“See the refrigerator?” Avery asked.
“Yes?”
“Open the door, Steve.”
Carella opened the door.
“The fridge doesn’t work, Steve,” Avery said. “No electricity in the building. I hope you didn’t bring us hot money.”
He sounded almost jovial now. Big joke here, the son of a bitch. Slits a dog’s throat, rats running all over the place, he jokes about hot money.
“What do you want me to do here?” Carella asked.
“You sound peeved, Steve.”
Carella said nothing.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What did you ask?”
“Is the money hot?”
“No.”
“I certainly hope it’s not marked or anything.”
“It’s not marked.”
“Because I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the girl.”
“It’s not marked. Just tell me what you want me to do, okay?”
“What’s he saying?” Loomis asked.
Carella shook his head.
“Put the dispatch case on one of the shelves, Steve.”
Carella slid the case onto the shelf under the ice cube compartment.
“Now close the door and hang up. When you’re outside the building, I’ll call again.”
Carella closed the refrigerator door, and hit the END button.
“Let’s go,” he told Loomis.
They stepped out into the hallway again. Everywhere around them, there was the sound of chittering little creatures in the near-dark, glittering little eyes suddenly disappearing as the rats turned and ran off. He remembered being a rookie, remembered other cops telling him about babies in their cribs getting their faces chewed to ribbons by rats. Moving slowly and cautiously, he scraped his feet along the floor, feeling his way toward the stairwell.
“Here it is,” he told Loomis.
With his right hand, he felt for the wall again. With his left foot, he reached out for the first stair tread, afraid he would step on a rat. Behind him, Loomis said, “He’s gone too far. Why’d he kill that dog?”
“To show us he’s serious,” Carella said.
“That wasn’t the deal.”
“He wanted me along to bear witness. So I’d go back and tell the others he’s serious about killing the girl.”
“We already knew that. He alreadytold us that.”
“Show is better than tell, Mr. Loomis.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” Loomis said again, sounding very much like a petulant child. “Nobody gets hurt, that was the deal. He didn’t have to kill the goddamn dog.”
They came down the stairs and out of the building. Both men blinked against the sunlight.
“Do you think they’re holding her in one of these buildings?” Loomis asked.
“I hope not,” Carella said.
The phone rang immediately.
“Hello?” Carella said.
“This is what I want you and Mr. Loomis to do,” Avery said. “Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“Walk back to the car. Put the phone to your ear again when you get there.”
The two men walked back to the limo. Carella put the phone to his ear again.
“We’re here,” he said.
“I see you,” Avery said. “Just stand right where you are. I’ll call you again when we have the case. You can hang up now.”
Carella hit the END button.
THEY CAME DOWNfrom the seventh floor of the building at 5107 Ambrose, from which they’d been watching the action across the street at 837 South 185th. Hidden by the building itself, they crossed the empty lot behind it, and entered 837 through the rear door. They were both carrying the AK-47s they’d used on the boat gig two nights ago, but this time Cal’s rifle was fitted with a scope. On the first floor of the building, he told Avery he felt like shooting himself some rats. Avery told him to resist the urge.
They found the black dispatch case in the refrigerator, right where Carella had left it. Cal threw the beam of a flashlight on it, and Avery unclasped it. There was no time to count the money right now, but those looked like a whole lot of nice brand-new hundred-dollar bills in there.
They went downstairs and out the back door again. This time, they crossed the lot to where they’d parked the stolen Montana behind a twelve-story building on Lasser. Carella and Loomis may have heard them starting the car, but it wouldn’t matter, anyway. The girl was their insurance. Nobody was going to do anything stupid while they had the girl.
They didn’t call again until almost an hour later. By that time, they’d dumped all the cell phones they’d used since three this afternoon. It was now close to five-thirty, and Avery was using yet another stolen phone when he called from the house out on Sands Spit.
Barney Loomis answered on the second ring.
“Hello?” he said.
“You can go back to your office now,” Avery said. “We’ll call you again after we’ve counted the money. If it’s all here, you’ll get the girl back tonight. I promise.”
“Where will you…?” Loomis started, but Avery had already hung up.
10
TAMAR GUESSEDshe should have felt honored.
This was just like a summit meeting.
Yasir Arafat was smiling. So were Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. All three of them were smiling—or at least their eyes were—but only Arafat was talking. Tamar figured he was the leader of the gang, the one who’d told her his eyes were brown. She could still see that his smiling eyes were brown. He was the same dude, all right.
“We have the money,” he told her. “Everything went off without a hitch.”
No wonder he was smiling.
The other two nodded in agreement. They were still smiling. George Bush had nice tits; Tamar wondered which one she was sleeping with.
“I’m telling you all this,” Arafat said, “because I want to warn you again not to do anything stupid.”
Do anything stupid! She was still handcuffed to the radiator!
“We’re going to count the money now. If it’s all here, we’ll drop you off someplace, and you’ll be home before you can spell your last name,” he said, and she wondered if that was an ethnic slur.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “Thank you,” she added.
For nothing, she thought.
“So be a good girl, honey,” Hussein said, smiling, and all three jackasses went out of the room.
She heard the lock clicking shut behind them.
OLLIE STOPPEDfor a snack after he was relieved at a quarter to five, and then walked crosstown to his piano teacher’s apartment, right here in the Eight-Eight. He had called her early Sunday morning to ask if she could get him the sheet music to Al Martino’s “Spanish Eyes”…
“Not the one the Backstreet Boys did,” he cautioned.
…and she had promised she would try. Now, at seven minutes to six on this Monday night, the fifth of May, Ollie climbed the steps to the fifth floor and rapped on the door to apartment 53. He was glad he couldn’t hear the sound of a piano inside. This meant her previous student had already left. Helen Hobson’s apartment was tiny, and if she was still giving a lesson when he arrived, he had to wait outside in the hall.
She was smiling when she opened the door for him. A woman in her late fifties, rail thin and wearing her habitual green cardigan sweater over a brown woolen skirt, she said, “Well, Detective Weeks, you’re right on time this evening.”
“Always a pleasure to come here,” Ollie said, which was the truth.
“Come in, come in,” Helen said, and stepped aside to let him by.
The grand piano always came as a surprise in this small apartment. Walking toward it behind his teacher, Ollie always felt as if he was being led onstage at Clarendon Hall. Sitting beside her on the piano bench, he always felt as if he was about to begin playing a duet with Arthur Rubenstein or Glenn Gould or one of those guys.