"Yes?" Priscilla said.
"He brought fish for the cat." "Who did?" Tony asked. "A tall blond person."
"His name wouldn't have been Eliot, would it?" Georgie asked shrewdly.
"I have no idea what his name was."
"But he brought fish to her apartment?" Tony said. "Fish. Yes."
"But didn't go in?"
"Well, actually, I don't really know. I was leaving for work when he knocked on her door. Svetlana answered, and he said.." mm, yeah, that's right, wait a minute. He did give her his name, but I don't remember it. It was something very foreign. He had a foreign accent."
"Russian?" Priscilla asked.
"I really don't know. He said he was here with the fish for Irina."
"For Irina. So he knew the cat's name. Which means he knew my grandmother, too. But he didn't go in? When she opened the door?"
"Well, in fact I really can't say. I was already starting down the stairs."
"What kind of fish?" Georgie asked. "I have no idea." "Where'd he get this fish?"
"Well, I would guess at the fish market, wouldn't you?"
"What fish market?" Priscilla asked.
"Where Svetlana went for the cat every morning."
"And where's that?" Priscilla asked, and held her breath.
"Let's try a timetable on this thing, okay?" Byrnes said. He was getting exasperated. He didn't like little
old ladies in faded mink coats smelling of fish shot with a gun stolen from a limo that had transfered: a fighting rooster uptown. He didn't like period. Turtles, canaries, dogs, cats, fish, cockroaches, whatever.
"Where do you want us to start, Pete?" Carella asked.
"The gun."
"Belongs to a man named Rodney Pratt. He Keeps it in the glove compartment of his limo. breaks down Thursday night, he takes it to the garage off the Majesta Bridge. Place called
Texaco. Forgets the gun in the glove box." "Okay, next."
"How do you know he's not the murderer?" Byrnes asked.
"We know," Hawes said, dismissing the very
"Gee, excuse me for fucking breathing!" Parker said.
"Next," Carella said, "they work on the car all Friday. One of the mechanics, guy named Santiago, borrows the car, quote unquote, to drive prize rooster uptown that night to a cockfight at Riverhead."
"Excuse me while I puke," Parker said. "Puke," Kling suggested.
"A fuckin bird in the backseat of a limo?" "So puke," Kling suggested again. "Santiago's bird loses. He finds the gun in the box, decides to shoot the winning bird, changes mind when the Four-Eight raids the place. He goes nearby after-hours joint called The Juice Bar..."
"I know that place," Brown said."... where this tall blond son of a bitch we're trying to find is meeting with a bookie named Bernie Himmel who tells him he's gonna be swimming with the fishes unless he pays him by Sunday morning the twenty grand he lost on the Cowboys-Steelers game."
"Swimming with the fishes," Hawes corrected. "What?"
"He stressed the word 'swimming." "
"I don't know what you mean."
"He told Schiavinato he'd be swimming with the fishes."
"As opposed to what?" Meyer said. "Dancing with them?"
"I'm only telling you what I heard."
"Let me hear the rest of the timetable," Byrnes said. "Okay. Saturday night, a quarter to twelve, we get a DOA at 1217 Lincoln Street, old lady named Svetlana Helder, turns out to be Svetlana Dyalovich, the famous concert pianist."
"I never heard of her," Parker said. "Two to the heart," Hawes said. "I saw that picture," Kling said. "Was that the name?" "I'm pretty sure."
"Next morning, around seven, we get a dead hooker in an alley on St. Sab's." "Any connection?" "None."
"Then why bring her up?"
"A policeman,s lot," Carella said, and shrugged.
"He also called them the blond guy's fish," said.
"I'm lost," Parker said.
"So am I," Byrnes said.
"Himmel. The bookie. Bernie the Banker. He then didn't have much to talk about after he mentioned
Schiavinato swimming with his little fishies."
"I'm still lost," Parker said.
"Yes, can you please tell us what the hell you are driving at?" Byrnes asked.
"His little fishies. Not the little fishies, but his fishies. Schiavinato's little fishies."
Everybody was looking at him.
Only Carella knew what he was saying.
"The cat," Carella said.
"Not the goddamn cat again," Byrnes said.
"She went out every morning to buy fresh fish for the cat."
"Where'd you say her apartment was?"
asked, suddenly catching on.
"1217 Lincoln."
"Simple," Parker said. "The Lincoln Street Market."
"Selling fish," Meyer said, nodding. "As opl swimming with them."
At eight-fifteen that morning, the Lincoln Street Fish Market was not quite as bustling as it had been between four and six A.M. when fish retailers from all over the city arrived in droves. As Priscilla and the boys pulled up in a taxi, only housewives and restaurant owners were examining the various catches of the day, all displayed enticingly on ice well, enticingly if you liked fish.
The market was a sprawling complex of indoor and outdoor stalls. On the sidewalk outside the high-windowed arching edifice fishmongers, wearing woolen gloves with the fingers cut off, woolen caps pulled down over their ears, and bloodstained white smocks over layers of sweaters, stood hawking their merchandise while potential customers picked over the fish as if they were inspecting diamonds for flaws.
It was a clear, cold, windy, sunny Monday morning. "Where do we start?" Georgie asked.
He was hoping to discourage her. He did not want her to meet the man who'd dropped off' that key to the bus terminal locker. He did not want her to learn that nobody had been in that locker except him and Tony here, who was backing away from the fish stalls as if his grandmother had cooked fish for him whenever he visited her on a Friday, which she had, and which he'd hated. He learned after her death that she'd hated fish, too. His mother, on the other hand, never had to cook
fish in her entire lifetime because the church changed its rules. His mother was a staunch Catholic practiced birth control and didn't believe in confession. Priscilla looked bewildered.
She had never been to this part of the city certainly never to a fish market here, had never seen much damn fish ever and could not imagine how could even hope to find a tall blond man among these men wearing hats and smocks and gloves. The bitter cold did not help.
Priscilla was wearing a mink, dark and soft supple in contrast to the ratty orange-brown coat her grandmother had been wearing when someone shot her. The fur afforded scant protection against the harsh wind blowing in over the river. Georgie and Tony wearing belted cloth coats and woolen mufflers, fedoras pulled down low on their foreheads, in their pockets, just like movie gangsters. wailing around them, the three walked the dockside blocks, studying the men behind each outdoor stalls and ice bins, searching for telltale sideburns at the rolled edges of ubiquitous woolen
At the end of twenty minutes of close scrutiny, were happy to be entering the long enclosed After the howling wind outside, even the indoor seemed welcoming, fishmongers touting and squid, sea bass and flounder, mackerel shrimp, sole and snapper. They were coming down center aisle, tall windows streaming wintry sunlight stalls of iced fish on either side of them, Georgie blowing on his hands, Tony wearing a pained look in memory of his grandmother, Priscilla holding
the collar of the mink closed with one hand because to tell the truth it was almost as cold inside here as it was outside, when all at once... Behind the stall on the right... Just ahead... They saw a hatless man with muddy blond hair... Standing some six feet two inches tall... Wearing a white smock over a blue coat and a red muffler... Bearing a marked resemblance to Robert Redford, and lifting a nice fat halibut off the ice to show to a female customer.