"Except for the rope, maybe."
"Very slender chance that in this great big city . . ."
"Well, we think of them as sort of related."
"You want me to bring 'sort of charges against Cynthia Keating?"
"Way you're sounding," Brown said, "we can't bring any kind of charges."
"You want an indictment or a pass, which?"
"We think there's enough to take to a grand jury."
"They won't agree."
"One," Carella said, "she knew there was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar policy on the old man's . . ."
"Chicken feed."
"Plus," Carella went on, undaunted, "the copyright to a play she knew was being turned into a musical."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
"And she knew this before the old man got killed," Meyer said.
"When did she find out?"
"In September sometime."
"And she sold the rights two weeks after he died," Kling said.
"For how much?"
"Three thousand bucks plus . . ."
"Give me a break."
"Plus six percent of the show's gross, split four ways."
"What does that come to?"
"One and a half percent each," Brown said.
"How do you do that?"
"Smart," Brown said, and tapped his temple.
"How much is the weekly gross?"
"On a hit musical? Enough," Carella said.
"Papa wouldn't let the rights go," Byrnes said. "The producer went to see him three times, finally asked the daughter to step in."
"Still said no."
"Why?"
"Protecting the original playwright."
"Nice."
"Or dumb, depending how you look at it."
"I say nice."
"Anyway," Carella said, "she knew she was going to inherit something that might bring in a whole lot of . . ."
"How do you know she knew?"
"She admitted it."
"So she killed him. You're saying."
"Yes. Well, she hired someone to kill him."
"Same thing. How was the old man's health?"
"Two heart attacks in the past eight years."
"Couldn't wait for him to die of natural causes, huh?"
"The show was already in progress. They'd hired a songwriter, a bookwriter . . ."
"She saw the thing slipping away."
"So she hired this Jamaican to kill him. You're saying."
"That's what we're saying."
"Went all the way to Houston to hire a hit man, is that it?"
"Well. . ."
"He's from Houston, isn't that what you said?"
"That's our information, yes."
"A Jamaican," Nellie said. "From Houston."
"Yes."
"Didn't know there were any Jamaicans in Houston."
"Apparently, there are."
"My point is ... this woman's a housewife, right?"
"Yes."
"How the hell would she know how to hire a hit man? In Houston, no less."
"Well. . ."
"Yeah, tell me."
"Well. . ."
"I'm listening."
Nobody said anything.
"Tell me about this second murder. You think the housewife arranged that one, too?"
"No."
"Just the first one."
"Yes."
"So tell me about the second one."
"The Jamaican went partying before he flew home," Brown said. "Got into some kind of scuffle with this little girl does occasional tricks at a go-go joint downtown."
"What kind of scuffle?"
"Don't know. But he stabbed her."
"Why?"
"Some kind of scuffle."
"The old man was hanged, right?"
"Right. But Rohypnol figures in both cases. And
Ed McBam
we've got a witness who saw the girl with this Jamaican. He's got a distinctive knife scar on his face, he's easy to spot."
"So," Nellie said, "what we seem to have here is an old man killed for money, in effect, and a snitch killed for the same thing, in effect, and a go-go girl killed for we don't know what, but if she was turning tricks, we can euphemistically say love, which are two pretty good motives for murder, wouldn't you say, love and money? I would say so."
The detectives said nothing.
"All we need now is a fourth murder," Nellie said.
"Bite your tongue," Meyer said.
"You think the housewife's only behind one of them, huh?"
"Yes."
"She hired this mysterious Jamaican to kill her father. . ."
"He's not so mysterious, Nellie. We've got clean descriptions of him from two different people."
"Scar on his face, you said."
"Yes."
They were all wondering who'd tell her about the tattoo on his penis. They let it slide. Carella sort of smiled.
"But you can't find him," Nellie said.
"Not yet."
"Not here, and not in Houston, either."
"That's right. But we've got him linked to the father, and also the go-go dancer."
"He branched out, right? Started free-lancing, so to speak."
"Nobody likes a smart-ass, Nellie."
"Sorry. I'm just trying to see how I can possibly go for an indictment on this without making a fool of myself."
"We think it's strong, Nellie."
"/ think it's pie in the sky. I thank you for the journey
uptown," she said, and picked up her handbag. "It's always a pleasure to see how the other half lives. But if you want me to bag this lady for you, here's what you'll have to do. One, it would be very nice if you could find the Jamaican with the knife scar and whatever other identifying mark you're all smirking about. But that would be too good to be true. Lacking the trigger man himself— so to speak, since what we're looking for is a hangman and a knifer—I suppose you'll have to find some evidence that shows how a housewife with a lawyer husband, God forbid, could have got in touch with a Jamaican hit man. Did she phone him in Houston? Or perhaps Kingston? Did she pick him off the Internet? Did she pick him up in a bar? Did she write to him in prison? Show me some evidence that ties her to him, whoever he may be—and don't tell me he isn't so mysterious, Steve, I think he is very damn mysterious. If you guys really believe he got the rope from this guy in Hightown—and really, that sounds so far-fetched—then find out if he did, and get some better information on him than you already have, something that'll lead you to him. When you have all that, you know where to reach me. Toodle-ooo, fellas," she said, waggling her fingers at them, and then tossed the hood of her parka up over her head and walked out.
Lorraine Riddock could hardly contain her excitement.
She was nineteen years old, a redheaded sophomore at Ladd University, not two miles uptown, working part-time for the Reverend Foster since the beginning of the school term. What she did, mostly, was stuff envelopes and run the postage-meter machine, but she'd taken the job because she was a political science major who strongly believed in the reverend's program of Truth and Justice. During the past two days—ever since the brutal beating of Hector Milagros—Foster had allowed her to sit in on
some of the strategy meetings, and so she truly felt she had contributed to the plan he was about to announce this evening.
The three white men on the reverend's tactical committee called themselves "The Token Honkies," which even Foster found amusing, though normally he avoided any expression, white or black, that might be considered racist. There were street blacks who casually tossed around the word "nigger," as if it didn't carry with it centuries of hateful baggage, using it instead as if it were a salutation similar to "brother" or "sister." Here in the offices above the church, however, Lorraine had never once heard that word, certainly not from any of the whites but not from any of the blacks, either. It was a word she herself had never used in her lifetime. She scarcely noticed—and certainly didn't care—which of the men or women here tonight was white or black, misnomers in any case. White was the color of snow. Black was the color of coal. Nobody here even remotely fit either of those descriptions.