“What you want us to do now?” Jackson asked.
“Go work out on the bag a while,” Clarke said over his shoulder.
“Which bag?”
“The big one.”
Jackson turned and began walking toward the far side of the ring. The larger fighter followed him. Together they ducked through the ropes. A loudspeaker erupted into the sweaty rhythm of the huge echoing room. “Andrew Henderson, call your mother. Andrew Henderson, call your mother.”
“So what is it?” Clarke asked.
“Jimmy and Isabel Harris,” Carella said.
“You’re kiddin me,” Clarke said. “What’ve I got to do with that?”
“Is it true you asked Sophie Harris to marry you?”
“That’s right,” Clarke said. “Listen, what is this, man? Is this you’re lookin for information about somebody you think done this thing, or is it you’re tryin to hang it on me? Cause, man, from what I read in the papers that boy was killed at around seven-thirty last night, and I was right here then, man, workin my fighter.”
“Don’t get excited,” Meyer said.
“I ain’t excited,” Clarke said. “I just know some things. You don’t get to be sixty years old in Diamond-back without gettin to know a few things.”
“What are these things you know, Mr. Clarke?”
“I know when a black man’s been killed, the cops go lookin for another black man. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll give you six-to-five it’s cause I’m black.”
“You’d lose,” Carella said.
“Then enlighten me,” Clarke said.
“We’re here because you asked Sophie Harris to marry you, and you know she’s contingent beneficiary of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar insurance policy. That’s why we’re here.”
“You think I killed those two kids so I could latch onto the twenty-five, is that it?”
“What time did you get here last night?”
“Shit, man, I got half a mind—”
“If you’re clean, we’ll be out of here in three minutes flat. Just tell us when you got here and when you left.”
“I was here at seven and I left at midnight.”
“Anybody see you?”
“I was workin with Warren and a sparring partner.”
“Warren?”
“Warren Jackson. My boy.”
“Who was the sparring partner? Same guy there?” “No, a kid named Donald Rivers. I don’t see him around, I don’t think he’s here right now.”
“Anybody else?”
“Only every fighter and manager in Diamondback. Warren’s got a fight Tuesday night. I been workin his ass off. Ask anybody in the gym — pick anybody you see on the floor — ask them was I here workin the boy last night. Seven o’clock to midnight. Had ring time from eight to nine, you can check that downstairs. Rest of the time I had him runnin and jumpin and punchin the bags and the whole damn shit.”
“Where’d you go when you left here?” Meyer said.
“Coffee shop up the street. I don’t know the name of it, everybody from the gym rolls in there. It’s right on the corner of Holman and 76th. They know me there, you ask them was I in there last night.”
“We’ll ask them,” Meyer said. “What’s your middle name?”
“None of your fuckin business,” Clarke said.
They checked around the gymnasium and learned that at least half a dozen people had seen Clarke on the premises the night before, between the hours of seven and midnight. They checked with the owner of the coffee shop up the street, and he told them Clarke and his fighter came in shortly after midnight last night, sat around talking till at least one in the morning, maybe one-thirty. According to the coroner’s report, Jimmy Harris had been slain sometime between six-thirty and seven-thirty p.m. He had been able to pinpoint the time so narrowly because the body was discovered almost immediately after the murder; rigor mortis, in fact, had not yet set in. With Isabel Harris, the latitude was wider; the coroner guessed she’d been killed sometime between ten p.m. and one a.m. In order to have killed Jimmy in Hannon Square at six-thirty, and then get uptown to the gym in Diamondback by seven o’clock, Charlie Clarke had to have moved faster than a speeding bullet. The logistics were impossible. Nor could he have got downtown again to the Harris apartment during the time span the coroner had estimated for Isabel’s murder.
This meant nothing.
In this city you could get somebody killed for fifty dollars. There was a possible twenty-five thousand dollars at stake here, and for a tenth of that you could hire a battalion of goons. They did not yet know whether the lab boys had lifted any good prints in the Harris apartment. In the meantime, and against that eventuality, they decided to request an I.D. run on Charles C. Clarke in the morning. It was almost eight o’clock when they left Diamondback. Carella dropped Meyer at the nearest subway station, and then drove home to Riverhead.
Five
The front door to the house was locked.
Night like tonight, the goddamn door would be locked and he’d have to stand out there in the cold fumbling for keys. He rang the doorbell, and indeed began fumbling for keys, muttering under his breath. His fingers were stiff, they rummaged awkwardly through the loose change in his right-hand pocket. He took out his key ring. There were enough skeleton keys on it to have convicted a burglar of possession of tools. The house was a huge old rambling monster near Donnegan’s Bluff, purchased by the Carellas shortly after the twins were born, a house that had undoubtedly quartered a large family and an army of servants in the good old days. These were the bad new days, however. It was only Fanny who finally opened the door for him.
“Well, well, it’s himself,” she said.
Fanny was their housekeeper, a big woman in her late fifties, wearing a white blouse and bright green slacks that spread wide over a hundred and forty pounds of girth, bleached red hair flaming like neon, mellow Irish brogue spilling from her lips like aged whiskey. “I thought you’d never get here, to tell the truth of it,” she said.
“Fanny,” he said, “I’m cold and I’m hungry.”
“Don’t be threatenin me, y’bully,” she said. “Theodora’s in the living room. Come in, you’ll catch your death.”
“If you’ll step out of the doorway...”
“Aye, I’ll step out of the doorway,” she said, and moved aside to let him in.
She had come to the Carellas years ago, as a month-long gift from Teddy’s father, who’d felt his daughter needed at least that much time to recuperate after the birth of twins. In those days Fanny’s hair was blue, and she wore a pincenez and weighed ten pounds less than she did now. The prepaid month had gone by all too quickly, and Carella had regretfully informed her that he could not afford a full-time housekeeper on his meager salary. But Fanny was an indomitable broad who had never had a family of her own, and who rather liked this one. So she told Carella he could pay her whatever he might scrape up for the time being, and she would supplement her income with night jobs, she being a trained nurse and a very healthy woman to boot. Carella had flatly refused. Fanny had put her hands on her hips and said, “Are you going to throw me out into the street, is that it?” and they’d argued back and forth, and Fanny had stayed. She was still with them.
“Theodora’s in the living room,” she said again. “Shall I bring you a drink, or are you still on duty?”
“I’d like a Scotch and soda, please, very strong,” Carella said, and took off his coat and hung it on the hallway rack.