Nocturne

4

The three kids were all named Richard.

Because they were slick-as-shit preppies from a New England school, they called themselves Richard the First, Second, and Third, after Richard the Lion-Hearted, Richard the son of Edward, and Richard who perhaps had his nephews murdered in the Tower of London. They were familiar with these monarchs through an English history course they'd had to take back in their sophomore year. The three Richards were now seniors. All three of them had been accepted at Harvard. They were each eighteen years old, each varsity football heroes, all smart as hell, handsome as devils, and drunk as skunks. To coin a few phrases.

Like his namesake Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Hopper for such was his real name was six feet tall and he weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, and he had blond hair and blue eyes, just like the twelfth century king. Unlike that fearless monarch, however, Richard did not write poetry although he sang quite well. In fact, all three Richards were in the school choir. Richard the First was the team's star quarterback.

The real Richard the Second had ruled England from 1377 to 1399 and was the son of Edward the Black Prince. The present-day Richard the Second was named Richard Weinstock, and his father was Irving the Tailor. He was five feet ten inches tall and weighed two hundred and forty pounds, all of it muscle and bruised bones. He had dark hair and brown " eyes, and he played fullback on the team.

Richard the Third, whose true and honorable name was Richard O'Connor, had freckles and reddish hair and greenish eyes and he was six feet three inches tall and weighed two-ten. His fifteenth-century namesake was the third son of the duke of York, a mighty feudal baron. Richard's left arm was withered and shrunken, but this did not stop him from being a fierce fighter and a conniving son of a bitch. The king, that is. The present-day Richard was known to cheat on French exams, but he had two strong arms and very good hands and he played wide receiver on the Pierce Academy team.

All three Richards had come down to the city for the weekend. They were not due back at school till Monday morning. All three Richards were wearing the team's hooded parka, navy blue with a big letter P in white on the back. Just below the stem of the P, there was a white logo in the shape of a football, about three inches wide and five inches long. The patch indicated which team they played on. Over the left pectoral on the front of the parka, the name of the school was stitched in white script lettering, Pierce Academy tara.

The Richards Three.

At four-thirty on that gelid morning, it was doubtful that any of the three, despite the similarity, knew his own name. Turning back to yell "Fuck you!" and "g eat shit!" at the bouncer who'd told them the club was now closed and then politely but firmly showed them the front door, they came reeling out onto the sidewalk and stood uncertainly toggling their parkas closed, pulling the hoods up over their heads, wrapping their blue and white mufflers, trying to light cigarettes, burping, farting, giggling, and finally throwing their arms around each other and going into a football huddle.

"What we need to do now," Richard the First said, "is to get ourselves laid."

"That's a good idea," Richard the Third said. "Where can we find some girls?"

"Uptown?" Richard the First suggested.

"Then let's go uptown," Richard the Second agreed. They clapped out of the huddle.

Uptown, Yolande was Climbing into another automobile.

The three Richards hailed a taxi.

Jimmy Jackson's kids knew there was a black Santa Claus because they'd seen one standing alongside a fake chimney and ringing a bell outside a department store downtown on Hall Avenue after their mother had taken them to sit on the lap of a white Santa Claus inside. The white Santa apparently hadn't listened all that hard because James Jr. hadn't got the bike he'd asked for, and Millie hadn't got this year's hot doll, and Terrence hadn't got this year's hot warrior. So when the doorbell rang at a quarter to five that Sunday morning, they ran to wake up their father because they figured this might be the black bell ringing Santa coming back to make amends for the white department-store Santa's oversights.

Jimmy Jackson was only mildly annoyed to be awakened by his kids so early on a Sunday mornin when his mother-in-law was coming to visit, not to mention his sister Naydelle and her two screamin brats. He became singularly irritated, however, when he opened the door and found it wasn't no joke but, really two honkie dicks, just like they'd said through the wood, standing there with gold and blue badges in their hands. On a Sunday no less, did the motherfuckers have no consideration whatever?

The kids were asking if he would make pancakes. since everybody was up, anyway.

Jackson told them to go ask their mother.

"So whut is it?" he said to the cops.

"Mr. Jackson," Carella said, "we realize it's early in the morning…"

"Yeah, yeah, whut is it?"

"But we're investigating a homicide…"

"Yeah, yeah."

"And we're trying to track the murder weapon." Jackson looked at them.

He was a tall, rangy, very dark man, wearing a over pajamas, his eyes still bleary from sleep, his mouth pulled into a thin angry line. Man had a right to the sancty of his own home on Sunday morning, he was thinking, th out these motherfuckers comin roun. Murder weapon my ass, he was thinking.

"Is this about that damn gun again?" he asked.

From somewhere in the apartment, a woman asked, "Who is it, James?"

"It's the police," one of the children shouted gleefully. "Can Daddy make pancakes now?"

"The police?" she said. "James?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said.

"It's about the gun again, yes," Hawes said.

"I tole Pratt I dinn see no damn gun in his car. Nobody seen that damn gun. You want my opinion, that gun is a fiction of Pratt's imagination."

No one had yet invited them into the apartment. Mrs. Jackson came down the hall now in a robe and slippers, a perplexed frown on her face. She was a tall woman with the bearing of a Masai warrior, the pale yellow eyes of a panther. She didn't like cops here scaring her kids, and she was ready to tell them so.

"What's this," she said, "five o'clock in the mornin?"

"Ma'am," Carella said, "we're sorry to be bothering you, but we're working a homicide and…"

"What's anybody in this household got to do with a homicide?"

"We're simply trying to find out when the murder weapon disappeared from the owner's car. That's all."

"What car?" she asked.

"Caddy was in for service," her husband explained.

"You work on that Caddy?"

"No. Gus did."

"Then why they botherin you?" she said, and turned to the cops again.

"Why you botherin my man?"

"Because an old lady was killed," Carella said simply.

Mrs. Jackson looked into their faces.

"Come in," she said, "I'll make some coffee." They went into the apartment. Jackson closed the door behind them, double-bolted it, and put on the safety chain. The apartment was cold; in this city, in this building, they couldn't expect heat to start comin up till six-thirty, seven o'clock. The radiators will begin clanging then, loud enough to wake the dead. Meanwhile, all was silent, all was chilly. The children wanted to hang around. This was better than TV. Jackson hushed them off to bed again. Husband and wife sat at the small kitchen table with the two detectives, drinking coffee like family. This was A.M." it was pitch-black outside. They could hear police sirens, ambulance sirens wailing into the night. All four of them could tell the difference; sirens the nocturnes of this city.

"That car was a headache minute it come in," Jackson said. "I'da been the night man, I'da tole go get a tow truck, haul that wreck outta here, trouble'n it's worth. Had to turn away two, three cars the next day, cause Gus had that damn Caddy on the lift. When I finely figured we were done with it. I come in yesterday mornin, the car's a mess. Man' coming in to pick it up at ten, it's a mess like I seen before in my life."

"What do you mean? Was there still trouble with the engine?" Carella asked.

"No, no. This was inside the car."

Both detectives looked at him, puzzled. So did his wife.

"Somebody musta left the window open when they moved it outside," Jackson said.

They were still looking at him, all three of them trying to figure out what kind of mess he was talkin about.

"You see The Birds he asked. "That movie Alfred Hitchcock wrote.?"

Carella didn't think Hitchcock had written it. "Birds tryin'a kill people all over the place?"

"Whut about it?" Mrs. Jackson asked impatiently.

"Musta been birds got in the car," Jackson said. "Maybe cause it was so cold."

"What makes you figure that?" Hawes asked reasonably.

"Bird shit and feathers all over the place," Jackson said. "Hadda put Abdul to cleanin it up fore the man came to claim his car. Never seen such a mess in my life. Birds're smart, you know. I read someplace when they was shootin that movie, the crows used to pick the locks on their cages, that's how smart they are. Musta got in the car."

"How? Did you notice a window down?"

"Rear window on the right was open about six inches, yeah."

"You think somebody left that window open overnight?"

"Had to've been."

"And a bird got in, huh?"

"At least a few birds. There was shit and feathers all over the place."

"Where was all this?" Carella asked.

"The backseat," Jackson said.

"And you asked Abdul to clean it up, huh?"

"Directly when he come in Saturday mornin. I seen the mess put him to work right away."

"Was he alone in the car?"

"Alone, yeah."

"You didn't see him going into that compartment, did you?"

"Nossir."

"Fiddling around anywhere in the front seats."

"No, he was busy cleanin up the mess in back."

"Did you watch him all the time he was in the car?"

"No, I din't. There was plenty other work to do."

"How long was he in the car?"

"Hour or so. Vacuuming, wiping. It was some you better believe it.

Man came to pick it up at ten, was spotless. Never've known some birds was nesting in it overnight."

"But the birds were already gone when you noticed, that open window, huh?"

"Oh yeah, long gone. Just left all their feathers and shit."

"I wish you'd watch your mouth," Mrs.

Jackson said, frowning.

"You figure they got out the same way they got in Hawes asked.

"Musta, don't you think?"

Hawes was wondering how they'd managed a little trick.

So was Carella.

"Well, thank you," he said, "we appreciate your time. If you can remember anything else, here's my…"

"Like what?" Jackson asked.

"Like anyone near that glove compartment."

"I already tole you I didn't see anyone near the glove compartment."

"Well, here's my card, anyway," Carella said. "If you think of anything at all that might help us… "Just don't come around five o'clock again,"

Jackson said.

Mrs. Jackson nodded.

What we'd like to do," Carella said on the phone, "is send someone around for the car and have our people go over it."

"What?" Pratt said.

This was a quarter past five in the morning. Carella was calling from a cell phone in the police sedan. Hawes was driving. They were on their way to Calm's Point, where Abdul Sikhar lived.

"When do I get some sleep here?" Pratt asked.

"I didn't mean someone coming by right this minute. If we can…"

"I'm talking about you waking me up right this minute."

I'm sorry about that, but we want to check out the car, find out…"

"So I understand. Why?"

"Find out what happened inside it."

"What happened is somebody stole my gun."

"That's what we're working on, Mr. Pratt. Which is why we'd like our people to go over the interior."

"What people?"

"Our techs."

"Looking for what?"

Carella almost said feathers and shit. "Whatever they can find," he said. "You're lucky it's Sunday," Pratt said. "Sir?"

"I'm not working today."

The three Richards were beginning to sober up beginning to get a little surly. They had come all way up here to Diamondback which was not such a good idea to begin with and now they couldn't find any girls on the streets, perhaps because a sensible girl was already asleep at five-twenty in the morning. Richard the First wasn't afraid of black people. He knew that Diamondback was a notoriou dangerous black ghetto, but he'd been up here in search of cocaine not for nothing was he nicknamed Lion-Hearted and he felt he knew how to deal with African Americans.

It was Richard the First's contention that a man, or a black woman, for that matter, could tell in a wink whether a person was a racist or not.

Of the only black men and women he knew were dealers and prostitutes, but this didn't lessen his conviction. A black person could look in a man's eyes and either find those dead blue eyes he' been conditioned to expect, or else he might that the white person was truly colorblind. the First liked to believe he was color-blind, which was why he was up here in Diamondback at this looking for black pussy.

"Trouble is," he told the other two Richards,

"We are here too late. Everybody's asleep already."

"Trouble is we're here too early," Richard the Second said. "Nobody's awake yet."

"Man, it's fuckin cold out here," Richard the said. Up the street, three black men warmed hands at a fire blazing in a sawed-off oil drum, oblivious to the three preppies in their hooded The lights of an all-night diner across the street threw warm yellow rectangles on the sidewalk. The sun still an hour and forty-five minutes away. The three boys decided to urinate in the gutter. This was perhaps a mistake.

They were standing there with their dicks in their hands-what the hell, this was five-thirty in the morning, the streets were deserted except for the three old farts standing around the oil drum looking like three monks in their hooded parkas, certainly intending no affront, merely answering the call of nature, so to speak, on a dark and stormless night. It was not perceived in quite this manner by the black man who came out of the night like a solitary guardian of public decency, the sole member of the Pissing in Public Patrol, dressed in black as black as the night, black jeans, black boots, a black leather jacket, a black O.J. Simpson watch cap pulled down over his ears.

He came striding toward them at exactly the same moment Yolande stepped into a taxi a mile and a half downtown.

"Thing I hate about the boneyard shift," Hawes said, "is you just start getting used to it and you're back on the day shift again."

Carella was dialing his home number.

The boneyard shift was the graveyard shift, which was the so-called morning shift that kept you up all night.

Fanny piked up on the third ring.

"How is he?" Carella asked. angel." She paused for the briefest tick of "Which is what I'd like to be doing," she said.

"Sorry," Carella said. "I won't call again. See you in a few hours."

That's what he thought.

"You a working girl?" the cabbie asked. "You a cop?" Yolande said.

"Sure, a cop," he said.

"Then mind your own business," she said.

"I'm just wondering if you know where you're going."

"I know where I'm going."

"White girl going up to Diamondback…"

"I said I…"

"This hour of the night."

"I know where I'm going. And it's morning."

"By me, it ain't morning till the sun comes up."

Yolande shrugged. It had been a pretty good night for her, and She was exhausted.

"Why you going to Diamondback?" the cabbie asked. His name on the plastic-enclosed permit on the dashboard to the right of the meter read MAX LIEBOWITZ. Jewish, Yolande thought. Last dying breed of big-city cabdrivers. Nowadays, most of your cabbies were from India or the Middle east. Some of them couldn't speak English. None knew where Duckworth Avenue was. Yolande knew where it was. She had blown a Colombian drug on Duckworth Avenue in Calm's Point. He had given her a five-hundred-dollar tip. She would never Duckworth Avenue in her life. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew where Duckworth Avenue was. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew she herself was Jewish.

"I didn't hear your answer, miss," he said.

"I live up there," she said.

"You live in Diamondback?" he said, and shot a glance at her in the rearview mirror.

"Yes."

Actually Jamal lived in Diamondback. All she did was live with Jamal.

Jamal Stone, no relation to Sharon, who had built a career by flashing her wookie. Yolande flashed her wookie a thousand times a day. Too bad she couldn't act. Then again, neither could a lot of girls who were good at flashing their wookies. "How come you live up there?"

Liebowitz asked. "I like paying cheap rent," she said.

Which wasn't exactly true. Jamal paid the rent. But he also took every penny she earned. Kept her in good shit, though. Speaking of which, it was getting to be about that time. She looked at her watch.

Twenty-five to six. Been a hard day's night.

"Worth your life, a white girl living up there," Liebowitz said.

Nice Jewish girl, no less, Yolande thought, but did not say it because she couldn't bear seeing a grown man cry. A nice Jewish girl like you?

Giving blow jobs to passing motorists at fifty bucks a throw. A Jewish girl? Suck your what? She almost smiled.

"So what are you then?" Liebowitz asked. "A dancer?"

"Yeah," she said, "how'd you guess?"

"Pretty girl like you, this hour of the night, I'm a dancer in one of the topless bars."

"Yeah, you hit it right on the head."

"I'm not a mind reader," Liebowitz said, chuckling. "You were standing in front of the Stardust when you hailed me."

Which was where she'd given some guy from Connecticut a twenty-dollar hand job while the girts onstage rattled and rolled.

"Yep," she said.

Tipped the manager two bills a night to let her freelance in the joint.

Pissed the regulars workin there, but gee, tough shit, honey.

"So where you from originally?" Liebowitz asked. unlo, she said.

"I knew it wasn't here. You don't have the accent." She almost told him her father owned a deli in Cleveland. She didn't. She almost told him she had once been to Paris, France. She didn't. Yolande Marie was her mother's idea. Yolande Marie Marx, Known in the trade as Groucho, just kidding. known in the trade as Marie St. Claire, which Jamal had come up with, lot of difference it made to the johns on wheels. My name is Marie St. Claire, case you're interested. Nice to meet you, Marie, take it deeper.

She had nightmares about a john pulling up in a blue station wagon and she leans in the window and "Hey, hiya. Wanna party?" and she gets in the car and unzips his fly and it's her father. Dreamt that on average twice a week. Woke up in a cold sweat every time. Dear Dad, I am still working here in the toy shop, it's a shame you never get out of Cleveland now that Mom's bedridden, maybe I'll be home for Yom Kippur. Sure. Take it deeper, hon.

"So do you have to do anything else at that bar?"

"How do you mean?"

"You know," Liebowitz said, and looked at her in the rearview mirror.

"Besides dancing?"

She looked back at him. He had to be sixty years old, short bald-headed little fart could hardly see over the steering wheel.

Hitting on her. Next thing you knew he'd offer to barter. Fare on the meter was now six dollars and thirty cents. He'd agree to swap it for a quickie in the backseat. Nice Jewish man. Unzip his fly, out would pop her father. "So do you?"

"Do what?"

"Other things beside dancing topless."

"Yeah, I also sing topless," she said.

"Go on, they don't sing in those places."

"I do."

"You're kidding me."

"No, no. You want to hear me sing, Max?"

"Nah, you don't sing."

"I sing like a bird," Yolande said, but did not demonstrate. Liebowitz was thinking this over, trying to determine whether or not she was putting him on.

"What else do you really do?" he asked. "Besides sing and dance?

Topless."

She was beginning to think it might not be a bad idea to turn another trick on the way home. But not for the six-ninety now on the meter.

How much cash you carrying, Zayde? she wondered. Want a piece of nineteen-year-old Jewish-girl ass you can tell your grandchildren about next Hanukkah? She thought her father again, decided no. Still, talk old Max into a hundred for a quick blow job, might be worth it. Twice the going price for a street girl, but oh such tender goods, what do you say, Granpa?

"What'd you have in mind?" she asked coyly.

The black man in the black jeans, black leather jacket, black boots, and black watch cap appeared in front of them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all three of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close.

"Now what do you call this?" he asked rhetorically.

"We call it pissing in the gutter," Richard the Second said.

"I call it disrespect for the neighborhood," the black man said. "That what the letter P stand for? Pissing."

"Join us, why don't you?" Richard the Third suggested.

"My name is Richard," Richard the First said, zipping up and extending his hand to the black man. "So is mine"

Richard the Second said. "Me, too," Richard the Third said.

"As it happens," the black man said, "my name is Richard, too."

Which now made four of them.

Bloody murder was only an hour and sixteen minutes away.

Abdul Sikhar lived in a two-bedroom Calm's Point apartment with five other men from Pakistan. They had all known each other in their native town of Rawalpindi, and they had all come to the United States at different times over the past three years. Two of the men had wives back home. A third had a girlfriend there. Four of the men worked as cabdrivers and were in constant touch by CB radio all day long. Whenever they babbled in Urdu, they made their passengers feel as if a terrorist act or a kidnapping was being plotted. The four cabbies drove like the wind in a camel's mane. None of them knew it was against the law to blow your horn in this city. They would have blown it anyway. Each and every one of them could not wait till he got out of this fucking city in this fucking United States of America. Abdul Sikhar felt the same way, though he did not drive like the wind. What he did was pump gas and wash cars at Bridge Texaco.

When he answered the door at ten to six that morning, he was wearing long woolen underwear and along-sleeved woolen top. He looked like he needed a shave but he was merely growing a beard. He was twenty years old, give or take, a scrawny kid who hated this country and who would have wet the bed at night if he wasn't sleeping in it with two other guys. The detectives identified themselves. Nodding, Sikhar stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, whispering that he did not wish to awaken his "mates," as he called them, an archaic term from the days of British rule back home, those bastards. When he learned what their business here was, he excused himself and went back inside for a moment, stepping into the hallway again a moment later, wearing along black overcoat over his long johns, unlaced black shoes on his feet. They stood now beside a grimy hall window that sputtered orange neon from outside. Sikhar lighted a cigarette. Neither Carella or Hawes smoked. They both wished they could arrest him.

"So what is this about a pistol?" he asked "Everyone wishes to know about this pistol."

"The feathers, too,"

Carella said. "And the bird shit," Hawes said.

"Such a mess," Sikhar agreed, nodding, puffing the cigarette, holding it the way Peter Lorre did in Maltese Falcon. He himself looked something ofa mess, but perhaps that was because the deveh beard looked like a smudge on his face "What kind of feathers were they, would you know?" Hawes asked.

"Pigeon feathers, I would say."

"Why would you say that?"

"There are many pigeons near the bridge."

"And you think some of them got in the car somehow, is that it?"

"I think so, yes. And panicked. Which is why shit all over everything."

"Pretty messy in there, huh?" Carella said.

"Oh yes."

"How do you suppose they got out again?" Hawes asked.

"Birds have ways," Sikhar said.

He looked at the men mysteriously.

They looked back mysteriously.

"How about the gun?" Carella said.

"What gun?"

"You know what gun."

Sikhar dropped the cigarette to the floor, ground it out under the sole of one black shoe, and took a crumpled package of Camels from the right-hand pocket of the long black coat. "Cigarette?" he asked, offering the pack first to Carella and next to Hawes, both of whom refused, each shaking his head somewhat violently. Sikhar did not get the subtle message. He fired up at once. Clouds of smoke billowed into the hallway, tinted orange by the sputtering neon outside the window. For some peculiar reason, Carella thought of Dante's inferno.

"The gun," he prompted.

"The famous missing pistol," Sikhar said. "I know nothing about it."

"You spent an hour or so in that car, didn't you? Cleaning up the mess?"

"A terrible mess," Sikhar agreed.

"Did the birds get anywhere near the glove compartment?"

"No, the mess was confined exclusively to the backseat."

"So you spent an hour or so in the backseat of the car."

"At least."

"Never once went into the front seat?"

"Never. Why would I? The mess was in the backseat."

"I thought, while you were cleaning the car…"

"No."

"You might have gone up front, given the dashboard a wipe…"

"No,"

"The glove compartment door, give everything a wipe up there, too."

"No, I didn't do that."

"Then you wouldn't know whether the compartment was unlocked or not, would you?"

"I would not know."

"What time did you start work on the car?"

"When I got there. Jimmy showed me the mess told me to clean it up. I got immediately to work."

"What time was that?"

"About seven o'clock."

"On Saturday morning."

"Yes, Saturday. I work six days a week," he said pointedly, and looked at his watch. It was now close six o'clock on Sunday morning. Dawn would come in an hour and fifteen minutes.

"Anybody else come near that car while you were in it?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Jose Santiago."

The thing Richard the Fourth did up here in Diamondback was sell crack cocaine to nice little like the three Richards he was now leading up the street to an underground bar where he promised them there'd be girls aplenty. Richard's family name was Cooper, and he was sometimes called Coop by people who wanted to get friendly with him, not knowing he despised the name Coop. This was the same as some jackass coming up to some dude and slamming him on the back and yelling in his face,

"Hey, remember me,

Sal?" Only his fuckin name ain't Sal, dig? Richard's name was Richard, and that was what he preferred being called, thank you.

Certainly not Coop, nor Rich or Richie neither, nor even Ricky or Rick.

Just plain Richard. Like the three Richards with him now, who he was telling about these quite nice jumbo vials he happened to have in his pocket, would they care for a taste at fifteen a pop?

The crack and the money were changing hands, black to white and white to black, when the taxi pulled up to the curb, and along-legged white girl in a fake-fur jacket and red leather boots stepped out. The driver's window rolled down. The driver looked somewhat dazed; as if he'd been hit by a bus. "Thanks, Max," the girl said, and blew him a kiss, and was swiveling onto the sidewalk, a slender, red, patent leather bag under her arm, when Richard Cooper said, "Hey, Yolande, you jess the girl we lookin for."

Fifty-six minutes later, she was dead.