The Last Dance (12 page)

“Is it all right if I go?” Helen asked.

“
Go
already, lady,” Monoghan said.

“Thank you, Officers,” she said, and hurried out of the apartment.

“What if I told you I myself was Irish?” Ollie asked.

“I wouldn't believe you,” Monroe said.

“Why? Cause I ain't drunk?”

“That's the kind of remark can get you in trouble,” Monoghan said, wagging his finger under Ollie's nose.

“I once bit off a guy's finger, was doing that,” Ollie said, and grinned like a shark.

“Bite
this
a while,” Monoghan said.

“Good thing the piano teacher's already gone,” Ollie said, shaking his head in dismay.

“Who's in charge here?” one of the technicians asked from the doorway.

“Well look who's here!” Ollie said.

“Keep us advised,” Monoghan said.

You fat bastard, he thought, but did not say.

That Wednesday morning, at a few minutes past eleven, Arthur Brown knocked on the door to Cynthia Keating's apartment.

“Yes, who is it?” she asked.

“Police,” Brown said.

“Oh,” she said. There was a long silence. “Just a minute,” she said. They heard a latch turning, tumblers falling. The door opened a crack, held by a security chain. Cynthia peered out at them.

“I don't know you,” she said.

Brown held up his shield.

“Detective Brown,” he said. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”

“I already spoke to the others,” she said.

“We have a few more questions, ma'am.”

“Is this legal?”

“May we come in, please?”

“Just a second,” she said, and closed the door to take off the chain. She opened it again, said, “Come in,” and preceded them into the apartment. “This better be legal,” she said.

“Ma'am,” Kling said, “do you know a man named John Bridges?”

“No. Let me see
your
badge, too,” she said.

Kling fished out a small leather holder, and flashed the gold and blue-enameled shield.

“Excuse me,” she said, and went directly to the telephone on the kitchen wall. She dialed a number, waited, listening, and then said, “Mr. Alexander, please. Cynthia Keating.” She waited again. “Todd,” she said, “the police are here. What's your advice?” She listened again, nodded, kept listening, finally said, “Thanks, Todd, talk to you,” and hung up. “Gentlemen,” she said, “unless you have a warrant for my arrest, my attorney suggests you take a walk.”

There was something very comforting about being alone at last in the dead girl's apartment. First of all, the silence. This city, the one thing you could never find anyplace was peace and quiet. There were always sirens going, day and night, police or ambulance, and there were car horns honking, mostly taxicabs, foreigners from India or Pakistan leaning on their horns day and night because they were remembering how fast their camels used to race across the desert sands where there were no traffic lights. Noisiest damn city in the entire universe, this city. Ollie much preferred the silence here in the dead girl's apartment.

He sometimes felt if he hung around a dead person's apartment long enough, he would pick up the vibrations of the killer. Get into his or her skin somehow. He had read a story once—he hated reading—where the theory was the image of a person's murderer would be left on the person's eyeballs, the retina, whatever. Total bullshit. But the silence in a victim's apartment was almost palpable, and he gave real credence to the notion that if he stood there long enough, in the silence, the vibrations of the killer would seep into his bones, though to tell the truth this had never happened to him. Nonetheless, he stood stock still at the foot of the dead girl's bed now, imagining her as he'd first seen her on the kitchen floor, knife in her chest, trying to feel what the killer had felt while he was stabbing her, trying to get into his skin. Nothing happened.
Ollie sighed, farted, and began his solitary search of Althea Cleary's apartment.

What he hoped he definitely would not find was her parents' names. He did not want to have to call them personally and tell them their daughter was dead. He wasn't good at such stuff. To Ollie, when a person was dead he was dead, and you didn't go around wringing your hands or tearing out your hair. He couldn't think of a single dead person he missed, including his own mother and father. He guessed if his sister Isabelle died, he would miss her a little, but not enough to be the one who got up and said some kind words about her at the funeral service because to tell the truth he couldn't think of a single kind thing he might care to say about her, dead
or
alive. Like most living people, Isabelle Weeks was a pain in the ass. She once told him he was a bigot. He told her to go fuck herself, girlfriend.

He had already looked through the dead girl's address book and appointment calendar, but he hadn't found any listings for anybody named Cleary. There were a few names for people in Montana, which wasn't either Ohio or Idaho or Iowa as the super had guessed, but these weren't Clearys, and he didn't plan on calling somebody in Montana just to find out if they were related to a dead black girl he didn't want to tell them about in the first place. Her appointment calendar wasn't much help, either. She probably was new here in the city, which maybe explained why she had cappuccino all the time with the lady upstairs who taught piano, Ollie would have to give her a call. “Night and Day,” he thought. And maybe “Satisfaction,” which was one of his favorite songs, too.

He went to the girl's dresser now, and opened the top drawer, looking for he didn't know what, anything that would tell him something about either her or whoever had been with her on the night she died. There were cops who went by the book, canvassed the neighborhood first, asked Leroy and Luis, Carmen and Clarisse did they see anybody going in or out of the apartment, but up here in Zimbabwe West, nobody ever saw nothing if you were a cop.
Anyway, he preferred getting to know the vic first, and
then
getting to know whoever knew her. Besides, Ollie liked dead people much better than he did most living ones. Dead people didn't give you any trouble. You went into a dead person's apartment, you didn't have to worry about farting or belching. Also, if the vic was a girl, you could handle her panties or pantyhose—like he was doing now—without anybody thinking you were some kind of pervert. Ollie sniffed the crotch of a pair of red panties, which was actually good police work because it would tell him was the girl a clean person or somebody who just dropped panties she had worn right back in the drawer without rinsing them out. They smelled fresh and clean.

Being in her apartment, sniffing her panties, going through the rest of her underwear, and her sweaters and her blouses and her high-heeled shoes in the closet, and her coats and dresses, one of them a blue Monica Lewinsky dress, going through all her personal belongings, trying to find something, wondering what kind of person could have stabbed the girl it looked like half a dozen times and then left a fuckin bread knife sticking out of her chest, opening her handbag and rummaging through the personal girl things in it, he felt both privileged and inviolate, like an invisible burglar.

Carl Blaney was weighing a liver when Ollie got downtown at four o'clock that Wednesday afternoon. It was still raining, though not as hard as it had been earlier. The morgue and the rain outside both had the same stainless steel hue. He watched as Blaney transferred the liver from the scale to a stainless steel pan. Personally, Ollie found body parts disgusting.

“Is that hers?” he asked.

“Whose?” Blaney said.

“The vic's.”

“That's all we've
got
here is vics.”

“Althea Cleary. The little colored girl got stabbed.”

“Oh, that one.”

“What do you do here, you just go from one liver to another?”

“Yep, that's all we do here,” Blaney said dryly.

“So what've you got for me?” Ollie asked.

There was nothing Meyer liked better than to irritate Fat Ollie Weeks. The man was calling to talk to Carella, but Carella was down the hall. Meyer could not resist the temptation.

“Do you plan to sue this guy?” he asked.

“What guy is that?” Ollie asked.

He had never sued anybody in his entire life. He figured the lawyers of the world were rich enough.

“This guy who wrote this book with a lot of police stuff in it.”

“What guy?” Ollie asked again.

“This Irishman who wrote a book. You're famous now, Ollie.”

“The fuck is
that
supposed to mean?” Ollie said.

“On the other hand, it
does
say in the front of the book that the names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously.”

“Wonderful,” Ollie said. “Tell Steve I called, okay? I got to see him about something.”

“‘Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons is entirely coincidental,'” Meyer quoted. “Is what it says. So I guess it
is
just a coincidence.”

“
What
is just a coincidence?” Ollie asked.

“His name being so similar to yours and all,” Meyer explained.

“Whose name?”

“This guy.”

“
What
guy?” Ollie asked for the third fuckin time.

“This guy in this police novel written by this Irish journalist.”

“Okay, I'll bite,” Ollie said.

“Fat Ollie Watts,” Meyer said, drawing the name out grandly. “Not that anyone ever calls
you
Fat Ollie,” he added at once.

“They better
not,
” Ollie said. “What do you mean, Fat Ollie Watts?”

“Is the name of a character in this book.”

“A
character?
Fat Ollie
Watts?
”

“Yeah. But he's just a minor character.”

“A
minor
character?”

“Yeah, some kind of cheap thief.”

“Some kind of cheap
thief?
”

“Yeah.”

“Called Fat Ollie
Watts?
”

“Yeah. Pretty close, don't you think?”

“
Close?
It's right on the fuckin
nose!
”

“Well, no. Watts isn't Weeks.”

“It ain't, huh?”

“It's even spelled differently.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“I wouldn't worry about it.”

“On your block, Fat Ollie
Watts
ain't Fat Ollie
Weeks,
huh? Then what is it?”

“It's Watts.”

“Who the fuck
is
this guy?”

“Fat Ollie Watts,” Meyer said. “I just told you.”

“Not
him!
The guy who wrote the fuckin
book!
Don't he even know I exist?”

“Gee, I guess not.”

“He's writing a book about
cops
and he never heard of
me?
A real
person?
He never heard of Oliver Wendell
Weeks?
”

“Oh, come on, Ollie, relax. This is just another Thomas Harris ripoff serial-killer novel. I wouldn't worry about it.”

“Does this fuckin guy live on
Mars,
he never heard of me?”

“He lives in Ireland, I told you.”

“
Where
in Ireland? In some booth in a pub? In some stone hut by the side of the road? In some fuckin smelly bog?”

“Gee, I'm sorry I even mentioned it.”

“What's this guy's name?”

“I told you. Fat Ollie …”

“Not
him,
” Ollie said. “The writer. The fuckin
writer!
”

“I'll tell you the truth,” Meyer said, grinning, “I've already forgotten it.”

And hung up.

The two men met in a bar at five that afternoon. Both were officially off duty. Carella ordered a beer. Ollie ordered a Harvey Wallbanger.

“So what's this about?” Carella asked.

“I told you on the phone.”

“Some girl got stabbed …”

“Black girl named Althea Cleary. Eight times, according to the ME. Knife was still in her chest. Weapon of convenience. Matches the set in her kitchen. Thing that made me think of you was Blaney telling me …”

“Which Blaney?”

“I don't know. How many Blaneys are there?”

“Two. I think.”

“Well, this was one of them,” Ollie said. “He told me the girl had maybe been doped. With guess what?”

Carella looked at him.

“Yeah,” Ollie said.

“Rohypnol?”

“Rohypnol. Hey, bartender!” he yelled. “Excuse me, but did you put any
vodka
in this fuckin drink?”

“I put vodka in it,” the bartender said.

“Cause what I can do, I can take it down the police lab, we'll run some toxicological tests on it, see if there's any alcohol in it at all.”

“Everything's in it
supposed
to be in it,” the bartender said. “That's a good strong drink you got there.”

“Then whyn't you make me another one just like it, on the house this time, it's so fuckin good.”

“Why on the house?” the bartender asked.

“Cause your toilet's leakin and your bathroom window's painted shut,” Ollie said. “Those are both violations.”

Which they weren't.

“You're sure she was doped?” Carella said.

“According to Blaney.”

“And he's sure it was roofers?”

“Positive.”

“What you're suggesting is a link to my case.”

“By George, I think you've got it.”

“You're saying because they were both doped …”

“Yep.”

“… and later murdered, there's a link.”