Nocturne (28 page)

Carella took a calculated risk.

He kicked in the door.

He would worry later about convincing a judge that a reliable witness had seen a paroled gambling offender accepting money
from a suspected murderer in an underground club that served booze illegally after hours. He would worry later about convincing
a judge that slamming a door shut on two police officers merely here to ask questions, and then locking that door, and then
opening a window were acts that constituted flight, than which there was no better index of guilt, tell that to O.J.

Meanwhile, the wood splintered, and the lock sprang, and the chain snapped, and they were inside a studio apartment, looking
at a wide-eyed girl in bed clutching a blanket to her, the window open on the wall beyond, the curtains billowing on a harsh
cold wind. They rushed across the room. Carella poked his head into the night.

“Stop! Police!” he yelled down the fire escape.

Nobody was stopping.

He could hear footfalls clanging on the iron rungs of the ladder below.

“I didn’t do anything,” the girl said.

They were already out the door again.

I
n the movies, one cop goes out the window and onto the fire escape and comes thundering down the ladders after the fleeing
perp, passing windows where ladies in nightgowns are all aghast, while the other cop runs down the steps inside the building,
and dashes around into the backyard so they have the perp sandwiched between them, All right, Louie, drop da gat!

In real life, cops know it’s faster and safer, especially if the perp is armed, to come down the inside steps while he’s outside
descending to street level on narrow, often slippery metal ladders, especially when the temperature outside is three above
zero. Carella and Hawes were a beat behind Bernie the Banker Himmel. They rounded the rear corner of the building just as
he was climbing a snowcapped wooden fence separating the backyards.

This was a beautiful night for a little jog through the city. The clouds had passed, the sky above was a black canopy studded
with stars and hung with an almost full moon that washed the terrain with an eerie glow. All was silent except for the sound
of their footsteps crunching on crusted snow, their labored breaths puffing from chapped lips. They followed Himmel over the
fence, right hands cold against the walnut stocks of their pistols, left hands gloved, coats flapping loose, mufflers flying
behind them as if they were World War I fighter pilots. Himmel was small and Himmel was fast, and both Carella and Hawes were
large and out of shape, and they were having a tough time keeping up with him.

In the movies, detectives are always lifting weights down at the old headquarters gym, or shooting at targets on the old firing
range. In real life, detectives aren’t often in on the big action scenes. They hardly ever chase thieves. They rarely, if
ever, fire weapons at fleeing suspects. In real life, detectives usually come in
after
the fact. The burglary, the armed robbery, the arson, the murder has already been committed. It is their job to piece together
past events and apprehend the person or persons who committed a crime or crimes. Sometimes, yes, a suspect will attempt flight,
but even then there are strict guidelines limiting the use of force, deadly or otherwise. The LAPD has these guidelines, too;
tell it to Rodney King.

Here in
this
city, tonight or any other night, gunplay was the very last thing Carella or Hawes wanted. The second least desirable thing
was brute force. Besides, the way this little chase was developing, Bernie the Banker would be out of gun range at any moment.
All three of them had now emerged from the barren backyards onto deserted—well, almost deserted—city streets, Himmel running
ahead through narrow paths shoveled on icy sidewalks, banks of snow on either side of him, fast outdistancing Carella and
Hawes who followed him and each other through the same narrow sidewalk burrows, knowing for damn sure they were going to lose
him.

And then, three things happened in rapid succession.

Himmel rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

A dog began barking.

And a snowplow went barreling up the street.

“This is what I’d like to know,” Priscilla said.

Georgie yawned.

Tony yawned, too.

“If this tall blond guy delivered the key to the locker …”

“Well, he did,” Georgie said. “We know he did.”

“Then he had to know my grandmother, right?”

“Well … sure.”

“I mean, she had to have given him the envelope with the key in it, am I right?”

“That’s right.”

“So why are we wasting time looking for this bookie, is what I’d like to know? When all we have to do is go to my grandmother’s
building and see if anyone
there
knows the blond guy.”

“Good idea,” Georgie said. “Let’s do it in the morning when everybody’s awake.”

“It
is
morning,” Priscilla said.

“Priss, please. We go knocking on doors at this hour …”

“You’re right,” she said.

Which astonished him.

Bernie Himmel was astonished to see a large black dog standing there like some fuckin apparition on the narrow path cleared
through the snow. He stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him was the animal, snarling and barking and baring his teeth and
blocking Himmel’s escape route through the snow. Behind him, somewhere up the street, he could hear the roaring clang of a
snowplow rushing through the night. He did what any sensible man would have done in the face of threatening fangs dripping
saliva and slime. He leaped over the snowbank on his left, into the street, just as the plow came thundering by.

Where earlier there had been an evil growling monster guarding the icy gates of hell, now there was an avalanche of snow and
ice and salt and sand pouring down onto Himmel’s shoulders and head, knocking him off his feet and throwing him back against
old snow already heaped at the curb, virtually burying him. He flailed with his arms, kicked with his legs, came sputtering
up out of a filthy gray mountain of shmutz, and found himself blinking up into a pair of revolvers.

Fuckin Cujo, he thought.

The questioning took place in the second-floor interrogation room at five-thirty that Monday morning. They explained to Himmel
that they weren’t charging him with anything, that in fact they weren’t interested in him at all …

“Then why am I here?” he asked reasonably.

He had been this route before, though not in this particular venue, which looked like any other shitty police precinct in
this city, or even some he had known in Chicago, Illinois, or Houston, Texas.

“Just some questions we want to ask you,” Hawes said.

“Then read me my rights and get me an attorney.”

“Why?” Carellla asked. “Did you do something?”

“You had my address, chances are you already been to the computer. So you know my record. So you want to ask me some questions.
So I’ll be back upstate tomorrow morning for breaking parole. I want a lawyer.”

“This has nothing to do with breaking parole.”

“Then why are you even mentioning it?”

“You’re the one who mentioned it.”

“Cause I’m six steps ahead of you.”

“This has to do with a person you were talking to in The Juice Bar on Friday night …”

“I want a lawyer.”

“… and again on Sunday morning.”

“I
still
want a lawyer.”

“Give us a break here, Bernie.”

“Why? You gonna give
me
a break?”

“We told you. We’re not interested in you.”

“I’ll say it again. If you’re not interested in me, why am I here?”

“This tall blond man you were talking to,” Hawes said.

“What about him?
If
I was talking to him.”

Progress, Carella thought.

“We traced a murder weapon to him,” he said.

“Oh, I see. Now it’s a murder. You’d better get me a lawyer right this minute.”

“All we want is his name.”

“I don’t know his name.”

“What
do
you know about him?”

“Nothing. We met in a club, exchanged a few words …”

“Exchanged some cash, too, didn’t you?”

The room went silent.

So did Himmel.

“But we’re willing to forget that,” Carella said.

“Then whatever I say is hypothetical,” Himmel said.

“Let’s hear it first.”

“First let’s understand it’s hypothetical.”

“Okay, it’s hypothetical,” Carella said.

“Then let’s say the man is a big gambler. Bets on any event happening.”

“Like?”

“Boxing, baseball, football, hockey, basketball, a man for all seasons. My guess is he bets the nags, too, but at one of the
off-track parlors.”

“Okay, he’s a gambler.”

“No, you weren’t listening. He’s a
big
gambler. And he’s usually in over his head. Wins occasionally, but most of the time he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Fuckin
greaseball can’t tell the difference between baseball and football, how
would
he know how to bet? I give him the odds, he picks whatever sounds …”

“What do you mean, greaseball?” Hawes asked.

“He’s Italian.”

“From Italy, you mean?” Carella said.

“Of
course
from Italy. Where
would
Italians come from, Russia?”

“You mean he’s
really
Italian,” Carella said.

“Yeah, really
really
Italian,” Himmel said. “What’s with you?”

“Never mind.”

“You’re surprised he’s Italian, is that it? Cause he’s blond?”

“No, I’m not surprised.”

“He also has blue eyes, does that surprise you, too?”

“Nothing ever surprises me,” Carella said wearily.

“You expect a wop to have black curly hair and brown eyes, you expect him to be a short fat guy. This guy’s six-two, he weighs
at least a buck ninety. Handsome as can be. Dumb fuck doesn’t even know what the Super Bowl
is
, he bets a fortune on Pittsburgh, loses his shirt.”

“When was this?”

“Two Sundays ago. Hypothetically.”

“So, hypothetically, what was he doing in The Juice Bar this past Friday night?”

“Hypothetically, he was telling his bookie, in broken English, that he didn’t have the twenty large to pay him.”

“Is that what he bet on the Steelers?”

“Twenty big ones. Gave him a fourteen-and-a-half-point spread. Cowboys took it by sixteen.”

“So what happened last Friday night?”

“The bookie told him to come up with the bread by Sunday morning or he was going to be
swimming
with the goddamn fishes.”

“How’d he react to that?”

“Said he had to make a phone call.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah, from the phone right there on the wall.”

“What time was this?”

“Around one-fifteen in the morning. A few hours after the cops raided the Alhambra up the street from the club. Where they
hold the cockfights.”

“How’d you know that?”

“One of the owners came in. His bird had just got chewed up, he was practically weeping at the table. He told me he had a
gun, he was thinking of shooting himself.”

“His name wouldn’t be Jose Santiago, would it?”

This city was full of mind readers.

“Yeah,” Himmel said. “How’d you know that?”

“Lucky guess,” Hawes said. “What time did
he
come in?”

“Santiago? Eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock. Right after the bust went down. I was sitting there waiting for Larry.”

“Who’s that?”

“The guy owed the twenty.”

“I thought you didn’t know his name.”

“That was before everything got hypothetical.”

“Larry what?”

“It’s Lorenzo, but everybody calls him Larry.”

“Lorenzo what?”

“I can’t even pronounce it.”

“Try.”

“I’m telling you I can’t. I wrote it down first time he placed a bet, it’s one of those fuckin wop tongue twisters.”

Carella sighed.

“Where’d you write it down?”

“On the slip.”

“The betting slip?”

“No, a lady’s pink slip, lace-trimmed.”

The detectives looked at him. He knew he was being a smart-ass. He grinned. Nobody grinned back. He shrugged.

“Yes, the betting slip,” he said. “Long since gone.”

“Never wrote the name down again?”

“Never. Couldn’t have if I wanted to. It was a mile long. Besides, I had his phone number. A man don’t pay his marker, I give
him a call, I say, Joey, you owe me a little something, am I right? It usually scares them.”

“Did it scare Lorenzo?”

“He came up here to see me one o’clock in the morning, didn’t he?”

“And made his phone call fifteen minutes later, is that right?”

“Yeah. We didn’t have much to talk about after I mentioned him swimming with his little fishies.”

“You didn’t happen to overhear his end of the phone conversation, did you?”

“Yeah, but it was all in Italian.”

“You think he called an Italian-speaking person, is that it?”

“I don’t know who he called. I know he was talking Italian.”

“What happened next?”

“He came back to the table, said he’d have the money by Sunday. Then he asked did I perhaps know where he could buy a gun.”

“So you recommended Santiago,” Carella said.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Himmel said, looking surprised.

“You didn’t witness the gun changing hands, did you?” Hawes asked.

“No. But hypothetically, Larry bought it.”

“What time did he leave here?”

“One-thirty or so.”

“One more thing,” Carella said.

“His phone number, right?” Himmel said.

Still six steps ahead of them.

At six-oh-four that Monday morning, the desk sergeant at the Eight-Eight called Ollie Weeks at home to tell him something
had come up that might relate to the triple homicide he was investigating. He didn’t know whether he should be waking Ollie
up or not …

“Yeah, well you did,” Ollie said.

… but some guy named Curly Joe Simms had called to say he was having a cup of coffee in the Silver Chief Diner on Ainsley,
and a waitress named Sally told him a detective named Oliver Weeks was in there asking about three kids pissing in the gutter,
and Curly Joe had seen these three kids with a person named Richie Cooper, who was a good friend now deceased. So if this
detective wanted to talk to him …