“POP!” Tony shouted, and the cork exploded from the bottle at the same instant, white bubbles following it out of the green neck, spilling onto Tony’s thick fingers. Birnbaum clapped Tony on the back, and they began laughing uproariously. The band was playing louder, and Jody Lewis was running all over the lawn popping his flash bulbs, capturing the bride and groom for posterity. He followed them to the long bridal table where the ancient and time-honored custom of collecting the connubial loot was about to take place. Angela made a beautiful hostess for the receiving line. Tommy sat beside her, grinning from ear to ear, and Jody Lewis kept the shutter clicking as the relatives filed past to kiss the bride and wish her luck, to shake hands with the groom and congratulate him. During the shaking of hands, a gratuity, a present, a ten-dollar bill or a twenty-dollar bill in an envelope was pressed into Tommy’s hand.
“Congratulations,” the well-wishers said, slightly embarrassed by the handing over of money, a civilized gesture with all the inherent savagery of primitive times, the spoils offered to the newly crowned king. And Tommy, in turn, was embarrassed as he accepted the gifts because there is nothing more difficult to do than accept a gift with style, and Tommy was too young to have acquired style. “Thank you,” he muttered over and over again. “Thank you, thank you.”
The champagne corks kept exploding.
“The trouble with this stuff,” Birnbaum says, “is it makes you want to go to the bathroom.”
“So go,” Tony said.
“I will.”
“Right upstairs. The bedroom at the end of the—”
“No, no. Too crowded up there,” Birnbaum said. “I’ll run over to my own house.”
“What? And miss the wedding?”
“It’ll take a minute. It’ll be quick. Don’t worry, Tony, I’ll be back. Just try to keep me away.”
“All right, Birnbaum. Hurry! Hurry!”
Birnbaum cocked his head to one side and started off through the bushes to his house on the next lot.
At the far end of the table, unobserved by either Angela or Tommy who were busy accepting gifts and good wishes, a pair of hands deposited a pair of small bottles filled with red wine. The bottles of wine were each tied with big bows. One bow was pink, the other was blue.
The pink bow had attached to it a card that read:
The blue bow had attached to it a similar card that, had Tommy seen it, might have struck a responsive chord. It is doubtful, however, that he would have recognized the handwriting as being identical with that on a card he’d received earlier in the day.
The card attached to the blue bow read, simply:
“Come with me,” Jonesy said to Christine.
“I came here with someone, you know,” Christine said coyly. She was rather enjoying the game and, oddly because she had not wanted to come, she was enjoying the wedding, too. But particularly, she was enjoying the look of dismay that spread over Cotton’s face whenever he saw her dancing with Sam Jones. The look was priceless. She enjoyed it more than the music, and more than the champagne, and more than the exploding corks, and the wonderful free feeling of gaiety that pervaded the outdoor reception.
“I know you came with someone. He’s bigger than me, too,” Jonesy said, “but I don’t care. Come on.”
“Where are you taking me?” Christine said, giggling as Jonesy pulled her by the hand into the bushes at the side of the house. “Jonesy! Really now!”
“Come, come, come,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He dragged her deeper into the bushes onto a path that had been stamped down through constant walking through the short grass.
“What do you want to show me?”
“Let’s get a little further away from the festivities first,” he said. His hand on hers was tight. He pulled her along the path as if urgently propelled. Christine was not frightened. She was, in truth, slightly excited. She thought she knew what was coming, and she thought she would not resist what was coming. It would serve Cotton right if a handsome young stranger dragged her into the bushes like a caveman and kissed her soundly and completely.
No, she would not resist.
There was something very nice about the attention Sam Jones had showered upon her all afternoon, something reminiscent of a time when she’d been very young, when outdoor parties were standard fare every weekend during the summer. Now, running over the short grass with him, she looked forward to the kiss she knew was coming. She felt very youthful all at once, a young girl running through a tree-shaded lane, her feet dancing over the sunlight-speckled trampled path at the far end of the lot.
Jonesy stopped suddenly.
“Here,” he said. “This should be far enough away, don’t you think?”
“For what?” Christine asked. Oddly, her heart was pounding in her chest.
“Don’t you know?” Jonesy said. He pulled her toward him, his back to the Carella property. Christine felt suddenly breathless. She lifted her mouth for his kiss, and someone suddenly screamed, and she felt goose pimples erupt over every inch of her body, and then she realized it was Jonesy who was screaming, screaming in a wildly masculine voice, and she pulled away from him and looked into his face and then turned to follow his glazed stare.
Not seven feet from where they were standing, a man lay face downward on the path. The man’s back was covered with blood. The man was not breathing.
“Oh my God!” Jonesy said. “It’s Birnbaum!”
Chapter 9
The telephone in the squadroom was ringing insistently.
Hal Willis, alone, unbent from his doubled-over position alongside the water cooler and shouted, “All right, all right, for Christ’s sake! It never fails. A guy goes for a drink of water and — all right, I’m coming!” He threw water and paper cup into the trash basket and ran like hell for the phone, snatching it from the receiver.
“Hello!” he shouted. “87th Squad!” he shouted. “Detective Willis speaking!” he shouted.
“I can hear you, Mac,” the voice said. “I can almost hear you without the aid of the instrument, and I’m all the way down on High Street. Shall we try it again? Pizzicato this time?”
“You mean diminuendo, don’t you?” Willis said softly.
“Whatever I mean, I think we all get the idea. This is Avery Atkins at the lab. Somebody up there sent a note down to us. We’ve been working on it.”
“What note?”
“It says ‘For the groom.’ Familiar with it?”
“Vaguely. What about it?”
“What did you say your name was, friend?”
“Willis. Hal Willis. Detective/third grade. Male, white, American.”
“And pretty snotty,” Atkins said.
“Listen, have you got information for me, or have you? I’m all alone here, and I’ve got a million things to do. So how about it?”
“Here it is. Catch it, wise guy. Paper used was five-and-dime stuff, trade name Skyline, sold over the counter all over the city at twenty-five cents for a package of ten cards and ten little envelopes. Go chase that one down. Ink used was Sheaffer’s Skrip, number thirty-two, permanent jet black. Ditto over counters across the face of our fair city. You can chase that one down, too, wise guy. Which brings us to fingerprints. Two sets on the card, both lousy. One set belongs to a guy named Thomas Giordano. No record. Checked it through his service fingerprints, he was in the Army Signal Corps. The second set belongs to a guy named Stephen Louis Carella who, I understand, is a detective working for the magnificent 87th Squad. He ought to be careful where he lays his fat fingers. You had enough, smart guy?”