The Big Bad City

3.

"Then she's not a nun," Carella's mother said. "Don't be so old-fashioned," his sister said. "What's old-fashioned got to do with it? A nun doesn't get herself breast implants, Angela. That's all there is to it.”

Carella expected her to cross her fingers and spit on them, the way she used to when he was a kid. The trouble with sign language, he thought, is that fingers can't whisper. Last night after dinner, he had told Teddy all about Blaney's discovery, little knowing that the twins presumably playing Monopoly across the room, on the floor beneath the imitation Tiffany lamp had been eavesdropping, each of them fascinated in a separate boy-girl way by the topic under discussion.

According to Blaney, before 1992 there had been three types of fillings for the implant: silicone gel, saline, or a combination of both, where saline was contained in one compartment of an elastomer shell and silicone gel in another. When it was discovered that the gel could bleed through the envelope and migrate to other parts of the body, potentially causing cancer, silicone gel implants were banned.

Sister Mary Vincent's implants were saline.

This did not necessarily mean they'd been inserted since 1992; saline implants had been on the market for more than a decade before the ban on silicone gel. But a good reason to suspect the implants had been recent was the fact that the shell had not yet turned from clear to cloudy. Apparently, when the shell was in place for any amount of time, the body's oxidizing compounds attacked it, causing discoloration. This had not yet happened in Mary's.

instance. Given the fact that Mary was only twenty-seven, given the longevity of the silicone gel ban, given as well the fact that the envelope was still clear, Blaney was willing to guess that the implants could not have been more than three or four years old.

All of this the prepubescent twins had overheard and felt compelled to repeat to their grandmother the moment they were all assembled on her backyard lawn for the big outdoor barbecue. Judging from previous Sunday afternoon feasts at his mother's house all throughout his childhood and beyond, he would not get home till eight tonight, by which time Sixty Minutes would have come and gone, oh well.

The indiscretion of the twins was compounded by the presence at the barbecue of Angela's new boyfriend, an assistant district attorney named Henry Lowell, who had merely allowed the man who'd killed Carella's father to walk out of a courtroom scot-free. He now had the balls to say, "That's privileged information, isn't it, Steve?" to which Carella replied, "Only if it's revealed by me, Henry," to which the asshole replied,. "Who else was privy to it?" to which Carella replied, "Mark and April. They're twelve.”

“Oh, let it go,”

Angela said.

The men were standing at the barbecue, Carella turning steaks, placing on Lowell chicken breasts the grill for anyone who preferred white meat.

Teddy was just coming out of the house, carrying a bowl of pasta that had been warming on the big stove in the kitchen. The screen door slammed shut behind her, the sound signaling dappled sunlight, capturing her in stuttered gold. Depending on which degree of political correctness you wished to accept, Teddy Carella was either a deaf mute, a hearing-and-speech impaired woman, or an aurally and vocally challenged person. Or else she was simply Carella's wife and the most beautiful woman in the. world, dark-haired and dark-eyed, moving with elegance and grace as she carried the steaming bowl to the wooden picnic table and set it down. Carella watched her. He loved to watch her. She caught him. Threw a brazen hip at him. He smiled. On the table, his mother's good red sauce immediately attracted bees.

Teddy ripped plastic wrap from a roll, shooed the bees, covered the steaming bowl.

"Angela, the salad!" his mother called. "The bread!”

"Getting it now, Mom!”

Angela slammed into the house, followed by her three-year-old twins.

Bang, bang, and bang again, the screen door went. Twins ran in the family. There were two sets here today, his sister's and Carella's own.

Plus Angela's seven-year-old, Tess.

"April! Mark! Dinner! Cindy! Mindy! Everybody! Henry! Come on!

Tess! Dinner!" his mother called, though this wasn't quite dinner at two in the afternoon, nor was it lunch, either, just your garden-variety, eat-till-you-bust Italian-style Sunday get-together.

We could remember hiding under the dining room table with his sister when they were kids. Now her estranged husband was a goddamn drug addict, and her boyfriend had let their father's killer walk, my how the time does fly.

His mother would not let go of the breasts, so to speak.

Kept rattling on and on about it being impossible for the woman in the park to be a nun because nuns simply didn't need or want breast implants. Sometimes she gave him a pain in the ass. Well, he guessed she was a little better nowadays, didn't as often fall into those long moments of deep silence, when she retreated to whatever private space she continued to share with her dead husband. My father, too, don't forget, Carella thought. My dead father. I mean, Mom, we all lost Pop, you know. But I don't retreat, I dare not retreat, oh dear God I would burst into tears.

Today it wasn't one of her deep meaningful silences. Instead, it was the nun and the Catholic Church, his mother seemingly having forgotten that she herself hadn't been to church for, what was it, twenty years? And, listen, don't even mention confession! On and on about the nun who had to be an impostor, while Henry Lowell sat across the table fretting over a detective's family knowing the intimate details of a case the detective was investigating, well, gee, pardon me all to hell, Henry!

Carella would be forty years old in October.

Oh, yes, no more thirty something forget it. He had read someplace that when Hollywood studios wanted to do a movie about a twelve-year-old, they hired a twelve-year-old to write the script. That was because a forty-year-old writer had never been twelve. Which meant that a seventy-year-old writer had never been forty, though a Hollywood studio would never hire a seventy-year-old to do anything but star in a movie opposite a thirty-four-year-old girl, the theory being that the gonads remembered what the heart and the head had long ago forgotten.

He sometimes watched old ladies plodding heavily across city streets where buses threatened, and knew for certain that inside those shrunken bodies were the shining faces of fourteen-year-olds.

Angela's three-year-olds were babbling in their own secret code, he remembered Mark and April when they were that age, inseparable, a gang in miniature. Twelve years old now. April blossoming into a young woman, already taller than her brother, Mark, who was essentially still a boy. Sunrise, sunset, where had the time flown? Mark favored his father, poor kid. April was the image of Teddy, who was now signing to Angela and Angela was trying to understand that her court appearance was scheduled for tomorrow morning at nine, and she was scared to death they'd find her guilty and send her to jail.

"They won't, Morn," Mark said at once, forgetting to sign, and then tapped her arm, and when she turned, reassured her in the language that had been in his hands from when he was a small boy.

"No one's going to find you guilty," Carella said aloud, simultaneously signing it, even though he knew this was no mere bullshit violation.

Assault Three was a misdemeanor for which Teddy could spend a year in jail if she was convicted. The accident leading to the assault charge had occurred so long ago that neither of them could remember exactly when, but court calendars being what they were, it was only coming to trial tomorrow morning.

"Who's the judge?" Lowell asked.

"Man named Franklin Roosevelt Pierson, do you know him?”

"Yes. He'S fair and honest. What's this all about, anyway?”

Teddy began signing, and Carella began talking at the same time, so she yielded to him for the sake of expediency since Lowell didn't understand sign language at all.

What had happened was that a woman had backed her red Buick station wagon into the grille of Teddy's little red Geo. The district attorney was insisting that a) Teddy had caused the accident, and b) Teddy had kicked the woman, and c) Teddy had taken advantage of her husband's position as a police detective to intimidate the arresting officer at the scene. The only truth to any of this was that Teddy had, in fact, kicked the woman, but only after she'd taken Teddy by the shoulders and shaken her the way some nannies do with infants.

April had heard all this before, so she turned to her aunt and asked her if she knew about this new nail polish that dried in ninety seconds flat. If this were a sitcom, Mark would have told her she was too young to wear nail polish, and April would have warned him to shut up, brat. But this was real life here on Grandma's lawn, and Teddy had let her daughter wear lip gloss for the occasion and Mark said, "Yeah, that's cool, Sis, I saw it on television.”

Carella knew that it could go badly for Teddy tomorrow morning because the plaintiff was a black woman and so was the judge, and nobody in this city liked to see a person of color pushed around by a white cop, even if it was only a white cop's white wife. He did not mention a word of this to Teddy. He planned to be at the trial tomorrow morning, dead nun or not. Even in police work, there were priorities. "Who's representing you?" Lowell asked.

Proper nouns were the most difficult words to sign. Especially when your listener couldn't read your fingers. Teddy turned helplessly to Carella. "Jerry Flanagan," he said. "Good lawyer," Lowell said. Unlike you, Carella thought.

Maybe it made a person cranky twelve years old, or going on forty, or well over the hill at seventy to be sitting opposite the district attorney who with an ironclad chain of evidence on the murder weapon had allowed a man to walk, had so bungled the case that a jury had let a murderer walk out of that courtroom, the man who'd killed Carella's father, well, listen, who the hell cared? Could you just imagine sitting at a dinner party with Carella on your right, and he's telling you all about how justice had not been served in the case of his father's murder, a killer had been allowed to walk free, oh, what a delightful dinner companion this would be, are all police detectives as entertaining as you? Maybe it had to do with getting to be forty.

Or maybe it had to do with guilt.

Carella himself had arrested the son of a bitch, you see, Carella could have blown the man's brains out in a deserted hallway with no one to witness except another cop who was urging him to pull the trigger, Do it, do it, but he had not done it, he had not killed the man who'd killed his father because he'd felt somewhere deep inside him that becoming a beast of prey was tantamount to having been that beast all along.

And now the guilt.

In the guilt game, Italians were second only to Jews. He never thought of himself as Italian, however, because, gee, you see, he'd been born here in these United States of America, you see, and an Italian was somebody who lived in Rome, or was he mistaken? He never thought of himself as an Italian American either, because that was someone who'd come to this country from Italy, correct? An immigrant? As, for example, his father's father, whom he'd never met because the man had died before Carella was born. He was the Italian-American, the hyphenate, the man who'd come all those miles from a walled mountaintop village midway between Bari and Naples, Italian at the start of his long journey, Italian when he'd reached these shores and this big bad city, becoming Italian-American only after he'd recited the pledge of allegiance under oath.

Carella's father was an American, born and bred in this country. And the man who'd killed him was American as well. Whatever his distant heritage had been, he'd been born here, and raised here, and he'd acquired his gun here in this land of the free and home of the brave, but only when you had a pistol in your hand. This American had learned to use his pistol here, and he had used it on Carella's father, another American, bang, bang, you're dead.

I should have killed him, Carella thought. Because this is the way it turns out.

You are here on a sweltering Sunday in August, and your sister has brought to the table the man who let your father's murderer walk, and she is sleeping with this man, she is fucking him in the dead of night, and all your mother can talk about is a nun with fake tits. He guessed he was getting to be forty.

He wondered if he'd suddenly start chasing nineteen-year-old girls.

He looked across at his wife. She winked at him. He winked back.

He would kill himself first.

Sunday evening tuned a rosy pink and then a deeper blush and then a reddish-lavender-blue and then purple and black, the golden day succumbing at last to night.

It was time to go buy a gun.

Stringent laws or not, it was as easy to buy a gun here in this city as it was in the state of Florida. That's because laws were made for honest people. Honest people knew that if you wanted to purchase a handgun in this city, you first had to get a permit from the police department's Pistol Licensing Division. The PLD issued four different types of permits. Owners of businesses that had been robbed, or persons who made night deposits at banks could apply for a "carry" permit. A "premise" permit could be issued for keeping a gun in a home or a business location. "Special”

permits could be granted to out-of-state residents, and "target”

permits to gun-club members. In this city, it was illegal to own or carry a handgun without a permit. But the police estimated that there were at least two million handguns out there despite the fact that fewer than fifty thousand permits had been issued. Thieves didn't need permits. Thieves knew a hundred and one ways to buy an illegal piece.

One of those ways was Little Nicholas.

At eleven o'clock that Sunday night, Sonny went to see him.

Little Nicholas did business in the rear of a laundromat he owned and operated on Lyons and South Thirty-fifth. The washing and drying machines closed down at ten-thirty, which is why Sonny didn't go by until eleven. He had called ahead, and he was expected. Even so, Little Nicholas was extremely cautious about opening the back door of the Soapy Suds until he'd turned on the outside floods and ascertained through a peephole that his visitor was indeed Samson Wilbur Cole.

"Hey, man," he said, and instantly closed and double-locked the door behind Sonny. The two men shook hands. Little Nicholas's grip was thick and sweaty. He was wearing a white tank-top undershirt and shorts roomy enough to accommodate two men his size, a length of clothesline threaded through the loops and tied at the gatiaerea waist.

was about five-eight and weighed in at three-fifty.

"Got some nice new merchandise up from Georgia yesterday," Little Nicholas said. "One of my mules made a quick run down there and back.

Picked up a silver-plated Mac-ll, a pair of Glock-17s, a 5.56 semi, a Colt .45 with a laser scope, and four .25caliber Ravens. What are you looking for?”

"Got to do me some hunting," Sonny said.

"Then you need stopping power;' Nicholas said. "We're talking a nine.

Your nine is anything that uses a .357 or a 9-millimeter cartridge."“

"I know what a nine is.”

Was a nine stopped Carella's father.

"So show me," Sonny said.

Part of the ritual here was who could out lip who. The price often rose or fell on who had the biggest mouth.

"Your nine did three hundred and two homicides in this city, last year alone," Nicholas said.

"Nobody's thinking of any homicide here.”

"Course not. Just thought you'd like to know. How much money are we talking here?”

"Money's no object.”

"I heard that tune before. Till I state the price.”

“State it.”

"I got nines ranging from seven hundred to a thou. Your uglies are more expensive. The Cobray M-11 and the Tee-9'll run you around twelve, fifteen hundred, depending. But you can't hide an ugly, cept under an overcoat, and you're not about to wear a coat in this heat, are you? Or did you plan to go hunting after it cools down a little?”

"/qi be needin the gun now.”

"So you want something you can tuck in your waistband or a holster, am I right?”

"Yes," Sonny said.

"But not one of your-junk guns, cost you a low of fifty, a high of two-fifty.”

"You talking your Raven and such?”

"Your Raven, your Jennings weapons, all the cheap Saturday-night specials.”

"I want a gun can do the job,”

"Your junk gun'll give you control but not much else.”

"Show me what you got in a nine.”

"Happy to," Nicholas said, and waddled over to a wall covered with half a dozen cabinet doors. "You got anything against Jew sT he asked.

"No more'n against any other man.”

"You got a quarrel with the state of IsraelT”

"None a'tall.”

"Cause I have some real fine Israeli nines, if you're interested. You ain't an Arab, are you?”

"Can't you tenT" Sonny said, and Nicholas chuckled.

"These are kosher weapons, man," he said, and threw open one of the cabinet doors. From one of the shelves, he picked up a pistol that looked like a Buck Rogers ray gun. "This is your Uzi nine," he said.

"Shorter and lighter version of the Uzi sub. Take it in your hand, man, go ahead.”

"Feels clunky," Sonny said.

"By comparison with your Beretta, yeah. I got the 1951 Model Her, you want to see it. But the piece you-re Ilt)ltllll lla Your Her don't even come close.”

"I just don't like the look of it," Sonny said. "You plan to fuck the gun or shoot it?”

“How much is it, anyway?”

"I can let you have this beautiful weapon for eleven hundred dollars, what do you say?”

"I say what else have you got?”

"I even mention the name, you goan wet your pants.”

"Try me?”

"The Desert Eagle.”

"I'm still dry," Sonny said.

"You crack me up," Nicholas said, chuckling again. He opened another cabinet door, and reached in for what looked to Sonny like a Colt .45 with a longer barrel. "Ten and a half inches long," Nicholas said, handing the gun to him. "Man, this is one fuckin burner.”

Sonny turned it over and over in his hands. "Check out the balance, man." Sonny hefted the gun.

"Weighs less than four pounds," Nicholas said. "Light, but one of the biggest motherfuckin semis there is.”

Sonny gripped the gun, held it at arm's length, sighting along the barrel.

"Comes in three popular calibers," Nicholas said. "The fifty fires a cartridge half an inch in diameter. That is one fuckin bone-cruncher, man.”

Sonny went "P-kuh, p-kuh, p-kuh," like a kid with a toy pistol.

You want to, you could knock down a elephant with that piece. If that's what you plan on hunting.”

Sonny turned the gun on Nicholas, and went "P-kuh, p-kuh, p-kuh”

again.

"Leaves an entry wound the size of a lemon," Nicholas said, "exit wound looks like a cantaloupe. You can mount this fuckin piece on a tank, it'd feel right at home.”

"What does the magazine hold?”

"Seven eight, or nine rounds, depending on the caliber. Your fifty holds seven. What do you think?”

“It's okay, I guess," Sonny said.

"Okay, my ass, it's a fuckin Lexus!”

“How much you asking for it?”

"I can let it go for fourteen large.”

"I can do better retail.”

"Okay, thirteen-fifty, but that's it.”

"Eleven," Sonny said.

"Twelve-fifty. And I'll throw in a box of fifties. Twenty rounds to a box, soft point or hollow point, take your choice.”

"Twelve and the ammo.”

"I'm losing money.”

"Take it or leave it," Sonny said.

"Cause I love you," Nicholas said, and the men shook hands on a done deal.

It was already ten minutes past midnight on Monday morning, the twenty-fourth day of August.

Teddy Carella was eating like a wolf.

Sitting opposite Carella at a table in a small Italian restaurant not far from one of the criminal courts buildings where they'd spent all morning, she could not stop eating. Nor could she stop talking about the trial. Carella sat watching her moving mouth and flying fingers, amazed by how she managed to combine a feeding frenzy with a continuous narrative stream, the fork in her right hand never skipping a beat while the fingers of her left hand sloppily signed the story of their day in court this morning, no small feat. I love that judge, Teddy signed.

"Me, too," Carella said, watching her flying fingers. Judge Pierson happened to have been brought up in Diamondback, right here in the big bad city. He'd escaped the ghetto by busting his ass in a white man's world, never currying favor or demanding sympathy, never once in his entire life playing the race card, something he suspected the district attorney was doing here in his courtroom today or such was the way Teddy had read the dynamics of what had happened this morning. Pierson had dismissed the charges, telling the plaintiff to drive more carefully in the future and actually suggesting that she might live longer if she quit being so darned angry, didn't she know stress was the primary contributing factor to heart attacks7 The D.A. got on his high horse and informed Judge Pierson that he planned to appeal, but Pierson just shook his head and said, "Go on, make a federal case of this one, counselor. Because we don't have any important causes to fight just now, do weT' Meaning "we" collectively, black people, we who have suffered, we who are still suffering, go make a federal case out of this petty grievance, was what Teddy thought she'd read in the judge's words, and saw in his eyes.

"We were lucky," Carella said.

I know.

"It could just as easily have gone the other way. I might have been bringing-you cigarettes in jail today." I don't smoke.

"Neither do I," he said. "Wanna go out sometime?”

Oh, sir, I'm married, she signed, and lowered her eyes like a virgin.

He wanted to scoop her into his arms that very moment, crowded restaurant or no, shower her face with kisses, tell her she was his moon and his stars and his very essence. Instead he observed her unobserved, her eyes still lowered, dark head bent over her plate, the delicate oval of her face, the generous mouth and long dark lashes, she raised her eyes and he melted in the dark-brown laser beam of her steady gaze.

She said nothing.

She could not speak, of course, but she could have signed. Instead, she remained essentially silent, her eyes saying all there was to say.

He reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. They were both grinning like high school sweethearts, which they'd never been. He was thinking he wished he didn't have to go meet Brown. She was thinking the same thing. He looked up at the clock. She did, too.

It was almost two. He signaled for the check. Teddy went off toward the ladies' room. The air conditioner thrummed a noisy accompaniment to the flirty swing of her skirt, the easy sway of her hips. He watched her until she was out of sight.

There was the busy sound of chatter, the clatter of silverware against china, the clink of ice cubes in frosted glasses, the lilting laughter of a black woman at another table. The diners here in this "moderately priced Northern Italian" as Zagat had defined it were a random mix of ethnic types. This was a city of contrasts, black and white, yellow and brown, khaki and teak, ochre and dust. In the wintertime, the days were chillingly gray, the nights inky and bleak. Summer's colors were softer, the longer days golden, the nights purple.

He paid the check and waited for Teddy to return. He missed her whenever she was gone from him, and often became alarmed when she was gone for too long a time. He knew she could not cry for help if ever the need arose; a voice had been denied her at birth. Nor could she easily detect, as hearing people could, the warning signs of danger. In her silent world, in this city of predators, Teddy was easy prey.

When at last he saw her coming back to the table, he shoved back his chair, and went to her, and took her hand.

Has to be his girlfriend, Sonny was thinking, cause there ain't no man on earth looks at his wife the way Carella was lookin at this woman right this minute. This was the first time he'd really got a good look at the man since he'd sat opposite him in court at his father's trial.

Standin on the sidewalk across the street now, just outside the restaurant, holding both her hands in his, and leanin down to kiss her.

His jacket was open, Sonny could see the butt of what looked like a nine sticking up out of a holster. Woman walking off now, Carella watching her. Kept watching her till she was out Of sight. Then he turned and began walking toward where he'd parked the Chevy.

Sonny gave it a minute, and then started his own car.