Nocturne (22 page)

The interesting thing about Jamal Stone’s yellow sheet was that it listed the names of several hookers in his on-again off-again
stables. Among these, and apparently current until her recent demise, was one Yolande Marie Marx, alias Marie St. Claire,
who had left behind in the apartment of the dead Richard Cooper her handbag and samples of hair and fibers. Ah, yes, Ollie
thought, doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation even within the confines of his own mind, a small world indeed, ah,
yes. Another one of Stone’s current racehorses was a girl named Sarah Rowland, alias Carlyle Yancy, whose address was listed
as the very same domicile Stone had inhabited while among the living, ah, yes.

Ollie didn’t expect to find a working girl home at this hour of the night. But even the good Lord rested on Sunday (although
it was already Monday), so he drove downtown through the snow and into 87th Precinct territory, getting to Stone’s block at
about a quarter past one, and stopping for a cup of coffee in the open diner before going into Stone’s building—smell of piss
in the hallway—and then upstairs to the third floor to knock on his door. Lo and behold, and would wonders never, a girl’s
voice answered his knock.

“Yes, who is it?”

“Police,” Ollie said, “sorry to be bothering you so late at night, would you mind opening the door, please?” All in a rush
in the hope that she’d just open the goddamn door before she began thinking about a search warrant, and police brutality,
and invasion of privacy, and civil rights, and all the bullshit these people up here thought about day and night.

“Just a minute,” she said.

Footsteps inside, approaching the door.

He waited.

The door opened a crack, pulled up short by a night chain. Part of a face appeared in the wedge. High-yeller girl looked about
nineteen, twenty years old. Suspicious brown eye peering out at him.

“What is it?”

“Miss Rowland?”

“Yes.”

“Detective Weeks, Eighty-eighth Squad,” he said, and held his shield up to the wedge. “Okay to come in a minute?”

“Why?” she asked.

He wondered if she knew her pimp was dead. News traveled fast in the black community, but maybe it hadn’t reached her yet.

“I’m investigating the murder of Jamal Stone,” he said, flat out. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She knew. He could see that on her face. Still, she hesitated. White cop banging on a black girl’s door one o’clock in the
morning. Did he think nobody watched television?

“What do you say, miss? I’m trying to help here,” he said.

He saw the faint nod. The night chain came off. The door opened wide. She was wearing a short silk robe with some kind of
flower pattern on it, black with pink petals, sashed at the waist, black silk pajama bottoms under it, black bedroom slippers
with pink pom-poms. She looked very young and very fresh, but he knew in her line of work this wouldn’t last long. Not that
he gave a shit.

“Thanks,” he said, and stepped into the apartment.

She closed the door behind him, locked it, put on the chain again. The apartment was cold.

“Police been here already?” he asked.

“Not about Jamal.”

“Oh? Then who?”

“Yolande.”

“Oh? When was this?”

“Yesterday. Two detectives from the Eight-Seven.”

“Uh-huh. Well, this is about Jamal.”

“Do you think they’re related?”

“The murders, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Richie was killed, too,” she said. “Isn’t that right?”

“He didn’t like to be called Richie.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. He liked to be called Richard.”

The scumbag, he thought.

“Do you think somebody was after all three of them?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”

Ollie often found this effective. Get them speculating, they told you all kinds of things. Sometimes, they speculated themselves
right into a Murder One rap. Cause they all thought they were so fuckin smart. Far as he knew, this sweet, innocent-looking
doll here had torn open the other hooker and drowned Richard the scumbag and then slashed her own pimp, who the hell knew?
These people? Who could tell? So they ask do you think they’re related, and do you think somebody was after all three of them,
which could all be a pose, the one person you could never trust was anybody.

“All I know is the last time I saw Jamal, he was going out to look for her bag.”

“Her bag, huh?”

“This red clutch bag she was wearing when she left here.”

“Which was when?”

“Saturday night. Jamal drove her down the bridge.”

“Which bridge?”

“The Majesta.”

“What time was this?”

“They left here around a quarter to ten.”

“What time did Stone get back?”

“Around eleven. He came to pick me up, take me to this party he arranged with some businessmen from Texas.”

“How many?”

“The Texans? Three of them.”

“Remember their names?”

“Just their first names. Charlie, Joe, and Lou.”

“Where was this?”

“The Brill. They had a suite there.”

“On Fawcett?”

“Yeah.”

“What time did you get there?”

“Jamal dropped me at midnight. I took a cab home.”

“When?”

“Three.”

“What kind of car did he drive? Stone.”

“A Lexus.”

“Know where he kept it?”

“A garage around the corner. On Ainsley. Why?”

“Might be something in it, who knows?”

He was thinking dope. There might be dope in the car. Jumbos on the bathroom floor and in the girl’s handbag, this might’ve
been a dope thing, who the hell knew, these people.

“You know the license plate number?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did they know him at the garage?”

“Oh, sure.”

“On Ainsley, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“You know the name?”

“No, but it’s right around the corner from here.”

“Okay. So you say you got back here around three. Was Yolande home yet?”

“No. Just Jamal.”

“What time did Yolande get home?”

“She didn’t. Next thing we know, two cops are banging down the door.”

“When was this?”

“Eight o’clock Sunday morning. Jamal thought it was this crazy Colombian crack dealer who said Jamal stole some bottles from
him and he was gonna kill him for it, which Jamal didn’t, by the way.”

“Didn’t steal no crack from him, you mean.”

“Right. Still, Jamal popped four caps through the door, thinking it was this crazy fuck Diaz, but it was two cops instead.”

“Shot at two cops, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a good idea.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Who were they, do you remember?”

“Two guys from the Eight-Seven. One of them had red hair.”

“Hawes, was that his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s Diaz’s first name? The crack dealer.”

“Manny. Manuel, actually. You think he killed them?”

“Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I think he
coulda
killed Jamal, cause he’s crazy, you know, and he thinks Jamal stole some shit from him, which he didn’t. But I don’t see
how that ties in with Yolande or Richie.”

“Richard. You know him?”

“Just to say hello.”

“He deals, too, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“You think he might’ve known this Diaz guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“So Jamal pops four through the door …”

“Yeah.”

“… so naturally they arrest him.”

“Yeah.”

“Then what?”

“Dragged him out of here.”

“How come he was on the street again? How come they didn’t lock him up?”

“I guess they figured they didn’t have nothing on him.”

“How about the gun? He shot at two fuckin cops, they didn’t lock him up?”

“He thought it was Diaz.”

“Did he have a license for the gun?”

“I think so.”

“Guy with a record, they gave him a license?”

“Then maybe not.”

“So why’d they let him go?”

“I got no idea.”

Ollie was thinking that sometimes a bullshit class-A misdemeanor wasn’t even worth taking downtown. This included violations
of 265.01, where criminal possession of a firearm could get you a year in prison, which wasn’t insignificant even if you behaved
yourself and got back on the street in three and a third months.

But this Jamal jerk had popped four at a pair of cops, which should have irked them considerably and caused them to haul his
ass downtown toot sweet. Unless they were thinking he’d be more valuable to them outside, lead them to whoever had torn out
that dead hooker’s insides, who the hell knew? Take a shot at Ollie, first thing you’d be picking up all your teeth, and next
thing you’d be downtown waiting for arraignment with your shoes falling off and your pants falling down cause they took away
your belt and your shoelaces and your brand-new stolen Rolex.

Or—and this was a possibility—maybe they figured with a murder on their hands and the shift changing, they didn’t want to
bother with booking and mugging and printing and court appearances on an A-mis where the guy might even walk if he pulled
a bleeding-heart black judge. Better to let the shithead walk now, especially since he’d been trying to chill
another
shit-head, which maybe next time he’d succeed, and more power to him. There are more things in police work, Horatio, than
are dreamt of in your potato patch.

Still, Ollie would ask.

Next time he was up the Eight-Seven, he would ask why they let a nigger in criminal possession of a weapon stroll right out
of that li’l ole squadroom, ah, yes, m’dear boys, yes, indeed.

“So Yolande and Jamal left here about a quarter to ten …”

“Yeah.”

“And Jamal got back around eleven …”

“Yeah.”

“And drove you to the Brill.”

“That’s right.”

“And he was here when you got home around three …”

“Three-thirty, it must’ve been.”

“He was home.”

“Yes.”

“But Yolande never made it.”

“No. Which is funny.”

“Funny how?” Ollie asked.

“Cause she called to say she was on her way.”

“Oh? When was this?”

“Around five-thirty in the morning.”

“Called here?”

“Yeah. Told Jamal she was just leaving the Stardust …”

“The Stardust? Down on Coombes?”

“Yeah.”

“And said she was coming home?”

“Soon as she could catch a cab,” Carlyle said.

Bingo, Ollie thought.

T
he uniformed radio motor patrol cops who pulled the taxi to the curb didn’t think it was a stolen vehicle or anything because
a 10–69 was specifically a noncrime incident. But then why had the dispatcher radioed
all
cars and asked them to stop and detain the taxi bearing this particular license plate? Stop, detain, and report back. That
was the message.

So they pulled the cab over and asked the driver for his license and while one of the cops looked it over as if he were intercepting
a huge dope shipment from Colombia, the other one radioed home to say they had the perp and what should they do now? The dispatcher
asked where they were and told them to sit tight till a Detective Oliver Weeks from the Eight-Eight arrived on the scene.
Meanwhile, Max Liebowitz was sitting behind the wheel, wetting his pants.

This was a bleak area of Calm’s Point. Liebowitz had just dropped off two suspicious-looking black guys who, it turned out,
were stockbrokers getting home late from a party celebrating a multimillion-dollar merger. He didn’t like being in this part
of the city at a quarter to two in the morning, and he didn’t like being pulled over by cops, either—both of
them
black, by the way—especially when they wouldn’t tell him what the violation was, and especially since he was losing money
sitting here by the side of the road. Eventually a battered Chevy sedan pulled up in front of the cops’ car, and a fat guy
wearing a lightweight trench coat open over his beer barrel belly got out. Under the trench coat Liebowitz could see a plaid
sports jacket, also unbuttoned, and a loud tie that looked like it had on it every meal the guy had eaten for the past week.
He waddled over to where the two black cops were sitting in their car flashing lights like it was still Christmas, and rapped
on the driver’s side window, and held up a badge. Liebowitz caught a flash of gold. A detective. The guy behind the wheel
rolled down the window but didn’t get out of the car. The fat guy seemed impervious to the cold. Had to be three above zero
out there, still snowing, and he was leaning on the window with his coat wide open like a flasher, chatting up the two black
cops. Finally he said something like “I’ve got it,” or “I’ll take it,” and thanked the two of them, and waved them off into
the night, their car trailing white exhaust fumes.

Ollie walked over to the taxi.

“Mr. Liebowitz?” he asked.

“Yeah, what’s the trouble?” Liebowitz said.

“No trouble, Mr. Liebowitz. I’m Detective Weeks, there’s a few questions I need to ask you.”