Nocturne (8 page)

“How much?” the driver asked.

The changing traffic light suddenly turned everything to green.

A moment later, the two vehicles moved off in opposite directions.

The night was young.

They found Gus Mondalvo in an underground club in a largely Hispanic section of Riverhead. This was now a little past four
in the morning. His mother, who refused to open the door of her apartment despite repeated declarations that they were police,
told them they could find her son at the Club Fajardo “up dee block,” which is where they were now, trying to convince the
heavyset man who opened the chain-held door that they weren’t here to bust the place.

The man protested in Spanish that they weren’t serving liquor here, anyway, so what was there to bust? This was just a friendly
neighborhood social club having a little party, they could come in and see for themselves, all of this while incriminating
bottles and glasses were being whisked from behind the bar and off the tabletops. By the time he took off the chain some five
minutes later, you would have thought this was a teenage corner malt shop instead of a joint selling booze after hours to
a clientele that included underage kids. The man who let them in told them Gus Mondalvo was sitting at the bar drinking …

“But nothing alcoholic,” he added hastily.

… and pointed him out to them. A Christmas tree still stood in the corner near the bar, elaborately decorated, extravagantly
lighted. The detectives made their way across a small dance floor packed with teenagers dancing and groping to Ponce’s Golden
Oldies, moved past tables where boys and girls, men and women alike were all miraculously drinking Coca-Cola in bottles, and
approached the stool where Gus Mondalvo sat sipping what looked like a lemonade.

“Mr. Mondalvo?” Hawes asked.

Mondalvo kept sipping his drink.

“Police,” Hawes said, and flipped a leather case open to show his shield.

There are various ways to express cool when responding to a police presence. One is to feign total indifference to the fact
that cops are actually
here
and may be about to cause trouble. Like “I’ve been through this a hundred times before, man, and it don’t faze me, so what
can I do for you?” Another is to display indignation. As, for example, “Do you realize who I am? How dare you embarrass me
this way in a public place?” The third is to pretend complete ignorance. “Cops? Are you
really
cops? Gee. What business on earth could cops possibly have with
me
?”

Mondalvo turned slowly on his stool.

“Hi,” he said, and smiled.

They had seen it all and heard it all.

This time around, it would be pleasant indifference.

“Mr. Mondalvo,” Hawes said, “we understand you worked on the engine of a Cadillac belonging to a Mr. Rodney Pratt on Friday,
would you remember having done that?”

“Oh, sure,” Mondalvo said. “Listen, do you think we’d be more comfortable at a table? Something to drink? A Coke? A ginger
ale?”

He slid off the stood to reveal his full height of five-six, five-seven, shorter than he’d looked while sitting, a little
man with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, sporting a close-cropped haircut and mustache. Carella wondered if he’d acquired
the weight lifter’s build in prison, and then realized he was prejudging someone who was, after all, gainfully employed as
an automobile mechanic. They moved to a table near the dance floor. Hawes noticed that the club was discreetly and gradually
beginning to clear out, people slipping into their overcoats and out the door. If a bust was in the cards, nobody wanted to
be here when it came down. Some foolhardy couples, enjoying the music and maybe even the sense of imminent danger, flitted
past on the dance floor, trying to ignore them, but everyone knew The Law was here, and eyes sideswiped them with covert glances.

“We’ll get right to the point,” Carella said. “Did you happen to notice a gun in the glove compartment of that car?”

“I didn’t go in the glove compartment,” Mondalvo said. “I had to put in a new engine, why would I go in the glove compartment?”

“I don’t know. Why would you?”

“Right. Why would I? Is that what this is about?”

“Yes.”

“Because I already told Jimmy I didn’t know anything about that guy’s gun.”

“Jimmy Jackson?”

“Yeah, the day manager. He asked me did I see a gun, I told him
what
gun? I didn’t see no gun.”

“But you did work on the Caddy all day Friday.”

“Yeah. Well not
all
day. It was a three-, four-hour job. What it was, somebody put styrene in the crankcase.”

“So we understand.”

“Styrene is what they use to make fiberglass. It’s this oily shit you can buy at any marine or boat supply store, people use
it to patch their fiberglass boats. But if you want to fuck up a guy’s engine, all you do you mix a pint of it with three,
four quarts of oil and pour it in his crankcase. The car’ll run maybe fifty, sixty miles, a hundred max, before the oil breaks
down and the engine binds. Pratt’s engine was shot. We had to order a new one for him. Somebody didn’t like this guy so much,
to do something like that to his car, huh? Maybe that’s why he packed a gun.”

Maybe, Carella was thinking.

“Anybody else go near that car while you were working on it?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Give us some approximate times here,” Hawes said. “When did you start working on it?”

“After lunch sometime Friday. I had a Buick in needed a brake job, and then I had a Beamer had something wrong with the electrical
system. I didn’t get to the Caddy till maybe twelve-thirty, one o’clock. That’s when I put it up on the lift.”

“Where was it until then?”

“Sitting out front. There’s like a little parking space out front, near where the air hose is?”

“Was the car locked?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, were you the one who drove it into the bay and onto the lift?”

“Yeah.”

“So, was the car locked when you …?”

“Come to think of it, no.”

“You just got into it without having to unlock the door.”

“That’s right.”

“Was the key in the ignition?”

“No, I took it from the cabinet near the cash register.”

“And went to the car …”

“Yeah.”

“… and found it unlocked.”

“Right. I just got in and started it.”

“What time did you finish work on it?”

“Around four, four-thirty.”

“Then what?”

“Drove it off the lift, parked it outside again.”

“Did you lock it?”

“I think so.”

“Yes or no? Would you remember?”

“I’m pretty sure I did. I knew it was gonna be outside all night, I’m pretty sure I would’ve locked it.”

“What’d you do with the key after you locked it?”

“Put it back in the cabinet.”

“You weren’t there on Thursday night when Mr. Pratt brought the car in, were you?” Carella asked.

“No, I go home six o’clock. We don’t have any mechanics working the night shift. No gas jockeys, either. It’s all self-service
at night. There’s just the night manager there. We mostly sell gas to cabs at night. That’s about it.”

“What time did you get to work on Friday morning?”

“Seven-thirty. I work a long day.”

“Who was there when you got there?”

“The day manager and two gas jockeys.”

Carella took out the list Ralph had written for him.

“That would be Jimmy Jackson …”

“The manager, yeah.”

“Jose Santiago …”

“Yeah.”

“… and Abdul Sikhar.”

“Yeah, the Arab guy.”

“See any of
them
going in that Caddy?”

“No.”

“Hanging around it?”

“No. But I have to tell you the truth, I wasn’t like
watching
it every minute, you know? I had work to do.”

“Mr. Mondalvo, the gun we’re tracing was used in a homicide earlier tonight …”

“I didn’t know that,” Mondalvo said, and looked around quickly, as if even mere possession of this knowledge was dangerous.

“Yes,” Hawes said. “So if you know anything at all …”

“Nothing.”

“… about that gun, or who might have taken that gun from the car …”

“Nothing, I swear.”

“… then you should tell us now. Because otherwise …”

“I swear to God,” Mondalvo said, and made the sign of the cross.

“Otherwise you’d be an accessory after the fact,” Carella said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’d be as guilty as whoever pulled that trigger.”

“I don’t know who pulled any trigger.”

Both cops looked at him hard.

“I swear to God,” he said again. “I don’t know.”

Maybe they believed him.

T
he three kids were all named Richard.

Because they were slick-as-shit preppies from a New England school, they called themselves Richard the First, Second, and
Third, after Richard the Lion-Hearted, Richard the son of Edward, and Richard who perhaps had his nephews murdered in the
Tower of London. They were familiar with these monarchs through an English history course they’d had to take back in their
sophomore year. The three Richards were now seniors. All three of them had been accepted at Harvard. They were each eighteen
years old, each varsity football heroes, all smart as hell, handsome as devils, and drunk as skunks. To coin a few phrases.

Like his namesake Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Hopper—for such was his real name—was six feet tall and he weighed a hundred
and ninety pounds, and he had blond hair and blue eyes, just like the twelfth-century king. Unlike that fearless monarch,
however, Richard did not write poetry although he sang quite well. In fact, all three Richards were in the school choir. Richard
the First was the team’s star quarterback.

The real Richard the Second had ruled England from 1377 to 1399 and was the son of Edward the Black Prince. The present-day
Richard the Second was named Richard Weinstock, and his father was Irving the Tailor. He was five feet ten inches tall and
weighed two hundred and forty pounds, all of it muscle and bruised bones. He had dark hair and brown eyes, and he played fullback
on the team.

Richard the Third, whose true and honorable name was Richard O’Connor, had freckles and reddish hair and greenish eyes and
he was six feet three inches tall and weighed two-ten. His fifteenth-century namesake was the third son of the duke of York,
a mighty feudal baron. Richard’s left arm was withered and shrunken, but this did not stop him from being a fierce fighter
and a conniving son of a bitch. The king, that is. The present-day Richard was known to cheat on French exams, but he had
two strong arms and very good hands and he played wide receiver on the Pierce Academy team.

All three Richards had come down to the city for the weekend. They were not due back at school till Monday morning. All three
Richards were wearing the team’s hooded parka, navy blue with a big letter P in white on the back. Just below the stem of
the P, there was a white logo in the shape of a football, about three inches wide and five inches long. The patch indicated
which team they played on. Over the left pectoral on the front of the parka, the name of the school was stitched in white
script lettering,
Pierce Academy
, ta-ra.

The Richards Three.

At four-thirty on that gelid morning, it was doubtful that any of the three, despite the similarity, knew his
own
name. Turning back to yell “Fuck you!” and “Go eat
shit
!” at the bouncer who’d told them the club was now closed and then politely but firmly showed them the front door, they came
reeling out onto the sidewalk and stood uncertainly toggling their parkas closed, pulling the hoods up over their heads, wrapping
their blue and white mufflers, trying to light cigarettes, burping, farting, giggling, and finally throwing their arms around
each other and going into a football huddle.

“What we need to do now,” Richard the First said, “is to get ourselves laid.”

“That’s a good idea,” Richard the Third said. “Where can we find some girls?”

“Uptown?” Richard the First suggested.

“Then let’s go uptown,” Richard the Second agreed.

They clapped out of the huddle.

Uptown, Yolande was climbing into another automobile.

The three Richards hailed a taxi.

Jimmy Jackson’s kids knew there was a black Santa Claus because they’d seen one standing alongside a fake chimney and ringing
a bell outside a department store downtown on Hall Avenue after their mother had taken them to sit on the lap of a white Santa
Claus inside. The white Santa apparently hadn’t listened all that hard because James Jr. hadn’t got the bike he’d asked for,
and Millie hadn’t got this year’s hot doll, and Terrence hadn’t got this year’s hot warrior. So when the doorbell rang at
a quarter to five that Sunday morning, they ran to wake up their father because they figured this might be the black bell-ringing
Santa coming back to make amends for the white department-store Santa’s oversights.