Money, Money, Money

VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUM FAIRIES danced in Ollie’s head, even though Christmas Day had come and almost gone. Visions of roast beef slices, too. And candied yams. And buttered beans. And thick apple pie with vanilla ice cream sitting on its flaky crust. And red Delicious apples, and Bartlett pears, and Baci chocolates with a sort of fortune-cookie message that readA woman’s soul is like an angel’s kiss. Lying alone in bed, he thought of all the delicious things his sister had served for Christmas dinner today, and he forgot all about the two separate—or so he thought—cases he was currently investigating. Suddenly famished, he got out of bed and went to the refrigerator.

He fixed himself a thick Genoa salami sandwich on rye bread smothered with butter and mustard, and poured himself a glass of whole milk, and carried these to the upright piano he’d rented.

It was almost midnight.

He sat down and started playing “Night and Day.”

Somebody in the building yelled, “Shaddup, you jackass!”

A fart on thee, Ollie thought, and continued playing.

He had to admit he wasn’t yet a jazz giant, but tomorrow was another day.

WALTER WIGGINS , better known as Wiggy the Lid, liked to frequent a bar on St. Sebastian’s and Boyle because there were very often white hookers in here. Wiggy was in the mood for a white hooker tonight. Not any of your Puerto Rican hookers wholooked white because they were of Spanish and not African descent. What he wanted was a genuine white hooker.

As a black kid growing up in America, Wiggy had played basketball in the schoolyard, had joined a street gang when he was thirteen, had convinced a twelve-year-old deb member of the gang that slobbering the Johnson wasn’t the same thing as having sex, had killed two other black kids from opposing gangs when he was sixteen, had decided when he was eighteen that gang-busting was for the fools of this world, had become fond of cocaine while serving as a mule for a Colombian dope dealer whose business he’d later acquired after he’d shot the man with a Desert Eagle semi-automatic he purchased from a black gun dealer.

As a grown man living in America—Wiggy had just turned twenty-three—he earned more each year than the head of General Motors did, but he still lived in Diamondback, the almost exclusively black section of the city, and he still dated black women, and went to a black barber who knew how to cut his hair, and wore expensive clothes he bought from a shop on Concord Av because the black owner knew what looked best on a black man. He liked eating steak and potatoes, but he also liked collard greens, and fried chicken, and grits. He enjoyed television shows and movies with all-black casts. He didn’t read much, but when he did it was mostly novels about crime—none of them by white writers, who he felt didn’t know shit about black thieves, and shouldn’t even try. In fact, Wiggy distrustedall white people because the men believed he was a criminal—which he happened to be, by the way—and the women believed he was a rapist, which hedidn’t happen to be, and hadnever been, by the way. He especially distrusted cops because he’d suffered too many beatings from them when he was coming along, and he was now paying off too many of them to look the other way when it came to this small matter of dealing controlled substances. Having a few dozen cops in your pocket did not engender faith in the criminal justice system.

Wiggy generally steered away from white neighborhoods altogether because he felt reviled there, observed, suspected, never treated with the respect he earned on his home turf. As a result, his universe was largely defined by theabsence of white people in it. This was why he liked to go to bed with white hookers. Same way lots of white dudes came uptown looking for black hookers, because these girls were something outside of they purlieu, so to speak. The Starlight Bar often had white hookers in it, which is why he was not surprised when along around twelve-fifteen or so on Christmas night, this leggy blonde walked in all alone and took the stool to his right at the bar, and crossed her legs to show enough gartered stocking to qualify her for porn stardom. This little girl seemed most definitely for sale. If she was Puerto Rican, however, he didn’t want her. Because to his mind, that meant she wasn’t white, she was just a spic.

America was a peculiar place.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Merry Christmas,” she said and turned to him, and smiled.

“Merry Christmas, Miss,” the black bartender said. “Something to drink?”

“I’ll have a Tanqueray martini,” she said. “On the rocks. A twist.”

“Another scotch, Mr. Wiggins?” the bartender asked.

“No, John, I think I’ll try what the lady’s drinking,” Wiggy said, and swung his stool around to face her. “What’d you just order there, Miss?”

“A Tanqueray martini.”

“Sounds good to me,” Wiggy said.

“It is,” she said, and smiled.

He had never drunk a martini in his life. He did not know what Tanqueray was, either. He had, however, seen a lot of James Bond movies.

“Stirred or shaken?” he asked.

He did not like Bond making it with black girls. The girl here looked very white indeed. But if so, what was she doing in a black bar at midnight on Christmas Day?

“Shaken is better,” she said, and smiled.

“Shakin it, huh?” he said. “Is better, you think?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Much.”

“Then, John,” he said, “you best shake it for me, too.”

“Two martinis comin right up, Mr. Wiggins,” the bartender said.

“So,” Wiggy said to the blonde, “how was your Christmas?”

“Very nice, thank you,” she said. “And yours?”

“Spent it with my mama,” he said, which was the truth. His mama didn’t know he was dealing drugs. She thought he got lucky as a day trader. Only person in his family knew he was thus involved was his cousin Ashley, who was one of his runners. Kid made more money than Wiggy’s father did, who was a mailman. “How about you?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, but he noticed she hadn’t mentioned who with, or exactly how she’d spent the day.

“Santa treat you nice?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” she said.

“Two martinis on the rocks, a twist,” John said.

“Thank you, m’man,” Wiggy said, and raised his glass to the blonde. “Cheers,” he said, “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said again, and clinked her glass against his.

Wiggy tasted the drink.

“Mm,” he said. “Good.”

“Told you, didn’t I?”

“So you did.”

Not a trace of Spanish accent, but lots of these third-generation spics spoke English good as he did. Last thing he needed was a roll with a girl had six diseases she’d picked up in San Juan.

“Walter Wiggins,” he said, and put his glass down, and extended his right hand. She took it in her own hand; it was cold from holding the drink.

“I’m Sheryl,” she said.

“Nice to meet you, Sheryl.”

Didn’t sound like any Spanish name he knew, maybe she was white, after all. Or Jewish maybe, which was even better. You got some of these Jewgirls in bed, they screamed down the whole fuckin hood.

“You live up here in Diamondback?” he asked.

Smattering of spics lived up here, maybe she was one of them, after all. He was tempted to take John aside, ask him who the blonde with the long legs and the big tits was. A Spanish working girl or an import?

“No, I spent the day here with a girlfriend,” she said.

“She live up here?”

“Her mother does.”

“She a black girl?”

“No.”

“Spanish?”

He looked her dead in the eye.

“White,” she said. “Same as me.”

“Where doyou live?” he asked.

“Same place my girlfriend does. We’re roommates.”

“And where’s that?”

“Downtown. Hastings and Palm. Near the Triangle.”

“Nice neighborhood,” he said. “So what are you doing up here?”

“I told you. My girlfriend’s mother invited us for Christmas.”

“White woman living up here?” he asked.

“On thepark,” she said. “What is it with you?”

“I thought you might be Puerto Rican.”

“I’m not. But what difference would it make?”

“None at all.”

“So what’s the bullshit?” she asked. “I mean, what is it, areyou so fucking white?”

All at once, he liked her.

“Have another drink,” he said.

“Oh, am I suddenly white enough for you?”

“You’re white enough, honey,” he said, and put his hand on her thigh. She looked into his eyes.

“Another Tanqueray,” she told the bartender.

“How about you, Mr. Wiggins?”

“I’ll join the lady, sure,” Wiggy said, and squeezed her thigh. She kept looking into his eyes. She was jiggling her foot now. She had terrific tits in a very low cut black dress.

“So what are you doing here at the Starlight?” he asked.

“What areyou doing here at the Starlight?”

“Hoping to meet a gorgeous blonde from downtown on Hastings and Palm,” he said. “Near the Triangle.”

“So you met her,” Sheryl said, and covered his hand on her thigh with her own. Her hand was no longer cold.

“Seems I have,” Wiggy said.

Sheryl looked at her watch. “My girlfriend’s picking me up in five minutes,” she said. “We’ve got a car and a driver. You want to come downtown with us, honey?”

“Let’s have our drinks first,” Wiggy said.

THE LIMO WAS a black Lincoln Town Car driven by a black chauffeur. There was another blonde on the back seat, wearing a black dress like Sheryl’s, high-heeled black shoes like her, a black cloth coat identical to hers, little black fur collar at the neck. The car felt warm and smelled of expensive perfume. “Hi,” the other blonde said, extending her hand. “I’m Toni.” Wiggy slid onto the seat beside her, took her hand. “Hi, honey,” she said, and leaned across him to kiss Sheryl on the cheek. He felt her breasts against his arm. Her dress was high on her thighs. The door on Sheryl’s side slammed shut. She moved closer to him. The brother came into the car, made himself comfortable behind the wheel.

“We’re going home,” Toni told him, and the tinted glass separating front from back slid up at once.

“Excuse me, ladies,” Wiggy said, “but how much is this going to cost me?”

“One million, nine hundred thousand dollars,” Toni said.

He turned to look at her.

She was holding an AK-47 in her lap.

6 .

THE OFFICES OF Wadsworth and Dodds were in a side street off Headley Square, close to the Municipal Theater and the Briley School of Art. As Ollie crossed the small park outside the school, and then the square itself, a fierce wind almost blew his hat from his head. He clutched at it with both hands, cursed at the wind, and at God—who was also on his list of people, places, things, and supernatural beings he hated—and then proceeded across the square to the building in which the publishing firm was housed. The wind moaned beneath the eaves of the old landmark building as he mounted the low flat entrance steps and walked into the lobby, stomping slush from his shoes. He checked the lobby directory—Wadsworth and Dodds was on the fourth floor of the six-story building—and walked toward the waiting elevator, its fancy grillwork door looking like it had come out of a spy movie set in Vienna.

“Whoosh!” he said to the elevator operator, and took off his hat when he noticed there was a lady in the car. The gesture did not go unnoticed. The woman, a good-looking broad in her late fifties, Ollie guessed, with still splendid legs andpoitrines, ah yes, smiled almost imperceptibly. He figured she worked out a lot. One of these days, he’d have to go to a gym, lose a few pounds, though not anytime soon. Maybe after he learned his five songs. His next lesson was tomorrow night, he could hardly wait.

Wadsworth and Dodds occupied the entire fourth floor of the building. Ollie took one look at the receptionist behind the desk and figured she could have profited from the same aerobics classes the broad in the elevator most likely attended. Ollie hated fat people. He considered them unsightly and weak-willed whereas he thought of his own girth as perfectly suited to his height and his large bone structure. When Fat Ollie Weeks looked into a mirror he saw an impressive figure of a man, whose very presence struck fear into the hearts of underworld types.

“May I help you, sir?” the fat lady behind the desk asked.

Ollie flashed the tin.

“Detective Weeks,” he said, cutting to the chase. “I’d like to talk to whoever runs the place here.”

“You’d want Mr. Halloway, our publisher.”

“Okay,” Ollie said, and snapped the leather case shut. “Could you let him know I’m here, please?”

The fat lady picked up her phone, pressed a button on her desk panel, listened, said, “A Detective Weeks to see you, sir,” listened again, said, “Yes, sir,” looked up at Ollie, and asked, “May I ask what this is in reference to, sir?”

“No,” Ollie said.

The fat lady looked startled. “Uh,” she said into the phone, “he won’t tell me. Yes, sir,” she said. “Yes, sir.” She hung up, smiled at Ollie, and said, “He’ll be with you in a moment, sir. Won’t you please have a seat?”

“Thanks,” Ollie said, and began roaming the waiting room.

Framed posters of Wadsworth and Dodds books lined the walls. The firm’s logo was a distinctive open hand with a silver globe sitting on the palm and radiating rays of light, the fingers tentatively closed around it. Ollie didn’t recognize any of the titles.

Behind him, he heard a buzz from the phone on the fat lady’s desk.

“Mr. Weeks?” she said. “He’ll see you now. It’s the end of the corridor, the door on the right.”

Ollie nodded.

The corridor leading to Halloway’s office was similarly lined with framed posters of books Ollie never heard of. The closed walnut door on the right, at the end of corridor, had no markings on it. He knocked, heard a man’s voice call, “Come in, please,” twisted the brass doorknob, and entered. He was in a corner office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls. The other two walls were windowed, enclosing a walnut desk that matched the entrance door. A white-haired man in his early fifties, Ollie guessed, sat behind the desk. He rose the moment Ollie entered the room. Extending his hand, he said, “Richard Halloway, how do you do?”

Ollie took the hand.

“Detective Oliver Weeks,” he said, “Eighty-eighth Squad.”

“Sit down,” Halloway said. “Please,” and gestured to a brown leather wingback chair studded with brass buttons. Ollie sank into the chair.

“How can I help you?” Halloway asked.

“One of your salesmen was murdered on Christmas Eve,” Ollie said. “His name …”

“What?” Halloway said.

“Yes, sir. His name’s Jerome Hoskins. From what his wife …”

“Oh my God!” Halloway said.

“From what his wife tells me, he sold books in your northeast corridor.”

“Yes. Yes, he did. Forgive me, I’m … forgive me.”

He was shaking his head now, demonstrating how overwhelmed he was. Little white-haired guy in a gray flannel suit and a bow tie with red polka dots on a black field, shaking his head and looking appalled and overcome with sudden grief, all of which seemed somewhat phony to Ollie. Then again, he’d never met a book publisher before.

“Did his territory include Diamondback?” he asked.

“Yes, it did.”

“Lots of bookstores up there, I guess.”

“Not many. But enough. We’re a small firm, last of the family publishing houses in this city, in fact. We’re constantly trying to expand our market.”

“You sell your books for cash, Mr. Halloway?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”

“Hoskins had seven hundred dollars and change in his wallet. Seemed like a lot of cash to be carrying around.”

“I have no idea why he would have …”

“Any idea why he might have been carrying a gun?”

“Diamondback is a dangerous section of the …”

“Tell me about it.”

“Perhaps he felt he needed protection.”

“Do all of your salesmen carry guns?”

“Not to my knowledge. In fact, I didn’t knowJerry carried one until this very moment.”

“How many salesmen are there?”

“Including Jerry, only five. As I told you, we’re a small firm.”

“Is Mr. Wadsworth still alive? Or Mr. Dodds?”

“Both dead. Christine Dodds is the sole stockholder now. Henry Dodds’s granddaughter.”

“How about you? Are you a member of the family?”

“Me? No. No, what gave you that idea?”

“Well, you being thepublisher and all …”

“Oh, that’s just a title,” Halloway said airily. “Like President or Vice President or Senior Editor.”

“Pretty important title, though, huh?”

“Well … yes.”

“Who are these other four salesmen? I’ll need to talk to them.”

“Jerry was the only one based here, you know. In this city.”

“Where are the other ones?”

“Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, and California.”

“Can you give me a list of names and phone numbers?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the bookstores Mr. Hoskins visited in Diamondback.”

“I’ll ask Charmaine to get those ready for you,” he said.

Charmaine, Ollie thought. A slender wraith who weighs a ton and a half bone dry. He watched as Halloway picked up the receiver, pressed a button, and told his receptionist what he needed. There was something crisp and efficient about his motions and the way he rapped out instructions. When at last he replaced the receiver on the cradle, he seemed to suddenly realize that Ollie had been observing his every move. He smiled pleasantly. “She’ll have those for you when you leave,” he said.

“Thanks,” Ollie said. “Tell me what you know about Jerry Hoskins, okay?”

“Tell me what you’re looking for.”

“Well,” Ollie said, “I guess I want to know what a book salesman was doing with types who’ll shoot a man at the back of his head and drop him in a garbage can.”

“Good Lord!” Halloway said.

Ollie didn’t know there was anyone still left on the planet who said, “Good Lord!” He had the feeling all over again that Richard Halloway was faking surprise and sorrow.

“Most of the gangs in Diamondback are dealing drugs,” he said, and watched Halloway’s eyes. Nothing flickered there. “Hoskins wasn’t doing dope, was he?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Whowouldknow?” Ollie asked.

“Pardon?”

“If he was doing drugs. Or dealing drugs. Or involved in any way with controlled substances.”

“I can’t possibly imagine Jerry …”

“Whocouldpossibly imagine it, Mr. Halloway?”

“I suppose our sales manager would have known him better than anyone else in the firm.”

“What’s his name?”

“She’s a woman.”

“Okay,” Ollie said.

“I’ll ask her to come in.”

CARELLA AND MEYER went to the Banque Française at ten that morning of the twenty-sixth with a court order to open Cassandra Jean Ridley’s safe deposit box. The manager of the bank was a Frenchman from Lyon. His name was Pascal Prouteau. In a charming accent, he said he had read about Mademoiselle “Reed-ley’s” death in the newspapers and was very sorry. “She was a lovely person,” he said. “It is a shame what ’appen.”

“When did she first open the box, can you tell us?” Meyer asked.

“Oui, messieurs,I ’ave her records here,” Prouteau said. “It was on the sixteenth of November.”

“How many times has she been in that box since?”

Prouteau consulted the signature card.

“She was ’ere a great deal,” he said, looking surprised, and handed the card to Carella. He and Meyer looked at it together. “We’ll need a copy of this, please,” Meyer said.

“Mais, oui, certainement,”Prouteau said.

“Let’s take a look in the box,” Carella said.

What they found in the box was $96,000 in hundred-dollar bills.

There was also a sheet of paper with a lot of figures on it.

They asked Prouteau for a copy of that as well.

THEY KNEW THE LADY had been smurfing even before they checked the figures against her two checkbooks and her passbook.

The handwritten notes in her safe deposit box looked like this:

“Missed a day,” Meyer said.

“Thanksgiving,” Carella said.

The next deposit was made almost two weeks later.

“According to her calendar, she came East on the eighth of December,” Carella said.

On the identical dates she had listed for withdrawals from the safe deposit box, there were corresponding deposits in either of her two checking accounts or her savings account. Each deposit was for a sum of money less than $10,000, the maximum cash deposit allowed under a federal law that had gone into effect almost three decades ago. Anything more than that sum had to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service on a so-called CTR, the acronym for Currency Transaction Report. Cassandra Jean Ridley, it would appear, had been engaged in money laundering, albeit on a relatively minor scale. Smurfing, as it was called in the trade.

In order to be charged with laundering, a person had to disguise the origin or ownership of illegally gained funds to make them appear legitimate. Hiding legitimately acquired money to avoid taxation also qualified as money laundering. The U.S. Treasury Department cautiously accepted a State Department Fact Sheet estimating that as much as four hundred billion dollars was laundered worldwide annually. Of this, fifty to a hundred billion was said to have come from drug profits in the United States alone.

If Cassandra Jean Ridley’s transfers of cash were indeed necessitated because the money came from drugs, she was small potatoes indeed. According to the evidence they now possessed, she had introduced a mere $200,000 into the banking system, and had then separated it from its possible criminal origins by passing it through several financial transactions. In police jargon, this was called “placement” and “layering.” But street sales of drugs were usually transacted in five- or ten-dollar bills, and the $96,000 they found in her safe deposit box was in hundreds. It seemed certain she hadn’t been running around the street selling dime bags of coke to teenagers.

Her checkbooks showed somewhat substantial amounts written to department stores all over the city in the weeks before her murder. The lady had been moving money around and spending it profligately. The only sum they could not account for was the $8,000 in $100 bills they’d found nestling in the top right hand drawer of her desk—presumably currency suspected in a kidnapping that had drawn the attention of the Secret Service.

They knew several other things about Cassandra Jean Ridley.

She had been a pilot in the U.S. Army.

She had lived in Eagle Branch, Texas.

This last bit of information might not later have proved significant if Ollie Weeks wasn’t at that very moment speaking to Jerome Hoskins’ sales manager in the publishing offices of Wadsworth and Dodds.

KAREN ANDERSEN was a tall brunette wearing a charcoal black business suit with wide lapels and white pin stripes. Her handshake was firm and her smile was welcoming. Ollie wondered at once if she was wearing black thong panties and a garter belt under the tailored slacks. Halloway filled her in on the reason for Ollie’s visit—

She seemed equally appalled by the news of Hoskins’ murder.

—and then left them alone in his office while he attended a meeting in the firm’s conference room. Karen asked Ollie if he’d care for a cup of coffee. It was close to twelve noon; he was beginning to get hungry. He wondered if the offer included a croissant, a donut, or at least a slice of toast. He accepted it nonetheless, watching Karen’s ass as she walked to a folding door that opened to reveal a small kitchen unit. A coffee maker was already prepared for brewing. She hit a button. A red light went on. Karen walked to a chair facing him. She crossed her long legs. He wished she was wearing a skirt. She tented her hands. Long narrow fingers, the nails painted a red to match her lipstick. The savory aroma of perking coffee set Ollie’s salivary glands flowing.

“So,” she said, “what is it you want to know?”

“What was he doing in Diamondback?” Ollie asked.

“Selling books, I’d expect.”

“At oneA.M . on Christmas Eve?”

Karen looked at him.

“That’s the ME’s estimated post mortem interval. The time of his death. The time someone fired a nine-millimeter pistol into the base of his neck.”

“I can’t evenimagine what he was doing up there at that hour.”

“How many bookstores was he selling to?” Ollie asked. “In Diamondback?”

“Four. We’re trying to expand our market there.”

“What sort of books do you sell?”

“Mostly non-fiction. We have a small fiction list, but nothing significant.”

“Books that would appeal to a Negro audience?”

“To a what?”

“A Negro audience.”

“You said Negro.”

“Yes.”

“Some of them.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, any number of our titles.”

“Was Hoskins having any kind of trouble with his accounts?”

“Trouble?”

“Deadbeats. Slow payers. Whatever. Personality differences?”

“No problems that I know of. We’re an easy firm to deal with. As I said, we’re trying to expand our markets. Not only in Diamond-back, but all over the United States. Coffee’s ready,” she said, and uncrossed her legs. She rose, walked to the kitchenette, poured coffee for both of them. “Sugar?” she asked. “Cream?”

“Both,” he said.

He was hoping she’d offer him something to eat. His eyes whipped the counter top, saw nothing but an open box of granulated sugar. She knelt to open a mini-fridge under the counter, took from it a container of skim milk. She spooned sugar into his cup …

“Two, please,” he said.

… added milk, carried it to where he sat. She smelled of expensive perfume. He wondered what the hell she was doing selling books for a rinky-dink firm like Wadsworth and Dodds.

“Five salesmen,” Ollie said. “Was what Mr. Halloway told me. Charmaine’s supposed to be getting me their names and phone numbers.”

“Why?” Karen said.

“I want to talk to them. See what they can tell me about him.”

“I doubt if any of them knew him that well. Aside from sales conferences, their paths wouldn’t have crossed all that often.”

“Worth a few phone calls,” Ollie said, and shrugged.

“I’ll see how she’s doing,” Karen said.

She lifted the phone on Halloway’s desk, stabbed at a button on the face of the cradle. “Hi,” she said, “it’s Karen. Have you got that information for Detective Weeks?” She listened, hung up, nodded, said, “She’s bringing it in,” and then folded her arms across her chest, and looked across the room at Ollie.

“Would you guys be interested in a book by a bona fide police officer?” he asked.

Karen looked surprised.

“Would you?” he asked.

“What kind of a book?”

“You know, make-believe.”

“Fiction?”

“Sure, fiction. But by somebody who reallyknows police work, never mind these faggots who make it all up.”

“Who’d you have in mind?” Karen asked.

“Me,” Ollie said.

“I didn’t know you were a writer.”

“You probably didn’t know I play piano, either.”

“I confess I didn’t.”

“Do you like ‘Night and Day’? I can play that for you sometime.”

“It was never one of my favorites.”

“I can even play it with a Latin beat, if you like.”

“I don’t think so, thanks. Why? Do I look Latin?”

“Well, the dark hair and eyes.”

“Actually, my parents were Swedish.”

“So would you be interested?”

“In what?”

“A fictious book about police work? I’ve had lots of experience.”

“Would it have a Latin beat?” Karen asked, and smiled.

“I had more of an American cop in mind.”

“We sell lots of books in the Southwest.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of fish?”

“Large Latino audience,” Karen said, and shrugged.

“I could throw in a few wetbacks, I suppose,” Ollie said dubiously. “But it might ruin the subtle mix.”

“Oh, you already have a mix in mind, is that it?”

“No, but I thought if I could talk to somebody up here, one of your editors …”

“I see.”

“… he could maybe fill me in on your needs, and I could prepare an outline or something. I have to explain something to you, Miss Andersen …”

“Yes, what’s that?”

“If a person is creative in one way, he’s usually creative in another. That’s been my experience, anyway. Take Picasso, you ever heard of Pancho Picasso?”

“Does he write police novels?”

“Come on, he was a famous painter, you heard of him. The point is, he also made pots.”

“I see.”

“What I’m saying is, if you’re creative in one way, you’re creative in another. My piano teacher says there’s no limits to where I can go.”

“Maybe you’ll even play at Clarendon Hall one day.”

“Who knows? So have you got an editor up here I can talk to? Give your company an exclusive look at the book?”

“I’m not sure any of our editors are free just now,” Karen said. “But we may have something you can look at.”

“What do you meanlook at?”

“Something one of our editors may have prepared. Defining our needs. As I said, we don’t publish much fiction …”

“Always room for a bestseller, though, am I right?”

“Always room.”

“You had more bestsellers, maybe your salesmen wouldn’t end up in garbage cans with bullet holes in their heads.”

“Maybe not.”

“Was he doing drugs?” Ollie asked.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Did he have a black girlfriend up there?”

“He was married.”

“Did he have a black girlfriend up there?” Ollie asked again.

“He washappily married.”

Dainty Charmaine came in with the names and addresses of Hoskins’ customers in Diamondback, and the names and addresses of his fellow sales reps in the United States.

One of them lived in Eagle Branch, Texas.

WALTER WIGGINS had grown up to believe that beating the system was the only way to cope with the system. The way he looked at it, the system was stacked against the black man, and any man of color would be foolish to try living within the rules white men had established to control and punish the black man.

Wiggy committed his first theft—a two-dollar water pistol from a variety store on Hayley Avenue, the wide thoroughfare that skewered Diamondback north to south—when he was six years old. His mother forced him to take the toy pistol back to the owner, which Wiggy did after much wailing and protesting. Two days later, he went back to the store again—without his mother this time—and stole the water pistol all over again.

The owner of the store was white, but Wiggy didn’t feel he was striking a blow for black power—which words were all the rage then—or anything else. He merely felt he was getting a water pistol for free, fuck his mother. He kept committing petty thefts until the time he was thirteen and joined a street gang named Orion, after which his life became a merry round of rumbling, doing drugs, dealing drugs, and eventually master-minding (he thought of it as such) the ring (he called it a posse, in the Colombian style) that now supported him in the life style to which he had become accustomed. It would never have occurred to Wiggy that living within the system was a possible alternative to the life he’d chosen. Wiggy the Lid was a big man in this part of the city. He even fancied himself to be famous outside of the six square-blocks he controlled in Diamond-back.

It annoyed him enormously that he’d had to pay for cocaine being peddled by a man he thought of as an amateur. It annoyed him even further that he’d had to hand over the money to a pair of white chicks holding guns bigger than they were. This guy Frank Holt—if that was his name, which Wiggy doubted—had come recommended by a cousin of Wiggy’s in Mobile, Alabama, who said he’d met him with a man named Randolph Biggs in Dallas, Texas, when the three of them were setting up a run from Mexico, this was four years ago. Apparently this Frank Holt person—who’d later found himself stuffed feet first in a garbage can with a bullet hole at the back of his head, courtesy of Wiggy the Lid himself—had recently purchased some very good shit in Guenerando, Mexico, and through various levels of subterfuge had smuggled it into the metropolitan area where he was peddling a hundred keys for a million-nine. One look at the guy, you knew he was new at the trade, however long ago Wiggy’s cousin had worked with him. Patted him down, found him carrying an ancient piece out ofCasablanca, trusted Tigo and him alone to test the shit while he sat outside with a brother named Thomas who could’ve broke him in half with his bare hands. Beating the system was what this was all about. Why pay a white man a mill-nine when you could shoot him in the head and take the booty home free? Like the water pistol.

Not that there wasn’t profit enough in the trade even if Wiggy had played it by the book. Pay Frank Holt—or whatever his name was—the money he wanted for his hundred keys of truly very good shit, and then take it from there. In the long run, because Wiggy’d been careless or stupid or both, he’d had to fork over $19,000 a key to the two blondes in the Lincoln Town Car, who’d driven him back to his so-called office on Decatur and watched while he’d opened the safe, the one named Toni—which he was sure wasn’ther goddamn name, either—sitting there with the AK-47 leveled at his head while he twirled the combination dial, a smile on her face, her splendid white-cunt legs crossed.

Wiggy had failed to beat the system.

Oh yes, he knew he’d be selling off his newly acquired ten-key lots for twenty-three grand a key, a twenty-one percent profit on each key, for a virtual overnight gain of $400,000 on his $1,900,000 investment. Yes, he knew that, and that wasn’t bad for a kid who’d stolen his first water pistol at the age of six. He knew, too, that there’d be profits for everyone down the line, but he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. His one-kilo buyers would step on the drug by a third, diluting it to produce 1,333 grams or some 47 ounces of cocaine. This would be sold for about $800 an ounce, the profit margin rising the closer the drug came to the street. What had started in Mexico for $1,700,000 would end up on the streets of Diamondback at a retail price of close to $9,000,000. From door to door, all anybody made was money, money, money, but Wiggy was in this for Numero Uno alone. It did not disturb him to know that some of the kids buying highly diluted shit from sad-assed street dealers were scarcely older than he himself had been when he swiped that water gun.

What bothered him was that he’d allowed two titty blondes to cold-cock him and deprive him of an even greater profit. He would have to get that money back somehow.

What he didn’t know was that his $1,900,000 had already been wire-transferred to Iran—where it would buy even more money at a huge discount.

THE REDHEADED PILOT had told them the man’s name was Randolph Biggs and had said he lived in Eagle Branch, Texas. She’d given them a fairly good description, too: a tall, broad-shouldered man with thick black hair and a black mustache. She had told them he was a Texas Ranger, but they couldn’t go ask aboutthat, eh,amigo? And besides they felt she was either lying or had been lied to. How could a Texas Ranger be involved in a scheme flying dope out of Guenerando, Mexico?

Eagle Branch was just across the Rio Grande from Piedras Rosas, Mexico—where, legend held, a former U.S. Marine had broken an American drug-prisoner out of jail there, oh, twenty, thirty years ago. Legends die hard. The people in Eagle Branch still talked about the daring escape. To them, it had become almost mythic. They insisted that the escaped prisoner’s girlfriend had lived and taught school right there in Eagle Branch. Who knew? It could be true. The people in Piedras Rosas were indifferent to the story. They wouldn’t have cared if a whole Marinebattalion had freed the entire prison population. They were of a mind to believe that the corrupt guards at the local jail, if paid enoughmordida, would let everybody go free, anyway. Most of the people in Piedras Rosas were more intent on crossing the river and making their way north, where Wiggy the Lid was selling cocaine to dealers lower down the chain of command who would eventually step on the drug and sell it to Mexican immigrants without green cards living in shitty neighborhoods where they pined for the good old days in Piedras Rosas.

Both Francisco Octavio Ortiz and Cesar Villada possessed green cards and were therefore free to come and go as they pleased, taking trips hither and yon in pursuit of their chosen occupation, which was earning—if that was the word—millions of dollars smuggling drugs up from Colombia and selling them to assorted gringos from across the border. On the seventh day of December this year, they had turned over to a pretty redheaded pilot one hundred keys of very high quality cocaine they’d purchased from the Cali cartel, a notorious association of traffickers operating out of Colombia’s third-largest city. She had given them in return $1,700,000 in hundred-dollar bills, which they’d counted to ascertain the proper value and then—generously, they felt—had skimmed ten thousand dollars off the top, to give to her as a gratuity.

They had smiled all around.

Gracias, gracias, muchas gracias.

Now, in this little border town of what they estimated to be fifteen, twenty thousand people, they were looking for a man named Randolph Biggs, who had given the lady the money she’d subsequently passed on to them.

They didn’t mind losing the ten thousand, which, after all, had been offered of their own free will, in gratitude, as an act of South of the Border generosity.

What annoyed them was thatall the money was counterfeit.

7 .

THE RESTAURANT SPECIALIZED in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Here, in the virtual shadow of the mosque near the ramp approach to the River Dix Drive, one could feast upon delicious dishes from Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Republic. The restaurant was smoke-filled even at lunch time, when it was packed with men and women—but mostly men—on breaks and longing for the taste and the aroma of the food and drink they had enjoyed in Damascus or Baghdad, Beirut or Teheran. The entertainment, even during the lunch hour, helped to remind them of their homelands, but it was the fare that drew them here, exquisite to the taste and to memories too long submerged in an accursed foreign land.

Mahmoud Gharib looked the most benign of the three men sitting at the little round table near the small stage where a Raqs Sharqui belly dancer gyrated to a recorded mix of electronic instruments and violins. Resembling a chubby cheerful standup comic from the good old days before comedians turned lean, mean, and obscene, he sported a tiny mustache somewhat uptilted at the tips, giving him the appearance of a man who was perpetually smiling. His complexion was the color of bread lightly toasted, his eyes the color of the very dark brown Turkish coffee they brewed here. His comrades knew him as Mahmoud. The dispatcher at the cab company for which he worked called him Moe, which Mahmoud knew was a Jewish name, and therefore a hundredfold more offensive. He looked plump and jolly and content. He was the most dangerous of the three men.

The men were talking about the proper way to prepare a fish dish that was enormously popular throughout the Middle East. Jassim, the smallest of the men, was saying that the secret was in refrigerating the fish for an hour before it was cooked. Akbar, who worked for a sporting goods store on the South Side, told him that refrigeration had nothing to do with it, he had eaten the fish in poor little villages where no one had evenheard of ice. Jassim insisted it was the refrigeration. You had to keep the fish on ice for an hour before placing it in the skillet, skin side down, and cooking it. It was the refrigeration, he said, that caused the skin to crisp so swiftly and effectively. Mahmoud said that was nonsense.

“The fish is inconsequential to the dish,” he said, waving his hand in a manner that defined leadership and dismissed argumentation. The gesture seemed exceptionally grandiose in light of the comic little mustache under his nose. “You can use any kind of white-fleshed fish,” he said. “So long as you wash it clean and season it with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, you can let it stand outside while you make the sauce. I’m not saying forever. It is dangerous to let any fish stand forever. But it’s the sauce and the nuts that give the dish its succulent flavor.”

“The onions,” Akbar agreed.

“The caramelized onions, yes,” Jassim said, nodding.

“But especially the pine nuts,” Mahmoud said, again superseding all discussion. “Swiftly fried in oil, browned to a pale golden perfection, and thenshowered on the fish.”

“On a bed of rice,” Akbar said.

“On a bed of rice,” Mahmoud said, and kissed his fingertips.

It was odd that the men were discussing fish because at the moment they were eating pancakes stuffed with cheese. In Morocco, where they were cooked on one side only and served with only a warm honey-butter sauce, these little semolina-yeast crepes were traditionally served on the feast ofaid el seghir, toward the end of the Islamic month of fasting called Ramadan. Here in this restaurant, the pancakes were prepared in the Lebanese manner, stuffed with ricotta and shreds of mozzarella, broiled on both sides to a succulent crispness, and then drizzled with a syrup made of sugar, lemon juice, orange blossom honey, and orange flower water. The men ate ravenously. Jassim licked his lips. Mahmoud found this disgusting, but he made no comment.

A dark-eyed, dark-haired waitress brought them thick black coffee. The belly dancer was wearing a beaded bra and matching belt, a sequined skirt over a body stocking. Her veil work was hardly Egyptian. To Mahmoud, it looked more like the modified strip tease one would find in the so-called American Nightclub style. The girl was wearing finger cymbals, although they had for the most part gone out of style in Egypt. She was more adept at twirling her veil and snapping her hips than she was at playing the cymbals.

“When does the Big Jew arrive?” Akbar asked.

Given the origins and political dispositions of the trio, this could have been a derogatory remark, but it was not meant to be. Svi Cohen was in fact an Israeli Jew, and he was in fact a very big man, standing some six feet, three inches tall and weighing close to two hundred and forty pounds.

“Tomorrow,” Mahmoud said.

“And his performance at Clarendon?” Jassim asked. He was still licking traces of syrup from his lips. His fingernails were grimy with traces of his trade; he worked as an automobile mechanic in a garage at the foot of the Calm’s Point Bridge. Mahmoud found the filthy fingernails disgusting, too.

“On the thirtieth,” he said. “This Saturday night.”

“So where’s the money?” Akbar asked.

It was a good question.

THE SQUADROOM WAS relatively calm on that Wednesday morning two days after Christmas. Today was only the twenty-seventh and the week was lurching steadily forward into another big weekend that would culminate on Sunday with the tolling of the bells and the falling of the ball in the square. But the squadroom was enjoying a comparative period of calm, a respite from the usual hubbub and hullabaloo that accompanied its normal pace.

Carella and Meyer sat poring over the letters Mark Ridley had written to his sister in the months and weeks preceding her death. From references he made to her own letters, it became clear almost at once that she was terribly excited about a job she’d be flying early in December, which would change her circumstances considerably, enabling her to move East, where she’d always wanted to live, be there long before Christmas, in fact. In the letter they’d already read—the one dated November 13—her brother wrote to say that the job sounded good to him, “so long as you won’t be flying anything that might get you in trouble.”

The words still rang meaningfully in the stillness of the squadroom.

On November 16, Cassandra Jean Ridley opened a safe deposit box at Banque Française here in this city and placed in it $50,000 in cash. Apparently, her circumstances had infact changed considerably by then. They were to change even more dramatically. Her calendar for December 7 was marked with the words “End Mexico.” On December 8, she presumably flew East again. Three days later, she placed another $150,000 in the safe deposit box. Twelve days after that, she was dead.

Their computer told them there’d been seventy-four reported incidents of kidnapping in the United States during the first three weeks of December. Most of these were abductions of children from parents in divorced or separated circumstances. Some of these cases might have attracted the attention of the FBI, in that state lines had been crossed. None of them would have warranted the attention of the Secret Service.

Yet the Treasury Department had braced a small-time burglar named Wilbur Struthers, confiscating bills he’d stolen from Cassandra Jean Ridley’s apartment, checking out the serial numbers against ransom notes used in an alleged kidnapping, and then—remarkably—giving him a clean bill of health and returning the bills to him that very same day.

Something stank in the state of Denmark.

They figured it was time they paid a personal visit to Special Agent David A. Horne.

A WHOLE LOT OF hundred-dollar bills were fanned out on Horne’s desk.

“A hundred and four thousand dollars,” Carella said.

“Some of it recovered in the dead woman’s apartment,” Meyer said.

“The rest from her safe deposit box.”

“All receipted and accounted for,” Meyer said.

“So?” Horne said.

He looked like a used car salesman who’d eaten and drunk too much over the weekend, jowly though not paunchy in a dark blue suit, brown shoes, a white button-down shirt, and a blue tie. The circular seal of the Department of the Treasury hung on the wall behind his desk, its gold shield decorated with a pair of scales representing justice, a key symbolizing official authority, and a blue chevron with thirteen stars for the original thirteen states. A little black plastic placard, with Horne’s name on it in white lettering, sat near his telephone.

“We think the eight thousand we found in her apartment is the money you appropriated from Wilbur Struthers,” Carella said flat out.

“What makes you believe that?”

“Struthers does. Apparently, Miss Ridley located him and went to get her money back. At gun point, incidentally.”

“I’m assuming Struthers told you this as well.”

“Yes.”

“A petty thief,” Horne said, dismissing him.

“Big enough to have captured your attention, though,” Meyer reminded him.

Horne looked at him. “I don’t like unannounced visits,” he said belatedly.

“We’d like to see that list of ransom-note serial numbers,” Carella said.

“As I told you on the phone …”

“We’d like to know just which kidnapping you were investigating,” Meyer said.

“I have no authority to release that information to you. And you have no authority to request it.”

“We’re investigating a murder,” Carella said.

“Top of the food chain,” Meyer reminded Horne.

“I’m sorry,” Horne said, and shook his head.

“We won’t go away, you know,” Carella said.

“Detective,” Horne said, and paused to give the word weight. “Go home, okay? Go arrest some pushers around the schoolyard. Keep your nose out of affairs that don’t concern you.”

“Gee,” Carella said, “all at once I’mreally interested.”

“Me, too,” Meyer said.

Horne looked at them both. He sighed heavily.

“I’m not free to discuss any case currently under investigation,” he said. “I can, however, show you the list of suspect serial numbers for you to make a comparison check. You’ll have to do it here in this office, under my supervision. If that’s satisfactory to you …”

“It’s a start,” Carella said.

THE SERIAL NUMBERS were a random lot.

There were numbers in the A series …

A63842516A, A5315898964A, A06152860A …

… and numbers in the B series …

B35817751D, B40565942E …

… and numbers in the C and F and H and G and E and L and K and D series …

But none of these numbers matched those on the separate caches of hundred-dollar bills they’d seized by court order from Cassandra Jean Ridley’s desk and her safe deposit box.

They thanked Horne for his time and courtesy …

“Always a pleasure,” he said.

… and went back to the squadroom.

It was not yet twelve noon.

DAVID HORNE was trying to convince his boss that the two Keystone Kops had no idea the bills had been switched.

“This is like the old shell game,” he said. “You have to guess which shell the pea is under. But the pea is really in the palm of our hand.”

“I’m not familiar with the shell game,” Parsons said.

His full name was Winslow Parsons III, and he had been recruited into the Secret Service when he was twenty-two and a senior at Harvard. He’d been present in Dallas, walking alongside the presidential limo when Kennedy was assassinated, but he hadn’t been the one to protect the President with his own body—well, no one had, for that matter. Similarly, when John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, Parsons had missed his big chance at immortality by not hurling himself in the path of the bullet. At the age of sixty-four, he was still tall and lean and he had all his hair, albeit turning gray, and he thought he looked like Charlton Heston, whom he greatly admired, but he bore no resemblance to him at all. In any case, he didn’t know what a shell game was. In Cambridge, they did not have such things as shell games.

“You palm the pea,” Horne explained. Or tried to explain. “Same way we palmed the bills.”

He was thinking this is four days before New Year’s Eve, and we’re having a big party, and I should be checking my booze, see how much I have to order. Setups, too.

“How did they come across the bills in the first place?” Parsons asked.

“A case they’re investigating.”

“What kind of case?”

“A woman was murdered.”

Parsons looked at him.

“It gets complicated,” Horne said.

“Life gets complicated,” Parsons replied.

“Yes, sir, it does.”

“Lifeiscomplicated.”

“Yes, sir, it most certainly is.”

“How’dweget involved in this, is what I’d like to know,” Parsons said. “If you please.”

“A flagged super showed up on our list, sir. Man who passed it had eight thousand total in similar bills. We yanked them out of circulation. Should have been the end of the story.” Horne shrugged. “Instead, the woman got killed and suddenly it’s Mickey Mouse time.”

“What’s the woman got to do with it?”

“He stole the bills from her.”

“The eight thousand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He admitted that?”

“No, sir. He told me he won them in a crap game.”

“Is that likely?”

“Hardly.”

“And you say you recovered eight thousand supers?”

“Yes, sir, and replaced them with clears. The old shell game, sir,” he said, and smiled.

Parsons did not smile back.

“Why the hell did you do that?” he asked.

“Do what, sir?”

“Give the man good money for bad?”

“In retrospect, I’m glad I did, sir. All this sudden police interest.”

Parsons looked at him skeptically.

“Never mind in retrospect,” he said. “Why did you do it in thefirst place?”

“I thought he might make a fuss, sir, if we simply grabbed eight thousand dollars of his.”

“Has this man got a record?” Parsons asked.

“Yes, sir. Took a burglary fall seven years ago, did three and a third at Castleview.”

“Ex-cons don’t usually make fusses.”

“But he might have, sir.”

“Any chance we can pop him back in?”

“Not unless he commits a crime, sir.”

“How’d this woman get the eight thousand?”

“I have no idea. But, sir …”

“Yes?”

“There’s more.”

“Let me hear it.”

“The locals found close to a hundred thousand in her safe deposit box.”

“Supers?”

“I didn’t check them, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Well, they had them in their possession, sir. They were here to look at the list of serial numbers used in a kidnapping …”

“What kidnapping?” Parsons asked at once. “Has there been a kidnapping?”

“No, sir, that was just confetti.”

“But you say they were here with a hundred thousand dollars …”

“Ninety-six, actually, sir.”

“… that they found in her safe deposit box?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you didn’t check thebills?”

His eyes were wide open now.

“I had no opportunity to do so, sir. Without arousing suspicion.”

“Suspicion isalready aroused,” Parsons said. “Why the hell do you think they came here? They’realready suspicious!”

“I don’t think so, sir. They’re a simple pair of flatfoots investigating a murder. Nothing more.”

“Nothing more,” Parsons said sourly. “Nothing more than a murder.”

“That’s all, sir.”

“Ninety-six thousand dollars in cash and you don’t think they’re going to smell something fishy?”

“Sir, my job was to yank those supers out of circulation. That’s what I did, sir.”

“Splendid,” Parsons said.

Horne never knew when he meant it.

“But how long do you think it’ll be before these nitwits realize there aremore phony hundreds out there?” Parsons asked. “How long will it be before they come back to us?”

The room went silent.

“Why was the woman killed, do you know?” Parsons asked.

“I would suspect to keep her quiet,” Horne said.

“Do you think this may be Witches and Dragons again?”

“It could be, sir.”

Parsons nodded.

“Find out,” he said. “Give Mother a call.”

THE SIGN OVER the cash register read:

WE WILL NOT CASH BILLS LARGER THAN $50. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE. THANK YOU.

Wilbur Struthers took umbrage at this.

Perhaps this was because the only money he had in his wallet was a pair of singles and $400 in hundred-dollar bills. A glance at the cash register total informed him that he had spent $95.95 for two bottles of Simi Chardonnay, two bottles of Gordon’s gin, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne.

“I’m afraid I only have hundred-dollar bills,” he told the cashier.

“We accept American Express, MasterCard, and Visa,” the cashier said.

“I only have cash.”

“Take a personal check, too, if you have proper ID,” the cashier said. “Driver’s license, or even a MetTrans card with a photo on it.”

“I only have cash.”

“We can’t accept a hundred-dollar bill, I’m sorry,” the cashier said.

“Why’s that?”

“Been burned too often. Lots of phonies in circulation.”

“These aren’t phonies,” Struthers said.

“Hard to tell ’em apart nowadays,” the cashier said.

So much easier to stick up the fuckin joint, Struthers was thinking.

“Tell you what I’m gonna do,” he said. “I’m gonna lay a hundred-dollar bill right on the counter here and forget all about the four dollars and change I got coming. You can either pick up the bill and put it in your cash register and tell me ‘Thanks for your business, sir,’ or you can shove it up your ass. Either way, I’m walkin out of here with my purchases. Good day to you, sir.”

The Eighty-seventh Precinct car patrolling Adam Sector picked him up before he’d walked three blocks from the store.

FIRST THING Detective Andy Parker learned about the perp the blues brought in was that he’d walked out of a liquor store with purchases totaling close to a hundred bucks without paying for them— or at least paying for them with a bill the cashier had refused to accept because it might have been counterfeit. Nobody—least of all Parker—as yet knew whether the bill was queer or not. That wasn’t the point. You could not simply walk out of a store without paying for your purchases even if you kept insisting afterward that youhad paid for them—which Struthers was insisting now, over and over again, bending Parker’s ear and breaking his balls.

This was not a court of law here. This was a police station. Parker was a detective and not a judge. He was not being paid to administer justice here, any more than cops in a park during a riot were expected to determine whether a crowd of unruly assholes wereactually sticking their hands up under girls’ skirts. Those cops were being paid to sit on park benches and watch the parade go by. Parker was being paid to sit here and write up a DD form that would follow this man through the criminal justice system—where, by the way, the dude had been before, Parker was just noticing on his computer. This did not bode too well for Mr. Wilbur Struthers here, who seemed to have taken a burglary fall not too long ago and done some fine time upstate. This was enough to put Mr. Struthers in serious trouble here, though certainly Parker did not wish to seem judgmental.

“What you did, it looks like,” he said, “was walk out of a store with close to a hundred bucks in merchandise, without paying for it. Is what you seem to have done, Willie.”

“I paid for the merchandise,” Struthers said.

“Man said you placed a possibly phony …”

“Man had no reason to believe the bill was phony.”

“Says you forced it on him even though he told you it was store policy not to accept …”

“No one forced anything on him. I merely placed the bill politely on the counter top …”

“And told him to shove it up his ass.”

“He could’ve also just put it in the cash register and shut his fuckin mouth.”

“Language, Willie, language.”

“Well, he could’ve avoided a lot of unnecessary trouble here.”

“Which he chose not to do because his boss has been stung with queer C-notes before.”

“This one was not queer.”

“How do you know?”

“The Secret Service told me,” Struthers said.

This was not exactly true.

The Secret Service had told him that $8,000 of the $8,500 he’d stolen from Cassandra Jean Ridley’s apartment was not part of a ransom paid in some mysterious goddamn White House kidnapping, but they had not said the bills weren’t counterfeit. In any case, the lady had reclaimed the eight large and had been eaten by lions for her boldness. The $100 bill Struthers had subsequently passed across the counter of S&L Liquors on Stemmler Avenue was one of the bills first Special Agent David A. Horne and later the redheaded lady herself had overlooked in their zeal to make everything right again. Struthers had no idea whether it was phony or not.

Besides, intent was ninety percent of the law, a jailhouse attorney had once informed him, true or not. He’d had no intention of passing counterfeit money. His only intention was to stock up on alcoholic beverages for New Year’s Eve, which he hoped to perhaps spend with that girl Jasmine he’d tried to introduce to good champagne, if ever he could find her again. He now had $300 left of the money he’d stolen from the Lion Lady, as he thought of her, and if Jasmine would accept that in trade, he would be willing to pay for a woman for the first time in his life. What the hell, a new year was coming. After which, he figured he might have to run out and do another little burglary, provided this asshole detective here in the rumpled suit and the razor cuts all over his face let him go. Struthers didn’t see that anybody had a case here. He’d paid for the goddamn booze!

“Here’s the way I look at it,” Parker said. “If the bill you gave that guy was genuine, then you in fact paid for the merchandise, and we’ve got no beef. If, however, the bill is phony, then not only were you passing bad money, you were also committing Petit Larceny, a class-A misdemeanor as defined in Section 155.30 of the Penal Law, punishable by a term not to exceed a year in the slammer. I’m not paid to be judgmental,” Parker said judgmentally, “but why waste the city’s time and money if in fact the bill is genuine?”

Struthers held his breath.

“Let’s take a walk over to the bank,” Parker said.

“Let’s,” Struthers said confidently.

“Well, well, look who’s here,” Meyer called from the corridor. He swung open the gate in the slatted wooden railing, walked into the squadroom, tossed his hat at the hat rack, and missed. Kneeling to retrieve it, he asked, “What’s it this time, Will?”

“Walkaway,” Parker said.

“Oh dear,” Meyer said.

“Hello, Will,” Carella said, just behind him.

Struthers didn’t like all this fucking cordiality. He wanted to go to the bank, show the bill to whoever understood counterfeits there, and get on with his preparations for New Year’s Eve.

“Also he insisted on passing a C-note may be phony,” Parker said.

“I was paying for my merchandise. Incidentally,” he said, “there’s no law against innocently passing a counterfeit bill if there is no intent to deceive.”

The detectives looked at him.

Parker sighed.

“We were just on our way to the bank,” he said.

“Where’d you get that bill?” Carella asked.

Struthers didn’t answer.

“Will? Where’d you get that C-note?”

Still no answer.

“Was it part of the money you stole from Cass Ridley?”

Struthers didn’t know what he might be getting into here. He figured maybe he just ought to keep still.

“Was it?”

No answer.

“Cause I’ll tell you what,” Carella said. “We’ve got a whole pile ofotherhundred-dollar bills here. Why don’t we all walk over to the bank?”

IT WAS TEN MINUTES TO THREE when Struthers and the detectives walked through the revolving doors of the First Federal Bank on Van Buren Circle. Not too long ago—well, perhaps longer ago than Carella chose to admit—a criminal alternately known to the squad as “Taubman” or “L. Sordo” or most commonly “The Deaf Man”—had tried to rob this bank,twice. Carella still felt a faint shiver of apprehension at the memory. They had not heard from The Deaf Man in a long, long time—well, perhaps not as long a time as Carella might have wished—and he had no desire to hear from him again anytime soon.

The manager back then had been named Somebody Alton, Carella no longer remembered the first name, if ever he’d known it. The new manager was a woman named Antonia Belandres, a stately plump brunette in her forties, wearing no makeup and a dark gray suit. She looked up at the clock the moment they approached her desk.

“Little late for business, gentlemen,” she said.

Carella showed his shield.

“Detective Carella,” he said. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”

“This is the Eighty-sixthPrecinct,” she said.

Carella didn’t know what that had to do with anything. The bank was on the Circle, directly across Tenth, the wide avenue that slivered the two precincts roughly in half, north to south. First Federal was most convenient to the station house, and besides it was a federal bank. If anybody should know anything about counterfeit money, it was the Feds.

“We’re just across the avenue,” Parker explained helpfully.

“We’re investigating a homicide,” Carella said.

She looked at the clock again.

“We need some suspect bills checked,” Meyer said.

“We’re kind of in a hurry here,” Struthers added.

Antonia turned to look at him. Something flashed in her dark eyes. Perhaps she was wondering if he was in charge of this little band of Homicide detectives. He certainly looked intelligent enough. Perhaps she liked the long rugged cowboy look of him. Whatever it was, she addressed her next question to him. With a smile.

“May I see the bills, please?” she said.

They spread the bills on her desk.

$96,000 in hundreds from Cass Ridley’s safe deposit box …

$8,000 in hundreds from the desk drawer in her apartment …

And next the solitary hundred-dollar bill Struthers had placed on the counter at S&L Liquors in payment for his various alcohol purchases.

“You have to understand,” Antonia said, as she delicately leafed through the money, “that for every man, woman, and child in the United States, there are six or seven hundred-dollar bills in circulation. That means for every person in the work force, there are more than adozen hundred-dollar bills out there. That comes to something like a billion and a half dollars.”

It had begun snowing again. The snow was fierce. Tiny little needle-like crystals blown by a bitter wind. The snow and the wind lashed the long windows of the bank where they sat around Antonia’s desk covered with hundred-dollar bills.

“Now who do you think is in possession ofmost of those bills?” she asked, and smiled at Struthers.

“Who?” he asked.

“Vicious criminals, drug dealers, and tax cheats,” Antonia said.

“I’m not any one of those,” Struthers explained to the detectives.

They did not appear impressed.

“The Secret Service gave me a clean bill of health,” he explained to Antonia. She seemed more impressed than the detectives. She raised her eyebrows appreciatively, gave him an approving little nod.

“You may not know,” she said, “that the United States Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department.”

“Yes, Idid know that, in fact,” Struthers said. “It was explained to me.”

“They don’t merely protect the life of the President of the United States. Actually, themajor part of their job is the detection and prevention of currency counterfeiting. Not many people know that,” she said.

“ThatI didn’t know till this very minute,” Struthers said—kissing ass, Parker thought.

“I’m happy you came to me today,” Antonia said. “I’ve had occasion to work with the Secret Service before, you see, on cases regarding counterfeit United States currency.” She was carefully turning over the stack of hundreds on her desk, bill by bill, checking for whatever. “Though at first glance, I must say these bills do not strike me as being super-bills. Or super-dollars, whichever terminology you gentlemen prefer. Or even super-notes. Whichdo you prefer, Lieutenant?”

Struthers realized she was addressing him.

“I never heard any of those terms in my life,” he said.

“The Arabic writing on the face of some of these bills is suspect, of course,” Antonia said, “but not all bills passing through the Middle East are fake. In fact, sixty percent ofall United States currency is in circulation abroad. You probably didn’t know that, either.”

“I certainly didn’t,” Struthers said.

“In fact, the hundred-dollar bill is the most widely held paper currency in the world. Which is what makes it such an attractive target for counterfeiters,” Antonia said. “What I’m trying to tell you, however, is that the signature of a money-changer—on this bill, for example, the handwriting means ‘Son of Ahmad’—in itself does not indicate a fake bill. As a matter of pride, a money-changer will sign or put some other personal mark on a stack of bills. It’s like an author signing his book at Barnes & Noble.”

Struthers thought a money-changer was some guy who cashed checks on Lambert Av, up in Diamondback. And he didn’t know any authors who signed books.

“In the Arab world,” Antonia said, “money-changers are financial middlemen. They’ve been around since well before Jesus. You need to buy commodities in the West? Simple. You just take your cash to a second-story office in the old quarter of Damascus. The money-changer will arrange for the transfer. I’ve seen these money-changers’ signatures many times before,” she said, exhibiting another of the bills. “They don’t necessarily indicate a bill is counterfeit. We see entirefamilies of counterfeit bills …”

Families, Struthers thought.

“… with the same serial numbers on them,” Antonia said. “But none of this larger stack of bills belongs to any of those families.”

“Then they’re genuine,” Carella said.

“They’re not counterfeit, that’s right,” Antonia said, and shoved the stack of bills to one side of her desk, summarily dismissing $104,000 as beneath further scrutiny. “But let’s look more closely at this lone hundred-dollar bill here,” she said, and picked up the bill Struthers had used in the liquor store. “Henry Loo,” she said, staring at the face of the bill.

The man on the bill looked like Benjamin Franklin to Struthers, but he didn’t say anything.

“The manager of Ban Hin Lee,” she said. “The bank I worked for in Singapore, many years ago. On Robinson Road.”

“I know Robinson Road,” Struthers said.

“You do?”

“I was in Singapore many years ago, too,” Struthers said.

“What’s Henry Loo got to do with this bill?” Carella asked.

“He was the first person who showed me a super-bill,” Antonia said. “Or a super-dollar, if you prefer. Or a super-note.”

Struthers was trying to figure what the rap might be for passing a phony hundred-dollar bill he hadn’t known was phony to begin with.

“I studied economics in Manila,” she told Struthers, trying to impress him, Parker figured. “After graduation, I got a job at Ban Hin Lee …”

“I spent some time in Manila, too,” Struthers told her—still kissing ass, Parker thought. “After I escaped from the Khmer Rouge. But that’s another story,” he said, and Antonia noticed for the first time the almost imperceptible tic and small white scar near the corner of his left eye.

“And later in Singapore,” he said. “That’s how I happen to know Robinson Road.”

“It’s a small world,” Antonia said.

“I’m amazed we didn’t meet there,” he said. “In Singapore. We probably passed each other all the time on Robinson Road.”

“Yes,” she said. “We probably did.”

Staring at each other across the desk where the genuine bills were stacked to one side, and Struthers’ lone C-note was sitting in front of her.

“I started as a bank messenger,” Antonia said. “Worked my way up to teller and then assistant manager, which was when Henry Loo showed me a hundred-dollar bill soreal -looking I thought old Ben Franklin would any minute go fly a kite off it!”

Antonia laughed at her own witticism.

“But it was as queer as monkey soup,” she said, on a comic roll. “A lot of these C-series hundreds were coming through at the time, all of them printed in Teheran on high-tech intaglio presses.”

“Whatkind of presses?” Carella asked.

“Intaglio,” she said.

“What’s intaglio?” Meyer asked.

“An embossing technique that uses a very thick gummy ink.”

“Is that what intaglio means?” Parker asked Carella. “Thick and gummy?”

“How should I know what intaglio means?” Carella said.

“Maybe it means embossing technique,” Meyer suggested.

“I thought you were supposed to be Italian,” Parker said, and shrugged.

“Intaglio produces a three-dimensional effect you can’t get with any other printing technique,” Antonia said. “Whatever the engraver designs, intaglio gives youexactly.”

“And you say these presses exist inTeheran?” Parker asked. He was thinkingTeheran? Where they wear baggy pants and turbans?

“Yes,” Antonia said. “Identical to the ones used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”

“Bureau of Engraving presses inTeheran?” Meyer said. He was thinkingTeheran?Where they shoot guns in the air and burn American flags?

“Oh yes,” Antonia said.

“Let me get this straight,” Carella said. “You’re saying …”

“I’m saying that the late Shah of Iran bought two high-tech intaglio presses from the United States to print his own currency. When the mullahs took over, they put the presses to their own use.”

“Printing counterfeit hundreds, you’re saying,” Parker said.

“Printing super-bills, yes. On plates and paper purchased from the East Germans, yes. Is what I’m saying.”

“Printing high-quality …”

“Printingsuper-bills,” Antonia repeated, stressing the word this time. “Notes so close to the original, they’re virtually impossible to tell apart. In fact, I suspectthis may be a super-bill,” she said, and gingerly tapped Struthers’ hundred-dollar note.

Uh-oh, he thought.

“How can you tell?” Carella asked.

“Experience,” she said.

He looked at her.

“How?” he asked. “If they’re so close to the original …”

“There are detection machines at the Federal Reserve,” she said.

“Do you have one of those machines here?”

“No. I’m judging by eye.”

“I thought you said it was virtually impossible …”

“Yes, well, I have a trained eye.”

He looked at her again. It suddenly occurred to him that she didn’tknow for sure whether or not that hundred-dollar bill was a phony.

“But if it’s soeasy,” he said.

“No one said it’s easy.”

“Well, you took one look at that bill …”

“I’ve been looking at it all along.”

“Without a machine, without even a magnifying glass …”

“There are machines at the Federal Reserve. I told you …”

“But not here.”

“That’s right. We send any suspect bills to the Fed.”

“How many suspect bills do you get on any given day?”

“We get them every now and then.”

“How often?”

“Not very often. Now that the Big Bens are in circulation …”

“The what?”

“The new hundreds with the big picture of Franklin on them. Little by little, they’re replacing all the old hundreds. That means all the super-bills will eventually be pulled out of circulation, too.”

“When?”

“That’s difficult to say. It might take years.”

“How many years?”

“Five? Ten? Why are you being so hostile?” Antonia asked.

Struthers was wondering the same thing.

“Maybe because a woman was killed,” Carella said. “And you’re telling me a bill stolen from her apartment may be one of thesesuper -bills that are so good nobody can tell them from the real thing.”

“The Federal Reserve can detect them. They have machines.”

“But how about mere mortals? Canwe detect them?”

“I just told you this bill looks suspicious, didn’t I?”

“Which means you’ll be sending it to the Federal Reserve to check on one of its secret machines, right?”

“They’re notsecret machines. Everyone knows they exist.”

“How many of these super-bills find their way to those machines?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How many of the bills end up in the Federal Reserve’s vaults?”

“The Fed doesn’t release those figures.”

“Well, how many of them are still incirculation? I’m not talking about the ones you see here at your bank, I’m talking about …”

“I don’t understand your question.”

“I’m asking howmany of these super-bills are still floating around out there.”

“I’ve heard an estimate.”

“And what’s the estimate?”

“Twenty billion dollars,” Antonia said.

8 .

IN THIS BUSINESS , you do not expect fake money.

Fake names, yes, but not fake money.

Fake money can get you killed, whereas a fake name can save your life. Even the two Mexicans, whose real nameswere Francisco Octavio Ortiz and Cesar Villada, used fake names when they were doing business with types trading in controlled substances. No one buying or selling a hundred keys of dope gives you his real name, unless he isloco —which, by the way, was a distinct possibility with the people who’d paid a million-seven in fake hundreds to two dangeroushombreslike themselves. They suspected that the man the redheaded pilot had fingered as Randolph Biggs wasn’t a Randolph Biggs at all, nor was he even the Texas State Ranger he’d pretended to be. The problem was in finding him first in a good-sized town like Eagle Branch, and next in Piedras Rosas, the teeming border town just across the river.

If you are dealing in controlled substances, you do not buy radio commercials or newspaper ads announcing that you are in town looking for a man who paid you with bad money. You play it cool, which is difficult to do when you are eager to tie a man to a chair and pull out his fingernails. Villada and Ortiz merely kept flashing money everywhere they went. They were either rich tourists from Barcelona—in a shitty border town like Piedras Rosas?—or else they were looking to make a drug deal. There were drugs and drug dealers in Eagle Branch, and there were drugs and drug dealers in Piedras Rosas, too. You could not go anywhere in the world today and not find drugs or drug dealers, even in those nations where the penalty for possession was death. This was a very sad fact of life to Ortiz and Villada, but what could one do in a world obsessed with money?

The color of their money blinked like green neon. Money, money, money. The scent of human greed on their hundred-dollar bills floated on the hot Mexican air. Prostitutes blatantly tendered their sloppy favors. Men proffered high-stakes card games, cock fights, dog fights. Lower-level street pushers looking likebandidos out of old black-and-white movies offered rolled sticks of marijuana, dime bags of diluted cocaine. Urchins asked if the gentlemen would care to fuck their sisters. Ortiz and Villada were even afraid to drink the water.

Randolph Biggs—or someone who could have been Randolph Biggs—surfaced that afternoon.

THEY WERE SITTING at a table in an outdoor bar, flashing the green as always, trolling. The white man who took a table adjacent to theirs was tall and broad-shouldered, with a broad neatly trimmed mustache under a nose that sniffed the air disdainfully as he sat and signaled to a harried waiter. He was wearing a neatly pressed tan tropical suit. White linen shirt open at the throat. Tan loafers. No socks. A huge man, the redhead had told them. Randolph Biggs?

Looking bored, he ordered tequila, lime, salt. His dark brown eyes grazed their table. He looked at his watch. Sniffed again, as if he’d just smelled an open toilet, which in all likelihood he had. Looked around as if expecting cockroaches or rats in a place like this, another likelihood. The waiter brought his drink and the props. He thanked him in fluent Spanish, told him to keep the tab running. Villada and Ortiz were impressed.

He squirted lime juice on the back of his hand, sprinkled salt onto it, licked at the solution, drank some tequila. They were further impressed. He signaled to a man selling cigarettes from a tray hanging around his neck. Loose or by the pack? the man asked in Spanish. He bought an unopened package of Marlboros, paid with Mexicanpesoshe peeled from a grubby roll of bills.

The three men, at separate adjacent tables, sat drinking in the gaudy heat of the Mexican afternoon. There were guitars somewhere. There was the liquid laughter of women from alleyways and upstairs rooms. Everything smelled sweaty and smoky. Buses rolled past. Taxicabs honked their horns. This was a busy bustling little city the size of some neighborhood ghettos in North America. Walk into any one of those ghettos, you’d see the same faces you saw here, you’d hear the same language. The man sitting here in his fancy tropical suit and his neatly groomed mustache looked as out of place as Meg Ryan might have.

“Perdoname,”he said.“¿Tiene usted un cerillo?”

He was holding one of the Marlboros between the forefinger and middle fingers of his right hand, close to his lips, leaning over toward them now. Ortiz triggered a gold Cartier cigarette lighter into flame. The man inhaled, let out a cloud of smoke, grinned in satisfaction. In Spanish, he said, “I’ve been trying to quit.”

“A bad habit,” Ortiz agreed in Spanish, and snapped the lid of the lighter shut.

Randolph Biggs?

“What brings you to this lovely city?” the man asked, and raised his eyebrows to emphasize the sarcasm.

“Passing through,” Villada said.

“On your way to?”

“Mexico City.”

They were still speaking Spanish. His Spanish was very good.

“And you?” Ortiz asked.

“I live in Eagle Branch,” the man said.

They waited for his name. Nothing came.

“Manuel Arrellano,” Ortiz said, reaching his hand across the tables, giving the name he frequently used during drug transactions, though he did not yet know whether or not this man was at all involved in the trade. “My partner Luis Larios,” he said, giving Villada’snom de guerre.

“Randolph Biggs,” the man said.

Ortiz’s eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit.

The men shook hands all around.

“What business are you in?” Biggs asked. “You said you were partners.”

“We export pottery,” Villada said in Spanish.

“And you?” Ortiz asked in English. Shift to the man’s own tongue, make him feel a little more comfortable about asking if the gentlemen here were in reality selling high-octane shit and not some crockery worth a buck and a half.

“I’m a law enforcement officer,” Biggs said. “Texas Rangers.” He raised the flap of his jacket, reached into his side pocket, took out a thick leather billfold, opened it to show a gold star pinned to the flap. Ortiz and Villada were impressed all over again. But the redheaded pilot had told them all this. A Texas Ranger named Randolph Biggs was the man who’d introduced her to Frank Holt, another bullshit name, who’d arranged for her to fly to Guenerando to pick up the dope. And pay for it with focking fonny money.

“Do you know a woman named Cassandra Jean Ridley?” Villada asked in English.

Stick to English now, he was thinking.

Make this all perfectly clear to Mr. Randolph Biggs here.

The name registered.

Biggs looked across the table to where Ortiz was sitting with a pistol in his lap, pointing at his belly.

“We have a car,” Villada said.

OLLIE’S PIANO TEACHER was a woman named Helen Hobson. She was in her late fifties somewhere, he guessed, he’d never asked, a rail of a woman who always wore a green cardigan sweater over a brown woolen skirt, he wondered if she had any other clothes in her closet. He thought it ironic, the way fate worked. In November, he’d caught a little dead colored girl in an apartment downstairs, turned out Helen had been the one who discovered the body. Now he was taking piano lessons from her and well on the way to becoming an accomplished musician. It was all so strange and wonderful.

It seemed odd to find a grand piano in what was basically a slum apartment, but Helen had crowded one into a corner of her small living room, and it was here that Ollie shared a piano bench with her while he pored over the sheet music for “Night and Day.” Helen sat perched to his right on one scant corner of the bench, Ollie’s wide buttocks overwhelming the remainder of it. He kept pecking away at the keys.

“I’m having trouble with the notes in the first few bars,” he said.

He loved musical terms.

Until now, a bar was just a place where you went to have a beer.

Helen looked at him.

“The notes in the first fewbars?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re giving me trouble,” he said.

“There is onlyone note in the first few bars,” she said. “It is the same note repeated three times. G. The note is G. Three times. Bom, bom, bom. Night. And. Day. That is the same note, Mr. Weeks. How can it be giving you trouble?”

“I don’t know, it’s just giving me trouble.”

“Mr. Weeks, we’ve been working on the first six measures of this song for the past little while now …”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Without, I must confess, noticeable progress. Are yousure you want to take piano lessons?”

“I am very sure. Yes, Miss Hobson. My ambition is to play five songs on the piano.”

“Because … and this is a possibility you may wish to consider, Mr. Weeks … perhaps you have no talent.”

“Oh, I have talent, all right.”

“Perhaps not.”

“I have talent to spare. I think I’m just in some kind of slump, is all. Not bein able to get past those first three notes.”

“But those first three notes are one and thesame note! Bom, bom, bom,” she said, demonstrating, striking the note three times in succession. “Night. And.Day!” she said, striking the same note again and again and again. “It is impossible for you to be having trouble with the identical note struck three times. It is physically impossible, Mr. Weeks. Bom, bom, bom,” she said, hitting the note again. “It’s so simple arodent could tap it out with his nose.”

“It isn’t that I haven’t been practicing,” he said.

“Bom, bom, bom,” she said.

“It’s just I caught these two murder cases …”

“Please,” she said, and lowered her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I know you don’t like to hear about …”

“I truly don’t.”

“I’m just trying to explain I’ve been very busy. And also, I’ve begun writing a book.”

Helen turned to look at him.

“Yeah,” he said, and grinned. “A novel.”

She kept staring at him.

“A novel,” she said. “My.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

He went on to explain that he’d been a cop for almost twenty years now, and a detective for fifteen of those years, so he knew a little bit more about police work than your average run-of-the-mill aspiring writer, didn’t he?

“I’m sure you do,” Helen said.

So he’d picked up what he guessed was some sort of form letter this editor at Wadsworth and Dodds …

“Which is where I’m investigating the second murder …”

… writes to people who make inquiries and it had really been very helpful, and had probably started him on yet another worthwhile career, though not one so satisfying as yet as playing the piano …

“If I can just get past those first three notes,” he said.

“Thesamenote, Mr. Weeks. It is theidentical note. Bom, bom,bom,” she said, pounding the G key.

“His name is Henry Daggert,” Ollie said.

“Whose name?”

“This editor at Wadsworth and Dodds. He’s a senior editor and vice president. I practically memorized everything he wrote.”

“But you can’t memorize the first note of this song,” Helen said, tapping the sheet music. “Such asimple note, too. Just think of the three notes as thesame note, can you do that? Place your index finger over the G key, and strike it once, bom. Let it resonate, and then strike it again, bom. Can you do that?”

“Oh sure,” Ollie said.

Helen looked at the keyboard somewhat despairingly. “We have a few more minutes,” she said. “Do you think we can try it one more time?”

AT FIRST , he insisted he knew no one named Cassandra Jean Ridley. Knew no one named Frank, either. Ofany last name whatever. No Franks at all in his busy life as a Texas Ranger.

But this was sunny Mexico.

So they used a cattle prod on his testicles.

He all at once remembered the good-looking redhead and this man named Frank Whoever, but all he’d done was introduce the pair,“Verdad,” he said in Spanish, he scarcely knew them at all, really. Cassie—the guys in the bar used to call her Cassie—was an attractive redhead, and Frank was just someone he’d seen around, nice-enough fellow, he thought they might hit it off together, didn’t even know his last name,verdad, amigos.

“I’m a Texas Ranger,” he told them. “What I do mostly is border patrol, trying to keep the wetbacks out, you know …”

He actually used the word “wetbacks”in the presence of two Mexicans who were holding a cattle prod an inch away from his quivering balls …

“No offense meant,” he said immediately. “The point is …”

The point was he knew nothing about any money that was flown south of the border by Lieutenant Ridley or anyone else, knew nothing about any deals made between these two obviously fine gentlemen here and anyone in the entire universe, did not know anything about Frank Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was, whom he’d only met in a bar, did not know how much a key of cocaine was worth, did not even know what cocainewas, ask him any other question, he was very good at geography.

They gave him a longer jolt this time.

His balls shriveled right up into his throat.

Okay, he told them, the man’s name is Frank Holt, I knew him only as an independent contractor who was normally very reliable. I had no idea what kind of deal was going down in Mexico, I merely put together a man and a pilot. The man needed a delivery and pickup, and the pilot had to be willing to take risks—which, by the way, Lieutenant Ridley had taken plenty of during the Gulf War, from what he’d heard about her. He believed she’d been decorated for valor, in fact. An honorable woman who’d served her nation well in times of dire stress, he felt sure she would not have had any part of a scheme designed to bilk anyone out of fair payment in exchange for his goods, whatever those goods might have been, though he’d had no idea the lady would be picking up cocaine across the border. He told them he’d certainly hadn’t the faintestnotion that counterfeit money was being flown to Mexico in exchange for what was undoubtedly very high-grade coke indeed, the two gentlemen here seeming trustworthy and entirely professional. In short, he’d been a mere instrument of convenience, an enabler, a facilitator, so to speak, an all-around nice guy who’d tried to be helpful, was all. If the gentlemen here had got stung, Randolph L. Biggs hadn’t had anything to do with it. They would have to look elsewhere for satisfaction.

“So, gentlemen …”

Villada nodded to Ortiz.

Ten seconds later, Biggs was telling them that Frank Holt’s real name was Jerome Hoskins and that he worked for a company called Wadsworth and Dodds, back East in the big bad city.

CARELLA FINALLY REACHED Captain Mark William Ridley at a little past six that evening. He was cognizant of the fact that it was already midnight in Binsfeld, Germany, but when he’d tried earlier that day, he was informed that the captain had still not returned to base.

Now—at six-oh-six exactly on the face of the squadroom clock—Carella listened to the captain’s voice coming over the line from somewhere outside Frankfurt, explaining at great length that Spangdahlem’s commanding officer, the brigadier general in charge of the 52nd Fighter Wing, had decided to divide more or less evenly among the base’s five thousand U.S. active-duty military members and their seven thousand dependents, the holiday season’s twelve-day sequence that had begun on December 21, the start of Hanukkah, and would end on New Year’s Day.

“That is because our wing mission is to be constantly ready at all times to promote stability and thwart naked aggression,” he said.

“I see,” Carella said.

“In order to achieve U.S. and NATO objectives,” Ridley added, “yessir.”

Carella wished the man didn’t sound as if he’d been drinking.

“I drew December 21 to December 27,” Ridley said. “I just got back from Italy fifteen minutes ago. Did I understand you to say you are a detective, sir?”

“Yes, I am,” Carella said.

“Why are you calling me here in the Rhineland, may I ask, sir?”

Carella was calling to tell him his sister was dead.

He took a deep breath.

He guessed he’d performed this drill a hundred times before, perhaps a thousand times before, telling a wife or a mother or a father or a son or a brother or an aunt that someone near and dear was suddenly, inexplicably dead, and then listening to the silence or the tears or sometimes the hysterical laughter that greeted this unexpected, unwanted news from a total stranger, he guessed he had spoken these same damn more or less identical words a million times before it sometimes seemed.

Ridley was silent for several moments.

Then he said, “It comes in bunches, don’t it, sir?” He sounded suddenly quite sober. “First my wife leaves me …”

He fell silent again.

Carella waited.

“I’m sorry,” Ridley said.

Carella suspected he was crying, but he could hear no tears over the crackling line. He waited.

“Captain,” he said at last, “I wonder if I could ask you some questions. I know this is a bad time …”

He let the sentence trail.

Ridley said nothing.

“Captain?” Carella said.

“Yes. Yes, sure,” Ridley said. “Go ahead. Sure. I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

“We read some letters you sent to your sister …”

“Yes, we corresponded a lot.”

“In one of them, you made reference to one ofher letters …”

“Yes.”

“… where she told you she’d be flying a job early in December …”

“Yes.”

“… which apparently she felt would change her circumstances considerably, was how she put it in the letter to you, which you were quoting.”

“Yes.”

“What was that job, Captain Ridley? Would you know?”

The captain was silent.

“Sir? Apparently she wrote to say she’d be moving East sometime after this job …”

“Yes.”

“… be there long before Christmas, in fact, was apparently what she wrote to you, if your letter was quoting her exactly.”

Again, the captain was silent.

“You see, sir, she was killed just before Christmas, and we were wondering if this job she flew had anything to do with her murder.”

“How was she killed?” Ridley asked.

“Someone stuck an ice pick in her,” Carella said.

And waited.

“She was flying dope,” Ridley said.

“To Mexico, is that right?”

“Yes. Four runs.”

“On December seventh, she flew to Mexico for the last time, is that right?”

“Yes. How do you know that?”

“There was an entry in her calendar.”

“She called me right afterward.”

“Called you there in Germany?”

“Yes.”

“To say what, Captain?”

“That she’d flown the four runs, and they turned out to be a piece of cake.”

“How do you know they were drug runs?”

“She told me.”

“On an open phone?”

“No, in one of her letters. After I warned her not to do anything that might get her in trouble. She assured me these would be short flights, simple pickups and deliveries. Just like chickens or sandals, she said. Just like that.”

“Where was she flying? From where to where?”

“Texas to Mexico to Arizona.”

“What kind of pickups and deliveries?”

“Money for drugs.”

“How much money?”

“They didn’t tell her. It was in locked suitcases.”

“What drug? Heroin? Cocaine?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she knew, either.”

“Who was she working for?”

“A man named Frank Holt. He was the one who gave her the suitcases with the money in them. He was the one buying the stuff.”

“Who is he, do you know?”

“Some guy she got introduced to in a bar in Eagle Branch. This is why I thought it all sounded so risky. I mean who the hellwere these people? She said they were okay. Ordinary guys, she told me. Guys trying to make a buck. One of them was a Texas Ranger she’d dated once or twice. The guy who introduced her to Holt.”

“What washis name? The Ranger?”

“Riggs? Briggs? Something like that.”

“How much were they paying her?”

“Alotof money.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot,” Carella agreed. He was thinking they had to be big buys. You didn’t pay fifty grand a pop for a two-bit pickup and delivery.

“How’d they pay her, did she say? Was it in hundred-dollar bills?”

“I don’t know. She got fifty on a handshake, the rest after the last run.” Ridley paused. “Plus what they tipped her.”

“What do you mean? Tipped her?”

“Yeah, they tipped her.”

“Who did?”

“The Mexicans in Guenerando. They gave her a ten-thousand-dollar tip. She told me she was going to buy a couple of fur coats.”

The line went silent.

“Did she ever buy the coats?” Ridley asked. “Would you know?”

“She bought the coats,” Carella said.

FAT OLLIE WEEKS stopped by after his piano lesson to see if anybody up the Eight-Seven wanted to go for pizza or anything. They went to a place on Culver and U. Ollie ordered a large pie for himself. Meyer and Carella shared a nine-incher. The men were off-duty, they ordered beers all around.

“You look tired,” Ollie told Carella.

“Must be all this accounting work,” Carella said.

Ollie bit into a wedge of pizza. Cheese and sauce spilled onto the lapel of his sports jacket. He dipped up a dollop of mozzarella with the tip of his forefinger, and daintily brought it to his mouth. Licking it off, he asked, “What accounting?”

“On the Ridley case.”

“What accounting?” Ollie asked again.

“I’ve been trying to chase down all her money. I spoke to her brother in Germany half an hour ago …”

“The one whose wife dumped him,” Ollie said, nodding. He was already on his second slice of pizza. “The one who sent the wedding band.”

“That’s the one. He told me she got paid two hundred grand for picking up some dope in Mexico.”

“We’re in the wrong racket,” Ollie said.

“Plusa ten-grand tip.”

“Dope dealers are tipping people nowadays, huh?”

“The way I figure it, she kept the ten grand aside for petty cash. Struthers stole whatever was left of it.”

“Eight thousand bucks,” Meyer said.

He was wondering how many calories were in the slice of pizza he now picked off the tray. Ollie seemed to have no such problems.

“Popped two hundred grand into her safe deposit box,” Carella said, “and then slowly transferred it into two separate checking accounts and a savings account.”

“Placement and layering,” Meyer said.

“Smurfing,” Ollie agreed, and picked up a third slice of pizza.

“All accounted for,” Carella said. “And, incidentally, all good money. What’s left of it.”

“Who says?”

“A lady at the bank.”

“Reliable?”

“Maybe.”

Ollie raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“But for the moment, let’s say the two hundred grand isnot counterfeit, okay?” Carella said.

“Okay. Two hundred large in nice clean money.”

“That leaves only theten grand she got as a tip.”

“Only?”Ollie said. “That’s bigger than the weekly collection from Riverhead.”

Cops were always joking about payoffs from Riverhead or Calm’s Point being short or being late or withheld for one reason or another. Some of the cops weren’t joking. Meyer figured Ollie for an honest cop, though. Only a cop with a clear conscience could eat the way Ollie did.

He watched him as he washed down the third slice of pizza with a huge swallow of beer, thought What the hell, and bit ferociously into his own pizza wedge. With his right hand, Ollie signaled to the waitress for another pie. With his left hand, he was reaching for a fourth slice. Meyer wondered what he would look like if he had three hands.

“A ten-grand tip from the boys in Mexico,” Carella said. “Which Cass keeps around the house to use for incidentals while she’s distributing thebig money in her various accounts. Okay. Struthers breaks in, finds eight thousand—or maybe more—sitting in a shoe box or wherever, and swipes it. He tries to spend one of the hundreds, but gets nailed by the Secret Service, who tell him they’re investigating a kidnapping …”

“Bullshit,” Ollie said.

“I agree. In any case, they return the bills and send him on his way.”

“Why?”

“Good question. Now here’s what’s troubling me …”

Ollie bit into the fourth slice of pizza. Chewing, he looked across the table at Carella. Meyer was looking at him, too.

“Struthers tried to cash another bill earlier today. Which makes me think he originally swiped more than the eight G’s. But never mind. We take the bill to the bank, lady there thinks it’s a phony— something called a super-bill the Iranians are running off on presses they …”

“Bullshit,” Ollie said again.

“I’m not so sure. But forget the Iranians for a minute, okay? Maybe thatis bullshit, who knows? Let’s just say, for now, that the billisphony. Let’s say everyone of those hundred-dollar bills Cass Ridley got as a tip were phony. Ten thousand bucks in fake hundreds. Can we say that for a moment?”

Meyer was frowning.

“What?” Carella asked.

“If that ten grand was fake …”

“Right.”

“And Struthers stole it …”

“Or what was left of it.”

“And the Secret Service checked it out …”

“Yes.”

“How come they didn’t recognize it as fake?”

“That’s just what’s troubling me,” Carella said, and nodded, and bit into his cold slice of pizza.

“I must be missing something,” Ollie said.

“If the Secret Service had its hands on eight thousand bucks in bad money,” Carella said, “why didn’t they just confiscate it? Why’d they return it to Struthers?”

“I’ll bite,” Ollie said, and bit into another slice of pizza. The waitress was arriving with the fresh one. He ordered another round of beers from her. Now, two-fisted and ham-handed, he began lifting slices of pizza from both trays, some hot, some cold, all disappearing with remarkable rapidity into his briskly energetic mouth. “Whydidthey return the money to him?”

“All I can figure is they didn’t,” Carella said.

“You just said …”

“They returned eight thousand dollars to him, yes, but it wasn’t the eight thousand they’d taken from him earlier. They returnedgood money to him. Even the lady at the bank said it was good.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they didn’t want anybody making waves down the line. Take his money from him, he might start trouble later on, who knows? Might even come squawking tous, who knows?”

“An ex-con?” Ollie said.

“Who knows? But give him back eight grand inreal bills …”

“They probably got a slush fund,” Meyer said. “Same as us.”

“I’ll bet. They pull eight large from it, send Struthers on his way, nice to know you, kid, don’t bother us anymore.”

Ollie looked at him.

“Too fucking deep for me,” he said.

“Don’t you see?” Carella said. “Why would two blond hitters carrying a bottle of champagne go up to a lone woman’s apartment on a bullshit birthday story, stick an ice pick in her head, waltz her over to the park, strip her naked, and toss her into the lion’s den where she gets eaten beyond all recognition? Why did they want her to disappear?”

“Why?” Ollie asked.

“Because she stumbled into something down there in Eagle Branch, Texas.”

“Eagle Branch?” Ollie said, and stopped chewing.

“What is it?” Carella said at once.

“My publisher has a sales rep lives down there.”

“Your publisher?”

“Yeah, I’m writing a book, didn’t I tell you?”

Carella glanced at Meyer.

“I happened by chance on a publisher looking for a good thriller,” Ollie said. “So when I’m not practicing piano, I work on the book. The countdown hasbegun!” he announced dramatically, and popped another slice of pizza into his mouth.

“You happened upon a publisher by chance,” Carella said. “With a sales rep who lives …”

“I caught a guy stuffed in a garbage can on Christmas Eve,” Ollie explained. “Bullet at the back of his head. Looked like a drug hit to me, but turned out he’s an honest-to-God sales rep. Wadsworth and Dodds. That’s the name of the publishing house he worked for.”

“Ollie,” Carella said. “Eagle Branch is where Cass Ridley hooked up with the two guys who sent her to Mexico.”

“Well, Iknow that, Steve-a-rino.”

“Eagle Branch is where this allstarted.”

“Well, why do you think I mentioned it?”

“Are you saying you’ve got a linked homicide?”

“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying I caught a stiff who worked for a publishing house that has a sales rep who lives in Eagle Branch, Texas. Is what I’m saying.”

“What’s his name, this guy in Texas?”

“Randolph Biggs.”

“The Texas Ranger,” Carella said to Meyer.

“No, he’s a sales rep,” Ollie said.

“Your stiff didn’t happen to be carrying any phony hundred-dollar bills, did he?” Meyer asked.

“Well, I don’t know if they’re phony or not,” Ollie said, “but you’re welcome to look at them. I already turned them over to the Property Clerk’s Office.”

THEY SIGNED FOR and checked out the seven $100 bills Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks had recovered from Jerome Hoskins’ wallet and deposited for security with the Property Clerk’s Office. At ten minutes to ten that night, when the last FBI pouch left for Washington, D.C., the money was on the plane, together with an urgent note to the Federal Reserve, asking for an immediate authenticity pop.

The bills and the response from the Fed were waiting on Carella’s desk when he got to work early the next morning, the twenty-eighth day of December.

The money was real.

9 .

IT REALLY UPSET Nikmaddu Zarzour to be treated like a terrorist. Even if he looked like one. Even if hewas one. Which, in fact, he happened to be.

The problems started the moment he transferred from Air France’s flight 613 from Damascus to Paris, onto their connecting flight 006 to the United States. He was wearing a black linen suit, a white shirt without a tie, and a little red fez of the sort favored by Turkish gentlemen though he was neither Turkish nor a gentleman. On the Syrian leg of the flight, he was merely another Arab, his complexion the color of desert sand, his black mustache neatly trimmed, a single gold tooth occasionally glinting in the upper left hand corner of his mouth. But the moment he transferred planes in Paris he became someone whose shabby-looking suitcase and clothes called him to the attention of the security guard who was boarding the 3:15P.M. flight to the States. It never occurred to the guard that if Nikmaddu were truly a terrorist—which, in fact, he was—he would have been carrying a Louis Vuitton suitcase or something less likely to call attention to his appearance. The guard riffled through his meager belongings, and then questioned—and confiscated—the little box of fresh figs Nikmaddu said he was taking to the U.S. for his maiden aunt. The guard did not suspect that the battered and scarred brown leather suitcase contained a false bottom. He could not have imagined that close to two million dollars in U.S. currency was neatly layered along the bottom of the suitcase; X-ray machines do not pick up paper.

And, of course, there was the same hassle coming through Customs and Immigration here on the eastern shores of the munificent United States of America, even though his passport was in order, even though he showed them a visa, little did it matter to them. He looked like a terrorist, ergo hewas a terrorist. Which, in fact, he was. But it rankled.

Now …

At last.

“Uhlan wa-Sahian.”Welcome.

“Ahlan Bikum,”Nikmaddu said.

The proper reply, in plural because he was talking to three of them. He had never met any of them before. The men introduced themselves now. One of them, the obvious leader, sported a tiny uptilted mustache that made him look as if he were smiling. He had been trained in Afghanistan, was said to have links with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

“Ismi Mahmoud Gharib,”he said. My name is Mahmoud Gharib.

The second man had the harsh, leathery look of a desert camel driver, deep creases on his brown face, thick veins standing out on the backs of his strong hands. He told Nikmaddu his name was Akbar. He had the unsettling grin of a shark, all teeth and no sincerity. He was their demolitions expert.

The man who introduced himself as Jassim had the look of a pit viper, small and dark and pock-marked. His handshake was remarkably strong, his fingernails encrusted with a deep dark residue, perhaps the traces of explosive powders or oils. He was the one who would go in with the bomb.

One who smiles only with his mustache, Nikmaddu thought, another who smiles with false teeth, and a third—with dirty fingernails—who does not smile at all.

“So you’re here at last,” the third one said. Jassim.

“Il-Hamdu-Allah,”Nikmaddu answered. Thanks be to God.

“Was it a pleasant flight?” Akbar asked. All false glittering smile and bright dark eyes.

Nikmaddu shrugged.

“Did you bring the money?” Mahmoud asked. Mustache smiling. A direct question. Without the money, there would be no explosives. Without the money, there would be no preparations. Without the money, there would be no escape routes afterward, no safe passages home. Without the money, there would be nothing.

“I brought the money,” Nikmaddu said.

And now they could discuss the business at hand.

THE APARTMENT they were meeting in was rented by Mahmoud himself. He was already three months in arrears, another reason for him having asked so soon about the money, his bloodsucking Jew landlord threatening eviction on an almost daily basis. The apartment was in a four-story walkup in a section of the city called Majesta after Her Majesty, the late lamented virgin queen of England, when these United States were still colonies. Once upon a time, Majesta was inhabited by Irish immigrants. Then it became Italian. Then it became Puerto Rican. Now it was populated largely by immigrants—many of them illegal—from third-world nations in the Middle East. The men sat sipping strong Turkish coffee as they looked out past the swirling snow to the towers of the Majesta Bridge in the misty distance. Jassim would have loved to wire that bridge with explosives, but Mahmoud was of a more conservative bent.

It was Mahmoud’s opinion that all successful terrorist acts were premised on what had happened in Algiers almost half a century ago. It was there that the Arab struggle for independence from France began in 1954, culminating in July of 1962, when the Democratic and Popular Government of Algeria was formed. It was during those eight years that terrorism discovered its claws and its fangs. It was then that women wearing long dresses as prescribed in the Koran—O prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and the wives of the believers that they shall lengthen their garments. Thus, they will be recognized and avoid being insulted—wearing as well thehijab that covered all of the face except the eyes, and thekhimar that covered their bosoms, strolled unrecognized into grocery stores or onto buses, carrying shopping bags full of high explosives which they conveniently left behind while they went home to their families.

The world of terrorism—Mahmoud now told Nikmaddu—had expanded too greatly. The leaders were thinking too big. Their plans were too grandiose. Why bomb a World Trade Center in New York or a Federal Building in Oklahoma City or a U.S. Embassy in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam? Why bring down an airplane over Lockerbie or LaGuardia? Events such as these only created intense scrutiny and enormous animosity. Why not settle instead for leaving a small bomb in a cinema? Or a railroad station? Why not compromise instead for leaving a satchel with explosives under a sixth row orchestra seat at Clarendon Hall on the night Svi Cohen would be playing Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata in F Major, or his “Kreutzer” in A Minor, or whichever other tune the Big Jew chose to perform on his accursed Zionist fiddle?

“Why not committiny acts of terrorism that will allow them to realize we can strike anywhere, anytime we choose?” Mahmoud asked.

“Clarendon Hall is not so tiny,” Akbar said, grinning.

“You understand my point,” Mahmoud said reasonably to Nikmaddu.

“I understand your point,” Nikmaddu answered reasonably.

He was enjoying the coffee. He was not so sure he was enjoying the terrorist beliefs of a half-lira philosopher like the man with the comic mustache here. Nikmaddu himself had worked with Osama bin Laden on the Dhahran bombing attack in which nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed. It was his own belief that onlymajor attacks of terrorism would leave any impression at all on the forces of evil polluting the Arab world. Only desperation measures would provoke wholesale departures. The withdrawal of all U.S. and western forces from Moslem countries in general and from the Arabian Peninsula in particular was the stated goal ofal Quaida. Killing all Americans, including civilians, everywhere in the world was merely a means toward this end. But Nikmaddu was nothing if not a faithful servant of God. Someone higher up had ordered the Clarendon Hall bombing. He was here merely to serve.

They sat sipping coffee.

“Tell me the plan,” Nikmaddu said.

THE OWNER OF Diamondback Books was named Jotham Davis. He was in his early forties, Ollie guessed, a black man with an entirely bald and very shiny head. He was wearing black jeans, black loafers, and a black turtleneck sweater. A gold chain hung around his neck, dangling to somewhere in the middle of his narrow chest. He told them that in the Bible, Jotham was the youngest of Gideon’s seventy sons. He told them things were quiet after Christmas. He told them fifty percent of a bookstore’s sales were in the three months before Christmas. He told them if a bookstore didn’t make it at Christ-mastime, it might as well fold. Ollie thought he was full of shit. That was because Ollie figured a Negro couldn’t possibly know anything about selling books.

It was now almost twelve noon on the twenty-eighth day of December, three days before New Year’s Eve, six minutes or so before lunch time. Ollie was always aware of the clock, but only because it announced mealtimes. He and Carella had been in the shop for almost ten minutes now, listening to this bald jackass telling them about the book business when all they wanted was information about Jerome Hoskins who’d been shot at the back of the head and stuffed in a garbage can four days ago.

“You sell many books from Wadsworth and Dodds?” Ollie asked. “In the three months before Christmas?” He was thinking these people would probably be his publishers once he finished his book, so he wanted to know how well their books sold.

“Not too many,” Jotham said. “They publish mostly technical stuff, you know.”

“What do you mean, technical?” Carella asked.

“Engineering stuff, architectural. Like that.”

“How about thrillers?” Ollie asked.

“Haven’t seen any thrillers from them,” Jotham said.

“They told me they do some thrillers.”

“Maybe so. I just haven’t seen any.”

“Did their salesman mention any thrillers to you?”

“No, I don’t recall him mentioning any thrillers.”

“Man named Jerome Hoskins? He never mentioned any thrillers to you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“When’s the last time he came by?” Carella asked.

“Must’ve been in September? Maybe October. Sometime around then. That’s when most of the reps come around. Right after they have their sales conferences.”

“Was he in here last week?” Ollie asked.

“Nossir.”

“Two days before Christmas, to be exact.”

“Nossir, he definitely was not in here two days before Christmas.”

“You read newspapers?” Ollie asked.

“I do.”

“You watch television?”

“I do.”

“Read or see anything about Hoskins in the past few days?”

“No, I didn’t. What happened to him?”

“How do you know anything happened to him?” Carella asked.

Jotham gave him a look that said Man, when you were born and raised in this neighborhood and two cops come calling on you one fine morning, and start asking questions about the last time a sales rep was in here, you know damn well they ain’t here to buy no book about electrical engineering.

“Thanks for your time,” Carella said.

Not three blocks away from the bookstore, Wiggy the Lid was talking to the bartender at the Starlight Bar, where he’d met one of the blondes who’d cold-cocked him on Christmas night.

“I NEVER SEED HER before that night,” the bartender said.

“Just walked in out of the blue, is that it, John?”

“That’s what it was, Mr. Wiggins.”

“She ever been in here before?”

“Don’t recollect seeing her.”

“Or another blonde looked just like her?”

“I’d’ve remembered somebody looked like that,” John said.

“Neither one of them come in here, ast did a man named Wiggy Wiggins frequent this place?”

“No, neither one of ’em, Mr. Wiggins.”

“Man named Wiggy the Lid? Did either one of ’em come in here, ax for me by that name?”

“Nobody come in here axin for you by no name at all.”

“Cause I think she come in lookin for me, John.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“I think she knew I’d be here, come in here lookin for me specific.”

John the bartender clucked his tongue in sympathy.

“Found out somehow that I drop in here every now and then, come in here toget me, John.”

John the bartender clucked his tongue again.

“You didn’t happen to see me get in that limo with her, did you?”

“Well, yes, I was watchin thu the winder.”

Wiggy opened his eyes wide.

“You didn’t happen to see the license plate, did you?”

John the bartender grinned from ear to ear.

IN THE NEXT three bookshops on the list Ollie had obtained from Wadsworth and Dodds, the two detectives learned a few things about the publishing business in general and his prospective publisher in particular.

“A sales rep’ll make fifty to seventy K a year,” the first of the booksellers told them. His name was Oscar Haynes. He asked them to call him Oz. Ollie figured him for a fag because he was wearing a purple shirt.

“To cover the U.S., you’ve got to hire, what, twenty to thirty reps?” Oz said. “That comes to big bucks. Frankly, I don’t see how a small firm like W&D can afford that kind of coverage.”

“They’ve only got five reps,” Ollie said.

“Even so, that comes to two hundred and fifty K minimum,” Oz said. “That’s a lot of bread.”

In the second bookstore, they learned from a bookseller whose last name was African and unpronounceable—he asked them to call him Ali—that most publishers have a two-season list, and it was therefore not unusual for Jerome Hoskins to make calls here only twice a year. “Unless a house has a big bestseller, where there’ll be reorders, a rep has no reason to come by again. W&D has never had a bestseller in its history, take it from me.”

“Never?”Ollie said, dismayed.

“Not that I know of. You want my opinion, W&D publishes books nobody wants to read.”

In the third and last of the bookshops, they learned that a firm the size of Wadsworth and Dodds usually employs a distribution company to peddle its books. “A distributor will handle sales for a hundred or so small companies,” the bookseller told them. His name was David. He was black, too, and he was wearing a pink shirt. Ollie figured him for another fag. Ollie was beginning to think the entire industry was populated with faggot Negro booksellers. “I’m surprised W&D has its own reps, really,” David said.

“Did Jerome Hoskins stop by here on the twenty-third?” Carella asked.

“If he did, it had to be after five o’clock. That’s when I closed.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?” Ollie asked.

“September sometime. October. Around then.”

“Ever see him with any other W&D reps?”

“Nope.”

“Man named Randolph Biggs? Ever meet him? From Texas?”

“Nope.”

It was time for lunch and all they’d learned about Hoskins was that he hadn’t visited any of his bookshop customers on the twenty-third. Which meant he’d been up here for some other reason. Some other reason that had got him shot in the head and dumped in a garbage can.

“Total fucking loss,” Ollie said.

“Not entirely,” Carella said. “We now know Wadsworth and Dodds is a two-bit publisher that never had a bestseller in its history.”

“Who gives a shit?” Ollie said. Actually, he was heartbroken; he’d been hoping his first novel would sell millions of copies.

“But they hired five sales reps, anyway,” Carella said. “At fifty to seventy grand a pop. To peddle a list of books nobody wants to read.”

“Let’s go eat,” Ollie said.

SINCE THE ABILITY to fix tickets for traffic violations was essential to Wiggy the Lid’s business, one of the people on his payroll was a sergeant in the Motor Vehicles Bureau. He called the man—whose name was Evan Grimes—at one o’clock that afternoon, and asked if he could trace a car for him, and then gave him the license plate number John the bartender had seen through the window of the Starlight on Christmas night. Grimes got back to him ten minutes later. He told him that the car was registered to a company called West Side Limousine, and he gave Wiggy an address and a telephone number he could call. He also advised Wiggy not to call him at work again and hung up abruptly, which was tantamount to a gladiator thumbing his nose at the emperor. Wiggy called him back, at work, an instant later.

“Let me splain the rules of the game, shithead,” he said.

Grimes listened.

Carefully.

Then he personally called the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission and asked if a trip sheet had been filed by West Side Limo for a pickup at the Starlight Bar on St. Sebastian and Boyle around oneA.M . on December twenty-sixth. “License plate would’ve been WU 3200,” Grimes said, “I don’t have the car number.” The guy at T&L asked him to wait while he checked, and then came back on the line some five minutes later.

“I think I got what you want,” he told Grimes. “But I don’t have it as the Starlight Bar. I’ve got it as 1271 St. Sebastian.”

“What time would that have been?”

“Ten past one.”

“That’d be it. Who ordered the car?”

“Company named Wadsworth and Dodds. You need an address?”

“Please,” Grimes said.

Which is how, within minutes of each other that Thursday afternoon, three people converged on the old landmark building off Headley Square.

One of them was Wiggy Wiggins himself.

The other two were Detectives Steve Carella and Ollie Weeks.

ACTUALLY, THEY RODE UP in the elevator together.

Wiggy knew these two dudes were cops the minute they stepped into the car. He could smell cops from a hundred miles away. Even if he hadn’t seen the butt of a nine-millimeter pistol showing under the fat one’s jacket, he’d have spotted him for plainclothes. The other one, tall and slender, had Chinese eyes that didn’t hide the look of awareness about him, as if he was expecting a crime to erupt around him any minute and was getting ready for it to happen. The fat one was saying that was the worse pastrami sandwich he’d ever had in his life. Half of it was on his jacket, from the looks of it, mustard stains on one of the lapels, ketchup stains on the other. Wiggy looked up at the ceiling.

The elevator operator was a pimply-faced white kid wearing a brown uniform with gold braid. “Fourth floor,” he said, as the elevator ground to a halt. He slid open the door and looked over his shoulder at all three of them. The two cops—Wiggy was sure they were—stepped out into a large waiting room with framed posters of books lining the walls. Wiggy hesitated.

“Sir?” the elevator operator said. “This is the fourth floor.”

In the next ten seconds, Wiggy did some quick calculations. Two blondes had forced him to give up the money he’d taken from Frank Holt before shooting him dead and stuffing him in a garbage can. Now two cops were here at the place that had hired the limo for the two blondes. Was it possible the cops were also looking for the blondes? If so, how long would it be before they linked Wiggy himself to the murder of Frank Holt?

“I think I made a mistake here,” he said to the elevator operator.

“Hi, Charmaine,” the fat cop said to the fat broad behind the reception desk.

“Take me back to the lobby,” Wiggy said.

The elevator operator shrugged and started to pull the door shut.

The tall, slender cop turned and took a look at Wiggy just as the closing door blocked him from view.

THE MAN WHO INTRODUCED HIMSELF as the publisher here at Wadsworth and Dodds was wearing a brown suit, darker brown shoes, a corn-colored shirt, and a green bow tie sprinkled with gold polka dots. He had snow white hair, and he told Carella his name was Richard Halloway. He remembered Ollie as DetectiveWatts, a misapprehension Ollie quickly corrected.

“It’sWeeks, sir,” he said. “Detective OliverWeeks.”

“Yes, of course, how stupid of me,” Halloway said. “Sit down, gentlemen, please. Some coffee?”

“I could use a cup,” Ollie said.

“Detective Carella?”

“Yes, please.”

Halloway lifted the receiver on his phone, pressed a button on the base, and asked someone to bring in some coffee. He put down the receiver, turned to the detectives, smiled, and said, “So. What brings you back here, Detective Weeks?”

“We’re still trying to figure out what Jerry Hoskins was doing up in Diamondback on December twenty-third,” Ollie said. “According to his customers, he wasn’t there to see any of them.”

“It is peculiar, isn’t it?” Halloway said.

“A couple of the booksellers seemed surprised you had sales reps at all,” Carella said.

“Oh? Did they?”

“Seemed to think a firm this size might do better with a distributor.”

“We’ve considered that, of course. But then we wouldn’t get the personal service we now enjoy.”

“Five sales reps altogether,” Carella said.

“Yes.”

“One of them in Texas, is that right?”

Before Halloway could answer, a knock sounded on the door, and the receptionist came in with a tray on which there was a pot of coffee, three cups and saucers, a pitcher of milk, and a bowl containing an assortment of white, pink, and blue packets.

“Ah, thank you, Charmaine,” Halloway said.

Charmaine put the tray down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

“You wouldn’t have any cookies or anything, would you, Charmaine?” Ollie asked.

“Well … uh …”

“See if we have any cookies,” Halloway said.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and went out.

Ollie was already pouring.

“How do you take this?” he asked.

“Black for me,” Halloway said.

“A little milk, one sugar,” Carella said.

He was watching Halloway. A good three or four minutes had passed since he’d asked about the sales rep in Texas, more than enough time for Halloway to frame an answer. Halloway seemed to be engrossed in Ollie’s short order technique. Ollie was opening a packet of sugar now, pouring it into Carella’s cup. He handed it to him, and then carried Halloway’s black coffee to the desk. Charmaine came in with a platter of Fig Newtons, just as Ollie sat on the couch beside Carella again.

“Thank you, Charmaine,” he said.

Charmaine smiled at him and went out.

“Your rep in Texas,” Carella said.

“Yes.”

“He lives in Eagle Branch, is that right?”

“Yes, Eagle Branch.”

“You listed his name as Randolph Biggs …”

“Yes, that’s his name.”

“Would this be a side job for him?”

“A side job?”

“A second job. He wouldn’t have another job, would he?”

“Not that I know of. Another job? No. Why would he have another job? Working for us keeps him busy enough, I’m sure.”

“He wouldn’t be a Texas Ranger, would he?”

Halloway burst out laughing.

“Forgive me,” he said, “a TexasRanger? I hardly think so.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“Of course I’ve met him.”

“Did Jerry Hoskins know him?” Ollie asked.

“Yes, I’m sure they knew each other. I’m sure they were at sales conferences together.”

“Twice a year, is that right?” Carella asked.

“Yes. In the spring and the fall.”

“Would they have seen each other this year?”

“I feel certain.”

“This spring? This fall?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Where, Mr. Halloway?”

“Why, here. We had both conferences at the Century Hotel.”

“You didn’t have your conferences in Texas, did you?”

“No.”

“Eagle Branch, Texas?”

“No.”

“So they couldn’t have met down there, could they?”

“Hardly.”

“When’s the last time you yourself saw Mr. Biggs?”

“When he was up here in September. For our last sales conference.”

“Do you talk to him often?”

“Every now and then.”

“Will you be talking to him anytime soon?”

“I would imagine.”

“Tell him we were asking for him, will you?”

“I’ll be sure to.”

There seemed nothing further to say.

Carella was wondering if they had enough on Biggs to justify an arrest warrant and extradition from Texas. Ollie was thinking he would like to ask this little white-haired son of a bitch if he knew that Biggs had introduced Cassandra Ridley to his friend Frank Holt, who’d paid her two hundred thousand dollars to fly dope up from Mexico. He wanted to ask him if maybe Biggs had athird job besides sales rep and Texas Ranger, and could that third job possibly be smuggling drugs? He wanted to suggest that if one of Halloway’s sales reps was fucking with drugs down in Mexico then maybeanother of his reps was doing the same thing up in Diamondback, which was maybe what had got him killed. Ollie wanted to scare the shit out of Halloway, was what he wanted. Sometimes, if you scared them hard enough, they jumped the wrong way.

The silence lengthened.

“Well,” Carella said, “thanks for your time. We appreciate it.”

“Andthe delightful repast,” Ollie said, and stuffed some Fig Newtons into his jacket pocket.

They were walking out of the Headley Building, toward the square across the street with its statue of William George Douglas Rae, the gentleman scholar who had captivated the heart of the city with his grace, his charm, and his sparkling wit, when Ollie said, “What do you think? Is the flyboy’s word enough for an arrest warrant?”

“What flyboy?”

“Cass Ridley’s brother in Germany.”

“Depends on what judge we get.”

“You think Halloway’s in on this?”

“In on what?”

“On whatever the fuck itis.”

“If he is, we’ve got him thinking.”

“We shoulda scared him more.”

“I think we scared him enough,” Carella said.

But Halloway’s bad day was just beginning.

THE DETECTIVES DIDN’T NOTICE Walter Wiggins cross the street and head toward the Headley Building the moment he spotted them coming out onto the sidewalk. Nor did they notice the two Hispanic-looking men who crossed the little park in the square and walked toward the building, reaching it at just about the same time Wiggy did. The two men were Francisco Octavio Ortiz and Cesar Villada, and they had just arrived from Mexico this morning.

They got into the elevator with Wiggy, and all three men told the operator they wanted the fourth floor. The two Mexicans gave Wiggy a glance and then turned away. To Wiggy, they looked like spic hit men. He was beginning to regret having come here altogether. First two bulls in the elevator and now two big hitters. “Fourth floor,” the elevator operator said, and yanked open the door. Wiggy was looking out at the same reception room he’d seen half an hour ago, same fat white chick behind the desk. The two Latinos stepped out of the elevator ahead of him, no fuckin manners. They walked to the desk, Wiggy right behind them.

“We’re looking for a man who works here named Jerome Hoskins,” one of them said.

It came out, “We lookin for a man worrs here name Jerr-o Hosk.”

“Frank Holt,” the other one said.

The last name came out “Hote.”

Which was clear enough to Wiggy, who all at once began to think these two Spanish-American gentlemen were not two hitters but were instead two detectives from the Eight-Eight, investigating the murder of Frank Holt. He almost bolted for the elevator.

“I can’t understand what you’re saying,” the receptionist said, squinting.

“What’syour name?” the first man asked.

He made it sound like a threat, even though it came out with a Spanish accent as thick as guacamole.

“Charmaine,” she said.

“You know a man name Randoff Beegs?” he said. “In Texas?”

“Eagle Branch,” the other one said.

Wiggy was trying to remember if Frank Holt had told him he’d come up from Eagle Branch, Texas. All he could recall was him saying the hundred keys of cocaine had come up from Guenerando, Mexico. He wondered now if Guenerando was anywhere near Eagle Branch. He tried to appear as if he was not listening to the conversation between these two possible dicks and the fat chick behind the desk, but he was standing only three feet behind them, and it was impossible to appear small and insignificant when he weighed two hundred and ten pounds and stood an even six feet tall. He wondered if he should go sit on the bench against the wall, but then he’d miss this fascinating conversation about the man he’d shot in the head. So he stood where he was and pretended not to be eavesdropping. He would have whistled to show how nonchalant he was, but he thought that might only attract attention to him.

“What was that name again?” Charmaine asked. “In Texas?”

“Randolph Biggs,” the first man said.

It still came out “Randoff Beegs.”

“Oh. Yes,” she said, decoding the accent at last. “Let me see if our sales manager is free.” She lifted the receiver on her phone, pressed a button in its base, asked, “Whom shall I say is here?” and raised her eyes expectantly.

“Francisco Ortiz,” one of the men said.

“Cesar Villada,” the other one said.

Wiggy noticed that they did not flash gold badges or identify themselves as detectives. Maybe they were associated with Mr. Holt in some other way. Maybe they were from Eagle Branch, Texas. Maybe they were good old buddies of Frank Holt’s, here to inquire how come he was now dead. In which case, Wiggystill felt he ought to get out of here fast.

“Miss Andersen,” Charmaine said, “there are two gentlemen here inquiring about Mr. Biggs.” She listened, nodded, looked up at the two men again. “May I say what firm you’re with?” she asked.

“Villada and Ortiz,” Ortiz said.

“Villada and Ortiz,” Charmaine said. She listened again. “Is that a bookstore?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s a bookstore,” Villada said.

“In Eagle Branch,” Ortiz said. “Texas,” he said. “Villada and Ortiz, Booksellers.”

Charmaine relayed the information, listened again, put the phone receiver back on its cradle, rose, and said, “I’ll show you in.” She turned to Wiggy as she came around the desk, said, “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir, won’t you have a seat?” and walked off with the two men Wiggy now knew owned a bookstore in Eagle Branch, Texas, which sounded like total bullshit to him.

He went over to the wall on the left of the elevator doors, and sat on the bench there. He looked around the room at the posters hanging on the walls. He’d never heard of any of the books. In a minute or so, Charmaine came back. Instead of going to her desk, though, she walked over to where he was waiting, and sat beside him on the bench.

“So,” she said, and smiled. “How can I help you, sir?”

“On Christmas night,” Wiggy said, “somebody up here phoned for a limo. I want to talk to whoever that might’ve been.”

“That’s very fanciful,” Charmaine said, and smiled coquettishly.

“Are you a writer?”

“No, I’m a drug dealer,” Wiggy said, and grinned like a shark.

“I’ll bet,” Charmaine said.

“I run a posse up in Diamondback,” he said.

“Oh, sure,” she said.

“Who do I talk to about this limo was called for?”

“Ifanyonecalled for a limo, it would’ve been Douglas Good, our publicity director. But no one was here on Christmas night. We closed on Christmas Eve at three in the afternoon, and didn’t open again till the following Tuesday. But I’ll see if Mr. Good will talk to you.”

“Just tell him Mr.Bad is here,” Wiggy said, and grinned again.

KAREN ANDERSEN was telling the two Mexicans that Randolph Biggs did indeed work for them, and so had Jerry Hoskins. But she hadn’t seen Randy since their sales conference in September, and Jerry had been the victim of a fatal shooting on Christmas Eve. Was there anythingshe could do for the gentlemen?

The gentlemen explained to her—in halting English which she nonetheless understood—that Jerry Hoskins, who until recently they had known only as Frank Holt, had purchased from them a hundred keys of excellent cocaine …

“I beg your pardon,” Karen said, looking astonished.

… for which they had been paid in hundred-dollar bills…

“Gentlemen, I’m sorry,” she said, “but …”

“Yes, we’re sorry, too,” Villada said.

“Because the money was bad,” Ortiz said.

DOUGLAS GOOD was a black man who did not appreciate brothers who looked or sounded like Walter Wiggins.

“Two girls named Sheryl and Toni,” Wiggins was telling him.

“Yes?” Douglas said.

“West Side Limo,” Wiggins said. “The Starlight Bar.”

“Mr. Wiggins …”

“Somebody here called a limo from West Side to take two girls named Sheryl and Toni uptown to a bar named the Starlight on St. Sab’s and Boyle on Christmas night,” Wiggins said. “St. Sebastian’s,” he explained.

“Somebody from Wadsworth andDodds called a limo …”

“Is the information I have.”

“… for two girls named Sheryl and Toni?”

“That’s they names. The ladies owe me some money, bro.”

Douglas didn’t like black men who looked or sounded like Walter Wiggins to call him “bro.”

“Mr. Wiggins,” he said, “we don’t have any women named Sheryl and Toni working for us.”

“Two very tall blond ladies,” Wiggins said.

“I’m sorry.”

“This was a limo from West Side,” Wiggins explained again, patiently. “Black Lincoln Town Car with a chauffeur same color as the car. The blonde named Toni was sittin in it, and she picked up me and the blonde named Sheryl outside the Starlight and drove me to my office on Decatur Av, where they relieved me of a certain amount of money, at gun point, on Christmas night.”

“No one was here on Christmas night,” Douglas said.

“The Taxi and Limousine Commission seems to believe otherwise, bro.”

“The Taxi and Limousine Commission made a mistake,” Douglas said.

“I don’t think so,” Wiggins said.

“Let me ask Mr. Halloway to come in,” Douglas said.

“Who’s Mr. Halloway?”

“Our publisher.”

He went to the desk phone, picked up the receiver, and hit Halloway’s extension button.

“Halloway.”

“Richard, it’s Douglas.”

“Yes, Douglas.”

“I have a man with me who thinks we sent a limo up to Diamondback on Christmas night. His name is Walter Wiggins.”

“He should’ve left well enough alone,” Halloway said.

“I thought you might like to meet him.”

“I’ll be right in,” Halloway said.

Douglas put the receiver back on the cradle, smiled at Wiggins, and said, “He’s on his way.”

KAREN ANDERSEN was still trying to bluff her way out of this.

“Bad money?” she said.

“Counterfeit,” Ortiz said. “We wass paid with queer money.”

“One million seven hun’red t’ousan dollars of it,” Villada said.

Karen smiled.

“We don’t think it’s so funny, Miss,” Ortiz said.

“In any case,” Karen said, “Jerry Hoskins is dead.”

“In any case,” Ortiz said, “so is Randolph Biggs.”

Karen looked at them.

“He met with an electrical accident in Piedras Rosas, Mexico,” Villada said, and nodded.

“We want our money,” Ortiz said.

“Gentlemen, I have absolutelyno idea what you’re talking about,” Karen said.

“We are talking about one million seven hun’red t’ousan dollars two people who worr for you company focked us out of in Mehico,” Villada said.

Or something like that.

Which Karen Andersen all at once understood clearly because Ortiz suddenly seemed to be holding a gun in his hand.

DOUGLAS GOOD didn’t want to say anything further to Mr. Wiggins here until Halloway joined them. Wiggins had obviously done a little research, first locating West Side’s name and next tracing them back to the offices here. Douglas figured the man was here to get his money back, which wasn’t his money at all since he should have paid it to Jerry Hoskins after the cocaine had been turned over. Wiggins’s oversight had resulted in a visit from “The Weird Sisters,” as Sheryl and Toni were affectionately called even though they were not related. W&D’s oversight—or rather Halloway’s—had been in not dispatching the man the moment the money was in their hands. Halloway had ruled out such an action, partially because he had no real evidence that Wiggins had been responsible for the murder of one of their best people, secondly because black-white relationships were touchy enough in Diamondback without giving the drug people up there a reason to distrust future commerce with Whitey. In any case, Wiggins should have left well enough alone. Instead, here he was, the fool.

“You know why I’m here, don’t you?” Wiggins asked, and smiled wisely.

“I have no idea,” Douglas said.

“No, huh? Then why’d you ax your boss to come in?”

Douglas had called Halloway because he was the only person sanctioned to order Wiggins’s death—as he should have done on Christmas night. If Wiggins had anything incriminating to say, he wanted Halloway to hear it first hand. So that maybe he’d give the goddamn correct orders this time around.

“I’m here for my money,” Wiggins said.

Big surprise, Douglas thought, and Halloway walked in without knocking. “Hello, Mr. Wiggins,” he said, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.” The men shook hands. Their eyes met. Douglas figured Wiggins should have known in that single meeting of eyes that he was a dead man. But maybe he was stupid.

“Are you authorized to make a payout?” he asked Halloway. “Cause what I need fum you is one million nine hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

IN ALL HER YEARS with W&D, Karen Andersen had never before looked down the barrel of a gun or into the eyes of a person who would have no qualms about pulling the trigger of that gun. She wondered briefly what Halloway would do in similar circumstances. She had seen him perform admirably in comparably challenging situations, but those had been when they were in bed together, and always during the window of opportunity Viagra presented. She was surprised now to discover that she was not at all frightened. Calmly, coolly, she said, “Please don’t force me to call the police.”

Villada laughed.

Karen reached for the phone on her desk, intending not to call the police but to summon Halloway for help. Ortiz slammed the butt of his revolver down on her hand. She pulled it back, winced, held the throbbing fingers to her breasts. Her lip was quivering, but she did not scream.

“We’ll be back,” Ortiz said. There was blood on the butt of the pistol. He yanked a tissue from the box on Karen’s desk, wiped the butt clean, and tossed the stained tissue into an ashtray. “Get the fockin money,” he said.“Real money this time,comprende?”

“Or we’ll kill every fockin one of you who works here,” Villada said.

Not if we kill you first, Karen thought.

“I HAVE NO IDEA what money you mean,” Halloway said.

“The money your two blond ladies took from me,” Wiggins said.

“I don’t know which ladies you mean.”

“Sheryl and Toni. With the long legs and the AK-47.”

“We have no such employees. Mr. Wiggins,” Halloway said, slowly and distinctly, “you are making a terrible mistake here.”

Their eyes met again.

This time Wiggins read the meaning in them.

Which was perhaps why he drew a pistol from a holster under his jacket. He pointed the gun first at Halloway, and then swung it around toward Douglas, as if to emphasize that his enmity was large enough to include both of them. The gun looked like a snub-nosed .38. Douglas didn’t think the man was foolish enough to kill them here in their own offices, especially since he was here to negotiate the return of money he felt was his. But who knew with these street thugs?

Halloway had been in hairier situations than this one. Not for nothing was he in charge here. He looked at the gun in Wiggins’s hand, and then raised his eyes to meet Wiggins’s again. His eyes seemed to sayThis is only about money, friend. Do you really want to die for it? But would Wiggins have pulled a gun on them if he didn’t realize he was already a dead man?

“You don’t want to do this,” Halloway said.

“I’ve done it before,” Wiggins said.

“Not with the consequences this would bring.”

Douglas knew this was bullshit. If Wiggins had in fact killed Jerry Hoskins, there had been no consequences at all. Wiggins must have realized this, too. He had blown one of them away, and the only thing that had happened was The Wierd Sisters coming to call. Douglas wondered if, in retrospect, Halloway was thinking he should have given the termination order back then on Christmas night. A bit late now, though.

“Tell you what,” Wiggins said. “I realize you don’t have that kind of money juss layin aroun in cash. But go get it, okay? I’ll come see you sometime soon,” he said, and backed away toward the door.

Sometime soon, you’ll be dead, Douglas thought. Bro.

Wiggins stepped out into the hallway.

THE THREE MEN reached the elevator at about the same time. One of the two Mexicans pressed the bell button set in the wall.

“How’d it go?” Wiggy asked them.

“Fockin people still owe us money,” Ortiz said.

Which was how a rather strange triumvirate was founded.

IT WAS STILL THURSDAY on what was shaping up to be the longest day of the year, never mind what the almanac said. Sitting at his desk at a quarter to five that evening, the squadroom almost deserted, Carella tried to make some sense of this bewildering case that seemed to focus entirely on money, real or largely imagined. Theimaginedcash appeared to originate in Iran, where billions of dollars in so-called super-bills were being printed on intaglio presses with plates provided by the good old U.S. of A., talk about payback time.

Carella knew some things for certain. The rest he could only guess at. He knew that Cass Ridley had made four trips to Mexico with a certain amount of money she’d exchanged for some kind of controlled substance, and had been paid $200,000 in cash for her efforts. This money was real, if the lady at First Federal could be trusted, whatever her name was. But Cass Ridley had also been given a ten-grand tip by the pair of Mexicans involved in the transaction, whoeverthey were, andthat money was fake. Poor Will Struthers, trying to spend the cash he’d pilfered, had twice been nailed passing phony hundreds. According to the lady at First Federal, Antonia Lugosi or something, twenty billion dollars in counterfeit hundreds were floating around out there, enough bogus bills to concern the Treasury Department, who had relieved Struthers of the phonies he’d stolen and given him real cash in exchange—but that was only a guess. Belandres! AntoniaBelandres! Hence the Lugosi association, forBela Lugosi, the best Dracula there ever was, the mind worked in curious ways its wonders to reveal.

Carella wished with all his heart that this case would reveal itself as clearly to him as Lucy’s throat had been revealed to the count all those years back when Carella first saw the black-and-white film on television, the count’s head descending, his lips drawing back, the fangs bared, Carella had almost wet his pants.

The money in Jerry Hoskins’ wallet was real, too. No question about that, the Federal Reserve had run it through their machines, the hundred-dollar bills were genuine. But Jerry Hoskins had worked for Wadsworth and Dodds, and the man who’d set up the flying arrangement with Cass Ridley also worked for W&D, though there seemed to be some confusion about whether or not Randolph Biggs wasalso a Texas Ranger, which Carella sincerely doubted—but that, too, was a guess.

Lots of guesswork here, no hard facts.

He wondered what time it was in Texas.

He looked up at the wall clock, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took out his massive directory of law enforcement agencies, found a listing for the Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Austin, figured somebody would be there no matterwhat time it was, and dialed the number. He told the woman who answered the phone what he was looking for, was connected to a sergeant named Dewayne Ralston, repeated everything again, and was asked to “Hang on, Detective.” He hung on. Some five minutes later, Ralston came back onto the line.

“Nobody in the Ranger Division named Randolph Biggs,” he said. “You landed yourself an imposter, Detective.”

“While I’ve got you on the line,” Carella said, “could you check for a criminal record?”

“Don’t go away,” Ralston said.

Carella didn’t go away. Across the room, he could see Kling at his desk, hunched over a computer. Cotton Hawes was just coming through the railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. Telephones were ringing. In one corner of the room, the squad’s meager Christmas tree blinked holiday cheer to the street outside. From the Clerical Office down the hall, he could smell the aroma of coffee brewing. This was a very familiar place to him. He felt suddenly sad and could not have explained why.

“You still there?” Ralston asked.

“Still here.”

“No record on a Randolph Biggs, B-I-G-G-S. But if this is the same dude, he turned up dead in Piedras Rosas two days ago. Found him floating in a tub of water with a plugged-in cattle prod. Death by electrocution. Apparent suicide.”

“That makes two,” Carella said.

“Pardon?”

“One of his colleagues was murdered up here on Christmas Eve.”

“Looks like you got your hands full,” Ralston said.

“Looks that way,” Carella said.

THE PHONE ON Ollie Weeks’s desk rang some five minutes later.

“Weeks,” he said.

“You handlin that murder happened last week?” a man’s voice asked.

“Which murder would that be?” Ollie asked.

Up here in the Eight-Eight, there were 10,247 murders every day of the year.

“The newspaper said he was Jerry Hoskins,” the man said. “To me, he was Frank Holt.”

“Who’s this?” Ollie asked at once.

“Nev’ mine who’s this,” the man said. “I know who killed him.”

Ollie pulled a pad into place.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“Is they a reward?”

“Maybe. I can’t deal with you unless you tell me your name.”

“Tito Gomez,” the man said.

“Can you come up here in half an hour?”

“I rather meet you someplace else.”

“Sure. Where?”

“The Eight’ Street footpath into Grover. Fourth bench in.”

Ollie looked up at the wall clock.

“Make it a quarter to six,” he said.

“See you,” Tito said, and hung up.

Ollie hit the files.

IT DID NOT TAKE Wiggy and the two Mexicans long to discover that what they had in common was a hundred keys of cocaine. It also appeared they had each been stiffed by a company that purported to publish books, but which instead seemed to be involved in the transport and sale of controlled substances. They did not yet know they were fucking with something much bigger here. For the time being their shared grievances were enough to provide motivation for what they planned to do sometime tomorrow.

They were discussing all this over beers in a bar on Grover Avenue, not too distant from Grover Park, where Ollie and Gomez would be meeting twenty minutes from now. In many ways, the big bad city was just a small town.

“I can’t get over these people payin you queer money for your goods,” Wiggy was saying. “Which by the way was very high quality shit, I have to tell you.”

“Gracias, señor,”Ortiz said, pride of product glowing in his eyes.

“Which is a shame,” Wiggy said, “them stiffing you that way. But I have to tell you the moneyI paidthemwas hundred-percent genuine American currency, and I want it back cause they sent two blondes to take it away from me.”

This was not entirely true. Wiggy had never paid a single penny to Hoskins or Holt or whoever he was. He had shot him in the head instead.

“They stoleyour money, too?” Ortiz asked incredulously.

“For damn sure.”

Neither was this entirely true. They had, in fact, taken the money from his safe, but this was not stealing from him. This was collecting money rightfully owed them for the hundred keys of cocaine they’d delivered as promised.

“So they are stealing fromall of us,” Villada said.

“Basic thieves is what they are,” Wiggy said.

“Like us,” Ortiz said, and all three men burst out laughing.

“So what we’re gonna do tomorrow …” Wiggy said.

AT FIRST, it looked as if there was nothing on him but a marijuana violation two years ago. But at the time of the bust, Tito Gomez—whose street name was Tigo—had worked for a place named King Auto Body, and this rang a bell with Ollie. So he cross-checked the files and lo and behold, there it was. A massive conspiracy arrest some six months back. Ollie went to his desk and phoned Carella.

“Steve,” he said, “I got a call from somebody says he knows who killed Hoskins. I’m meeting him in Grover Park ten minutes from now. You want to join us?”

“Where in Grover?” Carella asked.

“WE GO UP THERE TOGETHER,” Wiggy said. “We tell them give us the fuckin money you owe us or you all dead men. Your million-seven. My million-nine.”

Nobody owed Wiggy anything. But he already believed himself the true owner of the million-nine the blondes had taken in rightful payment for the drugs he’d purchased.

“Fockin crooks,” Villada said, shaking his head.

Ortiz was shaking his head, too. But only because he didn’t like the plan. His reasoning was simple. Threats and warnings were one thing. Reality was another. In his broken English, he explained that between yesterday and today, nobody up at Wadsworth and Dodds could have gathered together the million-seven his partner had demanded, much less the million-nine their new associate was seeking. That came to a total of three-million-six …

“Which ees a ho lot of money,” Ortiz explained.

Wiggy was thinking there was once a time in his life when two dollars for a water pistol seemed like a whole lot of money.

TITO GOMEZ was sitting on the fourth bench into the park when Carella got there at ten minutes to six that Thursday night. The two seemed to be hitting it off extremely well. Gomez was smoking a cigarette and listening to Ollie intently as he concluded what was apparently a joke because Gomez burst out laughing just as Carella approached.

“Hey, Steve!” Ollie called. “You know the one about the guy who puts a condom on his piano?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

He sat on the bench beside Gomez, the two detectives flanking him like mismatched bookends. “This the man you were telling me about?” he asked Ollie.

“This is him,” Ollie said. “Tito Gomez. Otherwise known as Tigo. Meet Detective Carella, Tigo.”

Tigo nodded.

“So I understand you want to talk to us about something,” Carella said.

“Yeah, but I ain’t got all day here. You got any more detectives you need to call?” he asked Ollie.

“No, this is all of us,” Ollie said affably. “He says he knows who killed Jerry Hoskins, ain’t that interesting? He wants to know if there’s a reward.”

“We can maybe come up with a little something,” Carella said.

“What do you meanmaybe?”

“We can talk to the commissioner, see what this case means to him.”

He was thinking with counterfeit super-bills somehow involved, the commissioner might be able to come up with a little something.

“What I have in mind is fifty thousand dollars,” Tigo said.

“That’s a lot of money, Tigo.”

“But that’s what makes the world go round, no?” Tigo said, and grinned. “Money, money, money.”

“Well, that all depends on the value of the information you have for us, eh,amigo?” Ollie said, still affably.

Tigo didn’t like to be called“amigo.” His father was from Puerto Rico, true enough, but his mother was black, and he was proud of his heritage on her side of the family. As pleasantly as he could—these were, after all, cops he was dealing with—he said, “I don’t speak Spanish,amigo,” which was a lie, but which seemed to make his point.

“Oh, sorry,” Ollie said, “I didn’t realize. So tell us why you wanted to see us.”