Fat Ollie's Book (12 page)

Ollie came in with his own towel and took a seat beside Donner on the wooden bench. Together, they looked like a pair of giant white Buddhas. Steam swirled around them.

“I'm looking for a hooker named Emmy,” Ollie said. “Blond hair, big tits. Ring a bell?”

“Most hookers these days got blond hair and big tits,” Donner said.

“Not the Puerto Rican ones,” Ollie said.

“Ah, we're closing in,” Donner said.

“You know her?”

“Only what you just told me, dad. Blond, big tits, a spic. What part of town is she working?”

“She hocked a Gucci dispatch case in a pawnshop on Ainsley and Fifth. Broker's a guy named Irving Stein.”

“No last name, this chick?”

“Stein didn't ask for one. It was a two-bit transaction,” Ollie explained. “I'm looking for the case, too, if you get anything on it. A fat lady bought it from Stein.”

“Does she have a name, this fat lady?”

“No.”

“How fat is she?”

Not as fat as you, Ollie was tempted to say, but didn't.

“She looked like an opera singer,” he said. “White. Brown hair, brown eyes.”

“Let's get back to the hooker, dad. Not many of them work that stretch of turf. Is it possible Emmy
lives
near the pawnshop?”

“I don't know where she lives. And besides, Stein told me he gets
lots
of hookers in there.”

“I'm only saying that ain't a stretch they normally stroll, man. You talking Hookerland, try Mason Avenue.”

“Are you telling me lots of hookers
live
near Ainsley and Fifth?”

“Lots of hookers live everywhere in this city. Most of 'em don't eat where they shit, though, is all I'm saying.”

“Then why'd Stein tell me he gets lots of hookers in his shop?”

“Maybe he does.”

“Who live in the neighborhood?”

“It's possible. Lots of them big old buildings used to have Jewish families in them, the ones south of Ainsley?”

“Yeah?”

“Could be hookers in them buildings now.”

“The queen could be king, too, if she had balls,” Ollie said.

“I'm only tryin'a zero in, dad,” Donner said. “If I can get a bead on her territory, maybe I can find her for you. Where'd she get this dispatch case?”

“She stole it from a parked car outside King Memorial.”

“Ah-ha!” Donner said. “Now you're talkin, man. That's hooker turf, the King area. Lots of events there, lots of white men on the town uptown, lookin for bars, lookin for black pussy, spic pussy, now you're talkin. Let me go on the earie.”

“I'm eager to find this broad,” Ollie said.

“How much are we talkin here?” Donner asked. “You tell me the Gucci was a two-bit transaction…”

“I'm thinking a C-note if you find her for me.”

“You're thinking small, dad. This is the twenty-first century.”

“And Castleview is still a penitentiary,” Ollie said.

“Oh dear, don't threaten me, dad.”

“It's all I know how to do,” Ollie said, and grinned like a barracuda.

“Make it a deuce,” Donner said.

“Let's see what you come up with.”

“Emmy,” Donner said. “Let's see.”

 

AT A QUARTER
to four that Thursday afternoon, just as the night shift was gathering before the muster desk downstairs, preparing to relieve on post at four
P
.
M
., and just as detectives were beginning to wend their separate ways up the iron-runged stairway that led to the second-floor squadroom, Pamela Henderson stopped at the desk and asked Sergeant Murchison where she could find a Detective Steve Carella. Murchison picked up a phone, pushed a button on it, said a few words into the receiver, and then told her to go up the steps there to the second floor and down the corridor.

Carella was waiting inside the slatted wooden railing to greet her. He opened the gate, led her in, and offered her a chair at his desk.

Still wearing black—her husband had been dead only four days, after all—she looked somehow taller than she had in jeans and a turtleneck, perhaps because she was wearing high-heeled pumps with the black skirt and jacket. She sat, crossed her legs, and said, “Is this an inconvenient time? I sense a changing of the guard.”

“Not at all,” Carella said. “I had some papers to file, anyway.”

Pamela looked at him and nodded.

He sensed that she didn't quite trust him.

He said, “Really, I'm in no hurry. How can I help you?”

Still, she hesitated.

“Really,” he said again.

She sighed heavily. Nodded again.

“I found some letters,” she said.

He glanced, he hoped surreptitiously, at the clock on the wall, and he thought, What this case doesn't need at a quarter to four in the afternoon, ten to four already, after a long hard day when I'm ready to pack it in and go home to my wife and family, what this case definitely does not need is more complications, this case already has enough complications.

Ollie had called him earlier to tell him the gun was found on the wrong side of the hall. Now here was the murdered man's wife telling him she'd found some letters, which he somehow suspected were not letters from her mother.

“Letters from whom?” he asked.

“Someone named Carrie.”

“As in Grant?”

“No, as in Stephen King.”

“A woman.”

“Yes. A woman.”

Landing on the word heavily. A woman. Yes.

“To whom were these letters addressed, Mrs. Henderson?”

“To my husband,” she said.

Carella pulled on the white cotton gloves.

 

THERE WERE THREE
letters in all.

All of them written in a delicate hand, in purple ink on pale lavender writing paper. The stationery was obviously expensive, embossed with the monogrammed initials JSH. If there had been matching envelopes to go with the single sheet of paper in each envelope, they had not been used for these mailings. Instead, Carrie—for such was how she'd signed her name—had used plain white envelopes she could have bought in any variety store for ten cents apiece. In her same delicate handwriting, she had addressed the letters to Councilman Lester Henderson at his office downtown. Hand-lettered across the face of each envelope were the councilman's name and address and the words
PERSONAL AND PRIVATE
. The envelopes had been postmarked at a post office in an area called Laughton's Market, one of the city's better neighborhoods.

The first letter read:

The second letter read:

Carella slipped the letters back into their envelopes.

“You know,” he said, “maybe it would be better if I…”

“I've read them all,” Pamela said. “Don't worry about me. I'm beyond shock.”

He nodded, and opened the third envelope.

“So, uh, where'd you find these?” Carella asked, folding the last letter, sliding it back into its envelope, busying himself with the task, not looking at Lester Henderson's widow, who sat beside the desk in monumental silence.

“In his study. At the back of a drawer in his desk.”

“When was this?”

“This morning.”

He didn't ask what she was doing in his desk. A man dies, you go through his things. Death robs everyone of privacy. Death has no respect for secrets. If you're fucking a nineteen-year-old girl, don't leave her letters around. Death will uncover them.

“Does the name mean anything to you?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You don't know anyone named Carrie?”

“No one.”

“How about the monogram. JSH. Do those initials ring a bell?”

“No.”

“They don't seem to match the name ‘Carrie.'”

“No, they don't.”

“Did you suspect any of this?”

“No.”

“Any idea your husband was…uh…?”

“No. This came as a total surprise.”

“Any…uh…past history of…uh…”

“Never. As far as I knew, he was completely faithful to me.”

“May I keep these letters?”

“Of course. That's why I brought them here. Won't there be fingerprints on them or something?”

“Well, yours certainly, and your husband's. And, yes, maybe the girl's, too.”

Nineteen. He guessed that was a girl. He guessed that was still a girl.

“If you'll let us take your prints before you go,” he said. “For comparison.”

“Yes, of course.”

“We have your husband's,” he said. He did not mention that cadavers were routinely printed at the morgue. He did not mention that even if they recovered some good prints for the girl, chances of finding anything on her in the system were exceedingly slim. Nineteen years old? Had she ever been in the armed services? Had she ever held a government job? What was the likelihood that a nineteen-year-old girl who wrote letters on expensive monogrammed stationery had ever been arrested for anything? Still, you went through the paces, and sometimes you got lucky.

“Will you let me know if you learn anything?”

“I'll call you right away,” he said.

“I hate him for this,” she said out of the blue.

 

THE BAR TWO BLOCKS
from the Eighty-seventh Precinct station house was called Shanahan's. At four-thirty that afternoon, forty-five minutes after the day watch was relieved, Eileen Burke and Andy Parker met there with Francisco Palacios, who was not too terribly tickled to be seen in a place where so many cops went for drinks after work. The Gaucho liked to keep a low profile.

On the other hand, if he was involved in the business of supplying information to the police, would he be doing it so blatantly out in the open? Mindful of the fact that another person in his profession—an informer named Danny Gimp—had been killed in a public place while sharing coffee and chocolate eclairs with yet another detective from the Eight-Seven, Palacios kept a roving eye on the people coming in and out of Shanahan's, lest he, too, be cold-cocked for no reason whatsoever.

He was here this evening to tell Parker and Eileen what he had learned about the drug deal that would go down this Tuesday at midnight. The date and the time hadn't changed. Neither had the names of the principal players. But he was now able to give them with some degree of certainty the exact location of the impending transaction.

“The thing is she's being very careful, this woman,” he said. “I think she got burned once before, really bad, by some sharpies up from Miami, so she wants to make sure nobody does it to her again. Five times already, she changed the location. It's always a basement, she likes to do business in basements cause nobody can get in and out too fast if they have to run up and down steps. When the Miami guys took her, it was on a rooftop. She figured a rooftop would be safe,
verdad?
Instead, she handed over the crack and next thing you know she's looking at half a dozen Glocks and the Miami guys are jumping over to the next roof, and it's so long, see you on the beach, honey. Ever since then, it's basements, does anybody want another beer?”