THE HALLS OF JUSTICE were somewhat less than thronged with judges eager to hand down rulings at three o’clock on this Christmas Eve, which also happened to be a Sunday. Most pickpockets, shoplifters, and daytime burglars had called it a day yesterday, packing it in at six o’clock, when all the stores closed. Most of the judges had done the two-step at around the same time, the Christian judges eager to get back to their homes and hearths so they could start the Yuletide festivities, the judges of other faiths heading to vacation spots where they could escape a holiday that excluded them so completely. Only skeleton crews manned the courtrooms. The entire Criminal Courts building resembled nothing so much as a marble mausoleum.
Abe Feinstein was the judge who read Carella’s petition for a search warrant. He was sixty-three years old, and he’d been a criminal court judge for twenty-three years now, having been appointed at the age of forty, which was relatively young for such a judgeship. He read the signed affidavit and then peered over the rims of his eyeglasses and the top of his bench, and said in a rather astonished voice, “You want a warrant to search the offices of the U.S.Treasury Department?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Because—if I’m reading this correctly—you wish to examine a list ofserial numbers …”
“Yes, sir.”
“… for hundred-dollar bills that you believe may have been used asransommoney in a kidnapping?”
He still sounded astonished.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Carella said.
“Which kidnapping would that have been, Detective?”
“I don’t know, sir. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“I must be missing something,” Feinstein said, and shook his head.
“Your Honor, a special agent named David A. Horne confiscated eight thousand dollars in hundred-dollar …”
“Hold it, hold it, where’s that on the affidavit?”
“Paragraph number three, Your Honor.”
“ ‘Upon personal knowledge and belief,’ ” Feinstein quoted, “ ‘and facts supplied to me by …’”
“Yes, Your Honor, by an ex-con named Wilbur Struthers, who burglarized the suspect money from the apartment of a woman now deceased, the victim of a homicide. That’s all in paragraph three, Your Honor.”
“Eaten bylions, does this say?”
“Yes, sir. At the Grover Park Zoo yesterday. But that wasn’t the cause of death. The woman was first stabbed with an ice pick.”
“I see that, yes.”
“In the head, Your Honor.”
“Yes. And you think her murder may be related to this kidnapping you mention?”
“Yes, Your Honor, I do.”
“But you don’t know anything about this kidnapping?”
“Only what Struthers reported to me.”
“Does he seem reliable?”
“As reliable as any thief can be, Your Honor.”
“Have you contacted the Secret Service?”
“I spoke personally to Special Agent Horne, yes, Your Honor.”
“And what did he have to say?”
“He advised me to leave it alone.”
“Any idea why he would have made such a suggestion?”
“He told me the case was classified, sir.”
“I see. And you’re asking for a search warrant that would invade this confidentiality, is that it?”
“A woman was murdered, Your Honor. An ice pick …”
“I have no idea what this kidnapping case is about—and neither do you, I might add. Which means you don’t have probable cause, Detective. If the Secret Service has deemed its case classified, I’m not going to allow you to poke around confidential documents. Take Horne’s advice, Detective. Leave it alone. Petition denied.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Carella said.
“Merry Christmas,” Feinstein said.
OLLIE WEEKS CALLED the offices of Wadsworth and Dodds at four that afternoon. He got a message telling him the firm was closed for the holidays and would not reopen until Tuesday morning, December 26.
He figured he was the only person working in this fucking city, so he went home.
5 .
SO THIS IS WHAT the family has turned out to be, Carella thought.
This is what this family has become on this Christmas Day in the new millennium.
There’s still me and Teddy, thank God, and the twins, thank God again, although he didn’t appreciate the fact that they were slowly inching their way toward puberty. Before he knew it, Mark would be readingPenthouse and April would be dating seniors, and he and Teddy would be in wheelchairs in a nursing home. Forty years old, he thought. Jesus. Where did it all go so soon?
There was his sister Angela, too, of course, with her own twins— they ran in the family—and their older sister. Tess was eight, the twins four, all three far distant from puberty. Angela had named the twins Cynthia and Melinda, and then had begun calling them Cindy and Mindy, as if they were a tap-dancing team in Vegas, shame on you, Sis, even though their father had insisted they be called Cynthia and Melinda as originally planned, a noble thought.
Tommy wasn’t here this Christmas, the little girls’ father was God-knew-where on this bright cold afternoon as everyone was called to dinner, or lunch, or whatever it was at two in the afternoon. Tommy Giordano wasn’t here today because he and Angela were divorced now—but not because he’d insisted on calling his daughters by their true and proper names. Tommy Giordano had been caught having a love affair, was still having a love affair, but the lady in question wasn’t a lady at all, although she was often called that. Tommy Giordano was having a love affair with cocaine. He had tried psychiatric help, had tried rehabilitation, had tried every damn thing he and the family could think of, but he was hooked through the bag and back again, and nothing had worked. The marriage had fallen apart when Angela just couldn’t take it any longer. Tommy was still snorting the Devil’s Dandruff,wherever he was— the last time they’d heard it was Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In Tommy’s place today was an assistant district attorney named Henry Lowell, who had received his undergraduate degree from Duke, his law degree from Harvard, and a smattering of lesser education from Oxford University, or so the precinct locker-room jive maintained. Lowell had been with the D.A.’s Office for almost five years now. In that time, he had racked up thirty-eight convictions, an impressive record, four of them on murder cases. The only murder case he’d ever lost, in fact, was the one he’d prosecuted against the man who’d killed Carella’s father.
Maybe this was why Carella didn’t like him too much.
Gee.
What Carella couldn’t understand was why hissister was sleeping with the son of a bitch, and bringing him around to his mother’s house on every goddamn holiday that came along. That was what Carella couldn’t understand, but maybe he was just old-fashioned. Maybe he thought real life here in the big bad city wasn’t the same thing as Greek tragedy where you slept with your father’s murderer or ate your own children. Given that the murderer had finally been gunned down by Carella himself or maybe Brown, who’d been standing by his side and firing at the same time …