The lettering on the plate glass window of the shop read: EL CASTILLO DE PALACIOS
She opened the door and went in.
A little bell tinkled over the door. She closed the door behind her, glanced quickly through the window to make sure the cop was still with her, and then smiled as The Gaucho came out from the back to greet her.
13
WELL NOW, Parker thought, isn’t this interesting?
The Gaucho is giving us information on a Rosie Washington deal going down this Tuesday night, and here’s Rosie herself marching into his shop big as daylight on Sunday afternoon, will wonders never?
Of course, they were both spics, so who knewwhatevil the two of them had cooked up together?
Half-spic, anyway, in her case.
He took up a position across the street, thinking maybe he should try to get a court order to plant a bug in The Cowboy’s shop.
THE FIRST THINGPalacios thought as he came through the beaded curtains from the back of his shop was that Rosie knew he’d ratted her out.
“Hey, hello, Rosie,” he said, smiling. “What brings you here?”
“I need a dreams book,” she said. “For my cousin.”
Not everyone knew what kind of a shop Palacios ranbehindhis shop. Most people truly did come in for religious, paranormal, or supernatural items. So it was entirely possible that Rosie had a cousin who needed a book that would explain the significance of a recent dream so that she’d know whether she was going to win the lottery or fall under a spell instead. No one but the police knew that Palacios was an informer. Well, of course not. If everyone knew how he picked up a few extra pennies, how could he ever garner any information at all? It was terrifying to think that Rosie had somehow discovered he’d be getting a tidy little sum after they busted her this Tuesday night. Rosie was not in the business of selling violets to opera goers. Rosie was in a business where people broke other people’s heads and shot them in the balls.
“What kind of dreams has your cousin been having?” Palacios asked.
“She’s been dreaming that a cop is following her,” Rosie said, and Palacios went pale. “Gaucho,” she said in a rush, “I think the law is on my tail. Can I go out your back door?”
Palacios almost wet his pants in relief.
AT FIRST, Ollie thought the girl sitting on the park bench with Donner was the Emmy he was looking for. The girl was a blonde, wearing a short blue skirt and knee-high blue socks, flat brown shoes, and an abundant white blouse. As he came closer to the bench, however, he realized that the girl couldn’t be older than thirteen.
“Go play, Heather,” Donner told her. “But don’t get lost.”
“Okay, Bill,” the girl said, and smiled at Ollie, and then walked off toward the playground equipment on the hill.
“Little old for you, ain’t she?” Ollie said.
“Yeah, well, times are difficult,” Donner said. “You want to lecture me, or you want to hear about Emmy?”
“I’m listening.”
“She’s a boy.”
Ollie looked at him.
“That’s not what Stein told me.”
“Stein told you right. Emmy can pass for a girl any day of the week. But she ain’t Emmy, she’s Emilio. And Emilio’s a boy.”
“Emilio what?”
“Ah-ha,” Donner said. “That’s where the cash comes in.”
“Do you have a last name for him?”
“I do.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“I do not.”
“So how much do you want for thisvaluableinformation?”
“I told you. A deuce.”
“For just a name? No address?”
“The valuable information is that you’re looking for a cross-dresser. The minute I give you his name, you’re on him like a bag of fleas.”
Ollie sighed.
“Lollipops cost,” Donner said philosophically.
Ollie opened his wallet. He took two hundreds from it, and handed them to Donner. Up on the hill behind them, Heather was on one of the swings, blue skirt flying, white panties showing. Donner fingered the bills.
“Herrera,” he said. “Emilio Herrera.”
Of which there were probably ten thousand in this city alone.
LUCAS RILEYwas perhaps twenty years old, they guessed, a skinny, blue-eyed kid some five feet, nine inches tall, freckles spattered all over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, the map of County Donegal all over his face. He was wearing jeans, a Ramsey U sweatshirt, high-topped workmen’s shoes, and a baseball cap turned backwards, the peak at the back of his head, the band on his forehead. They found him at last in the library at Ramsey U, and they asked him to come outside with them, please, and then walked him over to the school’s football field, empty on Sunday except for some kids in jogging clothes running around the perimeter.
They sat in the stands under a clear blue sky.
The breeze was mild, the sun was shining.
But Lucas Riley had swatted a nineteen-year-old girl last Monday morning at eleven-thirty after he discovered she’d spent the weekend with Lester Henderson. And Henderson had been killed an hour or so before that.
“So tell us about it,” Carella said.
“I lost my temper.”
“Twice?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Did you lose your temper with the councilman, too?”
“I never met the slimy bastard.”
“How’d you find out about them?”
“Her girlfriend.”
“Carrie’s girlfriend?”
Lucas nodded. “I called her Saturday night, I thought maybe Carrie was there studying with her, she told me she had a lot of studying to do that weekend. So Maria said No, she wasn’t there, and she sounded sort of hesitant, you know, the way people do when they’re hiding something, holding something back? So I said What is it, Maria? and she opened up, told me Carrie’d been seeing this older man since just after Thanksgiving, told me she was tired of making alibis for her, told me Carrie was upstate right that minute with the son of a bitch! I wanted tokillhim!”
The detectives looked at him.
He seemed to realize what he’d just said, and immediately added, “But I didn’t.”
“You beat her up instead,” Kling said.
“I only hit her once.”
“Where were you before then?”
“Like say between ten and ten-thirty that morning?”
“I had an early class.”
“How early?”
“Nine o’clock. It let out at eleven. I went straight to Carrie’s afterward. She was still unpacking from her big trip.”
“Where’d this class meet?”
“Morten Parker Hall. Room 713.”
“What’s the instructor’s name?”
“Dr. Nagel.”
“What’s his first name?”
“She’s a woman. Phyllis, I think. Or Felice, I’m not sure.”
“Does she keep attendance?”
“I’m sure she does.”
“What sort of class is it?” Carella asked.
“Romantic Poetry,” Lucas said.
ROSITA THOUGHTthese three people were total dummies, and she could not imagine how they’d managed to come up with three hundred thousand dollars, but they assured her they already had the money, and it was now merely a matter of ascertaining that she could deliver the product.
“How do we know you evenhavethe jelly beans?” their apparent leader said.
His name was Lonnie Doyle, or so he’d said, she never believed any names that were exchanged in drug transactions. She herself had told them her name was Rosalie Wadsworth, which was close to Rosita Washington, but no cigar, thank you. She did not think Lonnie Doyle could possibly be this man’s real name, but then again maybe he was stupid enough to have given her a square handle, who could tell when you were dealing with dummies?