Lullaby

Andrew Fields was his name. Giant of a man. He could have broken Hamilton in half with his bare hands, torn him limb from limb, the way he'd done other people without batting an eyelash. But there was deference in his voice. When he said 'Lewis,' it somehow sounded like 'sir.'

'Told you to use baseball bats on the man?' Hamilton asked.

'Yes, Lewis.'

'When I specifically said I wanted the man put to sleep?'

'That message did come down, Lewis.'

'But you used baseball bats anyway,' Hamilton said.

Andrew was hoping he believed him. He didn't want Hamilton thinking that he himself, or even Herbert, had been acting on their own initiative. Had somehow taken it in their heads that the way to do the little spic was with ball bats. Herbert had been the third man on the hunting party. The one who'd thrown his bat at the cop. The first one the cop had shot. He'd had nothing at all to do with deciding on the ball bats, James had made that decision. Maybe because the person they were about to do was a spic and spics understood baseball bats. But if the whole idea was to put the man to sleep, then what difference did it make how they did it? Was he later going to remember in his grave that it was a gun or a knife or three ball bats had done him? James's reasoning on this had eluded Andrew. But in a posse, as in any kind of business, there were levels of command. The man had said ball bats, so ball bats it had been.

'Was it James's notion to merely harm the man?' Hamilton asked.

'I think to box him,' Andrew said.

'Not just to break a few bones, eh?'

'He told us you wanted the man boxed, Lewis.'

'Then why baseball bats?' Hamilton asked reasonably, and spread his hands before him, and lifted his shoulders and his eyebrows questioningly. 'If we are looking to put this man in a box in a hole in the ground, why take the long way home, Andrew, why take the dusty road by the sea, do you understand what I'm asking? Why not short and sweet, adios, amigo, you fuck with us, you kiss your sister goodbye? Am I making my point?'

'Yes, Lewis.'

'Did James have an explanation? Did he say I want to use bats for this or that reason?'

'He didn't offer no reason, Lewis.'

'Oh my my my,' Hamilton said, and sighed, and shook his head, and looked to Isaac for possible guidance.

'Shall I go to the hospital and ask him?' Isaac said.

'No, no. The man's been denied bail, there's a policeman outside his door. No, no. Time enough to talk to him later, Isaac'

Hamilton smiled.

The smile was chilling.

Andrew suddenly did not want to be James. It seemed to Andrew that the best thing that could happen to James was to be sent away for a long, long time. Where Hamilton could not get to him. Although Andrew couldn't think of a single prison in the United States that Hamilton could not reach into. Andrew didn't know why Hamilton had wanted the little spic killed, nobody had told him that. But he knew James had fucked up badly and the spic was still out there walking around.

'Andrew?'

'Yes, Lewis.'

'I'm very troubled by this.'

'Yes, Lewis.'

'I send three men to do one little spic . . .'

'Yes, Lewis.'

'. . . a man who could have been blown away with a fucking twenty-two ...'

Those eyes.

Blazing.

'But instead the three of you decide to use . . .'

'It was James who . . .'

'I don't give a fuck who! The job wasn't done!'

Silence.

Andrew lowered his eyes.

'Do I have to go do this myself?' Hamilton asked.

'No, Lewis. You still want the job done, I can do it.'

'I want the job done.'

'Fine then.'

'No mistakes this time.'

'No mistakes.'

'We are not trying to win the World Series, Andrew.' A smile.

'I know, Lewis.'

'Go sing the man his lullaby,' Hamilton said.

* * * *

The social worker who had handled the adoption for the Hoddings was a woman named Martha Henley. She had been working for the Cooper-Anderson Agency, a private adoption agency, for the past fourteen years now. In her late sixties, a trifle stout, wearing a dark brown suit, low-heeled walking shoes, and gold-rimmed eyeglasses that demanded to be called spectacles, she warmly greeted the detectives at ten o'clock that Monday morning, and offered them seats on easy chairs facing her desk. A bleak wintry sky edged with skyscrapers filled the corner windows of her office. She told them at once that she loved children. She told them that nothing brought her greater happiness than to find the right home for a child needing adoption. They believed her. They had told her on the telephone why they wanted to see her. Now she wanted to know why they felt information about the adoption of Susan Hodding was important to their case.

'Only in that it's another possible avenue,' Meyer said.

'In what way?'

'We're investigating two possibilities at the moment,' Carella said. 'The first is that the murders may have been felony murders - murders that occurred during the commission of another crime. In this case, a burglary. Or a rape. Or both.'

'And the second possibility?'

She was making notes on a lined yellow pad, using an old-fashioned fountain pen with a gold nib. She was left-handed, Meyer noticed. Wrote with her hand twisted around peculiarly. Meyer figured she'd been growing up when schoolteachers were still trying to change all lefthanders into right-handers. He imagined this had something to do with Good vs. Evil, the right hand of God vs. the sinister left hand of the Devil. All bullshit, he thought. Those exercises at changing a person's handedness had in many cases led to stuttering and a whole carload of learning disabilities. Carella was still talking. Mrs Henley was still writing.

'. . . who wanted the sitter dead, the Flynn girl. In which case, the murder of the infant was a side-effect, if you will, an offshoot of the other murder. That's the second possibility.'

'Yes,' she said.

'But there's a third possibility as well,' Carella said.

'Which is?'

'That the murderer wanted the baby dead.'

'A six-month-old child? That's difficult to . . .'

'Admittedly, but . . .'

'Yes, I know. In this city . . .'

She let the sentence trail.

'So,' Carella said, 'the reason we're here . . .'

'You're here because if the baby was the primary target . . .'

'Yes . . .'

'. . . you'll need to know as much about the adoption as possible.'

'Yes.'

'Where shall I begin?' she asked.

The Hoddings had first come to her a bit more than a year ago, on the recommendation of their lawyer. They'd been trying to conceive ever since Mrs Hodding . . .

'She used to be a model, you know,' Mrs Henley said.

'Yes.'

. . . quit modeling some three or four years back. But although they'd assiduously followed their physician's directions, their efforts merely proved fruitless and bitterly disappointing, and they had ultimately decided to seek legal assistance in finding a reputable adoption agency.

Those were Mrs Henley's exact words. She had a rather flowery way of speaking, Carella noticed, as old-fashioned as her gold-nibbed fountain pen and her gold-rimmed spectacles.

'Their lawyer recommended us,' she said, and nodded as if in agreement with the lawyer's good taste. 'Mortimer Kaplan,' she said, 'of Greenfield, Gelfman, Kaplan, Schuster and Holt. A very good firm. We did all the home studies, obtained all the necessary references, prepared the Hoddings in advance for the sort of baby that might realistically turn up . . .'

'What do you mean?' Carella asked.

'Well, many of them want what we call a Gerber Baby, do you know? Blue eyes and blonde hair, cute little smile, chubby little hands. But not all babies look like that. We get all sorts of babies put up for adoption. We place all of them.'