"Yes, we have," Carella said. "This would've been in February sometime, is that it? When you met Mary?”
"February, March, along about then.”
i-/ow o ten did you see her?”
"We got together for dinner every three weeks or so. Usually she came here, sometimes we met in the city.”
"According to this," Brown said, consulting Mary's calendar, "she was here at the convent on the eleventh. That would've been a Tuesday night. She has you listed for six-thirty.”
"Yes, that's when we have supper here at the convent. Right after vespers. The evening prayer. You have to understand ... this will sound terrible, I know, but, well, I'm sorry, but it's the way it is.
You see, we take vows of poverty, charity, and obedience. We are poor, we don't simply pretend to be poor. So whenever Mary came here for supper ... well ... it was an extra mouth to feed, you see. We have a budget, too. So she chipped in for the meal. And we gratefully accepted whatever she could offer. What ever her budget would allow.”
"How about when you went out to eat together?”
“Oh, we never went to anyplace fancy. You'd be surprised how many inexpensive little places there are in the city. We usually had pasta and a salad, a glass of wine. There are places that will let you sit and talk. We knew a lot of them," she said, her eyes twinkling as if she were in possession of a state secret. "And in the spring and summer months, we'd walk. It was a gorgeous spring this year. There are a lot of very poor people in this city, you know. And not many of them had a choice in the matter. We chose this life. You must never forget that.”
"When you say she was upset about her budget ...”
"Well, yes.”
"Was that why she came to see you?”
"Yes. I mean, we were good friends, she also wanted to spend some time with me and the other sisters. But the budget was on her mind, yes.”
"Did you talk about anything but her budget that night?" Brown asked.
"It was on her mind," Felicia said. "That's what we talked about mostly.”
"Just you and Mary? Or did the other sisters join in?”
"Just the two of us.”
"And you say she was upset.”
"Yes." , "Only about the budget?”
"That's all she told me about.”
"Did she mention receiving a letter from anyone?”
Carella asked.
"No.”
"Did she mention some kind of decision she'd made a few weeks ago?”
"No.”
"You just talked about her budget.”
"Mostly. The difficulty she was having making ends meet. The trouble she was having with the vow.”
“Of poverty, do you mean?”
"Of poverty, yes. I'm not sure why it should suddenly have been such a burden. She'd been a nun for ...”
"Did she owe anyone money?" Brown asked. "No. Well, I'm sure she didn't.”
“How can you be sure?”
I'm sorry, but such a thing would never occur to “
me.
"She didn't drink, did she?”
"Not to excess, no. No. Of course not.”
“Hadn't developed any bad habits, had she?”
“Is that a pun, Detective?”
“Huh? Oh. No. I'm talking about bad habits like gambling or dope, your everyday bad habits.”
The room went silent.
"She was a nun, you know," Felicia said. "We have to ask," Brown said.
"Do you?”
She looked up at the wall clock. Brown figured he'd blown it. He waited for Carella to ask the next question. Carella was thinking he'd have a tough time pulling this one out of the fire. Felicia looked up at the wall clock again. He decided to bite the bullet, what the hell.
"How much was she living on?" he asked. "Would you know?”
"She got by.”
"But she complained.”
"Only to me. I was her closest friend. You can't complain to God, gentlemen, but you can complain to friends. I told her she should have been used to it by now, what did she think poverty meant, champagne and caviar? I told her I could understand this if she'd just entered the order. But six years ? Why did she take her final vows if she still had doubts? Why did she accept the gold ring of profession ... ?”
"Did she say she had doubts?”
"No, she simply said it was very difficult.”
"All at once.”
"I don't know if it was all at once. Maybe she'd been thinking about it for some time. This was the first I'd heard of it.”
"But you said you often talked about money matters?”
"There is not a nun on earth who doesn't talk about money matters?”
"Had she ever complained about money matters before?”
"Never.”
"Why now?" Carella asked.
"I don't know why. A nun for six years," Felicia said, shaking her head. "Entered the order straight from college. Brown University, I think. So all of a sudden she hasn't got enough money to spend? Can you understand that? I certainly can't.”
There had been mention of him last night on the eleven o clock news, but he didn't like them referring to him as The Cookie Boy, which made him sound like some kind of fat little Pillsbury Doughboy you poked your finger in his belly and he giggled. He was not only a grown man twenty-seven years old but he was also tall and slender and quite good-looking if he said so himself. A skilled burglar besides. A professional burglar, mind you, who'd been entering apartments unobtrusively since he was twenty-two when he'd been discharged from the armed forces of the United States of America, in which he'd served honorably and nobly, go ask Mom. Not a single arrest in five years, eitheclass="underline" ' and never hoped to get busted, thank you very much.
The Cookie Boy.
Didn't like that name at all.
Sort of diminished the whole point of what he was doing. Demeaned it somehow. This wasn't some kind of dumb gimmick, this was a genuine attempt to transmute victims he hated that word, into honest-to-God recipients. He was trying to create some sort of exchange here. No hard feelings, you understand? I know I've been in your apartment, I know I've taken with me some of your precious belongings, once very near and dear to you, but, alas, now gone. I want you to understand, however, that no malice was intended. This is what I do for a living, in much the same way that you're a stockbroker or a nurse, a lawyer or a waitress. I am a burglar, and I want you to respect what I do, just as I respect what you do, just as I've shown respect for all your possessions while inside your apartment. I haven't thrown things all over the floor, I haven't left any kind of mess here, have I? I've left the place just the way I found it, except for taking a few things with me. And in return, because I truly don't want you harboring any feelings of resentment or anger, I leave you these chocolate chip cookies I baked myself. Not as payment for your goods, I don't want you to misinterpret the gesture. This is not an act of commerce.
Rather, I think of it as an exchange of gifts. I thank you for your belongings, and I humbly offer this gift of my own, these delicious chocolate chip cookies baked by yours truly, from my own recipe, and offered with all my love. Low fat, no less.
The windows were wide open because it was another hot morning he did all his baking in the morning and he was preheating the oven to three hundred and seventy-five degrees. Whenever he baked, which was every day except Sunday, he imagined people all over the neighborhood poking their heads out of similarly opened windows to sniff in the good, sweet aroma of his cookies wafting out on the still summer air. All of his ingredients were laid out on the kitchen table, his sugars and his margarine, his flour and baking soda, his vanilla and salt, his egg white and his chocolate chips. The oven was almost ready. He began mixing.
First the half cup of granulated sugar and next the quarter cup of brown sugar. Then the quarter cup of softened margarine and the teaspoon of vanilla. All in a large bowl, mixed with a wooden spoon, his hand moving in circles, a smile on his face, oh how he loved doing this! Now he stirred in a cup of flour and a quarter teaspoon of salt, and then he dropped in his semisweet chocolate chips, a half cup of them, dribbling them in bit by bit, watching them fall like punctuation marks into the white mix, stirring them in, sniffing the air, smiling, opening the oven and feeling the good heat on his face, oh my. Onto an ungreased cookie sheet, he dropped his teaspoon-size bits of dough, spacing them about two inches apart, and then sliding the sheet into the oven, and setting the timer for ten minutes. The recipe was good for about fifty cookies.