Fat Ollie Weeks was a detective in the Eight-Three. Carella did not like working with him. That was only because Ollie was a bigot. Carella did not like bigots. Ollie was a good cop and an excellent bigot. His bigotry entended to everyone and everything. He missed being a misanthrope by a hair. That was because there were some people he actually liked. One of those people was Steve Carella. Since the affection was somewhat less than mutual, Carella tried to avoid wandering into the Eight-Three except out of dire necessity. Carella even avoided calling the Eight-Three unless a hatchet murderer was last seen on the steps leading up to the station house there. His dislike of Fat Ollie bordered on ingratitude; the man had, after all, helped them crack at least two cases in recent memory.
Carella hoped it would not be the Eight-Three. On the telephone he asked Sophie Harris where she’d been living when her son Jimmy was eighteen, and then held his breath in anticipation of her answer. The telephone line crackled and spit. Sophie said she’d lived on Landis and Dinsley. Carella let out his breath and then thanked her more profusely than her simple answer seemed to have warranted. Landis and Dinsley was in the Eight-Five.
They went up there at ten o’clock that Sunday morning. Meyer had a hangover, but he was able to report with some lucidity about what he’d discovered, or rather what he had not discovered, in the Harris apartment yesterday.
“The way I figure it,” he said, “something was buried in that window box, and somebody later dug it up.”
“Jimmy?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the killer. I packed a specimen of the dirt in an evidence—”
“Soil,” Carella said.
“What?”
“It’s soil, not dirt.”
“Yeah — in an evidence bag and sent it over to the lab. This was before I went to Irwin’s wedding, I want you to know. You had me very busy yesterday.”
“Did you check out the back yard?”
“I went down there before I left the building. I didn’t see any signs of digging.”
“How’d the window box look?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it dumped on the floor like the rest of the stuff in the apartment?”
“The dirt, you mean?”
“Yeah, the soil.”
“No, it was in the box.”
“Well, if the killer went throwing everything all over the place, why was he so neat with the window box?”
“Then maybe it wasn’t the killer,” Meyer said, and shrugged, and then winced. “My head hurts when I shrug,” he said. “I shouldn’t drink. I really shouldn’t drink. I can hold my liquor, I don’t get drunk, but I always have a terrible hangover the next day.”
“What do you drink?” Carella asked.
“Scotch. Why? What does it matter what I drink?”
“Some drinks give you worse hangovers than other drinks. Gin gives you terrible hangovers. So does bourbon. Cognac is the worst.”
“I drink Scotch and I have a hangover,” Meyer said. “That’s because I’m Jewish.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Indians and Jews get terrible hangovers from drinking Scotch,” Meyer said. “Jewish college girls get headaches from eating Chinese food, did you know that? It’s from the the monosodium glutamate in it. It’s called the Jewish College Girl Syndrome.”
“How do you happen to know that amazing fact?” Carella asked.
“I looked it up.”
“Where?”
“In the library. Under Jewish College Girls.”
“I’ve never in my life looked under a Jewish College girl,” Carella said.
“The reason I looked it up, I was working on this case,” Meyer said, “where an Indian...
“Yeah, yeah,” Carella said.
“God’s truth. An Indian was lacing a Jewish college girl’s Chinese food with Scotch, and she was getting terrible headaches all the time. I finally arrested the Indian.”
“Did the headaches go away?”
“No, but the Indian did. For six years.”
“What did the girl do about the headaches?”
“She went to see a headache doctor. He told her she was wearing underwear a size too small.”
“How did he know?”
“He looked it up.”
“Under what?”
“Underwear,” Meyer said, and both men burst out laughing.
They were still laughing when they showed their shields to the patrolman stationed outside the front steps of the 85th Precinct. The patrolman looked at the shields and then looked at the two men. He suspected they were imposters, but he let them go inside, anyway; hell with it, let the desk sergeant’s mother worry. The building that housed the 85th looked very much like the one that housed the 87th — twin green globes flanking the entrance doors, wide steps leading up to those doors, muster room beyond, brass rail just before the muster desk, sergeant sitting behind the high wooden desk like a magistrate in a British court. They showed him their shields and said they wanted to talk to someone in the Detective Division.
“Anyone in particular?” the sergeant asked.
“Anyone who might be familiar with street-gang activity in the precinct.”
“That’d be Jonesy, I guess,” the sergeant said, and plugged a line into his switchboard. He waited, and then said, “Mike, is Jonesy up there? Put him on, will you?” He waited again. “Jonesy,” he said, “I’ve got a pair of detectives down here, want to talk to somebody about street gangs. Can you help them?” He listened, and then said, “Where you guys from?”
“The Eight-Seven,” Meyer said.
“The Eight-Seven,” the sergeant repeated into the phone. “Okay, fine,” he said, and pulled out the plug. “Go right upstairs,” he said, “He’s waiting for you. How’s Dave Murchison? He’s your desk sergeant there, ain’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” Carella said.
“Give him my regards. Tell him John Sweeney, from when we used to walk a beat together in Calm’s Point.” “We’ll do that,” Meyer said.
“Ask him about the ham and eggs,” Sweeney said, and laughed.
The detectives of the 85th had somehow managed to wheedle from petty cash, or someplace, the money for a printed sign. It read DETECTIVE DIVISION in bold black letters. Just below the words was a pointing carnival-barker hand that looked like what someone’s great-grandmother might have seen. It gave the otherwise decrepit muster room a look of antiquity and shoddy dignity. Up the iron-runged steps they went, just as if they were home. Turn the comer, walk down the hall, there was the bull pen. No slatted rail divider here. Instead, a bank of low filing cabinets that formed a sort of wall across the corridor. Just inside the battered metal barrier was a desk. A huge black man in shirt sleeves was standing behind the desk, a clearly anticipatory look on his face.
“I’m Jonesy,” he said. “Come in, have a seat.”
A plastic nameplate on his desk read Det. Richard Jones. The desk top was strewn with familiar D.D. report forms, departmental flyers and notices, hot car sheets, stop-sheets, all-state bulletins, B-sheets, mug shots, fingerprint cards — the usual clutter you’d find on the desk of any detective in the city. There were four men besides Jonesy in the squadroom. Two of them sat typing at their desks. One was leaning against the grilled detention cage, talking to a young black girl inside it. Another was at the water cooler, bending over to look at the spigot.