“But Hurricane was willing to do C.J.’s for two thousand.”
“Three thousand all together.”
“Your share was only two. Eighteen songs for two thousand bucks. How come?”
“Well,” Caine said, “not eighteen.”
“Ah,” Carella said. “How many?”
“This was to be more like a demo album. As opposed to an album for distribution to disc jockeys and retail outlets.”
“How many songs on it?”
“We planned to press only one side.”
“Nine songs?”
“Eight.”
“For a three-thousand-dollar fee.”
“Hurricane’s share was only two.”
“Why were you giving a thousand to Chadderton? Because he brought the girl to you?”
“No, he was getting paid for writing the songs and recording them.”
“What kind of songs?”
“Well, calypso, of course. That’s what George wrote and performed. Calypso.”
“Which would suddenly become vital to the record industry, huh?” Carella said.
Caine smiled. “Not vital perhaps, but worth a shot. Miss Hawkins had a great deal of information George was prepared to put into the songs.”
“Were they going to collaborate on them, is that it?”
“That part of it hadn’t been worked out yet. I think it was George’s intention only to pick her brain. Apparently, she had hundreds of stories to tell. She’d only been in the life since April, from what I understand, but apparently one learns very quickly in the streets.”
“Too bad she didn’t learn a little more quickly off the streets,” Carella said.
“I’m sorry,” Caine said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean you were charging her three thousand bucks to record eight songs, which on my block comes to three hundred and seventy-five bucks a song, or a hundred and twenty-five more than you usually charge.”
“George was getting a thousand of that.”
“I see. You were getting only your usual fee, right?”
“If you care to look at it that way.”
“How would you care to look at it, Mr. Caine. Together, you were leading that kid straight down the garden.”
“She wasn’t a virgin,” Caine said, smiling.
“No,” Carella answered, “but usually she charged for the screwing.”
The smile dropped from Caine’s face. “I’m sure you’ve got a million things to do,” he said. “I don’t want to keep you.”
“Nice meeting you, Mr. Caine,” Carella said, and walked out of the office. He stopped at the desk in the reception room, and asked the girl there what kind of car Mr. Caine drove. The girl gave him the year, make, and color, and then said, “Uh-oh, did I do something wrong just then?” Carella assured her she had not.
Outside in the pouring rain, he searched the street from end to end till he found the car answering the girl’s description. From a phone booth on the corner, he called Communications and asked for a computer check on the license plate. Within minutes, he learned that the car was registered to a Mr. Harry Caine, who lived in Riverhead, and that it had not been reported stolen. For the next ten minutes, Carella walked in the rain looking for the beat cop. When he found him, he identified himself and then led him back to where Caine’s car was illegally parked on the wrong side of the street.
“Ticket it,” he said.
The patrolman stared at him. The rain was drumming on Carella’s uncovered head, the rain had soaked through his coat and his shoes and his trouser legs; altogether he looked like a drowned rat. The patrolman kept staring at him. At last he shrugged and said, “Sure,” and began writing out the summons. The time he scrawled into the righthand corner was 1:45 P.M.
Carella did not get back to the office until two-thirty that afternoon, at which time the lieutenant had a reporter from the city’s morning paper in with him, wanting to know not about the relatively obscure calypso singer found dead in the 87th Precinct this past Friday night, nor even about the more obscure hooker found dead in Midtown South four and a half hours later, but instead about a rash of jewelry-store robberies that seemed to have leaped the dividing line that separated the scuzzy Eight-Seven from its posh neighboring precinct to the west. The reporter was asking Lieutenant Byrnes whether he felt the robbers who’d held up a store on Hall Avenue just west of Monastery Road were the same thieves who’d been raising havoc in the Eight-Seven for, lo, these many months. Byrnes refused to admit to any reporter on earth that any damn thieves were raising havoc in his damn precinct, and besides, he didn’t consider six jewelry-store hold-ups to be havoc, nor did he even consider them to be a rash. In any event, he was occupied with the reporter until a quarter to three, at which time Carella gained access to his office, carrying with him a box with a blue and green fleur-de-lis design. A handkerchief tented over his head, Carella lifted the lid from the box.
“You have to stop bringing me flowers,” Byrnes said. “The men are beginning to talk.”
“Left outside Harding’s apartment a little while ago,” Carella said. “He thinks it means something.”
“Mm,” Byrnes said.
“Whether it does or not isn’t important,” Carella said. “He’s damn scared, and I think he may have a point. Whoever tried to blow him away—”
“May try it again,” Byrnes said, and nodded.
“Can we spare a patrolman up there?”
“For how long?”
“At least till we pick up Joey Peace.”
“Have you talked to Meyer yet?”
“Yes, and he told me it’s José La Paz. I’ve already called the Gaucho to let him know.”
“How long do you think it’ll be before we flush him out?”
“I’ve got no idea, Pete. It could be ten minutes, it could be ten days.”
“How long do you want the cover on Harding?”
“Can you let me have a week? Round-the-clock?”
“I’ll check it with the captain.”
“Would you, Pete? I want to get this down to the lab. Sam promised me a report by morning if I can get it to him right away.” Both men looked at their watches. Byrnes was picking up the phone receiver as Carella left the office.
Captain Frick enjoyed being in command of the entire Eight-Seven, including those plainclothes cops who inhabited the ruckus room on the second floor of the station house. There were 186 patrolmen assigned to the Eight-Seven, and together with the sixteen detectives upstairs, the small army under Frick’s command constituted a formidable bulwark against the forces of evil in this city. Byrnes was now asking that three men in the uniformed ranks be taken from active duty elsewhere to be placed outside the door of a black business manager (not that his blackness mattered) on a round-the-clock basis, one man for every eight hours, three men each and every day of the week for the next week. Frick did not want to take this responsibility upon himself. Frick felt that three men fewer against the forces of evil were three men more on the side of the forces of evil. He told Byrnes he would get back to him, and at exactly one minute past 3:00, he placed a call to the Chief of Field Services in Headquarters downtown on High Street, and asked if he might feel free to release three patrolmen each day for the next week for a round-the-clock on a black business manager whose client had been a homicide victim this past Friday night up here. The C.O.F.S. wanted to know what the business manager’s blackness had to do with a goddamn thing on God’s green earth, and Frick said, at once, “Nothing, sir, it has nothing whatever to do with anything whatever,” and the C.O.F.S. granted permission to assign the three men on a round-the-clock. It was by then 3:09 P.M., and it was still raining.