"Nope.”
Shoulders moving to the rhythm now, still tossing her head.
"Has he asked you for a divorce?”
"Nope. Let me freshen that for you, okay?”
she said, and took the glass from his hand, and swung her legs out from under her and padded to the bar, swaying in time to the music. He watched her as she poured the vodka into his glass. Hips and shoulders moving to the beat. "He wouldn't divorce me in any case," she said. "He's got too much to lose.”
She carried the glass back to him.
"There's lots of money involved," she said.
"Thanks," he said, and accepted the glass.
She had poured it almost full to the brim. - He suddenly wondered if she was trying to get him drunk. He almost smiled at the thought.
There were saxophones and flutes again, repeating the same figure that had started the tune.
Sinatra rode in on top of them with a sustained note that seemed to go on forever. There was the sudden crash of a cymbal-and then silence.
"Lots of money," she said again.
"Kiss ..." Sinatra sang.
"Oh God, I love this song," she said.
"It all begins with a ...”
"Kiss ...”
"Would you like to dance?" she asked.
"I'm not a very good dancer," he said.
"I'm not, either.”
"Well ...”
"So let's try it," she said, and opened her arms to him, and took a step toward him. He took her in his arms. His right hand rested lightly on the swell of her hip. Her left hand rested lightly on his shoulder. His left arm was bent at the elbow, her right hand in his hand. Their hands touched lightly. They began moving in time to the music.
Cautiously. Feeling the beat. Moving tentatively into the beat.
"... lips that burn in a ...
"Kiss ...”
"Nobody sings this better than he does,”
she said.
"Are only learning "To lie "Unless "The first "Caress "Is true.”
"By the way," she said, "I'm still not sure I believe you.”
"About what?”
"Killing me. Being hired to kill me.”
"When will you believe me?”
"Later," she said. "Maybe.”
And stepped in closer to him.
His hand moved up to the small of her back.
He realized all at once that she wasn't wearing a bra under the sweater, there was no bra strap crossing her back. And just as suddenly he felt her breasts against his chest, and her hand moved off his shoulder, and her arm circled his neck.
"... against my eyes.
"And kiss me sweet and promise "Me your "Kisses won't be lies.”
"The phrasing," she whispered. "It's his phrasing.”
"Kiss ...
"And show me, tell me of "Bliss ...
"Because I know I "Will die "Unless "This first "Caress "Is true.”
There were violins now, startling in that there hadn't been any on the previous two cuts, modulating into a different key for the bridge, swelling from the speakers, flooding the room, and then coming back to the original key for the final chorus.
She tilted her hips into him.
"Kiss ..." Sinatra sang again.
She lifted her face to his.
"And show me, tell me of "Bliss ...”
"Kiss me," she whispered.
"Because I know I "Will die "Unless "This first "Caress "Is true.”
Their lips met.
It was a kiss of death.
11.
At eight o'clock that Sunday morning, the thirteenth day of January, Meyer and Carella went downtown to where Executive Limousine kept its cars. The garage was in a narrow street on the Calm's Point side of the Old Seawall Tunnel, conveniently situated between a gasoline station and a company selling wholesale tires. A painted sign ran across the top of the garage, the words EXECUTIVE LIMOUSINE running across it in black letters on a white field. Meyer wondered how many limousine companies in cities across the length and breadth of this fair nation were called Executive Limousine. Were there any limousine companies called Office Boy Limousine? Or Garbageman Limousine?
"Or Bag Lady Limousine?" he asked out loud.
"Huh?" Carella said.
"Just wondering," Meyer said.
There were three arched entranceways to the garage, all wide enough to accommodate the trucks that used to pull in here when the neighborhood was still part of the thriving Calm's Point Market. Those days were gone forever. Where now there were stacks of new tires outside the building on the left of Executive Limousine, and men rolling whitewalls inside to where automobiles stood hoisted on lifts or jacks, there used to be rows of stands selling fresh fruit and vegetables trucked in from the farms out on Sands Spit or in the state across the River Harb. Where now there were self-service pumps and cars lined up bumper to bumper at the gasoline station on the other side of the garage, there once used to be stands of fresh fish pulled daily from the River Dix or netted far out on the Offshore Reaches, arranged neatly on ice each morning for restaurant buyers who sometimes came from as far as a hundred miles away.
Here in the surrounding side streets, Old World merchants once sold everything from furniture to plumbing supplies, dry goods to shoes, corsets to chandeliers. Day in and day out there had been the lively hue and cry of a loud and busy place of commerce. The area had survived the First World War, and the Crash, and the Depression, and the Second World War, and a handful of foolish adventures in the Far East and in Central America, but it could not survive crack. What had once been a thriving market was now a slum ridden and riven by narcotics. The tenements that had once housed shops on their street-level floors were now abandoned. Where people once had come to buy the goods that sustained their daily lives, they now came to buy the substance that was destroying them and America both.
Here was where the limousines were garaged.
The manager of Executive Limousine was a man named Marty Guido. They were in a glass-enclosed space that looked down on the constant automobile traffic moving in and out of the garage. In this city, the radio-car companies operated stretch limos and also what were called "black cars," even though many of them were actually white. These so-called black cars were town cars like Caddies or Lincoln Continentals. They ran you twenty-eight bucks an hour as opposed to the thirty-five for a stretch. Like sharks, the black cars and the limos were in constant motion within their sectors. If they parked, a zealous son-of-a-bitch cop would give them a summons.
So they kept moving, waiting for the radio dispatcher to come up with a call in the neighborhood they were cruising. Behind Guido and the detectives, the dispatcher kept throwing out street locations, trolling for takers. The babble was constant. It sounded like code.
"Three-Seven Morris, who's up?
Anybody up near Three-Seven Morris?
Let me hear from you, I've got a lady going uptown from Three-Seven Morris.”
On and on the dispatcher's voice droned behind them.
It was like trying to be heard in a steel mill.
"Roger Turner Tilly," Meyer said.
"Used to work here as a driver.”
"Why, what'd he do?" Guido asked.
"Nothing," Carella said.
"Then why you looking for him?”
"We're not looking for him. Do you know him?”
"I know him. He got in some trouble here a little while back. This was when I first started here.”
"That's what we want to know about," Meyer said.
"The trouble.”
"Why?”
"Do you know what the trouble was?”
"One of the drivers called him a - fag. So he beat him up. That was the trouble.”
"Yes, that was the trouble," Carella said. "Do you know who that driver was?”
"One of the Spanish guys.”
"We checked Tilly's record ...”
"Who's headed out to B. Franklin? I got a pickup at United Airlines, who's running out that way? Anybody on the way to the airport? Or heading back? Anybody want a United Airlines coming into the city? Let me hear it, who wants it? Pickup at United, who wants it?”