At that moment, he didn't feel very good about himself, anyway. He was thinking that the system would wring Imogene out like a dirty dishcloth. Ninety-six pounds if she weighed a nickel, the system would destroy her. Not twenty minutes ago, all he'd been thinking about was his own skin. Heard shots, figured they were meant for him. Ambush for the big detective. A genuine family dispute erupting into a lady-with-a-gun situation, and all he could think at the time was that someone had set him up. Maybe he deserved to be jeered.
They came out of the building into the bitter cold.
Imogene in handcuffs.
Archibald on one side of her, looking penitent now that it was all over, Kling on the other side, holding her elbow, guiding her toward the patrol car atthe curb.
He did not notice a tall, thin black man standing in a doorway across the sheet.
The man was watching him.
The man was Lewis Randolph Hamilton.
* * * *
9
It was Fat Ollie Weeks who came up with the lead on Doctor Martin Proctor.
Fat Ollie was not an informer; he was a detective working out of the Eight-Three. Fat Ollie was not as fat as Fats Donner; hence Ollie's obesity was in the singular whereas Donner's was in the plural. The men did have two things in common, however: they were both very good listeners and nobody liked either one of them. Nobody liked Fats Donner because his sexual preferences ran to prepubescent girls. Nobody liked Fat Ollie because he was a bigot. Moreover, he was that rare sort of bigot who hated everyone.
The cops of the Eight-Seven still remembered Roger Havilland, who'd been an Ollie Weeks sort of person before he got thrown through a plate glass window to his final reward. No one - well, hardly anyone - wished such a dire fate would befall Ollie, but they did wish he would bathe every now and again. On a fair day with a brisk wind, you could smell Ollie clear across Grover Park.
On Monday morning, the sixteenth day of January, Ollie walked into the Eight-Seven's squadroom as if he owned the joint. Pushed his way familiarly through the slatted rail divider, his beer barrel belly preceding him as surely as did his stench, wearing only a sports jacket over his open-collared shirt, despite the frigid temperature outside. His cheeks were rosy red, and he was puffing like a man actively seeking a heart attack. He walked directly to where Carella was typing at his desk, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, 'Hey, Steve-a-rino, how you been?'
Carella winced.
'Hello, Ollie,' he said unenthusiastically.
'So you're looking for the Doctor, huh?' Ollie said, and put his finger to the side of his nose like a Mafia sage. 'You come to the right person.'
Carella hoped Ollie didn't mean what he thought Ollie meant.
'Martin Proctor,' Ollie said. 'Sounds like a Jew, don't he? The Martin, I mean. You ever heard of anybody named Martin who wasn't a Jew?'
'Yes, Martin Sheen,' Carella said.
'He's worse than a Jew,' Ollie said, 'he's a fuckin' Mexican. His son's name is Emilio Estevez, so where does he come off usin' an American name like Sheen? There was this bishop in New York, his name was Sheen, wasn't it? So who's this fuckin' Mexican using a Jewish first name and an Irish last name?'
Carella was suddenly sorry he'd brought it up.
But Ollie was just gathering steam.
'You get these fuckin' immigrants, they change their names so nobody can tell they're foreigners. Who do they think they're kiddin'? Guy writes a book, he's a fuckin' wop, he puts an American name on the book, everybody knows he's really a wop, anyway. Everybody says. You know what his real name is? His real name ain't Lance Bigelow, it's Luigi Mangiacavallo. Everybody knows this. Behind his back, they laugh at him. They say Good morning, Lance, how are you? Or Good evening, Mr Bigelow, your table is ready. But who's he kidding? They all know he's only a wop.'
'Like me,' Carella said.
'That's true,' Ollie said, 'but you're okay otherwise.'
Carella sighed.
'Anyway, you got me off the track with your fuckin' Martin Sheen,' Ollie said. 'You want what I got on Proctor, or you want to talk about Mexicans who put makeup on their faces to earn a living?'
Carella sighed again.
He did not for a moment doubt that Ollie Weeks had a line on Martin Proctor. But he did not want favors from Ollie. Favors had to be paid back. Favors owed to a bigot were double-edged favors. However good a cop Ollie Weeks was - and the sad truth was that he happened to be a very good cop - Carella did not want to owe him, did not want Ollie to come back later to say the note he'd signed was due. But a six-month-old baby and her sitter had been murdered.
'What've you got?' he asked.
'Ah yes, the man is interested,' Ollie said, doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation.
Carella looked at him.
'Very definitely interested, ah yes,' Ollie said, still doing Fields. 'Let us say for the sake of argument that there is a certain lady who frequents a bar, ah yes, in the Eighty-Third Precinct, which some of us mere mortals call home, ah yes. Let us further say that this lady has on occasion in the past dispensed certain favors and information to certain detectives in this fair city who have looked the other way while the lady was plying her trade, do I make my point, sir?'
Carella nodded.
Weeks was banging a hooker in the Eight-Three.
'What's her name?' He asked.
'Ah yes, her name. Which, may I say, sir, is none of your fucking business, ah yes.'
'Could you please drop the Fields imitation?' Carella said.
'You knew it was him, huh?' Ollie said, pleased. 'I also do Ronald Reagan.'
'Don't,' Carella said.
'I do Ronald Reagan after they cut off his legs.'
'What about this hooker?'
'Who said she was a hooker?'
'Gee, for some reason I thought she was a hooker.'
'Whatever she may be, let us say she got to talking the other night . . .'
'When?'
'Saturday night.'
'And?'
'And seeing as I am a law enforcement officer, and seeing as how we were sharing a few intimate moments together . . .'
'Get to it, Ollie.'
'The lady inquired as to whether I knew why the police were looking for Martin the Doctor. This was like a strange situation, Steve. Usually, I'm the one pumping her. But there we were . . .'
His sex life, no less, Carella thought.
'. . . both of us naked as niggers in the jungle, and she's the one tryin'a get information outa me. Can you see how peculiar that was?'