Sadie When She Died

15

The detective who engaged the garage attendant in a bullshit conversation about a hit-and-run accident was Steve Carella. The lab technician who posed as a mechanic sent by the Automobile Club to charge a faulty battery was the same man who had wired Arlene Orton’s apartment.

Fletcher’s car was parked in a garage four blocks from his office, a fact determined simply by following him to work that morning of December 24. (Carella had already figured that Fletcher would park the car where he finally did park it because the pattern had been established in the earlier surveillance; a man who drove to work each day generally parked his car in the same garage or lot.)

On the sidewalk outside the garage, Carella asked invented questions about a damaged left fender and headlight on a fictitious 1968 Dodge, while upstairs the lab technician was installing his bug in Fletcher’s 1972 Oldsmobile. It would have been simpler and faster to put in a battery-powered FM transmitter similar to those he had installed in Arlene Orton’s apartment, but since batteries needed constant changing, and since access to any given automobile was infinitely more difficult than access to an apartment, he decided on wiring his bug into the car’s electrical system instead. With the hood open, with charge cables going to Fletcher’s battery from his own tow-truck battery, he busily spliced and taped, tucked and tacked. He did not want to put the bug under the dashboard (the easiest spot) because this was wintertime, and the car heater would undoubtedly be in use, and the sensitive microphone would pick up every rattle and rumble of the heater instead of the conversation in the car. So he wedged the microphone into the front cushion, between seat and back, and then ran his wires under the car rug, and up under the dashboard, and finally into the electrical system. Within the city limits, the microphone would effectively broadcast any sound in the car for a distance of little more than a block, which meant that Fletcher’s Oldsmobile would have to be closely followed by the monitoring unmarked police sedan. If Fletcher left the city, as he planned to do tonight when he took Arlene to The Chandeliers, the effective range of the transmitter on the open road would be about a quarter of a mile. In either case, the listener-pursuer had his work cut out for him.

On the sidewalk, Carella saw the technician drive out in his battered tow truck, abruptly thanked the garage attendant for his time, and headed back to the squadroom.

The holiday was starting in earnest and so, in keeping with the conventions of that festive season, the boys of the 87th Squad held their annual Christmas party at 4 P . M . that afternoon. The starting time for the party was entirely arbitrary, since it depended on when the squad’s guests began dropping in. The guests, unlike those to be found at most other Christmas parties in the city, were in the crime business, mainly because the hosts were in that same business. Most of the guests were shoplifters. Some of them were pickpockets. A few of them were drunks. One of them was a murderer.

The shoplifters had been arrested in department stores scattered throughout the precinct, the Christmas shopping season being a good time to lift merchandise, Christmas Eve being the last possible day to practice the art in stores still jammed to the rafters. The shoplifters plied their trade in various ways. A skinny lady shoplifter named Hester Brady, for example, came into the squadroom looking like a pregnant lady. Her pregnancy had been caused by stuffing some two hundred dollars worth of merchandise into the overlarge bloomers she wore under her dress, a risky procedure unless one is skilled at lift, grab, stuff, drop the skirt, move to the next aisle, advance in the space of twenty minutes from a sweet Irish virgin to a lady eight months along; such are the vagaries of birth control.

A man named Felix Hopkins dressed for his annual shopping spree in a trenchcoat lined with dozens of pockets to accommodate the small and quite expensive pieces of jewelry he lifted from counters here and there. A tall, thin distinguished-looking black man with a tidy mustache and gold-rimmed spectacles, he would generally approach the counter and ask to see a cigarette lighter, indicating the one he wanted, and then rip off five or six fountain pens while the clerk was busy getting the lighter out of the display case. His hands worked as swiftly as a magician’s; he had been at the job such a long time now that he didn’t even have to unbutton the coat anymore. And though the pockets inside the coat now contained a gold fountain pen, a platinum watch, a gold money clip, a rhinestone necklace, an assortment of matched gold earrings, a leather-bound traveling clock, and a monogrammed ring with a black onyx stone, he still protested to the arresting officer that he had bought all these items elsewhere, had thrown away the sales slips, and was taking them home to wrap them himself because he didn’t like the shitty job the stores did.

Most of the other shoplifters were junkies, desperate in their need, unmindful of store detectives and city detectives, sorely tempted by the glittering display of goods in what was surely the world’s largest marketplace, knowing only that whatever chances they took might net them a bag or two of heroin before nightfall, guarantee them a Christmas Day free from the pangs of drug-hunger and the pains of withdrawal. They were the pitiful ones, pacing the detention cage at the rear of the squadroom, ready to scream or vomit, knowing that being busted meant cold turkey for Christmas Day, with the only hope being methadone instead—maybe. They were looked upon with disdain by the haughty professionals like Hester Brady of the pregnant bloomers, Felix Hopkins of the pocketed raincoat, and Junius Cooper of the paper-stuffed packages.

Junius Cooper had figured out his dodge all by himself. He was a man of about forty-three, well-dressed, looking somewhat like a harried advertising executive who was rushing around picking up last-minute gifts his secretary had neglected to buy. He came into each department store carrying several shopping bags brimming with gift wrapped parcels. His modus operandi worked in two ways, both equally effective. In either instance, he would stand next to a man or woman who was legitimately shopping and who had momentarily put his own shopping bag on the floor or on the counter top. Junius would immediately: (a) transfer one of the legitimate shopper’s gift-wrapped packages into his own shopping bag or (b) pick up the legitimate shopper’s bag and leave his own bag behind in its place. The beautifully wrapped boxes in Junius’ bag contained nothing but last Sunday’s newspapers. His system was a bit potluckish, but it provided the advantage of being able to walk innocently past department-store cops, carrying packages actually paid for by bona-fide customers and wrapped by department-store clerks. It was almost impossible to catch Junius unless you saw him making the actual exchange. That was how he had been caught today.

This mixed bag of shoplifters mingled in the squadroom with their first cousins, the pickpockets, who similarly looked upon the frantic shopping days before Christmas as their busiest time of the year. A pickpocket enjoys nothing better than a crowd, and the approaching holiday brought the crowds out like cockroaches from under the bathroom sink: crowds in stores, crowds in the streets, crowds in the buses and subways. They worked in pairs or alone, these light-fingered artists, a nudge or a bump, an “Oh, excuse me,” and a purse delicately lifted from a handbag, a hip pocket slit with a razor blade to release the bulging wallet within. There was not a detective in the city who did not carry his wallet in the left-hand pocket of his trousers, close to his balls, rather than in the sucker hip pocket; cops are not immune to pickpockets. They were surrounded by them that afternoon, all of them innocent, naturally, all of them protesting that they knew their rights.

The drunks did not know their rights, and did not particularly care about them. They had all begun celebrating a bit early and had in their exuberance done one thing or another considered illegal in this fair city—things like throwing a bus driver out onto the sidewalk when he refused to make change for a ten-dollar bill, or smashing the window of a taxicab when the driver said he couldn’t possibly make a call to Calm’s Point on the busiest day of the year, or kicking a Salvation Army lady who refused to allow her trombone to be played by a stranger, or pouring a quart of scotch into a mailbox, or urinating on the front steps of the city’s biggest cathedral. Things like that. Minor things like that.

One of the drunks had killed someone.

He was unquestionably the star of the 87th’s little Christmas celebration, a small man with vivid blue eyes and the hands of a violinist, beetling black brows, a mane of black hair, stinking of alcohol and vomit, demanding over and again to know just what the hell he was doing in a police station, even though there was blood all over his white shirt front and speckled on his pale face and staining his long thin, delicate fingers.

The person he had killed was his sixteen-year-old daughter.

He seemed to have no knowledge that she was dead. He seemed not to remember at all that he had come into his apartment at three o’clock that afternoon, little more than an hour ago, having begun his Christmas celebrating at the office shortly after lunch, and had found his daughter making love with a boy on the living-room sofa, the television casting unseen pictures into the darkened room, television voices whispering, whispering, and his daughter locked in embrace with a strange boy, skirts up over belly and thighs, buttocks pumping, ecstatic moans mingling with the whisper of television shadows, not hearing her father when he came into the room, not hearing him when he went into the kitchen and searched in the table drawer for a weapon formidable enough, punishing enough, found only a paring knife and discarded that as unequal to the task, discovered a hammer in the shoebox under the sink, hefted it on the palm of his hand, and, thin-lipped, went into the living room where his daughter still moaned beneath the weight of her young lover, and seized the boy by the shoulder and pulled him off her, and then struck her repeatedly with the hammer until the girl’s face and head were gristle and pulp and the boy screamed until he fainted from exhaustion and shock and the woman next door ran in and found her neighbor still wielding the hammer in terrible dark vengeance for the unpardonable sin his daughter had committed on the day before Christmas. “George,” she had whispered, and he had turned to her with blank eyes, and she had said, “Oh, George, what have you done?” and he had dropped the hammer, and could not remember from that moment on what he had done.

It was a nice little Christmas party the boys of the 87th had.

He had forgotten, almost, what she looked like.

She came through the hospital’s chrome and glass revolving doors, and he saw at first only a tall blond girl, full-breasted and wide-hipped, honey blond hair clipped close to her head, cornflower-blue eyes, shoving through the doors and out onto the low, flat stoop, and he reacted to her the way he might react to any beautiful stranger stepping into the crisp December twilight, and then he realized it was Cindy, and his heart lurched.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

She took his arm. They walked in silence for several moments.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you. So do you.”

He was, in fact, quite aware of the way they looked together, and fell immediately into the Young Lovers syndrome, positive that everyone they passed on the windswept street knew instantly that they were mad about each other. Each stranger (or so he thought) cased them quickly, remarking silently on their oneness, envying their youth and strength and glowing health, longing to be these two on Christmas Eve, Cindy and Bert, American Lovers, who had met cute, and loved long, and fought hard, and parted sadly, and were now together again in the great tradition of the season, radiating love like flashing Christmas bulbs on a sixty-foot-high tree.

They found a cocktail lounge near the hospital, one they had never been to before, either together or separately, Kling sensing that a “first” was necessary to their rediscovery of each other. They sat at a small round table in a corner of the room. The crowd noises were comforting. He suspected an English pub might be like this on Christmas Eve, the voice cadences lulling and soft, the room itself warm and protective, a good place for nurturing a love that had almost died and was now about to redeclare itself.

“Where’s my present?” he said, and grinned in mock, evil greediness.

She reached behind her to where she had hung her coat on a wall peg, and dug into the pocket, and placed a small package in the exact center of the table. The package was wrapped in bright blue paper and tied with a green ribbon and bow. He felt a little embarrassed; he always did when receiving a gift. He went into the pocket of his own coat, and placed his gift on the table beside hers, a slightly larger package wrapped in jingle-bells paper, red and gold, no bow.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he said.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

They hesitated. They looked at each other. They both smiled.

“You first,” he said.

“All right.”

She slipped her fingernail under the Scotch Tape and broke open the wrapping without tearing the paper, and then eased the box out, and moved the wrapping aside, intact, and centered the box before her, and opened its lid. He had bought her a plump gold heart, seemingly bursting with an inner life of its own, the antiqued gold chain a tether that kept it from ballooning ecstatically into space. She looked at the heart, and then glanced quickly into his expectant face and nodded briefly and said, “Thank you, it’s beautiful.”

“It’s not Valentine’s Day . . .”

“Yes.” She was still nodding. She was looking down at the heart again, and nodding.

“But I thought . . .” He shrugged.

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” she said again. “Thank you, Bert.”

“Well,” he said, and shrugged again, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and suspecting it was because he hated the ritual of opening presents. He ripped off the bow on her gift, tore open the paper, and lifted the lid off the tiny box. She had bought him a gold tie-tack in the form of miniature handcuffs, and he read meaning into the gift immediately, significance beyond the fact that he was a cop whose tools of the trade included real handcuffs hanging from his belt. His gift had told her something about the way he felt, and he was certain that her gift was telling him the very same thing—they were together again, she was binding herself to him again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you like it, Bert?”

“I love it.”

“I thought . . .”

“Yes, I love it.”

“Good.”

They had not yet ordered drinks. Kling signaled for the waiter, and they sat in curious silence until he came to the table. The waiter left, and the silence lengthened, and it was then that Kling began to suspect something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. She had closed the lid on his gift, and was staring at the closed box.

“What is it?” Kling asked.

“Bert . . .”

“Tell me, Cindy.”

“I didn’t come here to . . .”

He knew already, there was no need for her to elaborate. He knew, and the noises of the room were suddenly too loud, the room itself too hot.

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

“I see.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” he said. “No, Cindy, please.”

“Bert, what you and I had together was very good . . .”

“I know that, honey.”

“And I just couldn’t end it the way . . . the way we were ending it. I had to see you again, and tell you how much you’d meant to me. I had to be sure you knew that.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Bert?”

“Yes, Cindy. Okay,” he said. He smiled and touched her hand reassuringly. “Okay,” he said again.

They spent a half hour together, drinking only the single round, and then they went out into the cold, and they shook hands briefly, and Cindy said, “Good-bye, Bert,” and he said, “Good-bye, Cindy,” and they walked off in opposite directions.

Peter Brice lived on the third floor of a brownstone on the city’s South Side. Kling reached the building at a little past six-thirty, went upstairs, listened outside the door for several moments, drew his service revolver, and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again, waited, holstered his revolver, and was starting down the hall when a door at the opposite end opened. A blond-headed kid of about eight looked into the hallway and said, “Oh.”

“Hello,” Kling said, and started down the steps.

“I thought it might be Santa Claus,” the kid said.

“Little early,” Kling said over his shoulder.

“What time does he come?” the kid asked.

“After midnight.”

“When’s that?” the kid shouted after him.

“Later,” Kling shouted back, and went down to the ground floor. He found the super’s door alongside the stairwell, near where the garbage cans were stacked for the night. He knocked on the door and waited. A black man wearing a red flannel robe opened the door and peered into the dim hallway.

“Who is it?” he said, squinting up into Kling’s face.

“Police officer,” Kling said. “I’m looking for a man named Peter Brice. Know where I can find him?”

“Third-floor front,” the super said. “Don’t do no shootin’ in the building.”

“He’s not home,” Kling said. “Got any idea where he might be?”

“He hangs out on the corner sometimes.”

“What corner?”

“Barbecue joint on the corner. Brice’s brother works there.”

“Up the street here?”

“Yeah,” the super said. “What’d he do?”

“Routine investigation,” Kling answered. “Thanks a lot.”

The streets were dark. Last-minute shoppers, afternoon party-goers, clerks and shopgirls, workingmen and housewives, all of whom had been rushing toward tomorrow since the day after Thanksgiving, now moved homeward to embrace it, put the final fillip on the tree, drink a bit of nog, spend the last quiet hours in peaceful contemplation before the onslaught of relatives and friends in the morning, the attendant frenzied business of gifting and getting. A sense of serenity was in the air. This is what Christmas is all about, Kling thought, this peaceful time of quiet footfalls, and suddenly wondered why the day before Christmas had somehow become more meaningful to him than Christmas Day itself.

Skewered, browning chickens turned slowly on spits, their savory aroma filling the shop as Kling opened the door and stepped inside. A burly man in a white chef’s apron and hat was behind the counter preparing to skewer four more plump white birds. He glanced up as Kling came in. Another man was at the cigarette machine, his back to the door. He was even bigger than the one behind the counter, with wide shoulders and a thick bull’s neck. He turned from the machine as Kling closed the door, and the recognition between them was simultaneous. Kling knew at once that this was the man who’d beaten him senseless last Monday night, and the man knew that Kling had been his victim. A grin cracked across his face. “Well, well,” he said, “look who’s here, Al.”

“Are you Peter Brice?” Kling asked.

“Why, yes, so I am,” Brice said, and took a step toward Kling, his fists already clenched.

Kling had no intention of getting into a brawl with a man as big as Brice. His shoulder still ached (Meyer’s copper bracelet wasn’t worth a damn) and he had a broken rib and a broken heart besides (which can also hurt). The third button of his overcoat was still unbuttoned. He reached into the coat with his right hand, seized the butt of his revolver, drew it swiftly and effortlessly, and pointed it directly at Brice’s gut.

“Police officer,” he said. “I want to ask you some questions about . . .”

The greasy skewer struck his gun hand like a sword, whipping down fiercely across the knuckles. He whirled toward the counter as the skewer came down again, striking him hard across the wrist, knocking the gun to the floor. In that instant Brice threw the full weight of his shoulder and arm into a punch that caught Kling close to his Adam’s apple. Three things flashed through his mind in the next three seconds. First, he realized that if Brice’s punch had landed an inch to the right, he would now be dead. Which meant that Brice had no compunctions about sending him home in a basket. Next he realized, too late, that Brice had asked the man behind the counter to “look who’s here, Al.” And then he realized, also too late, that the super had said, “Brice’s brother works there.” His right wrist aching, the three brilliant flashes sputtering out by the time the fourth desperate second ticked by, he backed toward the door and prepared to defend himself with his one good hand, that one being the left and not too terribly good at all. Five seconds gone since Al had hit him on the hand (probably breaking something, the son of a bitch) and Pete had hit him in the throat. Al was now lifting the counter top and coming out front to assist his brother, the idea probably having occurred to both of them that, whereas it was not bad sport to kick around a jerk who was chasing after Frank Richmond’s girl, it was bad news to discover that the jerk was a cop, and worse news to let him out of here alive.

The chances of getting out of here alive seemed exceedingly slim to Detective Bert Kling. Seven seconds gone now, ticking by with amazing swiftness as they closed in on him. This was a neighborhood where people got stomped into the sidewalk every day of the week and nary a soul ever paused to tip his hat or mutter a “how-de-do” to the bleeding victim. Pete and Al could with immunity take Kling apart in the next seven seconds, put him on one of their chicken skewers, hang him on the spit, turn him and baste him in his own juices, and sell him later for sixty-nine cents a pound. Unless he could think of something clever.

He could not seem to think of a single clever thing.

Except maybe you shouldn’t leave your undefended gun hand within striking distance of a brother with a greased skewer.

His gun was on the floor in the corner now, too far to reach.

(Eight seconds.)

The skewers were behind the counter, impossible to grab.

(Nine seconds.)

Pete was directly ahead of him, maneuvering for a punch that would knock Kling’s head into the gutter outside. Al was closing in on the right, fists bunched.

(With a mighty leap, Detective Bert Kling sprang out of the pit.)

He wished he could spring out of the goddamn pit. He braced himself, feinted toward Pete, and then whirled suddenly to the right, where Al was moving in fast, and hit him with his left, hard and low, inches below the belt. Pete swung, and Kling dodged the blow, and then swiftly stepped behind the doubled-over Al, bringing his bunched fist down across the back of his neck in a rabbit punch that sent him sprawling flat across his own sawdust-covered floor.

One down, he thought, and turned just as Pete unleashed a haymaker that caught him on the side opposite the broken rib, thank God for small favors. He lurched back against the counter in pain, brought up his knee in an attempt to groin Pete, who was hip to the ways of the street and sidestepped gingerly while managing at the same time to clobber Kling on the cheek, bringing his fist straight down from above his head, as though he were holding a mallet in it.

I am going to get killed, Kling thought.

“Your brother’s dead,” he said.

He said the words suddenly and spontaneously, the first good idea he’d had all week. They stopped Pete cold in his tracks, with his fist pulled back for the blow that could have ended it all in the next thirty seconds, smashing either the bridge of Kling’s nose or his windpipe. Pete turned swiftly to look at his brother where he lay motionless in the sawdust. Kling knew a good thing when he saw one. He didn’t try to hit Pete again, he didn’t even try to kick him; he knew that any further attempts at trying to overpower him physically were doomed to end only one way, and he did not desire a little tag on his big toe. He dove headlong for his gun in the corner of the room, scooped it up in his left hand, the butt awkward and uncomfortable, rolled over, sat up, and curled his finger around the trigger as Pete turned toward him once again.

“Hold it, you son of a bitch!” Kling said.

Pete lunged across the room.

Kling squeezed the trigger once, and then again, aiming for Pete’s trunk, just as he had done on the police range so many times, the big target up there at the end of the range, the parts of the body marked with numerals for maximum lethal reward, five points for the head and throat, chest and abdomen, four for the shoulders, three for the arms, two for the legs. He scored a ten with Peter Brice, because both slugs caught him in the chest, one of them going directly through his heart and the other piercing his left lung.

Kling lowered his gun.

He sat on the floor in the corner of the room, and watched Pete’s blood oozing into the sawdust, and wiped sweat from his lip, and blinked, and then began crying because this was one hell of a fucking Christmas Eve, all right.

Carella had been parked across the street from The Chandeliers for close to two hours, waiting for Fletcher and Arlene to finish their dinner. It was now ten minutes to ten, and he was drowsy and discouraged and beginning to think the bug in the car wasn’t such a hot idea after all. On the way out to the restaurant, Fletcher and Arlene had not once mentioned Sarah or the plans for their impending marriage. The only remotely intimate thing they had discussed was receipt of the lingerie Fletcher had sent, which Arlene just adored, and which she planned to model for him later that night.

It was now later that night, and Carella was anxious to put them both to bed and get home to his family. When they finally came out of the restaurant and began walking toward Fletcher’s Oldsmobile, Carella actually uttered an audible “At last” and started his car. Fletcher started the Olds in silence, and then apparently waited in silence for the engine to warm before pulling out of the parking lot. Carella followed close behind, listening intently. Neither Fletcher nor Arlene had spoken a word since they entered the automobile. They proceeded east on Route 701 now, heading for the bridge, and still they said nothing. Carella thought at first that something was wrong with the equipment, and then he thought that Fletcher had tipped to this bug, too, and was deliberately maintaining silence, and then finally Arlene spoke and Carella knew just what had happened. The pair had argued in the restuarant, and Arlene had been smoldering until this moment when she could no longer contain her anger. The words burst into the stillness of Carella’s car as he followed close behind, Arlene shouting, Maybe you don’t want to marry me at all!

That’s ridiculous, Fletcher said.

Then why won’t you set a date? Arlene said.

I have set a date, Fletcher said.

You haven’t set a date. All you’ve done is say after the trial, after the trial. When after the trial?

I don’t know yet.

When the hell will you know, Gerry?

Don’t yell.

Maybe this whole damn thing has been a stall. Maybe you never planned to marry me.

You know that isn’t true, Arlene.

How do I know there really were separation papers?

There were. I told you there were.

Then why wouldn’t she sign them?

Because she loved me.

Bullshit.

She said she loved me.

If she loved you . . .

She did.

Then why did she do those horrible things?

I don’t know.

Because she was a whore, that’s why.

To make me pay, I think.

Is that why she showed you her little black book?

Yes, to make me pay.

No. Because she was a whore.

I guess. I guess that’s what she became.

Putting a little TG in her book every time she told you about a new one.

Yes.

A new one she’d fucked.

Yes.

Told Gerry, and marked a little TG in her book.

Yes, to make me pay.

A whore. You should have gone after her with detectives. Gotten pictures, threatened her, forced her to sign those damn . . .

No, I couldn’t have done that. It would have ruined me, Arl.

Your precious career.

Yes, my precious career.

They both fell silent again. They were approaching the bridge now. The silence persisted. Fletcher paid the toll, and then drove onto the River Highway, Carella following. They did not speak again until they were well into the city. Carella tried to stay close behind them, but on occasion the distance between the two cars lengthened and he lost some words in the conversation.

You know she had me in a bind, Fletcher said. You know that, Arlene.

I thought so. But now I’m not so sure anymore.

She wouldn’t sign the papers, and I ( ) adultery because ( ) have come out.

All right.

I thought ( ) perfectly clear, Arl.

And I thought ( )

I did everything I possibly could.

Yes, Gerry, but now she’s dead. So what’s your excuse now?

I have reasons for wanting to wait.

What reasons?

I told you.

I don’t recall your telling me . . .

I’m suspected of having killed her, goddamn it!

(Silence. Carella waited. Up ahead, Fletcher was making a left turn, off the highway. Carella stepped on the accelerator, not wanting to lose voice contact now.)

What difference does that make? Arlene asked.

None at all, I’m sure, Fletcher said. I’m sure you wouldn’t at all mind being married to a convicted murderer.

What are you talking about?

I’m talking about the possibility . . . never mind.

Let me hear it.

I said never mind.

I want to hear it.

All, right, Arlene. I’m talking about the possibility of someone accusing me of murder. And of having to stand trial for it.

That’s the most paranoid . . .

It’s not paranoid.

Then what is it? They’ve caught the murderer, they . . .

I’m only saying suppose. How could we get married if I killed her, if someone says I killed her?

No one has said it, Gerry.

Well, if someone should.

(Silence. Carella was dangerously close to Fletcher’s car now, and risking discovery. But he could not afford to miss a word at this point, even if he had to follow bumper-to-bumper. On the floor of his own car, the unwinding reel of tape recorded each word of the dialogue between Fletcher and Arlene, admissible evidence if ever Fletcher were charged and brought to trial. Carella held his breath and stayed glued to the car ahead. When Arlene spoke again, her voice was very low.)

You sound as if you really did do it.

You know Corwin did it.

Yes, I know that. That’s what . . . Gerry, I don’t understand this.

There’s nothing to understand.

Then why . . . if you didn’t kill her, why are you so worried about being accused and standing trial and . . .

Someone could make a good case for it.

For what?

Someone could say I killed her.

Why would anyone do that? They know that Corwin . . .

They could say I came into the apartment and . . . they could say she was still alive when I came into the apartment.

Was she?

They could say it.

But who cares what they . . . ?

They could say the knife was still in her and I . . . I came in and found her that way and . . . finished her off.

Why would you do that?

To end it.

You wouldn’t kill anyone, Gerry.

No.

Then why are you even suggesting such a terrible thing?

If she wanted it . . . if someone accused me . . . if someone said I’d done it . . . that I’d finished the job, pulled the knife across her belly . . . they could claim she asked me to do it.

What are you saying, Gerry?

Don’t you see?

No. I don’t.

I’m trying to explain that Sarah might have . . .

Gerry, I don’t think I want to know.

I’m trying to tell you . . .

No, I don’t want to know. Please, Gerry, you’re frightening me, I really don’t want to . . .

Listen to me, goddamn it! I’m trying to explain what might have happened, is that so fucking hard to accept? That she might have asked me to kill her?

Gerry, please, I . . .

I wanted to call the hospital, I was ready to call the hospital, don’t you think I could see she wasn’t fatally stabbed?

Gerry, Gerry, please . . .

She begged me to kill her, Arlene, she begged me to end it for her, she . . . damn it, can’t either of you understand that? I tried to show him, I took him to all the places, I thought he was a man who’d understand. For Christ’s sake, is it that difficult?

Oh my God, my God, did you kill her?

What?

Did you kill Sarah?

No. Not Sarah. Only the woman she’d become, the slut I’d forced her to become. She was Sadie, you see. When I killed her. When she died.

Oh my God, Arlene said, and Carella nodded in weary acceptance. He felt neither elated nor triumphant. As he followed Fletcher’s car into the curb before Arlene’s building, he experienced only a familiar nagging sense of repetition and despair. Fletcher was coming out of his car now, walking around to the curb side, opening the door for Arlene, who took his hand and stepped onto the sidewalk, weeping. Carella intercepted them before they reached the front door of the building. Quietly, he charged Fletcher with the murder of his wife, and made the arrest without resistance.

Fletcher did not seem at all surprised.

And so it was finished, or at least Carella thought it was.

In the silence of his living room, the children already asleep, Teddy wearing a long white hostess gown that reflected the colored lights of the Christmas tree, he put his arm around her and relaxed for the first time that day. The telephone rang at a quarter past one. He went into the kitchen, catching the phone on the third ring, hoping the children had not been awakened.

“Hello?” he said.

“Steve?”

He recognized the lieutenant’s voice at once. “Yes, Pete,” he said.

“I just got a call from Calcutta,” Byrnes said.

“Mmm?”

“Ralph Corwin hanged himself in his cell, just after midnight. Must have done it while we were still taking Fletcher’s confession in the squadroom.”

Carella was silent.

“Steve?”

“Yeah, Pete.”

“Nothing,” Byrnes said, and hung up.

Carella stood with the dead phone in his hand for several seconds, and then replaced it on the hook. He looked into the living room, where the lights of the tree glowed warmly, and he thought of a despairing junkie in a prison cell, who had taken his own life without ever having known he had not taken the life of another.

It was Christmas Day.

Sometimes, none of it made any goddamn sense at all.