Fiddlers Read online

  * * * *

  On the way down to the street, Carella said, ‘The rest is silence.’

  Meyer looked at him.

  ‘Hamlet,’ Carella said. ‘I played Claudius in a college production.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yeah. I could’ve been famous.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  They came out into the street, began walking toward where they’d parked the car.

  ‘How about you?’ Carella asked.

  ‘I could’ve been Picasso.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist,’ Meyer said, and shrugged.

  ‘Ever regret becoming a cop?’

  ‘A cop? No. Hey, no. You?’

  ‘No,’ Carella said. ‘No.’

  They walked toward the car in silence, thinking about paths not taken, dreams unborn.

  ‘Well, let’s check out this other musician,’ Carella said.

  * * * *

  ‘I play at Ninotchka only when I’m between pit gigs,’ Sy Handelman told them.

  They figured a ‘pit gig’ was a job that was the bottom of the barrel. The pits.

  ‘The orchestra pit,’ Handelman explained. ‘For musicals downtown, on the Stem.’

  He was twenty years old or so. Wore his hair long, like an anachronistic hippie. They could imagine him playing violin outside a theater downtown, collecting tips in a plate on the sidewalk. A busker. They could also imagine him in a long-sleeved, white-silk, ruffled shirt, playing violin for the senior citizens at Ninotchka. They had a little more trouble visualizing him in the orchestra pit at a hit musical; on their salaries they rarely got to see hundred-dollar-ticket shows.

  ‘I like pit work,’ Handelman said. ‘All those good-looking gypsies.’

  They got confused again.

  Was he now talking about his work at Ninotchka?

  ‘The chorus girls,’ he explained. ‘We call them gypsies. You sit in the orchestra pit, you can see up their dresses clear to Manderlay.’

  ‘Must be an interesting line of work,’ Meyer said.

  ‘Can make you blind, you’re not careful,’ Handelman said, and grinned.

  Which led them to why they were here.

  ‘Max Sobolov?’ Handelman said. ‘A sad old Jew.’

  ‘He was only fifty-eight,’ Meyer said.

  ‘There are sad old men who are only forty,’ Handelman observed philosophically.

  ‘Ever tell you why he was so sad?’ Carella asked.

  ‘I got the feeling it was guilt. We Jews always feel guilty, anyway, am I right?’ he said to Meyer. ‘But with Max, it was really oppressive. What I’m saying is nobody acts the way Max did unless he did something terrible he was sorry for. Never smiled. Hardly even said hello when he came to work. Just got into costume… we wear these red-silk ruffled shirts

  Okay, so they’d figured white.

  ‘… and tight black pants, give the old ladies a thrill, you know. Then he went out to do his thing. Which was to play this dark, brooding, gypsy music. Which he did superbly, I must say.’

  ‘We understand he was trained as a classical musician.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised. Where, would you know?’

  ‘Kleber.’

  ‘The best. I’m not surprised.’

  ‘This terrible thing he did, whatever it was…’

  ‘Well, I’m just guessing.’

  ‘Did he ever mention what it might have been, specifically?’

  ‘No. He never told me any of this, you understand, he never said, “Gee, I’m so guilty and sad because I threw my teenage sweetheart off the roof,” never anything like that. But there was this… this abiding sense of guilt about him. Guilt and grief. Yes. Grief. As if he was so very sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ Carella asked.

  ‘Maybe for himself,’ Handelman said.

  * * * *

  First time Kling ever called her was from a phone booth in the rain. Less a booth, really, than one of these little plastic shells, rain pouring down around him. He was calling from a similar enclosure today, the heat rising from the pavement in shimmering waves he could actually see, talk about palpable.

  He hadn’t spoken to her in six days, but who was counting? You go from sharing apartments, his and hers, alternately, to simply not speaking, that was a very serious contrast. He was calling her at her office, he hoped he wouldn’t get the usual medical menu, hoped he wouldn’t get a nurse asking him where he itched or hurt. Sharyn Cooke was the police department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon. Bert Kling was a Detective/Third Grade. Big enough difference right there. Never mind the fact that she was black and he was white. Blond, no less.

  ‘Dr. Cooke’s office,’ a female voice said.

  He was calling her uptown, in Diamondback, where she had her private practice. Her police office was in Rankin Plaza, across the river. They knew him at both places. Or at least used to know him. He hoped she hadn’t given orders otherwise.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘it’s Bert. May I speak to her, please?’

  ‘Just a moment, please.’

  He almost said, ‘Jenny, is that you?’ Knew all the nurses. But she was gone. He waited. And waited. Heat rose from the sidewalk and the street.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sharyn?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Bert.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘Shar…”

  Silence.

  ‘I’d like to see you.’

  More silence.

  ‘Shar, we have to talk.’

  ‘I can’t talk yet,’ she said.

  ‘Shar…’

  ‘I’m still too hurt.’ Heat rising.

  ‘You don’t know how much you hurt me,’ she said. “ Fire truck going by somewhere on the street. Siren blaring.

  ‘Please don’t call me for a while,’ she said.

  There was a click on the line.

  For a while, he thought.

  He guessed that was a hopeful sign.

  * * * *

  Alicia was certain someone was following her. She’d confided this to her boss, who told her she was nuts. ‘Who’d want to follow you?’ he’d said, which she considered a bit of an insult. Like what? She wasn’t good-looking enough to be followed?

  Alicia was fifty-five years old, a tall Beauty Plus blonde (what they called Honey Melt, actually) with excellent legs and fine breasts, a woman who’d provoked many a construction-worker whistle on the streets of this fair city - so what had Jamie meant by his remark? Besides, she was being followed, she was certain of that. In fact, she checked the street this way and that the minute she stepped out onto the sidewalk that Friday evening.

  Beauty Plus was located in a twenty-seven-story building on Twombley Street midtown. The Lustre Nails Care Division was located in a string of eight offices on the seventeenth floor of the building. Fanning out from these offices every weekday were the twenty-two sales reps Beauty Plus hoped would vigorously sell its nail-care products to the four-thousand-plus manicure salons all over the city. Alicia had written out her day’s report by a quarter to five, had mentioned to Jamie Dewes that she hoped she wouldn’t be followed again tonight (hence his snide remark) and was stepping out onto the sidewalk at a few minutes past five.

  The June heat hit her like a closed fist.

  She looked up and down the street again. No sign of whoever it was she felt sure was following her. She stepped out in a long-legged stride, heading for the subway kiosk on the next corner.

  * * * *

  Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks had lost ten pounds. This caused him to look merely like a hippopotamus. Patricia Gomez thought he was making real progress.

  ‘This is truly remarkable, Oll,’ she told him. ‘Ten pounds in two weeks, do you know how wonderful that is?’

  Ollie did not think it was so wonderful.

  Ollie felt hungry all the time.

  Patricia was
still in uniform. She told Ollie she’d signed out late because her sergeant had something brilliant to say about the way the team had handled a joint operation with Street Crime. Seemed a confidential informant wasn’t where he was supposed to be when the bust went down, some such bullshit. Her sergeant was always complaining about something or other, the old hairbag. Ollie told her he’d have a word with the man, ah yes, get him off her case. Patricia told him to never mind. They were strolling up Culver Av, in the Eight-Eight territory they called home during their working day. If she wasn’t in uniform, he’d have been holding her hand.

  ‘Are you nervous about tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Why should I be nervous?’

  Actually, he was nervous.

  ‘You don’t have to be,’ she said, and took his hand, uniform or not.

  * * * *

  On the way to Calm’s Point, Alicia kept eyeing the subway crowd. The man who’d been following her was bald, she was sure of that. More of a Patrick Stewart bald than a Bruce Willis bald. Tall slender guy with a slick bald pate, had to be in his mid-to-late fifties.

  He scared hell out of her.

  She’d spotted him on two separate occasions now, just quick glimpses, each time ducking out of sight when she’d turned to look.

  There was only one bald guy in the subway car, and he had to be in his seventies, sitting there reading a Spanish-language newspaper.

  * * * *

  Ollie guessed he expected everybody to be speaking Spanish. Her mother’s name was Catalina, and her two sisters were Isabella and Enriquetta. Her brother - who played piano - was named Alonso. First thing the brother said was, ‘Hey, dude, I hear you play piano, too.’

  ‘Well, a little,’ Ollie said modestly.

  ‘He learned “Spanish Eyes” for me,’ Patricia said, beaming.

  ‘Get out! her sister said.

  ‘I mean it, he’ll play it for us later.’

  ‘Well,’ Ollie said modestly.

  ‘Come,’ Patricia’s mother said, ‘have some bacalaitos.’

  Ollie almost said he was on a diet, but Patricia gave him an okay nod.

  * * * *

  The owner of the Korean grocery store around the corner from her apartment greeted Alicia warmly when she stopped in to pick up some things for dinner. He told her he had some nice fresh blueberries today, three-ninety-nine a basket. She bought half a pound of shiitake mushrooms, a dozen eggs, a container of low-fat milk, and two baskets of the berries.

  It was while she was making herself an omelet that she heard the bedroom window sliding open.

  * * * *

  ‘Oh, Spanish eyes…’

  This was the Al Martino version of the song, not the one the Backstreet Boys did years later. Ollie had been studying it for weeks now. His piano teacher insisted he had it down pat, but this was the first time he’d ever performed it in public, in front of Patricia’s whole family, no less.

  They were all gathered around the upright piano in the Gomez living room. A framed picture of Jesus was on the piano top. The picture made Ollie nervous, staring at him that way. What made him even more nervous was Patricia’s father. Ollie got the feeling her father didn’t like him too much. Probably thought Ollie was going to violate his virgin daughter, though Ollie guessed she wasn’t one at all.

  Patricia and her mother knew the words by heart. It was Patricia’s mother, in fact, who’d taught her the song. Her sister Isabella seemed to be hearing it for the first time. She seemed to like it, kept swaying back and forth to it. When they’d met tonight, Ollie told her his sister’s name was Isabel, too, and she’d said, ‘Get out!’ She looked a little like Patricia, but Patricia was prettier. Nobody in the family was as good-looking as Patricia. In fact, nobody in this entire city was as good-looking as Patricia.

  Tito Gomez, the father, kept scowling at Ollie. The brother was doing a good imitation of his father, too.

  Patricia and her mother kept singing along.

  Isabella kept swaying to the music.

  In the kitchen, asopao de polio was cooking.

  * * * *

  At first, Alicia thought she was hearing things. She’d turned on the air conditioner and closed all the windows the minute she’d come into the apartment, but now she heard what sounded like a window going up in the bedroom. There were two windows in the bedroom, one of them opening on the fire escape, the other with an air-conditioning unit in it. She did not want to believe that someone had just opened the fire-escape window, but…

  ‘Hello?’ she called.

  From outside, she heard the sudden rush of traffic below. Would she be hearing traffic if the window wasn’t… ?

  ‘Hello?’ she said again.

  ‘Hello, Alicia,’ a voice called.

  A man’s voice.

  She froze to the spot.

  She’d sliced the mushrooms with a big carving knife, and she lifted that from the counter now, and was backing away toward the entrance door to the apartment when he came out of the bedroom. There was a large gun in his right hand. There was some kind of thing fastened to the barrel. An instant before he spoke, she recognized it as a silencer.

  ‘Remember me?’ he said. ‘Chuck?’

  And shot her twice in the face.

  2.

  THE TWO DETECTIVES met for lunch in a diner on Albermarle, two hours after Carella received the telephone call. He figured he knew what Kramer wanted. He wasn’t wrong.

  ‘The thing is,’ Kramer was telling him, ‘we don’t catch many homicides up the Nine-Eight. This is more up your alley, you know what I mean.’

  Low crime rate in the Nine-Eight, was what Kramer was saying. As compared to the soaring statistics uptown in the asshole of creation, was what Kramer was saying. What’s another homicide more or less to you guys, Kramer was saying. Carella was inclined to tell him, Thanks, pal, but our platter is full right now. If only it weren’t for the First Man Up rule.

  Kramer wouldn’t have called if the Ballistics match hadn’t come through so fast. You get a blind man shot dead outside a nightclub Wednesday night, and then Friday night, at the other end of the city, you get a woman killed cooking an omelet in her own apartment, there’s no connection, right? Unless Ballistics calls early Monday morning to tell you the same nine-millimeter Glock was used in both shootings. That can capture a person’s attention, all right. It had certainly caught Kramer’s, who was now munching on a ham and egg sandwich while trying not to be too aggressive about the department’s time-honored First Man Up rule. Hence his song and dance about the Nine-Eight’s inexperience with matters homicidal.

  ‘So what do you say?’ he asked Carella. ‘I’ll turn over our paper to you, the Eight-Seven can pick it up from there. This should be a snap for you guys, you already got a gun match.’

  A snap, Carella thought, and wondered how many nines were loose in the city.

  ‘I’d have to check with the Loot,’ he said, ‘see if he thinks we can take on another homicide just now.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Kramer said, and then casually added, ‘but he’s familiar with FMU, of course.’ And further added, ‘Which is the case here. You caught your blind guy two days before we caught the omelet lady. So what do you say?’ Kramer asked again.

  He knew he had Carella dead to rights on FMU. He was just being polite.

  Carella hoped he’d at least pay for the lunch.

  * * * *

  ‘Way I understand this,’ Parker said, ‘is we’re now the garbage can of the Detective Division, is that it?’

  There were only five men in the lieutenant’s office and Parker had the floor. He was dressed this Monday afternoon the way he usually dressed for work: like a bum. Unshaven. Blue jeans and a T-shirt. Short-sleeved Hawaiian-print shirt over that, but only to hide the automatic holstered at his right hip.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,’ Carella said.

  ‘No? Then what does it mean when any murder done with a Glock gets dumped on us?’


  ‘Not every Glock. Just the ones that match the blind-man kill.’

  ‘Which we caught,’ Lieutenant Byrnes explained again. Bullet-headed, gray-haired, square-jawed, he looked like an older Dick Tracy sitting behind his comer-office desk. ‘Which means First Man Up prevails,’ he explained further.

  ‘Like I said,’ Parker continued, undeterred. ‘We’re the DD’s garbage can.’

  ‘How many have there been so far?’ Genero asked. Curly-haired, brown-eyed, the youngest man on the squad, he always sounded tentative. Or maybe just stupid.

  ‘Just two, counting the omelet lady.’

  ‘That ain’t so many,’ Genero said. ‘Can you run them by us?’ he said, trying to sound executive.

  ‘The blind guy is the one we caught,’ Meyer said. ‘Ten thirty last Wednesday night.’

  Bald and burly, shirtsleeves rolled up and shirt collar open because the squadroom’s air conditioner wasn’t working again on one of the hottest days this June, he hunched over Carella’s desk, consulting the DD report.

  ‘That would’ve been?’

  ‘June sixteenth.’

  ‘Fifty-eight years old. Two in the head,’ Meyer said.

  ‘From a Glock?’

  ‘A Glock. Apparently, nothing was stolen from him. His wallet still contained a check for three hundred dollars, and a hundred and change in cash, presumably tip money.’

  ‘And the next one?’

  Carella walked over from the watercooler. He moved like an athlete, though he wasn’t one, his skills limited to stickball when he was a kid growing up in Riverhead. He picked up the Nine-Eight’s report, and studied it again, together with the other detectives this time. Standing side by side, reading the report, the men could have been accountants looking over a client’s weekly payroll report - if only it weren’t for the shoulder holsters.

  And the nine-millimeter Glocks in them.

  Just like the one that killed the omelet lady and the blind guy.

  ‘Friday night,’ Carella said. ‘Calm’s Point. The Nine-Eight phoned this morning, right after they got a Ballistics match.’