“The coke, do you mean? Or the fact that she was still playing around with Lopez?”
“Take your choice,” Byrnes said.
“He told us there were no other men in her life, and he told us she wasn’t doing anything stronger than pot.”
“Reliable?” Byrnes asked.
“He was the one who tipped us off to the ice operation,” Meyer said.
“Yeah, what about that?” Byrnes asked. “Any connection to the murders?”
“We don’t think so. The Anderson girl’s involvement was a one-shot deal.”
“Are you moving on it?”
“No proof,” Meyer said. “We’ve put Carter on warning.”
“A lot of good that’s gonna do,” Byrnes said, and sighed. “What about Edelman?” he asked Brown. “Are you sure you read all that stuff right?”
“Checked it three times,” Brown said. “He was screwing Uncle, that’s for sure. And laundering a lot of cash over the past five years.”
“Buying real estate overseas, huh?”
“Yes,” Brown said, and nodded.
“You think that’s what all that money in his safe was for?”
“For his next trip over there, right.”
“Any idea when he was going?”
“His wife told us next month sometime.”
“So he was stashing the money till then, is that it?”
“That’s the way it looks to us,” Brown said.
“Where’d he get three hundred grand all of a sudden?” Byrnes asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t all of a sudden,” Kling said. “Maybe it was over a period of time. Let’s say he comes back from Holland with a plastic bag of diamonds stuffed up his kazoo, and sells them off a little at a time, sixty grand here, fifty grand there, it adds up.”
“And then goes to Zurich to put the money in a Swiss account,” Brown said.
“Till he’s ready to buy either more gems or more real estate,” Kling said.
“Okay,” Byrnes said, “a nice little racket. But how does it tie in with the other two murders?”
“Three, if you count the Quadrado girl.”
“That was a cutting,” Byrnes said. “Looks like a wild card to me, let’s concentrate on the ones with the same gun. Any ideas?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Carella said.
“What’s the thing?”
“We can’t find any connection but the one between Lopez and the girl. And even that one...” He shook his head. “We’re talking peanuts here, Pete. Lopez had a handful of customers, the girl was maybe supplying him with... what? An ounce a week, tops? Tack on what she was selling to the kids in the show, and it still adds up to a very small operation. So why kill her? Or Lopez? What’s the motive?”
“Maybe it is a crazy, after all,” Byrnes said, and sighed.
The other men said nothing.
“If it’s a crazy,” Byrnes said, “there’s nothing we can do till he makes his next move. If he knocks off a washerwoman in Majesta, or a truck driver in Riverhead, then we’ll know the guy’s choosing his victims at random.”
“Which would make the Lopez and Anderson connection—”
“Coincidental, right,” Byrnes said. “If the next one is a washerwoman or a truck driver.”
“I don’t like the idea of waiting around till the next body turns up,” Meyer said.
“And I don’t buy coincidence,” Carella said. “Not with Lopez and Anderson both moving cocaine. Anything else, I’d say sure, the guy picked one victim here, another one downtown, a third one up here again, he’s checkerboarding all over the city and shooting the first person he happens to run across on any given night. But not with cocaine involved. No, Pete.”
“You just told me the cocaine was a lowball operation,” Byrnes said.
“It’s still cocaine,” Carella said.
“Was Lopez the only person she was supplying?” Byrnes asked.
The men looked at him.
“Or was this a bigger operation than we know?”
The men said nothing.
“Where was the girl getting it?” Byrnes said. He nodded briefly. “There’s something missing,” he said. “Find it.”
Emma and Brother Anthony were celebrating in advance.
He had bought a bottle of expensive $4 wine, and they now sat drinking to their good fortune. Emma had read the letter, and had come to the same conclusion he had: the man who’d written that letter to Sally Anderson was the man who was supplying her with cocaine. The letter made that entirely clear.
“He buys eight keys of cocaine,” Brother Anthony said, “gives it a full hit, gets twice what he paid for it.”
“Time it gets on the street,” Emma said, “who knows what it’d be worth?”
“You got to figure they step on it all the way down the line. Time your user gets it, it’ll only be ten, fifteen percent pure. The eight keys this guy bought... he sounds like an amateur, don’t he? I mean, going in alone? With four hundred grand in cash?”
“Strictly,” Emma said.
“Well, so are we, in a way,” Brother Anthony said.
“You’re very generous,” Emma said, and smiled.
“Anyway, those eight keys, time they hit the street up here, they’ve already been whacked so hard you’re talking maybe thirty-two keys for sale. Your average user buying coke doesn’t know what he’s getting. Half the rush he feels is from thinking he paid so much for his gram.”
Emma looked at the letter again. “ ‘The first thing I want to do is celebrate,’ ” she read. “ ‘There’s a new restaurant on top of the Freemont Building, and I’d like to go there Saturday night. Very elegant, very continental. No panties, Sally. I want you to look very elegant and demure, but no panties, okay? Like the time we ate at Mario’s down in the Quarter, do you remember? Then, when we get home...’ ” Emma shrugged. “Lovey-dovey stuff,” she said.
“Girl had more panties than a lingerie shop,” Brother Anthony said. “Whole drawerful of panties.”
“So he asks her not to wear any!” Emma said, and shook her head.
“I’m gonna buy you one of those little things ballet dancers wear,” Brother Anthony said.
“Thank you, sir,” Emma said, and made a little curtsy.
“Why you think she saved that letter?” Brother Anthony asked.
“ ‘Cause it’s a love letter,” Emma said.
“Then why’d she hide it in the collar of her jacket?”
“Maybe she was married.”
“No, no.”
“Or had another boyfriend.”
“I think it was in case she wanted to turn the screws on him,” Brother Anthony said. “I think the letter was her insurance. Proof that he bought eight keys of coke. Dumb amateur,” he said, and shook his head.
“Try him again,” Emma said.
“Yeah, I better,” Brother Anthony said. He rose ponderously, walked to the telephone, picked up the scrap of paper on which he’d scribbled the number he’d found in the directory, and then dialed.
Emma watched him.
“It’s ringing,” he said.
She kept watching him.
“Hello?” a voice on the other end said, and Brother Anthony immediately hung up.
“He’s home,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Go see the man, dear.”
The odd thing about the lunchtime skull session the boys of the Eight-Seven held in the squadroom at ten minutes past 1:00 that Thursday afternoon was that someone who wasn’t even a policeman already knew the missing “something” that would have proved extremely valuable to their investigation if only they’d known it, which they didn’t. They were still trying to find it, whereas Brother Anthony already knew it. Brother Anthony, as it were, happened to be a few steps ahead of them as they chewed, respectively, on their hot pastrami on rye, tuna on white, sausage and peppers on a roll, and ham on toasted whole wheat. They were drinking coffee in cardboard containers, also ordered from the diner up the street, a habit Miscolo tried to discourage because he felt it was an insult to the coffee he brewed and dispensed, gratis, in the Clerical Office. As Brother Anthony pushed his way through the subway turnstile some six blocks away, and ran toward the waiting graffiti-camouflaged train, managing to squeeze himself inside the car before the doors closed, the boys of the Eight-Seven were chewing on the case (and their sandwiches) from the top, trying to find the missing something that would take them exactly where Brother Anthony was heading. It did not speak well for the police department.