"Can't be Dolores again, can it?" Brown said.
"What?" Dolores said, puzzled.
"Better go answer it," Brown said.
"Yes," Marie said.
"I'll go with you," he said.
In the kitchen, the phone kept ringing.
Marie hesitated.
"Want me to get it?" Brown asked.
"No, I'll… it may be my mother-in-law," she said, and headed immediately for the kitchen, Brown right behind her.
The phone kept ringing.
She was thinking You goddamn fool, I told you the cops were here!
She reached out for the receiver, her mind racing.
Brown was standing in the doorway to the kitchen now, his arms folded across his chest.
Marie lifted the receiver from the hook.
"Hello?" she said.
And listened.
Brown kept watching her.
"It's for you," she said, sounding relieved, and handed the receiver to him.
CHAPTER 13
Parker felt like a real cop again.
A working detective.
The feeling was somewhat exhilarating.
The newspaper story accompanying the headline told him everything he needed to know about the liquor-store holdups tonight. The story extensively quoted Detective Meyer Meyer who had been interviewed in his room at Buenavista Hospital. Meyer had told the reporter that the heists and subsequent felony murders had been executed by four midgets being driven by a big blonde woman in a blue station wagon. One of the holdup victims had described the thieves as midgets. She had further told the police that one of the midgets was named Alice.
Parker did not have to be a detective to know that there couldn't be too many midgets named Alice in this city. But making the connection so quickly made him feel like a real cop again.
He put Peaches in a taxi—even though they were only four blocks from her apartment—told her he'd try to call her later, and then hailed a cruising patrol car. The two uniformed cops in the car advised Parker they were from the Three-One—which Parker knew anyway since the number of the precinct was on the side of the car—and they didn't know if they had authority to provide transportation for a detective from the Eight-Seven.
Parker said, "This is a homicide here, open the fucking door!"
The two uniformed cops looked at each other by way of consultation, and then the cop riding shotgun unlocked the back door for him. Parker sat in the back of the car like a common criminal, a metal grille separating him from the two cops up front.
"Four-oh-three Thompson Street," he told the driver.
"That's all the way down the Quarter," the driver complained.
"That's right, it should take you fifteen, twenty minutes."
"Half hour's more like it," the shotgun cop said, and then got on the walkie-talkie to tell his sergeant they were driving a bull from the Eight-Seven downtown.
The sergeant said, "Let me talk to him."
"He's in back," the shotgun cop said.
"Stop the car and let me talk to him," the sergeant said. He sounded very no-nonsense. Parker had met sergeants like him before. He loved trampling on sergeants like him.
They stopped the car and opened the back door. The shotgun cop handed the walkie-talkie in to Parker.
"What's the problem?" Parker said into it.
"Who's this?" the sergeant said.
"Detective Andrew Lloyd Parker," he said, "Eighty-Seventh Squad. Who's this?"
"Never mind who this is, what's the idea commandeering one of my cars?"
"The idea is homicide," Parker said. "The idea is two cops in the hospital. The idea is I gotta get downtown in a hurry, and I'd hate like hell for the media to find out a sergeant from the Three-One maybe stood in the way of a timely arrest. That's the idea. You think you got it?"
There was a long silence.
"Who's your commanding officer?" the sergeant asked, trying to save face.
"Lieutenant Peter Byrnes," Parker said. "We finished here?"
"You can take the car downtown, but I'll be talking to your lieutenant," the sergeant said.
"Good, you talk to him," Parker said, and handed the walkie-talkie to the shotgun cop. "Let's get rolling," he said.
They closed the back door again. The driver set the car in motion.
"Hit the hammer," Parker said.
The blues looked sidelong at each other. This kind of thing didn't seem to warrant use of the siren.
"Hit the fucking hammer," Parker said.
The driver hit the siren switch.
They were sitting in the living room when Brown got off the phone. Marie and her sister-in-law side by side on the sofa, Hawes in an easy chair opposite them.
Brown walked in looking very solemn.
"Hal Willis," he said to Hawes.
"What's up?" Hawes said.
Brown tugged casually at his earlobe before he started talking again. Hawes picked up the signal at once. Little dog-and-pony act on the way.
"They found the rest of the body," Brown said.
Marie looked at him.
"Head and the hands," Brown said. "In the river. I'm sorry, ma'am," he said to Dolores, "but your brother's body was dismembered. I hate to break it to you this way."
"Oh my God!" Dolores said.
Marie was still looking at Brown.
"Guys dredging the river pulled up this aluminum case, head and the hands in it," he said.
Hawes was trying to catch the drift. He kept listening intently.
"Did you know this?" Dolores asked Marie.
Marie nodded.
"You knew he'd been… ?"
"Yes," she said. "I didn't tell Mom because I knew what it would do to her."
"Monoghan responded," Brown said to Hawes, "phoned the squad. Willis went on over with the stuff on my desk."
The stuff on his desk, Hawes thought. The reports, the positive ID, the poster he'd taken from the high school bulletin board.
"I hate to have to go over this another time, Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "but I wonder if you can give me a description of your husband again. So we can close this out."
"I have it right here," Hawes said. He was beginning to catch on. Nobody closed out a case while the murderer was still running around loose. He took his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket, flipped through the pages. "Male, white, thirty-four years old…" he said.
"That right?" Brown asked Marie.
"Yes," she said.
"Five-eleven," Hawes said, "one-seventy…"
"Mrs. Sebastiani?"
"Yes."
Eyes flashing with intelligence now. Hawes figured she was beginning to catch on, too. Didn't know exactly what was coming, but was bracing herself for it. Hawes didn't know exactly what was coming, either. But he had a hunch.
"Hair black," he said, "Eyes…"
"Why do we have to go over this again?" she said. "I identified the body, you have everything you…"
My brother's hair was black, yes," Dolores said softly, and patted Marie's hand.
"Eyes blue," Hawes said.
"Blue eyes, yes," Dolores said. "Like mine."
"Will I have to come into the city again?" Marie asked. "To look at… at what they… they found in the… ?"
"Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "the head we found in the river doesn't match your husband's photograph."
Marie blinked at him.
Silence.
Then:
"Well… does… does that mean… what does that mean?"
"It means the dead man isn't your husband," Brown said.
"Has someone made a mistake then?" Dolores asked at once. "Are you saying my brother isn't dead?"
"Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "would you mind very much if I read you this description you gave me of Jimmy Brayne?"