seek retaliation.


The fifty K plus interest.


A whole hell of a lot of interest when you considered that the stuff coming up from Miami was worth a million bucks, but honor among thieves was costly.


Hence the bullshit running around the city.


Hamilton setting up his excuse in advance: Tsu did me and now I am going to do him.


That's what you think, Henry thought, and reached for the telephone and dialed the same Miami number Herrera had called not five hours earlier.


* * * *


It was already dark when they got to Angela Quist's apartment that Sunday evening. She had been rehearsing a play at the Y all day, she told them, and was exhausted. She really wished this could wait till morning because all she wanted to do right now was make herself some soup, watch some television, and go to sleep.


'This won't take long,' Carella said. 'We just wanted to check a lead the Seattle cops are following.'


Angela sighed heavily.


'Really,' Meyer said. 'Just a few questions.'


She sighed again. Her honey-colored hair looked frazzled. Her star sapphire eyes had gone pale. She was sitting on the couch under the Picasso prints. The detectives were standing. The apartment was just chilly enough to make overcoats seem appropriate.


'Did Joyce ever mention a woman named Sally Antoine?' Carella asked.


'No. I don't think so. Why?'


'Never mentioned that her father was seeing a woman? Any woman at all?' Carella asked.


'I don't recall her ever saying anything like that.'


'Did she ever mention her father's will?'


'No.'


'When she went out to Seattle, did she say why she was going?'


'Yes. Her father was very sick. She was afraid he might die before she saw him again.' Angela looked at them, her eyes puzzled now. 'Why don't you ask Joyce all this?' she said.


And they realized all at once that they hadn't told her.


She didn't know.


'Miss Quist,' Carella said gently, 'Joyce is dead. She was murdered last Monday night.'


'Oh, shit,' Angela said.


And bowed her head.


Sat there on the couch under the Picasso prints, head bent.


Nodding.


Saying nothing.


At last she sighed heavily and looked up.


'The same person?' she asked.


'We don't know.'


'Boy.'


She was silent again.


Then she said, 'Does her sister know?'


'Yes.'


'How's she taking it?'


'Okay, I guess.'


'They were so close,' Angela said.


Both detectives looked at her.


'Saw each other all the time.'


They kept looking at her.


'All the time?' Meyer said.


'Oh, yes.'


'Even after she got pregnant?'


'Well, sure. In fact, it was Melissa who did all the groundwork for her.'

'What groundwork?' Carella asked.


'Finding an adoption agency,' Angela said.


* * * *


16


They did not get to Richard and Melissa Hammond until eleven o'clock on Monday morning because they'd had to make another stop first. The Hammonds were packing when the detectives got there. Melissa told them she'd received a call from Pearl Ogilvy in Seattle, who had advised her that her father had passed away that morning at seven minutes to eight Pacific time. The two were planning to catch an early afternoon flight to the Coast.


Carella and Meyer expressed their condolences.


'There'll be a lot to take care of, won't there?' Carella said.


'Pearl will be a big help,' Hammond said.


'I'm sure,' Carella said, and smiled pleasantly. 'I know this is a bad time for you . . .'


'Well, it was expected,' Hammond said.


'Yes. But I wonder if we can ask a few questions.'


Hammond looked at him, surprised.


'Really,' he said, 'I don't think this is ...'


'Yes, I know,' Carella said. 'And believe me, I wish three people hadn't been murdered, but they were.'


Something in his voice caused Hammond to look up from his open valise.


'So, I'm sorry, really,' Carella said, not sounding sorry at all, 'but we would appreciate a few more minutes of your time.'


'Certainly,' Hammond said.


On the other side of the bed, Melissa was neatly arranging clothing in her open bag. The detectives stood just inside the door, uncomfortable in a room as intimate as the bedroom, further uncomfortable in that no one had asked them to take off their coats.


'The last time we spoke to you,' Carella said, 'you mentioned that you hadn't seen Joyce since February sometime . . .'


'The twelfth of February,' Meyer said, consulting his notebook.


'That's right,' Melissa said.


Head still bent, packing.


'When she would've been four months pregnant,' Carella said.


'Yes.'


'But you didn't notice she was pregnant.'


'No.'


'Because all the Chapman women carry small, isn't that so, Mr Hammond?'


'I'm sorry, what . . . ?'


'Isn't that what you said, Mr Hammond? That all the Chapman women carry small.'


'Yes.'


'Which Chapman women did you have in mind?'


'I'm sorry, I really don't know what you're . . .'


'Your wife had only one sister. Joyce. You couldn't have meant Joyce because you'd never seen her pregnant. And the last time Melissa's mother was pregnant was twenty years ago. You didn't see her pregnant, did you?'


'No, I didn't.'


'So which Chapman women did you mean?'


'Well, Melissa, of course . . .'


'Yes, of course. And who else?'


'What I meant,' Hammond said, 'was that everyone in the family always said the Chapman women carried small.'


'Ah,' Carella said. 'Well, that explains that, doesn't it?'


'Mr Carella, I'm not sure what you're going for here, but I know I don't like your tone. If you have anything you . . .'


'Mrs Hammond,' Carella said, 'isn't it true that you suggested the Cooper-Anderson Agency to your sister?'


Melissa looked up from her suitcase.


'No,' she said.


Flat out.


A flat-out lie.


'Before coming here this morning,' Carella said, 'we went to see a man named Lionel Cooper, one of the partners in the Cooper-Anderson...'


'What is this?' Hammond said.


'Mr Cooper distinctly remembers having had several telephone conversations with you . . .'


'My wife never spoke to anyone named . . .'


' . . .regarding your sister's pregnancy and the placement of her baby after it was born.'


'Do you recall those conversations?' Meyer asked.


'No, I don't,' Melissa said.


'But you do understand that if you did have those conversations, then we'd have reasonable cause to believe you knew yoursister was pregnant.'


'I did not know she was pregnant,' Melissa said.


'So you told us. Because you weren't very close and you rarely saw her.'


'That's right.'


'Her roommate, a young woman named Angela Quist, seems to think you were very close and that you saw each other all the time. Especially after Joyce got pregnant.'


'Miss Quist is mistaken,' Hammond said flatly.


'Mr Hammond, where were you on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, actually, between one-forty-five and . . .'


'He was here with me,' Melissa said.


'You were both here between . . .'


'That's it, gentlemen,' Hammond said.


'Meaning what?' Carella said.


'Meaning I'm a lawyer, and this is the end of the conversation.'


'I thought you might say something like that,' Carella said.


'Well, you were right. Unless you have . . .'


'We do,' Carella said.


Hammond blinked.


'We have a match.'


Hammond blinked again.


'A report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,' Carella said, 'stating that the fingerprints recovered from the handle of the knife used to murder Annie Flynn match the US Army fingerprints on file for Richard Allen Hammond. That's you.'


He was lying.


Not about the FBI files. Bonnem in Seattle had told him that Hammond had served in the army during the Vietnam War, and so he knew his fingerprints would be on file as a matter of course. But the foreign prints on the handle of the murder weapon had been too smudged for any meaningful search. He was hoping Hammond hadn't been wearing gloves when he'd jimmied open the window to the Hodding apartment. He was hoping a lot of things. Meanwhile, he was taking his handcuffs from his belt.


So was Meyer.


Melissa seemed to realize all at once that one pair of cuffs was intended for her.


'My father just died,' she said. 'I have to go to Seattle.'


Carella looked her dead in the eye.


She turned away from his icy gaze.


* * * *


At ten minutes past eleven that Monday morning, Herrera came down the steps of the stoop outside 3311 Vandermeer and began walking eastward toward Soundview Boulevard.


Kling was right behind him.


He had got here at seven, not figuring Herrera for an early riser, but not wanting to lake any chances, either. Herrera was walking along at a brisk clip now; well, sure, he hadn't been freezing his ass off on the street for the past four hours. Good arm swinging, head ducked into the wind, racing along like a man with a train to catch. Kling hoped he didn't plan to walk all over the goddamn city. His ears were cold, his hands were cold, his feet were cold, and his nose was cold. It bothered him that Herrera had most likely woken up in a warm bed an hour or so ago, made love to Consuelo Diego, and then eaten a hot breakfast while Kling was standing in a doorway across the street waiting for him to put in an appearance.


Herrera stopped to talk to someone.


Kling fell back, turned toward a store window, eyes glancing sidewards toward where Herrera was obviously asking directions.


The man he'd stopped was pointing up the street now.


Herrera thanked him, began moving again.


Cold as the frozen tundra out here.


Kling fell in behind him, staying a good fifty feet back. Herrera knew what he looked like. One glimpse and-


Stopping again.


This time to look up at the number over one of the shops.


In motion again.


Kling behind him.


Then, obviously having seen the storefront window ahead of him, recognizing it for what he'd been seeking, he turned immediately toward the door, opened it, and disappeared off the sidewalk.


The lettering on the window read:


GO, INC

TRAVEL AGENCY


Kling was too cold to appreciate the pun.


He crossed the street, took up position in the doorway to a tenement building, pulled his head into his shoulders, and hunkered down to wait again.


An hour later, Herrera came flying out of Go, Inc as though he were not only going but already gone. Big smile on his face, this was a man with tickets in his pocket, this was a man on his way to somewhere sunny and warm. Falling in behind him, Kling wished for a moment that he was going wherever Herrera was going. Get away from this city with the snow already turned soot black and the sidewalks slick with ice and the sky a gunmetal gray that seemed to threaten even more snow. Get away someplace. Anyplace.


So where are we going now? he wondered.


Where Herrera was going was right back to 3311 Vandermeer Avenue.


Climbed the front steps, walked directly inside, and pool.


Vanished.


Kling took up his position in the doorway across the street. The superintendent came out at a little after one to chase him away from the building. Kling went to the luncheonette several doors up, took a seat at a table near the front plate glass window, and sat eating a cheese-burger and a side of fries while he watched the building diagonally across the way. He was on his third cup of coffee when Herrera came out of the building, this time with a very pretty, dark-haired woman on his good arm. The woman was wearing a short fake fur over a micro miniskirt. Terrific legs. Smile all over her face. Consuelo, Kling figured. It was almost three p.m.


He followed them past the park on Soundview and then eastward to Lincoln and a movie theater complex named Gateway, where two different movies were playing in two different theaters, the Gateway I and the Gateway II. He could not get into line immediately behind Herrera because Herrera knew what he looked like. He waited until Herrera had bought two tickets to something, and then asked the girl behind the ticket-dispensing machine which movie the guy with his arm in a cast was seeing.


The girl said, 'Huh?'


'The guy wearing the cast,' Kling said. 'Which theater did he go into?'


He did not want to flash the tin. Let the girl know he was a cop, everyone in the place would know it five minutes later. Herrera had eyes and ears.


'I don't remember,' the girl said.


'Well, there are only two movies playing, which one did he buy tickets for?'


'I don't remember. You want a ticket or not?'


'Give me tickets to both movies,' Kling said.


'Both movies?'


'Both.'


'I never heard of such a thing,' the girl said.


She was sixteen years old, Kling figured. One of the teenagers who nowadays were running the entire universe.


'How can you watch two movies at the same time?' she asked.


'I like to catch a little of each,' Kling said.


'Well, it's your money,' she said, her look clearly indicating that there were more nuts roaming this city than there were lunatics in the asylums. "That's fourteen dollars even,' she said, punching out the tickets.


Kling took the tickets as they popped out of the machine. He gave her a ten and four singles. The girl counted the bills. 'Ten and four make fourteen,' she said, showing off.


Kling walked to where another teenager was standing beside a long vertical box, tearing tickets in half.


'Ticket, please,' the boy said.


Kling handed him both tickets.


'Someone with you, sir?' the boy said.


'No, I'm alone.'


'You have two tickets here, sir.'


'I know.'


'And they're for two different movies.'


'I know.'


The boy looked at him.


'It's okay,' Kling said, and smiled.


The boy kept looking at him.


'Really,' Kling said.


The boy shrugged, tore the tickets in half, and handed the stubs to Kling.


'Enjoy the show,' he said. 'Shows.'


'Thank you,' Kling said.


He tried Gateway I first. Waited at the back of the theater until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Cautiously came down the aisle on the left, standing behind each row of seats so he wouldn't be made if Herrera was in here and happened to glance away from the screen. Checked each row. No Herrera. Went down the aisle on the opposite side of the theater, same routine. On the screen, somebody was saying he thought he was falling in love. His friend was saying something about him always falling in love, so what else was new? The two guys were teenagers. Who knew all about love, Kling guessed. One of the thousands of movies made for teenagers and starring teenagers. Kling tried to remember if there were any teenage stars when he was a teenager. He couldn't remember any teenage stars. He could only remember Marilyn Monroe's pleated white skirt blowing up over her white panties. Herrera was nowhere in the theater.


Kling came up the aisle, pushed open the door, turned immediately to the left, walked past the rest rooms and the concession and the video game machines, and then opened the door to Gateway II, and waited all over again while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He spotted Herrera and Consuelo sitting in two aisle seats about midway down the theater on the right-hand side. He took a seat three rows behind them. The couple on the screen - both teenagers - were necking. The girl was struggling to keep her blouse buttoned. Kling remembered a time when unbuttoning a girl's blouse was tantamount to scaling Mount Everest. The boy on the screen unfastened an undoubtedly key button. The girl's breasts, contained in a white bra, popped out of her blouse and onto the screen. Kling figured she was supposed to be seventeen. She looked twenty-five. The boy looked twelve. Three rows ahead of him, Herrera was passionately kissing Consuelo. The position of his body seemed to indicate that he had his good hand up under Consuelo's skirt. Kling wondered why they didn't simply go back to the apartment. There was a new scene on the screen now. Two teenagers were fixing an automobile. The hood was up. They were talking about a girl named Mickey. Listening, Kling found Mickey somewhat less than fascinating. Herrera and Consuelo did not seem too interested in Mickey, either. Herrera looked as if he now had his entire arm up under Consuelo's skirt.


Kling kept looking at his watch.


An average film was about two hours long; he did not want to get caught sitting here when the movie ended and the lights came up. He kept checking the action on the screen against his watch. The movie seemed to have sixteen endings. Each time he thought it was close to over, another teenage crisis sprang up, demanding immediate resolution. Kling wondered how teenagers managed to get through an entire day, all the serious problems they had to solve. The movie seemed to be peaking at about an hour and fifty minutes. He got up, walked to the back of the theater, and stood there until the movie did finally and truly end. As the credits began to roll, he stepped outside and walked over to one of the video game machines. Stood there with his back to the theater's doors, but with a good sideward shot at the exit doors to the street. Herrera and Consuelo walked through those doors some ten minutes later. Kling figured they'd both made rest-room stops. He tried to remember when he himself had last peed. It was now twelve minutes past five o'clock.


Already dark on the street outside. Streetlamps on. He followed Herrera and Consuelo back to the apartment on Vandermeer. Waited until they were inside and the lights came on in the third-floor front apartment. He ducked into the luncheonette then, used the rest room, and immediately came out onto the street again. The lights were still on in the third-floor apartment. Kling settled down to wait again.


At seven minutes past six, two Chinese men entered the building.


To most cops, all Chinese looked alike.


But these two could have passed for twins.


* * * *


Hammond refused to say a word.


Advised his wife to remain silent as well.


But alone in the Interrogation Room with Nellie Brand and the detectives, Melissa finally burst into tears and told them everything they wanted to know. The time was a quarter past six. Until that moment, they'd been nervously watching the clock, aware of Miranda-Escobeda, knowing that time was running off down the drain. They figured Melissa's sudden outpouring was prompted by the presence of another woman, but they didn't give a damn about the why of it. All they wanted was a case that would stick; Nellie asked all the questions.


'Mrs Hammond,' she said, 'do you now remember where your husband was between one-forty-five and two-thirty a.m. on the first day of January?'


'I don't know about the exact times,' Melissa said. 'But he left the apartment at . . .'


'By the apartment, do you mean . . . ?'


'Our apartment. In Calm's Point.'


'Left it at what time?'


'Midnight. We toasted the New Year, and then he left.'


'To go where?'


'To kill the baby.'


The way she said those words sent a chill up the detectives' backs. Emotionless, unadorned, the naked words seemed to hover on the air. To kill the baby. They had drunk a midnight toast. He had left the apartment. To kill the baby.


'By the baby, do you mean Susan Hodding?' Nellie asked softly.


'Yes. My sister's baby.'


'Susan Hodding.'


'We didn't know what they'd named her.'


'But you did know the adopting couple was named Hodding. Mr and Mrs Peter Hodding.'


'Yes.'


'How did you know that?'


'My husband found out.'


'How?'


'Someone at the agency told him.'


'By the agency . . .'


'Cooper-Anderson.'


'The adoption agency.'


'Yes.'


'Someone at the agency revealed this information to him.'


'Yes. He paid someone to get this information. Because, you see, the name of the people adopting the baby was only in two places. In the court records and in the agency records. The court records are sealed, you know, in an adoption, so Dick had to get the name through the agency.'


'And, as I understand this, cash was given to . . .'


'Yes. Five thousand dollars.'


'To someone in the agency.'


'Yes.'


'Who? Would you remember?'


Planning down the line. Getting her ducks in a row for when she had to prosecute this thing. Get the name of the agency person. Call him or her as a witness.


'You'll have to ask Dick,' Melissa said.


'So once your husband had the name . . .'


'And address.'


'Name and address of the Hoddings, he knew where to find the baby.'


'Yes.'


'And he went there on New Year's Eve


'Yes.'


'. . . to kill this infant.'


'Yes.'


'Specifically to kill this infant.'


'Yes.'


'How did he happen to kill Annie Flynn?'


'Well, I only know what he told me.'


'What did he tell you, Mrs Hammond?'


'He told me he was in the baby's room when . . . you see, what it was, he had the floor plans of the building. It's a new building, he went there pretending he was interested in buying an apartment. So he knew the layout of the apartment the Hoddings were in, do you see? There's a fire escape off the second bedroom, which he knew would be the baby's room, it's only a two-bedroom apartment. So he knew if he came down the fire escape from the roof, he could get right into the baby's room. And smother her. With her pillow. But the night he was there . . .'


'Why did he pick New Year's Eve?'


'He figured New Year's Eve would be a good time.'


'Why? Did he say why?'


'No. He never told me why.'


'Just figured it would be a good time.'


'Well, yes. You'll have to ask him. Anyway, he was in there, and the girl . . .'


'Annie Flynn?'


'Yes, the sitter. You see, what he figured was that he'd just go in the baby's room, put the pillow over her face, and go right out again. I mean, this was a baby. There wouldn't be any resistance or anything, no noise, no yelling, he'd just go in and go out again. If the Hoddings were home . . . well, this was New Year's Eve, they probably would've had a few drinks, and anyway it was very late, they'd be sound asleep, he'd go in very quietly, do what he had to do and get out without them hearing a thing. This was a baby, you see. And if they were still out celebrating, there'd probably be a sitter, and if she wasn't asleep . . .'


'There was a sitter, as it turned out, wasn't there?'


'Well, yes, but Dick knew where the living room was, and the baby's room was all the way down the hall from it. So ... what he figured, you see, was that either way it would be ... well, easy. This was a baby. He wasn't expecting any problem at all.'


'But there was a problem.'


'Yes.'


'What was the problem, Mrs Hammond?'


'The mobile.'


'The what?'


'The mobile. Over the crib. He was leaning in over the crib when he hit the mobile. It was one of these . . . almost like wind chimes, do you know? Except it didn't depend on wind. What it was, if you hit it, it would make these chime sounds. It was hanging over where the baby's hands would be, so the baby could reach up and hit it and make the chime sounds. But Dick didn't know it was there, he'd never actually been in the apartment, and when he leaned in over the crib, his head hit the mobile, and it went off like an alarm.'


'What happened then?'


'He yanked the mobile loose from the ceiling, but it had already woken up the baby, the baby was screaming. And the sitter heard her crying, and that's when all the trouble started. Otherwise it would've gone smoothly. If it hadn't been for the mobile.'


'So when Annie heard the baby crying . . .'


'Yes. Well, you have to understand we didn't know either of their names. Not the baby's and not the sitter's. Until we heard them on television.'


'What happened when she heard the baby crying?'


'She yelled from the living room, wanted to know who was there, and then she . . . she just appeared in the doorway to the room. With a knife in her hand. A very big knife, in fact. And she came at Dick with it. So he had to defend himself. It was self-defense, really. With the sitter, that's what it was. She was really coming at him with that knife. He struggled with her for maybe three, four minutes before he finally got it away from her.'


'And stabbed her.'


'Yes.'


'Did he tell you that?'


'Yes.'


'That he stabbed her?'


'Yes. That he had to kill her. In self-defense.'


'Did he say how many times he'd stabbed her?'


'No.'


'And the baby? When did he . . . ?'


'The baby was still crying. So he had to work fast.'


'The baby was awake . . .'


'Crying, yes.'


'. . . when he smothered her?'


'Well, put the pillow over her face.'


'Smothered her.'


'Well, yes.'


'Was there blood on his clothing when he got home?'


'Just a little. Some spatters.'


'Do you still have that clothing?'


'Yes. But I soaked out the stains. With cold water.'


Nellie was still planning her case. Seize the clothing as evidence. Send it to the lab. It was almost impossible to soak out all traces of blood. Compare the bloodstains with those recovered from the knife's wooden handle. Get herself a match that would prove Annie Flynn's blood was on the murder weapon and on the clothes Richard Hammond had worn on New Year's Eve.


'Tell me what happened on Monday night, the sixteenth of January,' she said.


'I don't want to talk about that.'


'That's the night your sister was murdered, isn't it?'


'I don't want to talk about it.'


'Did your husband kill her?'


'I don't want to talk about it.'


'Did he?'


'You know, there are some things . . .' Melissa said, almost to herself, and shook her head. 'I mean, we'd be getting half when Daddy died, so why . . . ?' She shook her head again. 'Half to me, half to Joyce,' she said. 'Plus the trust. Which is why the baby was so important. So ... why get so greedy? Why go for it all?'


'Mrs Hammond, did your husband kill Joyce Chapman?'


'You'll have to ask him. I don't want to talk about it.'


'Was he going for all of the inheritance?. Is that what you're saying?'


'I loved my sister,' Melissa said. 'I didn't care about the baby, I didn't even know the baby, but my sister . . .'


She shook her head.


'I mean, the baby meant nothing to me. And my husband was right, you know. Why should all that money go to a child that was . . . well, a bastard? I mean, Joyce didn't even know who the father was.'


'All what money?' Nellie asked.


'I could understand that, it made sense. But my sister ... I didn't know he was going to do that to her, I swear to God. If I'd known . . .'


'But you did know he was going to kill the baby.'


'Yes. But not my sister. I'd have been happy with half, I swear to God. I mean, there are millions, why'd he have to get so damn greedy all at once? the other money, okay. Why should it go to a baby my sister never wanted? But then to ...'


'What other money?' Nellie asked again.


'It's all in the will,' Melissa said. 'You'll have to look at the will.'


'Has someone already contacted you about it?'


'About what?'


'The will. I understand your father died early this morning. Has his attorney . . . ?'


'No, no.'


'Then . . .'


Nellie looked suddenly puzzled.


'Are you saying . . . ?'


'We knew what was in the will,' Melissa said. 'We found out almost a year ago.'


'How did you find out?'


'Mr Lyons told my husband.'


'Mr Lyons?'


'Geoffrey Lyons. Who used to be my father's attorney.'


Nellie looked appalled.


'Told your husband the provisions of his client's will?' she said.


'Well, he was very fond of Dick,' she said. 'His own son was killed in Vietnam, they'd grown up together, gone to school together, I suppose he looked upon Dick as a sort of surrogate son. Anyway, there was nothing illegal about what he did. Or even unethical. My father was trying to make sure the family wouldn't just die out. He was trying to provide some incentive. Mr Lyons gave Dick a friendly tip, that was all. Told him what was in the will. Said we'd better get going, you know?'


'Get going?'


'Well, you know.'


'No, I don't know.'


'Well, get on with it.'


'I still don't know what you mean.'


'Well, you'll have to look at the will, I guess,' Melissa said, and turned away from Nellie.


And then, for some reason Carella would never understand, she looked directly into his eyes, and said, 'I did love her, you know. Very much.'


And buried her face in her hands and began weeping softly.


* * * *


The apartment Herrera was using for the testing and tasting was only three blocks east of the one he had rented on Vandermeer. Both apartments were normally rented by the hour to prostitutes turning quickie tricks, and so the separate landladies had been happy to let Herrera have them at weekly rates that were lower but more reliable than the come-and-go, on-the-fly uncertain hooker trade.


Herrera had walked here with Zing and Zang. He was carrying fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in a dispatch case that made him feel like an attorney. The five kilos of cocaine would go into that dispatch case once the deal was consummated. The three of them would then go back to the apartment on Vandermeer, where Zing and Zang expected to take possession of their half of the coke. Two and a half keys for them, two and a half for Herrera. Just as they'd all agreed. Gentlemen. Except that Herrera planned to kill them.


It was all a matter of having been born in this city, he figured.


You take two pigtailed Chinks from Hong Kong, they did not know that the minute the door to the apartment on Vandermeer closed behind them, he would shoot them in the back.


They did not understand this city.


You had to be born here.


They stopped now at the steps to 705 East Redmond.


'I have to go up alone,' Herrera told them.


'Yeh,' Zing said.


'Because that's the way Miami wants it.'


'Yeh,' Zang said.


'It may take a while. Make sure they ain't selling us powdered sugar.'


'We be here,' Zing said.


* * * *


Kling saw Herrera go into the building.


The two Chinese men stayed outside, hands in the pockets of their overcoats. Both wearing long dark blue coats. No hats. Sleek black hair combed straight back from their foreheads. Neither of them had ever seen Kling before, he could move in closer for a better look.


Walked right past them on the same side of the street.


Brothers for sure.


Twins, in fact.


Didn't even seem to glance at them. But got enough on them in his quick fly-by to be able to spot them later, anytime, anywhere.


He continued on up the street. Walked two blocks to the west, crossed over, came back on the other side, this time wearing a blue woolen watch cap that covered his blond hair. The one thing you could count on in any slum neighborhood was a dark doorway. He found one three buildings up from the one Herrera had entered. Across the street, the Chinese twins were flanking the front stoop like statues outside a public library. Ten minutes later, a man with a mustache walked past the Chinese and into the building. Like Herrera, he, too, was carrying a dispatch case.


* * * *


The man from Miami was a hulking brute with a Pancho Villa mustache. He said 'Hello,' in Spanish, and then 'You got the money?'


'You got the shit?' Herrera asked.


No passwords, no code words, no number sequences. The time and the place had been prearranged. Neither of them would have known when and where without first having gone through all the security bullshit. So now they both wanted to get on with it and get it done fast. The sooner they got through with the routine of it, the safer the exchange would be.


There were people who said they could tell by a little sniff up the nose or a little speck on the tongue whether you were buying good coke or crap. Herrera preferred two simple tests. The first one was the old standby cobalt thiocyanate Brighter-the-Blue. Mix the chemical in with the dope, watch it dissolve. If the mix turned a very deep blue, you had yourself high-grade coke. The brighter the blue, the better the girl. Meaning if you got this intense blue reaction, you were buying cocaine that was purer than what you'd get with, say, a pastel blue reaction. What you had to watch out for was coke that'd been stepped on maybe two, three times before it got to you.


For the second test, Herrera used plain water from the tap.


The man from Miami watched in utter boredom as he scooped a spoonful of the white dust out of its plastic bag, and dropped a little bit of it into a few ounces of water. It dissolved at once. Pure cocaine hydrochloride. Herrera nodded. If the powder hadn't dissolved, he'd have known the coke had been cut with sugar.


'Okay?' the man from Miami said, in English.


'Bueno,' Herrera said, and nodded again.


'How much of this are you going to go through?' the man asked, in Spanish.


'Every bag,' Herrera said.


* * * *


From where he stood in the doorway across the street, Kling saw the man with the mustache coming out of the building, still carrying the dispatch case. He did not look at the two Chinese, and they did not look at him. He walked between them where they were still flanking the stoop, made a left turn and headed up the street. Kling watched him. He unlocked the door to a blue Ford station wagon, got in behind the wheel, started the car, and then drove past where Kling was standing in the doorway. Florida license plate. The numerals 866 - that was all Kling caught. The street illumination was too dim and the car went by too fast.


He waited.


Five minutes later, Herrera came out of the building.


* * * *


'No trubber?' Zing asked.


'None,' Herrera said.


'You have it?' Zang asked.


'I've got it.'


'Where?' Zing asked.


'Here in the bag,' Herrera said. 'Where the fuck you think?'


His eyes were sparkling. Just holding the dispatch case with all that good dope in it made him feel higher than he'd ever felt in his life. Five kilos of very very good stuff. All his. Take the Chinks back to the place on Vandermeer, kiss them off, leave them there for the cops to find when somebody complained about the stink in apartment 3A. Take his time disposing of the coke, so long as he got rid of it by the fifteenth of February. Catch the TWA plane to Spain on the fifteenth. The plane to Spain is mainly in the rain, he sang inside his head. Christ he was happy!


The twins were on either side of him now.


Like bodyguards.


Zing smiled at him.


'Henny Shoe say tell you hello,' he said.


* * * *


From where Kling stood across the street, he heard the shots first and only then saw the gun. In the hand of the Chinese guy standing on Herrera's right. There were three shots in rapid succession. Herrera was falling. The guy who'd shot him backed away a little, giving him room to drop. The other Chinese guy picked up the dispatch case from the sidewalk where it had fallen. They both began running. So did Kling.


'Police!' he shouted.


His gun was in his hand.


'Police!' he shouted again and watched them turn the corner.


He pounded hard along the sidewalk. Reached the corner. Went around it following his gun hand.


The street was empty.


His eyes flicked doorways. Hit doorways. Snapped away from them. Nothing. Where the hell had they . . . ?


There.


Partially open door up ahead.


He ran to it, kicked it fully open, fanned the dark entrance alcove with his gun. Open door beyond. Went to that. Through the doorway. Syeps ahead. Not a sound anywhere in the hallway. An abandoned building. If he went up those steps he'd be walking into sudden death. Water dripped from somewhere overhead. A shot came down the stairwell. He fired back blindly. The sound of footfalls pounding up above. He came up the steps, gun out ahead of him. Another shot. Wood splinters erupted like shrapnel on the floor ahead of him. He kept climbing. The door to the roof was open. He came out into sudden cold and darkness. Flattened himself against the brick wall. Waited. Nothing. They were gone. Otherwise they'd still be firing. Waited, anyway, until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then covered the roof, paced it out, checking behind every turret and vent, his gun leading him. They were gone for sure. He holstered his gun and went down to the street again.


As he approached Herrera lying on his back on the sidewalk, he saw blood bubbling up out of his mouth. He knelt beside him.


'José?' he said, 'Joey?'


Herrera looked up at him.


'Who were they?'


They won't let you live in this city, Herrera thought, but they won't let you out of it, either.


His eyes rolled back into his head.


* * * *


Sitting in the automobile, Hamilton and Isaac watched the two Chinese men from the Tsu gang entering the building.


Hamilton smiled.


The thing about the Chinese, he thought, is that they know business but they have no passion. They are cool lemon yellow. And tonight, they were going to get squeezed.


The two men from Miami were waiting upstairs in apartment 5C.


This according to what Carlos Ortega had told him.


For ten percent, the ungrateful bastard.


The two men from the Tsu gang were now on their way upstairs to make payment and take delivery. The earlier testing and tasting, wherever the hell that had taken place, had apparently gone off without a hitch. Hamilton had no interest whatever in those shitty five keys that had vanished in the night. Upstairs in apartment 5C, there were ninety-five keys of cocaine and only four people to look after all that dope.


He nodded to Isaac.


Isaac nodded back and then flashed his headlights at the car up the street. He still didn't understand all the details of the deal. He only knew that tonight they were making a move that would catapult them into the big time where posses like Spangler and Shower roamed at ease. He was confident that Hamilton knew what he was doing. You either trusted someone completely or you didn't trust him at all.


Together, they got out of the automobile.


Up the street, the doors on the other car opened. Black men in overcoats got out. The doors closed silently on the night. The men assembled swiftly, breaths pluming on the frosty air, and then walked swiftly to the front steps of the building. Eight of them altogether. Hamilton, Isaac and six others. Hamilton knew the odds would be two to one in his favor.


Together they climbed to the fifth floor of the building.


Hamilton listened outside the door to apartment 5C.


Voices inside there.


Three separate and distinct voices.


There now.


A fourth voice.


He kept listening.


He smiled. Held up his right hand. Showed four fingers. Isaac nodded. Four of them inside there. As promised by Ortega. Isaac nodded to the man on his right.


A single burst from the man's AR-15 blew off the lock on the door


The Jamaicans went in.


Hamilton was still smiling.


There were not four people in that apartment.


There were a dozen Colombians from Miami and a dozen Chinese from right here in the city.


Henry Tsu was one of those Chinese.


In the first ten seconds, Isaac - who still did not completely understand all the details of this deal - took seventeen slugs in his chest and his head. Hamilton turned to run. His way was blocked by the Jamaicans behind him. They, too, had realized all at once that they had walked into an ambush, and they were now scrambling in panic to get out of the trap. They were all too late. A second wave of fire cut them down before they reached the door. It was all over in thirty seconds. The only shot the Jamaicans had fired was the one that took off the lock.


Hamilton, still alive, started crawling over the bodies toward the doorway.


One of the Chinese said, 'Henny Shoe say tell you hello.'


Then he and another Chinese who looked remarkably like him fired twelve shots into Hamilton's back.


Hamilton stopped crawling.


Henry Tsu looked down at him.


He was thinking it was all a matter of which was the oldest culture.


* * * *


17


Carella signed for the Federal Express envelope at ten minutes past nine the following morning. It was from the Seattle Police Department and it contained a sheaf of photocopied pages and a handwritten memo. The memo read: Thought you might like to see this. It was signed: Bonnem. The pages had been copied from Paul Chapman's will. They read:


My daughters are Melissa Chapman Hammond and Joyce Chapman.


I give and bequeath to my trustee hereinafter named the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) to hold same in trust for the benefit of the first child born of my said daughters, and to manage, invest and reinvest the same and pay all costs, taxes . . .


'He was making sure the family line would continue after he was gone,' Carella said.


'If his daughters were still childless at his death, he was giving them a good reason to change the situation,' Meyer said.


'To get on with it.'


'To get going.'


'Melissa's words.'


'Here's the motive,' Carella said, tapping the page of the will that spelled out the firstborn provision.


'He was signing little Susan's death warrant,' Meyer said.


'Because if she'd never been born . . .'


'Melissa's baby would be the firstborn child . . .'


'And that's where the million-dollar trust would go.'


Both men continued reading in silence.


All the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, of whatsoever nature and wheresoever situated, which I may own or to which I may in any way be entitled at the time of my death, including any lapses or renounced legacies or devises, is referred to in this, my will, as my residuary estate.


'Defining his terms,' Carella said.


'The rest of his estate.'


'Millions of dollars, isn't that what she said?'


I give, devise and bequeath any residuary estate in equal shares to my daughters living at my death . . .


'Just what she told us.'


... or if a said daughter shall predecease me ...


'Here comes the motive for Joyce's murder . . .'


. . . then I give, devise and bequeath all of my residuary estate to my then surviving daughter.


'Kill Joyce and Melissa gets it all,' Carella said.


'Love or money,' Meyer said and sighed. 'It never changes.'


There was more to the will.


But they already had all they needed.


And the phone was ringing again.


* * * *


There were no windows in the room.


This was the first time Eileen noticed it.


Neither was there a clock.


Must be Las Vegas, she thought.


'Something?' Karin asked.


'No.'


'You were smiling.'


'Private joke,' Eileen said.


'Share it with me.'


'No, that's okay.'


She was wearing a digital watch. Nothing ticked into the silence of the room. She wondered how many minutes were left. She wondered what the hell she was doing here.


'Let's play some word games,' Karin said.


'Why?'


'Free association. Loosen you up.'


'I'm loose.'


'It's like snowballing. Cartoonists use it a lot.'


'So do cops,' Eileen said.


'Oh?'


'In a squadroom. You take an idea and run with it,' she said, suspecting Karin already knew this. If so, why the expression of surprise? She wished she trusted her. But she didn't. Couldn't shake the feeling that to Karin Lefkowitz, she was nothing but a specimen on a slide.


'Want to try it?'


'We don't have much time left, do we?'


Hoping she was right. Not wanting to look at her watch.


'Twenty minutes, anyway,' Karin said.


Christ, that long?.


'I'll give you a word, and you give me the first word that pops into your head, okay?'


'You know,' Eileen said, 'I really don't enjoy playing games. I'm a grown woman.'


'Yes, so am I.'


'So why don't we just skip it, okay?'


'Sure. We can skip the whole damn thing, if you like.'


Eileen looked at her.


'I think we're wasting each other's time,' Karin said flatly. 'You have nothing to say to me, and if you don't say anything, then I can't help you. So maybe we ought to . . .'


'The only help I need . . .'


'Yes, I know. Is quitting the force.'


'Yes.'


'Well, I don't think I can help you do that.'


'Why not?'


'Because I don't think it's what you really want.'


'Then why the hell am I here?'


'You tell me.'


Eileen folded her arms across her chest.


'Here comes the body posture again,' Karin said. 'Look, I really don't think you're ready for this. I don't know why you came to me in the first place ...'


'I told you. Sam Grossman sugg . . .'


'Yes, and you thought it was a good idea. So here you are, and you have nothing to tell me. So why don't we call it a day, huh?'


'You want to quit, huh?'


'Just for now, yes. If you change your mind later . . .'


'Too bad I can't quit just for now, huh?'


'What do you mean?'


'The force. Leaving police work is forever.'


'Why do you say that?'


'Come on, willya?'


'I really don't know why you feel . . .'


'Don't you ever talk to cops? What do you do here? Talk to architects? Bankers? I mean, for Christ's sake, don't you know how cops think?


'How do they think, Eileen? Tell me.'


'If I quit now . . .' She shook her head.


'Yes?'


'Never mind, fuck it.'


'Okay,' Karin said, and looked at her watch. 'We've got fifteen minutes left. Have you seen any good movies lately?'


'I just don't like having to explain the simplest goddamn things to you!'


'Like what?'


'Like what everyone would think if I quit!'


'What would they think?'


'And why it would be impossible to . . .'


'What would they think, Eileen?'


'That I'm scared, goddamn it!'


'Are you?'


'I told you I was, didn't I? How would you like to get raped?'


'I wouldn't.'


'But try to explain that to anyone.'


'Who do you mean?'


'People I've worked with. I've worked with cops all over this city.'


'Men?'


'Women, too.'


'Well, surely the women would understand why you'd be afraid of getting raped again.'


'Some of them might not. You get a certain kind of woman with a gun on her hip, she's sometimes worse than a man.'


'But most women would understand, don't you think?'


'I guess so. Well, Annie would. Annie Rawles. She'd understand.'


'Rape Squad, isn't that what you told me?'


'Annie, yeah. She's terrific'


'So who do you think might not understand? Men?'


'I've never heard of a man getting raped, have you? Except in prison? Most cops haven't been in prison.'


'Then it's cops you're worried about. Men cops. You don't think they'd understand, is that it?'


'You should work with some of these guys,' Eileen said.


'Well, if you quit, you wouldn't have to work with them anymore.'


'And they'd run all over the city saying I couldn't cut it.'


'Is that important to you?'


'I'm a good cop,' Eileen said.


'Was.'


'Well, you haven't quit yet. So you're still a cop.'


'But not a good one.'


'Has anyone said that to you?'


'Not to my face.'


'Do you think anyone has said that behind your back?'


'Who cares?'


'Well, you do, don't you?'


'Not if they think I'm scared.'


'But you are scared. You told me you were scared.'


'I know I am.'


'So what's wrong with that?'


'I'm a cop.'


'Do you think cops aren't scared?'


'Not the way I'm scared.'


'How scared are you, Eileen? Can you tell me?'


She was silent for a long time.


Then she said, 'I have nightmares. Every night.'


'About the rape?'


'Yes. About giving him my gun. He has the knife to my throat, and I give him my gun. Both guns. The thirty-eight and the little backup pistol. The Browning. I give him both guns.'


'Is that what happened in reality?'


'Yes. But he raped me, anyway. I thought . . .'


'Yes?'


'I don't know what I thought. I guess that . . . that if I ... I cooperated, then he ... he wouldn't cut me . . . wouldn't rape me. But he did.'


'Cut you. And raped you.'


'So fucking helpless? Eileen said. 'A cop!'


'What did he look like, do you remember?'


'It was dark.'


'But you saw him, didn't you?'


'And raining. It was raining.'


'But what did he look like?'


'I don't remember. He grabbed me from behind.'


'But surely, when he . . .'


'I don't remember.'


'Did you see him after that night?'


'Yes.'


'When?'


'At the trial'


'What was his name?'


'Arthur Haines. Annie made the collar.'


'Did you identify him at the trial?'


'Yes. But . . .'


'Well, what did he look like?'


'In the dream, he has no face.'


'But while he was raping you, he had a face.'


'Yes.'


'And at the trial, he had a face.'


'Yes.'


'Which you identified.'


'Yes.'


'What did he look like, Eileen?'


'Tall. Six feet. A hundred and eighty pounds. Brown hair and blue eyes.'


'How old?'


'Thirty-four.'


'How old was the man you killed?'


'What?'


'How old was . . . ?'


'What's he got to do with this? I don't have nightmares about him.'


'Do you remember how old he was?'


'Yes.'


'Tell me.'


'Early thirties.'


'What'd he look like?'


'I already told you this. The second time I was here. We've been through all this.'


'Tell me again.'


'Blond,' Eileen said, and sighed. 'Six-two. Two hundred pounds. Eye-glasses. A heart-shaped tattoo with nothing in it'


'What color were his eyes?'


'Blue.'


'Like the rapist.'


'The eyes, yes.'


'His size, too.'


'Well, Bobby was heavier and taller.'


'But they were both big men.'


'Yes.'


'You said you were alone with him in a room . . .'


'Bobby, yes.'


'Because you'd lost your backups. By the way, do you always think of him as Bobby?'


'Well ... I guess so. That's what he called himself. Bobby.'


'Uh huh.'


'Is there anything wrong with that? Calling him Bobby?'


'No, no. Tell me how you lost your backups.'


'I thought I already did.'


'No, I don't think so. How many were there?'


'Two of them. Annie and a ... Annie Rawles . . .'


'Yes.'


'. . . and a guy from the Seven-Two in Calm's Point. Mike Shanahan. Big Irishman. Good cop.'


'How'd you lose them?'


'Well, Bert got it in his head that I needed help. So he drove out to the Zone . . .'


'Bert Kling.'


'Yeah. Who I was still seeing at the time. I told him I didn't want him coming out there, but he came anyway. And . . . he's blond, you know. Did I mention he's blond? And there was a mix-up on the street, Shanahan saw Bert and thought he was the guy we were looking for, because Bobby was blond, too, you know, and about the same size. So by the time they straightened it out - it was the Feather in the Hat thing, you know, only nobody was wearing feathers - by the time Shanahan realized Bert was on the job, Bobby and I were gone.'


'Gone?'


'Around the corner. On our way to the room.'


'Did they ever catch up to you?'


'No.'


'Then you really did lose them. I mean, permanently.'


'Yes.'


'Because Bert stepped into the play.'


'Well, it wasn't his fault.'


'Whose fault was it?'


'Shanahan's.'


'Why?'


'Because he mistook Bert for the suspect.'


'Didn't know Bert was a cop.'


'That's right.'


'But if Bert hadn't been there . . .'


'But he was.'


'But if he hadn't beenthere . . .'


'There's no sense thinking that way. He was there.'


'Eileen, if he hadn't been there, would there have been a mix-up on the street?'


'Well, no.'


'Would you have lost your backups?'


'Probably not.'


'Do you think they might have helped you in your situation with Bobby?'


'Who?'


'Your backups.'


'I suppose so. If they'd got to me in time.'


'Well, you said they're both good cops . . .'


'Oh, sure.'


'. . . who undoubtedly knew their jobs . . .'


'I'd have trusted my life with either of them. In fact, that's exactly what I was doing. Trusting them to get there on time if I needed them.'


'But they weren't there when you needed them.'


'Yes, but that wasn't their fault.'


'Whose fault was it?'


'Nobody's. It was one of those dumb things that happen all the time.'


'Eileen, if it hadn't happened - if there hadn't been the mix-up, if you hadn't lost Shanahan and Annie - do you think you'd have had to shoot Bobby?'


'I don't know.'


'Well, think about it.'


'How can I possibly . . . ?'


'Well, if they'd been following you . . .'


'Yes, but they weren't.'


'If they'd been there behind you . . .'


'But you see . . .'


'. . . if they'd seen where Bobby was taking you . . .'


'Look, there's no use crying over . . .'


'. . . and if they'd got to you in time, would you have shot and killed Bobby Wilson?'


'I'd shoot him all over again,' Eileen said.


'You didn't answer my question.'


'Man with a knife? Coming at me with a knife? Of course I'd shoot the son of a bitch! I got cut once, thanks, and I don't plan to . . .'


Eileen stopped dead.


'Yes?' Karin said.


Eileen was silent for several moments.


Then she said, 'I wasn't trying to get even, if that's what you think.'


'What do you mean?'


'When I shot Bobby. I wasn't ... I didn't shoot him because of... I mean, it had nothing to do with the rape.'


'Okay.'


'Nothing at all. In fact . . . well, I already told you.'


'What was that?'


'I was beginning to like him. He was very charming.'


'Bobby.'


'Yes.'


'But you killed him.'


'I had to. That's the whole point, you know, the whole reason I'm here.'


'Yes, tell me the reason.'


'I already told you this, I don't know why I have to tell you every fucking thing a hundred times.'


'What was it you told me?'


'That I want to quit because I'm afraid I'll . . .'


'Yes, I remember now. You're afraid . . .'


'I'm afraid I'll get so angry I'll kill somebody else.'


'Angry?'


'Well, Jesus, if somebody's coming at you with a knife . . .'


'But I thought you were beginning to like him. Bobby.'


'The man had already killed three other women! He was ready to kill me! If you think that doesn't start the adrenaline flow . . .'


'I'm sure it does. But you say it made you angry.'


'Yes.' She hesitated a moment, and then said, 'I emptied the gun in him.'


'Uh-huh.'


'Six shots.'


'Uh-huh.'


'A big gun. A Smith & Wesson forty-four.'


'Uh-huh.'


'I'd do it again. In a minute.'


'And that's what you're afraid of. That's why you want to quit the force. Because someday you might get angry all over again, and . . .'


'He had a knife!'


'Is that what made you angry? The knife?'


'I was all alone up there! I'd lost my . . . you know, I told Bert to stay out of it. I told him I could take care of it just fine, I had two backups who knew what they were doing, I didn't need any more help. But he came out there, anyway.'


'And caused you to lose your backups.'


'Well, that's what he did, didn't he? I mean, I didn't lose them! And Shanahan was only doing his job. It was Bert sticking his nose in that caused all the trouble. Because he thought I wasn't any good anymore. Thought I'd lost it, you see. Couldn't take care of myself. Couldn't do the job. When I found out later what'd happened out there on the street, I could've killed him!'


'So you were angry with him, too,' Karin said.


'Well, later, yes.'


'Yes. When you realized that if he hadn't interfered . . .'


'I wouldn't have been alone up there with Bobby. Yes.'


The room went silent.


Karin looked at her watch.


Their time was up.


'But you told me you'd kill Bobby again,' she said. 'In a minute.'


'I'd never killed anyone before, you know,' Eileen said. 'I used to ... you know, my father and my uncle Matt both got killed on the job . . .'


'I didn't know that.'


'Well, yeah. And ... I used to think I'd . . . if I ever caught that guy with the red handkerchief over his face, I'd ... blow him away without kitting an eyelash. For what he did to ... but . . . you know . . . when I . . the third shot knocked him onto the bed, Bobby, he was lying flat on the bed, I'm sure he was already dead. But I ... I fired the rest of the . . . three more bullets into . . . into his back . . . along the spine. And then I threw the gun across the room and began screaming.'


Karin looked at her.


You're still screaming, she thought.


'Our time is up,' she said.


Eileen nodded.


Karin rose from behind her desk. 'We have a lot of work to do,' she said.


Eileen was still sitting. Looking at her hands. Head bent, hands in her lap. Without looking up, she said, 'I hate him, don't I?'


'Which one?' Karin asked, and smiled.


'Bert'


'We'll talk about it, okay?' Karin said. 'Will I see you on Thursday?'


Eileen stood up.


She looked directly into Karin's eyes.


She did not say anything for several seconds.


Then she said, 'Yes.'


It was a beginning.


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