"What's that?" Brown asked.
"The drowning," Fames said.
On television that night, the Chief of Detectives said there was no way his officers could have known beforehand that the man in that apartment was not the Leslie Blyden they were looking for. They could not understand why the man in the apartment had come at them with a knife.
The man had no reason to behave so irrationally. They had announced themselves as police. He knew they were police. They had asked him to identify himself. What had got into the fellow? "My four detectives all acted within the guidelines," he told the estimated four million people watching the eleven o'clock news. "They had a No-Knock warrant backed by probable cause. They had good reason to believe a burglar who had murdered two people was in that apartment.
They went in with service pistols drawn because there was the distinct possibility that the man who'd already shot two people might be armed and dangerous on this occasion as well. They opened fire because the suspect had come at one of the detectives with a knife in his hand, was in fact ready to plunge that knife into the officer's chest if they hadn't taken preventive action when they did.”
The Chief of Detectives told the anchorman that in spite of all this there would be a thorough investigation.
Meanwhile, The Cookie Boy was still out there.
12.
The girl's name was Tirana Hobbs and she told Ollie Weeks she'd never seen this Sonny character before Friday night, hadn't seen him since, and didn't care to see him ever again, thanks. So what was this all about? "Owner of the Siesta says you were sitting with Sonny Cole, is his full name, and a person named Julian Judell on Friday night, must've been around ten, ten-thirty, is that correct?”
"I just told you that's the first and onliest time I ever seed the man.”
They were in the Diamondback apartment the girl shared with her mother and her two younger brothers. The brothers were still asleep in one of the rooms at the rear. Mama was in church. The girl was wearing a red robe over cotton pajamas. No makeup. Frizzed blonde hair looking like straw that had got hit by lightning. They were sitting at an enamel-topped table in a window open to the backyard. It was a bright hot sunny Sunday, and church bells were calling to the faithful and anyone else who cared to enjoy their mellifluent clamor.
"How about Judell? He goes by Juju. What was your relationship with him?”
"Relationship? What kind of relationship ? I met him ten minutes before I met the other guy. What'd the two of them do, anyway?”
'tOne of them got hlrriseil killed," Ollie said, trying to look sorrowful, the way television newscasters do when they're reporting a tragedy they don't give a damn about. Ah yes, the bullshit of it all, he thought in his best W. C. Fields mode. "I was wondering did him and Sonny say where they might be going when they left the club?”
"For a walk.”
"A walk where?”
"Couldn't be far cause they said they'd be back in a few minutes)' "Way I understand it," Ollie said, "Sonny came back about twenty minutes later, looking for you.”
“I don't know nothing about that.”
"Owner told him you were gone.”
“Then I guess I must've been.”
"What time did they leave for their little walk, would you remember?”
“I got no idea)' "Ten-thirty? Around then?”
“I didn't look at my watch.”
"Did Juju mention some hot babe he was going to meet?”
"No, all Juju did was put the moves on me.”
"So you didn't get the impression they were leaving there to meet some woman.”
"No, Sonny said there were a few things him and Juju should talk about if he had a minute. That's what prompted him to say they should take a walk)' "Sonny?”
"No, was Juju who suggested it. Sonny was the one said it wouldn't take but a few minutes.”
"Okay, thanks a lot, miss," Ollie said. For nothing, he thought.
This could have been Santo Domingo on any given day of the week. The women dressed in their church finery, the men looking slender and sleek and clean-shaven, the people out for a Sunday morning stroll, the sun shining brightly overhead. Almost made you forget for a minute that this was one of the shittiest parts of the city, rife with drugs and teeming with people itching to get the hell out of here the minute they made enough money to go back home and start a little business or so Ollie conjectured. He'd probably have been surprised to learn that as many immigrants from Ireland went back home as did immigrants from the Dominican Republic. The Irish simply looked more American. But to Ollie, looks were ninety percent of the argument.
He figured the only route Sonny and Juju could have taken on Friday night was straight down to the river. Two black guys might've been mistaken for spies in this neighborhood, but only if they kept their mouths shut. Miracle was that they'd been in a Dominican club to begin with, but that's where the ass was, Ollie supposed. He automatically figured Tirana Hobbs was a bleached blonde black hooker peddling her wares to any spic came along. He didn't know she was a manicurist, and he wouldn't have believed her if she'd told him so. The nice thing about Ollie's beliefs was that they were unshakable.
So he guessed the two black gents out for a friendly little walk wouldn't have stopped in any local bar to sample the beer or the broads because Friday night could turn suddenly mean and dangerous in this neighborhood unless you were in a social club like the Siesta, where apparently Juju was well-known, according to the owner. Who'd also volunteered that he suspected Juju had connections with the drug people here in Hightown, though he didn't suggest which drug people, of whom there were only thousands. Ollie figured he was sucking up because he had a brother in jail or a sister in rehab. Around here, nobody offered information unless they were plea-bargaining. The man did not, however, mention that Juju was also a pimp who probably ran girls out of his little old Club Siesta here.
Kept that bit of information strictly to himself, lest a padlock appear on his front door one fine night.
So if Sonny and Juju were walking to a quiet place where they could talk, why not down to the river? Have a seat on the rocks in the shadow of the bridge, discuss this pressing matter that was on Sonny's mind. Not a bad surmise, ah yes, considering the fact that Juju's body with his face all gone had been found nudging the pilings under the dock on Hector Street, not too terribly far down river.
Ollie took a stroll down to the river himself, not expecting to find anything there, and not disappointed when he didn't. His thinking, of course, was good riddance to bad rubbish, a black dope-dealer pimp, who gave a shit? But it irked him that Sonny Cole was out there thinking the cops couldn't reach him. Bothered him further when he remembered that this was the guy Blue Wisdom said had put away Carella's father, which made it nice if Ollie could run into him in a dark alley some night and repay the favor.
Thing was, first he had to find him.
Sal Roselli all at once remembered that the guy who ran The Last Stand had fallen into the water dead drunk the very night they ended their engagement there.
"We didn't learn that until we were already up in Calusa," he said.
"That he'd fallen into the river behind the club ...”
“Yeah.”