“No. The First Precinct is the First Precinct. I never heard it called the Oh-One. Never. That makes it sound like there’s a decimal point in front of it, the Oh-One.”
“Also, if there’s an Oh-One, there’s also an Oh-Two, and an Oh-Three, and so on. Which as you know, there ain’t,” Emilio said. “So I figure Livvie made up this fake what you might call terminology to throw any evil-doer off the track.”
“Any evil-doer, huh?”
“Somebody tryin’a get those diamonds.”
“Diamonds, huh?”
“You help me find them, Ahn, we’ll both go down to Rio together.”
“Why Rio?”
“It’s nice down there, I hear. Also, they have carnival.”
“I have carnival right here every time I shoot up.”
“You used to be a bartender, am I right?”
“You know I used to be a bartender.”
“So where’s there a bar two blocks from a police station?”
“Everywhere,” Aine said.
AT FIVE O’CLOCKthat Friday evening, Josh Coogan seemed surprised to find two men who identified themselves as police detectives waiting for him on the steps outside his building.
“I thought this was the fat guy’s case,” he said.
“We’re working it together,” Carella told him.
“How’d you know where to find me?”
“Alan Pierce gave us your address.”
“So what’s up?”
“We want to ask you some more questions.”
“What about? I already spoke to the fat guy, you know.”
“Briefly, yes,” Kling said.
“Well, I thought I answered all his questions.”
“We’re sorry to be bothering you again, but we thought…”
“I mean, am I a suspect in this thing?”
The question they all asked sooner or later.
But Coogan had about him the air of confidence most college kids exude—especially those pursuing arts programs. They didn’t yet realize they would never become a Hemingway or a Picasso or a Hitchcock or a Frank Lloyd Wright. The world was still their oyster. Kling, who’d never been to college, and Carella, who’d never finished college, envied the attitude. But they had both read Fat Ollie’s report, and they remembered him describing Coogan as “flustered and unsure of himself.” He did not appear that way tonight.
“Do you know anyone named Carrie?” Carella asked.
“No. Is that a man or a woman?”
“It’s a nineteen-year-old girl,” Carella said.
“No, I don’t know her. Am I supposed to know her?”
“Lester Henderson was supposed to know her.”
“Does that mean what I take it to mean?”
“What do you take it to mean?”
“Was he messing around with a nineteen-year-old girl?”
“You tell us.”
“Let me say I wouldn’t be surprised. He definitely had an eye for the women.”
“Did you everseehim with a nineteen-year-old girl?”
“Our office is full of nineteen-year-old girls. But if you mean…”
“Any of them named Carrie?”
“No.”
“Did any letters addressed to the councilman and marked ‘Personal and Private’ ever cross your desk?”
“No. His mail went to him directly.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“In spite of the anthrax scare?”
“Was it anthrax that killed him?” Coogan said, and raised his eyebrows, and nodded sagely.
11
IT TOOK THREE HOURSby train to the state capital. It would have taken them a half-hour to get to the airport and—with security what it was these days—another two hours to get to the gate, all for an hour-long flight. If Carella had opted to drive up, the trip would have taken almost four hours. He figured it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. Besides, on the train, he and Teddy could talk.
Communicating with a person who could neither hear nor speak required, first, that you be able to see each other’s hands (because that’s what signing was all about, Gertie) and next that the impaired (what a word!) partner be able to see the other person’s lips so that she could read them.
Car rides were difficult. Without risking an accident, Carella could not turn his head away from the road to look at Teddy. And without leaning over at an impossible angle and virtually flashing her fingers in his face, Teddy simply could not communicate. They had tried. They knew. The only way it worked was to translate through the kids, Carella speaking, the kids in the back seat signing, and then Teddy signing back to the kids, and the kids speaking the words out loud to their father. But alone in a car? Forget about talking.
The train was a good solution.
Besides, this was Saturday, and Carella’s day off, and he was entitled.
The morning train they caught was virtually empty. He bought coffee and donuts in the café car and carried them back to where they’d spread out like pashas on two reclining seats. Leisurely, they watched the countryside flashing by outside, and talked about things there hadn’t been time to discuss in their busy workaday schedules.
Carella was most concerned about having to give away both his motherandhis sister at their joint weddings this coming June. How was he supposed to do that? Come down the aisle with one of them on each arm? Or lead his mother down first, a nod to seniority, and then go back up for his sister. While Luigi…
“I really wish his name wasn’t Luigi,” he said, signing simultaneously. “It really makes him sound like a wop.”
He’s Italian,Teddy signed.That’s a very common name in Italy.
“Yeah, well, this is America,” he said, and then something occurred to him. “You don’t think she’ll bemovingto Milan, do you?”
Well, of course, she will,Teddy signed.That’s where he lives.
“How come I didn’t think of that till now?”
Maybe that’s what’s troubling you about taking them down the aisle.
“Maybeeverythingis troubling me about taking them down the aisle.”
Get over it,Teddy signed.
He nodded, and then fell silent for a while, thinking again that his mother shouldn’t be remarrying so soon after his father’s death, and his sister shouldn’t be marrying the man who’d unsuccessfully prosecuted his father’s slayer. Well, get over it, he thought. You should have got over it last Christmas already, put it to rest, okay? They’re getting married, you’re giving them away, put on a happy face.
Come June sixteenth, his mother would be Mrs. Luigi—Jesus, I hate that name!—Fontero, and his sister would be Mrs. Henry Lowell, whom he suspected he’d have to start calling “Hank,” the way his sister did, “Could you please pass the gravy, Hank?”
Luigi and Hank.
Jesus.
Teddy was talking again. He turned to watch her hands. He loved the way she signed, her fingers moving almost liquidly, her eyes and her face adding expression to what she was saying, her lips mouthing the words her hands signaled. She was telling him she had to find a job. She was telling him she was tired of addressing envelopes at home, she wanted to get out into the real workplace. She’d been checking the want ads, but these were difficult times, and being so limited…
“You’re not limited,” he told her.
Well, if I can’t hear, I won’t exactly be hired as conductor of the Philharmonic,she said, and burst out laughing.
Carella laughed with her.
“How about moderator on a talk show?” he suggested.
Good idea,she said.Or a translator at the UN.
The countryside flashed by.
Spring was alive out there.
It was a very short ride.
THEY TOOK A TAXIto the Raleigh Hotel, and Carella settled her in the coffee shop while he went to find the manager.
The manager’s name was Floyd Morgan. He told Carella at once that he hated the job up here because the winters were so damn cold. “Well, look at it,” he said. “It’s already the end of April, and there’s still snow on the ground up here, can you believe it?” He told Carella that the last managerial position he’d held was in the Bahamas, at the Club Med there on Columbus Isle. “Nowthatwas a job,” he said. “Great people to work with, wonderful food, and an atmosphere of…joy,do you know? Happiness. Not like here. Here it’s doom and gloom all winter long and by the time May rolls around, you’re ready to jump out the window. Have a seat,” he said, “let me get some coffee for us. You’ve had a long journey, you must have a lot of questions to ask.”