This letter, too, was unsigned.
It was a shame.
It made their job more difficult.
The clock on the squadroom wall read twelve minutes to midnight. The Graveyard Shift had just relieved, and Hawes was arguing with Bob O'Brien, who didn't want to be the one who broke the news to Carella. He told Hawes he should stick around, do it himself, even though he'd been officially relieved.
"You're the one the sister talked to," O'Brien said. "You're the one should tell Steve."
Hawes said he had an urgent engagement, what did O'Brien want him to do, leave a note on Carella's desk? The urgent engagement was with a Detective/First Grade named Annie Rawles who had bought him the red socks he was wearing. The socks matched Hawes's hair and the tie he was wearing. He was also wearing a white shirt that echoed the white streak of hair over his left temple. Hawes was dressed for the summer heat. Lightweight blue blazer over gray tropical slacks, red silk tie and the red socks Annie had given him.
13
This was the seventeenth day of July, a Tuesday night, and the temperature outside the squadroom was eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. By Hawes's reckoning that came to thirty degrees Celsius, which was damn hot in any language. He hated the summer. He particularly hated this summer, because it seemed to have started in May and it was still here, day after day of torrid temperatures and heavy humidity that combined to turn a person to mush.
"Can't you just do me this one simple favor?" he said.
"It's not such a simple favor," O'Brien said. "This is the most traumatic thing that can happen in a man's life, don't you know that?"
"No, I didn't know that," Hawes said.
"Also," O'Brien said, "I have a reputation around here as a hard-luck cop ..."
"Where'd you get that idea?" Hawes said.
"I got that idea because I have a habit of getting into shoot-outs, and I know nobody likes being partnered with me."
"That's ridiculous," Hawes said, lying.
"Now you're asking me to tell Steve this terrible thing, he'll confuse the messenger with the message and he'll think Here's this hard-luck cop bringing hard luck to me."
"Steve won't think that at all," Hawes said.
"I won't think what?" Carella said from the gate in the slatted-rail divider, taking off his jacket as he came into the room. Brown was right behind him. Both men looked wilted.
"What won't I think?" Carella asked again.
O'Brien and Hawes looked at him.
"What is it?" Carella said.
Neither of them said anything.
"Cotton?" he said. "Bob? What is it?"
"Steve . . ."
"What?"
"I hate to have to tell you this, but. . ."
"What, Bob?"
"Your sister called a little while ago," O'Brien said.
"Your father is dead," Hawes said.
14
Carella looked at them blankly.
Then he nodded.
Then he said, "Where is she?"
"Your mother's house."
He went directly to the phone and dialed the number from memory. His sister picked up on the third ring.
"Angela," he said, "it's Steve."
She'd been crying, her voice revealed that.
"We just got back from the hospital," she said.
"What happened?" he asked. "Was it his heart again?"
"No, Steve. Not his heart."
"Then what?"
"We went there to make positive identification."
For a moment he didn't quite understand. Or didn't choose to understand.
"What do you mean?" he said.
"We had to identify the body."
"Why? Angela, what happened?"
"He was killed."
"Killed? What. . .?"
"In the bakery shop."
"No."
"Steve ..."
"Jesus, what. . .?"
"Two men came in. Papa was alone. They cleaned out the cash register ..."
'Angela, don't tell me this, please."
"I'm sorry," she said.
And suddenly he was crying.
"Who's . . . who's ... is it the ... the ... it's the Four-Five, isn't it? Up there? Who's working the ... do you know who's working the . . . the . . . Angela," he said, "honey? Did they . . . did they hurt him? I mean, did they . . . they didn't hurt him, did they? Oh God, Angela," he said, "oh God oh God oh God ..."
He pulled the phone from his mouth and clutched it to his
15
chest, tears streaming down his face, great racking sobs choking him. "Steve?" his sister said. "Are you all right?" Her voice muffled against his shirt where the receiver was pressed fiercely to his chest. "Steve? Are you all right? Steve?" Over and over again. Until at last he moved the phone to his mouth again, and still crying, said, "Honey?"
"Yes, Steve."
"Tell Mama I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Drive carefully."
"Did you caU Teddy?"
"She's on the way."
"Is Tommy there with you?"
"No, we're alone here. Mama and me."
"What do you . . .? Where's Tommy?"
"I don't know," she said. "Please hurry."
And hung up.
The two detectives from the 45th Squad in Riverhead felt uncomfortable talking to the detective whose father had been killed. Neither of the men knew Carella; the Eight-Seven was a long way from home. Moreover, both detectives were black, and from all accounts the two men who'd robbed Tony Carella's bakery shop and then killed the old man were black themselves.
Neither of the detectives knew how Carella felt about blacks in general. But the murderers were blacks in particular, and the way the black/white thing was shaping up in this city, the two Riverhead cops felt they might be treading dangerous ground here. Carella was a professional, though, and they knew they could safely cut through a lot of the bullshit. He knew what they'd be doing to apprehend the men who'd killed his father. They didn't have to spell out routine step by step, the way you had to do with civilians.
The bigger of the two cops was named Charlie Bent, a Detective/Second. He was wearing a sports jacket over blue jeans and an open-collared shirt. Carella could see the bulge of his shoulder holster on the right-hand side of his body. Left-handed, he figured. Bent spoke very quietly, either because he was naturally soft-spoken or else because he was in a funeral home.
The other cop was a Detective/Third, just got his promotion last month, he mentioned to Carella in passing. He was big,
r
too, but not as wide across the shoulders and chest as Bent was. His name was Randy Wade, the Randy being short for Randall, not Randolph. His face was badly pockmarked, and there was an old knife scar over his left eye. He looked as mean as Saturday night, but this was ten o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they were inside the Loretti Brothers Funeral Home on Vandermeer Hill, and so he was speaking softly, too.
Everyone was speaking softly, tiptoeing around Carella, who for all they knew might be as bigoted as most white men in this city, but whose father had certainly been killed by two black men like themselves, bigot or not. The three detectives were standing in the large entrance foyer that separated the east and west wings. Carella's father was in a coffin in Chapel A in the east wing.
There was a hush in the funeral home.
Carella could remember when he was a kid and his father's sister got run over by an automobile. His Aunt Katie. Killed instantly. Carella had loved her to death. They'd laid her out in this very same funeral home, in one of the chapels over in the west wing.
Back when Aunt Katie died, the family still had older people in it who'd come from the Other Side, as they'd called Europe in general. Some of them could barely speak English. Carella's mother, and sometimes his father - but not too often because his own English showed traces of having been raised in an immigrant home - laughed at the fractured English some of their older relatives spoke. Nobody was laughing when Aunt Katie was here in this place. Aunt Katie was twenty-seven years old when the car knocked her down and killed her.