Someone was bouncing a ball in the attic.
He stood just outside the door to the story above, debating whether he should go up there, thinking maybe somebody was working tricks with lights and wind machines, causing apparitions to appear, a theater of the supernatural, designed to cause a psychic to faint dead away and an experienced detective to stand shaking in his sodden loafers. He told himself there couldn’t be anything like ghosts—but he had already seen five of them. He told himself there was nothing to fear, but he was terrified. Fanning the air with his pistol, he made his way up the steps to the attic. The stairs creaked under his cautious tread. The ball kept bouncing somewhere above him.
She was standing at the top of the stairs. She was no older than his daughter April, wearing a long gray dress and a faded sunbonnet. She was grinning at him. She was bouncing a ball, and grinning, and chanting in tempo with the bouncing ball. The chant echoed down the stairwell. It took him a moment to realize that she was repeating over and over again the words “Hang them.” The ball bounced, and the child grinned, and the words “Hang them, hang them” floated down the stairwell to where he stood with the pistol shaking in his fist. The air around her shimmered, the ball took on an iridescent hue. She took a step down the stairwell, the ball clutched in her fist now. He backed away, and suddenly lost his footing, and went tumbling down the stairs to the floor below. Above him, he heard her laughter. And then, suddenly, the sound of the ball bouncing again.
He got to his feet and turned the pistol up the steps. She was no longer there. On the floor above he could see a blue luminous glow. His elbow hurt where he had landed on it in his fall. He dragged Hillary to her feet, held her limply against him, hefted her painfully into his arms, and went down the steps to the first floor. Above he could still hear the bouncing ball. Outside the house he carried Hillary to where he’d parked the car, the snowflakes covering her clothes till she resembled a shrouded corpse. He heaved her in onto the front seat and then went back to the house—but only to pick up their coats. The ball was still bouncing in the attic.
He heard it when he went outside again, stumbling through the deep snow toward the car. He heard it over the whine of the starter and the sudden roar of the engine. He heard it over the savage wind and the crash of the ocean. And he knew that whenever in the future anything frightened him, whenever any unknown dark terror seized his mind or clutched his heart, he would hear again the sound of that little girl bouncing the ball in the attic—bouncing it, bouncing it, bouncing it.
It was close to 10:00 when they got back to the hotel. The night clerk handed him a message over the desk. It read: Calvin Horse called. Wants you to call him at home. Carella thanked him, accepted the keys to both rooms, and then led Hillary to the elevators. She had been silent from the moment she regained consciousness in the automobile. She did not say a word now on the way up to the second floor. Outside her door, as she unlocked it, she asked, “Are you going straight to bed?”
“Not immediately,” he said.
“Would you like a nightcap?”
“I have to make a call first.”
“I’ll phone room service. What would you like?”
“Irish coffee.”
“Good, I’ll have one, too. Come in when you’re ready,” she said, and opened the door and went into the room. He unlocked his own door, took off his coat, sat on the edge of the bed, and dialed Hawes’s home number. He debated greeting him as Mr. Horse, but he was in no mood for squadroom humor just now. Hawes picked up on the third ring.
“Hawes,” he said.
“Cotton, this is Steve. What’s up?”
“Hi, Steve. Just a second, I want to lower the stereo.” Carella waited. When Hawes came back on the line, he said, “Where’ve you been? I called three times.”
“Out snooping around,” Carella said. He did not mention the ghosts he’d seen; he would never mention the ghosts he’d seen. He shuddered involuntarily now at the mere thought of them. “What’ve you got?”
“For one thing, a lot of wild prints from that pawnshop counter. Some very good ones, according to the lab boys. They’ve already sent them over to the ID Section; we may get a make by morning. I hope.”
“Good. What else?”
“Our man took another shot at it. This time he tried to hock the gold earrings with the pearls. Place on Culver and Eighth. They’re worth close to six hundred bucks, according to Hillary Scott’s list.”
“What happened?”
“He was prepared this time. Wouldn’t show a driver’s license, said he didn’t drive. The broker would’ve accepted his Social Security card, but he said he’d left that at home. He produced a postmarked letter addressed to him at 1624 McGrew. Name on the envelope was James Rader. The broker got suspicious because it looked like the name and address had been erased and then typed over again. He wouldn’t have taken it as identification anyway, but it alerted him, you know? So he went in the back room to check our flyer. When he came out again, the guy was gone, and the earrings with him.”
“Anything on James Rader?”
“Nothing in the phone directories, I’m running the name through ID now. It’s most likely a phony. I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’ve also sent the envelope to the lab. There may be prints on it they can compare against the others.”
“How about the address?”
“Nonexistent. McGrew runs for six blocks east to west, just this side of the Stem. Highest number on the street is 1411. He pulled it out of thin air, Steve.”
“Check for Jack Rawles,” Carella said. “The J. R. matches, he may be our man. If there’s nothing for him in the city, check the Boston directories for a listing on Commonwealth Avenue. And if there’s nothing in those, call the Boston PD, see if they can come up with a make.”
“How do you spell the Rawles?” Hawes asked.
“R-A-W-L-E-S.”
“Where’d you get the name?”
“He was renting the house Craig described in his book.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Maybe nothing. Check him out. I’ll be up for a while yet, give me a ring if you get anything.”
“What do you make of all this running around trying to hock the jewels?” Hawes asked.
“Amateur night in Dixie,” Carella said. “He needs money, and he doesn’t know any fences. What’d he sound like?”
“Who?”
“The guy who tried to pawn that stuff,” Carella said impatiently. “James Rader or whatever the fuck his name was.”
“Steve?” Hawes said. “Something wrong up there?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Can you reach those pawnbrokers?”
“Well, they’ll be closed now. It’s close to—”
“Try them at home. Ask them if the guy had a rasping voice.”
“A rasping voice?”
“A rasping voice, a hoarse voice. Get back to me, Cotton.”
He hung up abruptly, rose from the bed, paced the room a moment, and then sat again and dialed Boston Information. In the room next door he could hear Hillary ordering from room service. Carella gave the Boston operator both names—Jack Rawles and James Rader—and asked for a listing on Commonwealth Avenue. She told him she had a listing for a Jack Rawles, but that it was not for Commonwealth Avenue. He wrote down the number anyway and then asked for the address. She told him she was not permitted to give out addresses. He told her testily that he was a police officer investigating a homicide, and she asked him to hold on while she got her supervisor. The supervisor’s voice dripped treacle and peanut butter. She explained patiently that it was telephone company policy not to divulge the addresses of subscribers. When Carella explained with equal patience that he was an Isola detective working a homicide case and gave her the precinct number and its address, and the name of his commanding officer, and then his shield number for good measure, the supervisor said, simply and not so patiently, “I’m sorry, sir,” and hung up on him.