'You think that's connected, huh?' Brown said.
'Had to be,' Carella said.
'You get a make on him?'
'Nothing.'
'What you got here,' Parker said, turning from the window, 'is a two-bit courier who gave you a story so you'd put some blues on him, and you fell for it hook, line and sinker. So now he disappears, and you're surprised.'
'He told me a big buy was coming down, Andy.'
'Sure, when?'
'Next Monday night.'
'Where?'
'He didn't know where yet.'
'Sure, you know when he's gonna know? Never is when he's gonna know. 'Cause there ain't no buy. He conned you into laying some badges on him till the heat cooled, Artie's right. Now he don't need you anymore, it's goodbye and good luck.'
'Maybe,' Kling said.
'Why would he have lied?' Byrnes asked.
'To get the blue muscle,' Parker said.
'Then why didn't he lie bigger?' Carella said.
'What do you mean?'
'Give Bert the time, the place, the works. Why the slow tease?'
The room went silent.
'Which is why I figure he's really trying to find out,' Kling said.
'Why?' Parker said.
'So we can make the bust.'
'Why?' Parker said.
'So we'll put away the people who tried to kill him.'
Parker shrugged.
'That's a reason,' Byrnes said.
'Bust up the posse,' Brown said.
'Herrera walks away safe,' Meyer said.
'But something's missing,' Carella said. 'Why'd they want him dead in the first place?'
'Ah-ha,' Parker said.
The men looked at each other. Nobody seemed to know the answer.
'So what's next?' Parker asked. 'I want to go home.'
Brown scowled at him.
'You're scaring me to death, Artie,' Parker said. 'Can we get on with this, Loot?'
Byrnes scowled at him, too.
Parker sighed like a saint with arrows in him.
'This double on New Year's Eve,' Carella said. 'The baby's mother was killed Monday night, in Seattle. It may be linked, we don't know. I'll be seeing her sister later today.'
'The sister lives here?' Byrnes asked.
'Yeah. In Calm's Point.'
'They're originally from Seattle,' Meyer explained.
'So have you got any meat at all?' Parker asked impatiently.
'Not yet. According to the timetable . . .'
'Yeah, yeah, timetables,' Parker said, dismissing them as worthless.
'Let him talk,' Willis said.
'You get six different timetables from six different people,' Parker said. 'Makes it look like the person got killed six different times of day.'
'Just let the man talk,' Willis said.
'It's ten after four already,' Parker said.
'The way we've got it,' Carella said, 'the sitter was still alive at twelve-thirty in the morning. The parents got home at two-thirty and found her and the baby dead. The father had been drinking, but he was cold sober when we got there.'
'The girl was raped and stabbed,' Meyer said.
'The baby was smothered with a pillow,' Carella said.
'What was it in Seattle?' Brown asked.
'A gun.'
'Mmm.
'How do you know she was still alive at twelve-thirty?' Kling asked.
'You want to look at this?' Carella said, and handed him the timetable he and Meyer had worked up.
'Twelve-twenty a.m.,' Kling said, reading out loud. 'Harry Flynn calls to wish Annie a happy new year.'
'The sitter's father?' Willis asked.
'Yeah,' Meyer said.
'Twelve-thirty a.m.,' Kling read. 'Peter Hodding calls to check on the baby . . .'
'Peter who? Parker said.
"The baby's father.'
'His name is Peter Hard-On?
'Hodding.'
'How would you like to go through life with a name like Peter Hard-On?' Parker asked, laughing.
'He tells the sitter they'll be home in a little while, asks if everything's okay.'
'Peter Hard-On,' Parker said, still laughing.
'Was everything okay?' Byrnes asked.
'According to Hodding, she sounded fine.'
'No strain, no forced conversation, nobody there with her?'
'He said she sounded natural.'
'And this was at twelve-thirty, huh?' Willis asked.
'Yeah. According to Hodding.'
'Who'd had a little to drink, huh?' Brown said.
'Well, a lot to drink, actually,' Meyer said.
'So there's your problem,' Parker said. 'One end of your timetable is based on what a fuckin' drunk told you.'
Carella looked at him.
'Am I right?' he asked.
'Maybe,' Carella said.
'So can we go home now?'
* * * *
It broke her heart sometimes, this city.
On a day like today, with the storm clouds beginning to gather over the river, gray and rolling in over the gray rolling water, the certain smell of snow on the air ...
On a day like today, she remembered being a little girl in this city.
Remembered the playground this city had been, winter, summer, spring and fall. The street games changing with the changing seasons. A children's camp all year round. In the wintertime, on a day like today, all the kids would do their little magic dance in the street, praying that the snow would come soon, praying there'd be no school tomorrow, there'd be snow forts instead and snowball fights, the girls shrieking in terror and glee as the boys chased them through narrow canyons turned suddenly white. Eileen giggling, her cheeks red, her eyes flashing, bundled in a heavy parka, a woolen pom-pommed hat pulled down over her ears, her red hair tucked up under it because she was ashamed of her hair back then, made her look too Irish, whatever that was, too much the Mick, her mother used to say, We're American, you know, we didn't just get off the boat.
She loved this city.
For what it had inspired in her.
The need to compete, the need to excel in order to survive, acity of gutter rats, her father had said with pride in his voice. Michael Burke. They called him Pops on the beat, because his hair was prematurely white, he'd looked like his own grandfather when he was still only twenty-six. Pops Burke. Shot to death when she was still a little girl. A liquor store-holdup. The Commissioner had come to his funeral. He told Eileen her father was a very brave man. They gave her mother a folded American flag.