"Do you love her?" his father asked.
"Yes, I love her, Pop," he said. "I love her very much."
"Then there's nothing to be scared of. I'll tell you something, Steve. The only time a man considers taking another
146
woman is when he no longer loves the woman he already has. Do you think that's going to happen? Are you afraid the time will come when you won't love Teddy anymore?"
"How can I know that, Pop?"
"You can know it. You can feel it in your bones and in your blood. You can know you'll love this woman till the day you die, and you'll never want another woman but her. And if you don't know this now . . . don't marry her."
"Now isn't tomorrow," he said.
"Yes, now is tomorrow. Now is forever," his father said.
The shop fell silent.
"Listen to me," his father said.
"Yes, Pop."
His father put his hands on Carella's shoulders. Big hands covered with flour. He looked into Carella's eyes.
"How do you feel about anyone else touching her?" he asked.
"I would kill him," Carella said.
"Yes," his father said, and nodded. "You have nothing to worry about. Marry her. Love her. Stay with her and no one else. Or I'll break your head," he said, and grinned.
And now, all these years later, Carella was following his sister's husband because the possibility existed that a time had come when he didn't love her anymore. He supposed that time could come to anyone. He did not think it would ever come to him. But he wondered now if that was because he truly loved Teddy to death or only because his father had threatened to break his head. In the darkness, quickening his pace as Tommy rounded a corner ahead, he smiled to himself.
He must have been trailing Tommy for at least half a mile, ten blocks or so, the area changing from strictly residential to commercial, elevated train tracks overhead now, stores still open on this gaudy summer night, July still flaunting her passion, men and women in the streets - was he planning to take a train? Was he heading for the platform on the next . . .?
No, he walked right past the stairway leading up to the
147
platform and the tracks, staying on the avenue, his stride deliberate, his step that of a man who knew where he was going, a man with a destination. A little past nine o'clock now, the earlier lingering dusk now snuffed, the moonless sky black, the only illumination coming from store lights and sidewalk lamps and the red and green traffic lights on the tracks above and the streets below. Tommy was moving at a pretty fast clip, looking at his watch every now and then, continuing on up the avenue until he reached Brandon, and then turning left, off the avenue, down to Willow where the brick library Carella used as a kid stood on the southern side of the street, mantled in darkness now.
A car was parked up the street, some short distance from the library.
Tommy walked directly to the car.
He opened the door on the passenger side, triggering the interior light, the light going out again the instant he slammed the door behind him. The headlights came on. Carella ducked away from their sudden glare. The driver gunned the engine into life and set the car in motion. Carella moved deeper into the shadows as it approached the corner. A red Honda Accord sped by.
A woman was at the wheel.
8
"He wanted to fire you," Goodman said. "I talked him into a thirty-day probation period."
"Fire me?" Eileen said. "But why?"
They were having lunch together in a seafood joint down near the Headquarters Building. Special Forces was on the tenth floor, Goodman's office was on the fourth. It was convenient. But she'd believed, until this moment, that he'd asked her to lunch to offer congratulations.
"You have to understand him," Goodman said.
"Oh, I understand him, all right."
"Well, yes, that," he said.
She loved the way men brushed off matters of enormous concern to women. Bert yesterday with his Well, yeah, that in reference to what had merely been the most traumatic experience in her life, and now Goodman with his Well, yes, that, when he knew she'd been referring to Brady's blatantly sexist attitude.
"He just adores the class clown," she said, "and he . . ."
"Well, you have to admit Materasso's a pretty funny guy."
"How about Pellegrino? Or Riley? They're not too comical, and Brady treats them like long-lost brothers. He's got two women on the team only because ..."
"Give credit where it's due, Eileen. He's the one who put women on the team in the first place."
"I wonder why."
"Certainly not because he's sexist."
"Then what was the 'Well, yes, that' all about?"
"I thought you knew."
"No, Mike, I'm sorry, I don't."
Using the name for the first time, realizing she hadn't called him anything until now, not Dr Goodman, not Michael, and certainly not Mike. But there it was. Mike.
"I'm willing to bet he's never trusted a woman in his life."
"You'd lose."
"Would I?"
"I'm starved," he said, suddenly peering at her from behind his eyeglasses, raising his eyebrows and looking very much like a hungry little boy. "Aren't you?"
"I can eat," she said.
"Good, let's order."
They both ordered the steamed lobster. Eileen ordered a baked potato, he ordered fries. Eileen asked for Roquefort on her salad, he asked for creamy Italian. The salads came first. He ate ravenously. It was almost comical watching him. No manners at all. Just dug in. She wondered if he'd come from a large family.
"So tell me," she said.
"He lost one," Goodman said.
"What does that mean?"
"A negotiator. A woman."
"What are you saying?"
"Early on. The first woman he put on the team."
"You're kidding me."
"No, no. This was a long time ago, you probably weren't even on the job at the time. Woman named Julie Gunnison, worked out of Auto Theft, good cop, a Detective/Second. It was summertime, same as now. First time she worked the door. Woman in an apartment with her three kids, suddenly went bananas, threw one kid out the window before the police got there, was threatening to do the same with the other two if they didn't pull back. He put Julie on the door because it was a woman in there. There was a theory at the time that
150
women confided more freely in other women, we now know it doesn't always work that way. But that was the thinking back then. Hostage negotiation was a new thing. You got a woman taker, you gave her a woman talker."
"What happened?" Eileen asked.
"Who gets the baked?" the waitress asked.
"I do."
The waitress put down their plates.
"Anything to drink?" she asked.
"Eileen, some wine? Beer?"
"I'm working," she said.
"Right. Coke? Pepsi?"
"Coke."
"I'll have a Heineken beer," Goodman said.
"One Coke, one Heineken," the waitress said, and rushed off looking harried.
"I'm listening," Eileen said.
"Julie was on that door for six hours straight, performing a high-wire act that defied all the laws of gravity. Every five minutes, the lady inside there grabbed one of her kids and rushed to the window and hung the kid outside it, upside down, holding him by the ankles, swinging him, yelling she was going to let go if the cops didn't back off. Cops and firemen all over the street, trying to figure out where to run with the net, which way she was going to swing that kid before she dropped him. Julie at the door, talking her out of it each time, telling them all they wanted to do was help her, help the kids, help each other, come on but of there we'll talk it over. Woman had a meat cleaver in her hands. Her husband was a butcher. The kid she dropped out the window before they got there, she'd cut off his hands at the wrist."