The Big Bad City

9.

"It's called a qualified act of exclaustration," Carella said.

"Sounds dirty," Brown said.

"It's like a leave of absence from the diocese. What it amounted to, Kate wanted to check out for a year.”

“The Head Penguin told you this?”

“On the phone last night.”

"You can do that, huh? Just say, "Hey, I think I want to go home for a year, see you later?" ' "It's not that easy. There are complicated church laws regarding all this. From what Carmelita told me, qualified exclaustration isn't a penalty, it's a grace. A favor. Its purpose is to help the religious person to overcome a vocation crisis. It's granted only when there's a reasonable hope of recovery.”

"Meaning they expected to get her back.”

“Exactly. Carmelita talked it over with her cabinet, and they tried to figure out the best way they could help Kate. Who was already Mary Vincent by then, don't forget. I wonder why she chose her brother's name?”

“Are they allowed to use men's names?”

“Carmelita says it's okay long as they're saints' names. You think there are any nuns out there named Sister Peter Paul?”

"In a mausoleum colossal," Brown quoted, "the explorers discovered a fossil. They could tell by the bend, and the knob on the end, 'twas the peter of Paul the Apostle.”

"You're not a very religious person, are you?" Carella said.

"You suppose? What else did the Top Tux have to say?”

"She said, believe it or not, their conversations with Kate were not about getting her to stay. Instead, they were trying to support her, help her make the best possible decision. She told me lots of nuns leave the order for various reasons. They're fed up, they're mixed up, they're in love, they may just want to clear out their heads.”

"Why'd Kate want to leave all of a sudden?”

“She wanted to be a rock singer.”

Brown turned to look at him. The detectives were sitting side by side in proper lightweight business suits, shirts, and ties, on the 9:20 A.M. train to Philadelphia, due to arrive at the 30th Street Station at 10:42. They looked like commuting businessmen, except they didn't have newspapers. Vincent Cochran knew they were coming. Carella had called him early this morning. "A rock singer," Brown repeated. "Yes.”

"A singing nun.”

"That's how she first got interested in the church, 9”

remember? The God-given voice.

"So now she wanted to leave the order ...”

"Just for a year. To take voice lessons, get a job with a band ...”

"This must've gone over very big with Carmelita, huh?".

"Actually, she took it pretty calmly. Suggested Kate see a psychiatrist ...”

"That's taking it calmly, all right.”

"Asked her not to be hasty, explained the benefits of exclaustration ...”

"Still sounds dirty.”

"... and the drawbacks. Told her there'd be documents to sign if she decided to go ahead with this, explained that the order might not accept her back if she decided to return after her year away “

"I thought it was a leave of absence.”

"More or less. Carmelita struck me as a very unusual person, Artie.

Almost a visionary. She felt that if Kate believed so strongly in what she wanted to do, then maybe it was what God wanted for her. A calling of another sort. This new career, this new walk of life. And if that's what God wanted, then Carmelita was there to encourage Kate. Try it, she told her. See what happens. If you're truly serious about singing ...”

“Rock singing?”

"I got the feeling she'd have preferred opera. But God works in mysterious ways ...”

"So they let her go.”

"Eventually. It took about four months before she signed off. That was in San Diego. Apparently, you have to end it in your original diocese. Kate went out on her own, started managing her own money ...”

"Money again," Brown said.

"... kept in touch with the convent as requested ...”

“She ever become a rock singer?”

"The last Carmelita heard, she'd signed with a talent agent.”

"Which one?”

“She didn't know?”

“Here? L.A.?”

“She didn't know.”

"Got to be one or the other. Where else are there talent agents?”

"In any case, it didn't work out.”

"What do you mean?”

"Knocked on the convent door six months after she'd left. Said she'd had a conversion and seen the light, wanted to be taken back in.”

"Big Mama must've been tickled to death.”

"She was. This past June, Kate took her final vows?”

“And now she's dead.”

"Now she's dead," Carella said. "Here's our station.”

It was difficult to draw a family resemblance. They had seen Kate only after she'd been murdered, her face already beginning to look bloated in the summer heat. Vincent Cochran was a tall thin man with Kate's blue eyes, though hers had been open and staring when first they'd seen her. He had the same blondish hair, too, though hers was disheveled and tangled after the struggle that had left her dead on a park path.

Cochran looked as annoyed as he'd sounded on the telephone the first time they'd spoken to him, when he'd hung up on them, and the next time they'd spoken to him, only this morning, when he'd finally agreed to see them if they came to Philadelphia. The reason he'd acquiesced was the phone bills. Carella showed him those bills now.

"These came from Bell Atlantic this morning," he said. "Kate's bills for the past month?”

"So you told me on the phone," Cochran said.

He had the look and the sound of a sniveling spoiled brat. Brown felt like smacking him.

"Your sister called you three times in the past two weeks," he said.

"So?”

"You told us the last time you spoke to her was four years ago.”

"I didn't want to get mixed up in her murder.”

"Well, now you are," Brown said. "What'd you talk about?”

"The first time, we didn't talk about anything. I simply hung up.”

"Bad habit," Carella said.

"Is that a nun joke? Stand-up is my turf, Detective.”

"What'd you talk about the next time?" Carella asked.

"Money.”

Money again, Brown thought.

"What about money?" he asked.

"She said she wanted to borrow two thousand dollars.”

Blackmail, Carella thought. This has to be blackmail.

"Same story as four years ago," Cochran said. "She called me soon as she got out of the convent, said she was here in the East, could she please see me. I asked her was she finished with the fucking nuns, and she told me she was. So she came to Philly and first thing she did was ask me for a loan of four thousand dollars.

So she could get started, she said. Like a jackass, I gave it to her.

Six months later, she's back inside again, doing penance, I suppose.

Two weeks ago, she calls again. Not a word from her in four years, but here she is again. Hello, Vince, darling, may I please borrow two grand this time? Never mind she never paid back the four grand! This has got to be the ballsiest nun in the world, am I right?”

"She say why she needed the money?”

“I didn't ask. I hung up.”

“But she called back again.”

"Yeah. A few days later. Please, Vince, I desperately need the money, I'm in serious trouble, Vince, please, please, please." Cochran sighed heavily. "I told her no. I asked her why the hell she hadn't come to the funeral. Our parents got killed in a car crash, she can't find her way to Pennsylvania?”

“Maybe she didn't know, Mr. Cochran.”

"Then God should have sent down a messenger.”

“So you refused to give her the money.”

“I refused.”

"Did she say what kind of trouble she was in?”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”

"No, sir, we're trying to find out who killed her.”

"Are you saying she got killed because I wouldn't give her the two thousand?”

"We don't know why she got killed, sir. You just told us she was in serious trouble. If we can learn what kind of trouble ...”

"She sounded ... I don't know. She kept going on about past and present, the past affecting the present, it all sounded like religious bullshit. She said she would pray for me, and I told her to pray that I get the four thousand back I loaned her four years ago. Then she said..." He shook his head. "She said, "I love you, Vince," and hung up.”

They allowed him the moment, both detectives standing by silently, feeling somewhat foolishly intrusive in what was essentially a private reflection.

"Did she mention having received a letter?" Carella asked.

"No.”

"Did she mention any recent decisions she'd made?”

"No. Just said she was in serious trouble and needed two thousand dollars.”

"Didn't say for what?”

"No." He shook his head again. "What kind of trouble could a nun be in, will you please tell me? The trouble was her being a nun in the first place, that was the goddamn trouble.”

There was another awkward silence.

"I used to tell a lot of nun jokes in my act," he said. "It was my way of getting back at her for having left. Every night, another nun joke.

There has to be a thousand nun jokes out there. Even when she left the convent, I kept doing nun jokes. It was as if I knew she'd go back in one day. I kept hoping she was really out for good, I kept hoping she'd come home again soon, but I guess I knew, I guess I knew she wasn't really finished with it. The day I heard she went back in again, I thought, What's the use? I stopped telling nun jokes that very night. I haven't told a nun joke since. Because, you see, my sister was the biggest nun joke of them all.”

That afternoon, everything broke at once.

First, the rain came.

It had not rained for almost two weeks now, and the storm that broke over the city at a quarter past three seemed determined to make up for lost time. Lightning crashed and thunder bellowed. Raindrops the size of melons or so some long-time residents claimed, came pouring down from the black sky overhead, drilling the dimmed afternoon, pelting the sidewalks, splashing and plashing and plopping and sloshing until the gutters and drains overflowed like the tub in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, poor Mickey overwhelmed. The rain was relentless. It made everyone happy to be indoors, even cops.

Particularly happy on" that rainy afternoon were Carella and Brown, who got back to the squad room to find a fax from a doctor named George Lowenthal, who said he had indeed performed a surgical procedure on a woman named Katherine Cochran, in the month of April, four years ago.

Equally happy were Meyer and Kling. The address and phone number Marilyn Monroe had given the pawnbroker were big surprise non-existent.

But now after also striking out on the six M. Monroes listed in the city's phone directories, none of whom were Marilyns they came up with the brilliant idea that perhaps the woman who'd visited Manny's pawnshop was either a Munro or a Munroe, the variant spellings of Monroe. In all five directories, there were three listings for M.

Munro, and four listings for M. Munroe. There was only one listing for an M. L. Munro, in Calm's Point, over the bridge.

Meyer called the telephone company, who supplied him with the full names of their initiated subscribers. Not surprisingly, four of the M's stood for Mary. Two of them were abbreviations of Margaret, and one of them was short for Michael odd in that men usually did not list themselves under an initial. There was not a Marilyn among them. But the M. L. Munro in Calm's Point was a woman named Mary Lynne.

"Son of a bitch!" Meyer said.

This was a city of bridges.

Isola was an island the very name meant "island" in Italian linked on one flank by bridges to the rest of the city, and on the other flank to the next state. Of all the bridges spanning the city's rivers, the Calm's Point Bridge was the most beautiful. People wrote songs about the Calm's Point Bridge. People wrote about the sheer joys to be found over the Calm's Point Bridge. The sky behind the bridge at four that afternoon was a golden wash, the city clean and new after the sudden storm. They drove with the windows rolled down, breathing in sweet draughts of fresh smelling air. The cables still dripped rainwater.

The River Dix glistened below in the late afternoon sun. There were sometimes days like this in the summertime city.

The telephone company had supplied an address for Mary Lynne Munro, but they did not call ahead because she had hocked stolen property and perhaps would not be overly delighted to see them. They didn't know what to expect behind the door to apartment 4C.

The Syrian signet ring had not been stolen from the Cooper apartment where The Cookie Boy or at least someone who'd dropped chocolate chip crumbs had possibly slain a forty-eight-year-old housewife and a sixteen-year-old delivery boy. But it had been taken from an apartment where the burglar had left behind, on a bedroom pillow, a small white box of chocolate chip cookies. So if the woman who'd hocked the ring knew the man who'd stolen the ring, and if the man who'd stolen the ring was, in fact, The Cookie Boy, and if The Cookie Boy was, in fact, the person who'd killed two people in yet another apartment he'd burglarized, then there was need for caution here. Admittedly a great many ifs, but as they approached the door, they drew their pistols nonetheless, prepared for the worst.

The worst turned out to be the woman Manny Schwartz had described yesterday, five feet four inches tall, weighing around a hundred and ten, with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, no shoes. The detectives were still holding regulation nines in their hands when she opened the door. They had announced themselves as policemen, but she wasn't expecting drawn guns. She almost slammed, the door on them.

"That's okay, lady," Meyer said, and glanced swiftly into the room. The gun was still in his hand. He would not put it away until he made sure she was alone. "Anybody here with you?" he asked.

"No," she said. "What the hell's the gun for?" 'Okay to come in?”

Kling asked. "Let me see some ID," she said.

Both men were scanning the room. Eyes darting. Searching.

Listening. They saw nothing, heard nothing. Meyer was holding up his shield and his ID card. Mary Lynne was studying it. Both detectives were still standing in the hallway outside the door. This was a garden apartment in Calm's Point, a nice quiet neighborhood. Nobody expected cops in the hallway with guns in their fists.

"Who are you looking for?" she asked.

"Okay to come in?" Kling said again.

"No. Not till you tell me what this is about.”

"You hocked a stolen ring, lady," Meyer said. "We want to know where you got it.”

"Oh," she said. "That. Come on in, I'm alone." She stepped aside to let them into the apartment. They fanned out, guns up and ready, no search warrant here, they had to be careful. To the woman this must have looked absurd, two grown men playing cops and robbers as if they were on television. They didn't care how: foolish they looked. They cared only about taking two in the head.

"Okay to look around?" Meyer asked. "Just don't touch anything," she said. "You Mary Lynne Munro?”

“I am.”

Roaming the apartment ... "Okay to open this door?" making sure they were, in fact, alone, and only then holstering their weapons and turning their attention to the woman who'd been in Schwartz's pawnshop.

"That ring was a gift," she said at once. "If that's what's concerning you.”

"Who gave it to you?”

'"A man I met. Why? Is he some kind of thief?.”

"He is some kind of thief, lady," Meyer said.

"What's his name.”

“Arthur Dewey.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don't know.”

"He gave you a ring worth twelve thousand dollars and you don't ...”

"Twelve? That son of a bitch Jew only gave me three!" ' This did not endear her to Meyer. When he was a boy growing up, the Irish kids who chased him through the streets used to chant "Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire." Kling didn't much like it, either. "My partner's Jewish," he said. "So?" she said.

"So watch your mouth," he said.

"Oh, you mean that son of a bitch in the pawnshop wasn't Jewish?”

"Lady, don't press your luck," Meyer said. "How come you don't know where this guy lives?”

"Cause I met him in a bar, that's how come.”

“When?”

"Couple of weeks ago.”

"Met him in a bar and he gave you a twelve thousand-dollar ring?”

“Not in the bar.”

“Where then?”

“Right here?”

"Gave you the ring you hocked the other day?”

“I had no use for it. It was too big for my finger.”

“How come he gave it to you?”

"I guess he was stunned by my beauty," she said. "Oh, was that it?”

"He offered it, I took it.”

"What do you do for a living, Miss Munro?”

“I'm presently unemployed.”

"When you're not unemployed, what do you do?”

“Various jobs.”

"What was your last job?”

“It was a while ago.”

“When?”

"Two years or so.”

"Doing what?”

"I worked at a Burger King.”

“And since then?”

“What is this?”

"We're trying to figure out why a total stranger handed you a ring worth twelve thousand dollars.”

"I guess he didn't know it was worth that much. I'll tell you the truth, I was surprised when the Jew offered me three. I thought it was worth tops five hundred, like he said.”

"Like who said?”

"Arthur. If that was his name.”

"What makes you think it wasn't?”

"I don't know what it was. I don't meet many men who give me their real names.”

"You a working girl, Miss Munro?”

"Gee, you blew my cover.”

"And he offered you the ring in payment for your services, is that it?”

"Supersleuth," she said.

"Ever been arrested?”

"Never. You arresting me now?”

"Did Arthur if that was his name mention the ring was stolen?”

"Would you?”

"I'm asking what he did.”

"No, he did not.”

"Mention how he came into possession of it?”

“Really now.”

“Did he?”

"Of course not.”

"When you hocked the ring ...”

"Yeah, I know all about it.”

"You told Mr. Schwartz it was an heirloom you had to sell because you'd lost your wallet with all your money and credit cards in it. Is that right?”

“Lost it in a taxi, I told him.”

“Why?”

"What was I supposed to tell him? Some guy gave me the ring in exchange for a superior blow job?”

“Is that why he gave it to you?”

"I don't know about superior, though they say I'm pretty good. I told him the price was two hundred. He said he'd give me a gold ring worth five hundred. I looked at it, I thought maybe it was worth three, four. So we traded.”

"Ever think it might be stolen?”

"Why would I?”

"Guy carrying an antique ring in his pocket ...”

"It wasn't in his pocket. It was on his finger.”

“Took it off his finger, did he?”

“Before we started.”

“Then what?”

"Tipped his hat and left.”

"He was wearing a hat?”

"That's just an expression.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Who remembers?”

"Notice any scars, tattoos, birthmarks ... ?”

“What is this? Clinton's cock?”

“Any identifying ... ?”

"There was a finger missing on his right hand. I noticed it when he took the ring off.”

"Which finger?”

"The pinkie. It was almost disgusting.”

"Thanks, Miss Munro.”

There was a sudden silence. Their brief encounter was finished, there was nothing further to say. It was almost as if she'd entertained a pair of tricks and was now showing them the door.

"Nice after the rain, ain't it?" she said almost wistfully.

Dr. George Lowenthal's waiting room was full of women when Carella and Brown got there at four that afternoon. The office was on Stoner, just off Jefferson Avenue, a high-rent, low-crime neighborhood in the center of the city. The women glanced up curiously; two men were entering a normally females-only preserve. A woman in a green hat kept staring at them. The others went back to reading Vogue and Cosmopolitan. The detectives told a receptionist who they were. The woman in the green hat kept staring. She was still staring ten minutes later, when they were ushered into Lowenthal's private office.

Lowenthal was a man in his early fifties, Carella supposed, with graying hair and pale eyes. He looked tired. As if he had just come out of a difficult surgery, which he hadn't. The blinds behind him were drawn against the afternoon sun low on the horizon. Kate Cochran's file was open on his desk.

"I remember her well," he said. "There was a waif like air about her, a sort of otherworldly naivete. I have to tell you the truth, I don't often try to talk a woman out of breast augmentation. It's her body, after all. I assume if she's uncomfortable with what she has and wants to change it, that's her business, not mine. My job is to serve a patient's needs. But Kate ..." He tried to find words. "Let me say that her body seemed perfectly suited to her gentle, childlike manner.

According to my records, she was twenty-three years. old, but she seemed fourteen.”

"Did she tell you she was a nun?”

"A nun? No.”

"Did she mention the name Mary Vincent?" Brown asked.

"No.”

"Sister Mary Vincent?”

"No?”

"That's who she was," Brown said. "On leave when she came to see you?”

"I knew nothing of this?”

"We're trying to piece together past and present, Dr. Lowenthal. If there's anything you can tell us that might help ...”

"Like what?”

"Well ... the ME's Office said this wasn't reconstructive surgery. Is that correct?”

"Yes. It was strictly augmentative. After a mastectomy, we insert the shell behind tiae chest muscle and in front of the ribs. But Kate's implants were sub glandular That means the shell was placed behind the breast tissue and in front of the pectoral muscle. We make a small incision, usually in the crease under each breast. With saline implants ... these were saline, the silicone gel was outlawed in 1992.”

“So we understand.”

"With saline implants, we insert the envelope while it's still empty and fill it when it's in place. This enables us to adjust the size.

Kate didn't want outrageous breasts ... some women do, you know. You have to understand that breast augmentation is the third most common type of cosmetic surgery in the United States. Kate was ...”

"What are the other two?" Brown asked.

"Liposuction's number one. Eyelid surgery comes next.”

"Things. women do," Brown said, and shook his head.

"For us, usually," Lowenthal said and smiled somewhat ruefully.

"Nationwide, we do some fifty thousand saline implants a year. Before the silicone ban, and the attendant cancer scare, we were doing twice as many, maybe three times as many silicone gel operations. There's a lot of pressure on American women. They see all the supermodels in the magazines and on television, they think this is what men want. Maybe we do. I don't question it too closely. My job is to serve a patient's needs.”

Second time he's said that, Capella thought.

"Kate was doing this for professional reasons, of course. he wanted breasts that looked ... well ... rather more like a woman's than a child's.”

"How much did this cost her?" Brown asked.

"I don't remember what the manufacturers were charging back then. This was four years ago. I believe Mentor and McGhan were the only ones left in the market after the ax fell. It probably was something. like three, four hundred dollars for a set of implants.

My fee was the same back then as it is now.”

“And what's that, Doctor?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

Which is why she needed four grand from her brother, Brown thought.

"I must say she was rather pleased with the results," Lowenthal said.

"Kept touching them. Well, most women do that. Smile and touch. It's remarkable." He hesitated a moment, a frown furrowing his brow.

"There's something I don't understand.”

"Yes?”

"Did she go back to the church?”

"Yes. After a very short time.”

"That explains it then. She wanted to be a singer, you know. That's why she had the operation done. So she'd look good on a concert stage.

Already had a talent agent. In fact, it was Herbie who sent her to me.”

"Herbie who?" Carella said at once.

Herbie Kaplan's office was on the twelfth floor of the Krimm Building at 734 Stemmler Avenue in the Midtown North Precinct. The elevator up was packed with songwriters, musicians, and agents at ten o'clock that Friday morning, all of them speaking an arcane language neither Carella nor Brown understood. Kaplan's office was at the far end of a hallway lined with doors that had wooden lower panels and frosted glass upper panels. All up and down the hallway, there was the sound of pianos playing and voices singing. The cacophony reminded Carella of rehearsals for the sixth-grade production of Annie, in which his darling little daughter had played the evil Miss Hannigan, and his handsome son, Mark, had played Daddy Warbucks. Closed classroom doors all along the elementary-school corridor, and behind them, kids bleating "Tomorrow" and "A Hard Knock Life" to the solid accompaniment of the music department's thumping. The lettering on Kaplan's door read HK TALErT. Carella knocked and twisted the doorknob. Brown followed him in.

They were standing in a small entry lined with three sheets of Broadway shows, presumably those utilizing the talents of HK Talent. There were windows to the left, open to Stemmler Avenue and the noisy traffic below. Facing the entrance door, there was a desk with it blonde behind it, a phone to her ear. She glanced up as the detectives entered, and then went back to her conversation. They stood waiting. At last, she hung up and said, "Hi, can I help you?”

"Detectives Carella and Brown," Carella said. "We have an appointment with Mr. Kaplan.”

"Oh, sure, just a sec," she said, and picked up the receiver again. She pressed a button in the base of the phone, listened, said, "The cops are here," listened again, and then hung up. "Go right on in," she said, and indicated with a toss of her head a door to the right of her desk. The detectives went to it. Carella opened it. They both went in.

Herbie Kaplan appeared to be about forty-five or so, a short, not unpleasant-looking man with reddish hair and eyebrows, sitting behind his desk in shirtsleeves and a vest. He rose as the detectives came in, said, "Hey, how you doing?" and gestured to a pair of chairs in front of his desk. The detectives sat. There were windows behind Kaplan, facing the side street. On the wall to their left, there was an upright piano with framed pieces of sheet music above it, again presumably the efforts of HK clients.

"I should've called the minute I saw her picture in the paper, I know,”

Kaplan said. "But I figured a nun ? How could Katie Cochran end up being a nun? But you got to me, anyway, huh? A week later as it turns out, but you got to me. So it's okay in the long run. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee? Something to drink?”

"Thanks, no," Carella said.

"Mr. Kaplan," Brown said, "we understand you once referred Kate to a p|astlc surgeon named Geoi Lowenthal, is that correct?”

"Yeah, I send a lot of my clients to him. Tits and ass, correct? That's the name of the song and the name of the game.”

"Tell us how you first met her.”

"She walked in off the street. This was, what, four years ago? Cute as could be, she looked thirteen, fourteen, she was twenty-three. Voice like an angel. I had this audition pianist at the time, a guy named Frank DiLuca, he since passed away. She sang two Janis Joplin tunes, are you familiar with "Cry Baby'? The and Bobby McGee'?”

es, Brown said.

"No," Carella said.

Brown looked at him.

"Knocked down the ceiling," Kaplan said. "I couldn't believe it. This big voice coming out of a kid looks like a war refugee. She told me she wanted to be a rock singer, wanted to know could I hook her up with a good band. She had in mind, like, REM." or Stone Temple Pilots, or Alice in Chains, fat chance. I told her first put on some weight and next buy herself a pair of tits. She asked me how much that would cost, I told her three, four grand, this doctor I knew. Then she asked me ... can you believe it? ... she asked me could I advance her the money against the time she was a big rock star. I told her take a walk, kid. She comes back two weeks later with four grand in the kip, wants to know the doctor's name. I sent her to Georgie, him and I went to high school together in Majesta. He does a very nice job. Next time she walks in here, she's wearing a tight cotton sweater, no bra, I tell her now you're talking We changed her name and I started selling her.”

"Changed it to what?”

"Katie Cochran. Which was better than either Katherine or Kate.”

"Did you find a band for her?”

"You have to understand it's rare that a rock group comes along actually needing a singer. Very rare. These kids 'start as a complete entity, they got everybody in place from go, including the lead singer.

They write their own music, they make a demo CD, they try to get it played on local stations, they're hoping for a bigtime recording contract. Every now and then, though, somebody's replaced, like Pete Best was by Ringo Starr. But that's rare. Very rare. So it was lucky I represented this group where the girl singer had left to get married cause her boyfriend made her pregnant. A group called The Racketeers.”

"The Racketeers?" Brown asked.

He'd never heard of them. Knew every rock group ever cut a record, but not anybody called The Racketeers. "They later became The Five Chord," Kaplan said. Brown hadn't heard of them, either.

"I get kids in here," Kaplan said, "they call themselves Green Vomit, they think that's cool, Green Vomit. Would you like to dance to the music of Green Vomit? The rappers are an altogether different story, they think it's cute to call themselves 4Q2. I sometimes wish I was still in the rag trade, I got to tell you.”

"So what happened?" Carella asked., "What do you mean'! IAzci ratle ocmttJ o,."..,. “

big rock star? You know she didn't. She ended up a dead nun, didn't she?”

"I meant with The Five Chord.”

"Oh. It was a fortuitous happenstance, as they say. Katie. was looking for a band, they were looking for a lead singer. Boys, meet Katie Cochran. Katie, here's The Racketeers. Soon to be known as The Five Chord, catchy, no?”

Brown didn't think it was catchy at all.

"So you're saying she joined the band," he said. "The Five chord is what that means. Five people.”

“Then what?”

"I sent them to a booking agent.”

"And?”

"He booked them.”

"Who was he?”

"The booking agent? Guy named Hynie Rogers, no relation to Richard Rodgers. Or even to Buck Rogers. He's dead now.”

"Do you remember the names of anybody in the band?”

"Sure, all of them. Addresses and phone numbers, forget it. For that, you have to go to the musician's union.”

The woman who answered the phone at the number the musicians' union had given them identified herself as Alan's mother, Adelaide Figgs, and when Carella asked if he could speak to her son, please, there was a long silence on the line.

"Alan is dead," the woman said.

ae words were chilling, not only because the woman's voice was so sepulchral, but also because they conjured up the instant horror of someone methodically knocking off members of The Five Chord. What Carella definitely did not need at the moment was a serial killer. Let all those other detectives out there occupy themselves with serial killers. He himself could count on the fingers of one hand all the serial killers he'd encountered in all his years on the force.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.

"He died last month," the woman said.

This enforced the notion of someone out there stalking The Five Chord.

Please don't tell me he was strangled, Carella thought. He waited. The silence on the line lengthened. For a moment, he thought he'd been cut off.

"Ma'am?" he said.

"Yes?”

"How did he die, ma'am?”

“AIDS," she said. Gay, he thought.

"He was gay," she said, echoing his surmise, the short sentence laden with such bitterness that he dared not pursue it further.

"Sorry to have bothered you;' he said.

"No bother," she said, and hung up.

Sal Roselli was watering his lawn when they found him.

A short, wiry man with curly black hair and brown eyes, barefoot and in shorts and a tank-top shirt, he stood happily spraying his grass.i could turn on the sprinkler," he said, "but I enjoy handling the hose. I'm sure that's Freudian.”

The lawn was at the back of a development house on Sand's Spit, near the airport. It had taken Carella and Brown half an hour to drive here in light traffic, and it was now a little before noon. The heat was beginning to build again. The water splashing from the hose made them think of yesterday's rain, made them long for rain again today.

"You got my number from the musicians' union, huh?" he said.

"Yes.”

"They probably thought it was for a job.”

“No, they knew we were policemen.”

“So Katie's dead, huh?”

“You didn't know that?”

"No. First I heard was when you told me on the phone. Something, huh? Do the others know?”

"We haven't talked to the others yet," Brown said.

"Last time I saw them was at Alan's funeral. He died last month, did you know that?”

"Yes?”

"AIDS," Roselli said. "Well, I'm not surprised. I always thought he had tendencies. Anyway, we were all there. Not Katie, of course, God only knew where she was. Now she turns up here. Dead. A nun. It's difficult to believe.”

"When's the last time you saw her?”

"When the band broke up. Four years ago? Right after we finished the tour. She told us she was quitting. We had a little farewell dinner, and off she went.”

Did you know she was returning to the order?”

“Didn't know she'd ever been in an order. I figured she might be going back to Philadelphia. I knew she had a brother there, inherited a lot of money when their parents died in a car crash.”

"So that's the last time you saw her.”

"Yes. Around four years ago.”

"And the other guys in the band last month sometime.”

"Yes. It was really sad. Made me realize how much I miss The Five Chord. What the band was well, first off, we had no leader. Like The Beatles, you know? We all had equal billing. There was Davey on drums, and me on keyboard, and then Alan on lead guitar, and Tote on bass. Davey Fames, Alan Figgs, and Tote Hollister. Everybody but me sounded Dickensian. Tote was short for Totobi, though, which didn't exactly come from Great Expectations, either. Tote's black, I guess you already know that ...”

"No.”

"He is. Which caused a bit of difficulty in the South, but that's another story. His real name is Thomas. Thomas Hollister. The Totobi was his stab at finding roots. I'll tell you the truth, the band was just a run-of-the-mill, all-American garage band until Katie came along.”

You think of The Supremes, you-think of Diana Ross. You ihink of The Mamas and the Papas, you think of Mama Cass. You think of Big Brother and the Holding Company, you think of Janis Joplin. Mention The Five Chord, and after the wild applause and uncontrollable hysteria die down, you think of Katie Cochran. Well, you know the trite scene, don't yot? Singer starts her song; everybody stops sweeping. Mouths fall open, jaws hang agape, even the gods are awe stricken Struck? Whatever.

That's what happened the first time she walked into the Oriental, where we were rehearsing. You know the Oriental rehearsal studios off Langley? She looked sixteen, she could've been anybody's kid sister.

Herbie Kaplan had sent her down, he was representing us at the time, we were still calling ourselves The Racketeers. She did "Satisfaction”

for us, giving the old Stones tune a spin old Mick never dreamt of in his universe, and promptly knocked our socks off. Here's a kid who looks like she needs permission from her mother to attend the senior prom, and she's got a wisdom and maturity in her voice and in her eyes that signal Sign me, Sign me, Sign me though at the time The Racketeers didn't have contracts to sign, not even on napkins.

We got The Racketeers from Davey's father, by the way. He came in one day while we were rehearsing in Davey's living room, and remarked in his Deliberately Dense Parent mode, "This racket you're making ... is it supposed to be music?" Hence The Racketeers, imminently to become The Five Chord the moment Davey's father came up with yet another name for the band. This was after Katie had joined us, there were now five of us in the band. This time Davey's father was in his Learned Elder mode, explaining that rock bands play mostly in the key of G. and the five chord in the key of G is the D triad. That's D, F sharp, and A, if you'd like to try it on your accordion. So what Mr. Fames that's Davey's father's name, Anthony Fames, he sounds Dickensian, too, I just realized. Looked sort of Dickensian, for that matter. Anyway, what he was trying to do was convey the fact that this was a rock band, and there were five of us in it. The five chord, dig? And the five chord in the key of G. which is the key favored ...

"Forget it," Roselli said. "I guess you had to be there." He turned the nozzle of the hose, began spraying another section of lawn. "A nun, huh?" he said. "Who'd have expected it?”

"The Sisters of Christ's Mercy," Carella said.

"I mean ... it wasn't that she was wild or anything, quite the contrary. But a nun? I mean, come on. Katie?”

She may have looked like your kid sister, but this was the girl who wrote songs you could fry eggs on. Five-seven, weighed about a hundred and ten pounds, skinny as a wren, but nice breasts. She was wearing her hair in a ponytail that first time she sang for us, you never expected this sexy voice to come out of her mouth. Turned out she knew all the R&B repertoire, could do all the later rock stuff, too well, everything, for that matter. Pop, Broadway show tunes, you name it, Katie could sing it. I guess we all four of us fell in love with her that very first day. Summertime was just around the corner, this must've been April when we auditioned her.

I remember the booking agent Herbie sent us to wanted to know if the name of the band was supposed to be plural. Hymie Rogers, his name was, a short, fat guy with a cigar he kept chomping. "Is it The Five Chords ?" he wanted to know.

little pissed off that the guy hadn't understood tlae reference, a booking agent for rock bands, for Christ's sake! At the time, I felt this was a mistake on Davey's part, getting so agitated, I mean. I mean, we weren't Pink Floyd, we were a garage band with a girl singer whose voice could shatter concrete. Which, of course, the agent recognized the minute Katie opened her mouth.

Make a long story short, he booked us for "a summer tour of Dixie," as he called it, which meant we'd be following a club circuit that ran through Virginia and the Carolinas, and then swung through Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia before heading into Florida, where we'd play Tampa and St. Pete, and a town near the Everglades, and then back north again to end the tour in Calusa. Every rock band's dream tour, right? This was three years ago.

Well, let me see, I was twenty-five at the time. So that makes it ...

well, wait a minute, it was four years ago. That means I was only twenty-four. Jesus. We all had beards back then, all the guys on the band. Davey was exactly my age, give or take a few weeks. Tote was a little older. You ought to talk to him. I mean, he'd probably give you a different slant. He knew Katie better than any of us.

Anyway, we left the city here on the last day of June, for the beginning of the tour, a Fourth-of July-weekend gig in Richmond, Virginia. The way we traveled was in a sports utility wagon, a used Jeep actually that Davey had picked up cheap from a bass player leaving for a gig in London. There was plenty of room for the five of us plus the instruments, speakers, amps, all o It, lnslae the car.

Every night, we carried everything into whichever cheap motel we were staying at. Some of these towns we played, you wouldn't leave a stick of chewing gum in the car, no less instruments and equipment worth thousands of dollars.

A favorite joke of ours was "Are you sure the Beatles got started this way?" That was whenever anything went wrong. Like when we pulled up in front of a club called The Roadside Palace or some such and it turned out to be this ramshackle dive on the edge of a cliff. Or when we plugged in one night this was in Georgia some place and blew out every light in the club. The owner took a fit till we advised him to put candles on all the tables and find us some acoustic guitars and an upright piano, which for Georgia worked remarkably well, Katie singing all kinds of bluesy shit and all of us playing sort of hushed and reverential behind her, a kind of in time evening, if you dig. Then there was the time ... On and on, Roselli went, reminiscing about that summer tour four years ago, painting it in glowing terms while the sultry afternoon waned and the detectives worried about hitting heavy traffic going back into the city. Finally, he turned off the recitation and the hose.

"I hope I've been helpful," he said.

He hadn't.

He was afraid he might never do another burglary.

Burglary was his entire life. He truly enjoyed what he did, but now he was fearful that he might never frightened that day, he admitted it to himself now. And because he'd been so frightened, he hadn't done another job since. Nor had he baked any cookies. The one enjoyment was linked to the other, and all because of a clumsy accident he'd been deprived of both pleasures. All he could think was that the police would knock on his door at any moment.

They had to know he was the one who'd been in that apartment. He didn't know how they'd found out, but he knew they knew. Otherwise, why had all the television stories stopped? How come there was nothing more about The Cookie Boy? No cute little stories about the burglar who left behind chocolate chip cookies. He was sure the police were behind that. They'd been told to throw a blanket over any news release about him. Probably some trick to keep him complacent while they closed in. Any minute now, they'd knock on his door. Probably were questioning everyone in the neighborhood right this minute. Know anybody who bakes cookies? Tightening the net. See anybody who looks like this man? Did they have a composite drawing of him? Had someone seen him going in or coming out of the building that day? He tried to think of any mistakes he'd made in the apartment. Had he wiped everything clean? He couldn't remember. He usually did that because he knew his fingerprints were on file from his days in the army, but now he couldn't remember. That's because he'd been so frightened. Such a stupid encounter. He sometimes thought he should go to the police, tell them he hadn't killed anybody in that apartment, it was the woman wroo gone al the goddamn shooting, it was the woman who had the weapon! Had he somehow left fingerprints on it? No, his hands were over hers, she was the one with her finger on the trigger, she was the one who'd first, shot the boy and then shot herself. Maybe he should go to the police. Sure, how are you, they'd say, nice you stopped by.

That's two counts of felony murder, so long, fella, see you in a hundred years.

If only ... Well, look, there was no sense second-guessing this. What happened happened. He should have been more careful, he should have listened more intently, he shouldn't have taken a step into that goddamn apartment until he was dead certain nobody was in it. Had he left something behind? He didn't think so.

But had they been able to trace him somehow? Were they this very instant climbing the steps to the fourth floor here, ready to knock on the door, you are under arrest, you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to ... The ring.

The one he'd given that hooker. Could they link him to that? Well, even if they did ... Marilyn Monroe, was that what she'd told him her name was? Jesus, why hadn't he gotten her real name? Jesus, how could he have been so stupid? But even if they did ... Wait a minute here.

Suppose somehow they got to the hooker, and suppose, somehow, she told them how she'd got the ring, and suppose, somehow, they knew this was a ring he'd stolen from an apartment three weeks before that dumb fucking woman shot herself and that stupid little boy, suppose all that. Okay, how could they possibly link the murders to the ring? They couldn't.

But suppose they could? Suppose somehow ... He'd given the woman a phony name, same as she'd given him, he couldn't even remember what name he'd given her. So there was no danger there. But suppose she'd identified him? Look, it was impossible that they'd been able to track down a cheap whore he'd met in a shitty little bar. But suppose they had, and suppose they'd shown her the ring, and suppose she told them yes this man gave me the ring, this man whatever his name was, whatever name I gave her, traded the ring for my services. And this man was missing the pinkie on his right hand, suppose she'd mentioned that? Suppose she'd been as revulsed by that missing pinkie as most women seemed to be? Suppose she'd remembered that one thing about him, never mind anything else, never mind people telling him he looked a little like a young John Travolta, just remember the fucking missing pinkie! Well, so what? He didn't have a criminal record, so no one was going to be able to tap into a computer and call up all the burglars in the world who had a pinkie missing on the right hand. So fuck you, lady, you remembered the missing pinkie, so who cares? The only thing they could possibly trace were his fingerprints if he'd left any in that apartment. Go back to his army records, hello, fella, come right along.

He wished he could remember whether or not he'd wiped that apartment clean before he'd left it. He must have. He always did.

The call from the Mobile Crime Lab came at six-thirty that night, just as Meyer was taking his nine-millimeter service pistol from his locked desk drawer in preparation for heading home. The technician calling was a man named Harold Fowles who, together with his partner had dusted and vacuumed and otherwise scrutinized the Cooper apartment for hairs, latent prints, semen stains, and the like.

"I'm the one found the cookie crumbles, remember?" he asked.

"Yes, I do," Meyer said. "How are you, Harold?”

“Fine, thanks. Well, a little hot, but otherwise fine.”

“So what've you got for me?”

"Well, we went over the latents, and all of them match prints of either the woman or her husband or the kid was banging her, and other members of the family, too, we had a lot of cooperation here, and the maid, and the super who was in there a few weeks ago to unclog the toilet. All people who had legitimate access to the apartment. No wild prints is what I'm saying.

Nothing that didn't belong there, so to speak. Okay." Meyer waited.

"We know the guy went in through the dining room window just off the fire escape," Fowles said. "There were wipe marks outside and inside the window, and imprints of his feet in me carpet same-c t, the floor and then walked across the room. He left the window open behind him. We also know he went out of the apartment by way of the front door. It was unlocked and there were wipe marks on both the inside and the outside knobs.

Okay. Something occurred to me." Meyer waited.

"If he went to all the trouble of wiping everything clean, then he wasn't wearing gloves. Maybe he was afraid someone would spot him with gloves on in this heat, who knows, I'm not a criminal. But if he wasn't wearing gloves, and if he didn't go out the same way he went in, which I'm positive is the case, then there was one thing he couldn't have wiped.”

“What was that?" Meyer asked. "The ladder.”

“What ladder?”

"The fire-escape ladder. The one he had to jump up for. I went back there this afternoon. I recovered some nice latents from the bottom rung where he pulled the ladder down and also some good ones from the rungs above it, which he left when he was climbing to the first-floor landing. I'm running them through the system now. If the guy's got any kind of record, criminal or military, maybe we've got something. It may take a while, but ...”

"I'll give you my home number," Meyer said.

Sonny finally caught up with him at ten that night in a private club called Siesta, all the way uptown in a section of the city called Hightown. Here in the shadow of the bridge connecting Isola to the. state next door, you had more damn drug dealers than you could find in the entire nation, all of them Dominican, all of them linked to the Colombian cartel. This was dangerous tuff, man. Worth your life to look cockeyed at a man standing on a street corner here, lest he believe you were invading his tuff. Sonny couldn't understand what Juju was doing all the way up here where Spanish was the language and a person's sensitivity could easily turn into a challenge. He was glad he had the Eagle tucked in his belt. He drove around the block three times, looking for a space, and finally parked in front of the club in a zone clearly marked to "ARYaNG. Fuck it, he thought, and went inside.

The owner of the club was a man named Rigoberto Mendez. Sonny introduced himself and told him he was looking for his good friend Juju Judell. A CD player was oozing dreamy close dancin music when Sonny stepped into the place. The sweet scent of marijuana floated on air thick with smoke, and skinny girls in clingy, tight summer dresses swayed in the arms of dudes black and tan. Juju sat at a table in the corner chatting up a tall black girl with bleached blonde frizzy hair and earrings long as fingers hanging from her ears, low-cut dress about to pop with righteous fruit within. He had an eye for the women, Juju did.

"Well now looka here," he said as Sonny approached, and rose from the table, extending his hand, shaking it warmly, "Sonny Cole, meet Tirana ... I didn't catch the last name, honey.”

"Hobbs," she said, a little disdainfully, it seemed to Sonny, as if she was looking down her nose at him, for what reason he couldn't fathom.

"Tirana Hobbs," he said, "how you doing, honey?" and extended his hand, which she didn't take, so he figured he'd be taking her to bed tonight, Juju notwithstanding. He pulled up a chair. Tirana was sitting across from him at the small round table, Juju on his right.

All their knees almost touched under the table.

"Choo drinkin, man?" Juju asked, and signaled to a man wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with an NFL logo on it. "They got ever' thing juss name it.”

"What's that you're drinkin there, Tirana?" Sonny asked, trying to be friendly, trying to let her know she was gonna end up in bed with him, so let's cut the thaw, honey, no sense playin games here.

"Gee," she said, "what can it possibly be comes in a brown bottle and pours out yellow with foam on it?" To demonstrate, she poured more beer into her mug. Sonny grinned.

I'll have a beer, too," he said. He wanted to keep a clear head for what was coming later. Started drinking anything harder, he'd liable to fuck up. "So how you been, Juje?" he said.

"What's that stand for, anyway?" Tirana asked. She had yellow eyes, Sonny noticed, sort of glassy now, as if she'd been smoking before he got here. Maybe that's why she sounded so harsh. Grass sometimes did that to people. They either got mellow or they got mean. He didn't mind a mean girl, long as she understood who had the cock.

"Juju stands for Julian Judell," he said.

"That's a nice name," Tirana said. "Why'd you shorten it to Juju?”

"Didn't do it myself, honey. Kids started sayin it and it stuck.”

"Tirana's a nice name, too," Sonny lied. He thought it was one of those bullshit names lots of black mothers picked outta some African baby-name book.

"Where'd you get such a pretty name?”

“It was supposed to be Tawana.”

"Oh? Yeah? Tawana?”

"My mother didn't know how to spell it. She thought what they were sayin on the TV was Tirana. You remember Tawana Brawley, the one got raped by all those white guys smeared her with shit later?”

“She was full of shit, anyway," Juju said. "I don't think so," Tirana said.

"I think she was tellin the truth," Sonny said.

Tirana smiled.

"How'd you get the name Sonny?" she asked. "I don't know how. My real name is Samson.”

“Ooooh," Tirana said. "Strong.”

"Still got all my hair, too," Sonny said, and smiled charmingly.

"I'll bet," Tirana said.

If Juju was noticing any of this, he wasn't showing it. In any case, Sonny wasn't about to let pussy intrude on what was the real order of business here tonight. He suddenly wondered if Tirana bleached herself down there, too, be interesting to find out. But Juju came first. What had to be done with Juju came first. Then they'd tend to other matters. If there was to be any other matters. Juju said, "So how come you knew where I was at?”

“I asked around," Sonny said.

"Why was it you wanted to see me?”

Sonny tried to calculate was he suspicious. He decided no.

"Couple things we should talk about," he said, "you have a minute.”

"Want to take a walk?" Juju asked.

"You mind, Tirana? Just take a few minutes.”

“Time and tide wait for no man," Tirana said.

"Be the tide's loss," Sonny said, and shoved back his chair.

Tirana looked up at him. Same mean smile on her face like when he first came over to the table. He knew for sure now she'd be waiting for him when he got done with Juju.

Outside, the night was cool.

They strolled through streets full of people jabbering in Spanish. He wondered all at once if Juju was of Spanish descent. Julian could be Spanish, he guessed. But Judell? He doubted it. Still, what the hell was he doing all the way up here in Hightown? Lots of laughter, too, on the summer air. People hanging out of windows, looking down into the street. People drinking. Some of them dancing. Like some kind of carnival atmosphere, you'd think it was still early in the evening, number of people in the street.

"So what is it?" Jugu asked.

"I been having trouble finding a piece," Sonny said. Juju looked surprised.

"You can get any kind of weapon you wish, this city," he said. "Where you been looking?”

"Well, I had to be discreet.”

"Naturally. But where you been looking?”

"I been asking around.”

"Who you been asking?”

"Point is, Juju, I was wondering you could help me.”

"You want to link me to a gun you goan use in a murder?”

"Who's talking about any murder?”

"Oh, sc use me, I thought you were planning to do some police officer.”

Juju had been drinking. Otherwise he wouldn't be talking so loose now.

People in the street here were all speaking Spanish, but they understood English fine, and Juju's voice was too loud. Mention the words "police officer" in this neighborhood, ears went up.

"I don't know where you got that idea," Sonny said. "Maybe from me,”

Juju said, and burst out laughing. Sonny laughed with him, faking it along. They were walking north toward the bridge. The crowd was beginning to thin, except for teenyboppers ambling down toward the water for their hand jobs. Behind him, Sonny could hear the laughter trailing, the crowd noises fading. It was a cool, clear, beautiful night. "Sure, I'll help you find a piece," Juju said. "That's kind of you, Juju.”

"What I'll do, I'll make the initial inquiry, set you up. Then you go do the deal yourself. That way, I'm out of it.”

"Sounds good to me.”

A pair of thirteen-year-olds were standing close together on the rocks down by the water, the girl's blouse open, the boy's fly open, too They saw two big black guys approaching, they zipped up and buttoned up mighty fast, got the hell out of there in a hurry. The men sat on the rocks the kids had vacated. Juju offered Sonny a joint. Sonny shook his head no. Had to stay clear. Had to be cool. Juju lit up.

The cloying smell of grass wafted out over the water.

"I've been thinkin what you advised me that night in jail," Sonny said.

He was scoping the area now, making sure there wasn't anybody else lingering. Two more teenagers were climbing down the bank now. He didn't have to wave them off. They saw Sonny and Juju sitting there on the rocks, they made an abrupt about-face, moved right on out again.

Black power, Sonny thought, and smiled.

"What's funny?" Juju said, and sucked on the joint. The tip glowed hot in the dark.

"What you said. In jail that night.”

"What'd I say?”

"You said to do it clean, man.”

“Thass right. Why is that funny?”

"Clean piece ...”

"We'll get one for you, don't worry.”

"... no partners. In, out, been nice to know you.”

"That was good advice, man," Juju said, and took another hit off the joint.

"But what I realized just recently," Sonny said, "is I already got a partner.”

Juju turned to look at him.

"You," Sonny said. "You the partner. You the only one knows what I'm goan do, man.”

Juju was all at once looking into the barrel of a Desert Eagle.

"Thought you couldn't find a piece," he said dryly. "I found one,”

Sonny said.

"Ain't no need to do this, man," Juju said. "I'm the one advised you.”

"That's right.”

"So come on, put away ...”

"I'm just takin your advice," Sonny said, and fired two shots into his face.

In this neighborhood, the sound of gunfire was as common as the sound of salsa. Four teenagers, laughing as they came down the bank, heard the shots and immediately turned back. Sonny dragged Juju to the edge of the river.

"Been nice to know you," he said, and rolled him off the rock wall and into the water.

There was a parking ticket under Sonny's windshield wiper when he got back to the club. He read the ticket and then tore it up and threw the pieces down the sewer. Rigoberto Mendez was watching him from the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. He told Sonny that Tirana and her bleached blonde hair had gone off with a Dominican who looked very white. "Where's Juju?" he asked.

"Last I seen him, he was with some hot babe we met on the street.”

"That's Juje, all right," Mendez said.

"That's him," Sonny said.