Lullaby

'We called the police right away,' Unger said.

'They were here in three minutes flat,' Shirley said. 'Two cops in uniform and a detective. A little short guy with curly hair.'

Willis, they both thought.

'Detective Willis?' Carella asked.

'Yes,' Shirley said. 'That's the one.'

'Must have picked it up on the car radio,' Meyer said.

Carella nodded.

A police department was a big organization. There were close to twenty-eight thousand cops in this city. Even in the same squadroom, you didn't always get a chance to cross-check one case against another. Willis had probably been making a routine run of the sector when he'd caught the 10-21. Burglary Past. Figured he'd run on over, save the responding blues the trouble of calling it back to the precinct. The report Willis had been typing so furiously when Meyer and Carella got back to the squadroom may have been on the Unger burglary. They hadn't told him they'd caught a double homicide at 967 Grover. He hadn't told them he'd caught a burglary at the same address. Nobody asked and nobody offered. Sometimes you had to go the long way around the mulberry bush.

'So what's this?' Shirley asked. 'The follow-up?'

They told her what this was.

She did not seem terribly impressed. She was more interested in whether the police were going to get back the emerald ring her husband Charlie had bought for her eight years ago on their honeymoon in Calle di Volpe, Italy, on the island of Sardinia. She was also interested in whether the police were going to get back the new VCR Charlie had bought her for Christmas this year. 'Well, last year already, am I right?' she said and smiled a radiant smile that said I would love to kiss your pectorals. She also wanted to know how long this was going to take because she wanted to go out for her walk and she was beginning to get hot here in the apartment, dressed for the outside as she was.

Carella told her that any questions regarding the burglary would have to be answered by Detective Willis, but that he and his partner wanted to know a little more about this man they'd seen going out the window . . .

'Yes, onto the fire escape,' Shirley said.

. . . because the burglary here in the Unger apartment on the sixth floor of the building might have been related somehow to the double homicide downstairs on the fourth floor.

'Oh,' Shirley said.

'Yes,' Meyer said.

'Then would you mind if I took off my sweatshirt?' she asked. 'Because, really, it is very warm in here.'

Without wailing for their permission, which she didn't need anyway, she pulled the U Mich sweatshirt over her head, revealing fat red suspenders and a flimsy white cotton T-shirt. She was not wearing a bra under the T-shirt. She smiled modestly.

'You say this was around one-thirty?' Carella said. 'When you came into the apartment?'

'Yes,' Shirley said shyly. Now that she was half-naked, she was playing a novitiate nun at a cloister in the mountains of Switzerland. Her husband was still wearing a ski parka. He had begun to perspire visibly, but he did not take off the parka. Perhaps he figured he could inspire the detectives to cut this short if he did not remove the parka. Let them know he wanted to get the hell out of here, go take his walk in the park. Subtly hint to them that he didn't give a flying fuck about the baby who'd got snuffed in the apartment downstairs. Or her babysitter, either. What were they going to do about getting back his camel hair coat that had been bought at Ralph Lauren for eleven hundred bucks was what he wanted to know.

'And you say the burglar was in the bedroom, going out the window…'

'Yes. The robber,' Shirley said. 'With my VCR under his arm.'

'What did he look like?' Meyer asked. 'Did you get a good look at him?'

'Oh, yes,' Shirley said. 'He turned to look back at us.'

'As we came into the bedroom,' Unger said.

Carella had already taken out his pad.

'Was he white?' he asked. 'Black? Hispanic? Orient . . . ?'

'White.'

'How old?'

'Eighteen, nineteen.'

'Color of his hair?'

'Blond.'

'Eyes?'

'I don't know.'

'Neither do I.'

'How tall was he?'

'That's difficult to say. He was all hunched over, you know, going out the window onto the fire escape.'

'Can you guess at his weight?'

'He was very thin.'

'Well, he was wearing black,' Shirley said. 'Black makes a person look thinner.'

'Even so, he was thin,' Unger said.

'Was he clean-shaven? Or did he have a beard, a mustache . . . ?'

'A mustache.'

'A small mustache.'

'Well, a scraggly mustache. He was just a kid, you know.'

'Like it was just growing in.'

'You know the kind of mustache a kid has? Like fuzzy?"

'That's the kind of mustache this was.'

'When you say he was wearing black . . .'

'A black leather jacket,' Unger said.

'Black slacks.'

'And sneakers.'

'White sneakers.'

'And my coat,' Unger said.

'Your what?'

'My camel hair coat Shirley bought for me at Ralph Lauren for eleven hundred bucks.'

Must be some coat, Meyer thought.

Carella was thinking the same thing. The first car he'd owned had cost eleven hundred bucks.

'What color was the coat?' Meyer asked.

'I told you. Camel hair. Tan.'

'And he was wearing this over the black leather jacket . . .'

'Yes.'

'And the black slacks . . .'

'Yes, and the white sneakers.'

'Any hat?' Meyer asked.

'No.'

'Did you say anything to him?'

'Yes, I yelled "Take off my coat, you fucking crook!"'

'Did he say anything to you?'

'Yes.'

'What did he say?'

'He said, "If you call the cops, I'll come back!"'

'Very scary,' Shirley said.

'Because he was pointing a gun at us,' Unger said.

'He had a gun?' Carella said.

'Yeah, he pulled a gun out of his pocket.'

'Very scary,' Shirley said again.

'So I called the police right away,' Unger said, and nodded for emphasis.

'Do you think he'll be back?' Shirley asked.

Carella didn't know what she was playing now.

Maybe the expectant rape victim.

'I don't think so,' he said.

'Did Detective Willis examine that fire escape?' Meyer asked.

'Yes, he did.'

'Would you know if he found anything out there?'

'Nothing belonging to us, that's for sure,' Shirley said.

* * * *

Detective Hal Willis was in bed with a former hooker when the telephone rang at ten minutes past twelve that afternoon. He was sleeping soundly, but the phone woke him up and he grabbed for the receiver at once. Every time the phone rang, Willis thought the call would be from some police inspector in Buenos Aires, telling him they had traced a murder to the city here and were planning to extradite a woman named Marilyn Hollis. Every time the phone rang, even if he was asleep, Willis began sweating. He began sweating now.

Not many cops on the squad knew that Marilyn Hollis had done marijuana time in a Mexican prison or that she'd been a hooker in B.A. Willis knew, of course. Lieutenant Byrnes knew. And Carella knew. The only cop who knew that Marilyn had murdered her Argentine pimp was Willis.

'Willis,' he said.

'Hal, it's Steve.'

'Yes, Steve,' he said, relieved.

'You got a minute?'

'Sure.'

'This burglary you caught last night . . .'