"What's that got to do with how much money we earn? How much money do you earn, okay?”
"Did she mention any threatening telephone calls or letters?”
"No.”
"Would you know if she owed money to anyone?”
“Yes," Jenna said. "She owed me a buck seventy five for bus fare. Her transit card gave out, so I ran her through on mine.”
Later Rene told her mother that the shvartzeh had grilled her like a common criminal.
"It's what we get," her mother said.
Jenna later asked her boyfriend, who was a lawyer, if she could sue Carella for treating her like a common streetwalker.
"How Were you sitting?" her boyfriend asked.
6.
Cookie Boy never went for the big score. He figured that was for amateurs. Everybody was in the business for money, sure, but amateurs were also in it for the glamour and the thrill, the goddamn glory.
Amateurs thought of themselves as movie stars. Get past security in a luxury high-rise overlooking the park, pick the lock on the door, crack the safe behind the framed Rembrandt on the wall, walk off with a fortune. Thank you, thank you, this is an honor. I also want to thank my mother, my drama coach, and my police dog. Amateurs.
America was a nation of lucky amateurs.
Cookie Boy never even thought of the big score. He'd see a lady in a sable coat that dusted her ankles, strutting out of a luxury building, doorman whistling for a cab, holding an umbrella for her, whisking her inside the taxi, Cookie Boy walked right on by. Sure, you managed to get in her pad you'd find a couple more furs, loads of diamonds, priceless artwork, whatever. Which you had to get out with, don't forget. Even if you got past security once, going in, you still had to get past them a second time, going out. Not only going out, but going out with a shitpot full of stolen goods, try explaining that to the members of the Academy, thank you all, I love you all so very much, this is such a great honor.
What Cookie Boy had learned early on in his career was that even poor people had treasures. Whether it was a locket that used to be Grandma's they kept in a candy tin, or five hundred bucks hidden in the bottom rail of a Venetian blind, everybody had something. Well, not everybody. He didn't go into tenement apartments in Diamondback, for example, where he wouldn't find any thing but cockroaches and empty crack vials.
Cookie Boy chose to walk the middle ground. He considered himself a moderate.
He knew there were people in the profession who felt that if you were going to take the chance of going in at all, then you I might as well go for the big one. You were looking at the same time whether you walked off with Grandma's locket or the rich lady's sable. It was all burglary. Well, there were different degrees of burglary, depending on whether you went in armed he never went in armed, that was foolish or whether it was the daytime or the nighttime or whether it was a dwelling or a place of business, or whether the place was occupied at the time or not. All of these factors determined how long you could stay in prison, where Cookie Boy had never been, and where he never intended to go, thank you very much.
But the amateur thinking went: If you're looking at five, ten, twenty, whatever, depending on the particular circumstances, God forbid you should kill somebody during the commission, which made it a felony murder and you were looking at the long one, baby But the amateur thinking went: Suppose you were looking at ten in the slammer, that wasn't going to change no matter what you stole, the price of admission was ten in the slammer, got it? You wanted to play, you had to understand you were looking at ten down the line if you got caught.
Cookie Boy never intended to get caught.
First of all because he didn't go after the really big scores, that was for amateurs. Second because he was content with the smaller hits, didn't go around grumbling or complaining, didn't tell bartenders he coulda been a contend uh didn't let it bother him that he went home with three, four grand a week instead of five hundred thou. on a single hit. Cookie Boy was living well and enjoying himself besides.
And every now and then, he'd pop a crib and lo and behold he'd discover a red-fox jacket and a candy tin full of all kinds of baubles and beads. He'd fence the jacket for five hundred and the jewelry for a thou, which gave him a fifteen-hundred-dollar profit for jimmying a window and spending twenty minutes in an apartment.
Sometimes you went in and you found a shithole, what could you do? You could tell at a glance you wouldn't find anything of value in such an apartment,. but you tossed it fast, anyway, so it shouldn't be a total loss, and you got out as fast as you came in, no sense looking at time for no reason at all, risks were for amateurs. Never mind leaving any cookies, either, thanks for nothing, lady!
What he tried to do was find a well-kept building in a low-crime area, didn't have to be silk stocking. Just your average middle-class neighborhood where you'd find buildings without doormen, some of them walk-ups without elevators, it didn't matter. You were looking for something without security. You walked the neighborhood three or four times, got the feel of it, looked for steps leading down to the backyards, made a few trips behind the buildings. Anybody questioned you, you told them you were a "city inspector," checking "ordinances," and you moved on to another block. If you took no risks, you spent no time upstate. The backyards were another world.
It was like being inside a piece of modern sculpture back there, a fantastic universe of flapping clotheslines and telephone poles and fire escapes and soot-stained brick and blue sky overhead, all crazy angles, wood and iron and concrete against the soft billowing curves of laundry drying. Another world. Music coming from open windows, television voices blending with real voices, toilets flushing, cooking smells floating out over fences and walls, a private world back here, hidden from the street. Exciting, too, in a way that had nothing to do with risk. Exciting because it was an intimate glimpse. Like catching sight of a girl's panties when she crossed her legs.
In the summertime, you avoided any apartment where a window was open.
This usually meant somebody was home trolling for a breath of flesh air. An occupied apafftment was the one thing on earth you did not desire, unless you were an amateur who got his kicks scaring sick old ladies in bed. Apartments with air conditioners were tricky because all the windows had to be kept closed, and you couldn't tell if anyone was in there or not. So you looked for an apartment with closed windows and fire-escape access, and then you took your chances. Went up, listened outside, you could usually tell if anybody was home or not. Lots of windows were closed but unlocked; people got careless, even in a city like this one. If the window was locked, you jimmied it. If the lock was painted shut, you used a glass cutter, though in such cases it was usually best to meander on by and look for another score. You dropped a piece of glass, the noise of it shattering was the best burglar alarm in the world. Once you had the window open, you took a deep breath and went in.
The apartment he'd chosen today was on the third floor of one of those white-brick buildings that had been all the rage a few decades back.
Once they got covered with all the filth and grime of the city, they didn't look so hot anymore, and landlords discovered they cost a fortune to clean, so they just let them revert to the jungle. Some of these buildings still had doormen, but not the one he'd chosen. This one was sandwiched between two red-brick walkups. He preferred a building with access to structures on either side, rather than a corner one. When there were adjoining buildings, if ever push came to shove you had rooftop escape routes.
The backyard here was uncommonly still this afternoon.
He thought at first something might be wrong, everything so still. The way a forest went suddenly still whenever a predator approached. He stood in the tunnel leading from the steps into the yard itself, garbage cans already in for the night at three-thirty in y the afternoon, lined the walls of the tunnel, up along faint, whiff of garbage here, everything so still. He waited.