“Al-Barak?” Brown asked.
“No, Ali,” Parker said. “More than five million men in the Arab world are named Ali.”
“How do you know that?” Kling asked.
“I know such things,” Parker said.
“And what’s it got to do with the goddamn price offish?” Byrnes asked.
“In case you run into a lot of Alis,” Parker explained, “you’ll know it ain’t a phenomenon, it’s just a fact.”
“Let me hear it,” Byrnes said sourly, and nodded to Eileen.
“Three children,” she said, picking up where she’d left off. “Lived in a Saudi neighborhood in Riverhead. No apparent connection to either of the two other vies. All three even worshipped at different mosques. Shot at the back of the head, same as the other two. Blue star on the windshield...”
“The other two were the same handwriting,” Meyer said.
“Right-handed writer,” Carella said.
“Anything from Ballistics yet?” Byrnes asked Eileen.
“Slug went to them, too soon to expect anything.”
“Two to one, it’ll be the same,” Richard Genero said.
He was the newest detective on the squad and rarely ventured comments at these clambakes. Taller than Willis — hell, everybody was taller than Willis — he nonetheless looked like a relative, what with the same dark hair and eyes. Once, in fact, a perp had asked them if they were brothers. Willis, offended, had answered, “I’ll give you brothers.”
“Which’ll mean the same guy killed all three,” Byrnes said.
Genero felt rewarded. He smiled in acknowledgment.
“Or the same gun, anyway,” Carella said.
“Widow been informed?”
“We went there directly from the scene,” Willis said.
“What’ve we got on the paint?”
“Brand name sold everywhere,” Meyer said.
“What’s with this Inverni kid?”
“He’s worth another visit.”
“Why?”
“He has a thing about religion.”
“What kind of thing?”
“He thinks it’s all bullshit.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Parker said.
“I don’t,” Genero said.
“That doesn’t mean he’s going around killing Muslims,” Byrnes said. “But talk to him again. Find out where he was last night at... Hal? What time did the cabbie catch it?”
“Twenty past two.”
“Be nice if Inverni’s our man,” Brown said.
“Yes, that would be very nice.”
“In your dreams,” Parker said.
“You got a better idea?”
Parker thought this over.
“You’re such an expert on Arabian first names...”
“Arabic.”
“...I thought maybe you might have a better idea,” Byrnes said.
“How about we put undercovers in the cabs?”
“Brilliant,” Byrnes said. “You know any Muslim cops?”
“Come to think of it,” Parker said, and shrugged again.
“Where’d this last one take place?”
“Booker and Lowell. In Riverhead,” Eileen said. “Six blocks from the stadium.”
“He’s ranging all over the place.”
“Got to be random,” Brown said.
“Let’s scour the hood,” Kling suggested. “Must be somebody heard a shot at two in the morning.”
“Two-twenty,” Parker corrected.
“I’m going to triple-team this,” Byrnes said. “Anybody not on vacation or out sick, I want him on this case. I’m surprised the commissioner himself hasn’t called yet. Something like this...”
The phone on his desk rang.
“Let’s get this son of a bitch,” Byrnes said, and waved the detectives out of his office.
His phone was still ringing.
He rolled his eyes heavenward and picked up the receiver.
All over the city, busy citizens picked up the afternoon tabloid, and read its headline, and then turned to the story on page three. Unless the police were withholding vital information, they still did not have a single clue. This made people nervous. They did not want these stupid killings to escalate into the sort of situation that was a daily occurrence in Israel. They did not want retaliation to follow retaliation. They did not want hate begetting more hate.
But they were about to get it.
The first of what the police hoped would be the last of the bombings took place that very afternoon, the fifth day of May.
Parker — who knew such things — could have told the other detectives on the squad that the fifth of May was a date of vast importance in Mexican and Chicano communities, of which there were not a few in this sprawling city. Cinco de Mayo, as it was called in Spanish, celebrated the victory of the Mexican Army over the French in 1862. Hardly anyone today — except Parker maybe — knew that La Battala de Puebla had been fought and won by Mestizo and Zapotec Indians. Nowadays, many of the Spanish-speaking people in this city thought the date commemorated Mexican independence, which Parker could have told you was September 16, 1810, and not May 5, 1862. Some people suspected Parker was an idiot savant, but this was only half true. He merely read a lot.
On that splendid, sunny, fifth day of May, as the city’s Chicano population prepared for an evening of folklorico dancing and mariachi music and margaritas, and as the weary detectives of the Eight-Seven spread out into the three sections of the city that had so far been stricken with what even the staid morning newspaper labeled “The Muslim Murders,” a man carrying a narrow Gucci dispatch case walked into a movie theater that was playing a foreign film about a Japanese prostitute who aspires to become an internationally famous violinist, took a seat in the center of the theater’s twelfth row, watched the commercials for furniture stores and local restaurants and antique shops, and then watched the coming attractions, and finally, at 1:37 P.M. — just as the feature film was about to start — got up to go to the men’s room.
He left the Gucci dispatch case under the seat.
There was enough explosive material in that sleek leather case to blow up at least seven rows of seats in the orchestra. There was also a ticking clock set to trigger a spark at 3:48 P.M., just about when the Japanese prostitute would be accepted at Juilliard.
Spring break had ended not too long ago, and most of the students at Ramsey U still sported tans they’d picked up in Mexico or Florida. There was an air of bustling activity on the downtown campus as Meyer and Carella made their way through crowded corridors to the Registrar’s Office, where they hoped to acquire a program for Anthony Inverni. This turned out to be not as simple as they’d hoped. Each and separately they had to show first their shields and next their ID cards, and still had to invoke the sacred words “Homicide investigation,” before the yellow-haired lady with a bun would reveal the whereabouts of Anthony Inverni on this so-far eventless Cinco de Mayo.
The time was 1:45 P.M.
They found Inverni already seated in the front row of a class his program listed as “Shakespearean Morality.” He was chatting with a girl wearing a blue scarf around her head and covering her forehead. The detectives assumed she was Muslim, though this was probably profiling. They asked Inverni if he would mind stepping outside for a moment, and he said to the girl, “Excuse me, Halima,” which more or less confirmed their surmise, but which did little to reinforce the profile of a hate criminal.
“So what’s up?” he asked.