Some of the photographs were obviously recent and had probably been taken by Charlie himself, here in his own apartment — in the bedroom primarily, but also in the living room, the kitchen, and (in one remarkable series) on the fire escape outside. Some of the photographs were enlarged prints of pictures taken decades ago — the costumes identifying the separate eras, telltale cracks, rips and fade marks indicating sources other than Charlie’s own camera.
All of the photographs were pornographic.
They depicted every conceivable sex act ever committed, devised, or imagined by and for humans and animals of every age, color, stripe, or persuasion in duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets (of course), crowds, mobs, tribes, or (as it seemed in one of the pictures) entire nations — performed with or without restraints, mechanical appliances, tools, gadgets, instruments of torture, or benefit of clergy. Since all of the photographs were marked with price tags, it was reasonable to assume that Charlie had been something more than a casual collector. In fact, it was almost mandatory to assume that Charlie’s expensive clothes and automobile were direct residuals of his penchant for photography. An important part of his busy-ness then (or business, if you prefer) was the peddling of porn. Nor had Elizabeth Benjamin been lying when she’d stated she was not a hooker. Elizabeth Benjamin was a photographer’s model. At least two-thirds of the pictures in Charlie’s gallery featured Elizabeth as performer in a variety of roles. Her repertoire was apparently unlimited, her poses unselfconscious and unabashed, her star quality evident.
And so the dinner hour passed pleasantly, and dusk settled on the city as Kissman, Boyd, and Hawes spent a quiet interlude looking at dirty pictures, each man knowing at last what it felt like to be a member of a censorship board who, compelled to read all sorts of filthy books in the service of the community, finally determines which of those are too vile to be permitted space on the shelves of the public library.
The experience was purifying.
Steve Carella was beginning to feel like an accountant.
It was now twenty minutes to 8:00, and Ollie Weeks had arrived at the squadroom almost two hours ago with quite a bit of information on the firm called Diamondback Development, Inc., run by two gentlemen named Robinson Worthy and Alfred Allen Chase. Ollie had apparently done some thorough digging since the time he’d left Worthy and Chase with a promise to look into their company operations and the time he’d phoned Hawes to say, “I found out a few things about our friends Worthy and Chase,” a choice bit of meiosis, if ever there’d been one. Actually, Ollie had done some fine and fancy footwork in those few hours before most business offices closed for the day, proof positive that fat men are light on their feet and good dancers besides.
He had, of course, been running his case by the book, and the book dictated that certain things be done as a matter of form in the investigation of a suspect business operation. Ollie had done them all, and he was now anxious to prove to Hawes (or to Carella as his substitute) that he had not been overly hasty in his judgment of the men who ran Diamondback Development. He knew Carella from a case they had worked jointly some five years back, at which time Carella had called Ollie on his peculiar idiosyncrasy of referring to an eighty-six-year-old Puerto Rican matriarch, grandmother to twelve children, and proud parent of a son who was then running for the City Council, as “that decrepit spic twat.” Ollie had taken offense at Carella’s having taken offense, and the working relationship had been somewhat strained from that moment on. Neither of the two men exchanged too many pleasantries now as they got down to business. Carella had a homicide, and Ollie had a homicide, and the two homicides were maybe linked somehow, and that gave them something in common.
“This is what I found out about those two creeps,” Ollie said. “First thing I did was call Cartwright and Fields, the credit reporting agency downtown, and talked to a lady named Mrs. Clara Tresore of the Service Department. She gave me a lot of static about coming down to the fourth floor there and showing my credentials, and I told her it was already three in the afternoon and I didn’t have time to come running downtown. So she hemmed and hawed, and finally called me back a half hour later to give me the information I needed. Okay, it turns out that Diamondback Development was incorporated in September of last year, the three officers of the corporation being Robinson Worthy as president, Alfred Allen Chase as vice-president, and a guy named Oscar Hemmings as treasurer. Principal assets at the time of incorporation were five thousand nine hundred seventy-five dollars, stock divided evenly among the three officers. Principal business activity of the firm was stated to be ‘the purchase and redevelopment of properties in that section of the city known as Diamondback.’ Sounds legit so far, don’t it?”
“It does,” Carella said. He was beginning to think about Roger Grimm and his import business, and the firms in Hamburg and Bremerhaven. He immediately put them out of his mind. He even had trouble explaining the new math to his twins, and he suspected he was not cut out for an executive position in an international cartel. He did not yet know that in a little while Hawes would bring him information about yet another business, the little porn shop Charlie Harrod had been running. His mind would have snapped.
“You with me so far?” Ollie asked.
“I’m with you,” Carella said, not entirely sure he was.
“Okay, I next checked with the Better Business Bureau and the Credit Bureau of Greater Isola and also the Diamondback Credit Bureau, and I learned that these guys have good credit ratings, no complaints from anybody they ever dealt with, bills paid on time, all the rest of it. It still looks good, it still looks legit.”
“When does it start looking bad?” Carella asked.
“Give me a minute, will you?” Ollie said. He consulted his notes, which he had fastidiously hand-lettered onto the backs of several printed Detective Division forms, and then looked up again. “Okay, so these guys are in the business of buying property and redeveloping it, right? So I called Land Transfer Records, and I found out these guys bought a total of nine abandoned buildings in Diamondback since they went into business. They bought all those buildings from their original owners, and the prices paid were less than what they would’ve got them for at auction. You want to hear some of the prices?”
“Sure, why not?” Carella said.
“The prices are important,” Ollie said. “For example, they paid sixty-three hundred for a three-story brick building on the south side of Thorp Avenue; twenty-seven hundred for a two-story frame on Kosinsky Boulevard; thirty-eight hundred for a three-story limestone facade on Hull and Twenty-fifth, and like that. Total cost for the nine buildings was forty-eight thousand seven hundred fifty. You got that?”
“I’ve got it,” Carella said, not so sure he had.
“So next I called License and Building Records, and I learned that Diamondback Development, even though they now have nine buildings that they own outright and a firm of architects making drawings for them, has only renovated one building in all this time — a dump over on St. Sebastian Avenue. The architects are a firm called Design Associates on Ainsley. I called them and they told me their fee for the drawings had been fifty thousand dollars.”
“How’d you know who the architects were?”
“I called Worthy and Chase and they told me, how do you think? Those two creeps are anxious to establish they’re legit; they told me the name of their architects, and also the name of their bank — which was their first mistake.”