by Nocturne
“What do you mean?”
“A trade, you know? He forgets the gun, we forget the bill.”
“You think that’s what he had in mind, huh?”
“Who knows?”
“Well, did he actually suggest anything like that?”
“No, I’m just saying.”
“So, actually,” Hawes said, “you have no reason to believe there wasn’t a gun in that glove compartment?”
“Unless the jig had some other reason to be lying about it.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe he had some use for it later on. Claim it was stolen, build an alibi in advance, you follow?”
“Can you write down the names of everyone who was working here while the car was in the shop?” Carella asked.
“Sure.”
“Would anyone else have access to that key cabinet? Aside from your people?” Hawes asked.
“Sure. Anybody walking in and out of the office here. But there’s always one of us around. We would’ve seen anybody trying to get in the cabinet.”
“Addresses and phone numbers, too,” Carella said.
Despite the cold, the blonde was wearing only a brief black miniskirt, a short red fake-fur jacket, gartered black silk stockings and high-heeled, red leather, ankle-high boots. A matching red patent-leather clutch handbag was tucked under her arm. Her naked thighs were raw from the wind, and her feet were freezing cold in the high-heeled boots. Shivering, she stood on the corner near the traffic light, where any inbound traffic from Majesta would have to stop before moving into the city proper.
The girl’s name was Yolande.
She was free, white, and nineteen years old, but she was a hooker and a crack addict, and she was here on the street at this hour of the morning because she hoped to snag a driver coming in, and spin him around the block once or twice while she gave him a fifty-dollar blow job.
Yolande didn’t know it, but she would be dead in three hours.
The detectives coming out of the gas station office spotted the blonde standing on the corner, recognized her for exactly what she was, but didn’t glance again in her direction. Yolande recognized them as well, for exactly what they were, and watched them warily as they climbed into an unmarked, dark blue sedan. A white Jaguar pulled to the curb where she was standing. The window on the passenger side slid noiselessly down. The traffic light bathed the car and the sidewalk and Yolande in red. She waited until she saw a plume of exhaust smoke billow from the tailpipe of the dark sedan up the street. Then she leaned into the window of the car at the curb, smiled and said, “Hey, hiya. Wanna party?”
“How much?” the driver asked.
The changing traffic light suddenly turned everything to green.
A moment later, the two vehicles moved off in opposite directions.
The night was young.
They found Gus Mondalvo in an underground club in a largely Hispanic section of Riverhead. This was now a little past four in the morning. His mother, who refused to open the door of her apartment despite repeated declarations that they were police, told them they could find her son at the Club Fajardo “up dee block,” which is where they were now, trying to convince the heavyset man who opened the chain-held door that they weren’t here to bust the place.
The man protested in Spanish that they weren’t serving liquor here, anyway, so what was there to bust? This was just a friendly neighborhood social club having a little party, they could come in and see for themselves, all of this while incriminating bottles and glasses were being whisked from behind the bar and off the tabletops. By the time he took off the chain some five minutes later, you would have thought this was a teenage corner malt shop instead of a joint selling booze after hours to a clientele that included underage kids. The man who let them in told them Gus Mondalvo was sitting at the bar drinking …
“But nothing alcoholic,” he added hastily.
… and pointed him out to them. A Christmas tree still stood in the corner near the bar, elaborately decorated, extravagantly lighted. The detectives made their way across a small dance floor packed with teenagers dancing and groping to Ponce’s Golden Oldies, moved past tables where boys and girls, men and women alike were all miraculously drinking Coca-Cola in bottles, and approached the stool where Gus Mondalvo sat sipping what looked like a lemonade.
“Mr. Mondalvo?” Hawes asked.
Mondalvo kept sipping his drink.
“Police,” Hawes said, and flipped a leather case open to show his shield.
There are various ways to express cool when responding to a police presence. One is to feign total indifference to the fact that cops are actually here and may be about to cause trouble. Like “I’ve been through this a hundred times before, man, and it don’t faze me, so what can I do for you?” Another is to display indignation. As, for example, “Do you realize who I am? How dare you embarrass me this way in a public place?” The third is to pretend complete ignorance. “Cops? Are you really cops? Gee. What business on earth could cops possibly have with me?”
Mondalvo turned slowly on his stool.
“Hi,” he said, and smiled.
They had seen it all and heard it all.
This time around, it would be pleasant indifference.
“Mr. Mondalvo,” Hawes said, “we understand you worked on the engine of a Cadillac belonging to a Mr. Rodney Pratt on Friday, would you remember having done that?”
“Oh, sure,” Mondalvo said. “Listen, do you think we’d be more comfortable at a table? Something to drink? A Coke? A ginger ale?”
He slid off the stood to reveal his full height of five-six, five-seven, shorter than he’d looked while sitting, a little man with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, sporting a close-cropped haircut and mustache. Carella wondered if he’d acquired the weight lifter’s build in prison, and then realized he was prejudging someone who was, after all, gainfully employed as an automobile mechanic. They moved to a table near the dance floor. Hawes noticed that the club was discreetly and gradually beginning to clear out, people slipping into their overcoats and out the door. If a bust was in the cards, nobody wanted to be here when it came down. Some foolhardy couples, enjoying the music and maybe even the sense of imminent danger, flitted past on the dance floor, trying to ignore them, but everyone knew The Law was here, and eyes sideswiped them with covert glances.
“We’ll get right to the point,” Carella said. “Did you happen to notice a gun in the glove compartment of that car?”
“I didn’t go in the glove compartment,” Mondalvo said. “I had to put in a new engine, why would I go in the glove compartment?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
“Right. Why would I? Is that what this is about?”
“Yes.”
“Because I already told Jimmy I didn’t know anything about that guy’s gun.”
“Jimmy Jackson?”
“Yeah, the day manager. He asked me did I see a gun, I told him what gun? I didn’t see no gun.”
“But you did work on the Caddy all day Friday.”
“Yeah. Well not all day. It was a three-, four-hour job. What it was, somebody put styrene in the crankcase.”
“So we understand.”
“Styrene is what they use to make fiberglass. It’s this oily shit you can buy at any marine or boat supply store, people use it to patch their fiberglass boats. But if you want to fuck up a guy’s engine, all you do you mix a pint of it with three, four quarts of oil and pour it in his crankcase. The car’ll run maybe fifty, sixty miles, a hundred max, before the oil breaks down and the engine binds. Pratt’s engine was shot. We had to order a new one for him. Somebody didn’t like this guy so much, to do something like that to his car, huh? Maybe that’s why he packed a gun.”
Maybe, Carella was thinking.
“Anybody else go near that car while you were working on it?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Give us some approximate times here,” Hawes said. “When did you start workin
g on it?”
“After lunch sometime Friday. I had a Buick in needed a brake job, and then I had a Beamer had something wrong with the electrical system. I didn’t get to the Caddy till maybe twelve-thirty, one o’clock. That’s when I put it up on the lift.”
“Where was it until then?”
“Sitting out front. There’s like a little parking space out front, near where the air hose is?”
“Was the car locked?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, were you the one who drove it into the bay and onto the lift?”
“Yeah.”
“So, was the car locked when you …?”
“Come to think of it, no.”
“You just got into it without having to unlock the door.”
“That’s right.”
“Was the key in the ignition?”
“No, I took it from the cabinet near the cash register.”
“And went to the car …”
“Yeah.”
“… and found it unlocked.”
“Right. I just got in and started it.”
“What time did you finish work on it?”
“Around four, four-thirty.”
“Then what?”
“Drove it off the lift, parked it outside again.”
“Did you lock it?”
“I think so.”
“Yes or no? Would you remember?”
“I’m pretty sure I did. I knew it was gonna be outside all night, I’m pretty sure I would’ve locked it.”
“What’d you do with the key after you locked it?”
“Put it back in the cabinet.”
“You weren’t there on Thursday night when Mr. Pratt brought the car in, were you?” Carella asked.
“No, I go home six o’clock. We don’t have any mechanics working the night shift. No gas jockeys, either. It’s all self-service at night. There’s just the night manager there. We mostly sell gas to cabs at night. That’s about it.”
“What time did you get to work on Friday morning?”
“Seven-thirty. I work a long day.”
“Who was there when you got there?”
“The day manager and two gas jockeys.”
Carella took out the list Ralph had written for him.
“That would be Jimmy Jackson …”
“The manager, yeah.”
“Jose Santiago …”
“Yeah.”
“… and Abdul Sikhar.”
“Yeah, the Arab guy.”
“See any of them going in that Caddy?”
“No.”
“Hanging around it?”
“No. But I have to tell you the truth, I wasn’t like watching it every minute, you know? I had work to do.”
“Mr. Mondalvo, the gun we’re tracing was used in a homicide earlier tonight …”
“I didn’t know that,” Mondalvo said, and looked around quickly, as if even mere possession of this knowledge was dangerous.
“Yes,” Hawes said. “So if you know anything at all …”
“Nothing.”
“… about that gun, or who might have taken that gun from the car …”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“… then you should tell us now. Because otherwise …”
“I swear to God,” Mondalvo said, and made the sign of the cross.
“Otherwise you’d be an accessory after the fact,” Carella said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’d be as guilty as whoever pulled that trigger.”
“I don’t know who pulled any trigger.”
Both cops looked at him hard.
“I swear to God,” he said again. “I don’t know.”
Maybe they believed him.
4
The three kids were all named Richard.
Because they were slick-as-shit preppies from a New England school, they called themselves Richard the First, Second, and Third, after Richard the Lion-Hearted, Richard the son of Edward, and Richard who perhaps had his nephews murdered in the Tower of London. They were familiar with these monarchs through an English history course they’d had to take back in their sophomore year. The three Richards were now seniors. All three of them had been accepted at Harvard. They were each eighteen years old, each varsity football heroes, all smart as hell, handsome as devils, and drunk as skunks. To coin a few phrases.
Like his namesake Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Hopper—for such was his real name—was six feet tall and he weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, and he had blond hair and blue eyes, just like the twelfth-century king. Unlike that fearless monarch, however, Richard did not write poetry although he sang quite well. In fact, all three Richards were in the school choir. Richard the First was the team’s star quarterback.
The real Richard the Second had ruled England from 1377 to 1399 and was the son of Edward the Black Prince. The present-day Richard the Second was named Richard Weinstock, and his father was Irving the Tailor. He was five feet ten inches tall and weighed two hundred and forty pounds, all of it muscle and bruised bones. He had dark hair and brown eyes, and he played fullback on the team.
Richard the Third, whose true and honorable name was Richard O’Connor, had freckles and reddish hair and greenish eyes and he was six feet three inches tall and weighed two-ten. His fifteenth-century namesake was the third son of the duke of York, a mighty feudal baron. Richard’s left arm was withered and shrunken, but this did not stop him from being a fierce fighter and a conniving son of a bitch. The king, that is. The present-day Richard was known to cheat on French exams, but he had two strong arms and very good hands and he played wide receiver on the Pierce Academy team.
All three Richards had come down to the city for the weekend. They were not due back at school till Monday morning. All three Richards were wearing the team’s hooded parka, navy blue with a big letter P in white on the back. Just below the stem of the P, there was a white logo in the shape of a football, about three inches wide and five inches long. The patch indicated which team they played on. Over the left pectoral on the front of the parka, the name of the school was stitched in white script lettering, Pierce Academy, ta-ra.
The Richards Three.
At four-thirty on that gelid morning, it was doubtful that any of the three, despite the similarity, knew his own name. Turning back to yell “Fuck you!” and “Go eat shit!” at the bouncer who’d told them the club was now closed and then politely but firmly showed them the front door, they came reeling out onto the sidewalk and stood uncertainly toggling their parkas closed, pulling the hoods up over their heads, wrapping their blue and white mufflers, trying to light cigarettes, burping, farting, giggling, and finally throwing their arms around each other and going into a football huddle.
“What we need to do now,” Richard the First said, “is to get ourselves laid.”
“That’s a good idea,” Richard the Third said. “Where can we find some girls?”
“Uptown?” Richard the First suggested.
“Then let’s go uptown,” Richard the Second agreed.
They clapped out of the huddle.
Uptown, Yolande was climbing into another automobile.
The three Richards hailed a taxi.
Jimmy Jackson’s kids knew there was a black Santa Claus because they’d seen one standing alongside a fake chimney and ringing a bell outside a department store downtown on Hall Avenue after their mother had taken them to sit on the lap of a white Santa Claus inside. The white Santa apparently hadn’t listened all that hard because James Jr. hadn’t got the bike he’d asked for, and Millie hadn’t got this year’s hot doll, and Terrence hadn’t got this year’s hot warrior. So when the doorbell rang at a quarter to five that Sunday morning, they ran to wake up their father because they figured this might be the black bell-ringing Santa coming back to make amends for the white department-store Santa’s oversights.
Jimmy Jackson was only mildly annoyed to be awakened by his kids so early on a
Sunday morning when his mother-in-law was coming to visit, not to mention his sister Naydelle and her two screaming brats. He became singularly irritated, however, when he opened the door and found it wasn’t no joke but was really two honkie dicks, just like they’d said through the wood, standing there with gold and blue badges in they hands. On a Sunday no less, did the motherfuckers have no consideration whatever?
The kids were asking if he would make pancakes, since everybody was up, anyway.
Jackson told them to go ask they mother.
“So whut is it?” he said to the cops.
“Mr. Jackson,” Carella said, “we realize it’s early in the morning …”
“Yeah, yeah, whut is it?”
“But we’re investigating a homicide …”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And we’re trying to track the murder weapon.”
Jackson looked at them.
He was a tall, rangy, very dark man, wearing a robe over pajamas, his eyes still bleary from sleep, his mouth pulled into a thin angry line. Man had a right to the sancty of his own home on Sunday morning, he was thinking, thout these motherfuckers comin roun. Murder weapon my ass, he was thinking.
“Is this about that damn gun again?” he asked.
From somewhere in the apartment, a woman asked, “Who is it, James?”
“It’s the po-lice!” one of the children shouted gleefully. “Can Daddy make pancakes now?”
“The police?” she said. “James?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said.
“It’s about the gun again, yes,” Hawes said.
“I tole Pratt I dinn see no damn gun in his car. Nobody seen that damn gun. You want my opinion, that gun is a fiction of Pratt’s imagination.”
No one had yet invited them into the apartment. Mrs. Jackson came down the hall now in a robe and slippers, a perplexed frown on her face. She was a tall woman with the bearing of a Masai warrior, the pale yellow eyes of a panther. She didn’t like cops here scaring her kids, and she was ready to tell them so.
“What’s this,” she said, “five o’clock in the mornin?”
“Ma’am,” Carella said, “we’re sorry to be bothering you, but we’re working a homicide and …”
