Nocturne (9 page)

Jimmy Jackson was only mildly annoyed to be awakened by his kids so early on a Sunday morning when his mother-in-law was coming
to visit, not to mention his sister Naydelle and her two screaming brats. He became singularly
irritated
, however, when he opened the door and found it wasn’t no joke but was
really
two honkie dicks, just like they’d said through the wood, standing there with gold and blue badges in they hands. On a Sunday
no less, did the motherfuckers have no consideration whatever?

The kids were asking if he would make pancakes, since everybody was up, anyway.

Jackson told them to go ask they mother.

“So whut is it?” he said to the cops.

“Mr. Jackson,” Carella said, “we realize it’s early in the morning …”

“Yeah, yeah, whut is it?”

“But we’re investigating a homicide …”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And we’re trying to track the murder weapon.”

Jackson looked at them.

He was a tall, rangy, very dark man, wearing a robe over pajamas, his eyes still bleary from sleep, his mouth pulled into
a thin angry line. Man had a right to the sancty of his own home on Sunday morning, he was thinking, thout these motherfuckers
comin roun. Murder weapon my ass, he was thinking.

“Is this about that damn gun again?” he asked.

From somewhere in the apartment, a woman asked, “Who is it, James?”

“It’s the
po
-lice!” one of the children shouted gleefully. “Can Daddy make pancakes now?”

“The police?” she said. “James?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said.

“It’s about the gun again, yes,” Hawes said.

“I tole Pratt I dinn see no damn gun in his car.
Nobody
seen that damn gun. You want my opinion, that gun is a fiction of Pratt’s imagination.”

No one had yet invited them into the apartment. Mrs. Jackson came down the hall now in a robe and slippers, a perplexed frown
on her face. She was a tall woman with the bearing of a Masai warrior, the pale yellow eyes of a panther. She didn’t like
cops here scaring her kids, and she was ready to tell them so.

“What’s this,” she said, “five o’clock in the mornin?”

“Ma’am,” Carella said, “we’re sorry to be bothering you, but we’re working a homicide and …”

“What’s anybody in this household got to do with a homicide?”

“We’re simply trying to find out when the murder weapon disappeared from the owner’s car. That’s all.”

“What car?” she asked.

“Caddy was in for service,” her husband explained.

“You work on that Caddy?”

“No. Gus did.”

“Then why they botherin you?” she said, and turned to the cops again. “Why you botherin my man?”

“Because an old lady was killed,” Carella said simply.

Mrs. Jackson looked into their faces.

“Come in,” she said, “I’ll make some coffee.”

They went into the apartment. Jackson closed the door behind them, double-bolted it, and put on the safety chain. The apartment
was cold; in this city, in this building, they couldn’t expect heat to start coming up till six-thirty, seven o’clock. The
radiators would begin clanging then, loud enough to wake the dead. Meanwhile, all was silent, all was chilly. The children
wanted to hang around. This was better than TV. Mrs. Jackson hushed them off to bed again. Husband and wife sat at the small
kitchen table with the two detectives, drinking coffee like family. This was five
a.m
., it was still pitch-black outside. They could hear police sirens, ambulance sirens wailing to the night. All four of them
could tell the difference; sirens were the nocturnes of this city.

“That car was a headache minute it come in,” Jackson said. “I’da been the night man, I’da tole Pratt go get a tow truck, haul
that wreck outta here, more trouble’n it’s worth. Had to turn away two, three other cars the next day, cause Gus had that
damn Caddy up on the lift. When I finely figured we were done with it, I come in yesterday mornin, the car’s a mess. Man’s
coming in to pick it up at ten, it’s a mess like I never seen before in my life.”

“What do you mean? Was there still trouble with the engine?” Carella asked.

“No, no. This was
inside
the car.”

Both detectives looked at him, puzzled. So did his wife.

“Somebody musta left the window open when they moved it outside,” Jackson said.

They were still looking at him, all three of them, trying to figure out what kind of mess he was talking about.

“You see
The Birds
?” he asked. “That movie Alfred Hitchcock wrote?”

Carella didn’t think Hitchcock had written it.

“Birds tryin’a kill people all over the place?”

“Whut about it?” Mrs. Jackson asked impatiently.

“Musta been birds got in the car,” Jackson said. “Maybe cause it was so cold.”

“What makes you figure that?” Hawes asked reasonably.

“Bird shit and feathers all over the place,” Jackson said. “Hadda put Abdul to cleanin it up fore the man came to claim his
car. Never seen such a mess in my life. Birds’re smart, you know. I read someplace when they was shootin that movie, the crows
used to pick the locks on they cages, that’s how smart they are. Musta got in the car.”

“How? Did you notice a window down?”

“Rear window on the right was open about six inches, yeah.”

“You think somebody left that window open overnight?”

“Had to’ve been.”

“And a bird got in, huh?”

“At least a
few
birds. There was shit and feathers all over the place.”

“Where was all this?” Carella asked.

“The backseat,” Jackson said.

“And you asked Abdul to clean it up, huh?”

“Directly when he come in Saturday mornin. I seen the mess, put him to work right away.”

“Was he alone in the car?”

“Alone, yeah.”

“You didn’t see him going into that glove compartment, did you?”

“Nossir.”

“Fiddling around anywhere in the
front
seat?”

“No, he was busy cleanin up the mess in back.”

“Did you watch him all the time he was in the car?”

“No, I din’t. There was plenty other work to do.”

“How long was he in the car?”

“Hour or so. Vacuuming, wiping. It was some mess, you better believe it. Man came to pick it up at ten, it was spotless. Never’ve
known some birds was nestin in it overnight.”

“But the birds were already gone when you noticed that open window, huh?”

“Oh yeah, long gone. Just left all they feathers and shit.”

“I wish you’d watch your mouth,” Mrs. Jackson said, frowning.

“You figure they got out the same way they got in?” Hawes asked.

“Musta, don’t you think?”

Hawes was wondering how they’d managed
that
little trick.

So was Carella.

“Well, thank you,” he said, “we appreciate your time. If you can remember anything else, here’s my …”

“Like what?” Jackson asked.

“Like anyone near that glove compartment.”

“I already tole you I didn’t see anyone near the glove compartment.”

“Well, here’s my card, anyway,” Carella said. “If you think of anything at all that might help us …”

“Just don’t come around five o’clock again,” Jackson said.

Mrs. Jackson nodded.

“What we’d like to do,” Carella said on the phone, “is send someone around for the car and have our people go over it.”

“What?” Pratt said.

This was a quarter past five in the morning. Carella was calling from a cell phone in the police sedan. Hawes was driving.
They were on their way to Calm’s Point, where Abdul Sikhar lived.

“When do I get some
sleep
here?” Pratt asked.

“I didn’t mean someone coming by right this
minute
. If we can …”

“I’m talking about you waking me
up
right this minute.”

“I’m sorry about that, but we want to check out the car, find out …”

“So I understand. Why?”

“Find out what happened inside it.”

“What happened is somebody stole my gun.”

“That’s what we’re working on, Mr. Pratt. Which is why we’d like our people to go over the interior.”

“What people?”

“Our techs.”

“Looking for what?”

Carella almost said feathers and shit.

“Whatever they can find,” he said.

“You’re lucky it’s Sunday,” Pratt said.

“Sir?”

“I’m not working today.”

The three Richards were beginning to sober up and beginning to get a little surly. They had come all the way up here to Diamondback—which
was not such a good idea to begin with—and now they couldn’t find any girls on the streets, perhaps because anybody sensible
was already asleep at five-twenty in the morning. Richard the First wasn’t afraid of black people. He knew that Diamondback
was a notoriously dangerous black ghetto, but he’d been up here before, in search of cocaine—not for nothing was he nicknamed
Lion-Hearted—and he felt he knew how to deal with African Americans.

It was Richard the First’s contention that a black man, or a black woman, for that matter, could tell in a wink whether a
person was a racist or not. Of course, the only black men and women he knew were drug dealers and prostitutes, but this didn’t
lessen his conviction. A black person could look in a white man’s eyes and either find those dead blue eyes he’d been conditioned
to expect, or else he might discover that the white person was truly color-blind. Richard the First liked to believe he was
color-blind, which is why he was up here in Diamondback at this hour, looking for black pussy.

“Trouble is,” he told the other two Richards, “we’re here too late. Everybody’s asleep already.”

“Trouble is we’re here too
early
,” Richard the Second said. “Nobody’s awake yet.”

“Man, it’s fuckin cold out here,” Richard the Third said. Up the street, three black men warmed their hands at a fire blazing
in a sawed-off oil drum, oblivious to the three preppies in their hooded blue parkas. The lights of an all-night diner across
the street cast warm yellow rectangles on the sidewalk. The sun was still an hour and forty-five minutes away.

The three boys decided to urinate in the gutter.

This was perhaps a mistake.

They were standing there with their dicks in their hands—what the hell, this was five-thirty in the morning, the streets were
deserted except for the three old farts standing around the oil drum—looking like three monks in their hooded parkas, certainly
intending no affront, merely answering the call of nature, so to speak, on a dark and stormless night. It was not perceived
in quite this manner by the black man who came out of the night like a solitary guardian of public decency, the sole member
of the Pissing in Public Patrol, dressed in black as black as the night, black jeans, black boots, a black leather jacket,
a black O. J. Simpson watch cap pulled down over his ears.

He came striding toward them at exactly the same moment Yolande stepped into a taxi a mile and a half downtown.

“Thing I hate about the boneyard shift,” Hawes said, “is you just start getting used to it and you’re back on the day shift
again.”

Carella was dialing his home number.

The boneyard shift was the graveyard shift, which was the so-called
morning
shift that kept you up all
night
.

Fanny picked up on the third ring.

“How is he?” Carella asked.

“Better. The fever’s gone, he’s sleeping like an angel.” She paused for the briefest tick of time. “Which is what
I’d
like to be doing,” she said.

“Sorry,” Carella said. “I won’t call again. See you in a few hours.”

That’s what
he
thought.

“You a working girl?” the cabbie asked.

“You a cop?” Yolande said.

“Sure, a cop,” he said.

“Then mind your own business,” she said.

“I’m just wondering if you know where you’re going.”

“I know where I’m going.”

“White girl going up to Diamondback …”

“I said I …”

“… this hour of the night.”

“I know where I’m going. And it’s morning.”

“By me, it ain’t morning till the sun comes up.”

Yolande shrugged. It had been a pretty good night for her, and she was exhausted.

“Why you going to Diamondback?” the cabbie asked. His name on the plastic-enclosed permit on the dashboard to the right of
the meter read
max r. Liebowitz
. Jewish, Yolande thought. Last of a dying breed of big-city cabdrivers. Nowadays, most of your cabbies were from India or
the Middle East. Some of them couldn’t speak English. None of them knew where Duckworth Avenue was. Yolande knew where it
was. She had blown a Colombian drug dealer on Duckworth Avenue in Calm’s Point. He had given her a five-hundred-dollar tip.
She would never forget Duckworth Avenue in her life. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew where Duckworth Avenue was. She wondered
if Max Liebowitz knew she herself was Jewish.

“I didn’t hear your answer, miss,” he said.

“I live up there,” she said.

“You live in
Diamondback
?” he said, and shot a glance at her in the rearview mirror.