“Oz Kiraz,” he said, and extended his hand. His grip was firm and strong. He was a big man, possibly thirty-two, thirty-three years old, with curly black hair and an open face with sincere brown eyes. Carella could visualize him killing Russian soldiers with his bare hands. He would not have enjoyed being one of them.
“Do you think you’re going to get this guy?” he asked.
“We’re trying,” Carella said.
“Or is it going to be the same song and dance?”
“Which song and dance is that, sir?” Meyer said.
“Come on, this city is run by Jews. If a Jew killed my cousin, it’ll be totally ignored.”
“We’re trying to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Carella said.
“I’ll bet,” Oz said.
“You’d win,” Meyer said.
The call from Detective Carlyle in Ballistics came at a quarter to seven that Saturday morning.
“You the man I spoke to yesterday?” he asked.
“No, this is Carella.”
“You workin this Arab shit?”
“Yep.”
“It’s the same gun,” Carlyle said. “This doesn’t mean it was the same guy, it coulda been his cousin or his uncle or his brother pulled the trigger. But it was the same .38-caliber Colt that fired the bullet.”
“That it?”
“Ain’t that enough?”
“More than enough,” Carella said. “Thanks, pal.”
“Buy me a beer sometime,” Carlyle said, and hung up.
At 8:15 that morning, just as Carella and Meyer were briefing Brown and Kling on what had happened the night before, an attractive young black woman in her mid twenties walked into the squadroom. She introduced herself as Wandalyn Holmes, and told the detectives that she’d been heading home from baby-sitting her sister’s daughter last night — walking to the corner to catch the number 17 bus downtown, in fact — when she saw this taxi sitting at the curb, and a man dressed all in black spraying paint on the windshield.
“When he saw I was looking at him, he pointed a finger at me...”
“Pointed...?”
“Like this, yes,” Wandalyn said, and showed them how the man had pointed his finger. “And he yelled ‘You! Whore!’ and I screamed and he came running after me.”
“You whore?”
“No, two words. First ‘You!’ and then ‘Whore!’ ”
“Did you know this man?”
“Never saw him in my life.”
“But he pointed his finger at you and called you a whore.”
“Yes. And when I ran, he came after me and caught me by the back of the coat, you know what I’m saying? The collar of my coat? And pulled me over, right off my feet.”
“What time was this, Miss Holmes?” Carella asked.
“About two in the morning, a little after.”
“What happened then?”
“He kicked me. While I was laying on the ground. He seemed mad as hell. I thought at first he was gonna rape me. I kept screaming, though, and he ran off.”
“What’d you do then?” Brown asked.
“I got up and ran off, too. Over to my sister’s place. I was scared he might come back.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Oh yes.”
“Tell us what he looked like,” Meyer said.
“Like I said, he was all in black. Black hat, black raincoat, black everything.”
“Was he himself black?” Kling asked.
“Oh no, he was a white man.”
“Did you see his face?”
“I did.”
“Describe him.”
“Dark eyes. Angry. Very angry eyes.”
“Beard? Mustache?”
“No.”
“Notice any scars or tattoos?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Well, yes, I told you. He called me a whore.”
“After that.”
“No. Nothing. Just pulled me over backward, and started kicking me when I was down. I thought he was gonna rape me, I was scared to death.” Wandalyn paused a moment. The detectives caught the hesitation.
“Yes?” Carella said. “Something else?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come here right away last night, but I was too scared,” Wandalyn said. “He was very angry. So angry. I was scared he might come after me if I told the police anything.”
“You’re here now,” Carella said. “And we thank you.”
“He won’t come after me, right?” Wandalyn asked.
“I’m sure he won’t,” Carella said. “It’s not you he’s angry with.”
Wandalyn nodded. But still looked skeptical.
“You’ll be okay, don’t worry,” Brown said, and led her to the gate in the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside.
At his desk, Carella began typing up their Detective Division report. He was still typing when Brown came over and said, “You know what time it is?”
Carella nodded and kept typing.
It was 9:33 A.M. when he finally printed up the report and carried it over to Brown’s desk.
“Go home,” Brown advised, scowling.
They had worked important homicides before, and these had also necessitated throwing the schedule out the window. What was new this time around—
Well, no, there was also a murder that had almost started a race riot, this must’ve been two, three years back, they hadn’t got much sleep that time, either. This was similar, but different. This was two Muslim cabbies who’d been shot to death by someone, obviously a Jew, eager to take credit for both murders.
Meyer didn’t know whether he dreamt it, or whether it was a brilliant idea he’d had before he fell asleep at nine that morning. Dream or brilliant idea, the first thing he did when the alarm clock rang at three that afternoon was find a fat felt-tipped pen and a sheet of paper and draw a big blue Star of David on it.
He kept staring at the star and wondering if the department’s handwriting experts could tell them anything about the man or men who had spray-painted similar stars on the windshields of those two cabs.
He was almost eager to get to work.
Six hours of sleep wasn’t bad for what both detectives considered a transitional period, similar to the decompression a deep-sea diver experienced while coming up to the surface in stages. Actually, they were moving back from the midnight shift to the night shift, a passage that normally took place over a period of days, but which given the exigency of the situation occurred in the very same day. Remarkably, both men felt refreshed and — in Meyer’s case at least — raring to go.
“I had a great idea last night,” he told Carella. “Or maybe it was just a dream. Take a look at this,” he said, and showed Carella the Star of David he’d drawn.
“Okay,” Carella said.
“I’m right-handed,” Meyer said. “So what I did...”
“So am I,” Carella said.
“What I did,” Meyer said, “was start the first triangle here at the northernmost point of the star... there are six points, you know, and they mean something or other, I’m not really sure what. I am not your ideal Jew.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“But religious Jews know what the six points stand for.”
“So what’s your big idea?”
“Well, I was starting to tell you. I began the first triangle at the very top, and drew one side down to this point here,” he said, indicating the point on the bottom right...
“...and then I drew a line across to the left...”
“...and another line up to the northern point again, completing the first triangle.”