Nocturne (35 page)

“What we’ve got here, pure and simple,” Nellie said, “is Murder Two. In fact, what we
may
have here, Alan, is murder for
hire
, which just may qualify for the death penalty.”

“Oh, come on, Nellie, really.”

“Man takes money to kill someone, that sounds to me like a contract killing.”

“Woman gives a man money to assist her in committing suicide, that sounds to me like a mitzvah.”

“What’s a mitzvah?”

“You don’t know what a mitzvah is?”

“No, what’s a mitzvah?”

“How long have you been practicing law in this city?”

“Are you going to tell me what a mitzvah is?”

“It’s a good deed.”

“Man shoots a woman …”

“She
asked
him to shoot her.”

“That’s a good deed by you?”

“That’s a mitzvah. Nellie, this man isn’t a criminal, he’s …”

“Then what is he? An angel? He murdered a woman in cold blood. Shot her twice in the chest …”

“She
wanted
to die!”

“How about the cat? Did she want to die, too?”

“Okay, I’ll give you the cat.”

“You’ll give me more than the goddamn cat, Alan.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Are the acoustics in here bad? I told you. Murder Two. Murder for hire. Lethal injection. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“This wasn’t murder for hire, and you know it.”

“He got twenty-five grand to kill her!”

“But
she’s
the one who gave it to him. This wasn’t some outside party who hired him to kill her. This was the victim herself who …”

“Victim, you’ve got it, Alan.”

“… who wanted to die, but didn’t have the nerve to kill herself. She’s arthritic, she’s got a brain tumor, she’s about to
go stone-deaf, she’s about to lose the nerves in her face, all she wants is
out
. My client helped her.”

“Right, he’s a Good Samaritan.”

“No, he’s a compassionate man who …”

“Who murdered her for twenty-five grand so he could pay off his bookie!”

“The best you’ve got here is Criminal Facilitation One. But this case is something that’ll bring tears to a jury’s eyes. Give
him Facilitation Four, and we’ve got …”

“Facil …” She almost choked on it. “That’s a class-A
mis
!”

“Okay, forget it then. Take a look at 120.30 instead. Promoting a Suicide Attempt. A person is guilty of promoting a suicide
attempt when he intentionally causes …”

“… or aids another person to attempt suicide,” Nellie finished for him. “This wasn’t an
attempt
, Alan! This was eminently successful. The woman is dead. And so’s her cat.”

“Lay off the goddamn cat, will you? We’re talking about a woman in agony and pain, we’re talking about a sympathetic man who
…”

“You’re talking about a lousy class-E felony, is what you’re talking about. We’re wasting time here, Alan. Let’s roll the
dice.”

“All right, I’ll grant you the suicide attempt was a success …”

“What suicide? He
murdered
her.”

“Didn’t you just say the
attempt
was successful?
Eminently
successful, weren’t those your words? So what’s it going to be, Nellie? Did the guy go in there and shoot her in cold blood,
or did he merely help her commit suicide? You go for Murder Two, that’s what the jury’ll have to decide.”

“Good, let them decide.”

“Take a look at Michigan.”

“Don’t sing me Kevorkian.”

“Gets kicked out each and every time.”

“This isn’t Michigan. And Kevorkian didn’t shoot anybody.”

“A jury might not see it that way, Nell.”

“Don’t call me Nell. I wasn’t raised in the woods.”

“Tell you what …”

“Sure, tell me.”

“We’re forgetting murder for hire, am I right?”

“Who said so?”

“Arguendo. And I guess you know that an affirmative defense …”

“Don’t insult me, Alan.”

“… under 125.25 is that the defendant caused or aided another person to commit suicide.”

“That’s an affirmative defense, all right.”

“Which happens to be the case here. An assisted suicide.”

“So?”

“So you’re absolutely right. You go for Murder Two, we’d be rolling the dice. And you just might lose.”

“What do you suggest?”

“
Man
Two.”

“No way.”

“A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree …”

“I know the section.”

“… when he intentionally causes or aids another person to commit suicide.”

“Man
One
is the best I can give you, Alan. Provided we agree on the max.”

“That’s too much to pay for a mitzvah.”

“A mitzvah, my ass. Man One. The max, Alan. Eight and a third to twenty-five. Take it or leave it.”

“Make it two to six.”

“No.”

“The poor bastard’s a foreigner.”

“Tough.”

“He can’t speak English, he looks like Robert Redford. You know what they’ll do to him in prison?”

“He should’ve thought of that before he murdered the old lady.”

“Come on, Nellie. You know he’s not a killer. What do you say? The minimum, okay? Two to six, okay?”

“I’ll give you a straight five to fifteen. And we’ll oppose parole after five.”

“You’re a hard woman.”

“I’ll also throw in the cat. Have we got a deal?”

“A hard woman,” Moscowitz said, shaking his head.

“Yes or no?”

“What choice do I have?”

“Good. Let’s go home.”

It was almost twelve-thirty when Carella and Hawes finished all the paperwork. They both looked bone-weary.

“Go home,” Byrnes told them, “it’s been a long night.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“Get some sleep.”

“Uh-huh,” Hawes said.

“You’ve still got a dead hooker on your plate,” Byrnes reminded them.

To qualify, a school had to answer positively to two questions: “Do you have a football team?” and “Are your school colors
navy blue and white?”

Didn’t matter if he was talking to St. Peter’s High or John Parker High. If he got an affirmative answer to both questions,
he saddled his horse and rode on over.

By one o’clock that afternoon, Fat Ollie Weeks had personally visited all of the qualifying P schools in the metropolitan
area and had struck nothing even faintly resembling pay dirt.

Only twelve of the blue and white schools had football teams. Only eight of those had parkas with a big white P on the back
of them. Of those, only two had a white football logo under the letter P. Ollie talked to some sixty football players, all
of them shitting their pants, trying to determine what each and every one of them had been doing this past weekend while a
white hooker and two black dudes were respectively being eviscerated, drowned, and stabbed. These kids were used to TV violence,
but man, this was real life.

The way Ollie looked at it, nobody in this country was
really
concerned about violence, anyway. If they were, they’d put the V-chip on football and hockey games. What
really
bugged Americans was sex. It was okay to talk about it obliquely on all those morning and afternoon TV programs, but show
two people actually
doing
it, and, man, the house suddenly got hushed, and all at once everybody was running to protect the little kiddies smoking
crack in the next room. Sex was The Great American Hang-up, legacy of those fuckin Puritans who came over from England. Speaking
of which, he hadn’t had any in a week and a half—sex, not Puritans—and here he was shagging ass all over the universe trying
to find three football players who maybe had got a little bit sexy and violent
off
the playing field, and whose head hairs might just match those he already had.

He was back in the squadroom again by a quarter past one.

He checked his computer list again.

Began making phone calls again.

At two-fifteen that afternoon, he began driving upstate to a school named Pierce Academy, whose colors were blue and white
and whose football team wore hooded parkas with a white letter P and a white football logo on the back.

At two-thirty that afternoon, Georgie looked up the name Karen Todd in the Isola directory and found a listing for a K. Todd
at 1217 Lincoln Street. He dialed the number, and her answering machine told him she could be reached at work and gave him
the number for St. Mary’s Hospital.

He hadn’t known she was a nurse, if she was a nurse.

This only whetted his appetite.

He dialed the number and was connected to a woman who said, “Records Office,” immediately shattering a young boy’s dreams.

“Karen Todd, please,” he said.

When she came on the line, he told her who he was, and reminded her that he’d been to see her earlier this morning, did she
remember, the tall good-looking guy, he actually said, with the black hair and brown eyes …

“I was with a blond woman and another man.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “of course. Svetlana’s granddaughter, in fact.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I remember you, sure,” she said. “Did you have any luck finding that guy who delivered the fish?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “The police have him. He killed her, I guess. Was what I could gather.”

“No kidding? Wow.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Uh, Karen,” he said, “do you think you might perhaps care to join me for dinner tonight?”

“Sure, why not?” she said.

From where Richard the First stood in the back row of the choir, he could see out over the heads of the two other Richards
and all the other singers. Like a true monarch surveying his lordly domain, he looked down the center aisle of the church
and beyond the transept to the huge oaken entrance doors. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the leaded stained-glass
windows on either side of the massive, vaulted space, illuminating it as if a religious miracle were in progress. Professor
Eaton, the choirmaster, had just given them notes on how badly they’d sung the hymn the last time around. They were now waiting
for his hand signal to start the third chorus all over again.

Hand and head dipped at precisely the same moment.

“Keep Thou my all, O Lord, hide my life in thine …

“Oh let Thy sacred light o’er my pathway shine …”

The central portal doors opened.

A very fat man stepped into the narthex and looked up the aisle.

“Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I’ll bear …

“Hear Thou and grant my prayer …”

“Professor Eaton?’

The fat man.

Calling from the back of the church.

“Hold it, hold it,” Eaton said, and turned with obvious annoyance toward where the fat man was coming down the aisle now,
a lightweight trench coat open over his beer barrel belly. Under the trench coat Richard could see a plaid sports jacket,
also unbuttoned, and a very loud tie. Now he was reaching into the back pocket of his trousers.

“What is it?” Eaton asked.

Now he was holding some kind of small leather case in his hand, a fob, whatever it was, the flap falling open as he waddled
toward the altar. Sunlight caught glittering gold and enameled blue, sending shivers of reflected light into the echoing stillness
of the church.

“Detective Oliver Weeks,” he said. “There’s some hairs I need to match. You got any singing football players?”

Georgie was expecting her at six-thirty. The arrangement was that she’d stop by at her own apartment to change clothes after
work, and then come to his place for a drink before they went to dinner. That was why he’d gone downstairs to the liquor store
to pick up a bottle of Canadian Club, because what she drank was Canadian Club and ginger ale, she’d informed him on the phone.
He was downstairs for no more than fifteen minutes. The phone was ringing when he got back to the apartment. He put the brown
paper bag with the booze in it on the pass-through between the kitchen and living room, yanked the wall phone from the hook
and said, “Hello?”

It was Tony again.

“What time do you think you’ll be here?” he asked.

“Sometime after dinner,” Georgie said. “But I may be a little late.”

“Like
how
late?”

“Maybe eleven, twelve o’clock.”

“Why so late?”

“Well.”

“Who is she?”

“Somebody.”

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you later. I got to go, Tony. She’ll be here any minute.”

“Bring me half of
her
, too,” Tony said.

Smiling, Georgie put up the phone, and checked his watch. Six-twenty. Plenty of time to go look at the money again. It never
failed to delight him, looking at all that money. Still smiling, he went into the bedroom.

The window was open.

The smile dropped from his face.

The drawers had been pulled out of his dresser and his shirts and socks and sweaters and underwear were strewn all over the
floor and the bed. The closet door was open, too. Jackets and suits had been ripped from their hangers and thrown everywhere.

An open shoebox was lying on the floor.

Two black patent-leather shoes lay on the floor beside the box.

Both shoes were empty.