Nocturne (13 page)

This was all vamping till ready. They didn’t actually
care
who wanted to shoot him, good riddance to bad rubbish, as Carella’s mother was fond of saying. All they really wanted to
know was whether Jamal was the one who’d put that freezer bag over Yolande’s head. Toward that end, they would let him talk
forever about all his real or imagined enemies out there, make him feel comfortable, ply him with cigarettes and coffee, wait
for him to reveal through word or gesture that he already
knew
why he was here being questioned by a pair of detectives, which no one had yet told him, and which he hadn’t yet asked about,
either. Which might or might not have meant something. With experienced felons, it was difficult to tell.

Jamal puffed on his cigarette.

Meyer and Kling watched him.

Their presence was a bit unsettling. He was beginning to wonder if they were cops from headquarters or something. What kind
of thing
was
this, two cops from headquarters here observing? But he knew better than to ask why he was up here. Too easy to step into
shit that way. So he puffed on his cigarette and sipped at his coffee and told them all about this Colombian crack dealer
who thought he’d stole some shit from him, which he hadn’t, but who let the word out that he was looking for him and was going
to kill him. So when he heard somebody banging on the door eight o’clock in the morning, the sun hardly up, he figured he’d
better make the first move here because there might not
be
no second move. Which is why he’d pumped four through the door. Then, not hearing a sound out there, he figured he’d nailed
whoever had done the knocking, and he opened the door expecting to find Manuel Diaz bleeding on the floor—

“That’s his name, Manuel Diaz, I just gave you something.”

As if they didn’t already know the names of all the dealers in most of the precincts up here.

“But instead it was you two guys, who I almost shot, by the way, before you yelled ‘Police.’ ” Jamal shrugged. “So here we
are,” he said.

“Here we are,” Hawes agreed.

Jamal still knew better than to ask what this was all about. The big bald guy and the tall blond guy were both looking very
stern now, as if he’d said something wrong a minute ago. He wondered what it could have been. Fuck em, he thought. I can wait
this out as long as you can. He lit another cigarette. Meyer nodded. So did Kling. Jamal wondered why they were nodding. These
two guys were making him very nervous. He felt relieved when Carella asked another question.

“Who was the girl with you?”

“Friend of mine,” Jamal said.

Carlyle Yancy was one of the two girls he ran. Her real name was Sarah Rowland, which he’d changed for her the minute he put
her on the street. Jamal wasn’t about to discuss either her profession or his. “Friend of mine” covered a lot of territory.

“How old is she?” Hawes asked. This also covered a lot of territory. Cops always asked how old a girl was, figuring you’d
wet your pants if she was underage.

“Twenty,” Jamal said. “No cigar.”

“What’s she do?”

“What do you mean, what’s she do?”

“Is she a prostitute?”

“Hey, come on. What kind of question is that?”

“Well, Jamal, considering your record …”

So that’s how they’d got to him. But why? And calling a man by his first name was an old cop trick Jamal knew quite well,
thank you.

“I haven’t been in that line of work for a long time,” he said.

Meyer raised an eyebrow. He was wondering how being a pimp qualified as work. So was Kling.
And
Carella.
And
Hawes. Jamal read their faces and figured them for a bunch of cynics.

“How about murder?” Carella asked. “Have you been in
that
line of work recently?”

“I paid my debt to society,” Jamal said with dignity.

“So we understand. Released last April, is that right?”

“That’s right. The slate is clean.”

Still with dignity.

“What have you been doing since?”

“Different kinds of work.”

“Different from pimping?” Hawes asked.

“Different from murder?” Carella asked.

“Just different jobs here and there.”

“Here and
where
?”

“Here in the city.”

“Lucky us,” Hawes said.

“What
kind
of different jobs?” Carella asked.

They were harassing him now. Trying to put him on edge. He knew it and they knew it. He remained unruffled. He’d been involved
with cops ever since he was twelve. Wasn’t a cop in the world could rattle him now.

“Drove a taxi, drove a delivery truck, worked as a waiter,” he said. “Odd jobs like that.”

“By the way,” Hawes said, “we have another B-sheet here,” and turned it so Jamal could see the name typed across the top of
it.
marx, yolande marie
, and below that, in parentheses, alias
marie st. claire
.

“Know her?” Carella asked.

If they had her B-sheet, they knew he was pimping for her. Was she in some kind of trouble again? The last time she’d shoplifted,
he told her he’d break both her legs she ever brought down heat again. Whatever this was, he figured it was time to play it
straight.

“I know her,” he said.

“You’re her pimp, right?”

“I know her.”

“How about the pimp part?”

Jamal nodded, shrugged, wagged his head, waggled his fingers, all intended to convey uncertainty, they guessed. They looked
at him silently, waiting for elaboration. He was wondering what Yolande had done
this
time. Why had they punched up her B-sheet? He said nothing. Wait them out, he thought. Play the game.

“When did you see her last?” Hawes asked.

“Why?” Jamal said.

“Can you tell us?”

“Sure, I can tell you. But why?”

“Just tell us, okay?”

“I drove her down by the bridge around ten o’clock.”

“Put her on the street at ten?”

“Well … yeah.”

“Which bridge?”

“The Majesta Bridge.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Little black skirt, fake-fur jacket, black stockings, red boots, red handbag.”

“See her after that?”

“No. Is she in jail?”

The detectives looked at each other. As Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a crossroads, take it.” They took it.

“She’s dead,” Carella said, and tossed a photograph onto the desk. The photo had been taken in the alley on St. Sebastian
Avenue. It was a black-and-white picture with the address of the crime scene camera-lettered in white at the bottom of the
picture, the date and time in the right-hand corner. Jamal looked at the picture. So that was it. Dead hooker, you go to her
pimp.

“So?” Hawes said.

“So, I’m sorry. She was a good kid. I liked her.”

“Is that why you put her on the street in her underwear last night? Twelve fuckin degrees out there, you
liked
her, huh?”

“Oh, did she
freeze
to death?” Jamal asked.

“Don’t get smart,” Hawes warned.

“Nobody twisted her arm,” Jamal said. “What was it? An overdose?”

“You tell us.”

“You think
I
did her? What for?”

“Where were you around seven this morning?”

“Home in bed.”

“Alone?”

“No, I was with my friend. You saw her. That’s who I was with.”

“Carlyle Yancy, is that her name?”

“That’s what she told you, isn’t it?”

“Is that her real name?”

“She’s never been busted, forget it.”

“What’s her real name?”

“Sarah Rowland.”

“We’ll check, you know.”

“Check. She’s clean.”

“From what time to what time?” Carella asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Was she with you.”

“She got home around three-thirty. I was with her from then till you came busting down my door. We were waiting for Yolande,
in fact.”

“We’ll check that, too, you know.”

“She’ll tell you.”

Meyer turned to Carella.

“You looking for a bullshit gun bust?” he asked.

“I’m looking for a murderer,” Carella said.

“Then go home, there’s nothing but a 265.01 here.”

He turned to Jamal.

“You, too,” he said. “We’ll keep the piece, thanks.”

W
hen you pull the boneyard shift, you quit work at eight, nine in the morning, sometimes later if a corpse turns up in your
soup. Say you’re lucky and you get home at nine, nine-thirty, depending on rush-hour traffic. You kiss the wife and kiddies,
have a glass of milk and a piece of toast, and then tumble into bed by ten, ten-thirty. After a few days, when you’ve adjusted
to the day-for-night schedule, you can actually sleep through a full eight hours and wake up feeling refreshed. This would
put you on your feet again at six, six-thirty in the evening. That’s when you have your lunch or dinner or whatever you might
choose to call it at that hour. You’re then free till around eleven
p.m
. At that time of night, it shouldn’t take more than half an hour, forty-five minutes to get to the precinct.

While you’re asleep or spending some time with your family or friends, the precinct is awake and bustling. A police station
is in operation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. That accounts for its worn and shoddy apple-green
look. Criminals never rest; neither does a police station. So while Carella and Hawes slept, the day shift worked from 7:45
in the morning to 3:45 in the afternoon, when the night shift took over. And while Carella was having dinner with Teddy and
the twins, and Hawes was making love with Annie Rawles, the night shift learned some things and investigated some things but
only some of these had to do with their two homicide cases.

During the hours of nine-fifteen that Sunday morning, when Carella and Hawes left the squadroom, and eleven forty-five that
night, when they reported back to work again, things were happening out there.

They would learn about some of these things later.

Some of these things, they would never learn about.

At nine-thirty that Sunday morning, two of the Richards were in the empty lot across the street from the abandoned produce
market, waiting for the other two Richards to come back with fresh pails of water. They had done a good job of cleaning the
trunk of the black Richard’s car, but now they wanted to make sure there weren’t any bloodstains anyplace else. The other
two had gone for fresh water and fresh rags at a car wash some three blocks away, under the expressway. This part of Riverhead
was virtually forlorn at nine-thirty on a Sunday morning. Hardly a car passed by on the overhead expressway. Empty window
frames with broken shards of glass in them stared like eyeless sockets from abandoned buildings. The sun was shining brightly
now, but there was a feel of snow in the air. Richard the Lion-Hearted knew when snow was coming. It was a sense he’d developed
as a kid. He hoped snow wouldn’t screw up what he had in mind. He was telling Richard the Second how he saw this thing.

“The girl dying was an accident,” he said. “We were merely playing a game.”

“Merely,” Richard the Second said.

“She should’ve let us know if she was having difficulty breathing.”

“That would’ve been the sensible thing to do.”

“But she didn’t. So how were we to know?”

“We couldn’t have known.”

“In a sense, it was her own fault.”

“Did you come?” Richard the Second asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Richard.”

“Three hundred bucks, it would’ve been nice to come.”

“I think
he
took the money, you know.”

“Who?”

“Richard. Took her money
and
the jumbos he’d given her earlier. Nine hundred bucks and ten jumbos. You didn’t see her bag anywhere around, did you? When
we carried her down to the car?”

“No, I didn’t, come to think of it.”

“I’m sure he stole her bag with the money and the jumbos in it. Which is how we’re going to tie him to this thing.”

“Tie him to what thing?”

“The girl’s accident. Yvonne. Whatever her name was.”

“Claire, I think her name was. I wish I could’ve come before she passed out.”

“Well, that was her fault.”

“Even so.”

“We have to find that bag, Richard.”

“Which bag is that?”

“It’s not in the car, I looked. It has to be in his apartment.”

“Which bag, Richard?”

“The one with the money and the jumbos in it. Once we find it, we can link him to the accident.”

“How?”

“If he stole the bag, his fingerprints’ll be on it.”

“He might’ve wiped them off.”

“They only do that in the movies. Besides, he wouldn’t have had time. We were all of us together, don’t you remember? Wrapping
her in the sheet, getting her downstairs into the trunk? He wouldn’t have had time.”

“She was heavy.”

“She was.”

“She looked so small. But she was heavy.”

“Deceptive, yes.”