"You noticed what she had on her feet?”
"Woman in shorts, a nice trim figure, you notice her legs and her feet.”
"Did she give you an address?”
"She did. Which is why I figured maybe Marilyn Monroe was her real name, after all. I mean, it a person's going to pick a phony name, why such a famous one?”
"That's right," Meyer said.
"Was what I figured.”
"Norma Something," Kling said. "I don't think so," Meyer said. "Also, she gave me a phone number.”
“Did she show you identification?”
"No. She said it was an heirloom she had to hock because she'd left her wallet in a taxi with a lot of money in it.”
"You believed her.”
"It could happen. This city, anything could happen. Besides, I was getting a twelve-thousand-dollar ring for three thousand.”
"Ever occur to you it might be stolen?”
"It occurred. It also occurred it might only be lost. People don't usually report lost items to the police. So if it wasn't reported, it wouldn't show up on any list, -am I right? And if it isn't on a list, then I don't know it's stolen goods and I'm still a bona fide purchaser for value. Was what I thought.”
"Can we have the address and phone number she gave you?”
"Sure. You going to take the ring, right?”
“We have to.”
“Sure.”
"We'll give you a receipt for it.”
"Sure," Schwartz said. "Sometimes I wish I wasn't so honest.”
"Jean Something?" Kling said.
river blunted the edge of the afternoon heat, promising eventual relief, perhaps even rain. Carella sat with his sister on a bench overlooking the distant water. Her twin daughters were on the playground equipment. Cynthia and Melinda, reduced to Cindy and Mindy, as Carella had dreaded would happen from the moment she named them. Her older daughter had fared better. Tess, modern and sleek, for Teresa, which conjured up cobblestoned streets in a mountaintop village in Potenza. Tess was supervising the twins now. Seven years old and looking after the little ones. Cindy and Mindy had been born on the twenty-eighth of July, eleven days after his father was killed. They reminded him of his own twins when they were small. It occurred to him that his sister was one of the few people in the world who knew him when he himself was small. Forty, he reminded himself. In October, you will be forty. "It was good of you to meet me," Angela said. "It's no trouble," he said.
It was four o'clock, and he was on his way home, but he'd have met his sister whenever, wherever, because he loved her to death. She had specified the park, it would be cooler than her apartment, she'd said.
We have to talk, she'd said. He waited now for her to begin. In his profession, he was skilled at waiting for people to begin talking.
"It finally looks as if it's going to be a clean break," she said.
She was talking about her divorce. Married for twelve years, and now a divorce. He would always remember the date of her wedding. He had rushed Teddy to the hospital directly from the reception, not Twelve years ago this past June. His twins had turned his sister, twelve on the twenty-second. And he would be forty face, he in October. Cut it out, he thought. It's not the end of come on, the world. Oh no? he thought, he knew "Tommy's moving to California. I think he met a going toi girl who lives out there, he's leaving at the end of the possibly month. It'll be better, Steve, I really think so. It's still "I painful, you know. I mean, whenever he comes by to drew pick up Tess and the twins, I remember what it used to have be like. It's painful, Steve. Divorce is painful?”
People who had twins never referred to them as “the kids" or "the children," they were always "the twins." He wondered what that must be like for twins a lot themselves, always to be referred to as half of a Steve whole, like a comedy team. The last time he'd seen his brother-in-law was when Tommy had told him he was entering a rehab program. That was after the marriage "His was shot, after he'd stolen and hocked virtually everything they'd owned, after he'd hit Angela with a '“
closed fist one night when she tried to stop him from taking the twins' silver teething rings that were a gift from Aunt Josie in Florida, Carella wanted to kill him.
So now he was moving to California, and Angela thought it would be for the best, which it. probably would but was that why she'd asked to meet him in the park at four o' clock in the afternoon? He waited.
He was very good at waiting.
"Steve," she said, and drew a deep breath. "Steve, honey, you're not going to like this.”
He knew at once what it was. And he knew he was not going to like It, ............... his sister, and when he saw the troubled look on her face, he wanted to take her in his arms and say, Hey, come on, Sis, this is me, how bad can it be, huh? But he knew how bad it could be, knew what she was going, to tell him, and wondered how he could possibly handle it.
"I know how you feel about Henry," she said, and drew another deep breath. "I know you think he could have sent Sonny Cole to prison, that somehow he screwed up ...”
"Angela ...”
"No, please, Steve, let me finish. I've talked to him a lot about the case, and he really did do his best, Steve, he really was surprised by some of the stuff the defense ...”
"He shouldn't have been surprised;' Carella said. "His job is not to be surprised. Sonny Cole killed Papa! And Lowell let him walk.”
"So did you, Steve," she said.
Which she shouldn't have thrown back at him because he'd been talking brother to sister when he'd told her about that night in a deserted hallway with only Sonny Cole and a black cop named Randall Wade who kept whispering "Do it" in his ear. He hadn't told that to anyone else in the world but his wife, and now Angela was throwing it back at him.
He had done what he'd thought was the right thing. If he had pulled the trigger on Sonny Cole that, night.." no, he couldn't have.
"I believe in the system," he said now.
"So do I.”
:--1 taougat me system ... "So did I. But Henry isn't the system. It was the system that let Cole walk after Henry did his best to put him away. You have to believe that, Steve.”
"Why should I?”
"Because we're moving in together.”
“Great," he said. "The man who ...”
“No.”
"Yes! He did screw up, Angela. That's why Sonny, Cole is still out there someplace ..." his arm going up now, his finger pointing out over the small hill above the park, his finger stabbing at the near distance ... "... maybe killing somebody else's father!”
From where Sonny lay on his belly on the grassy knoll overlooking the park below, he thought at first that Carella had spotted him and was pointing at him. He didn't know who the girl with him on the bench was, but all at once both of them were up on their feet and the girl was hugging him and Carella just stood there looking sort of helpless and foolish and then he ... There was something so familiar about the gesture. he brought his hand up and put it on top of the girl's head, just rested it on top of her head. Watching them, Sonny remembered a time long ago when he had a little sister who'd fallen down and skinned her knee and he'd put his big hand on top of her head just the way Carella was doing with the girl down there in the park, gentling her, soothing her, and he knew all at once that this girl was Carella's younger sister, same as Ginny had been his younger sister.
He didn't know why he was all at once trembling. He got to his feet, and looked once more down the grassy slope. Carella was taking his sister in his arms now, both of them standing there still as stone, crying maybe, Sonny couldn't tell. Crying maybe for the father he'd killed, maybe crying for him.
He ran off down the other side of the grassy slope, away from the scene below, looking for the green Honda where he'd parked it, thinking I got to do this soon, I got to do this fucking thing soon.