“David Horne, please,” he said.
“Who’s this?”
“Detective Steve Carella, Eighty-seventh Squad.”
“This is David Horne.”
“Mr. Horne, we’re investigating a homicide here, woman named Cassandra Jean Ridley …”
“Yes?”
“… whom we’ve linked to a man named Wilbur Struthers …”
“Yes?”
“Did three and a third at Castleview on a burglary fall …”
“Yes, I know the man. I questioned him about some suspect hundred-dollar bills.”
“Related to a kidnapping,” Carella said, nodding.
There was a silence on the line.
“Can you tell me which kidnapping that was?” Carella asked.
“No, I’m afraid that’s classified information,” Horne said.
“Even to a fellow law enforcement officer?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“This is a homicide, you know.”
“So you told me.”
“Well, can you at least tell me how it worked out?”
“How what worked out?”
“The questioning.”
“I confiscated eight thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, checked the serial numbers against our list, and came up negative. I returned the bills to Mr. Struthers that very same day. End of story.”
“Which list would that be? That you checked the bills against?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified, too.”
“Who was kidnapped, Mr. Horne? Can you tell me that?”
“Classified.”
“If I showed you the bills we recovered in the victim’s apartment, could you tell me if they’re the same ones you checked against this mysterious list of yours?”
“Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice, Detective Coppola?”
“It’s Carella.”
“Oh, forgive me. But this is Christmas Eve, you know …”
“Yes, I know that.”
“And I’m home here with my family. If you can …”
“Gee,I’mstill here at the office,” Carella said.
“That’s admirable, I’m sure. Call me on Tuesday, okay? Perhaps we can talk then.”
“Mr. Horne, the victim won’tever be talking again.”
“That’s unfortunate. But I’m certain our separate cases aren’t at all linked.”
“Then why were the serial numbers on her money being checked against bills paid in ransom, isn’t that what you said?”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
“Then it’s what Struthers told me.”
“A man with a criminal record.”
Carella could almost hear the dismissive shrug.
“He seemed to be telling the truth,” Carella said.
“Be that as it may.”
“Mr. Horne, I’m trying to find out who …”
“It’s Special Agent Horne, by the way.”
“Oh, forgive me. But somebody tossed a woman to the lions the other day …”
“Is that a metaphor, Detective?”
“I wish. We’re trying to find out who. Any help you can give us …”
“I have no help to offer. Our case is, as I said, classified. Besides, the bills we checked have nothing to do with that woman’s death.”
“How do you know that?”
“I feel certain they’re unrelated.”
“Then why were you checking them?”
“Detective …”
“Please don’t sound so annoyed,” Carella said.
He wanted to say, Don’t sound so fucking annoyed, okay, Mr. Special Agent Horne?
“I can subpoena those serial numbers,” he said.
“You’d never get a court order.”
“Why not?”
“Detective,” Horne said, and paused. “Let it go, okay? Leave it alone.”
“Sure,” Carella said, and hung up.
He had no intention of leaving it alone.
CLARA HOSKINS , as it turned out, was Jerome Hoskins’wife. On the phone, Ollie told her he was investigating something or other …
Actually, he mumbled the words “identification process” so that they were unintelligible, a bullshit ploy that did nothing to quell Mrs. Hoskins’ curiosity.
“You’re investigatingwhat?” she asked.
“Routine matter,” he said. “Better to discuss it in person. Okay to come out there, Mrs. Hoskins?”
“Well, all right, I guess,” she said. “But you’d better have identification.”
The drive to Calm’s Point took him half an hour from the North Side of the city to the bridge and over it into a community only recently reclaimed from urban decay. Hillside Commons consisted of low-rise tenements which had been inhabited by runaway hippies during the Sixties and Seventies, immigrant Hispanics in the early Eighties, Koreans in the Nineties, and now—here in the bright new millennium—upwardly mobile Yuppies yearning for a glimpse of the distant towers across the River Dix. The way Ollie looked at it, all those former immigrant residents could move right next door to Hillside Heights, where there were still street gangs and dope pushers and prostitutes and all the other amenities they were used to. Not that he liked the fuckin preppie Yuppies, either, but if an individual couldn’t speak the fucking language, he had no right living in a nice neighborhood.
Clara Hoskins spoke the language just fine.
She would not open the door until Ollie had flashed both his ID card and his gold detective’s shield, and then she unlocked two locks and took off a security chain before letting him in. She was a blonde in her early forties, Ollie guessed, dressed in tailored gray slacks and a tight red sweater with a little Santa Claus pin over the left breast. Five-seven, five-eight, he supposed, good-looking woman except for the suspicious blue eyes and the frown. She led him into the living room, where a Christmas tree was ablaze with light in one corner of the room. There was the scent of greenery all over the apartment, in fact. All the place needed was a log burning on the hearth, but this was the city, and only cannel coal was allowed, and not even that was in evidence.
“Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, figuring he’d get straight to the point, “I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”
“Oh Jesus,” she said.
“Your husband is dead, ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you this way.”
“Oh Jesus,” she said again.
They all reacted in different ways. Some of them burst into tears, some of them staggered around the room like drunks, some of them looked as if they’d been hit by a locomotive, some of them couldn’t speak for ten, fifteen minutes, some of them denied it, told you you’d made a mistake, or this was all a horrible joke, anything to get away from the fact that the Grim Reaper had come to the door and knocked on it and found somebody home. Clara Hoskins just stood there staring at him.