Money, Money, Money

4 .

OLLIE WEEKS HAD CALLED his sister to tell her he might not be able to make it there on Christmas Day cause he'd caught a leg being chewed on by a lion, and she'd said, "You ought to find yourself another job." Typical Isabelle Weeks remark, the jackass.

Now, to make matters worse, here was a dead guy stuffed in a garbage can, with a bullet hole at the back of his head. Your classic Mafia-style murder, except that the gangs up here in the Eight-Eight were all either black or Hispanic. Ollie could remember a time when the Mob ruled this part of the city, and all the Negroes and spics were running around doing the legwork for them while the Wops pulled in all the hard cash. Now it was different. The Wops should have learned to speak Spanish or so-called black English, which meant saying, "I done gone sell some dope to school chillun."

Ollie loved using the word "Negro" because he knew it pissed off "people of color," as they sometimes chose to be called. "Blacks" was another favorite, they should make up their fuckin minds. Same thing with the spics up here, which word he didn't dare use to their faces or they would cut him up and serve him from acuchifrito stand. They didn't know whether to call themselves "Hispanics," which sounded too much like "spics," or "Latinos," which sounded like a team of tango dancers. Ollie thought maybe they should concentrate instead on calling themselves "American," huh? and not flying Puerto Rican or Dominican Republic flags from their car antennas. Or marching in Columbus Day parades, the Wops. Or St. Patrick's Day parades, the Irish micks, getting drunk and puking all over the city streets, while cops got paid time and a half for overtime. Ollie hated all this high-profile nationalism for countries that weren't the U.S. of A. If they liked Santo Domingo or San Juan or Islamabad or Jerusalem or Dublin or Calcutta so fuckin much, they should go back home instead of leaving dead bodies in garbage cans. Ollie hated everyone and everything except food.

They had stuffed the corpse in the garbage can feet first, knees up, which was considerate of them. It meant that you could look the dead man right in the eyes. Looked like some kind of sculpture you could find in one of the elite, highbrow, so-called art museums downtown. Ollie could remember a time when a person could stroll along the avenue and buy an artistic landscape in real oil paints for twenty-five bucks. Nowadays, you got a dead man in a garbage can who looked like he was alive and posing for someartiste except that he had a bullet hole at the base of his skull.

The medical examiner had come and gone, offering his learned opinion that the guy in the garbage can was indeed dead and that the possible cause of death …

"Possible," he'd actually said.

. . was a bullet wound in the head.

With the help of the Mobile Unit techs-who had arrived some ten minutes ago and were dusting the alleyway as if it would reveal anything surprising about the corpse in the garbage can-Ollie lifted him out, and spread him on the alley floor. He was aware of the fact that in about ten minutes, an ambulance would arrive to pick up the body and carry it to the morgue, where they would cut it open to make sure the guy hadn't been poisonedbefore he got shot, a distinct possibility in police work, where nothing was as it appeared to be, ah yes, m'dear. Sometimes, Ollie eventhought like W. C. Fields.

The dead man was carrying a wallet with a lot of identification in it. There was a driver's license that gave his name as Jerome L. Hoskins (no relation to the disease, Ollie hoped) and his address as 327 Front Street in Calm's Point-shit, he'd have to make a trip all the way to a section of the city for which he had no particular fondness. There was an American Express credit card made out to Jerome L. Hoskins, and MasterCard and Visa cards made out to the same name. There was a MetTrans card for the subway and bus lines in this considerate city, and also a health plan card from an outfit called MediPlan, whose main offices were in Omaha, Nebraska, wherever that was. There was seven hundred dollars in hundred-dollar bills in the wallet, plus three twenties, a ten, and eight singles. A little card said that the person to notify in case of an emergency was Clara Hoskins at the same address in Calm's Point, who could be reached at 722-1314. Great. He justloved breaking the news to somebody's wife, mother, or sister.

A handful of change was in the right hand pocket of the stiff's trousers, along with what appeared to be a house key, a mailbox key, and a car key with a big gold L for Lexus in a circle on its black plastic head. The luxury car maybe spelled dope, though the vehicle of choice these days was a Range Rover, there being not much difference between big-city dope dealers and Hollywood producers, ah, yes. Strengthening the possibility of the stiff being drug-connected (as who wasn't up here these days?) was a carry pistol-permit tucked into one of the wallet flaps.

The carry was for a P-38 Walther, however, a somewhat ancient weapon for anyone in the drug trade, but perhaps the man was merely a diamond merchant who'd wandered uptown in search of black pussy and flirted by mistake with the girlfriend of a Negro warlord named High Five or some such. The gun itself was in a shoulder holster under the man's hand-tailored suit jacket. He was wearing no overcoat; when you're about to shoot a man at the back of his head, you don't dress him for the cold weather outdoors.

Well, Ollie guessed he had to talk to this Clara Hoskins, whoever she might turn out to be, find out if she was home, and then go all the way out to Calm's Point to give her the sad tidings, ah yes. He gave one of the techs his card, and asked him to call if he came up with any valuable fingerprints, Fat Chance Department. He also advised them to keep an eye out for a meat wagon from St. Mary Boniface, which should be along any minute now. He could tell the techs didn't like fat people. Hell with them.He didn't like nerds who tiptoed around alleyways treating garbage as if it was some priceless piece of evidence instead of the messy shit it actually was.

"Have a merry Christmas," he told them.

"You, too," one of the techs said cheerlessly.

A fart on thee, Ollie thought, and smiled in farewell.

This was now twenty-seven minutes past ten on Sunday morning, the twenty-fourth day of December-Christmas Eve, by Ollie's own reckoning, ah yes.

His jackass sister was probably in church.

CARELLA'S PHONE DIRECTORY for law enforcement agencies gave him a number for the U.S. Treasury Department at 427 High Street, all the way downtown, close to where the old police headquarters building used to be located. A recorded message told him the offices were closed for the holiday and would not reopen until Tuesday morning, December 26.

On the offchance that Special Agent David A. Horne might be listed in one of the city's five telephone directories, Carella tried the Isola book first and came up with dozens of listings for the surname Horne, but none for a David A. Horne. He began dialing, anyway. On his twelfth try, he hit paydirt.

"David Horne, please," he said.

"Who's this?"

"Detective Steve Carella, Eighty-seventh Squad."

"This is David Horne."

"Mr. Horne, we're investigating a homicide here, woman named Cassandra Jean Ridley …"

"Yes?"

"… whom we've linked to a man named Wilbur Struthers …"

"Yes?"

"Did three and a third at Castleview on a burglary fall …"

"Yes, I know the man. I questioned him about some suspect hundred-dollar bills."

"Related to a kidnapping," Carella said, nodding.

There was a silence on the line.

"Can you tell me which kidnapping that was?" Carella asked.

"No, I'm afraid that's classified information," Horne said.

"Even to a fellow law enforcement officer?"

"I'm afraid so."

"This is a homicide, you know."

"So you told me."

"Well, can you at least tell me how it worked out?"

"How what worked out?"

"The questioning."

"I confiscated eight thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, checked the serial numbers against our list, and came up negative. I returned the bills to Mr. Struthers that very same day. End of story."

"Which list would that be? That you checked the bills against?"

"I'm afraid that's classified, too."

"Who was kidnapped, Mr. Horne? Can you tell me that?"

"Classified."

"If I showed you the bills we recovered in the victim's apartment, could you tell me if they're the same ones you checked against this mysterious list of yours?"

"Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice, Detective Coppola?"

"It's Carella."

"Oh, forgive me. But this is Christmas Eve, you know …"

"Yes, I know that."

"And I'm home here with my family. If you can …"

"Gee,I'mstill here at the office," Carella said.

"That's admirable, I'm sure. Call me on Tuesday, okay? Perhaps we can talk then."

"Mr. Horne, the victim won'tever be talking again."

"That's unfortunate. But I'm certain our separate cases aren't at all linked."

"Then why were the serial numbers on her money being checked against bills paid in ransom, isn't that what you said?"

"I said nothing of the sort."

"Then it's what Struthers told me."

"A man with a criminal record."

Carella could almost hear the dismissive shrug.

"He seemed to be telling the truth," Carella said.

"Be that as it may."

"Mr. Horne, I'm trying to find out who …"

"It's Special Agent Horne, by the way."

"Oh, forgive me. But somebody tossed a woman to the lions the other day …"

"Is that a metaphor, Detective?"

"I wish. We're trying to find out who. Any help you can give us …"

"I have no help to offer. Our case is, as I said, classified. Besides, the bills we checked have nothing to do with that woman's death."

"How do you know that?"

"I feel certain they're unrelated."

"Then why were you checking them?"

"Detective …"

"Please don't sound so annoyed," Carella said.

He wanted to say, Don't sound so fucking annoyed, okay, Mr. Special Agent Horne?

"I can subpoena those serial numbers," he said.

"You'd never get a court order."

"Why not?"

"Detective," Horne said, and paused. "Let it go, okay? Leave it alone."

"Sure," Carella said, and hung up.

He had no intention of leaving it alone.

CLARA HOSKINS , as it turned out, was Jerome Hoskins'wife. On the phone, Ollie told her he was investigating something or other …

Actually, he mumbled the words "identification process" so that they were unintelligible, a bullshit ploy that did nothing to quell Mrs. Hoskins' curiosity.

"You're investigatingwhat?" she asked.

"Routine matter," he said. "Better to discuss it in person. Okay to come out there, Mrs. Hoskins?"

"Well, all right, I guess," she said. "But you'd better have identification."

The drive to Calm's Point took him half an hour from the North Side of the city to the bridge and over it into a community only recently reclaimed from urban decay. Hillside Commons consisted of low-rise tenements which had been inhabited by runaway hippies during the Sixties and Seventies, immigrant Hispanics in the early Eighties, Koreans in the Nineties, and now-here in the bright new millennium-upwardly mobile Yuppies yearning for a glimpse of the distant towers across the River Dix. The way Ollie looked at it, all those former immigrant residents could move right next door to Hillside Heights, where there were still street gangs and dope pushers and prostitutes and all the other amenities they were used to. Not that he liked the fuckin preppie Yuppies, either, but if an individual couldn't speak the fucking language, he had no right living in a nice neighborhood.

Clara Hoskins spoke the language just fine.

She would not open the door until Ollie had flashed both his ID card and his gold detective's shield, and then she unlocked two locks and took off a security chain before letting him in. She was a blonde in her early forties, Ollie guessed, dressed in tailored gray slacks and a tight red sweater with a little Santa Claus pin over the left breast. Five-seven, five-eight, he supposed, good-looking woman except for the suspicious blue eyes and the frown. She led him into the living room, where a Christmas tree was ablaze with light in one corner of the room. There was the scent of greenery all over the apartment, in fact. All the place needed was a log burning on the hearth, but this was the city, and only cannel coal was allowed, and not even that was in evidence.

"Mrs. Hoskins," he said, figuring he'd get straight to the point, "I'm afraid I have bad news for you."

"Oh Jesus," she said.

"Your husband is dead, ma'am, I'm sorry to have to tell you this way."

"Oh Jesus," she said again.

They all reacted in different ways. Some of them burst into tears, some of them staggered around the room like drunks, some of them looked as if they'd been hit by a locomotive, some of them couldn't speak for ten, fifteen minutes, some of them denied it, told you you'd made a mistake, or this was all a horrible joke, anything to get away from the fact that the Grim Reaper had come to the door and knocked on it and found somebody home. Clara Hoskins just stood there staring at him.

"Tell me what happened," she said.

"He was murdered," Ollie said.

"Are you a homicide detective?" she asked.

"No, ma'am, that's not the way we work it here. The precinct detective who catches the squeal …"

He caught himself.

"The responding detective follows the case through to its conclusion, ma'am, is the way we work it here in this city."

"Where was this?" she asked.

"In a section of the city called Diamondback, ma'am."

"That's black, isn't it?" she said.

"Largely, ma'am. And Hispanic."

"What was Jerry doing up there?"

"I thought maybe you could help me with that."

"Diamondback," she said, and shook her head.

"Do I smell something baking, ma'am?" Ollie asked.

"Oh my God," she said, "thank you," and turned away from him and rushed into the kitchen. He watched as she yanked open the oven door and took from it a steaming cake. "Caught it just in time," she said, and put it down on the counter top. "I bake one every Christmas," she said.

"What is it, ma'am?"

"An apple upside down cake."

"I'll bet it's delicious," Ollie said.

But she didn't offer him any.

Instead, she suddenly burst into tears. Sometimes apple upside down cakes did that to people. Or maybe she had just realized her husband was dead. Either way, if she wasn't going to offer him anything to eat, he had no sympathy at all for the woman.

"Ma'am," he said, "weren't you concerned when your husband didn't come home last night?"

"He's often gone a lot," Clara said.

"Were you expecting him home?"

"Not necessarily."

"Well, did he call to say hewouldn't be home?"

"No, he didn't. But that's usual. I don't worry about him. He comes and goes."

"What does he do for a living, ma'am?"

"He sells books."

"He works in a bookstore?"

"No, he's a booksalesman. For Wadsworth and Dodds. The publishing house. His territory is the entire northeast corridor. He goes all the way up to Maine and down to Washington, D.C. He's gone a lot."

Ollie tried to think if there were any bookstores in Diamondback. He couldn't recall a single one.

"Does he make stops in Diamondback?" he asked.

"I don't know where he makes stops," Clara said, and yanked a Kleenex from a box on the counter. "Can't you see I'm crying here?" she said. "Don't you have any sensitivity at all?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm trying to learn who might have killed him. Your husband wasn't doing drugs, was he?"

"What!"

"I said …"

"I heard what you said. Howdare you?"

"Mrs. Hoskins, I was simply asking a question. Your husband was found in a garbage can in Diamon …"

"A garbage can!"

"Yes, ma'am, with a bullet hole in the back of …"

"A bullet hole!"

"Yes, ma'am, which all sounds very strange for a man who sells books for a living, wouldn't you say? Did you know that he carried a gun?"

"A gun!"

"Yes, ma'am, a P-38 Walther was the make. In a holster on his right side. Was he left-handed, ma'am?"

"Yes. I have to tell you, Detective Weeks, I find all of this extremely upsetting." She pulled another tissue from the box, and blew her nose. Ollie hoped she wouldn't get snot all over the cake. She still hadn't offered him a piece. "I can't imaginewhat my husband was doing up there in Diamondback, or why he was carrying a gun, or why anyone would want to kill him. This is all simply beyond belief," she said, and blew her nose again.

"Yes, well, I'm terribly sorry it happened, too, ma'am, or even that I had to report it to you."

He was thinking he would like a piece of her apple upside down cake.

He was also thinking he would like to grab her ass.

"Your husband had a permit for the gun," he said.

"A permit!"

She had a very bad habit of repeating the key words in everything he said and shouting them back at him, very loudly, as if he were deaf. Each time she did that, he winced. The kitchen was redolent with baking smells. He felt like grabbing that cake in both his hands and gobbling it down.

"You sure he wasn't doing drugs?" he asked.

"No, I'mnot sure, how would Iknow if he was doing drugs or not? He was on the road two, three weeks at a time, for all I know he was robbing banks with his goddamn P-thirty-six …"

"Eight, ma'am."

"Whatever, and shooting heroin in his veins, how the hell wouldI know what he was doing when he wasn't here? He ends up in a garbage can, how the hell doI know what he was or evenwho he was?"

"That's just my point, ma'am."

"I fail to see your point."

"Just that it seems so strange."

"It does," she agreed, and burst into tears again.

He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. He wanted to reach up under that tight red sweater.

"I wish I could play piano for you sometime," he said.

She looked at him.

She had very blue sad wet eyes.

"To ease your pain," he said.

"Thank you," she said, "that's very kind of you."

"I play piano," he said.

"I wouldn't have suspected it," she said.

"I'm sorry for your trouble," he said. "Here's my card. Call me if you think of anything."

"What would I think of?" she asked.

"Anything that might help us find your husband's murderer."

She burst into tears again.

"Where do I go to … to claim … to … to … where is he now? His body?"

"At the St. Mary Boniface morgue," Ollie said. "You can identify the remains …"

"Remains!" she said.

"Yes, ma'am, his body, ma'am. You don't think he had a black girlfriend up there, do you?"

"A what!"

"I guess not," he said. "Call me, okay? I know 'Night and Day,' if you happen to like that song."

She was sitting by the Christmas tree in the living room, weeping, when he left the apartment. He could smell the goddamn apple upside down cake all the way down to the street.

THE HALLS OF JUSTICE were somewhat less than thronged with judges eager to hand down rulings at three o'clock on this Christmas Eve, which also happened to be a Sunday. Most pickpockets, shoplifters, and daytime burglars had called it a day yesterday, packing it in at six o'clock, when all the stores closed. Most of the judges had done the two-step at around the same time, the Christian judges eager to get back to their homes and hearths so they could start the Yuletide festivities, the judges of other faiths heading to vacation spots where they could escape a holiday that excluded them so completely. Only skeleton crews manned the courtrooms. The entire Criminal Courts building resembled nothing so much as a marble mausoleum.

Abe Feinstein was the judge who read Carella's petition for a search warrant. He was sixty-three years old, and he'd been a criminal court judge for twenty-three years now, having been appointed at the age of forty, which was relatively young for such a judgeship. He read the signed affidavit and then peered over the rims of his eyeglasses and the top of his bench, and said in a rather astonished voice, "You want a warrant to search the offices of the U.S.Treasury Department?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Because-if I'm reading this correctly-you wish to examine a list ofserial numbers …"

"Yes, sir."

"… for hundred-dollar bills that you believe may have been used asransommoney in a kidnapping?"

He still sounded astonished.

"Yes, Your Honor," Carella said.

"Which kidnapping would that have been, Detective?"

"I don't know, sir. That's what I'm trying to find out."

"I must be missing something," Feinstein said, and shook his head.

"Your Honor, a special agent named David A. Horne confiscated eight thousand dollars in hundred-dollar …"

"Hold it, hold it, where's that on the affidavit?"

"Paragraph number three, Your Honor."

" 'Upon personal knowledge and belief,' " Feinstein quoted, " 'and facts supplied to me by …'"

"Yes, Your Honor, by an ex-con named Wilbur Struthers, who burglarized the suspect money from the apartment of a woman now deceased, the victim of a homicide. That's all in paragraph three, Your Honor."

"Eaten bylions, does this say?"

"Yes, sir. At the Grover Park Zoo yesterday. But that wasn't the cause of death. The woman was first stabbed with an ice pick."

"I see that, yes."

"In the head, Your Honor."

"Yes. And you think her murder may be related to this kidnapping you mention?"

"Yes, Your Honor, I do."

"But you don't know anything about this kidnapping?"

"Only what Struthers reported to me."

"Does he seem reliable?"

"As reliable as any thief can be, Your Honor."

"Have you contacted the Secret Service?"

"I spoke personally to Special Agent Horne, yes, Your Honor."

"And what did he have to say?"

"He advised me to leave it alone."

"Any idea why he would have made such a suggestion?"

"He told me the case was classified, sir."

"I see. And you're asking for a search warrant that would invade this confidentiality, is that it?"

"A woman was murdered, Your Honor. An ice pick …"

"I have no idea what this kidnapping case is about-and neither do you, I might add. Which means you don't have probable cause, Detective. If the Secret Service has deemed its case classified, I'm not going to allow you to poke around confidential documents. Take Horne's advice, Detective. Leave it alone. Petition denied."

"Thank you, Your Honor," Carella said.

"Merry Christmas," Feinstein said.

OLLIE WEEKS CALLED the offices of Wadsworth and Dodds at four that afternoon. He got a message telling him the firm was closed for the holidays and would not reopen until Tuesday morning, December 26.

He figured he was the only person working in this fucking city, so he went home.