by Nocturne
“What’s anybody in this household got to do with a homicide?”
“We’re simply trying to find out when the murder weapon disappeared from the owner’s car. That’s all.”
“What car?” she asked.
“Caddy was in for service,” her husband explained.
“You work on that Caddy?”
“No. Gus did.”
“Then why they botherin you?” she said, and turned to the cops again. “Why you botherin my man?”
“Because an old lady was killed,” Carella said simply.
Mrs. Jackson looked into their faces.
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll make some coffee.”
They went into the apartment. Jackson closed the door behind them, double-bolted it, and put on the safety chain. The apartment was cold; in this city, in this building, they couldn’t expect heat to start coming up till six-thirty, seven o’clock. The radiators would begin clanging then, loud enough to wake the dead. Meanwhile, all was silent, all was chilly. The children wanted to hang around. This was better than TV. Mrs. Jackson hushed them off to bed again. Husband and wife sat at the small kitchen table with the two detectives, drinking coffee like family. This was five a.m., it was still pitch-black outside. They could hear police sirens, ambulance sirens wailing to the night. All four of them could tell the difference; sirens were the nocturnes of this city.
“That car was a headache minute it come in,” Jackson said. “I’da been the night man, I’da tole Pratt go get a tow truck, haul that wreck outta here, more trouble’n it’s worth. Had to turn away two, three other cars the next day, cause Gus had that damn Caddy up on the lift. When I finely figured we were done with it, I come in yesterday mornin, the car’s a mess. Man’s coming in to pick it up at ten, it’s a mess like I never seen before in my life.”
“What do you mean? Was there still trouble with the engine?” Carella asked.
“No, no. This was inside the car.”
Both detectives looked at him, puzzled. So did his wife.
“Somebody musta left the window open when they moved it outside,” Jackson said.
They were still looking at him, all three of them, trying to figure out what kind of mess he was talking about.
“You see The Birds?” he asked. “That movie Alfred Hitchcock wrote?”
Carella didn’t think Hitchcock had written it.
“Birds tryin’a kill people all over the place?”
“Whut about it?” Mrs. Jackson asked impatiently.
“Musta been birds got in the car,” Jackson said. “Maybe cause it was so cold.”
“What makes you figure that?” Hawes asked reasonably.
“Bird shit and feathers all over the place,” Jackson said. “Hadda put Abdul to cleanin it up fore the man came to claim his car. Never seen such a mess in my life. Birds’re smart, you know. I read someplace when they was shootin that movie, the crows used to pick the locks on they cages, that’s how smart they are. Musta got in the car.”
“How? Did you notice a window down?”
“Rear window on the right was open about six inches, yeah.”
“You think somebody left that window open overnight?”
“Had to’ve been.”
“And a bird got in, huh?”
“At least a few birds. There was shit and feathers all over the place.”
“Where was all this?” Carella asked.
“The backseat,” Jackson said.
“And you asked Abdul to clean it up, huh?”
“Directly when he come in Saturday mornin. I seen the mess, put him to work right away.”
“Was he alone in the car?”
“Alone, yeah.”
“You didn’t see him going into that glove compartment, did you?”
“Nossir.”
“Fiddling around anywhere in the front seat?”
“No, he was busy cleanin up the mess in back.”
“Did you watch him all the time he was in the car?”
“No, I din’t. There was plenty other work to do.”
“How long was he in the car?”
“Hour or so. Vacuuming, wiping. It was some mess, you better believe it. Man came to pick it up at ten, it was spotless. Never’ve known some birds was nestin in it overnight.”
“But the birds were already gone when you noticed that open window, huh?”
“Oh yeah, long gone. Just left all they feathers and shit.”
“I wish you’d watch your mouth,” Mrs. Jackson said, frowning.
“You figure they got out the same way they got in?” Hawes asked.
“Musta, don’t you think?”
Hawes was wondering how they’d managed that little trick.
So was Carella.
“Well, thank you,” he said, “we appreciate your time. If you can remember anything else, here’s my …”
“Like what?” Jackson asked.
“Like anyone near that glove compartment.”
“I already tole you I didn’t see anyone near the glove compartment.”
“Well, here’s my card, anyway,” Carella said. “If you think of anything at all that might help us …”
“Just don’t come around five o’clock again,” Jackson said.
Mrs. Jackson nodded.
“What we’d like to do,” Carella said on the phone, “is send someone around for the car and have our people go over it.”
“What?” Pratt said.
This was a quarter past five in the morning. Carella was calling from a cell phone in the police sedan. Hawes was driving. They were on their way to Calm’s Point, where Abdul Sikhar lived.
“When do I get some sleep here?” Pratt asked.
“I didn’t mean someone coming by right this minute. If we can …”
“I’m talking about you waking me up right this minute.”
“I’m sorry about that, but we want to check out the car, find out …”
“So I understand. Why?”
“Find out what happened inside it.”
“What happened is somebody stole my gun.”
“That’s what we’re working on, Mr. Pratt. Which is why we’d like our people to go over the interior.”
“What people?”
“Our techs.”
“Looking for what?”
Carella almost said feathers and shit.
“Whatever they can find,” he said.
“You’re lucky it’s Sunday,” Pratt said.
“Sir?”
“I’m not working today.”
The three Richards were beginning to sober up and beginning to get a little surly. They had come all the way up here to Diamondback—which was not such a good idea to begin with—and now they couldn’t find any girls on the streets, perhaps because anybody sensible was already asleep at five-twenty in the morning. Richard the First wasn’t afraid of black people. He knew that Diamondback was a notoriously dangerous black ghetto, but he’d been up here before, in search of cocaine—not for nothing was he nicknamed Lion-Hearted—and he felt he knew how to deal with African Americans.
It was Richard the First’s contention that a black man, or a black woman, for that matter, could tell in a wink whether a person was a racist or not. Of course, the only black men and women he knew were drug dealers and prostitutes, but this didn’t lessen his conviction. A black person could look in a white man’s eyes and either find those dead blue eyes he’d been conditioned to expect, or else he might discover that the white person was truly color-blind. Richard the First liked to believe he was color-blind, which is why he was up here in Diamondback at this hour, looking for black pussy.
“Trouble is,” he told the other two Richards, “we’re here too late. Everybody’s asleep already.”
“Trouble is we’re here too early,” Richard the Second said. “Nobody’s awake yet.”
“Man, it’s fuckin cold out here,” Richard the Third said. Up the street, three black men warmed their hands at a fire
blazing in a sawed-off oil drum, oblivious to the three preppies in their hooded blue parkas. The lights of an all-night diner across the street cast warm yellow rectangles on the sidewalk. The sun was still an hour and forty-five minutes away.
The three boys decided to urinate in the gutter.
This was perhaps a mistake.
They were standing there with their dicks in their hands—what the hell, this was five-thirty in the morning, the streets were deserted except for the three old farts standing around the oil drum—looking like three monks in their hooded parkas, certainly intending no affront, merely answering the call of nature, so to speak, on a dark and stormless night. It was not perceived in quite this manner by the black man who came out of the night like a solitary guardian of public decency, the sole member of the Pissing in Public Patrol, dressed in black as black as the night, black jeans, black boots, a black leather jacket, a black O. J. Simpson watch cap pulled down over his ears.
He came striding toward them at exactly the same moment Yolande stepped into a taxi a mile and a half downtown.
“Thing I hate about the boneyard shift,” Hawes said, “is you just start getting used to it and you’re back on the day shift again.”
Carella was dialing his home number.
The boneyard shift was the graveyard shift, which was the so-called morning shift that kept you up all night.
Fanny picked up on the third ring.
“How is he?” Carella asked.
“Better. The fever’s gone, he’s sleeping like an angel.” She paused for the briefest tick of time. “Which is what I’d like to be doing,” she said.
“Sorry,” Carella said. “I won’t call again. See you in a few hours.”
That’s what he thought.
“You a working girl?” the cabbie asked.
“You a cop?” Yolande said.
“Sure, a cop,” he said.
“Then mind your own business,” she said.
“I’m just wondering if you know where you’re going.”
“I know where I’m going.”
“White girl going up to Diamondback …”
“I said I …”
“… this hour of the night.”
“I know where I’m going. And it’s morning.”
“By me, it ain’t morning till the sun comes up.”
Yolande shrugged. It had been a pretty good night for her, and she was exhausted.
“Why you going to Diamondback?” the cabbie asked. His name on the plastic-enclosed permit on the dashboard to the right of the meter read max r. Liebowitz. Jewish, Yolande thought. Last of a dying breed of big-city cabdrivers. Nowadays, most of your cabbies were from India or the Middle East. Some of them couldn’t speak English. None of them knew where Duckworth Avenue was. Yolande knew where it was. She had blown a Colombian drug dealer on Duckworth Avenue in Calm’s Point. He had given her a five-hundred-dollar tip. She would never forget Duckworth Avenue in her life. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew where Duckworth Avenue was. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew she herself was Jewish.
“I didn’t hear your answer, miss,” he said.
“I live up there,” she said.
“You live in Diamondback?” he said, and shot a glance at her in the rearview mirror.
“Yes.”
Actually Jamal lived in Diamondback. All she did was live with Jamal. Jamal Stone, no relation to Sharon, who had built a career by flashing her wookie. Yolande flashed her wookie a thousand times a day. Too bad she couldn’t act. Then again, neither could a lot of girls who were good at flashing their wookies.
“How come you live up there?” Liebowitz asked.
“I like paying cheap rent,” she said.
Which wasn’t exactly true. Jamal paid the rent. But he also took every penny she earned. Kept her in good shit, though. Speaking of which, it was getting to be about that time. She looked at her watch. Twenty-five to six. Been a hard day’s night.
“Worth your life, a white girl living up there,” Liebowitz said.
Nice Jewish girl, no less, Yolande thought, but did not say because she couldn’t bear seeing a grown man cry. A nice Jewish girl like you? Giving blow jobs to passing motorists at fifty bucks a throw. A Jewish girl? Suck your what? She almost smiled.
“So what are you then?” Liebowitz asked. “A dancer?”
“Yeah,” she said, “how’d you guess?”
“Pretty girl like you, this hour of the night, I figured a dancer in one of the topless bars.”
“Yeah, you hit it right on the head.”
“I’m not a mind reader,” Liebowitz said, chuckling. “You were standing in front of the Stardust when you hailed me.”
Which was where she’d given some guy from Connecticut a twenty-dollar hand job while the girls onstage rattled and rolled.
“Yep,” she said.
Tipped the manager two bills a night to let her freelance in the joint. Pissed the regulars working there, but gee, tough shit, honey.
“So where you from originally?” Liebowitz asked.
“Ohio,” she said.
“I knew it wasn’t here. You don’t have the accent.”
She almost told him her father owned a deli in Cleveland. She didn’t. She almost told him her mother had once been to Paris, France. She didn’t. Yolande Marie was her mother’s idea. Yolande Marie Marx. Known in the trade as Groucho, just kidding. Actually known in the trade as Marie St. Claire, which Jamal had come up with, lot of difference it made to the johns on wheels. My name is Marie St. Claire, case you’re interested. Nice to meet you, Marie, take it deeper.
She had nightmares about a john pulling up in a blue station wagon and she leans in the window and says, “Hey, hiya. Wanna party?” and she gets in the car and unzips his fly and it’s her father. Dreamt that on average twice a week. Woke up in a cold sweat every time. Dear Dad, I am still working here in the toy shop, it’s a shame you never get out of Cleveland now that Mom’s bedridden, maybe I’ll be home for Yom Kippur. Sure. Take it deeper, hon.
“So do you have to do anything else at that bar?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know,” Liebowitz said, and looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Besides dancing?”
She looked back at him. He had to be sixty years old, short bald-headed little fart could hardly see over the steering wheel. Hitting on her. Next thing you knew he’d offer to barter. Fare on the meter was now six dollars and thirty cents. He’d agree to swap it for a quickie in the backseat. Nice Jewish man. Unzip his fly, out would pop her father.
“So do you?”
“Do what?”
“Other things beside dancing topless.”
“Yeah, I also sing topless,” she said.
“Go on, they don’t sing in those places.”
“I do.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, no. You want to hear me sing, Max?”
“Nah, you don’t sing.”
“I sing like a bird,” Yolande said, but did not demonstrate. Liebowitz was thinking this over, trying to determine whether or not she was putting him on.
“What else do you really do?” he asked. “Besides sing and dance? Topless.”
She was beginning to think it might not be a bad idea to turn another trick on the way home. But not for the six-ninety now on the meter. How much cash you carrying, Zayde? she wondered. Want a piece of nineteen-year-old Jewish-girl ass you can tell your grandchildren about next Hanukkah? She thought of her father again, decided no. Still, talk old Max here into a hundred for a quick blow job, might be worth it. Twice the going price for a street girl, but oh such tender goods, what do you say, Granpa?
“What’d you have in mind?” she asked coyly.
The black man in the black jeans, black leather jacket, black boots, and black watch cap appeared in front of them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all three of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close.
“Now what do you c
all this?” he asked rhetorically.
“We call it pissing in the gutter,” Richard the Second said.
“I call it disrespect for the neighborhood,” the black man said. “That what the letter P stand for? Pissing?”
“Join us, why don’t you?” Richard the Third suggested.
“My name is Richard,” Richard the First said, zipping up and extending his hand to the black man.
“So is mine,” Richard the Second said.
“Me, too,” Richard the Third said.
“As it happens,” the black man said, “my name is Richard, too.”
Which now made four of them.
Bloody murder was only an hour and sixteen minutes away.
Abdul Sikhar lived in a two-bedroom Calm’s Point apartment with five other men from Pakistan. They had all known each other in their native town of Rawalpindi, and they had all come to the United States at different times over the past three years. Two of the men had wives back home. A third had a girlfriend there. Four of the men worked as cabdrivers and were in constant touch by CB radio all day long. Whenever they babbled in Urdu, they made their passengers feel as if a terrorist act or a kidnapping was being plotted. The four cabbies drove like the wind in a camel’s mane. None of them knew it was against the law to blow your horn in this city. They would have blown it anyway. Each and every one of them could not wait till he got out of this fucking city in this fucking United States of America. Abdul Sikhar felt the same way, though he did not drive like the wind. What he did was pump gas and wash cars at Bridge Texaco.
When he answered the door at ten to six that morning, he was wearing long woolen underwear and a long-sleeved woolen top. He looked like he needed a shave but he was merely growing a beard. He was twenty years old, give or take, a scrawny kid who hated this country and who would have wet the bed at night if he wasn’t sleeping in it with two other guys. The detectives identified themselves. Nodding, Sikhar stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, whispering that he did not wish to awaken his “mates,” as he called them, an archaic term from the days of British rule back home, those bastards. When he learned what their business here was, he excused himself and went back inside for a moment, stepping into the hallway again a moment later, wearing a long black overcoat over his long johns, unlaced black shoes on his feet. They stood now beside a grimy hall window that sputtered orange neon from someplace outside. Sikhar lighted a cigarette. Neither Carella nor Hawes smoked. They both wished they could arrest him.
