“Then where was she keeping it?” Carella asked.
Mrs. Hawkins did not answer.
“If not here, where?” Meyer said.
“A bank?” Carella said.
“What bank?” Meyer said.
“Where?” Carella said.
“A bank, yes,” Mrs. Hawkins said.
“Which one?”
“The State National. On Culver and Hughes.”
“A savings account?” Carella asked.
“Yes.”
“Where’s the passbook?”
“I don’t know. Clara Jean kept it in her pocketbook, she always had it in her pocketbook when she come up here.”
“No, she didn’t keep it in her pocketbook,” Meyer said. “It wasn’t in her pocketbook the night she was killed.”
“Well then maybe it’s in that apartment she lived in with the other girls.”
“No, if she was hiding the money from her pimp, she wouldn’t have kept the passbook in that apartment.”
“So where is it, Mrs. Hawkins?”
“Well, I just got no idea.”
“Mrs. Hawkins, is it here? Is the passbook here in this apartment?”
“Not to my knowledge. Not unless Clara Jean left it here without tellin me about it.”
“Mrs. Hawkins,” Carella said, “I think it’s here in this apartment, and I think you know it’s here, I think you know exactly where it is, and I think you ought to go get it for us because it might—”
“Why?” Mrs. Hawkins said, suddenly and angrily. “So you can go to the bank and take out all the money?”
“How could we possibly do that?” Carella asked.
“If you got the passbook, you could take out all the money.”
“Is that what you plan to do?” Meyer asked.
“What I plan to do is my business, not yours. I know the police, don’t think I don’t know the police. Firemen, too, we don’t call them the Forty Thieves for nothin in this neighborhood. I had a fire in my apartment on St. Sebastian once, they stole everthin wasn’t nailed to the floor. So don’t tell me about the police an the firemen. You done that autopsy on her ’thout checkin with me, didn’t you? Her own mother, nobody ast was it all right to cut her up that way.”
“An autopsy is mandatory in a homicide,” Carella said.
“Ain’t nobody ast me was it all right,” Mrs. Hawkins said.
“Ma’am, they were trying to—”
“I know what they was trying to do, don’t you think I know about bullets an all? But they shoulda ast. Was I a white woman livin on Hall Avenue, they’da ast in a minute. So you think I’m gonna turn over a bank account got twenty-six hundred dollars in it? So somebody can go draw out all the money, and that’s the last I’ll see or hear of it? I know the police, don’t think I don’t know how you operate, all of you. Take me six months to earn that kinda money after taxes.”
“Mrs. Hawkins,” Meyer said, “the passbook is worthless to us. And possibly to you as well.”
“Worth twenty-six hundred dollars, that passbook.”
“Not unless it’s a joint account,” Meyer said.
“Or a trust account,” Carella said.
“I don’t know what neither of those mean.”
“Whose name is on the passbook?” Carella asked.
“Clara Jean’s.”
“Then, ma’am, the bank simply will not honor any signature but hers without letters testamentary or letters of administration.”
“Clara Jean’s dead,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “Ain’t no way she can sign her name no more.”
“That’s true. Which means the bank’ll hold that money until a court determines what’s to be done with it.”
“What you think’s gonna be done with it? They was only me an Clara Jean in the family, I’m all who’s left now, they’ll give the money to me, that’s what.”
“I’m sure they will. But in the meantime, no one can touch it, Mrs. Hawkins. Not you, not us, not anybody.” Carella paused. “May we see the passbook? All we need is the account number.”
“Why? So you can get the bank to pay over the money to you?”
“Mrs. Hawkins, you surely can’t believe that any bank in this city would turn over money in a personal savings account—”
“I don’t know what to believe no more,” Mrs. Hawkins said, and suddenly began weeping.
“Where’s the passbook?” Carella asked.
“In the... there’s a vase on top of the television set in my bedroom. It’s in the vase. I figured nobody’d search in the vase,” she said, drying her eyes and suddenly looking across the kitchen table to Carella. “Don’t steal the money,” she said. “If you got ways of stealing it from me, please don’t. That’s my daughter’s blood in that account. That’s the money was gonna buy her out of the life.”
“What do you mean?” Carella said.
“The record album,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “That’s the money was gonna get that album made.”
“What album?” Meyer said.
“The idea she had for an album.”
“Yes, what album?”
“About all her experiences in the life.”
“‘In the Life,’” Carella said, and looked at Meyer. “There it is. There’s the connection. Who was going to do this album, Mrs. Hawkins? Did she say?”
“No, she only tole me she needed three thousand dollars for it. Said she was gonna get rich from it, take us both out of Diamondback, maybe move to California. So... please don’t steal that money from me. If... if a court’s got to decide, like you say, then let them decide. I was thinkin, you see, of maybe goin west, like Clara Jean wanted for us, but if you steal that money from me...”
And suddenly she was weeping again.
They did not take the passbook when they left Dorothy Hawkins’s apartment because they frankly weren’t sure of their right to do so, and they didn’t want any static later about misappropriation, especially this month when fourteen cops at the Two-One in Majesta had been arrested by departmental shooflies for selling narcotics previously appropriated from sundry arrested addicts and pushers. Carella and Meyer were too experienced to go begging for trouble, not when they knew that all they needed was the passbook number and a court order asking the bank to release to them a duplicate statement on the account from the day of initial deposit to the present date.
Early Tuesday morning, in a teeming rain that was causing all the city’s forecasters to crack jokes about arks, they drove downtown to High Street, and requested and obtained an order from a municipal judge. At ten minutes to eleven that same Tuesday morning, September 19, the manager of the State National Bank on Culver Avenue and Hughes Street in Diamondback read the order and promptly asked his secretary to have a duplicate statement prepared for “these gentlemen from the Police Department.” Carella and Meyer felt vaguely flattered. The photocopy was made within minutes; they left the bank at precisely 11:01, and went to sit in Carella’s automobile, where together they looked over the figures. The day was not only wet, it had turned unseasonably cold as well. The engine was running, the heater was on, the windshield fogged over as the men read the statement.
Clara Jean Hawkins had opened the account on June 22, with a deposit of two hundred dollars. There had since been twelve regular weekly deposits of two hundred dollars, up to and including the last one made on September 14, just before her death. Thirteen deposits in all, for a balance of twenty-six hundred dollars. A glance at Carella’s pocket calendar showed that the dates of deposit were all Thursdays, corroborating Mrs. Hawkins’s statement that her daughter visited every week on that day. That was all they learned from Clara Jean Hawkins’s savings account.