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It was a little after twelve noon when they reached Dorothy Hawkins’s apartment. This time they had a search warrant with them. And this time, Dorothy Hawkins wasn’t home. The building superintendent told them that Mrs. Hawkins worked out on Bethtown in a factory that made transistor radios, something the detectives already knew, and something they might have remembered if the case hadn’t reached the true desperation phase. Desperately, Carella and Meyer showed the super the court order, and explained that Bethtown was one hell of a way from Diamondback, and that finding Mrs. Hawkins would necessitate a car trip all the way downtown to Land’s End, where they’d have to take a ferry over to the island, or else go across the new bridge, but this would put them smack in the center of Village East, the heart of Bethtown, and they’d then have to drive all the way over to the other end of the island where most of the factories were located, and if they had to drag Mrs. Hawkins back here with them to unlock her door, she’d lose a day’s work, did the super want the poor woman to lose a day’s work? The super said he certainly didn’t want a nice lady like Mrs. Hawkins to lose a day’s work.

“Then how about opening the door for us?” Meyer said.

“I spose,” the super said dubiously.

Under his watchful eye, they searched the apartment from top to bottom for almost two hours, but they could not find the slightest clue to where C.J. Hawkins had gone each and every Wednesday for the past thirteen weeks.

The girl who opened the door of Joey Peace’s downtown pad was a tall redhead wearing nothing but a pair of red bikini panties. She had very long legs and rather exuberant breasts with nipples that peered at each other as though in need of an ophthalmologist. She also had green eyes and frizzy hair, and she looked and sounded somewhat kooky.

“Hey, hi,” she said, opening the door and peeking into the hall. “Is there just the two of you?”

“Just the two of us,” Carella said, and showed her his shield.

“Hey, wow,” she said, “cool. Where’d you get that?”

“We’re police officers,” Carella said. “We’ve got a court order to conduct a search of this apartment, and we’d appreciate it if you let us in.”

“Yeah, hey, wow,” she said, “what are you lookin for?”

“We don’t know,” Meyer said, which was close enough to the truth, and which caused the redhead to burst into paroxysms of laughter that jiggled her exhilarated breasts and caused them to look even more cross-eyed than they had a moment before.

The judge who’d granted the warrant had been reluctant to give them what he called “a blind license to conduct a search for will-o’-the-wisps” until Carella pointed out that he had very specifically mentioned what the detectives were searching for, and what they were searching for, Your Honor — if you’ll just glance here at heading Number Two — is sand, Your Honor, to match sand discovered in the apartment of a homicide victim and already in possession of the Police Department and in custody at the Police Laboratory, in the hope of making a positive comparison, Your Honor. The judge had looked at him askance; he knew the premise was utterly groundless. But he also knew that these men were investigating a triple homicide, and he suspected nobody’s rights would be compromised if they conducted searches of the apartments one of the victims had most commonly inhabited, so he’d issued one warrant for a search of Mrs. Hawkins’s apartment and another for a search of Joey Peace’s rather more sumptuous pad on Laramie Avenue.

The redhead looked at the warrant Carella held in front of her face. She kept studying the document and nodding. Meyer, watching her, realized that her eyes were even more out of focus than her wayward breasts, and he decided that her natural kookiness was being aided somewhat by something that was causing her to float around on the ceiling someplace.

“You just shoot something?” he asked.

“Yeah, a tiger,” the girl said, and giggled.

“What are you on, honey?” Meyer said.

“Who me?” the girl said. “Straight as an arrow, man, they call me Straight Arrow, man, yessir.” She peeked around the warrant into the hallway. “I thought there was gonna be more of you,” she said.

“How many?” Carella asked.

“Ten,” the girl said, and shrugged.

“A minyan,” Meyer said.

“No, only ten,” the girl said.

“Which one are you?” Carella asked. “Lakie or Sarah?”

“Sarah. Hey, how’d you know my name?”

“My wife’s name is Sarah,” Meyer said.

“Where’s Nancy Elliott?”

“She split. She was afraid Joey was gonna hurt her. Hey, how do you know Nancy?”

“My grandmother’s name is Nancy,” Meyer said.

“Yeah? No kidding.”

“No kidding,” Meyer said. His grandmother’s name was Rose.

“Where’s Lakie?” Carella asked.

“Out buying some booze. This is supposed to be like a big party today, man,” she said, and looked out into the hall again.

“At one o’clock in the afternoon?” Carella said.

“Sure, why not?” Sarah said, and shrugged. “It’s raining.” Each time she shrugged, her nipples demanded corrective lenses.

“You’ve seen the warrant,” Carella said. “Now how about letting us in?”

“Sure, hey, come on,” Sarah said, and stepped into the hallway and looked toward the elevator bank.

“You’d better come in yourself,” Meyer said, “before you catch cold.”

“It’s just they’re supposed to be here by now,” she said, and shrugged.

“Come on inside,” Meyer said.

Sarah shrugged again and preceded him into the apartment. Meyer locked the door and put the chain on it.

“You’re Joey Peace’s girlfriend, huh?” he said.

“No, he’s my big daddy,” Sarah said, and giggled.

“Go put on some clothes,” Meyer said.

“What for?”

“We’re married men.”

“Who ain’t?” Sarah said.

“Where’d C.J. sleep?” Carella asked.

All over,” Sarah said.

“I mean, where’s her bedroom?”

“Second one down the hall.” The buzzer on the door sounded. Sarah turned toward it, and said, “There they are. What should I tell them?”

“Tell them you’re busy,” Carella said.

“But I ain’t busy.”

“Tell them the cops are here,” Meyer said. “Maybe they’ll just go away on their own.”

“Who, the cops?”

“No, the minyan.”

“I told you not a million,” the girl said. “Only ten.”