Nocturne

12

In the movies, one cop goes out the window and the fire escape and comes thundering down after the fleeing perp, passing windows where ladies in nightgowns are all aghast, while the other cop down the steps inside the building, and dashes into the backyard so they have the perp sandwiched between them, All right, Louie, drop da gat!

In real life, cops know it's faster and especially if the perp is armed, to come down inside steps while he's outside descending to level on narrow, often slippery metal ladders especially when the temperature outside is three zero. Carella and Hawes were a beat behind Bernie Banker Himmel. They rounded the rear corner ofthe building just as he was climbing a small wooden fence separating the backyards.

This was a beautiful night for a little jog through the city. The clouds had passed, the sky above was a canopy studded with stars and hung with an almost moon that washed the terrain with an eerie glow. All was silent except for the sound of their crunching on crusted snow, their labored puffing from chapped lips. They followed over the fence, right hands cold against the stocks of their pistols, left hands gloved, flapping loose, mufflers flying behind them as if they were World War I fighter pilots.

Himmel was fast, and both Carella and Hawes were large and out of shape, and they were having a tough time keeping up with him.

In the movies, detectives are always lifting weights down at the old headquarters gym, or shooting at targets on the old firing range. In real life, detectives aren't often in on the big action scenes. They hardly ever chase thieves. They rarely, if ever, fire weapons at fleeing suspects. In real life, detectives usually come in after the fact. The burglary, the armed robbery, the arson, the murder has already been committed. It is their job to piece together past events and apprehend the person or persons who committed a crime or crimes.

Sometimes, yes, a suspect will attempt flight, but even then there are strict guidelines limiting the use of force, deadly or otherwise. The LAPD has these guidelines, too; tell it to Rodney King.

Here in this city, tonight or any other night, gunplay was the very last thing Carella or Hawes wanted. The second least desirable thing was brute force. Besides, the way this little chase was developing, Bernie the Banker would be out of gun range at any moment. All three of them had now emerged from the barren backyards onto deserted well, almost deserted city streets, Himmel running ahead through narrow paths shoveled on icy sidewalks, banks of snow on either side of him, fast out-distancing Carella and Hawes who followed him and each other through the same narrow sidewalk burrows, knowing for damn sure they were going to lose him.

And then, three things happened in rapid succession.

Himmel rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

A dog began barking.

And a snowplow went barreling up the street.

"This is what I'd like to know,"." Priscilla said. Georgie yawned.

Tony yawned, too. "If this tall blond guy delivered the key to the locker…"

"Well, he did," Georgie said. "We know he "Then he had to know my grandmother, right?"

"Well… sure."

"I mean, she had to have given him the key in it, am I right?"

"That's right."

"So why are we wasting time looking for this bookie, is what I'd like to know? When all we do is go to my grandmother's building and see if anyone there knows the blond guy."

"Good idea," Georgie said. "Let's do it in the morning when everybody's awake."

"It is morning," Priscilla said.

"Priss, please. We go knocking on doors at this hour…"

"You're right," she said.

Which astonished him.

Bernie Himmel was astonished to see a large dog standing there like some fuckin apparition on a narrow path cleared through the snow. He stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him was the dog snarling and barking and baring his teeth and blocking Himmel's escape route through the snow. Behind him, somewhere up the street, he could hear the roaring clang of a snowplow rushing through the night.

He did what any sensible man would have done in the face of threatening fangs dripping saliva and slime. He leaped over the snowbank on his left, into the street, just as the plow came thundering by.

Where earlier there had been an evil growling monster guarding the icy gates of hell, now there was an avalanche of snow and ice and salt and sand pouring down onto Himmel's shoulders and head, knocking him off his feet and throwing him back against old snow already heaped at the curb, virtually burying him. He flailed with his arms, kicked with his legs, came spluttering up out of a filthy grey mountain of shmutz, and found himself blinking up into a pair of revolvers.

Fuckin Cujo, he thought.

The questioning took place in the second-floor interrogation room at five-thirty that Monday morning. They explained to Himmel that they weren't charging him with anything, that in fact they weren't interested in him at all.

"Then why am I here?" he asked reasonably.

He had been this route before, though not in this particular venue, which looked like any other shitty police precinct in this city, or even some he had known in Chicago, Illinois, or Houston, Texas.

"Just some questions we want to ask you," Hawes said.

"Then read me my rights and get me an "Why?" Carella asked. "Did you do something?"

"You had my address, chances are you already know from the computer. So you know my record. So you have to ask me some questions. So I'll be back tomorrow morning for breaking parole. I want a lawyer."

"This has nothing to do with breaking parole."

"Then why are you even mentioning it?"

"You're the one who mentioned it."

"Cause I'm six steps ahead of you."

"This has to do with a person you were talking to in The Juice Bar on Friday night…"

"I want a lawyer."

"… and again on Sunday morning."

"I still want a lawyer."

"Give us a break here, Bernie."

"Why? You gonna give me a break?"

"We told you. We're not interested in you."

"I'll say it again. If you're not interested in me, why am I here?"

"This tall blond man you were talking to'" Carella said.

"What about him? You were talking to him." Progress, Carella thought.

"We traced a murder weapon to him," he said.

"Oh, I see. Now it's a murder. You'd better get me a lawyer right this minute."

"All we want is his name."

"I don't know his name."

"What do you know about him?"

"Nothing. We met in a club, exchanged a few words…"

"Exchanged some cash, too, didn't you?" The room went silent. So did Himmel.

"But we're willing to forget that," Carella said. "Then whatever I say is hypothetical," Himmel said. "Let's hear it first."

"First let's understand it's hypothetical."

"Okay, it's hypothetical," Carella said.

"Then let's say the man is a big gambler. Bets on any event happening."

"Like?"

"Boxing, baseball, football, hockey, basketball, a man for all seasons.

My guess is he bets on the nags, too, but at one of the off-track parlors."

"Okay, he's a gambler."

"No, you weren't listening. He's a big gambler. And he's usually in over his head. Wins occasionally, but most of the time he doesn't know what he's doing. Fuckin grease ball can't tell the difference between baseball and football, how would he know how to bet?

I give him the odds, he picks whatever sounds…"

"What do you mean, grease ball Hawes asked.

"He's Italian."

"From Italy, you mean?" Carella said.

"Of course from Italy. Where would Italians come from, Russia?"

"You mean he's really Italian," Carella said.

"Yeah, really really Italian," Himmel said. "What,s with you?"

"Never mind."

"You're surprised he's Italian, is that it? Cause he's blond?"

"No, I'm not surprised."

"He also has blue eyes, does that surprise you, "Nothing ever surprises me," Carella said weari]. "You expect a wop to have black curly hair and eyes, you expect him to be a short fat guy. This one's six-two, he weighs at least about one-ninety. Handsome can be. Dumb Buck doesn't even know what the Bowl is, he bets a fortune on Pittsburgh, loses his "When was this?"

"Two Sundays ago. Hypothetically."

"So, hypothetically, what was he doing in The Bar this past Friday night?"

"Hypothetically, he was telling his bookie, in broken English, that he didn't have the twenty large to pay him."

"Is that what he bet on the Steelers?"

"Twenty big ones. Gave him a a-half-point spread. Cowboys took it by sixteen."

"So what happened last Friday night?"

"The bookie told him to come up with the bread Sunday morning or he was going to be swimmin with the goddamn fishes."

"How'd he react to that?"

"Said he had to make a phone call."

"Did he?"

"Yeah, from the phone right there on the wall."

"What time was this?"

"Around one-fifteen in the morning. A few minutes after the cops raided the Alhambra' the club up the street. Where they hold the cockfights."

"How'd you know that?"

"One of the owners came in. His bird had just got chewed up, he was practically weeping at the table. He told me he had a gun, he was thinking of shooting himself."

"His name wouldn't be Jose Santiago, would it?" This city was full of mind readers.

"Yeah" Himmel said. "How'd you know that?"

"Lucky guess," Hawes said. "What time did he come in?"

"Santiago? Eleven-thirty, twelve o'clock. Right after the bust went down. I was sitting there waiting for Larry."

"Who's that?"

"The guy owed the twenty."

"I thought you didn't know his name."

"That was before everything got hypothetical."

"Larry what?"

"It's Lorenzo, but everybody calls him Larry..."

"Lorenzo what?"

"I can't even pronounce it."

"I'm telling you I can't. I wrote it down first time he placed a bet, it's one of those fuckin wop tongue twisters."

Carella sighed.

"Where'd you write it down?"

"On the slip."

"The betting slip?"

"No, a lady's pink slip, lace-trimmed."

The detectives looked at him. He knew he was a smart-ass. He grinned. Nobody grinned back. shrugged.

"Yes, the betting slip," he said. "Long since "Never wrote the name down again?"

"Never. Couldn't have if I wanted to. It was along. Besides, I had his phone number. A man don't his marker, I give him a call, I say, Joey, you owe a little something, am I right? It usually scares them."

"Did it scare Lorenzo?"

"He came up here to see me one o'clock in the morning, didn't he?"

"And made his phone call fifteen minutes later that right?"

"Yeah. We didn't have much to talk about' mentioned him swimming with his little fishies."

"You didn't happen to overhear his end of the conversation, did you?"

"Yeah, but it was all in Italian."

"You think he called an Italian-speaking person, that it?"

"I don't know who he called. I know he was Italian."

"What happened next?"

"He came back to the table, said he'd have money by Sunday. Then he asked did I perhaps know where he could buy a gun."

"So you recommended Santiago," Carella said. "Yeah, that's right,"

Himmel said, looking "You didn't witness the gun changing hands, did you?" Hawes asked.

"No. But hypothetically, Larry bought it."

"What time did he leave here?"

"One-thirty or so."

"One more thing," Carella said.

"His phone number, right?" Himmel said. Still six steps ahead of them.

At six-oh-four that Monday morning, the desk sergeant at the Eight-Eight called Ollie Weeks at home to tell him something had come up that might relate to the triple homicide he was investigating. He didn't know whether he should be waking Ollie up or not… "Yeah, well you did," Ollie said.

" but some guy named Curly Joe Simms had called to say he was having a cup of coffee in the Silver Chief Diner on Ainsley, and a waitress named Sally told him a detective named Oliver Weeks was in there asking about three kids pissing in the gutter, and Curly Joe had seen these three kids with a person named Richie Cooper, who was a good friend now deceased. So if this detective wanted to talk to him…"

"What's his number?" Ollie asked.

The phone company told Hawes that the call from the wall phone of The Juice Bar at 1:17 A.M. on January nineteenth had been made to a telephone listed to a subscriber named Svetlana Helder at 1217 Lincoln Street in Isola.

This was puzzling.

Why had Larry Whoever called a woman who was murdered the very next night with a gun he'd purchased not five minutes after he'd got off the phone with her?

Meanwhile, Carella was dialing the number the Banker had given them.

This was now a quarter past six in the morning. A woman's sleepy voice "Pronto."

"Signora?" he said.

"St'?"

"Voglio parl are con Lorenzo, per piacere."

"Non ce."

In the next five minutes, in tattered Italian shattered English, the woman whose name was Carmela Buongiorno and who said she was landlady of a rooming house on Trent Street, blocks from where Svetlana had been Carella that Lorenzo Schiavinato had been living there since October the twenty-fourth, but had moved out last Sunday. She did not know where he was now. seemed to be a nice man, was something the "Che succese?" she asked.

"What happened?"

"Niente, signora, niente," Carella said.

Nothing, signora, nothing. But something indeed happened.

Murder had happened.

And Lorenzo Schiavinato had purchased the weapon the night before someone used it on Dyalovich.

They now had his full name. They ran it through the computer. There was niente, signora. Niente.

Ollie figured Curly Joe Simms would turn out to be a bald guy and he wasn't disappointed. He made a note to mention to Meyer Meyer, up at the Eight-Seven, that he would start calling himself Curly Meyer. Curly Joe was wearing yellow earmuffs and a brown woolen coat buttoned over a green muffler. His eyes kept watering and he kept blowing his nose as he explained to Ollie that he was a night person, which meant that he only slept during the daytime. He was beginning to get a little drowsy right now, in fact, but he. felt it was important to do his civic duty, wasn't it? Ollie was a little drowsy, too, but only because he'd just got up half an hour ago. At six forty-two in the morning, there weren't too many places open near the 88th Precinct station house.

They met in the coffee shop of the Harley Hotel on Ninety-second and Jackson. The Harley was a hotbed dive catering to hookers and their clientele. A steady stream of girls walked in and out of the coffee shop while Ollie and Curly Joe talked.

Curly Joe was bothered that someone had drowned poor Richie Cooper.

"Richie was a close friend of mine," he said.

So close you didn't know he hated being called Richie, Ollie thought, but did not say. The man had come all the way over from Ainsley and Eleventh, six in the morning, he deserved a hearing, even if he was bald. Ollie ate another donut and listened.

Curly Joe sipped at his coffee and told him how on Saturday night he was sitting with Richie in one of the window booths at the Silver Chief Diner, both of them having coffee, when all at once Richie jumps up and yells, "Look at that, willya?"

"Look at what?" Curly Joe said. "Out there. Those three guys."

Curly Joe looked.

Three big guys in hooded parkas were at the curb, pissing in the gutter.

This was not an unusual sight up here, so Curly Joe couldn't understand why Richie was so upset by it. But he certainly was annoyed, jumping up out of the bar and putting on his black leather jacket… "He was dressed all in black,"." Curly Joe "Black jeans, black shirt, black boots, the jacket…"

"Yeah, go on," Ollie said. putting on the jacket, and tossing a couple of bucks on the table as his share of the bill, and storming out of the diner and walking over to the three guys who were still standing there, shaking their dicks. From where Curly Joe watched from the diner window, he saw, but could not hear, conversation taking place between the four of them. Richie dressed all in black and appearing before them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close -Now what do you call this?

- We call it pissing in the gutter.

- I call it disrespect for the neighborhood. what the letter P stand for? Pissing? -Join us, why don't you? My name is Richard.

Big white guy zipping up and extending his hand to Richie.

So is mine.

Second white guy holding out his hand, too. -Me, too.

Third guy holding out his hand.

- As it happens, my name is Richard, too.

Richie holding out his hand, shaking hands with the three white guys, one after the other. And now there's a serious conversation at the curb, Richie probably explaining that what he did up here in Diamondback was sell crack cocaine to nice little boys like the three preppies here in their hooded parkas. In a minute or so, he begins leading them up the street, past the diner where Curly Joe is still sitting in the window booth, probably taking them to a place called the Trash Cat, which is an underground bar where there are plenty of girls all hours of the night, just like the Harley here.

They stop again not far from the diner, like at an angle to it, for another serious conversation Curly Joe can see but not hear.

You dudes interested in some nice jumbo vials I happen to have in my pocket here? You care for a taste at fifteen a pop?

And now Curly Joe sees crack and money changing hands, black to white and white to black, and all at once a taxi pulls up to the curb, and a long-legged white girl in a fake-fur jacket and red leather boots steps out. She looks familiar but Curly Joe doesn't recognize her at first.

The driver's window rolls down, he's got like a dazed expression on his face, as if he just got hit by a bus.

Thanks, Max.

The girl blows him a kiss and swivels onto the sidewalk, a red handbag under her arm… Hey, Yolande, you jess the girl we lookin and Curly Joe recognizes her all at once hooker Jamal Stone fixed him up with one time Jamal laid two bills on a pony and was a little cash. Her name was Marie St. Claire, she'd given Curly Joe the best blow job he'd ever had in his lifetime, did in his llie ever hear of a Moroccan now there's another big conference at the curb, Joe watching but not hearing, Richie's hands Six hundred for the three preppies here, shy? Two hundred apiece for the next few hours, bobbing, you take me on, I'll throw five jumbos pot, whutchoo say, girlfriend? big summit here on Ainsley Avenue We all go up my place some crack, get down to realities, sistuh, you whut I'm sayin?

- Well, I've been out since eleven last night, been along one, bro. So maybe we ought to just unless we can sweeten the pot a little, mm?

- Whutchoo mean sweeten it? How sweet do' wish to sweeten it?

If you 'll be joining the party I'll need ten No problem.

And a grand from the college boys here. you're all so cute, I might do it for nine.

Make it eight.

I can't do it for less than nine. Hey, you "re cute, but… How about eight-fifty?

- It has to be nine or I'm out of here.

- Will you accept travelers checks?

- Done deal.

" and they all start laughing. They musta concluded their negotiation, don't you think?" Curly Joe said. "Cause next thing you know, she's looping her hands through two of the guys' arms, and they' all marchin off toward Richie's buildin, her in the red jacket, and Richie in his black leather, and the three kids with these hooded blue parkas got big white Ps and footballs on the back of them."

Daybreak is aptly named.

Unlike sunset, where colors linger in the sky long after the sun has dropped below the horizon, sunrise is heralded by a similar flush, but the display is brief, and suddenly it is morning. Suddenly the sky is bright. Day literally breaks, surprising the pinkish night, setting it to rout.

From the windows of the squad room on the second floor of the old precinct building, they watched the day break over the city. It, was going to be cold and clear again. The clock on the squad room wall read seven-fifteen.

At a little past seven-thirty, the detectives began drifting in for the shift change. Officially this was called the eight-to-four, but it started at seven forty-five, because many uniformed cops were relieved on post, and detectives all of whom had once pounded beats honored the timeworn tradition. They hung their hats and coats on the rack in the corner, and exchanged morning greetings. Complaining about the vile coffee from the pot brewing in the clerical office down the hall, they sat nonetheless on the edges of their desks and sipped it " from soggy cardboard containers. Outside the wind raged at the windows.

They double-teamed this one because it was more than thirty-one hours since they'd Dyalovich squeal and they were not very much to finding the person or persons who'd killed It was also two full days since they'd discovered the body of Yolande Marie Marx in the alleyway Sab's and First. But whereas the Marx murder was officially theirs under the First Man Up rule, they had been informed that Fat Ollie Weeks of the Eight-eight had caught a related double murder, and they were more than content to leave the three-way investigation to him. A hooker, a pimp, and a smalltime dealer? Let Ollie's mother worry.

So here they all were, those legendary stalwarts the Eight-Seven, gathered in Lieutenant Byrnes sunny corner office at ten minutes to eight Monday morning, Carella and Hawes telling others what they had so far, and hoping that in this brilliant think tank would offer a clue or that would help them crack the case wide open.

"What it sounds like to me," Andy Parker said, you have nothing."

Parker was a good friend of Ollie Weeks. because they were both bigots. But whereas Ollie also a good detective, Parker only rarely rose heights of deductive dazzle. He was almost as big a slob, as Ollie, however, favoring unpressed soiled suits, unpolished shoes, and an unshaven face he believed made him resemble a good television cop. Parker figured there were only two kinds of cop shows. The lousy ones, which he called The Cops of Madison County, and the good ones, which he called Real Meat Funk.

As a detective, albeit not a very good one, Parker knew that the word "funk" descended from the word "funky," which in turn evolved from a style of jazz piano-playing called "funky butt," which translated as "smelly asshole." He was amused the other day when a radio restaurant critic mentioned that the food in a downtown bistro was "funky."

Not many things amused Parker.

Especially so early in the morning.

"Well, we do have the guy's name," Hawes said. "What guy?"

"The guy who bought the murder weapon."

"Who you can't find."

"Well, he moved out yesterday," Carella said.

"So he's in flight, is that what you figure?" Willis asked.

He was poised on the edge of the lieutenant's desk like a gargoyle on Notre Dame cathedral, listening carefully, brown eyes intent. Byrnes liked him a lot. He liked small people, figured small people had to try harder. Willis had barely cleared the minimum-height requirement for policemen in this city, but he was an expert at judo and could knock any cheap thief flat on his ass in less than ten seconds. His girlfriend had been shot and killed only recently, by a pair of Colombian goons who'd broken into her apartment. Willis never much talked about her, but he hadn't been the same since. Byrnes worried.

He worried about all of his people. after the murder, he "Day powders,"

Kling

"it's got to be flight."

Worried a lot about Kling, too. Never had any trouble with women, it seemed.

Byrnes understood he'd split up with a black woman, a deputy chief in department, no less, as if the black-white thing wasn't difficult enough.

Byrnes wished him the best, but remained to be seen. Next chapter, he thought. Life always full of next chapters, some of them written.

"Maybe he's already back in Italy," Brown said. Scowling. Always scowling. Made it look as if he was angry all the time, like a lot of black people in the city were, with damn good cause. But in all the time he'd known Brown, he'd never seen him lose his temper. Giant of a man, could have been for a professional football team, reminded him a lot of Rosie Grier, in fact, though Grier was now, what, minister? He tried to imagine Brown as a minister. imagination would not take him quite that far. "Maybe," Carella said.

"Where in Italy?" Meyer asked.

"Don't know."

"What'd you find when you tossed her

Byrnes asked.

"Me?"

"You."

"Dead cat lying alongside her," Carella said. "Skip the cat."

"Fish bones all over the kitchen floor."

"I said skip the cat."

"Savings account passbook in a dresser drawer, hundred-and twenty-five thou withdrawn the morning before she got killed."

"What time?"

"Ten twenty-seven A.M."

"Cash or bank check?"

"Don't know.

"What do you know?" Parker asked.

Carella merely looked at him.

"We know the guy's name," Hawes said.

"If he killed her," Parker said.

"Whether he killed her or not, we know his name."

"But not where he is."

"Check the airlines," Brown suggested. "Maybe he did go back to Italy."

"And we've got a clear chain of custody on the murder weapon," Carella said.

"Running from where to where?"

"Registered to a private bodyguard named Rodney Pratt, stolen from his limo on the night before the murder…"

"Who boosted it?" Kling asked.

"Guy named Jose Santiago."

"The famous bullfighter?" Parker asked.

This was a line he'd used before. The expression was his way of putting down anyone of Hispanic descent. Byrnes had heard rumors which he tended to disbelieve that Parker was now living with a Puerto Rican girl. Parker? Sleeping with a famous bullfighter? "The famous cock fighter Hawes corrected. "He fights with his cock?" Parker asked.

No one laughed.

Parker shrugged.

"So what do you figure?" Byrnes asked. " interrupted burglary?"

"If the him-twenty-five was in the apartment, yes, "What,d you find when you tossed it?"

"Us?" Meyer asked.

"You."

"Dead fish stinking up the joint."

"Piss, too," Kling said. "Cat piss."

"Are we back to the cat again?" Byrnes asked. He was not noted as an animal lover. When he was ten, a pet turtle named Petie had suddenly died.

Canary named Alice when he was twelve. And he was thirteen, his mother gave away his pet named Ruffles. For peeing all over their area Which apparently Svetlana Dyalovich's cat had been fond of doing, too. He did not want to hear a word about the dead woman's dead cat.

"Be nice if cats could bark, huh?" Parker sad.

Be nice if we could get off the goddamn cat. Byrnes said. "What else did you find?"

"Us?" Kling asked.

"You."

"Nothing."

"No money, huh?"

"Nothing."

"So maybe it was a burglar."

"The cat could explain those stains on the Carella said.

"What stains?" Brown asked.

"The fish stains. They could've got on the coat that way."

"There were fish stains on the coat?" Brown asked. Byrnes was watching him. Eyes narrowing, scowl deepening. He was looking for something. Didn't know what yet, but looking.

"If she fed the cat raw fish, I mean," Carella said.

"How do you know there were fish stains on the coat?" Byrnes asked.

"Grossman," Willis said. "I took the call."

"She was wearing a mink while she fed the goddamn cat?" Parker said.

"Are you saying the cat might've rubbed up against her?" Brown asked.

"No, these were near the collar," Carella said. "Near the collar?"

"I took the call," Willis said again.

"Well, what'd Grossman say, actually?" Byrnes asked.

"He said there were fish stains on the coat."

"Near the collar?"

Brown asked again.

"High up on the coat," Willis said, and opened his note-book. "These are his words," he said, and began reading. "

"Stains inside and outside, near the collar. From the location, it would appear someone held the coat in both hands, one at either side of the collar, thumbs outside, fingers inside. Quote, unquote."

"I can't visualize it," Brown said, shaking his head. "Okay to use this?" Willis asked. "Sure," Byrnes said.

Willis picked up a magazine from Byrnes's desk, handed it to Brown.

"Hold it with your fingers on the front cow thumbs on the back cover."

Brown tried it.

"That's how Grossman figures the coat was held, "You mean there were fingerprints?"

"No. But he thinks somebody with fish oil on his her hands held the coat the way you're holding the magazine."

Brown looked at his hands on the magazine Everyone in the office was looking at his hands on the magazine.

"Didn't you say she was wearing a wool coat Kling asked.

"Yeah. When she went down to buy the booze."

"When was that?" Byrnes asked.

"Eleven o'clock that morning."

"The day she was killed?"

"Yes. Half an hour after she made the withdrawal."

"Something's fishy here," Byrnes said, he was making a pun, and not realizing how close it was, either.

When Priscilla and the boys drove up in a taxi at eight that morning, the superintendent of the building was out front with the garbage wondering if the Sanitation Department would start pickups again.

Priscilla told him she was Svetlana's granddaughter, and he expressed his sympathy, clucking his tongue and shaking his head over the mysteries and misfortunes of life. chit chatted back and forth for maybe three or four minutes before he finally mentioned that Mrs. Helder's closest friend in the building was a woman named Karen Todd, who lived just down the hall from her.

"Probably there right this minute," he said. "Doesn't leave for work till about eight-thirty."

Georgie fell in love at once with the slender young woman who opened the door to apartment 3C. He guessed she was in her mid-twenties, a very exotic-looking person who reminded him of his cousin Tessie who once he tried to feel up on the roof when they were both sixteen.

Tessie later married a dentist. But here was the same long black hair and dark brown eyes, the same bee-stung lips and high cheekbones, the same impressive bust, as Georgie's mother used to call it.

Karen was just finishing breakfast, but she cordially invited them into the apartment batting her lashes at Georgie, Priscilla noticed and told them she had to leave soon, but she'd be happy to answer questions until then. Although, really, she'd already told the police everything she knew.

Priscilla suggested that perhaps the police hadn't asked her the same questions they were about to ask. Karen looked puzzled.

"For example," Priscilla said, "did you ever happen to notice a tall blond man visiting my grandmother's apartment?"

"No," Karen said. "In fact, I did not."

"How well did you know the old lady?" Georgie asked kindly.

Karen looked at the clock.

Then she gave them much the same she'd given the police, telling all about her sitting with Svetlana sipping tea together in the late afternoon listening to her old 78s… "It reminded me of T. S. Eliot somehow," she said and smiled at Georgie, who didn't know who T. S. Eliot was.

She told them, too, about accompanying Svetlana to her internist's office one day… "She had terrible arthritis, you know…" and another time to an ear doctor who told her she ought to see a neurologist. Because of the ringing in her ears, you know.

"When was this?" Priscilla asked.

"Oh, before Thanksgiving. It was awful. She was crying so hard in the taxi, I thought her heart would break."

"And you're sure you never saw her with a blond man?"

"Positive."

"Never, huh?"

"Never. Well, not with her."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think he went inside."

"Inside?"

"Her apartment. But one morning, when she was sick…"

"Yes?" Priscilla said.

"He brought fish for the cat."

"Who did?" Tony asked.

"A tall blond person."

"His name wouldn't have been Eliot, would it?" Georgie asked shrewdly.

"I have no idea what his name was."

"But he brought fish to her apartment?" Tony said. "Fish. Yes."

"But didn't go in?"

"Well, actually, I don't really know. I was leaving for work when he knocked on her door. Svetlana answered, and he said.." mm, yeah, that's right, wait a minute. He did give her his name, but I don't remember it. It was something very foreign. He had a foreign accent."

"Russian?" Priscilla asked.

"I really don't know. He said he was here with the fish for Irina."

"For Irina. So he knew the cat's name. Which means he knew my grandmother, too. But he didn't go in? When she opened the door?"

"Well, in fact I really can't say. I was already starting down the stairs."

"What kind of fish?" Georgie asked. "I have no idea."

"Where'd he get this fish?"

"Well, I would guess at the fish market, wouldn't you?"

"What fish market?" Priscilla asked.

"Where Svetlana went for the cat every morning."

"And where's that?" Priscilla asked, and held her breath.

"Let's try a timetable on this thing, okay?" Byrnes said. He was getting exasperated. He didn't like little old ladies in faded mink coats smelling of fish shot with a gun stolen from a limo that had transfered: a fighting rooster uptown. He didn't like period. Turtles, canaries, dogs, cats, fish, cockroaches, whatever.

"Where do you want us to start, Pete?" Carella asked.

"The gun."

"Belongs to a man named Rodney Pratt. He Keeps it in the glove compartment of his limo. breaks down Thursday night, he takes it to the garage off the Majesta Bridge. Place called Texaco. Forgets the gun in the glove box."

"Okay, next."

"How do you know he's not the murderer?" Byrnes asked.

"We know," Hawes said, dismissing the very "Gee, excuse me for fucking breathing!" Parker said.

"Next," Carella said, "they work on the car all Friday. One of the mechanics, guy named Santiago, borrows the car, quote unquote, to drive prize rooster uptown that night to a cockfight at Riverhead."

"Excuse me while I puke," Parker said. "Puke," Kling suggested.

"A fuckin bird in the backseat of a limo?"

"So puke," Kling suggested again. "Santiago's bird loses. He finds the gun in the box, decides to shoot the winning bird, changes mind when the Four-Eight raids the place. He goes nearby after-hours joint called The Juice Bar…"

"I know that place," Brown said."… where this tall blond son of a bitch we're trying to find is meeting with a bookie named Bernie Himmel who tells him he's gonna be swimming with the fishes unless he pays him by Sunday morning the twenty grand he lost on the Cowboys-Steelers game."

"Swimming with the fishes," Hawes corrected. "What?"

"He stressed the word 'swimming'. "

"I don't know what you mean."

"He told Schiavinato he'd be swimming with the fishes."

"As opposed to what?" Meyer said. "Dancing with them?"

"I'm only telling you what I heard."

"Let me hear the rest of the timetable," Byrnes said. "Okay. Saturday night, a quarter to twelve, we get a DOA at 1217 Lincoln Street, old lady named Svetlana Helder, turns out to be Svetlana Dyalovich, the famous concert pianist."

"I never heard of her," Parker said. "Two to the heart," Hawes said.

"I saw that picture," Kling said. "Was that the name?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"Next morning, around seven, we get a dead hooker in an alley on St. Sab's."

"Any connection?"

"None."

"Then why bring her up?"

"A policeman,s lot," Carella said, and shrugged.

"He also called them the blond guy's fish," said.

"I'm lost," Parker said.

"So am I," Byrnes said.

"Himmel. The bookie. Bernie the Banker. He then didn't have much to talk about after he mentioned Schiavinato swimming with his little fishies."

"I'm still lost," Parker said.

"Yes, can you please tell us what the hell you are driving at?" Byrnes asked.

"His little fishies. Not the little fishies, but his fishies.

Schiavinato's little fishies."

Everybody was looking at him.

Only Carella knew what he was saying.

"The cat," Carella said.

"Not the goddamn cat again," Byrnes said.

"She went out every morning to buy fresh fish for the cat."

"Where'd you say her apartment was?" asked, suddenly catching on.

"1217 Lincoln."

"Simple," Parker said. "The Lincoln Street Market."

"Selling fish," Meyer said, nodding. "As opposed swimming with them."