came to celebrate the start of a season of corn the cob and boiled lobsters, gin and tonic, beer with foam. Summertime. High cotton and l-looking women.
Carella had read over his own reports on the Hooper and Corrente interviews, and there was no question but that the two were in absolute contradiction. It seemed to him that a third might be valuable, and he had gone to :the Hooper apartment specifically to talk to Seronia.
Her mother told him where he could find her. Her mother cleaned white people's houses and offices for a living. Got down on her hands and knees to scrub floors. Her daughter got down on her hands and knees to perform quite a different service.
Carella had not realized the girl was a hooker. That was the first shock.
"Arrest her," Mrs. Hooper told him. "On'y way she goan learn.”
The second shock was actually seeing her.
He found her all the way downtown, standing Under the marquee of a movie theater playing a pair of triple-X-rated porn flicks. She was we purple satin mini and a lavender satin blouse. beads on her neck. Yellow flower in her High-heeled purple leather pumps to match the. and blouse. One hand on her hip, the other cl a small purple leather purse. Lips pursed to air as strange men turned to look her over, words. She looked twenty-seven. She was "Want a date?" she asked Carella, and kis air as he approached, and then recognized him started to turn away, and realized it was too late anyplace, and stopped dead still, one hand hip.
"Whut's this?" she said.
"Few questions," he said.
"You goan bust me?”
"Should I?”
"No crime to stan' outside a movie show said.
"I agree," he said. "Can I buy you a coffee?”
“I'd p'fer some ice cream," she said.
They found an ice cream shop with tables in back. At the counter, fresh-faced black red-and-blue uniforms served up sugar cones and earned seven bucks an hour. table near the window, Carella watched Hooper eating a banana split with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry, listened to her telling him that the girls behind counter were assholes.
"They cud make two hunn' id an hour," she said, was to get lucky.”
He figured she was talking fifty dollars a trick.
"I want to know what happened on Easter Sunday," he said.
"Nate tole you whut happen," Seronia said.
"I want to hear what he told you.”
"Same as he tole you.”
"I don't think so.”
"Look, man, whutchoo want fum me? Nate tole you the story, why'n't you go 'rest them cocksuckers busted his head?”
"Did your brother have a knife?”
"No. Who tole you he had a knife?”
"Did he go to Eleventh Street to sell crack?”
"Oh, man, doan make me laugh.”
"Is his street name Mr. Crack?”
"Where you hear all this shit, man?”
"Somebody's lying, Seronia. Either your brother or a kid named Bobby Corrente, who...”
"Oh, that sum 'bitch.”
"You know him?”
"I know him, all right. Was him swung the fust bat, you ass me.”
“Is that what your brother told you?”
"He tole me same as he tole you.”
"He didn't tell me it was Bobby Corrente who Swung the first bat. From the way he told it, the boys Who attacked him were strangers.”
"Then they was.”
"But you know Corrente, huh?”
Silence.
"Seronia? How come you know Corrente?”
"I seen him aroun' is all.”
"Where?”
"Aroun' .”
"What are you hiding?”
"Nuthin'. You know Corren'ee, you go 'rest He the one broke Nate's head.”
"How do you know that?”
"Jus' a guess is all.”
"Is that what your brother told you? That swung the first bat?”
"You go ass Nate.”
"I'm asking you.”
"I got no more time to waste here," Seronia and wiped her mouth on the paper napkin and preparing to get up from the table when asked, "How'd you like to waste some uptown?”
He felt no guilt whatever throwing muscle thirteen-year-old hooker.
"Waiting for the wagon to take you to Booking," he said, nailing the point home.
"Oh whut charge?" Seronia asked, su confident. "Anyway, my man get me out in half hour.”
"Good. Let's go then. I'm sure he'll love bail.”
"You think you bluffin' me?”
"Nope, I think I'm running you in on a Two-Thirty.”
"Nobody offered you no sexual conduct, man.”
"That's your word against mine," he said, and stood up. "Let's go.”
"Sit down," she said, "you makin' a fuss here.”
"Are we gonna talk about Easter Sunday or not?”
"They both lyin"" she said.
This is not Rashomon not quite.
The movie Rashomon, as Carella remembers it, was not about people lying.
It was about people sharing a single event but perceiving it separately and differently, so that each time the event was related, it had changed significantly. Listening to Seronia now, sitting with a thirteen-year-old hooker in an ice cream shop while she dug into her second banana split, aware that men thirty and forty years older than she is are eyeing her through the plate-glass window fronting the street, Carella begins wondering whether this version of the story, Seronia's version as related to her by Nate shortly after the incident occurred, is in fact the true version.
Or is she lying as well?
In the game of Murder, only the murderer is allowed to lie; all the other players must tell the truth.
But this is not the game of Murder, this is the death -of a human being who also happened to be a priest, and it appears now as if everyone is lying, if only what happened on Easter Sunday. And yet, there are areas where all three stories coinc" that it becomes increasingly more difficult who exactly was lying ... or is lying about aspect of the Eleventh Street happening.
Seronia admits, for example, that her bro street name is, in fact, Mr. Crack, and that been known to hang around the elementary on Ninth Street enticing the little kiddies to try of crack, a nickel a blow, this is not big kids who are ten, eleven years old. In this perhaps in every American city, kids are more often indulging in acts once exclusi reserved for adults. Seronia tells Carella presumably her line of work makes her an the subject that in the past three years, sex committed by boys in the twelve-tc year-old age bracket went up only percent, whereas sex crimes committed by under the age of twelve increased by two percent. Moreover, since the rapist usually someone weaker than he is, the female these new-age sex criminals ranged in age years old to seven.
In fact, Seronia feels she is a public service by engaging in sex with rapists who might otherwise be chasing teeny girls in the park.
But that is neither here nor there.
The point is that her brother, yes, is a dealer, But this does not make him a bad person. him a businessman filling a need in the ch as she is a businesswoman at thirteen, she rinks of herself as a woman, and why not, "considering her occupation - filling a similar need in a different but possibly related community. All of this communicated to Carella in English that is not quite Black English, but neither is it the Queen's Own.
And on Easter Sunday, as happened on every Sunday, rain or shine, Christmas, Yom Kippur or Ramadan, Nathan Hooper goes up town to Eleventh Street not to sell crack to the young wops gathered on their from stoops and freezing their asses off in their Easter finery, but instead to buy crack from his supplier, young Bobby Corrente... "Are you making this up?" Carella asked.
"Do I soun' like I'm makin' it up, man?”