“Whose stuff, Gene?”
“My mother’s,” Corrosco said.
“Your mother’s?” Ollie said, genuinely surprised. “Well, well. Your mother’s.”
“Yeah,” Corrosco said. “She keeps it in storage here.”
“Likes television, your mother,” Ollie said.
“Yeah, she does.”
“Fourteen sets, I count.”
“Yeah, fourteen,” Corrosco said. “She had fourteen rooms.”
“Watched television in all the rooms, huh?”
“Yeah, all the rooms,” Corrosco said.
“The toilet, too?”
“Huh?”
“Did she watch television in the toilet?”
“No, not the toilet,” Corrosco said.
“What’d she do in the toilet?” Ollie asked. “Did she take pictures in the toilet?”
“Huh?”
“Lots of cameras here. Did your mother take pictures in the toilet?”
“Oh, yeah, in the toilet,” Corrosco said, grinning.
“Corrosco,” Ollie said, “I am going to bust you for receiving stolen goods.”
“Gee, Detective Weeks,” Corrosco said.
“Unless...”
“How much?” Corrosco said at once.
“Did you hear that?” Ollie said, turning with a shocked expression to where Carella and Meyer stood just inside the open door, their pistols in their hands. “Did you hear what this man just said?”
“I didn’t say nothin,” Corrosco said.
“Me neither,” the blond said.
“I certainly hope you weren’t attempting a bribe,” Ollie said.
“No, no,” Corrosco said at once. “No, sir. Not me.”
“Me neither,” the blond said, shaking his head.
“I’ll tell you what,” Ollie said.
“What?” Corrosco said at once.
“There’s somebody we’re looking for.”
“Who?” Corrosco said, again at once.
“Man name Joey La Paz.”
“Never heard of him,” Corrosco said.
“You never heard of your own cousin?”
“He’s my cousin?” Corrosco said. “No, he can’t be my cousin. If I never heard of him, how could he be my cousin?”
“Gene,” Ollie said, “I’m sorry to have to do this to you because criminal possession of stolen property can be either a Class-A misdemeanor, or a Class-E or Class-D felony, depending on the value of the property. That means you can gross either a year, four years, or seven years in jail, depending. That’s a lot of time, Gene. But what can I tell you? The law is the law and I wouldn’t be doin my duty if I allowed this willful transgression—”
“La Paz, did you say?”
“Joey La Paz,” Ollie said, nodding.
“Oh, yeah. I thought you said Lopez.”
“No, La Paz.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sure.”
“Sure what?”
“Sure, he’s my cousin.”
“Where is he, Gene?”
“How should I know?” Corrosco said. “Do you know where your cousin is?”
“No, but then again I ain’t the one who’s got cop trouble in a roomful of stolen goods.” Ollie took a step closer to Corrosco. Corrosco backed away against the table. Ollie wrapped his fist into Corrosco’s shirt, put his face very close to Corrosco’s, and then, in a hissing little whisper, said, “Listen to me, spic. I want your cousin. If I don’t get your cousin, I get you. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a spic judge who’ll let you off easy. Take your choice, Gene. You or your cousin.”
“What do you want him for?” Corrosco asked.
“You ain’t reading me, are you?” Ollie said, and sighed, and let go of his shirt. “Okay,” he said, “get your hat. You, too, Blondie.”
“I just came by to say hello,” the blond man said.
“You can say hello to the judge.”
“I mean it. Tell him, Gene. Tell him I just came by to say hello.”
“Shut up,” Corrosco said. “My cousin’s in an apartment on St. Sab’s and Booker.”
“What’s the address?” Ollie said, taking out his pad.
“Six twenty-nine Saint Sab.”
“Name in the mailbox?”
“Amy Wyatt.”
“Who’s that? One of his hookers?”
“No, her mother.”
“Whose mother?”
“Sarah Wyatt’s.”
“Girl in his stable?”
“Yeah, but recent.”
“Okay, Gene, thanks a lot. Now get your hat.”
“Get my hat?” Corrosco said. “What for? You told me—”
“That was before you got cute with me. Get your fuckin hat!”
“That ain’t fair,” Corrosco said, pouting. “Who says it has to be?” Ollie asked.
La Paz came up off the bed with a pistol in his hand, swinging it at the door the moment the lock imploded into the room. He was wearing only dark narrow trousers, no shirt, no shoes or socks. His skin was a creamy tan, and he kept himself in good shape, muscles rippling across his chest and up the length of his arm as he leveled the pistol at Ollie’s broad chest.
“Just pull the trigger, shithead,” Ollie said.
La Paz hesitated.
“Go on, pull it,” Ollie said. “My two friends here’ll shoot you fulla holes and stuff you down the toilet like the piece of shit you are. Pull the fuckin trigger, go on!”
Carella waited with bated breath, half hoping La Paz would respond positively to Ollie’s dare. Instead, he lowered the gun.
“Good boy,” Ollie said. “Throw it on the floor.”
La Paz threw it on the floor.
“Up. On your feet. Grab paint,” Ollie said. He shoved La Paz against the wall, and then tossed him, between the legs and down the sides of his trousers. “Okay,” he said, “turn around. Who else is in this shithole?”
“Nobody,” La Paz said.
“Where’s Amy Wyatt?”
“She works. She ain’t here.”
“All alone, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I hope you don’t fall down and hurt yourself or nothing,” Ollie said. “Be nobody here but us to call an ambulance, huh? These gentlemen here want to ask you some questions. I hope you cooperate with them, Joey, cause I don’t like trouble in my precinct, okay?”
“How’d you get to me?”
“We got ways, m’boy,” Ollie said in his W.C. Fields voice. He picked up the pistol, looked at it, and then said to Carella, “You ain’t chasin a .32 Colt, are you?”
“No,” Carella said.
“Too bad,” Ollie said, and tucked the pistol into his waistband. He turned back to La Paz. “Answer the man’s questions,” he said.
“Sure,” La Paz said. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Clara Jean Hawkins,” Carella said.
“I knew it,” La Paz said.
“What’d you know?”
“That this was gonna be about her.”
“What the fuck’d you think it was gonna be about, you dumb fuck?” Ollie said. “Girl gets killed, what d’you think these guys are lookin for, a fuckin dumb procurin bust? This is homicide, you dumb shit, you better answer these guys straight.”
“I didn’t kill her,” La Paz said.
“Nobody ever killed anybody,” Ollie said. “The world is full of victims, but nobody ever victimized them. Go on, Steve, ask him what you gotta ask.”
“What do you know about a weekly beach party out on Sands Spit someplace?” Carella said.
“A what?”
“You heard the man, you deaf or something?” Ollie said.
“A beach party?” La Paz said, and shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“He means did you send some of your girls partying out at the beach is what he means, you dumb fuck,” Ollie said.