"Yeah. Turned out somebody'd put styrene in my fuckin crankcase."
Carella wondered what styrene in the crankcase had to do with buying an American car.
"Broke down the oil and mined the engine," Pratt said. "They had to order me a new one, put it in on Friday."
"And you picked the car up yesterday?"
"Yes."
"What time?"
"Ten o'clock in the morning."
"So the car was there all night Thursday and all day Friday."
"Yeah. And two hours yesterday, too. They open eight."
"With the gun in the glove compartment."
"Well, it disappeared during that time."
"When did you realize that?"
"When I got back here. There's a garage in the I parked the car, unlocked the glove conpartment to take out the gun, and saw it was gone."
"Always take it out of the glove compartment when you get home?"
"Always."
"How come you left it at the garage?"
"I wasn't thinking. I was pissed off about the car quitting on me.
It's force of habit. I get home, I unlock the box, reach in for the gun. The garage wasn't home. I just wasn't thinking."
"Did you report the gun stolen?"
"No."
"Why not?" Hawes asked.
"I figured somebody steals a piece, I'll never see it again, anyway. So why bother? It not like a TV set.
A piece isn't gonna turn up in a hockshop. It's gonna end up on the street."
"Ever occur to you that the gun might be used later in the commission of a crime?"
"It occurred to me."
"But you still didn't report its theft?"
"I didn't report it, no."
"How come?"
This from Hawes. Casually. Just a matter of curiosity. How come your gun is stolen and you know somebody might use it to do something bad, but you don't go to the cops? How come?
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.
"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 unlock 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 unlocked."
"Is what I'm saying in retrospect. Because the gun was missing. Which means somebody had already got in there."
"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." 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 liftingthe 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?
