Money, Money, Money

“There was this buy on Decatur Av?” Tigo said, making it sound like a question. “Guy runs a posse from a crib on the whole second floor there, knocked out the walls of three apartments? He brings up dope from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, sells it in ten-kilo lots for forty, fifty a pop, whatever the traffic will bear. I’ve been workin for him almost two years now, you’d think he’d start talkin bout makin me a partner, but no. He’s still got me on salary …”

So that’s why he’s ratting him out, Carella thought.

“… treats me like a fuckin courier, don’t get me started. I used to make more money driving the truck. I used to drive a tow truck for this auto body shop on Mason.”

“What’s this guy’s name?” Carella said.

“First tell me how much the commissioner’s gonna okay on this,” Tigo said.

“Well, we haven’t talked to him yet,” Ollie said affably. “We have togo to him with something, you see. We tell him there’s this guymaybehas information, he’ll say go take a walk, fellas.”

“Can you at least tell us when this buy went down?” Carella asked.

“Sure,” Tigo said. “Four, five days ago.”

“When exactly?”

“What’s today?”

“The twenty-eighth.”

“So it must’ve been … let me see.” He began counting back on his fingers. “Last Saturday night? When was that? Christmas Eve?”

“No, the twenty-third,” Ollie said.

“So that’s when it was. Like I said. Four, five days ago.”

“Where?” Carella asked.

“I told you, this crib on Decatur. It’s these three apartments, this person we’re talking about knocked out the …”

“What’s the address?”

“1280 Decatur.”

“Were you there when the buy went down?”

“Yeah. This dude was waitin in the front room while we tested the shit. He was supposed to get a mill-nine for the hundred keys.”

“What was his name?”

“Frank Holt. But his picture in the paper said he was Jerry Hoskins. The same guy, right?”

“The same guy,” Carella said. “Tell us what happened.”

“This is where the bus stops,” Tigo said. “Go talk to the commissioner.”

“Suppose we go to 1280 Decatur instead, talk to whoever’s got the second floor there, tell him his trusted employee just ratted him out?” Carella said.

“Now, now, Steve,” Ollie said affably. “The man hasn’t ratted out anyone yet, have you, Tigo?”

“Not till I see the green.”

“You just told us you participated in a drug deal, do you realize that?” Carella said. He was thinking this was an odd reversal of roles, him playing Bad Cop to Ollie’s Good.

“Gee, did I?” Tigo said. “Are you wired, Detective? If not, who’s your witness? Another cop? A bullshit bust, and you know it.”

“I can tell you right now, nobody’s giving you fifty thousand dollars so we can nail a two-bit drug dealer in Diamondback.”

“Even if it’s murder?”

“Even if he raped the Mayor’s mother.”

“How muchare you prepared to give me?”

Sounding like a fucking lawyer all at once.

“You tell us you witnessed a murder, you give us all the details, you agree to testify at trial, we can maybe scrape up two or three …”

“Goodbye, gentlemen,” Tigo said, and got off the bench.

“Sit down, punk,” Ollie said.

Tigo looked surprised.

“Isaidsit the fuckdown.”

Tigo sat.

“Let me tell you what you’re gonna do for us,” Ollie said.

“OKAY, I got a better idea,” Wiggy was telling the two Mexicans. “We go in heavy, all three of us. Semi-automatics under our overcoats. We hold the mother-fuckers hostage.”

Villada looked at Ortiz.

“We go in early tomorrow morning. They got the whole fourth floor, ain’t nobody but us gonna know we’re in there holdin guns on them. We stay there till they come up with the cash.”

“The banks will be closed till Tuesday,” Ortiz said.

“It’s the long weekend,” Villada said, nodding agreement.

“Man, they stole a mill-nine from me, you think they put that in abank?These people are thieves, man. They got that moneystashed someplace, is what. All we got to do is ask that white-haired fuck to take us to wherever it is.”

“What aboutour money?” Ortiz asked.

“We’ll get that, too, don’t worry,” Wiggy said. “One thing I know for sure, you stick a piece in some dude’s face, he’s gonna give you every fuckin nickel he has.”

Actually, Wiggy didn’t give a rat’s ass about their money. Far as he was concerned, they could eat tacos and beans the rest of they fuckin lives. All he needed them for was the extra muscle they brought to the gig. He was already figuring they would be the ones who stayed behind to watch the others while him and Halloway went to retrieve the money that was rightfully his.

Ortiz was ahead of him.

“Who goes for the money?” he asked.

“Halloway. Their boss.”

“Who goeswith him?”

“Any one of us,” Wiggy said.

“I think it should be either me or Cesar,” Ortiz said.

“Sure, whoever,” Wiggy said, and grinned.

TIGO SAID NO, he would not go in with no wire on him.

Ollie said either he wore the wire or they would bust his ass for the Fire Lane Scam.

“What the fuck is the Fire Lane Scam?” Tigo asked.

“You drove the tow truck, remember?” Ollie said affably. In fact, he was actually smiling.

“What’s the Fire Lane Scam?” Carella asked.

“What I done when Tigo called me,” Ollie said, “was see what we had on him in the files. Aside from a bullshit marijuana violation two years ago …”

“I was acquitted.”

“I told you. Bullshit. In fact, I was just about to tell Detective Carella here that there didn’t seem to be anything else on you. So I figured you were clean.”

“I am.”

“Except for participating in a drug deal last Saturday night,” Carella said.

“You got only my word for that,” Tigo said, making a joke. In fact, he grinned at them as if expecting them to laugh.

Ollie didn’t laugh, but he grinned back.

“Your record said you were employed by King Auto Body when you were busted for the weed,” Ollie said. “So I cross-checked and found out why that name sounded familiar. I found a big, big arrest six months ago, Tigo. The Fire Lane Scam. For which Joey King—no relation to Larry—is doing a five-and-dime at Castleview. You know what I’m talking about now, Tigo?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You were driving a tow truck for him, right?”

“That’s right. I went out on calls for dead batteries, flat tires, lockouts, like that.”

“You also went out on calls for Berry Appliances, who were in on the scam with Joey.”

“I never heard of anything called Berry Appliances.”

“George and Michael Berry,” Ollie said. “They used to sell washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, all that shit. A shop on Twelfth and Moore, you remember it?”

“No.”

“Had a little alley running alongside the shop, remember the alley?”

“No.”

“What it was,” Ollie explained to Carella, “George Berry went to the Fire Department and greased a few palms—they all went down together, by the way. Joey King, George and his brother, and the two Fire Department assholes who signed papers declaring the alley a so-called fire lane. They’re all exercising in the yard upstate.”

“Ho-hum,” Tigo said.

“Yeah, ho-hum,” Ollie said, and turned back to Carella again.

“What it was, George and his brother posted these signs on the walls of the alley saying it was a fire lane, and you couldn’t park there, or your car would be towed if you did. Guy comes back, finds his car towed, he reads the small print on the bottom of the sign, it tells him he can recover the car at King’s Auto Body Shop on Mason Avenue. What Tigo here did was make a sweep of the alley every few hours, tow any car parked there. There were always five, six cars in the alley, nobody paid any attention to the signs. Tigo picked up the cars, towed them over to King’s. When the owner came to collect his car, Joey told him it would cost a hundred bucks to release it. You towed maybe twenty cars a night, didn’t you, Tigo? People in this city have no fuckin respect for the law. ‘No Parking’ signs all over the alley, ‘Fire Lane,’ they just ignored them. A hundred bucks a car, that’s two thousand bucks these guys were splitting every night of the week. That’s like fourteen grand a week, how much do we make, Steve?”

“Not that much,” Carella said.

“Not even in a good week,” Ollie said. “I keep tellin you, we’re in the wrong business.”

“Where’d you get all this shit?” Tigo said, shaking his head as if in disbelief.

“It’s all in the record. You were driving the tow truck. But you told the D.A. you were just a salaried employee who didn’t know anything wrong was going on, and they believed you. You were just a kid, they had bigger fish to fry. But guess what Joey King told me?”

“You talked toJoey?”

“Yeah, gee, I did. I figured I might need insurance if you got all pissy on me. So I called Castleview just before I left the squadroom, had a nice little chat with him. He told me they were paying you twenty bucks for every car you brought in. Three, four hundred bucks a night. Something like two grand a week. You were in on the deal, Tigo.”

“I was a salaried employee. Go look at my social security records.”

“Salaryplus,Tigo. You were part of a conspiracy. You should be up there at Castleview with them.”

“But I ain’t,” Tigo said.

“Ah, but you could be. Joey seems to think early parole sounds very nice indeed.”

Tigo looked at him.

“He’s ready to rat you out, friend, ah yes.”

“You’re full of shit,” Tigo said.

“Well, maybe so,” Ollie said affably.

“Tigo,” Carella said, “I think he’s got us.”

10 .

CHARMAINE LOOKED UP when the three of them came out of the elevator. The moment the doors closed behind them, guns came out from under their coats. She was reaching for a button on her desk when Wiggy said, “Don’t, Fatso.” This hurt. A moment later he slapped her across the face to let her know he was serious. This hurt even more. One of the Mexicans was already rushing down the long corridor flanked with posters of books nobody ever heard of. Wiggy went directly into Halloway’s office.

He was hunched over his computer keyboard, his jacket draped over the back of his chair, his bow tie hanging unknotted and loose around his neck, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up. He jerked his head around the moment Wiggy burst into the room, and then immediately stabbed at one of the keys on the computer. Four key strokes would have allowed him to escape the program and the machine: the Windows key to the right of the space bar, the Up arrow, the Enter key, and the Enter key again. Once the computer was shut down, no one would be able to boot it again without the proper password. Halloway managed to hit the Windows key, and was about to tap the Up arrow when Wiggy said, “Don’t, Whitey.” Halloway hesitated. For a moment, it seemed he might complete the action, anyway. Just tap the remaining three keys, and shut down the computer, effectively locking it.

But the gun in Wiggy’s hand was very big and rather ugly.

THERE WERE EIGHT EMPLOYEES altogether, all of them seated around the long conference table now. Richard Halloway sat at the head of the table, as befitted his status as publisher. David Good from Publicity sat on his left, Karen Andersen from Sales on his right. There was an editor named Michael Garrity, and another editor named Henry Daggert. There was Charmaine, the fat receptionist, and someone named George Young from the stock room, and someone else named Betty Alweiss from the Art Department. Eight of them in all. They all looked frightened.

Wiggy and the two Mexicans leaned against three of the walls, weapons in their hands. Wiggy was holding a Cobray M11-9 he had purchased last night for five hundred dollars from a man named Little Nicholas in Diamondback. Villada and Ortiz were each carrying Mark XIX Desert Eagle pistols. The clock on the conference room wall read twenty minutes to ten. They had caught everyone by surprise, and now they were about to lay their demands on the table.

The Mexicans had decided to let Wiggy do all the talking. Ortiz had objected to this at first, on the grounds that his English was impeccable. Villada had convinced him at last. The men leaned against the walls nonchalantly. Their weapons—dangling casually in their hands—looked almost nonthreatening. The three of them figured they had nothing to worry about here with these bookish types. Little did they know.

“Now, this here’s the story,” Wiggy said. “Our grievance is a mill-seven for my frens here, and a mill-nine for me. We don’t know where you keep your stash, but one of you’s gonna go with one of us to get the cash an’ bring it back here. Then we’ll all be on our way, and you alls can go home to enjoy the ress of the holiday. Do I make myself clear?”

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Halloway said.

“We’re bettin you do,” Wiggy said. “We’re bettin you’ll go get it before …”

He looked up at the clock.

“Before six o’clock tonight. That’s eight hours from now, more or less. Cause for every hour we sit here without goin for the money, we’re gonna hafta shoot one of you. Eight hours, eight people. By six o’clock, you all be dead less’n we has our money. Do I make myself clear now?”

The room was silent.

“I’ll have to make some calls,” Halloway said.

“We’ll be listening,” Wiggy said.

The Mexicans were smiling.

Wiggy figured he had made himself clear.

THE MEN OF THE 87th Detective Squad couldn’t seem to keep their minds on business at their weekly Friday-morning, think-tank meeting. Carella was trying to tell them what he and Ollie had learned from Tito “Tigo” Gomez. He was trying to tell them that if Tigo could be trusted, a dope dealer named Walter “Wiggy” Wiggins was responsible for the murder of Jerome “Jerry”Hoskins, alias Frank Holt …

“Was that in this precinct?” Lieutenant Byrnes asked.

“No, but the murdered woman was.”

“What murdered woman?” Andy Parker asked.

He was dressed for undercover work today, which meant he hadn’t shaved, and he was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck sweater and a brown leather jacket and motorcycle boots. He thought he looked like an upscale drug dealer. Actually, he looked like a slob.

“The woman who got eaten by lions,” Meyer said.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Parker said.

“This happened a week ago, where have you been?” Brown said.

“She got stabbed with an ice pick first,” Carella explained.

“What’s Hoskins got to do with her?” Byrnes asked impatiently. He was thinking if any of this had happened in some other precinct, he’d be glad to get it off his plate.

“He paid her to pick up some dope in Mexico,” Meyer said.

“Which he later sold to this Wiggy character,” Carella said.

“Who paidhim with a bullet in the head.”

“Here in the Eight-Seven?”

“No, the Eight-Eight. Fat Ollie caught it.”

“So let him keep it.”

“He also caught one-fifth of the Ridley case.”

“Who’s Ridley?” Parker asked.

“The lady who got eaten by lions,” Kling said.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Parker said.

“How can you catch one-fifth of a case?” Willis asked.

“Her leg,” Meyer said.

“Am I supposed to be following this?” Parker asked.

“Nobody else is,” Byrnes said. “Why should you be an exception?”

“The point is,” Carella said, somewhat edgily, “we’re sending Gomez in with a wire.”

“Why?” Brown asked.

“Cause we’ve maybe got a line on the perp in a homicide.”

“This Wiggy character?”

“Right. Who maybe killed Jerry Hoskins, who for sure hired Cass Ridley to go to Mexico for him.”

“Andwecaught the Ridley case, is what you’re saying.”

“Four-fifths of her.”

“Why’s this so important, anyway?” Parker asked, and looked around the room, and shrugged, and said, “Don’t anybody want a bagel?” and went to help himself from the tray on Byrnes’s desk.

“There’s funny money involved,” Carella said.

“So let the Secret Service worry,” Byrnes said.

“They are worrying,” Carella said. “They grabbed eight grand in queer bills from a two-bit burglar and gave him real currency in return.”

“The lunatics have taken over the asylum,” Hawes said.

“I don’t like complicated cases,” Parker said.

“Neither do I,” Byrnes said.

“Well, that’s truly unfortunate,” Carella said, “but I didn’t ask tocatch this one, either.”

“What the hell’s wrong withyou this morning?” Parker asked.

“I’m trying to make some sense of this goddamn case, that’s all, and you guys are …”

“Relax, okay? Have a bagel.”

“There’s dope involved here,” Carella said, gathering steam, “and counterfeit money, and the Secret Service, and Christ knows what …”

“So let our new President handle it,” Parker said.

“Sure.”

“Our beloved flounder,” Willis said.

“Lethimask the Secret Service what’s going on here,” Brown said.

“Sure.”

“Next motorcade he’s in,” Hawes said, “he can wave out of his limo and ask them what they know about a lady got eaten by lions.”

“Go on, Steve, have a bagel,” Parker said.

“I don’t want a bagel,” Carella said.

“You know who woulda made a better President than the one we got now?” Hawes said.

“Who?” Kling asked.

“Martin Sheen.”

“The guy onThe West Wing, you’re right!”

“He’d call the Secret Service on the carpet, tell them to quit handing out good money for bad.”

“No, you know who’d do that? If he was President?” Willis said.

“Who?” Kling asked.

“Harrison Ford.”

“Air Force One!”

“President James Marshall!”

“Oh, yeah!” Brown said. “He was maybe thebest President we ever had. Remember what he said? ‘Peace ain’t merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.’ Man, that’s fancy talking.”

“Remember what thebad guy said?” Willis asked.

“Who cares what bad guys say?” Parker said, and took another bagel from the tray.

“He said, ‘You murdered a hundred thousand Iraqis to save a nickel a gallon on gas. Don’t lecture me on the rules of war.’That’s fancy talking, man.”

“That was Bush he was talking about,” Kling said.

“No, that was President James Marshall,” Willis said.

“Yeah, but that wasBush who started the Gulf War.”

“You want to know who was an evenbetter President than Harrison Ford?” Hawes said.

“Who?”

“Michael Douglas.”

“Oh,yeah.”

“He was maybe the best President we ever had. You see that movie, Steve?”

“No,” Carella said curtly.

“Have a bagel, sourpuss,” Parker said.

“The American President.That was the movie. Michael Douglas was President Andrew Shepherd.”

“You remember who his aide was?” Kling asked.

“No, who?”

“Martin Sheen! Who is nowPresident!”

“President Josiah Bartlet!”

“PresidentJedBartlet.”

“What goes around, comes around.”

“What’shis aide’s name?”

“Who cares?” Parker asked.

“He might be President one day.”

“Fredric March was a good President, too,” Byrnes suggested.

“Who’s Fredric March?” Kling asked.

“Seven Days in May.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Or Henry Fonda,” Byrnes said. “InFail-Safe.”

“That was the same movie, wasn’t it?” Brown asked.

“It onlyseemed like the same movie,” Hawes said.

“Who’s Henry Fonda?” Kling asked.

“How about Kevin Kline?” Willis asked.

“Yes, he was a very good President,” Meyer said solemnly.

“He was also this guy wholooked like the President.”

“Dave.”

“That was the name of the movie.Dave.”

“It was also the name of the lookalike. Dave Kovic.”

“Because thereal President had a stroke while fucking his secretary. I saw that movie,” Parker said. “This sexy broad.”

“Yeah,” Willis said, remembering.

“Yeah,” Brown said, nodding.

They all had another bagel.

“But you know who was thebest actor?” Meyer asked. “Who ever played the President?”

“Who?” Kling said.

“Ronald Reagan.”

“Oh yes,” Kling said.

“Yes,” Hawes agreed.

“Unquestionably,” Byrnes said.

What’s the use? Carella thought, and took a bagel from the tray.

THE CALL FROM Carella’s sister came at a little before ten that Friday morning. The surveillance equipment from the Tech Unit had already arrived. Across the room, Meyer Meyer was helping Fat Ollie Weeks tape the battery-powered recorder to Tito Gomez’s chest.

“Who’s gonna be on the other end of this?” Tigo asked.

“Nobody,” Ollie said. “It ain’t a transmitter, it’s a recorder.”

“Then who’s gonna come save my ass if Wiggy tips?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Meyer said.

“I worry,” Tigo said.

On the telephone, Angela was asking Carella if he could come to Mama’s house tonight after work.

“Why?” Carella said.

“We want to talk to you.”

“We’re talking right now,” Carella said.

“You’re at work and so am I.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“We’ll tell you when you get here.”

“I’m working a homicide, I may not get out of here till late,” he said.

“That’s okay, we’ll wait.”

“What is it, Angela?”

“A surprise,” she said.

“I’m a cop,” he said. “I hate surprises.”

“I’m leaving early today. Can you get to Riverhead by five?”

“Only if I’m out of here by four.”

“Whenever,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

He put the receiver back on its base and walked across the room to where Tigo was complaining that the tapes were too tight.

“You don’t want the gadget rattling around, do you?” Ollie asked.

“I don’t want the gadget, period,” Tigo said.

“It’ll save you a lot of time upstate,” Meyer said.

“Ifhe says anything.”

“That’s your job,” Carella said. “To get him talking.”

“He’s not so fuckin dumb, you know. I start talkin about that night, he’s gonna wonder why.”

“Make it sound casual,” Meyer suggested.

“Sure. Hey, Wiggy, remember the night you shot that dude in the back of his head and dropped him in a garbage can? Boy, that was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Do it over a few drinks,” Carella suggested.

“Sure. Have another beer, Wiggy. Remember the night you shot that dude in the back of …”

“Just play it cool,” Meyer said. “Don’t even think about the wire. Make believe you’re two guys shootin the breeze.”

“Sure.”

“The mike’s right here,” Ollie said. “It looks like a button on your shirt.”

“Suppose hespots the fuckin thing?”

“He won’t.”

“Butifhe does.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t be thinking about a wire.”

“What if hestarts thinking about a wire? This man can become very violent. He is not called Wiggy the Lid for no reason.”

“Just tell him you work for a record company,” Meyer said.

“Tell him you’re a talent scout for Motown,” Ollie said. “Tuck your shirt in your pants.”

Tigo tucked in his shirt.

He turned to face the cops.

“How do I look?” he asked.

He looked extremely worried.

“You look great,” Meyer said.

Kling came over from across the room.

“You’re wearing a wire, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” Tigo said. “Why?”

“I never would’ve guessed,” Kling said.

HALLOWAY TOLD THEM he would have to call their treasurer. Wiggy asked what his name was.

“Her,” Halloway said. “Her name is Susan.”

Susan was a code word. The moment whoever answered the phone heard the name “Susan,” he or she would know there was trouble.

“Make sure you talk to her and her alone,” Wiggy said. “Give me the number. I’ll dial it.”

The clock on the wall read ten minutes past ten.

Halloway wrote the number on a slip of paper. Wiggy looked at it as he dialed. The instant he heard it ringing on the other end, he handed the receiver to Halloway and picked up an extension phone. The phone rang once, twice …

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice.

“Susan?” Halloway said.

“Yes?”

“This is Dick Halloway. Happy New Year.”

“Thank you, Dick,” she said. “Same to you.”

His use of the familiar diminutive told her he was not alone. If Karen Andersen had announced herself as Karey, or David Good as Davey, it would have meant the same thing. By repeating the diminutive, the woman on the other end of the line was telling Halloway she understood he had company.

“Did you try to reach me yesterday?” she asked.

“Yes, I called around three,” he said.

He was telling her there were three people there with him.

“Sorry I missed you. How can I help?”

“We need some cash,” he said.

“How much?” she asked.

To Wiggy, listening on the extension, this all sounded legitimate so far.

“Are you sitting down?” Halloway asked, and smiled.

Wiggy smiled, too.

So did the Mexicans.

Everyone was smiling at Halloway’s witticism.

“That much, huh?” Susan said.

Her name wasn’t Susan, but that’s who Wiggy thought she was. He also thought this was going along splendidly so far. He didn’t have the slightest notion that he and his two pals were being set up.

“Three-million-six,” Halloway said.

“Oh dear,” Susan said.

“Indeed,” Halloway said, and rolled his eyes heavenward.

Wiggy nodded encouragement. You’re doing fine so far, his nod said.

“Where do you want it?” Susan asked.

Wiggy motioned for Halloway to cover the mouthpiece with his hand.

“Tell her you’ll come there for it,” he whispered.

“I’ll come there for it, Sue.”

Warning her again that he had company, three in number, remember? Trouble, Sue. Or Suzie. Big trouble here. Come help us, Suze.

“How soon can you get it together?” he asked.

“How soon will you need it?”

“As soon as possible, Sue.”

“How does one o’clock sound?”

Halloway looked at Wiggy. Wiggy nodded.

“One o’clock sounds fine,” Halloway said.

“Allow yourself a half-hour to get here,” Susan said.

This meant he could expect help at twelve-thirty.

“I’ll have to make three or four calls, Dick.”

She was telling him she’d be sending three or four people.

“And, Dick …?”

“Yes, Sue?”

“They’re doing some work out front, lots of heavy machinery all over the place. Come in the back way, will you?”

“See you in a bit,” he said.

She had told him they’d be heavily armed. She had told him they’d come up the emergency staircase at the rear of the Headley Building. She had so much as told him that Walter Wiggins and his Mexican associates were already as good as dead.

The hands on the wall clock now read a quarter past ten.

“Charmaine?” Wiggy said. “Why don’t you make us all some coffee?”

WILL STRUTHERS didn’t call the bank until ten-twenty that morning. As a former bank employee himself, he knew there was always an early-morning rush of customers, and he suspected Antonia Belandres would have been particularly busy until now, it being the start of the big New Year’s Eve weekend and all.

“Miss Belandres,” she said.

The “Miss” pleased Will. It meant a) she was single, and b) she wasn’t one of these damn feminists who called themselves “Ms.” and aspired to pee in men’s rooms.

“Hello, Miss Belandres,” he said, “this is Will Struthers.”

“Lieutenant Struthers!” she said, sounding enormously surprised. “Howare you?”

“Fine, thank you,” Will said, not bothering to correct her. “And you?”

“Busy, busy, busy,” she said. “We close at noon today, and it’s been bedlam.”

“I know just how it is,” Will said.

“I know you do,” she said. “So tell me, are you looking forward to the new year?”

“Actually, I never have liked New Year’s Eve,” he said. “It always seems like a big disappointment to me. I don’t know why.”

“I feel exactly the same way.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I’ve been to small parties and big ones, I’ve stayed home and I’ve gone to night clubs, and it’s always the same thing. A big buildup to an even bigger letdown.”

“Gee,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

There was a short silence.

“Miss Belandres …” he said.

“Antonia,” she said.

“Antonia,” he said. “I know this is short notice …”

Silence again. He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line.

“But I was …ah … wondering …”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“If you don’t … ah … have any other plans …”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you might care to have dinner with me tonight?”

“Why, I think that would be lovely,” she said.

“Good,” he said at once. “Good. Does seven o’clock sound convenient to you?”

“Seven o’clock sounds lovely.”

“Do you like Italian food?”

“I love Italian food.”

“Seven o’clock then, good,” he said. “Good. Where shall I pick you up?”

“It’s 347 South Shelby, apartment 12C.”

“I’ll be there at seven on the dorothy,” he said.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

He was thinking, Antonia, you and me are going to be millionaires.

“THIS IS CLARENDON HALL,” Mahmoud said.

Nikmaddu wished the man’s little mustache didn’t make him look as if he were constantly smiling. This was a serious matter here.

“Jassim will be sitting here, in row F in the center section.”

Jassim of the dirty fingernails and no smile nodded. He was familiar with the seating plan, knew exactly what he was to do tomorrow night.

“Seat number 101 on the aisle,” Mahmoud said.

Nikmaddu looked at the plan more closely.

“If we’re lucky,” Mahmoud said, “the explosion will carry to the stage. If not, we will have made our point, anyway.”

“Killing the Jew is not the point, you understand,” Akbar said. The desert camel driver, deep creases on his brown face, thick veins on the backs of his strong hands. Their demolitions expert. “We are teaching them that we can strike anywhere, anytime. We are telling them that they are completely vulnerable. Unless they wish to strip-search every American entering a theater, a movie house, a concert hall, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a supermarket, anywhere. They are at our mercy, is what we will be proving to them tomorrow night.”

“Still, getting the Jew would be a bonus,” Jassim said.

“But not apriority,” Akbar insisted. “If we get the Jew, fine. If not, many others will die. Our point will be made.”

“To die for Allah would be an honor,” Jassim said. He was the one going in with the bomb. By rights, he should have the last word. But Akbar had fashioned the bomb and the timing device.

“Akbar is right,” Nikmaddu said. “It will be better if no sacrifice were involved this time.” He was referring to the suicide bombing of the United States destroyer in Yemen. “We must let them know we are professionals, not fanatics.”

Jassim took this as a personal affront. He gave Nikmaddu what he hoped was a disdainful look, and then lighted a cigarette.

“When will this happen?” Nikmaddu asked.

“After the intermission,” Akbar said.

“Preciselywhen?” Nikmaddu asked.

“The Jew is the guest artist in the second half of the evening. We now know he will be playing Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in E Minor. The bomb will be set to go off sometime during the first movement.”

“When, precisely, during the first movement?”

“It is difficult to time the music precisely,” Akbar said. “The first movement is about twelve and a half minutes long, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“The performer, the conductor—artistic license. But it will rarely run much longer than that. In any event, the bomb will be set to go off at nine-thirty.”

“Atpreciselynine-thirty?”

“Precisely, yes. It will explode toward the end of the first movement, trust me.”

Nikmaddu was beginning to realize that although this man looked as if he belonged in a tent on the desert, he was perhaps more intelligent than any of the others.

“What do you mean by movement?” Jassim asked. The stupidest of the lot. And the one with the most responsibility. The one who would go in with the bomb. “What does movement mean?”

“The Mendelssohn concerto has three movements,” Akbar explained.

“But what is a movement?”

“It’s not important that you know,” Akbar said. “You will place the bomb and leave the hall. The rest is up to Allah.”

“Will Jassim have enough time to get back to his seat, leave the bomb, and make his departure?” Nikmaddu asked.

“A good point,” Mahmoud said. “Have you timed all this?”

“I have been to six concerts this season,” Akbar said. “And hated them all. I know exactly how long it takes to get from the street to the lobby, and from there back to the seat in row F. Without rushing, Jassim should be out of there before the bomb explodes.”

“At nine-thirty precisely,” Nikmaddu said, seeking confirmation yet another time.

“Yes, at nine-thirty precisely,” Akbar said. “A fitting climax to the first movement.”

The men laughed. All but Jassim, who found nothing humorous in any of this.

“What kind of bomb are you using?” Nikmaddu asked.

“A simple pipe bomb. Two of them actually. Taped together and packed with black powder, nails, and screws. Similar to the one in Atlanta four years ago.”

“And the timer?”

“A battery-powered clock.”

“How will he carry it in?” Nikmaddu asked.

“In a handbag,” Akbar said.

“I’ll be carrying ahandbag?” Jassim said.

“Aman’shandbag. Europeans carry them all the time. Besides, I’ve taken one into the hall on six different occasions now. There is no security check. Women go in with handbags, even shopping bags, men carry briefcases. They are very sure of themselves, these Americans.”

“That will all change tomorrow night,” Nikmaddu said.

“Yes, it will,” Akbar said.

“Inshallah,”Mahmoud said.

“Inshallah,”the others said in unison.

MAN SEEMED TO HAVE disappeared from the face of the earth.

First place Tigo tried was the crib on Decatur. Thomas—who on the night of the murder had been chatting with Mr. Jerry Hoskins, alias Frank Holt, while Tigo and Wiggy tested the dope in the other room—was watching television when Tigo waltzed in.

“Hey, man,” he said.

“Whut’choo watchin?” Tigo asked.

This was ten to eleven in the morning, man was sittin here watching television.

“I don’t even know,” Thomas said. “Suppin with Sylvester Stallone.”

Tigo watched the screen for a moment.

Sylvester Stallone was dangling from a rope.

“Where’s Wiggy?” he asked.

“You got me, man.”

“You seed him today?”

“Nope.”

“When’d you get here?”

“Bout an hour ago.”

“He wasn’t here?”

“Nope.”

“He come back, you tell him I’m lookin for him, okay?”

“Peace, brother,” Thomas said.

My ass, Tigo thought.

Next place he tried was Wiggy’s barber. This was a man named Roland, who cut mighty fine hair and also took in numbers on the side. Or vice versa. Tigo figured Wiggy might be here gettin a trim, New Year’s Eve comin up and all. He could use a trim hisself, matter of fact. Roland said he hadn’t seen hide nor hair—

“You get it?” he asked.

—of Wiggy since a week ago today when he last cut the man’s hair.

“Try L&G,” he suggested.

L&G was short for Lewis and Gregory, who were two brothers owned a haberdashery on Chase Street. Both brothers were there when Tigo arrived at eleven that Friday. The shop was packed with people returning ties, and shirts and shit they’d got for Christmas and had no use for. Greg told him he hadn’t seen Wiggy since before Thanksgiving, was the man all right? He usually came in here and splurged two, three times a year. Tigo told him Wiggy was fine, just’d been busy was all. Greg said, “Tell him I said happy new year, hear?”

“I’ll tell him,” Tigo said.

He was wondering had Wiggy vanished from sight?

This business, vanishing from sight was always a distinct possibility.

He tried a bar called the Starlight, which was already doing very good business at a quarter past eleven, two days before New Year’s Eve. Tigo could just imagine what the place would be like on the big night itself. But John the bartender told him he’d seen Mr. Wiggins on Christmas night, when he was sittin here at the bar hittin on a blonde who’d come in out the cold, and again just yesterday aroun this time.

“Is that so?” Tigo asked. “A blonde?”

It was too bad the tape recorder wasn’t turned on because first it missed a hair joke from Wiggy’s barber, and now it just missed a thickening of the plot with Wiggy working a blonde on Christmas night. He told John if Mr. Wiggins came in again to tell him he was lookin for him, okay, and then—so it shouldn’t be a total loss—he tossed off a shot of Dewar’s before he went out into the cold again.

It was beginning to snow.

No snow for Christmas, but now it was coming down to beat all hell.

Tigo looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven. He didn’t know where to go next.

He tried the pool hall on Culver and Third, but nobody there had seen Wiggy, and then he tried The Corset Lady on South Fifth, which was run by a foxy chick named Aleda who made very fine ladies’ underwears and who used to go with Wiggy, but not for six months or so now, but she hadn’t seen him and didn’tcare to see him, thanks. Then he tried the First Bap on St. Sab’s because believe it or not Walter Wiggins was a religious man who went to church every Sunday, but the Reverend Gabriel Foster hadn’t seen him since, in fact, last Sunday, had anything happened to him? Foster was always looking for something that had happened to anybody in the black community, some cause he could champion on his radio show, some put-upon black he could go march to City Hall about. Tigo was beginning to think maybe somethinghad happened to Wiggy. This business, things happened.

He finally tried a man named Little Nicholas, who did business out the back of a laundromat he owned and operated on Lyons and South Thirty-fifth. Little Nicholas was about five-feet, eight-inches tall and Tigo guessed he weighed something like three, four hundred pounds. What Little Nicholas did was sell guns. He told Tigo that Wiggy had been in there late last night, and had purchased a beautiful submachine gun called the Cobray M11-9, would Tigo be interested in seeing some very fine banned weapons and silencers that had come in from all over the nation only yesterday? Tigo asked had he seed Wiggy anytimetoday? Little Nicholas said No, he hadn’t had the pleasure.

It was a quarter to twelve.

The snow was coming down pretty hard now.

Tigo wondered where the fuck Wiggy could be.

WIGGY WAS SITTING at Halloway’s computer up at W&D. One of the Mexicans—he guessed it was Ortiz—came out of the conference room where they were holding the staff, and asked him shouldn’t he be going for the money soon? They had already decided, after some sound reasoning from Wiggy, that he should be the one who went for the cash, in case there was any language problem, not that he meant to be disparaging. He looked up at the wall clock now. It was only twelve noon, and Halloway’s accountant had advised them to allow a half-hour to get there for their one o’clock appointment, which meant there was still plenty of time before him and Halloway had to go out into what looked like a full-fledged blizzard.

“I got time yet,” he told Ortiz, or Villada, or whoever the hell he was.Whoeverhe was, Wiggy planned never to see him or his partner ever again the minute he got his hands on that money.Adios, amigos, it was very nice knowing you.

Meanwhile, there was some very interesting information on the W&D computer.

CARELLA AND MEYER were having lunch in a diner on Culver and Eighth, not far from the station house. Meyer was eating a salad and drinking iced tea. Carella was eating a hamburger and fries. Meyer told him that just two days ago, his wife had told him they should go buy him some clothes for the new year.

“She said we’d have to go to a shop forlarge men, was what she called it. I said, ‘Why do we have to go to a large men’s shop?’ She said, ‘Because we won’t find anything to fit you in a regular men’s store.’ I said, ‘Hey, come on, Sarah, I can buy clothes off the rack at any store in town! Large men’s shops are for men who areobese.’ So she looks me dead in the eye and says, ‘Well?’ ”

“Sarah said that, huh?”

“Sarah.”

“Said you were fat, in effect.”

“Obese.”

“In effect.”

“Do you think I’m obese?”

“No. Ollie Weeks is obese,” Carella said, and popped a fry into his mouth. “You’re what I’d call chubby.”

“Chubby! That’sworse than obese!”

“Well … plump maybe.”

“Keep going. How’s your damn hamburger?”

“Terrific.”

“The fries?”

“Splendid.”

“You forgot stout.”

“Stout’s a good one, too.”

“You ever have a weight problem?”

“Never. I’ve always been svelte.”

“I’ve always been borderline.”

“Borderline what?”

“Obese!” Meyer said, and both men burst out laughing.

The laughter trailed.

“I’ve got other problems, though,” Carella said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Meyer looked at him. Carella’s face, his eyes were suddenly very serious.

“Tell me,” Meyer said.

“You think I’ve changed?” Carella asked.

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Am I different?”

“You seem the same to me.”

“Teddy says I’ve changed since my father got killed. She says I never cried for him. She says I never cried for Danny, either, Danny Gimp. I don’t even remember if I did. She says I’ve been drinking too much, she says …”

“Ah, shit, Steve, you haven’t, have you?”

“No. I don’t think so. I hope not. It’s just …”

“What?”

“Ah, Jesus.”

“What, Steve? Tell me.”

“I think I’m scared.”

“Come on. You’re not scared.”

“I think I am. Teddy’s afraid I might eat my own gun one day. I’ll tell you the truth …”

“Don’t even say it.”

Both men fell silent.

Carella was looking down at his hands.

“I think I’m scared,” he said again. “Really, Meyer.”

“Come on, scared. Of what?”

“Dying,” Carella said. “I’m afraid I’ll get killed.”

“We’re all afraid we’ll get killed.”

“I came so close, Meyer.”

“We’ve all come close, one time or another. O’Brien comes close every day of his life.”

“O’Brien’s a hard luck cop. And he never had a lion sitting on his chest.”

“So what are you scared of? Another lion sitting on your chest? Come on, Steve.”

“He almost had my head in his mouth, I could feel his breath on my face, I could smell his breath. Another minute, he’d have closed his jaws on me. I never came that close to dying before.”

“And you’ll never come that close again. What do you think this is, the African plains? Come on. This is acity, Steve. You don’t run into lions on the streets here.”

“I dream about that lion every night, Meyer. Every fucking night, I see that lion in my dreams. I wake up sweating, Meyer, shaking. I’m scared it’ll happen again. And next time …”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Meyer said.

“Not if you’re a cop.”

“We’re all scared.”

“Cops shouldn’t …”

“Not only cops. Everybody. We’re all scared, Steve. If you meet another lion, just look him in the eye. Stare him down.”

Carella’s hands were trembling.

“Come on,” Meyer said. He slid out of the booth, came around the table, sat beside his friend, and put his arm around his shoulder. “Come on, Steve.”

Tito Gomez walked in just then.

“How tender,” he said.

“Go fuck yourself,” Meyer explained.

“Nice talk. I can’t find Wiggy. I don’t know where he is. What now?”

WIGGY WAS STILL AT Halloway’s computer.

There was a folder named MOTHER, which he couldn’t open because whenever he double-clicked on it, he was told to enter a password. But when he double-clicked on a folder called WITCHES AND DRAGONS—which he thought at first might be some kind of a game—it opened to his touch, and he found a whole list of files with names like ADA and NETTIE and DIANA and EM and TESSIE and RONI and BELA and GINA. Was W&D in the business of tracking hurricanes, or had he lucked into Halloway’s personal little black book of cuties, oh you sly old dog, you! Or were these the names of writers the company published? But then why use first names? And even some nicknames?

Intrigued now, Wiggy double-clicked on the file labeled TESSIE because that was the name of the first girl he’d ever talked into licking Frick and Frack, a thirteen-year-old high yaller beauty fresh up from the South with her grandma. There wasn’t nothing in that file about girls, mellow or otherwise. What was in there was information about the West Side Limousine Corporation, which it would appear was a subsidiary of Wadsworth and Dodds here, and which made all kinds of trips to and from the city’s two airports and the one across the river in the next state, not to mention a trip to Diamondback on Christmas night.

He began wondering why a file about a limousine company would be called TESSIE, and then he realized that there were two S’s in the words WEST SIDE, and also a T, and—lo and behold—an I and an E! So what you had here was little old TESSIE all curled up in the back seat of a WEST SIDE limo!

He double-clicked on the file labeled EM.

What was in there was an itemized list of drug deals that made Wiggy’s little operation in Diamondback look like somebody selling lemonade by the side of the road. Dates, places, number of kilos purchased, dollars paid for them. He wasn’t surprised that the list existed; everybody kept recordssomeplace, man. In fact, his own transactions uptown were recorded on a computer disc called HAPPY DAYS that could only be opened with the password WW2, which stood not for World War II, but instead for his initials and the month of his—it suddenly occurred to him that WITCHES AND DRAGONS stood for Wadsworth and Dodds.

What he was looking at here was a record of drug buys the book publishers had made in Mexico over the past two years. And suddenly he realized that the name EM was buried in the word MEXICO, same as TESSIE was buried in WEST SIDE, was in fact the first two letters of that word, reversed, and he began wondering how many of theother girls’ names in the WITCHES AND DRAGONS folder were buried in larger words, hiding there, so to speak, lurking there in the dark for somebody smart like Wiggy to find.

He kept opening file after file.

When finally he double-clicked on the file named DIANA, his eyes opened wide.

He was reading all about Diamondback, which was where he conducted business, the uptown ghetto where Jerry Hoskins alias Frank Holt had come calling with a hundred keys of prime cocaine purchased in Mexico.

DIAMONDBACK.

Little ole white girl DIANA hiding up there in the blackest of black holes.

The magnitude of his discovery made him suddenly want to pee.

Grabbing the Cobray from where it was resting on the floor at his feet, he went down the hall to the men’s room at the rear of the office complex.

At that very moment, The Weird Sisters and two very tall, very broad black men were entering the Headley Building through the back door in an alley that was posted with no parking—fire lane signs. This time around, Sheryl and Toni—whose real names were Anna and Mary Jo—wereeach carrying guns with silencers affixed to the muzzles.

So were the black men.

WIGGY DIDN’T HEAR any shooting because the weapons were wearing silencers.

All he heard was screaming.

The screaming wasn’t coming from the two Mexicans, who were dead within minutes after the assassins entered the conference room. Instead, they were coming from Charmaine the receptionist, and Betty Alweiss from the Art Department. Karen Andersen wasn’t screaming. She was learning how to be as cold-bloodedly unemotional as her boss and sometime lover.

“There’s a third one,” Halloway said.

By that time, Wiggy was down the fire stairs and out of the building.

THE WEIRD SISTERS unashamedly stripped the Mexicans naked and wrapped them in tarpaulin. Their two black associates carried the bodies down the fire stairs, hoisted them into the back of a white ML320 Mercedes-Benz, and transported them to a garbage dump on Sands Spit, not far from the airport. It was Halloway’s surmise that the Mexicans would never be identified and therefore would never be missed.

At about four-thirty that afternoon—just as Carella was leaving the squadroom—Anna and Mary Jo went up to Diamondback to look for Walter Wiggins. This time, their orders were to kill him.

CARELLA GOT TO his mother’s house in Riverhead at a little past six that evening. He recognized his sister’s car in the driveway outside the house, and parked just behind it. His mother’s Christmas tree glowed behind the windows fronting the house. At least a foot of snow covered the walk to the front door, and it was still coming down. He climbed the low flat steps, pressed the button set in the door jamb, and heard familiar chimes sounding inside the house. He waited. Falling flakes covered his hair and the shoulders of his overcoat. He was about to ring again when the door opened.

“Hey,” his mother said, and hugged him. “You should wear a hat.”

“I know,” he said. “You told me.”

“From when you were six,” she said.

“Three,” he corrected.

“Come in. Angela’s already here.”

“I saw her car.”

“Come in.”

He followed his mother into the house. This was where he’d grown up. This was what he’d called home during his childhood, his adolescence, and his early manhood. Home. It seemed strange to him now, smaller, somehow cheerless. He wondered if that was because his father no longer lived here. Angela was sitting at the big dining room table, drinking a glass of red wine. Another glass of wine was on the table, just opposite her. He remembered when they were kids and used to hide together under this very table. He remembered Sunday afternoons here in his parents’ house, the pennyante poker games, he and Angela hiding under the dining room table. He remembered his sister once breaking his head with the clasp on a pocketbook she’d swung at him in anger. He couldn’t remember now what had so enraged her. Something he’d said jokingly. He’d loved her to death when they were kids. He still did. She kissed him on the cheek in greeting.

“How’s the traffic?” she asked.

“Pretty bad. The roads are getting slick.”

“Steve, some wine?” his mother asked. “Something stronger?”

“A little wine, yes,” he said. “Thanks.”

He sat alongside Angela. Outside the window, the snow was coming down heavily. He didn’t live very far from here, but the roads were already bad. He was beginning to regret not having gone straight home from the office. His mother brought him his glass of wine, and went to sit opposite him and Angela at the table. They all lifted their glasses.

“Salute,”his mother said in Italian.

“Cheers,” Carella said.

“Health,” Angela said.

They drank.

“So,” Angela said.

“So,” his mother said.

They were both smiling.

Carella looked across the table at his mother. He turned to look at his sister.

“What?” he said.

“We’re getting married together,” Angela said.

“A double wedding,” his mother said.

“Me and Henry, Mama and …”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Carella said.

He was already standing, surprised to find himself on his feet, wondering when he’d got up. Was it when they’d both started smiling? Was it then that the feeling of impending dread had lurched from his heart into his throat?

“Sit down,” his mother said.

“No, Mom. I’m sorry, but …”

“Sit down, Steve.”

“No. I don’t want to hear about you getting married so soon after …”

“Your father’s been dead almost …”

“I don’t want tohear it!” Carella shouted, and whirled on his sister. “And I don’t want to hear about you marrying the man who …”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Angela asked.

“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no, you don’t.”

“Have you lost your …?”

“Never mind what’s wrong withme! What’s wrong with you? Have you both forgotten Papa already? How can you sit here inhis house …”

“Papa is dead, Steve.”

“Oh, is he? Gee, no kidding. What do you think this is about here? What are we talking about here? What are you both planning to do if not spit on Papa’s …”

“Don’t youdare!” his mother said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mom, stop behaving like a schoolgirl. And you stop encouraging her!” he shouted, whirling on Angela. “You want to marry that jackass, at least have the decency to leave her out of it.”

Angela was shaking her head.

“Sure, shake your head,” he said. “I’m wrong, right? She meets a Wop fresh off the boat …”

“Not in my house,” his mother said. “Never use that word in my house.”

“Oh, forgive me, what is he? A Yankee Doodle Dandy?”

“I think that lion scrambled your brains,” Angela said.

“And never mind the fuckinglion!” he shouted.

“Not in myhouse!” his mother said, and slapped him.

He looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sure.”

Angela suddenly began crying.

“All we wanted was your blessing,” she said.

“Well, you didn’t get it,” he said. “If you can both forget Papa so easily, I can’t. Goodnight, Mom. Thanks for the wine.”

He turned and was starting for the door when his mother said, “I’m not a schoolgirl, Steve.”

He continued going for the door.

“I love him and I’m going to marry him,” she said.

His hand was on the doorknob.

“Whether you like it or not,” she said.

“Goodnight,” he said again, and opened the door, and walked out into the fiercely falling snow.

THE TAPE RECORDER was going.

Tigo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Nor did hewant to be hearing what he was hearing. He wanted to get this conversation back to the reason he was wearing a wire to begin with. He wanted Wiggy to start talking about December twenty-third.

He wondered suddenly if this was all bullshit Wiggy was giving him here. Did Wiggy maybeknow he was wired? Was he maybe making up a good story so the fuzz would get off the scent? It sure was a peculiar story he was telling here. Almost made Tigo forget why he was here. Almost made Tigo sorry he had finally found the man.

“You really think all this is true, huh?” he asked. “Cause to me …”

“Man, I was lookin straight into they computer! I seed all this stuff with my own eyes!”

“It just sounds, you know, like science-fiction, you know?” Tigo said. “This file named Mothah you can’t open cause you need a password, an all this money floatin aroun, and these dope deals here an there, and these people causin trouble all over the world, an tryin’a fuck us right here in Diamon’back, I mean, man, it sounds like suppin you’d see in amovie, you know what I’m sayin, man?”

“It’d make agood movie, that’s for damn sure,” Wiggy said, “but it’strue, man! I got it from theycomputer!”

“That don’t mean it couldn’t of been garbage in there,” Tigo said, and shrugged.

“The point is, whut we gonna do about it, Tigo? I mean, these guys are messin with ourpeople!”

Tigo had never particularly felt that any of these people they sold dope to were necessarilyrelated to him in any way. MaybeWiggy thought of they customers as his “people” but Tigo didn’t share the sentiment. To tell the truth, if they was money to be made recycling dope here in the hood, Tigo didn’t carewho sold them the dope to begin with or where the proceeds of the sale were going. In fact, the only thing he wanted to do right this minute was talk about what he’d come here to talk about so he could go back to the police and collect his reward. He planned to retire from the dope business—

He didn’t yet realize how close his retirement was.

—soon as he got his hands on however much money the commissioner gave him for this valuable stuff he was about to tape. So he didn’t need to know about anyconspiracy Wiggy had tapped into through somebody’s computer. Nor did he want todo anything about any such conspiracy, even if it did exist, which he strongly doubted because Wiggy’s story sounded like so much jive to him. So—subtly and not wishing to appear too aggressive or inquisitive—he asked, “How’d it feel killing that dude on Christmas Eve?”

“I think we should go to the police,” Wiggy said, “tellthem the story.”

And suddenly, he shoved himself out of his chair and went marching straight for the telephone.

CARELLA WAS on his way home when the cell phone in his car rang. Ollie Weeks was on the other end.

“Guess what?” he said.

“Surprise me,” Carella said.

“I just got a call from Walter Wiggins.”

“What?”

“Ah yes.”

“The man Gomez is supposed to be taping?”

“The very same.”

“The man who maybe shot and killed Jerry Hoskins?”

“That’s the one.”

“Is he confessing?”

“I don’t think so. But he wants to talk to us.”

“What about?”

“Some kind of big conspiracy.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“I’m on my way to 1280 Decatur. You want to meet me?”

Carella looked at the dashboard clock.

“Give me half an hour,” he said.

ANTONIA BELANDRES was very impressed that Will had managed to find his way here in all this snow. He jokingly told her he used to drive a dog sled team in Alaska, which somehow she took to be the truth, and was even more impressed. He now had two lies to account for. He hoped he did not lose her when he told her he was not a police lieutenant, and had never been to Alaska in his life.

There wasn’t a single cab in sight when they came downstairs from her apartment. He had deliberately picked an Italian restaurant not too distant from where she lived on South Shelby, but it was really coming down and he apologized for asking her to walk the six blocks, but he was afraid they might lose their reservation.

“Don’t be silly, Lieutenant,” she said. “Ilove walking.”

Lieutenant, he thought. Boy.

As it was, he needn’t have worried about the reservation. The restaurant was almost empty. In fact, the owner fawned over them as if they were the Mayor and his wife who’d braved the storm to come here. He offered them a bottle of wine on the house, and then reeled off the specials for the night, all of which sounded delicious. Antonia ordered theosso buco. Will ordered the veal Milanese, which turned out to be breaded veal cutlets, oh well.

“By the way,” he said, when they had each drunk a glass of wine and Will was pouring again, “I’m not a police lieutenant. In fact, I’m not even a cop.”

“Oh?” she said.

“That’s right,” he said. “Here’s to golden days and purple nights,” and clinked his glass against hers.

“Where’d you learn that toast?” she asked. “Golden days and purple nights.”

“Singapore.”

“Me, too.”

“So here’sto them,” he said.

“Here’sto them,” she said. “Golden days and purple nights.”

They drank.

“Then what were you doing with all those detectives?” she asked. “If you’re not a cop.”

“I was sort of with them,” Will said.

“If you’re not a cop, what are you?”

“Actually, a burglar,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, and shrugged.

“Did they arrest you for burglary? Was that it?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“They thought I passed a phony hundred-dollar bill.”

“Was that the super-bill they asked me to examine?”

“I guess so. It sure looked real to me. I think that’s why they let me go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think it fooledthem, too. I mean, ifthey couldn’t tell it was fake, how was I supposed to know?”

“Well, you did work in a bank once.”

“Yeah, but I never saw a super-bill in my life. They told me they could’ve charged me with a class-A mis, but this was Christmas, what the hell. They let me go.”

“So as I understand this …”

“That’s right …”

“… you’re a common thief.”

“Well, I’m a burglar. That’s not so common.”

Antonia laughed. Will figured this was a good sign.

“Also, I have some plans that ain’t so common neither,” he said.

“Oh? What plans?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said.

Antonia was thinking the plans he was talking about had to do with sex. He was referring to possibly taking her to bed later on tonight. After dinner. While the storm raged outside. Which wasn’t a bad idea at all. Except that he was a common thief. Well, a burglar.

“What makes a burglar so special?” she asked.

“Well, first of all, we’re like doctors.”

“I see. Doctors.”

“Yes. Our motto is ‘Do no harm.’ In fact, we go out of our way to keep from harming people. We see a light burning in an apartment, we think there’s somebody in there, we’ll avoid it like the plague.”

“Why is that?”

“I just told you. We don’t want some old lady screaming so we’ll have to hurt her. Do no harm. Also, the rap is bigger. If you hurt somebody while you’re inside a dwelling, or even if you’re just carrying a gun. It goes up from Burg Two to Burg One. That’s a difference of ten years, when it comes to sentencing.”

“You sound very familiar with all this,” Antonia said.

“Oh sure,” he said. “Well, I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”

She was wondering why she was still sitting here. The man had just told her he was a burglar, athief.

“I thought you said you worked in a bank,” she said.

“Long time ago,” he said. “I was just a kid when I went out on the Rim.”

“But you never saw a super-bill,” she said.

“Never.”

“I’m surprised. Plenty of them in Southeast Asia.”

“Plenty of themeverywhere, from what you said.”

“Where’d you get the one you tried to cash?”

“I stole it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” she said, and rolled her eyes.

“That’s okay. Not many people get to dine with burglars.”

“Lucky me,” she said, and rolled her eyes again.

“That might turn out to be the case,” he said.

She still thought he was talking about taking her to bed later on. Which she still thought might not be such a bad idea.

“You know that woman who got eaten by lions in Grover Park?” he said. “The zoo there? Did you see that on television?”

“No,” she said. “But I read about it in the newspaper.”

“That was who I stole the money from.”

“Oh my, you’re famous,” she said.

“Well,she was, I guess. It’s not everybody gets eaten by lions.”

“What do you suppose she was doing in the lion’s cage?”

“I have no idea. I only talked to the lady once in my entire life.”

“Youdidn’t have anything to do with …”

“No, hey,no,” he said, “I’m a burglar!”

“Yes,” she said. “So I’m beginning to understand.”

Their food arrived. She was thoughtfully silent for a while. Then she said, “So, if you were me, what would you do here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wouldyou go to bed with you, knowing you’re a burglar? Or would you eat your dinner and go home like a nice little girl?”

“You could do both,” Will suggested.

TIGO GOMEZ was getting very nervous.

Wiggy had just told him that the man who was on his way here was the very same person who’d strapped this tape recorder to his chest—“That’s just great,” Tigo said—none other than Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks of the Eighty-eighth Detective Squad.

“You maybe seed him aroun the streets,” Wiggy said. “Fat Ollie Weeks. He’s this big fat guy.”

No kidding, Tigo thought.

The problem was that Wiggy thought he’d be doing a favor for the police, when allthey wanted to do was send him up for Murder One. The further problem was that Tigo couldn’t warn the man how dangerous this fat hump was because then he’d have to reveal that he himself had visited the police to ask for a favor of his own by way of a cash reward, and they’d wired him tight as Dick’s hatband, which is why he was sitting here this very minute, still attempting to get information he could use as a bargaining tool when the Law arrived and the shit hit the fan.

“You goan tell him you a drug dealer?” he asked.

“No, I don’t have to tell him that.”

“Then how come youknow these people are sellin dope up here?”

“I coulda heard.”

“Howyou could a heard, Wigg? You goan tell the fuzz this man Hoskins come up here Christmastime, sold you a hundred keys of coke to distribute to li’l kiddies in the streets?”

“No. But I could …”

“You goan tell ’em you shot this man Hoskins back of the head an dropped him in a garbage can? You goan do that, Wigg?”

“I’m say in it don’t seem right, what these mothahs are doin to our people.”

“They’s evil folk in this world,” Tigo said, “itis a shame.”

He was thinking Jerry Hoskins may have brought that shit up from Mexico and sold it to Wiggy, but Wiggy was the one passin it down the line till it got to his “people” in the streets. And hestill hadn’t said one damn word about the Christmas Eve murder. Tigo was about to prod him again, get this show on the road here, nem mine feelin sorry for all the drug addicts in this sorry world of ours, when Wiggy said, “You know what the name Nettie stans for?”

“Nettie, you say?”

“N-E-T-T-I-E,” Wiggy said, spelling it out for him. “You know what word that name is hidin’ in?”

“No, I has to admit I do not,” Tigo said.

“Counterfeit. That’s the word. You search that word, you find Nettie lurkin in there. You double-click on her name, you transported straight to Nettieland. You want to hear this, man, or you want to stay ignorant the ress of your life?”

Tigo did not want to hear anything but how Wiggy had killed Hoskins—but neither did he wish to remain ignorant the rest of his life. He nodded wearily, and listened as Wiggy began telling him all about his adventures in Nettieland. Gradually, he began to lean closer. Gradually, his eyes opened wide. He was listening intently, his attention completely captured, when all at once he heard footsteps pounding in the hallway outside. He turned toward the front door. An instant later, he heard the sound of rapid gunfire, and all at once the door flew off its hinges.

At that very moment, Steve Carella was turning his car into Decatur Avenue, never once realizing he was about to meet another lion.

TIGO WAS RUNNING FOR the window even before the two blond ladies burst into the room. Somewhere behind him Wiggy screamed in pain. Tigo dove through the glass head first, came through onto the fire escape in a cascade of shattering shards, heard more firing from inside the apartment.

“The window!” one of the women yelled, but he was already on his feet and charging down the ladder. The iron rungs were crusted with snow, slippery underfoot. He almost lost his balance, almost went over the rail, but continued running, sliding, slipping, almost flying down those steps while above him the blondes were on automatic, bullets kicking up snow everywhere around him, clanging against the iron of the fire escape. He jumped the dozen feet or so to the ground, began broken-field running across the back yard, the blondes still firing, and was climbing the fence between this yard and the next one over, when they finally found the range. He heard wood splintering everywhere around him, and then felt slugs ripping across his back as he came over the top of the fence. Another slug ripped through his right hand. He dropped to the ground, zigzagged toward the alleyway alongside the building, tucking his bloody hand in against his body, cradling it, blood leaking onto the white snow from his hand and his chest as he ran.

The storm had kept most people off the street.

He stumbled out of the alleyway, fell, got to his feet again.

He turned to look behind him, fell again, and began crawling toward the streetlamp on the corner. He was lying there under the lamp for perhaps two or three minutes when a tall hatless man came running around the corner. Tigo did not know whether the shots had attracted him or whether there’d been some other disturbance in the hood. He only knew he was glad to see him. The man knelt beside him. Tigo recognized him at once.

“You know who did this to you?” Carella asked.

Tigo nodded.

“Who, Tigo? Can you tell me?”

Carella’s lion had just followed Tigo’s trail of blood up the alleyway.

“Mother,” Tigo said.

“Yourmother shot …?”

“Nettie,” Tigo said.

“Is that your mother’s name?”

Carella’s lion was just running out of the alleyway behind them.

“Diana,” Tigo said.

“I don’t under …”

But Tito Gomez was already dead.

And Carella’s lion was almost upon him.

He turned just in time to see someone dressed entirely in black, carrying what was unmistakably an AK-47.

If you meet another lion, just look him in the eye. Stare him down.

This lion wasn’t a male.

There was merely a surprised instant that robbed Carella’s eye of steely intent and lessened the speed of his gun hand, but that was all it took to give the blonde the advantage she needed. He registered three things in the tick of a heart beat. A car pulling into the street. The blonde angling the weapon toward his head. A man getting out of the car.

The blonde was about to squeeze the trigger when Fat Ollie Weeks shot her in the back, dropping her in her tracks.

“That’s two, Steve,” he told Carella, and grinned into the flying snow.

11 .

WILL GUESSED this was why he’d never been to bed with a hooker.

You went to bed with somebody who you had to pay, she put on her clothes directly afterward, said, “Thanks, I had a nice time,” and went home. He guessed. But with a woman like Antonia Belandres, you sat here on a Saturday morning, drinking orange juice and coffee, and eating the chocolate croissants he’d gone down to the bakery to get, and it was … well … intimate. You could have sex with a hooker, but he didn’t guess you could get intimate with one.

Antonia was wearing nothing but a little silky peignoir she’d taken from her bedroom closet. Will was wearing the slacks and shirt he’d put on when he went downstairs for the croissants. It was a little past ten-thirty. The snow had stopped and the sun was shining. In the street outside, everything looked clean and white and sparkling. He told Antonia that maybe they should go for a walk later on, if she thought she might like that. She told him she might like that a lot. He smiled and nodded. She smiled and nodded back.

He didn’t tell her his plan until they were in her bed together again, and then only after they’d made love yet another time. She was cuddled in his arms, the blanket pulled up over their shoulders, frost still limning the window across the room, sunlight striking the glass.

“I know how we can both become millionaires,” he said.

“Yes, how?” she said.

Black hair fanned out on the pillow. Brown eyes opened wide. Wearing no makeup. Her face looking as expectant as a child’s on Christmas Day.

“We use the bills.”

“What bills?” she asked.

“The super-bills.”

“Use them?” she asked. “How do you mean?”

“You said you send any suspect bills to the Federal Reserve.”

“Yes?”

“That’s what you told the detectives.”

“That’s right. That’s what we do.”

“Somebody brings in a bill that looks phony …”

“Right, we send it to the Fed.”

“You confiscate the bill, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you give the person a genuine bill in exchange?”

Which was just what the Treasury Department had done with the eight grand they’d taken from him. But he didn’t know that.

“Of course not,” she said. “That would be the same as condoning counterfeiting.”

“Do you give the person a receipt for the bill?”

“Not if we know for certain it’s counterfeit,” she said. “In that case, we simply take the bill out of circulation.”

“Even if the person didn’t know it was counterfeit?”

“Too bad for him.”

“How about if you’re notsure it’s counterfeit? If it’s one of those terrific bills you have to send to the Fed?”

“Then we give the customer a receipt for it, yes.”

“And if the Fed decides it’s phony?”

“It never comes back to us. They take it out of circulation, and notify us. We in turn notify the customer, and that’s that.”

“What if they say it’s real?”

“They return it to us, we notify the customer, and he comes to pick it up. No harm done all around.”

“Okay, what if youdon’t send a suspect bill to the Fed? What if you just take it from the customer, give him a receipt for it … and keep it.”

“Keep it?”

“Yes. And then two weeks later … or however long it usually takes the Fed to get back to you …”

“It varies.”

“Two weeks, three weeks, whatever, you call the customer and tell him Sorry, your bill was phony and the Fed has confiscated it. Goodbye, sir, and good luck.”

Antonia looked at him.

“That would be stealing,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be stealingreal money.”

Antonia was still looking at him.

“It would be stealingcounterfeit money,” he said.

“What’s the difference?” she said. “I fail to see the difference.”

“That’s exactly my point. If nobody cantell the difference, we can use tons of fake money just as if it’s real money. We can use fake money to pay for anything we buy.”

Which was just what Jerry Hoskins had tried to do with the Mexicans. But Will didn’t know this, either.

“It still seems like stealing to me,” Antonia said.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with stealing,” Will said, and kissed her again.

“Do you like violin music?” she asked.

FAT OLLIE was eating.

He was also listening.

For him, he was eating lightly. That is to say, he was eating a baloney sandwich on rye with butter and mustard, and a sour pickle, and a potato knish, and a banana, and he was drinking coffee while he and Carella listened to the tape they’d retrieved from the recorder Tigo Gomez was wearing when the unidentified blonde—now in the hospital, andstill unidentified—shot and killed him. Carella was eating a tuna and tomato sandwich on white, and drinking a glass of milk. The two detectives were in the interrogation room at the Eight-Seven, where Ollie seemed to be spending a lot of time lately, now that he was responsible for Carella’s life two times over. Carella devoutly wished he would not save his life a third time, otherwise he might become a permanent fixture up here.

Ollie much preferred eating to listening to tapes.

The trouble with police tapes was that they were very rarely interesting. If you went to see a movie or watched a television show, or even if you were desperate and decided to read a book, there was usually a story you could follow. Listening to a tape was the same as hearing people talking, except that when you were in a room with people and they were babbling away, you didn’t always recognize how boring it was. Listening to a tape, you were always aware of the fact that you were hoping these people wouldsay something you could use against them. Usually, there was one person wearing the wire and the other person or persons present were totally unaware that they were being recorded. So they rambled on about anything under the sun, while you sat there with your thumb up your ass waiting for some kind of plot development. Even though Ollie did not much enjoy reading books, he knew all about plot development now that he’d started writing his thriller, which to tell the truth he’d found much easier than learning the first three bars of “Night and Day.” In fact, he couldn’t understand why the guys who wrote such shit got paid so much money for it.

The interesting thing about the tape Gomez had recorded was that Wiggins hadn’t shot him at once. Because anyone listening to it—as Ollie and Carella were listening to it now—had to recognize from minute one that Tigo was on a fishing expedition and that what he was fishing for was an admission of murder. But Wiggins had something else on his mind, and as the detectives listened and ate—Ollie’s banana was particularly tasty with a baloney sandwich smothered in mustard—they began to become more and more interested in what Wiggins was saying than in Gomez’s inept attempts to wring a confession from him.

Since Gomez’s voice was the only one they’d heard before now, they cleverly detected which of the two speakers was the one wearing the wire and doing the fishing, which easily enabled them to assign the other voice to Wiggins. And since both detectives were used toreading transcripts of tapes, they automatically beganlistening that way, labeling each voice as it came from the recorder. They were frankly getting bored stiff with Tigo’s clumsy interrogation, expecting Wiggy to yell “The fuck youdoin, man?” and shoot the silly jackass dead, when all at once Wiggy began talking about the computers he’d tapped into up at Wadsworth and Dodds. Ollie wondered what the man had been doing up there at his future publishing house, but Wiggy wasn’t about to explain that. Instead, he began talking about what he’d found on the computers. Ollie looked at Carella. Carella shrugged.

WIGGY:

All these files labeled with girls’ names.

TIGO:

Whut you mean names?

WIGGY:

Rina and Bela and Ada and Gina and Tessie, and here’s the one really got me … Diana.

TIGO:

Like Princess Di?

WIGGY:

Yeah, but it’s Diamondback. It’s code for Diamondback.

TIGO:

How you know that, Wigg?

WIGGY:

It was on the PC. Man left it wide open for me when I showed him the ugly. D-I-A-N-A. Right there in the name Diamondback, juss mixed up and turned all aroun, is all.

TIGO:

If the man put a code in there, why he want to gosplain it to you?

WIGGY:

Nobody splained it to me, man. I doped it out all by myself. Same as how B-E-L-A is for Lebanon. And G-I-N-A is for Nicaragua.

TIGO:

Why they want to do that for, Wigg?

WIGGY:

To hide what theydoin in those places. Man, don’t get me wrong. I don’t give a shit bout the mischief they into anyplace else. But when they buyin dope in Mexico and sellin it up here in Diamondback …

TIGO:

We selling dope here, too, Wigg.

WIGGY:

It ain’t the same thing, man. They sellin dope up here for altogether different reasons. Man, they shittin on us black folk is what they doin.

TIGO:

I just don’t know, Wigg. I mean …

WIGGY:

What is it you don’t know? I justtole you what’s happening, what is it you don’t unnerstan?

There was a long silence on the tape. Ollie peeled another banana. He looked at Carella again. Carella shrugged again.

TIGO:

You really think all this is true, huh? Cause to me …

WIGGY:

Man, I was lookin straight in they computer! I seed all this stuff with my own eyes!

TIGO:

It just sounds, you know, like science-fiction, you know? This file named Mothah you can’t open cause you need a password, an all this money floatin aroun, and these people causin trouble all over the world, an tryin’a fuck us right here in Diamon’back, I mean, man, it sounds like suppin you’d see in amovie, you know what I’m sayin, man?

WIGGY:

It’d make agood movie, that’s for damn sure, but it’strue, man! I got it from theycomputer

TIGO:

That don’t mean it couldn’t of been garbage in there.

WIGGY:

The point is, whut we gonnado about it, Tigo? I mean, these guys are messin with ourpeople!

There was another long silence.

“What the hell’s he talkin about?” Ollie asked.

“Shhh,” Carella said.

WIGGY:

I think we should go to the police, tellthem the story.

“Good idea,” Ollie said to the tape.

There was the sound of a phone being dialed.

“He’s calling me,” Ollie said.

“I figured.”

They listened to Wiggy’s end of the conversation. Ollie opened a bag of potato chips. Carella finished his glass of milk. There was the sound of the phone receiver clicking onto the cradle. Ollie dipped into the bag of chips.

WIGGY:

Weeks is on the way.

TIGO:

That’s just great.

WIGGY:

You maybe seed him aroun the streets. Fat Ollie Weeks. He’s this big fat guy.

“Hey, watch it,” Ollie said.

TIGO:

You goan tell him you a drug dealer?

WIGGY:

No, I don’t have to tell him that.

TIGO:

Then how come youknow these people are sellin dope up here?

WIGGY:

I coulda heard.

TIGO:

Howyou coulda heard, Wigg? You goan tell the fuzz this man Hoskins come up here Christmastime, sold you a hundred keys of coke to distribute to li’l kiddies in the streets?

“Here we go,” Ollie said.

“Shhh,” Carella said again.

WIGGY:

No. But I could …

TIGO:

You goan tell him you shot this man Hoskins back of the head an dropped him in a garbage can? You goan do that, Wigg?

“Go for it, man,” Ollie said.

WIGGY:

I’m sayin’ it don’t seem right, what these mothahs are doin to our people.

TIGO:

They’s evil folk in this world, itis a shame.

WIGGY:

You know what the name Nettie stans for?

TIGO:

Nettie, you say?

WIGGY:

N-E-T-T-I-E. You know what word that name is hidin’ in?

TIGO:

No, I has to admit I do not.

WIGGY:

Counterfeit. That’s the word. You search that word, you find Nettie lurkin in there. You double-click on her name, you transported straight to Nettieland. You want to hear this, man, or you want to stay ignorant the ress of your life?

“This is all bullshit,” Ollie said.

“Let’s hear what the man …”

“He’s hallucinatin,” Ollie said.

“For Christ’ssake!” Carella said, and snapped off the recorder, and shot Ollie a look. Ollie dug into the bag of chips again. Carella hit the rewind button. Ollie looked offended.

WIGGY:

… hear this, man, or you want to stay ignorant the ress of your life? What these mothahs doin, they buyin fake money in I-ran. Hunnerd-dollar bills. So good you want to lick’em right off the page. They buy ’em at a fifty-percent discount. That means they pays half a century for a C-note, they ahead of the game by fifty already, you dig, man?

TIGO:

I’m listening.

WIGGY:

They takes this fake money to Mexico, where they buy high quality shit with it. You member what that white dude was sellin us aroun Christmastime?

TIGO:

The one you shot and thowed in the garbage can?

WIGGY:

The hunnerd keys we tested, you member it?

TIGO:

I member you shootin him. Why’d you kill that man, Wigg?

WIGGY:

Point I’m makin is them hunnerd keys was purchased with funny money, man. They gettintwice the dope they should be gettin cause they payin for it with bills coss ’em onyhalf what they face value is. You see the scam they got goin here, man?

TIGO:

Wish we’da thought of it, Wigg.

WIGGY:

Butweain’t gettin no fifty-percent payback here in Diamondback, man! We payin the full an honorable price for the shit. And they takin the big profit they make up here an usin it for financin all they activities all over the world, you know what I’m sayin? Man, we payin ’em good money, an they usin it to start some revolution inAfrica someplace!

TIGO:

Who you mean bythey, man? Who’sthey?

WIGGY:

I don’tknow who they is. But I’ll bet you any amount of money it’s right there in that folder markedMothah. You fine the password to that folder, man, you on the way to trackin downzackly who these people are.

TIGO:

Why you so keen on knowin that, man?

WIGGY:

What’s the matter with you, Teeg, you some kind of fool? They fuckin us six ways from the middle! You close Nettie and you double-click on Diana, you know what you fine in that Diamondback file? You fine what the plan is forus, man. You see what theyreally doin up here, you see how this thing comes full circle.

TIGO:

What is it they doin, Wigg? I’m sorry, but I don’t see what …

WIGGY:

They buildin a community ofdope fiends, man. They keepin the nigger in his place so he can’t work, he can’t vote, he can’t do a fuckin thing but shoot H in his arm or sniff coke up his nose! They turnin us into fuckin slaves all over again.

TIGO:

Man, Wiggy. wiggy: Yeah, man, is right. That’s why I called that fat hump cop. They got to know what’s goin on here, Teeg. Somebody got to put a stop to it.

TIGO:

One thing I don’t get, Wigg.

WIGGY:

What’s that?

TIGO:

These dudes in I-ran? The ones gettin paidreal money for the fake stuff?

WIGGY:

Who gives a shit about them, man? You unnerstan what I’msayin here?

TIGO:

I was juss wonderin what theydo with that money, that’s all.

The shots exploding from the recorder startled both detectives. Ollie actually dropped the bag of potato chips. Screams erupted over the ugly stutter of automatic gunfire. A woman’s voice shouted, “The window!” There was the sound of glass breaking. Heavy breathing. More shots. Footsteps clanging on metal. The breathing harsher now. Yet more shots. More footsteps pounding. And then Carella’s own voice came from the machine.

CARELLA:

You know who did this to you? Who, Tigo? Can you tell me?

TIGO:

Mother.

CARELLA:

Yourmother shot …?

TIGO:

Nettie.

CARELLA:

Is that your mother’s name?

TIGO:

Diana.

CARELLA:

I don’t under …

There was more shooting.

Heavy breathing.

OLLIE:

That’s two, Steve.

“Who the fuck is Mother?” Ollie asked.

FROM WHERE SVI COHEN stood center stage, he could see the vast enclosing arms of Clarendon Hall, from the orchestra level soaring upward to the first and second tiers, and the dress circle, and the front and rear balconies. A giant of a man himself, he felt dwarfed by the golden sweep of the most prestigious concert hall in the United States. It was here that Jascha Heifetz, a seventeen-year-old Russian violinist, made his explosive American debut in 1917. It was here—not a decade later—that a ten-year-old prodigy named Yehudi Menuhin stunned the world of classical music with a violin style that combined the elegance of Kreisler, the sonority of Elman, and the technique of Heifetz himself. Here, too, on this very stage, the great Russian pianist Svetlana Dyalovich had made her American debut. Svi stood staring out at the red-carpeted space, overwhelmed.

“So how does it look to you?” Arthur Rankin asked, beaming.

Rankin was the Philharmonic’s conductor, a man in his sixties, a man who’d been playing violin since he was four years old and conducting since he was thirty, but in the presence of this thirty-seven-year-old genius from Tel Aviv, he was virtually awe-stricken.

“Wait till you hear the sound,” he said.

“I can imagine,” Svi said.

The orchestra was beginning to tune up.

Tonight’s program would start with “La Gazza Ladra”—the “Thieving Magpie” overture from Rossini’sThe Barber of Seville. They would then play Mozart’s no. 40 in G Minor to conclude the first half of the evening. There would be a twelve-minute intermission, and then Svi Cohen would take the stage. The orchestra had been rehearsing all of the pieces for the past week now, but this was the first time they would be playing the Mendelssohn E Minor with the Israeli violinist.

Rankin tapped his baton for silence.

“Gentlemen?” he said. “May I introduce our honored guest?”

THE PLAN was a simple one.

They had been trained to believe that all good plans were simple ones.

Part of the seed money had been spent for false identity papers created for them by a master forger who’d been trained in Bucharest and who now lived in a small town upstate, where he sold antiques as a sideline. Passports, green cards, driver’s licenses, social security cards, credit cards—all that anyone might need to move freely around the United States, or indeed around the world. From the stock of a Cadillac dealership in the state across the river, Nikmaddu—using the assumed name on his new driver’s license—had purchased outright a black DeVille sedan. The car would be used in the attack tonight, and then driven to Florida, where it would be disposed of before all four men parted company. Akbar, Mahmoud, and Jassim would board separate flights to Zurich, Paris, and Frankfurt, and would then disperse to the far corners of the Arab world. Nikmaddu would leave first for Chicago, and then San Francisco, and finally Los Angeles. The attack here in this city would have put only a small dent in the cash he’d carried from home. Activities elsewhere in the United States required money, too. Money was what made the world of terrorism—or, as he preferred to call it, liberation—go round. Money was both the engine and the fuel.

At seven-forty-five tonight Akbar, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform, would drive the Cadillac—

They called this luxurious car a Caddy, the Americans. They also used this word to describe the menial who carried a golfer’s clubs. A strange country.

He would drive the Caddy, then, to the front door of Clarendon Hall. Jassim, barbered and bathed and manicured and groomed, well-tailored in a black business suit, carrying a man’s handbag purchased at Gucci on Hall Avenue, would present his ticket and enter the hall. If he was asked to open the bag, which was highly unlikely, they would find in it only a package of cigarettes, a gold and enamel cigarette lighter also purchased at Gucci, a Coach leather wallet, and a paperback copy ofCatcher in the Rye. It was not until later that Jassim would re-enter the hall carrying the armed bomb.

“Where will you be during the first part of the concert?” Nikmaddu asked.

Akbar, who had assembled the bomb, and who would be responsible for arming it before Jassim went back in, said, “I’ll be parked just across the street.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to park directly outside?”

“It is forbidden to park in front of the hall. Or, in fact, anywhere on that side of the street. Most of the limo drivers park across the way or around the corner. Jassim knows where I’ll be. We’ve run this through many times already.”

Mahmoud looked at him skeptically.

“Half the taxicab and limousine drivers in this city are from the Middle East,” Akbar said. “I will not arouse any suspicion. I will sit behind the wheel quietly, minding my own business, smoking a cigarette and waiting for my fat Jew employer to come out of the hall. Jassim and I will find each other, don’t worry.”

“You’ve got only twelve minutes to find each other,” Mahmoud reminded them.

“I’ll be watching for him to come out,” Akbar said. “We’ll have more than enough time, believe me.”

“What time does the concert start?” Nikmaddu asked.

“It’s supposed to begin at eight. Experience has taught me that it always starts some five or ten minutes later.”

“And the intermission is when?”

“The Rossini overture can take anywhere between nine and eleven minutes and the Mozart symphony between twenty-five and thirty-five. On average, I would expect the first half of the concert to run some forty minutes. The intermission should start at around nine or a little bit after.”

“Can you not be more precise?” Nikmaddu asked.

“I’m sorry,” Akbar said. “Western music is not always precise. In any case, I’ll arm the bomb when Jassim returns to the limousine. I’ll place it in his bag, and he’ll go back into the hall. You’d be surprised how long a time twelve minutes is.”

“I hope so. I wouldn’t want the bomb to explode while he’s still outside on the sidewalk.”

“No, that can’t possibly happen. The intermission will end, let’s say, at nine-fifteen. They will allow at most five minutes for everyone to get settled again. Let’s say the Jew comes on stage at nine-twenty. The bomb will be set to explode at nine-thirty. Jassim will be long gone by then.”

“Inshallah,”Mahmoud said.

“Inshallah,”the others repeated.

The men fell silent.

“The weather is supposed to be clear and cold tonight,” Nikmaddu said at last.

“Good,” Mahmoud said. “Then our drive to Florida should be trouble free.”

“Someday, I would love to spend some time in Florida,” Akbar said, almost wistfully.

THE BLONDE Ollie had shot in the back was in a room on the sixth floor of Hoch Memorial. A male police officer was stationed outside the door to the room. The clock on the wall behind him read twelve-fortyP.M. The blonde had plastic tubes trailing out of her nose. The blonde had lines running into her arm. Neither Carella nor Ollie felt the slightest bit of pity or compassion for her on this cold December afternoon at the end of the year.

“Want to tell us who you are?” Carella asked.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said. “You’re making a grave mistake here.”

“You’re the one who made the grave mistake,” Ollie said.

“Threeof them,” Carella said.

The blonde smiled.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

“You killed two civilians and tried to kill a police officer. Do you know what kind of trouble you’re in here?”

“I’m not in any trouble at all.”

“Two counts of Murder Two …”

“Another count of Attempted …”

“On our block, that’s pretty serious,” Ollie said.

“On my block, it’s routine,” she said.

“And where’s that, Miss?”

“What’s your name, Miss?”

“Where do you live?”

“How come you weren’t carrying any identification?”

The blonde smiled again.

“You think this is pretty funny, don’t you?” Ollie said. “Trying to kill a police officer.”

“How about a police officer shooting me in the back?” she said. “Do you thinkthat’s funny?”

“Not as funny as it might have been if I’d killed you,” Ollie said. “That really would’ve been comical.”

“You think so, huh? Just wait, Mister.”

“For what?” Ollie said.

“Just wait.”

“What it is, you see, we don’t like cops getting shot in this city.”

“Then cops in this city should keep their noses out of other people’s business.”

“Which people are you talking about?”

“People with more important matters on their minds than two piss-ant dope dealers.”

“Oh?” Carella said.

“Oh?” Ollie said.

“You knew they were dealing, huh?”

The blonde smiled.

“What else did you know about them?”

She shook her head.

“Did you know one of them killed a man named Jerry Hoskins?”

She kept smiling, shaking her head.

“Ever hear that name?”

“Jerry Hoskins?”

“Got himself shot on Christmas Eve by one of the guysyou shot last night? Think there might be a connection?”

“Stop blowing smoke up my skirt,” she said.

“Jerry Hoskins? Frank Holt?” Ollie said.

“One and the same person,” Carella said.

“Sold Wiggins a hundred keys of coke on Christmas Eve …”

“Got paid for it with a bullet at the back of his head. Ever hear of him?”

“Jerry Hoskins?”

“Frank Holt?”

The blonde said nothing.

“Ever hear of a woman named Cass Ridley?” Ollie said.

“Cassandra Ridley?” Carella said.

“Flew a hundred keys of shit out of Mexico for Jerry Hoskins. Ever hear ofher?”

“I’m not saying anything until my people contact you.”

“Oh? Your people? Who are these people?”

“You’ll find out.”

“You got friends in high places?” Ollie asked.

“The Mayor’s office?”

“The Governor’s mansion?”

“The White House?”

“Go ahead, laugh,” she said.

“Nobody’s laughing,” Ollie said. “What it looks like is you knew Walter Wiggins was dealing drugs, and maybe you also knew Hoskins was in the same business …”

“Keep blowing smoke,” she said.

“Did you also know Cass Ridley, who flew the shit up from Mexico?”

“Did you happen to take a bottle of champagne to her apartment?”

“Did you and another fine lady walk her over to the zoo?”

“You and another blond lady?”

“Both of you wearing black?”

“We got a doorman justitching to identify you.”

“Keep blowing, I’m beginning to enjoy it.”

“I wonder how you’ll enjoy your date with the D.A.”

“You’vegot a date with my people,” she said. “But you don’t seem to …”

“We’re dying to meet them,” Carella said.

“Tell us who they are, we’ll go pay them a visit.”

“Maybe they can explain how come you killed Wiggins who killed Hoskins who hired Ridley to fly dope for him.”

“Maybe they can explain how Ridley ended up in that lion’s cage,” Ollie said.

“No ID on her,” Carella said.

“Maybe your people can explain all that.”

“Maybe my people can have you both walking beats tomorrow morning.”

“Oooo,” Carella said. “A threat, Ollie.”

“Oooo,” Ollie said.

There was nothing he liked better than a perp trying to pull rank. Especially when the perp had tried to gun down a cop.

“You think these important people you know’ll come riding to the rescue, is that it?” he said.

“You don’t know what you’re messing with here.”

“Gee, I thought we were messing with an Attempted Murder One and a pair of Murder Twos.”

“You’d never make it to trial. They’ll step on you like a bug.”

“Who? Your important people in high places?”

The blonde smiled.

Ollie just loved it when they smiled.

“If your friends take you out of here, they’ll be harboring a fugitive,” he said. “That’s called Hindering Prosecution in the first degree, Section 205.65 of the Penal Law. Want to hear it?”

“Shove it up your ass,” the blonde said.

“Nice talk on the lady,” Ollie said. “Hindering prosecution is rendering criminal assistance to a person who’s committed a class-A felony. Murder Two is a class-A felony. So’s Attempted Murder One. If your friends whisk you out of here, they’ll be staring at a seven-year max in the slammer. Maybe that’s why they’re not here yet, huh?”

“All in good time,” the blonde said.

“Oh sure, I hear them thundering down the hallway right this minute.”

The blonde actually cocked her head toward the door.

“But maybe not,” Ollie said. “Ballistics is checking the slugs that killed the two dealers. If they match the ones we test-fire from that cannon you were carrying …”

“Save it. I’m not interested.”

“Well, let me tell you what else we’ve got,” Carella said. “It might change your mind.”

“I got shot last night. I’m tired. Goodbye, Mr. Detective.”

“We’ve got one of the guys you killed wearing a wire. We’ve got the other guy you killedtalking on that wire. Saying a lot of interesting things about a company called Wadsworth and Dodds, ever hear of them?”

“No.”

“W&D?”

“No.”

“Witches and Dragons?” Carella said. “Is that a glimmer I see in your eye? How about Mother? Do you know who Mother is?”

The blonde said nothing.

“Ever see that name on a W&D computer?”

The blonde was still silent.

“Ever hear that name anyplace?”

“Why don’t you go home, Mr. Detective?”

“People keep telling me to go home,” Carella said to Ollie.

“Maybe you should,” Ollie said.

“Yeah, but gee, I’d like to finish this, you know?”

“So finish it.”

“Here’s where we’re coming from, Miss,” Carella said, turning back to the bed. “A person is guilty of Murder in the First Degree when the intended victim is a police officer who at the time of the killing is engaged in the course of performing his official duties, quote, unquote, Section 125.27 of the state’s Penal Law. You tried to kill a police officer last night, honey.Me. Would have killed me, in fact, if another police officer—Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks here—hadn’t expediently intervened. That makes the crimeAttempt to Commit Murder, which in this case is an A-1 felony. Add to that theactualmurders of both Tito Alberico Gomez and Walter Kennedy Wiggins, and you’re looking at twenty-five years to life, three times over. That comes to seventy-five years in the slammer. You’ll be a hundred years old when you get out.”

“A hundred and five,” the blonde said.

“That’s if we don’t get a positive ID from the doorman.”

“What doorman?”

“The one who let you in Cass Ridley’s apartment building. Where you stuck an ice pick in her forehead. You can add another twenty-five for that one.”

“You think so?I think I’ll be out of here before you jerks leave the building.”

“You got shot when?” Ollie said. “Seven, seven-thirty last night? You know what time it is now? Almost one o’clock the next day. Has anyone been here to see you? Has anyone even called you? Where’s the cavalry, sweetheart? They’re riding into the sunset, that’s where they are, and leaving you to take the fall. But, hey, be loyal. Seventy-five years behind bars may seem better to you than anything we’ve got to offer.”

The blonde was looking at him.

Ollie figured he had her attention.

“Want to hear it?”

“No. I want to go to sleep.”

“Okay, go to sleep. I guess we’ll have to charge her on all three counts, Steve.”

“Maybe four if we get lucky with the doorman,” Carella said. “Too bad she can’t help us get our search warrant, huh?”

“A crying shame,” Ollie said.

“Well, what are you gonna do?” Carella said, and shrugged. “Let’s go home.”

“So long, Miss,” Ollie said, and both detectives started out of the room.

“What do you mean?” the blonde asked.

They turned back to the bed.

“About a search warrant?” she said.

“Let me be honest with you, okay?” Ollie said, which was the last thing he wished to be with her. “We know you won’t admit you’re a hitter for W&D because that would make this Murder for Hire, and that means the Valium cocktail if you’re convicted.”

“The death penalty,” Carella explained. “Lethal injection.”

“I hear it’s actually pleasant,” Ollie said, and smiled. “But we know you won’t admit that somebodypaid you for offing the redhead and the two Negroes, so all we’ve really got for sure are the pair of Twos and the One-Ten. Which is enough to put you away for seventy-five, I might remind you, ah yes, if that’s the route you choose to take.”

“Or,” Carella said.

“Or,” Ollie agreed, and nodded.

“Orwhat?Let me hear it.”

“To the point, I like that in a woman,” Ollie said. “Do you know what’s on any of the W&D computers?”

“Let’s say Ican know what’s on them if Ineed to know what’s on them.”

“Let’s say youneed to know what’s on them if you want to deal here,” Ollie said.

“But of course we can’t speak for the D.A.,” Carella said.

“Of course not. Butif the lady wants to deal, she would have to tell us she knows what’s on those computers.”

“You’re both so full of shit,” she said. “Tell me what you want me to say.”

“We want you to say that evidence of a crime exists on W&D’s computers.”

“What crime?”

“From what we understand, the Criminal Sale of Controlled Substances.”

“In the first degree,” Carella said.

“Section 220.43.”

“An A-1 felony.”

“Twenty-five to life upstate.”

“Heavy,” Carella said.

“That’s the crime,” Ollie said. “From what we understand.”

“And how do you happen to understand this?”

“A good question,” Ollie said. “We’ve got a tape, remember?”

“We want you to listen to that tape,” Carella said.

“Tell us it’s accurate …”

“… so we can get a search warrant on probable cause.”

“Reliable information from a cooperative witness and all that,” Ollie said.

“IfI cooperate,” the blonde said.

“Well, that’s entirely up to you, m’little chickadee, ah yes.”

“What do I get in return?”

“We’ll drop the One-Ten,” Ollie said. “That okay with you, Steve? I mean, you’re the one she tried to kill.”

“That’s fine with me, if it’s okay with the D.A.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not fine with me,” the blonde said.

“Then you tell us.”

“Drop everything.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Oh, yes you can. I walk, you get the big boys.”

“Well, maybe we can reduce the murder counts to manslaughter.”

“Well, maybe I don’t think that’s good enough, either, okay?”

“Two counts of Manslaughter One? That’svery good,” Ollie said. “And we’ll drop the Attempted, don’t forget.”

“Sorry, boys.”

“Somewhere between five and twenty-five on each?” Carella said. “That’s a good deal. Don’t you think that’s a good deal, Ollie?”

“I do indeed. What do you say, Miss?”

“I say I want five, not twenty-five.”

Carella pretended to be thinking this over. He looked at Ollie. Ollie sighed.

“Okay, five,” Carella said.

“And you run the sentences concurrently,” the blonde said.

“No, we can’t do that,” Carella said. “That’d come to only two and a half on each hit.”

“Come on, honey, be realistic,” Ollie said.

“The guys who got whacked were a pair of shits,” the blonde said. “I did society a favor.”

“Still, just fiveconcurrently?” Carella said.

“For adouble hit?” Ollie said.

“That’s all they’re worth,” the blonde said.

“Let me call the D.A.,” Carella said. “Play the tape for her, Ollie.”

12 .

THEY INTERROGATED RICHARD HALLOWAY at ten minutes to five that Saturday afternoon. He was wearing gray flannel slacks, a blue blazer, a blue button-down shirt, and a green bow tie printed with little red prancing deer. He had waived his right to an attorney, and so there were only four people in the interrogation room—Halloway himself, Detectives Carella and Weeks, and Detective-Lieutenant Byrnes—all of them sitting around the long cigarette-scarred table, drinking coffee. Halloway seemed completely relaxed and supremely self-assured.

“Mr. Halloway,” Carella said, “when we entered the offices of Wadsworth and Dodds this afternoon at three-thirty, were you packing to move?”

“Is it a crime to move one’s offices?” Halloway asked.

“Only if you’re moving to conceal evidence of a crime.”

“I see. And what crime was I supposed to have been concealing?”

“We have a warrant to open your computers, Mr. Halloway.”

“So open them,” Halloway said, and smiled, and added, “If you can.”

“Oh, we will.”

“Good luck.”

“We think we might find some interesting stuff on your database.”

“If you find sales figures interesting.”

“Tell me about that database, okay?”

“Sure. Which book?”

“A folder called Witches and Dragons.”

“I’m not familiar with that title. How aboutDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of…?”

“How about a file named Diana?”

“Don’t know that title, either.”

“Or Em. Interesting file, Em. Seems to list all the drug deals your firm has made in Mexico over the past two years. Dates, locations, number of kilos, purchase prices, etcetera, etcetera, the whole megillah.”

“I’m more familiar withPractical Classroom Chemistry by Guthrie Frane. I know we have a file on that.”

“Do you have a file called Nettie?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“The Feds might be interested in that one. We think Nettie stands for ‘counterfeiting.’ We think you’ve been buying counterfeit money in Iran and using it to finance your various drug transactions.”

“My, my, all this crime in such a small publishing house.”

“We think your database will provide evidence of those crimes. And other interesting activities.”

“Assuming, of course, that you can get into our computers.”

“I think we can.”

“Well, you can certainly try.”

“Our nerds are very determined.”

“I’m sure they are,” Halloway said, and finished his coffee, and stood up, and smiled. “Well, I have things to do,” he said, “as I’m sure you do, too. So let’s not waste any more time here, hmm? I know you believe…”

“You’re under arrest here, Mr. Halloway,” Byrnes said. “Please don’t forget that.”

“Perhapsyoushould forget exactly that,” Halloway said. “Believe me, you’re not going to pick up any marbles this time. Not this time, boys. So, if there’s nothing further…”

“Sit down,” Byrnes said.

Halloway smiled. But he sat.

“We’re charging you with the criminal sale of controlled substances in the first degree,” Byrnes said. “That’s Section 220.43 of the Penal Law, an A-1 felony punishable by a term of twenty-five years to life. We’ve got twenty-four hours to arraign you before McNabb-Mallory kicks in. That means you’ll be before a criminal court judge early tomorrow morning. We’ll ask for sky-high bail, you’re an international drug dealer. If he goes along with that, we’ll have six days to crack your goddamn computers and present our case to a grand jury. Any questions?”

Halloway was still smiling.

“Let me give you some advice,” he said. “You should have listened to the Secret Service when they told you to back off, but you didn’t. So here we are, at an awkward juncture that could have been avoided. I certainly shouldn’t be here, but neither should you. Which is why I’m suggesting you listen to me now.” He looked at his watch. “When I walk out of here in five minutes, you will forget you ever saw me, you will forget a woman named Cass Ridley met a horrible fate in the zoo’s Lion Habitat, you will forget …”

“What are you, a hypnotist?” Ollie said.

“Allow me to finish, Detective Weeks. I am advising you to put all of this behind you. Forget Jerry Hoskins was murdered, forget that two black drug dealers in Diamondback were subsequently killed, forget everything that’s happened since December twenty-third, forget you ever wokeup that morning. There are bad people in this world, boys. Pursuing this any further …”

“People like you,” Carella said, nodding.

“No, you’ve got it backwards. I’m one of thegood guys. I’m talking about people who areterrorists. People who consider us the Great Satan. People who wish us nothing but harm. These people all believe in the same cause. And that cause is to drive Americans out of the Arab world.”

His tone had changed all at once, his voice sounding suddenly portentous and, to tell the truth, somewhat frightening.

“There’s a vast network of individual terrorist cells out there,” he said, “take my word for it. Three or four dedicated individuals in each cell, that’s all it takes to do considerable mischief. Anonymous littlegangs,if you will, who get their orders and their financing from the top, and then use their own judgment in executing those orders. Makes it enormously difficult to zero in on them, no less stop them. Why do you think those two men who bombed theCole still can’t be traced back to bin Laden? Why do you think …?”

“What’s any of this got to do with you buying and selling dope?” Ollie said.

“No one has yet produced any evidence to that effect,” Halloway said. “Once I walk through that door …”

“You’re not walking through any door,” Byrnes said. “You’re going straight to a detention cell downstairs.”

“That would be inadvisable.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Ollie asked. “The CIA?”

Halloway smiled.

“Cause you want my opinion, thereain’t no CIA. Any outfit so fuckin stupid has got to be a cover for ourreal intelligence agency.”

“I’ll have to remember that one,” Halloway said, and actually laughed. “No CIA, that’s very funny. On the other hand,you might wish to consider the possibility that the CIA,if it exists, has adopted the same techniques as the people they’re fighting. If thereis a CIA—and perhaps you’re right, perhaps there isn’t—but on the slight offchance that theremight be, then perhaps they’ve splintered into hundreds of littlecounter -terrorist cells all over the globe. Little self-reliant units that take orders from the top and carry them out autonomously. Authorized roving bands of brothers, you might say— sisters, too, if you wish to be politically correct. Legitimate loose cannons. And if this is actually so, then perhaps you stepped…”

“Authorized bywho?” Ollie said.

“Well, if thereis a CIA, then the authorization comes directly from the President or the National Security Council, doesn’t it?” He smiled again. Looked at his watch again. “Let’s say you stepped in the way of a rolling cannon on a tilting deck, boys. You stumbled into something far more vital to the interests of the United States than a bunch of dumb flatfoots, believe me. You should have known enough to step aside, boys. Instead, you stepped in shit. Wipe off your shoes and go home.”

“Somebody else telling us to go home,” Carella said.

“I’m telling you it’s possible to get chewed to shreds by lions,” Halloway said.

“He’s saying don’t go in the lion’s cage tonight,” Ollie said.

“For the lions are ferocious and they bite,” Carella said.

“Well, Mr. Halloway,” Byrnes said, and stabbed at a button on his intercom, “I appreciate your advice, truly. But you see we might feel derelict in our duty if we just let you walk out of here. So with the permission of the President and the National…”

“Sir?” a voice said.

“I’ll need an officer to take a prisoner down,” Byrnes said.

“I’ll send someone forthwith, sir.”

“Thanks,” Byrnes said, and clicked off.

“I want to warn you again not to do this,” Halloway said. “Don’t open a can of peas that might explode in your face. Don’t threaten our very existence, our sacred undertaking, our…”

“Gee, sacred,” Ollie said.

“Because if you do, if you destroy everything we’ve been trying to accomplish, if you open our files to public scrut…”

“I thought your computers were sacred, too,” Ollie said.

The door to Byrnes’s office opened.

“Sir?” a uniformed officer said.

“Maggie, find a cell downstairs for this gentleman, will you?” He turned to Halloway. “Do we have to cuff you?” he asked.

“Only lions bite,” Halloway said, and smiled thinly. “You’ll never even get me arraigned, I promise you. You’ve got to be kidding here. The Commissioner will come down on you so hard you’ll wish you lived on Mars. You think we’ll let a Mickey Mouse detective squad in the asshole of the universe jeopardize everything we’ve been working for? Who’d stop those bastardsthen, can you tell me? Who’d stop them from poisoning our reservoirs or blowing up our trains? Who’d stop them from planting bombs in day care centers or baseball parks? Who’d stop them from destroying this land of ours? Thisworldof ours? Thisfree world of ours? You? Are you the ones who’ll save us? Don’t make me laugh! You should get on your hands and knees and praise God we exist! Because if it weren’t for us, there’d be nobody! Nobody at all! They’d make it impossible to walk the streets! They’d blow up your babies in their cribs! Without us, who the hell on earth would eventry to stop them? I’m asking you.Who?”

WILL STRUTHERS HELPED Antonia out of the taxi in front of Clarendon Hall and looked up at the falling snow. The snow added a somewhat festive air to the evening. In a city of strangers, people were actually smiling at each other as they entered the old limestone building. Will looked up at the television monitors spaced high on the walls everywhere around the lobby, all of them showing the stage inside. “For the benefit of latecomers,” Antonia explained, which Will didn’t quite understand, but he followed her as she handed their tickets to a man standing at one of the entrance doors to the hall itself. Together, they stepped into the vast space, all red and gold and magnificent, glittering like an outsized Christmas present left by Santa himself. Will had never seen anything so splendiferous in his life. Not even in Texas.

THE SHORT , slight man who stepped out of the black Cadillac DeVille was wearing a black overcoat with a mink collar. The trousers of a black suit showed below the bottom edge of the coat. He was wearing a black homburg and highly polished black shoes. Hanging from a strap over his left shoulder was a man’s black leather handbag. The hat, the coat’s collar, the coat’s shoulders became immediately dusted with falling snow. The tinted glass window of the limo slid down silently. The man leaned into it and gave the driver some instructions in English. The driver answered in English and then the window slid up again, and the limo pulled away from the curb.

Standing in the falling snow on the sidewalk outside Clarendon Hall, Jassim Saiyed reached into the handbag, removed from it a package of Marlboro cigarettes, shook one free, and lighted it. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was fifteen minutes to eight. Puffing calmly on his cigarette, Jassim watched the crowd of smiling Americans entering the building.

THEY TOOK THEIR SEATS in row G, seven rows back from the stage, numbers 2 and 4 on the aisle.

“Good, huh?” Antonia said, grinning. “One of my best customers plays oboe with the orchestra. This was his Christmas present to me.”

Will was thinking that when he and Antonia became millionaires, they would come to places like this all the time, never mind free handouts from anybody. There was a sense of excitement and anticipation in this opulent place, resounding now with the repeated sounds of strings and horns tuning up. Leafing through the program, he noticed that one of the pieces they’d be playing tonight was something called “La Gazza Ladra,” which he saw was translated as “The Thieving Magpie.”

He showed this to Antonia, and then whispered, “I hope this isn’t anything personal.”

Antonia laughed.

A hush fell over the audience.

The concert was about to begin.

JASSIM LOOKED AT his wristwatch.

If Akbar’s calculations were correct, the intermission would begin at approximately nine o’clock. Jassim would go up the aisle, and out into the lobby, and hence into the street, where Akbar would be waiting in the Cadillac. He would arm the bomb’s timing device, and Jassim would come back into the hall, and take his seat again. Several moments later, after the Jew had started playing, Jassim would rise again from his seat, apparently on his way to the men’s room, leaving behind him his hat, his coat, and the bag containing the bomb. At precisely nine-thirty, the bomb would explode.

Jassim wondered why he felt so calm.

WILL WAS BORED to death.

The kind of music he liked best was what he heard back home in Texas. Songs about cowboys. Songs about women with broken hearts. Songs about true-blue hound dogs. The orchestra up on the stage there sounded like it was practicing.

He could hardly wait for the intermission.

TERROR WAS THE only thought on Jassim’s mind.

Strike terror into their hearts.

Deliver fatal blows all over the world.

He rose the moment the lights came up, placed his coat and his hat on the seat, and began walking swiftly toward the back of the hall. His watch read exactly three minutes past nine. He wanted to be back in his seat again by nine-fifteen, when the intermission would end. The aisle was thronged with concert-goers making their way to the rest rooms or the street outside. Patiently, Jassim milled along with them, but his heart was pounding inside his chest. He tried not to look at his watch again until he reached the lobby outside.

Nine-oh-six.

He raced through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.

He looked across the street.

The Cadillac was parked exactly where Akbar said it would be.

But a policeman in a black rain slicker was standing outside the door on the driver’s side.

THERE WAS IN THE LOBBY a palpable air of anticipation. The first part of the concert had been agreeable enough, but this glittery crowd was not here for the Rossini or the Mozart. In fact, they were not even here for the Mendelssohn. They were here for the man who would beplaying the Mendelssohn. The chatter was about Christmas gifts received and exchanged, and plans for tomorrow night’s celebration, and the weather and the market and the latest war abroad, but the people here in the lobby or smoking in the falling snow on the sidewalk outside were merely trying to conceal their excitement over the imminent appearance of the Israeli violinist. Like children careful not to wish for sunshine for fear it might rain upon their circus, they dared not even breathe his name lest he vanish somehow in a puff of smoke, disappointing their expectations.

THE POLICEMAN STOOD leaning into the open window on the driver’s side of the Cadillac, a massive man in a slippery black coat, the snow falling everywhere around him. Akbar was handing documents to him. The policeman was examining the documents. Akbar was smiling at him politely. The snow kept falling.

Jassim looked at his watch.

THE TELEVISION MONITORS spaced around the lobby showed only an empty stage now, its lights dimmed. Will kept hoping they’d show a football game or something.

“Are you enjoying it so far?” Antonia asked.

“Oh yes indeed,” he said.

So far, it was putting him to sleep.

“So far, I love it,” he said.

“Just wait,” she said. “The real fireworks won’t begin till the Israeli starts playing.”

THE POLICEMAN did not walk away from the Cadillac until fourteen minutes past nine. Dodging heavy traffic on the street, Jassim ran across to it, and yanked open the rear door on the curb side. Slamming into the car, he whispered, “What happened? What did he want?”

“Profiling!” Akbar shouted.

“What?”

“Profiling,profiling,never mind, give me the fuckingbag!”

Jassim handed him the bag. He looked at his watch and then glanced immediately over his shoulder through the rear window. The intermission would end in less than a minute; the sidewalk outside Clarendon Hall was rapidly clearing. In the front seat, Akbar was working on the timing device. Jassim could hear his heavy breathing, could see perspiration beading on his forehead, could hear as well the ticking of the clock to which Akbar was wiring the detonator. He waited. His palms were sweating. He looked back over his shoulder again. The sidewalk was clear now. He caught his breath. Waited. Kept waiting. The windows of the car were beginning to fog with their exhaled breaths. It seemed to Jassim that he could hear the beating of his own heart in the steamy darkness of the vehicle. At last, he heard a faint click. The bomb was armed, the timer and detonator wires securely fastened to the two taped pipes. Akbar eased the device into the bag. He closed the flap, snapped the bag shut.

Jassim looked at his watch.

The time was twenty minutes past nine.

The intermission had ended five minutes ago.

But he still had ten minutes to get back to his seat, plant the bomb, and get out of the hall before it went off. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and ran across the street to the lobby entrance doors. The lobby was empty. The huge ornate brass clock over the center entrance doors read nine-twenty-one. There was violin music coming from within the hall. The second part of the concert had already begun. On all the television monitors circling the lobby, a miniature Svi Cohen was standing before the orchestra, violin under his chin, head bent as if in prayer, deeply engrossed in his playing. Jassim noticed that the Jew held the fiddle in his unclean hand. He was reaching for the brass handle on the door nearest him when a man wearing a gray uniform said, “I’m sorry, sir.”

Jassim turned to him, puzzled.

“I can’t let you in until the first movement is over.”

Jassim blinked.

“It started three minutes ago, sir. I’m sorry, those are my orders.”

The time was nine-twenty-two.

The Mendelssohn concerto had started at nine-nineteen, and the bomb was set to detonate at nine-thirty.

WILL WAS WONDERING how long he’d have to sit here. He was thinking that maybe him and Antonia could go for a bite to eat after this fiddle player did his thing, there seemed to be a nice Italian restaurant right across the avenue.

He was also wondering if anybody had ever tried to steal instruments from this place. Was there a room where they stored tubas and trombones and such? Or did all those musicians up there have their own instruments? He guessed maybe they did. Besides, he had to stop thinking like a thief. If Antonia went along with his scheme, he would never in his lifetime have to commit another burglary.

But, man, wasthis boring!

JASSIM LOOKED AT his watch again.

It was now nine-twenty-four.

The first movement of Mendelssohn’s accursed violin concerto was about twelve and a half minutes long. The Jew had started playing it at nineteen minutes past nine, which meant he would end the first movement at a bit past nine-thirty-one, perhaps later, nine-thirty-three, even nine-thirty-four, depending on how much artistic license he took with the piece. Jassim could not wait until any of those times because the bomb was set to go off at nine-thirty, which meant that unless he went into the hall, it would explode right here in the lobby in six minutes.

He took a deep breath.

“Hey!” the guard shouted, but he was too late.

Jassim had thrown open one of the doors and was already running down the aisle on the right hand side of the hall.

WILL TURNED TO look up the aisle when he heard somebody screaming. The person screaming was a short dark man carrying a handbag, holding it by the straps and beginning to twirl it over his head as he ran toward the stage, screaming. Will didn’t know what the man was screaming because it was in a foreign language, but whatever it was, there was enormous rage in the words. As the man rapidly approached the stage where the Israeli was playing, he almost looked like an undersized David twirling a slingshot to hurl a stone at a giant Goliath.

Will got to his feet the moment he realized this was close to what the little man intended.

“Hey! What the hell you doing?” he shouted, and threw himself at the man, intending to tackle him, but missing by a hair. He stumbled forward, off balance, as the man stopped some three feet from the stage and shouted something else in the same foreign language.

Will didn’t know quite why he hurled himself at the man again. Perhaps he was simply trying to impress Antonia, who sat in the seventh row, watching him with her mouth agape and her eyes wide. Perhaps he was remembering that the Khmer Rouge who’d tortured him had also spoken a language he couldn’t understand. Whatever the reason, he threw himself into the air again just as the man released his grip on the handbag’s straps. The Israeli tried to deflect the missile coming at him, raising the violin by its slender neck, simultaneously stepping aside to his right.

In that instant, Will landed on the man’s back.

In the next instant, the bag exploded.

13 .

NEW YEAR’S EVE dawned bright and clear and piercingly cold. Something had gone wrong with Hoch Memorial’s heating system during the night, and while technicians fiddled with thermostats and nozzles and valves, nurses ran around wearing sweaters or even coats over their starched white uniforms.

A multitude of people had drifted into Will’s room at all hours of the night, there to take his temperature or his blood pressure, to change the dressings on his face and his hands, to offer him medication and the sort of tender loving care a wounded individual deserved. When he heard voices outside the door to his room, he thought it might be more nurses coming in to change the sheets or the dressings or the bags hanging by the bed, but instead it was just someone asking a nurse if it was okay for him to go in and talk to the patient.

The man who entered his room looked a lot like Detective Stephen Louis Carella.

“Hey, hi,” Will said. “What’reyou doing here?”

Carella had just supervised the orderly discharge and transfer of one Anna DiPalumbo—which turned out to be the blond shooter’s true and honorable name—from Hoch Memorial to the hospital wing at the Women’s House of Detention downtown, but he didn’t offer this information to Will because discussing an informant with a person who was a known felon was simply stupid and might come back to haunt him later on. If Halloway’s threats were at all realistic, the arraignment later this morning might be sent south even without any further help, but it didn’t hurt to err on the side of caution, as the sage once remarked.

“I had some business here,” Carella said, which was true enough. “How are you doing?”

“Well, okay, I guess,” Will said. “A lot better than some of the others, that’s for sure.”

The newspapers this morning had reported that the Israeli violinist, Svi Cohen, had been killed in what was cautiously being called “a supposed terrorist bombing” at Clarendon Hall. Six musicians in the string section had also been killed. Plus eight concert-goers sitting in the first two rows. Plus the unidentified bomber himself. Carella didn’t think Halloway’s case would be helped by the fact that the person who’d tried to stop the bomber was a professional burglar and not one of W&D’s own elite band of brothers, as he’d called them, or sisters if you included Anna DiPalumbo, who was now on her way downtown in an ambulance, and whom Carella never cared to meet again on any snow-covered street anywhere in the world, thank you. But where were you when we needed you, Mr. Halloway? When push came to shove last night, where were all your knights in shining armor? The only hero last night had been little ole Wilbur Struthers here, sitting up in bed now and grinning like a kid on Christmas Day.

“Your picture’s on the front page of two newspapers, did you know that?” Carella said.

“Yeah, I saw them. I was on TV, too, early this morning. They came here to my hospital room, can you believe it? I guess it was because of the book deal.”

“What book deal?” Carella asked.

“Man from a publisher here in the city came to see me, offered me a whole bunch of money for my life story. Not as much as they gave Hillary, but a goodly sum of money anyhow. I figured I ought to take it.”

“Are you free to say howmuch money?” Carella asked.

“A million-five,” Will said.

“That’s a goodly sum of money, all right,” Carella said.

“I guess there’s more than one way to make a killing, after all, huh?”

“I guess so,” Carella said.

HE STOPPED AT his mother’s house on the way home.

The front walk had been shoveled clean, he wondered who had shoveled it for her. He rang the doorbell, and heard chimes sounding inside, and then her voice calling, “Just a minute.” He waited.

When she opened the door, he almost burst into tears.

He had seen her only two days ago, but she seemed so suddenly old all at once.

He took her in his arms.

They hugged.

“Are you okay, son?” his mother asked.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“I love you, Steve,” she said.

“I love you, too, Mom.”

They sat at the kitchen table the way they used to when he was a boy eating breakfast before heading off to school, sat there now drinking coffee, and he told her he’d just come from an arraignment on what was going to shape up as a very difficult case, but at least they’d got past the first two hurdles. It was a miracle they’d managed to get the guy arraigned at all, and whereas they were hoping at best for bail in the millions, the judge had denied bail altogether, which was very good for their side. He told her all this sitting at the kitchen table, the way he used to sit there after school when he was a kid, drinking his milk and telling her everything that had happened that day.

She asked him what he and Teddy would be doing tonight, and he told her they’d be staying home with the kids, before you knew it Mark and April would be old enough to go to New Year’s Eve parties on their own, might as well enjoy the few years they still had left with them. His mother asked him if Teddy would be making lentils for the new year, it was good luck to serve cold lentils when the clock struck twelve, and he told her he remembered how she used to do that when he was a boy…

“Well, I still do it,” his mother said.

“I know, Mom. I’ll tell Teddy.”

“Tell her,” his mother said. “It’s good luck, really.”

They both fell suddenly silent.

He could hear the clock ticking in the living room.

He remembered his father winding that clock every Sunday night.

“Well,” he said, and there was nothing left to say except that he was sorry.

“I love you, Mom,” he said. “If you want to get married, I’ll lead you down the aisle. Angela, too, I love you both, I’m sorry I behaved like a shit. I think maybe it was the lion, I think Ange was right, I think that lion scrambled my brains. But there are no more lions now, I’m okay now, I promise you. I’m cool with it, really. I love you both, I’m sorry, life’s too damn short, I love you.”

They hugged again.

At the front door, she reminded him that the lentils had to be served at midnight, not before.

“For luck in the new year,” she said.

“I’ll remember,” he said.

“Good luck with your case,” she said.

“Thanks, Mom.”

He was starting for the car when he turned to her and said, “Mom?”

She was just about to close the door.

“Mom?” he said again.

“Yes, son?”

“Say hello to …uh … Luigi for me, okay?”

“Yes, son,” she said. “I’ll say hello.”

“Don’t forget now, okay?”

“I won’t forget.”

“Happy New Year, Mom.”

“Happy New Year, Steve.”

He waved, and nodded, and then turned and walked swiftly to where he’d parked the car.

Bad Money a novel by Oliver Wendell Weeks

It was a dark and stormy night.

Detective/First Grade Oswald Wesley Watts wasn’t overly fond of this section of the city because a lot of Negroes lived here, and they could infrequently be dangerous. On the other hand, “Big Ozzie Watts” as he was affectionately known to the residents of Rubytown, was here on an errand of mercy.

An evil individual was using government funds to enslave these oppressed folk, just the way the British had done in Japan, turning the entire populace into a nation of junkies before the Opium War put an end to that little gambit. Someone in this building was involved in the purchase and recycling of narcotics like cocaine. In police work, this illicit drug was called a “controlled substance.” It was sold in what was known as “keys,” which was an underworld expression for “kilograms.” A kilogram was 2.2 pounds. “Big Ozzie” knew all this valuable information because he had been a highly decorated (for bravery) law enforcement officer for a good many years now.

Tall and handsome, broad of shoulder and wide of chest, slender of waist and fleet of foot, Detective “Big Ozzie” Watts, pistol in hand (a nine-millimeter semi-automatic Glock, by the way), boldly climbed the steps to the fourth floor of the reeking tenement and knocked on the door to apartment 4C. The sound of music came from somewhere inside the apartment. Its noisome beat filled the hallway tremblingly. He heard the stammering click of high-heeled shoes approaching the door.

The woman who opened the door was a very gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old blonde, thirty-six, twenty-two, thirty-four, wearing a long green gown slit up the side to show her extremely curvaceous thigh. Leaning against the door jamb, the gown’s quite low neckline exposed fulsome white creamy breasts. She smiled dazzlingly out into the hall.

“Hello, Detective Watts,” she exclaimed.

“So, Mother,” he retorted. “We meet again.”

ED MCBAIN is the only American ever to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association’s highest award. He also holds the Mystery Writers of America’s prestigious Grand Master Award. His most recent 87th Precinct novel wasThe Last Dance.Under his own name—Evan Hunter—his writing career has spanned almost five decades, from his first novel,The Blackboard Jungle, in 1954, to the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’sThe Birds, toCandyland,his most recent novel, written in tandem with his alter ego, Ed McBain.