Where There's Smoke

Twenty

There was sunlight in the room; it was Tuesday morn­ing at last. On Maria’s pillow I found a note that read:

I looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes after one. I hadn’t intended to sleep so late. I put on a robe (for some undoubtedly perverse reason, I don’t like to talk to anyone on the telephone when all I’m wearing is paja­mas), went into the study, and dialed the Twelfth Precinct. The desk sergeant told me Horowitz had gone home. I asked him to put me through to Coop’s office instead.

“Good afternoon, Benny,” Coop said. He sounded very official and a trifle brusque.

“Coop,” I said, “I hate to bother you with this, but Dave Horowitz was waiting for a lab report...”

“I have it here on my desk,” Coop said. “Benny, I’ve got a very unhappy cop upstairs in the squadroom, and even though I love you like a brother, I’ve got to keep the detective team working together as a functioning unit of this precinct. You understand me?”

“What the hell is O’Neil worried about?”

“I’ll tell you what he’s worried about, if you’d like to know. Last night he gets to Natalie Fletcher’s apartment, and you’ve already been there. He talks to the super, you’ve already talked to the super. The super tells him the mother’s name, and this morning O’Neil goes to see her, and finds out you were there in the middle of the night, and what’s more you were leaving there to talk to some­body named Susanna Martin. Who’s Susanna Martin, Benny? O’Neil went up to that building on Ninety-sixth and couldn’t find anybody by that name.”

“Tell him to keep trying, Coop. He’s such a hot­shot ...”

“He’s a good cop, and I don’t like to see him upset.”

“What’s in the lab report, Coop?”

“No comment.”

“How about the VW bus? Anything on that yet?”

“Benny, you are not going to get anything further from me,” Coop said, and hung up.

I sat at the desk for a moment, trying to work out my next move. There had undoubtedly been something positive in the lab report. Otherwise, it would have been sim­pler for Coop to have said, “Sorry, nothing. No latents.” I decided to call the lab direct. I knew the number by heart, I had dialed it all too often in my years on the force. The assistant who answered the phone wanted to know who I was and why I wanted to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Ambrosiano. I told him my name, and said it was a per­sonal call. He said the lieutenant’s line was busy, and I’d have to wait. I waited. In the kitchen, I could hear the crow squawking at the top of his lungs.

Michael J. Ambrosiano was the man in charge of the Police Laboratory downtown in the Washington Plaza complex, where the new Police Headquarters building was located. His lab occupied all of the ninth floor and part of the tenth in the huge thirty-four-story structure which, from the outside, seemed to have been con­structed entirely of glass. So many windows were un­usual for a building housing policemen of every stripe and color. The windows in any precinct, for example, are usually covered on the outside with a heavy-gauge wire-mesh grille, it not being uncommon for cop lovers to toss rocks or stink bombs into the place. Not so at Headquar­ters, which housed the Lab as well as the Identification Section and the Property Clerk’s office (from which a million dollars’ worth of confiscated heroin had been stolen only last year, the less said about that the better), and the offices of the Police Commissioner and his Deputy Commissioners, the Chief Inspector, and the Chiefs of Patrol, and Detectives, and Personnel, and the offices of Personnel Records (Civilian and Uniform), and the office of the Employees Relations Unit, and the Press and Public Relations office.

Mike Ambrosiano was a policeman and a scientist both, a man of sensitivity and skill who had, while I was a working cop, helped me on more occasions than I could count. He was forty-six years old, with blond hair going slightly gray, and blue eyes that weighed with equal scrutiny a laundry mark inside a dirty shirt or a trace of poison in a coffee cup. We had worked well together over the years, and I felt I could now ask him for a favor with­out compromising either his professionalism or his in­tegrity. I was mistaken.

When he came onto the line, he said, “Coop just called. That’s who I was talking to.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Mm,” Mike said. “He figured you’d be trying me next.”

“So I guess the answer is no.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded genuinely sorry.

“Must be something pretty hot in that report.”

“I haven’t even seen it,” Mike said. “Ryan handled it.”

“You don’t suppose Ryan would like to tell me about it, do you?”

“I doubt it. Ryan is a very secretive type.”

“I figured he might be.”

“Ben, why don’t you let this go?” Mike advised gently. “Getting back the kraut’s jewels was one thing. But this is homicide.”

“I can’t let it go,” I said. “I’m possessed.”

“Did you hear the one about the lawyer who took on an exorcist as a client?” Mike said, and began chuckling im­mediately.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Well, this exorcist came to a lawyer complaining that he’d done some work for a man who’d been possessed, you know? Got rid of the devil inside him, all that stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“But the guy who’d been possessed refused to pay the exorcist for his services. So now the exorcist wanted sat­isfaction. So the lawyer called the guy and said he was representing the exorcist, and unless the guy paid the money he owed, he’d see to it that he was repossessed.” Mike burst out laughing. I smiled.

“Mike,” I said, “did you find any latents on either the crowbar or the pendant?”

“Ben,” he said, “it’s always good talking to you, give me a ring again sometime, huh? Maybe we can have lunch.”

I heard a click on the line. He had hung up. In the kitchen, the bird was yapping madly. I depressed one of the buttons on the receiver rest, got a dial tone, and im­mediately phoned Henry Garavelli. He picked up on the third ring.

“Garavelli Television,” he said.

“Henry, this is Ben. Are you free this afternoon?”

“What’s up?” he said.

“I’m looking for a lady named Natalie Fletcher,” I said. “Thirty-three years old, five feet six inches tall, slender, long black hair, may be dressed as Cleopatra.”

“Cleopatra?”

“That’s right, Henry. I’m expecting her to show at 12 East Ninety-sixth, near Fairleigh. She’s supposed to visit a woman named Susan Howell at two o’clock, Apartment 12C. If she shows, she may be driving a 1971 blue Buick station wagon. Stick with her, and get back to me.”

“Got you,” he said, and hung up.

I went out to the kitchen, and told the bird to shut up. He did not shut up. He yammered all the while I prepared myself some bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee, and contin­ued squawking while I ate. I put the dishes into the sink, glared at the bird before I left the kitchen, and then show­ered, shaved, and dressed for the trip uptown to Ham­merlock. I was just leaving the apartment when Lisette let herself in with her key. It was twenty minutes to three, and she usually came to work at eleven in the morning. Lisette had a hangover. She explained that Rene Pierre, her professor friend, had brought home a case of very good Bordeaux last night, and they had consumed three bottles of it before midnight.

I told her to go swallow a raw egg.