Nocturne (7 page)

Carella
knew
how come. Black people were beginning to believe that the best way to survive was to keep their distance from the police.
Because if they didn’t, they got set up and framed. That was O.J.’s legacy. Thanks a lot, Juice, we needed you.

“I talked privately to the day manager,” Pratt said. “Told him somebody’d ripped off the piece. He said he’d ask around quietly.”

“
Did
he ask around? Quietly.”

“None of his people knew anything about it.”

Naturally, Carella thought.

Hawes was thinking the same thing.

“And you say the glove compartment was locked when you got back home here?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“What do you mean, you
think
so?”

“Why do you guys think everything I say is a lie?”

Carella sighed in exasperation.

“Come on, was it locked or wasn’t it?” he said. “That isn’t a trick question. Just tell us yes or no.”

“I’m telling you I don’t
know
. I put the key in the lock and turned it. But whether it was locked or not …”

“You didn’t try to thumb it open
before
you put the key in?”

“No, I always leave it locked.”

“Then what makes you think it may have been unlocked this time?”

“The fucking gun was missing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but you didn’t know that before you opened the compartment.”

“I know it
now
. If it was already unlocked when I turned the key, then what I was doing was locking it all over again. So I had to turn
the key back again to
un
lock it.”

“
Is
that in fact what you did?”

“I don’t remember. I might have. A glove compartment isn’t like your front door, you know, where you lock it and unlock it
a hundred times a day, and you know
just
which way to turn the key to open it.”

“Then what you’re saying now, in retrospect, is that it might have been
un
locked.”

“Is what I’m saying in retrospect. Because the gun was missing. Which means somebody had already got in there.”

Bridge. Which I believe is against the law
anywhere
in the city.”

“Did you leave a valet key with the car, or …?”

“I lost the valet key.”

“So the key you left in the ignition could have unlocked the glove compartment, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“So you’re saying someone at the garage unlocked it and stole the gun.”

“Is exactly what I’m saying.”

“You don’t think whoever put styrene in the crankcase might have stolen the gun, do you?”

“I don’t see how.”

“You didn’t notice the hood open, did you?”

“
Yeah,
the hood was open. How would they get at the engine without lifting the hood?”

“I mean,
before
you took it to the garage.”

“No, I didn’t see the hood open.”

“Tell us where you went with the car that Thursday.
Before
somebody did the styrene job.”

“I don’t
know
when the styrene job was done.”

“Tell us where you went, anyway, okay? Help us out here, willya?”

“First, I drove an actress over to NBC for a television interview that morning …”

“NBC where?”

“Downtown. Off Hall Avenue.”

“When was that?”

“Six-thirty in the morning.”

“Did you go inside with her?”

“No, I stayed with the car.”

“Then what?”

“Drove her back to her hotel, waited downstairs for her.”

“Leave the car?”

“No. Well, wait a minute, yeah. I got
out
of the car to have a smoke, but I was standing right by it.”

“Gun still in the glove compartment?”

“Far as I know. I didn’t look.”

“You said you waited for her downstairs …”

“Yeah.”

“What time did she come back down?”

“Twelve-fifteen.”

“Where’d you go then?”

“To J. C. Willoughby’s for lunch. She was meeting her agent there.”

“And then?”

“Picked her up at two, drove her to …”

“Were you with the car all that time?”

“Come to think of it, no. I went for a bite myself. Parked it in a garage.”

“Where?”

“Near the restaurant. On Lloyd.”

“So somebody
could
have lifted the hood and poured that styrene in.”

“I guess.”

“Did you leave the key in the car?”

“Of course. How else could they drive it?”

“Then someone could have unlocked the glove compartment, too.”

“Yeah, but …”

“Yeah?”

“I
still
think somebody at the gas station swiped that piece.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Just a feeling. You know how you get a feeling something’s wrong? I had the feeling those guys knew something about the car
I
didn’t
know.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know what.”

“Which guys?”

“All of them. The day manager when I went to pick it up, all the guys working …”

“When did you pick up your diamond merchant?”

“What?”

“You said …”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Aaronson. I was with the actress all day, stayed with her while she shopped Hall Avenue. She was doing some
shopping before she went back to L.A. Drove her to meet some friends for dinner, took her back to the hotel afterward.”

“Stayed with the car all that time?”

“Didn’t budge from it. Picked up Mr. Aaronson at ten-thirty, drove him home. He was heavy that night.”

“Heavy.”

“Lots of gems in his suitcase.”

“What’d you do then?”

“Started back over the bridge, heard the car starting to conk out.”

“Would you remember where you parked the car while you were having lunch?”

“I told you. Place on Lloyd, just off Detavoner. Only one on the block, you can’t miss it.”

“You wouldn’t know who
parked
it, would you?”

“All those guys look the same to me.”

“Can you think of anyone who might’ve put that styrene in your crankcase?”

“No.”

“Or stolen the gun?”

“Yeah. Somebody at the fuckin gas station.”

“One last question,” Carella said. “Where were you tonight between ten and midnight?”

“Here is comes,” Pratt said, and rolled his eyes.

“Where were you?” Carella asked again.

“Right here.”

“Anyone with you?”

“My wife. You want to wake
her
up, too?”

“Do we have to?” Carella asked.

“She’ll tell you.”

“I’ll bet she will.”

Pratt was beginning to glower again.

“Let her sleep,” Carella said.

Pratt looked at him.

“I think we’re finished here. Sorry to have bothered you. Cotton? Anything?”

“One thing,” Hawes said. “Do you know who worked on your car?”

“Yeah, somebody named Gus. He’s the one who signed the service order, but he wasn’t there when I picked the car up yesterday.”

“Do you know if the day manager asked
him
about the gun?”

“He says he did.”

“What’s
his
name?”

“The day manager? Jimmy.”

“Jimmy what?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about the night manager? The one you left the car with?”

“Ralph. I don’t know Ralph what. They have their names stitched on the front of their coveralls. Just the first names.”

“Thanks,” Hawes said. “Good night, sir, we’re sorry to have bothered you.”

“Mm,” Pratt said sourly.

In the hallway outside, Carella said, “So now it becomes the tale of a gun.”

“I saw
that
movie, too,” Hawes said.

Bridge Texaco was in the shadow of the Majesta Bridge, which connected two of the city’s most populous sectors, creating massive
traffic jams at either end. Here in Isola—simply and appropriately named since it was an island and Isola meant “island” in
Italian—the side streets and avenues leading to the bridge were thronged with taxis, trucks and passenger vehicles from six
a.m
. to midnight, when things began slowing down a bit. At three-thirty in the morning, when the detectives got there, one would
never have guessed that just a few hours earlier the surrounding streets had resonated with the din of honking horns and shouted
epithets, the result of a stalled truck in the middle of the bridge.

There were two city statutes, both of them punishable by mere fines, that made the blowing of horns unlawful. Using profanity
in public was also against the law. The pertinent section in the Penal Law was 240.20, and it was titled Disorderly Conduct.
It read: “A person is guilty of disorderly conduct when, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or
recklessly creating a risk thereof, he uses abusive or obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture.” Disorderly conduct
was a simple violation, punishable by not more than a term of fifteen days in jail. The two statutes and the Penal Law section
only defined civilization. Perhaps this was why a uniformed cop on the street corner had merely scratched his ass at midnight
while an angry motorist leaned incessantly on his horn, yelling “
Move
it, you fuckin cocksucker!”

Now, at 3:30
a.m
., all the horn-blowing had stopped, all the profanity had flown on the wind. There was only the bitter cold of the January
streets, and a gas station with fluorescent lights that seemed to echo winter’s chill. A yellow taxicab was parked at one
of the pumps. Its driver, hunched against the cold, jiggling from foot to foot, was filling the tank. The paneled doors opening
on the service bays were closed tight against the frigid air. In the station’s warmly lighted office, a man wearing a brown
uniform and a peaked brown hat sat with his feet up on the desk, reading a copy of
Penthouse
. He looked up when the detectives came in. The stitched name on the front of his uniform read
Ralph
.

Carella showed the tin.

“Detective Carella,” he said. “My partner, Detective Hawes.”

“Ralph Bonelli. What’s up?”

“We’re trying to trace a gun that …”

“
That
again?” Bonelli said, and looked heavenward.

“Any idea what happened to it?”

“No. I told Pratt nobody here knew anything about it. That hasn’t changed.”

“Who’d you ask?”

“The mechanic who worked on it. Gus. He didn’t see it. Some of the other guys who were working on Friday. None of them saw
any gun.”

“How
many
other guys?”

“Two. They’re not mechanics, they just pump gas.”

“So Gus is the only one who worked on the car.”

“Yeah, the only one.”

“Where’d he work on it?”

“One of the service bays in there,” Bonelli said, and gestured with his head. “Had it up on the hydraulic lift.”

“Key in it?”

“Yeah, he had to drive it in, didn’t he?”

“How about when he was finished with it? Where’d the key go then?”

“Key box there on the wall,” Bonelli said, indicating a gray metal cabinet fastened to the wall near the cash register. A
small key was sticking out of a keyway on the door.

“Do you ever lock that cabinet?”

“Well … no.”

“Leave the key in it all the time?”

“I see where you’re going, but you’re wrong. Nobody who works here stole that gun.”

“Well, it was in the glove compartment when Mr. Pratt drove the car in …”

“That’s what
he
says.”

“You don’t think it was, huh?”

“Did
I
see it? Did
anybody
see it? We got only the jig’s word for it.”

“Why would he say there was a gun in the glove compartment if there wasn’t one?”

“Maybe he wanted me to write off the repair job, who knows?”

“What do you mean?”

“A trade, you know? He forgets the gun, we forget the bill.”

“You think that’s what he had in mind, huh?”

“Who knows?”

“Well, did he actually
suggest
anything like that?”

“No, I’m just saying.”

“So, actually,” Hawes said, “you have no reason to believe there
wasn’t
a gun in that glove compartment?”

“Unless the jig had some other reason to be lying about it.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe he had some use for it later on. Claim it was stolen, build an alibi in advance, you follow?”

“Can you write down the names of everyone who was working here while the car was in the shop?” Carella asked.

“Sure.”

“Would anyone else have access to that key cabinet? Aside from your people?” Hawes asked.

“Sure. Anybody walking in and out of the office here. But there’s always one of us around. We would’ve seen anybody trying
to get in the cabinet.”

“Addresses and phone numbers, too,” Carella said.

Despite the cold, the blonde was wearing only a brief black miniskirt, a short red fake-fur jacket, gartered black silk stockings
and high-heeled, red leather, ankle-high boots. A matching red patent-leather clutch handbag was tucked under her arm. Her
naked thighs were raw from the wind, and her feet were freezing cold in the high-heeled boots. Shivering, she stood on the
corner near the traffic light, where any inbound traffic from Majesta would have to stop before moving into the city proper.

The girl’s name was Yolande.

She was free, white, and nineteen years old, but she was a hooker and a crack addict, and she was here on the street at this
hour of the morning because she hoped to snag a driver coming in, and spin him around the block once or twice while she gave
him a fifty-dollar blow job.

Yolande didn’t know it, but she would be dead in three hours.

The detectives coming out of the gas station office spotted the blonde standing on the corner, recognized her for exactly
what she was, but didn’t glance again in her direction. Yolande recognized them as well, for exactly what they were, and watched
them warily as they climbed into an unmarked, dark blue sedan. A white Jaguar pulled to the curb where she was standing. The
window on the passenger side slid noiselessly down. The traffic light bathed the car and the sidewalk and Yolande in red.
She waited until she saw a plume of exhaust smoke billow from the tailpipe of the dark sedan up the street. Then she leaned
into the window of the car at the curb, smiled and said, “Hey, hiya. Wanna party?”