Carella started the car.
I Meyer turned on the radio.
The insistent chatter of police calls scratched at the
beating rain. It took a while for the ancient heater to throw any real warmth into the car, adding its clanking clatter to the steady drumming of the rain, the drone of the dispatcher's voice, the hissing swish of tires on black asphalt. Cops on the job listened with one ear all the time, waiting to hear the dispatcher specifically calling their car, particularly waiting for the urgent signal that would tell them an officer was down, in which case every car in the vicinity would respond. Meanwhile, as the rain fell and the heater hurled uncertain hot air onto their faces and their feet, they talked idly about Carella's birthday party earlier this month—a subject he'd rather have forgotten since he'd just turned forty— and the trouble Meyer was having with his brother-in-law, who never had liked Meyer and who kept trying to sell him additional life insurance because he was in such a dangerous occupation.
"You think our occupation is dangerous?" he asked.
"Dangerous, no," Carella said. "Hazardous."
"Enough to warrant what he calls combat insurance?"
"No, I don't think so."
"I rented a video last week," Meyer said, "Robin Williams is dead in it, he goes to heaven. One of the worst movies I ever saw in my entire life."
"I never go to movies where somebody dies and goes
to heaven," Carella said.
"What you should never do is go to a movie with the word 'Dream' in the title," Meyer said. "Sarah likes these
pictures where movie stars die and go walking around so
mere mortals can't see them. So you never heard of it,
huh?" Meyer said.
"Never," Carella said, and smiled. He was thinking if you worked with a man long enough, you began reading
his mind.
"Your kids aren't teenagers yet," Meyer said. "Rophies?
Roofies? Rope? R? Those are all names the kids use for
it."
"New one on me," Carella said.
"It used to come in one- and two-milligram tablets,"
Meyer said. "Hoffman-La Roche—that's the company
that manufactures it—recently pulled the two-mill off
the retail market in Germany. But it's still available here. That's another name for it, by the way. La Roche. Or even just Roach. How much did Blaney say the old man had dropped?"
"At least two mills."
"Would've knocked him out in half an hour. It's supposed to be ten times stronger than Valium, no taste, no odor. You really never heard of it?"
"Never," Carella said.
"It's also called the Date-Rape drag," Meyer said. "When it first got popular in Texas, kids were using it to boost a heroin high or cushion a cocaine crash. Then
some cowboy discovered if he dropped a two-mill tab
in a girl's beer, it had the same effect as if she drank a
six-pack. In ten, twenty minutes, she's feeling no pain.
She loses all inhibitions, blacks out, and wakes up the
next morning with no memory of what happened."
"Sounds like science-fiction," Carella said.
"Small white tablet," Meyer said, "you can either dissolve it in a drink or snort it. Ruffles is another name. The Forget Pill, too. Or Roofenol. Or Rib. Costs three, four bucks a tab."
"Thanks for the input," Carella said.
The men were on their way to Andrew Male's bank.
They were now in possession of a court order auth
orizing them to open his safe deposit box. Inside that box, by Cynthia Keating's own admission, there was an insurance policy on her father's life. Her husband had also told them that his law firm was in possession of her father's will, which left to husband and wife all of the old man's earthly possessions—which did not amount to a hell of a lot. A passbook they'd found in the apartment showed a bank balance of $,.. The old man had also owned a collection of rpm's dating back to the thirties and forties, none of them rare, all of them swing hits of the day—Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glenn Miller—played and replayed over and over again until the shellac was scratched and the grooves worn. There were a few books in the apartment as well, most of them dog-eared paperbacks. There was an eight-piece setting of inexpensive silver plate.
True enough, in a city where a five-dollar bill in a
tattered billfold was often cause enough for murder, these
belongings alone might have provided motive. But not for
two people as well off as the Keatings. Besides, this had
not been a case of someone choosing a random victim on
the street and then popping him, something that happened
all the time. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble
here, first drugging the old man and next hanging him.
The prize had to be worth the trouble.
Carella pulled the car into a No Parking zone in front
of the bank. He flipped down his visor to show the pink
police paper that normally warned off any cop on the beat,
and then stepped out of the car and dashed through the
rain toward the front of the bank, Meyer pounding along
behind him.
Their court order opened the dead man's safe deposit
box, and sure enough, they found an insurance policy for
$,, with Andrew Male's daughter and son-in-law
listed as sole beneficiaries. The policy did, in fact, contain
a suicide exclusion clause:
Section . SUICIDE
If the insured dies by suicide within one
year from the Date of Issue, the amount
payable by the Company will be limited to
the premiums paid.
But the policy had been issued almost ten years ago.
Thursday night was the night in question.
According to what Cynthia Keating had told them,
she'd spoken to her father at nine that night, and had found
him hanging dead at nine-thirty or so the next morning.
A check with the telephone company confirmed that she
had indeed called his number at : the night before, and
had spent two minutes on the phone with him. This did
not preclude her later taking the subway across the river and into the trees, going up to his apartment, dropping a few pills in his wine or his beer or his bottled water, and
then hanging him over a hook.
But—
Cynthia maintained that after having telephoned her
father, she had gone to meet her girlfriend Josie at the
movie theater a block from her apartment and together
they had seen a movie that started around : and ended around :, after which she and her friend Josie had gone for tea and scones at a little snack bar called Westmore's. She had returned home at around twelve-thirty, and had not left the apartment again until the next morning at around twenty to nine, at which time she had taken the subway across the river, and walked to her father's apartment, only to find Dad, poor Dad, hanging in the closet, and I'm feeling so bad. The movie she'd seen was part of a Kurosawa retrospective. It was titled High and Low, and it was based on a novel by an American who wrote cheap mysteries. A call to the theater confirmed the title of the film and the start and finish times. A call to her girlfriend Josie Gallitano confirmed that she had accompanied Cynthia to the movie and had later enjoyed a cup of tea and a chocolate-covered scone with her. Cynthia's husband, as was to be expected, confirmed that he had found her asleep in bed when he got home from a poker game at around one o'clock. She had not left the apartment again that night.
There had been six other men in that poker game.