The Big Bad City Page 6

  “No more’n against any other man.”

  “You got a quarrel with the state of Israel?”

  “None a’tall.”

  “Cause I have some real fine Israeli nines, if you’re interested. You ain’t an Arab, are you?”

  “Can’t you tell?” Sonny said, and Nicholas chuckled.

  “These are kosher weapons, man,” he said, and threw open one of the cabinet doors. From one of the shelves, he picked up a pistol that looked like a Buck Rogers ray gun. “This is your Uzi nine,” he said. “Shorter and lighter version of the Uzi sub. Take it in your hand, man, go ahead.”

  “Feels clunky,” Sonny said.

  “By comparison with your Beretta, yeah. I got the 1951 Model Ber, you want to see it. But the piece you’re holdin has a mag capacity of twenty rounds. Your Ber don’t even come close.”

  “I just don’t like the look of it,” Sonny said.

  “You plan to fuck the gun or shoot it?”

  “How much is it, anyway?”

  “I can let you have this beautiful weapon for eleven hundred dollars, what do you say?”

  “I say what else have you got?”

  “I even mention the name, you goan wet your pants.”

  “Try me.”

  “The Desert Eagle.”

  “I’m still dry,” Sonny said.

  “You crack me up,” Nicholas said, chuckling again. He opened another cabinet door, and reached in for what looked to Sonny like a Colt .45 with a longer barrel. “Ten and a half inches long,” Nicholas said, handing the gun to him. “Man, this is one fuckin burner.”

  Sonny turned it over and over in his hands.

  “Check out the balance, man.”

  Sonny hefted the gun.

  “Weighs less than four pounds,” Nicholas said. “Light, but one of the biggest motherfuckin semis there is.”

  Sonny gripped the gun, held it at arm’s length, sighting along the barrel.

  “Comes in three popular calibers,” Nicholas said. “The fifty fires a cartridge half an inch in diameter. That is one fuckin bone-cruncher, man.”

  Sonny went “P-kuh, p-kuh, p-kuh,” like a kid with a toy pistol.

  “You want to, you could knock down a elephant with that piece. If that’s what you plan on huntin.”

  Sonny turned the gun on Nicholas, and went “P-kuh, p-kuh, p-kuh” again.

  “Leaves an entry wound the size of a lemon,” Nicholas said, “exit wound looks like a cantaloupe. You can mount this fuckin piece on a tank, it’d feel right at home.”

  “What does the magazine hold?”

  “Seven, eight, or nine rounds, depending on the caliber. Your fifty holds seven. What do you think?”

  “It’s okay, I guess,” Sonny said.

  “Okay, my ass, it’s a fuckin Lexus!”

  “How much you askin for it?”

  “I can let it go for fourteen large.”

  “I can do better retail.”

  “Okay, thirteen-fifty, but that’s it.”

  “Eleven,” Sonny said.

  “Twelve-fifty. And I’ll throw in a box of fifties. Twenty rounds to a box, soft point or hollow point, take your choice.”

  “Twelve and the ammo.”

  “I’m losing money.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Sonny said.

  “Cause I love you,” Nicholas said, and the men shook hands on a done deal.

  It was already ten minutes past midnight on Monday morning, the twenty-fourth day of August.

  Teddy Carella was eating like a wolf.

  Sitting opposite Carella at a table in a small Italian restaurant not far from one of the criminal courts buildings where they’d spent all morning, she could not stop eating. Nor could she stop talking about the trial. Carella sat watching her moving mouth and flying fingers, amazed by how she managed to combine a feeding frenzy with a continuous narrative stream, the fork in her right hand never skipping a beat while the fingers of her left hand sloppily signed the story of their day in court this morning, no small feat.

  I love that judge, Teddy signed.

  “Me, too,” Carella said, watching her flying fingers.

  Judge Pierson happened to have been brought up in Diamondback, right here in the big bad city. He’d escaped the ghetto by busting his ass in a white man’s world, never currying favor or demanding sympathy, never once in his entire life playing the race card, something he suspected the district attorney was doing here in his courtroom today—or such was the way Teddy had read the dynamics of what had happened this morning. Pierson had dismissed the charges, telling the plaintiff to drive more carefully in the future and actually suggesting that she might live longer if she quit being so darned angry, didn’t she know stress was the primary contributing factor to heart attacks?

  The D.A. got on his high horse and informed Judge Pierson that he planned to appeal, but Pierson just shook his head and said, “Go on, make a federal case of this one, counselor. Because we don’t have any important causes to fight just now, do we?” Meaning “we” collectively, black people, we who have suffered, we who are still suffering, go make a federal case out of this petty grievance, was what Teddy thought she’d read in the judge’s words, and saw in his eyes.

  “We were lucky,” Carella said.

  I know.

  “It could just as easily have gone the other way. I might have been bringing you cigarettes in jail today.”

  I don’t smoke.

  “Neither do I,” he said. “Wanna go out sometime?”

  Oh, sir, I’m married, she signed, and lowered her eyes like a virgin.

  He wanted to scoop her into his arms that very moment, crowded restaurant or no, shower her face with kisses, tell her she was his moon and his stars and his very essence. Instead he observed her unobserved, her eyes still lowered, dark head bent over her plate, the delicate oval of her face, the generous mouth and long dark lashes, she raised her eyes and he melted in the dark-brown laser beam of her steady gaze.

  She said nothing.

  She could not speak, of course, but she could have signed. Instead, she remained essentially silent, her eyes saying all there was to say. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. They were both grinning like high school sweethearts, which they’d never been. He was thinking he wished he didn’t have to go meet Brown. She was thinking the same thing. He looked up at the clock. She did, too. It was almost two. He signaled for the check. Teddy went off toward the ladies’ room. The air conditioner thrummed a noisy accompaniment to the flirty swing of her skirt, the easy sway of her hips. He watched her until she was out of sight.

  There was the busy sound of chatter, the clatter of silverware against china, the clink of ice cubes in frosted glasses, the lilting laughter of a black woman at another table. The diners here in this “moderately priced Northern Italian”—as Zagat had defined it—were a random mix of ethnic types. This was a city of contrasts, black and white, yellow and brown, khaki and teak, ochre and dust. In the wintertime, the days were chillingly gray, the nights inky and bleak. Summer’s colors were softer, the longer days golden, the nights purple.

  He paid the check and waited for Teddy to return.

  He missed her whenever she was gone from him, and often became alarmed when she was gone for too long a time. He knew she could not cry for help if ever the need arose; a voice had been denied her at birth. Nor could she easily detect, as hearing people could, the warning signs of danger. In her silent world, in this city of predators, Teddy was easy prey.

  When at last he saw her coming back to the table, he shoved back his chair, and went to her, and took her hand.

  Has to be his girlfriend, Sonny was thinking, cause there ain’t no man on earth looks at his wife the way Carella was lookin at this woman right this minute. This was the first time he’d really got a good look at the man since he’d sat opposite him in court at his father’s trial. Standin on the sidewalk across the street now, just outside the restaurant, holding bot
h her hands in his, and leanin down to kiss her. His jacket was open, Sonny could see the butt of what looked like a nine sticking up out of a holster. Woman walking off now, Carella watching her. Kept watching her till she was out of sight. Then he turned and began walking toward where he’d parked the Chevy.

  Sonny gave it a minute, and then started his own car.

  4

  THE BUILDING MARY VINCENT HAD LIVED IN WAS ON YARROW AVENUE, CORNER OF FABER STREET, NOT A MILE from the hospital, a brief ten-minute ride by subway. Why she’d gone to Grover Park last Thursday instead of heading directly home was a question of some importance to the detectives. There was a good-size park alongside the hospital and bordering the River Dix. If she’d felt like taking the air, she could have gone there. Instead, on one of the hottest days of the year, she had walked seven long crosstown blocks to the park—the equivalent of fourteen uptown-downtown blocks—and then had walked the width of the park itself to a park bench on its farther side. Why?

  Carella met Brown downstairs at a quarter past two, told him the judge had dismissed Teddy’s case …

  “Yay,” Brown said.

  … apologized for being late, and asked if Brown had located the super of the building yet. Brown said he’d just got there a minute ago himself, and they went to look for him together. They found him out back, trying to repair the pulley on a clothesline that had fallen down, dropping clean white sheets all over the backyard. The super was enormously uncomfortable in this humid heat. “I’m from Montana,” he told them. “We get breezes there.” It was unusual for people from Montana to end up in this city unless they were seeking fame and fortune in television or on the stage. You didn’t get many building superintendents from Montana riding their horses in the streets here. Come to think of it, Carella had never met a single person from Montana in his entire life. Neither had Brown. Carella wasn’t even sure he knew where Montana was. Neither was Brown.

  Nathan Harding was a man in his early sixties, they guessed, burly and balding, sweating profusely in a striped T-shirt and blue jeans. He had difficulty recalling exactly which of his tenants was Mary Vincent even though there were only twenty-four apartments in the entire building. When they pointed out that she was a nun working at St. Margaret’s Hospital, he said he didn’t know where that was, which wasn’t exactly answering the question. They told him Mary Vincent was twenty-seven years old, a nun in the Order of the Sisters of Christ’s Mercy. He said he had three or four girls that age in the building, but he didn’t remember any of them looking like nuns. Neither Carella nor Brown were enjoying this damn heat, either, and the man was beginning to give them a Monday afternoon pain in the ass.

  “Haven’t you got a tenant list someplace?” Brown asked.

  “What’s this about?” Harding asked.

  “It’s about a murder,” Carella said.

  Harding looked at him.

  “Can we see that tenant list?” Brown said.

  “Sure,” Harding said, and led them into his apartment on the ground floor. The building was what they called a non-doorman walk-up, which meant there was no security and no elevator. Harding’s apartment looked as if the Cambodian army had recently camped there. He rummaged around in a small desk in a small cluttered office just off the kitchen and found a typewritten list that showed a Mary Vincent living in apartment 6C.

  “Want to open it for us?” Brown said.

  “A nun killed somebody?” Harding said.

  “The other way around,” Carella said, and watched Harding’s face. Nothing showed there. The man merely nodded.

  “Guess it’ll be okay,” he said.

  It damn well better be, Brown thought, but did not say.

  Both detectives were out of breath when they reached the sixth-floor landing. Harding was from Montana, he took the climb in stride. There were three other apartments on the floor, but this was two-thirty in the afternoon, and the building was virtually silent, almost all the tenants off to work.

  “How long was she living here?” Carella asked.

  “She the one I think she is,” Harding said, “she moved in around six months ago.” He was searching his ring of keys for the one to 6C.

  “Live here alone?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  The detectives exchanged a glance. It was hotter here in the building than it was on the street outside, all of yesterday’s heat contained in this narrow sixth-floor hallway just under the roof. They waited patiently. Brown was just about ready to snatch the goddamn ring away from him, when Harding finally found the key. He tried it on the keyway. It slid in easily. He twisted it, unlocked the door, and opened it wide. A wave of hotter air rolled heavily into the hallway.

  Carella went in first.

  This was not a crime scene, but he pulled on a pair of cotton gloves, anyway, before opening one of the windows. Only slightly cooler air sifted in from the street outside. There was the sound of an ambulance siren bruising the comparative mid-morning stillness.

  “Studio?” he asked.

  Harding nodded.

  This was a particularly small studio apartment. Single bed against one wall, phone on a night table beside it. On the other side of the room, there was a bookcase, an easy chair, a standing floor lamp, and an unpainted dresser. A locked window alongside the dresser opened onto a backyard fire escape. The kitchen was the size of a closet. Refrigerator with two oranges in it, a container of skim milk, a loaf of seven-grain bread, a package of organic greens, and a tub of margarine. The freezer compartment contained six frozen yogurt bars and a bottle of vodka. The bathroom was small and immaculate. A glistening white tub, sink, and toilet bowl. Over the sink, there was a mirrored cabinet containing several prescription drugs that appeared to be antibiotics, and the usual array of over-the-counter pain and cough medications one could find in any medicine cabinet in this city. That was it. Not a painting or a photograph anywhere. The place was featureless, colorless, drab, and depressing.

  Brown opened the door to the single closet in the room. There were three skirts, four pairs of slacks, two dresses, a woolen winter coat, a raincoat, several pairs of sensible shoes. Carella opened the top dresser drawer. Cotton panties and bras. White pantyhose. Socks. Darker pantyhose. Blouses in the middle drawer. Scarves. Sweaters in the bottom drawer. Not a piece of jewelry. Not a hint of anything truly personal.

  In the night-table drawer, they found an address book, an appointment calendar, and a budget-aid spiral notebook.

  “We’d like to take these with us,” Carella said, leafing through the appointment calendar.

  “Nope,” Harding said.

  Both detectives looked at him.

  “We’ll give you a receipt,” Brown said.

  “Nope,” Harding said.

  The detectives looked at each other.

  “That stuff ain’t mine,” Harding said. “I got no right to let you take it.”

  Carella gave the man a look that could have melted Greenland. He sat in the easy chair, took out his pad, and began copying Mary Vincent’s appointments for the two weeks preceding her murder. Then he went back to the night table, put all three books into the drawer again, gave Harding another look, and said, “We’ll be back.”

  In the car again, Brown said, “Son of a bitch is forcing us to get a warrant.”

  “Well, I guess he’s right,” Carella said.

  “Most people would’ve accepted a receipt.”

  “People don’t like cops, is what it is. We remind them of storm troopers.”

  “You and me?”

  “All of us.”

  “He probably understands sheriffs better,” Brown said.

  “Probably.”

  “Want to run downtown for it now?”

  “Doctor said he’d be leaving at four.”

  “We don’t hurry, we may miss a judge,” Brown said.

  “Let’s do the doctor and the priest, save the cowboy for last. What do you think?”

  “Sure. Either way, we have to driv
e half an hour downtown, the son of a bitch.”

  Neither of the men noticed the little green Honda following them some six car lengths behind.

  The doctor in charge of what was euphemistically called the Extensive Care Ward at St. Margaret’s Hospital was named Winston Hall, which made him sound like a college dormitory. The detectives supposed he was somewhere in his forties, a tall, suntanned, angular man with an infectious smile and a pleasant, soft-spoken manner. He was wearing a rumpled wheat-colored linen jacket over sand-colored slacks, a pale blue shirt, and a delicately hued blue-and-yellow-striped cotton tie. Sitting behind his third-floor desk at a quarter past three that Monday afternoon, he seemed dressed more for a boat ride around the island than a day at the office.

  He explained that there were forty beds on the floor, most of them occupied by patients who required long-term nursing, many of whom, in fact, belonged in nursing homes rather than a hospital.

  “The homes 911 ’em out to us the minute there’s a serious problem, hoping we’ll keep them forever. Sometimes we do, but with many of our patients forever is a short-term probability.”

  “What kind of patients was Mary treating?”

  “We’ve got all kinds on this floor,” Hall said. “COPD, terminal cancer, Alzheimer’s …”

  “What’s COPD?”

  “Chronic Obstructional Pulmonary Disease. Asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis. Most of them are on oxygen. We’ve also got a woman with Whipple’s Disease, she’s been dying for the past three years, refuses to let go. She’s got a PEG tube sutured into her belly, that’s how we feed her and administer medi …”

  “What’s a peg tube?” Brown asked.

  “P, E, G, all caps,” Hall said. “It’s an acronym for Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy. The woman with Whipple’s has a PEG in her belly and a permanent catheter in her chest wall. She has no control of her extremities, no teeth, she’s balding at the back of her head because no matter how many times we turn her, she ends up on her back. She really should be a DNR, but she refuses to sign the permission forms.”

  “What’s that?” Brown asked.