At Hale’s funeral on Sunday morning, they listened to a minister who had never met the man telling his sole remaining relatives what a fine and upstanding human being he’d been. Cynthia Keating and her husband Robert listened dry-eyed. It was still raining when the first shovelful of earth was dumped onto Male’s simple wooden casket.
It was as if he had never existed.
From home that Sunday night, Carella called Danny Gimp.
“Danny?” he said. “It’s Steve.”
“Hey, Steve,” Danny said. “Whatta ya hear?”
This was a joke. Danny Gimp was an informer. He- and not Carella -was the one who heard things and passed them on. For money. The men didn’t exchange any niceties. Carella got right down to business.
“Old guy named Andrew Hale…”
“How old?” Danny asked.
“Sixty-eight.”
“Ancient,” Danny said.
“Got himself aced Thursday night.”
“Where?”
“Apartment off Currey Yard.”
“What time?”
“ME puts it around midnight. But you know how accurate PMI’s are.”
“How’d he catch it?”
“Hanged. But first he was doped with a drug called Rohypnol. Ever hear of it?”
“Sure.”
“You have?”
“Sure,” Danny said.
“Anyway,” Carella said, “the only two people who had any reason to want him dead have alibis a mile long. We’re wondering if maybe they knew somebody handy with a noose.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s a lawyer…”
“The dead man?”
“No. One of the suspects.”
“A criminal lawyer?”
“No. But he knows criminal lawyers.”
“That doesn’t mean he knows hit men.”
“It means there could’ve been access.”
“Okay.”
“Ask around, Danny. There’s twenty-five grand in insurance money involved here.”
“That ain’t a lot.”
“I know. But maybe it’s enough.”
“Well, let me go on the earie, see what’s what.”
“Get back to me, okay?”
“If I hear anything.”
“Even if you don’t.”
“Okay,” Danny said, and hung up.
He did not get back to Carella until the following Sunday night, the seventh of November. By that time, the case was stone cold dead.
Danny came limping into the place he himself had chosen for the meet, a pizzeria on Culver and Sixth. The collar of his threadbare coat was pulled high against the wind and the rain. A long, college-boy, striped muffler was wrapped around his neck, and he was wearing woolen gloves. He peered around the place as if he were a spy coming in with nuclear secrets. Carella signaled to him. A scowl crossed Danny’s face.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he said, sliding into the booth. “Bad enough I’m meeting you in a public place.”
Carella was willing to forgive Danny his occasional irritability. He had never forgotten that Danny had come to the hospital when he’d got shot for the first time in his professional life. It had not been an easy thing for Danny to do; police informers do not last long on the job once it is known they are police informers. Danny’s eyes were darting all over the place now, checking the perimeter. He himself had chosen the venue, but he seemed disturbed by it now, perhaps because it was unexpectedly crowded at nine A. M. on a Monday morning. Who the hell expected people eating pizza for breakfast? But he couldn’t go to the station house, and he didn’t want Carella to come to his shitty little room over on the South Side because to tell the truth, it embarrassed him. Danny had known better times.
He was thinner than Carella had ever seen him, his eyes rheumy, his nose runny. He kept taking paper napkins from the holder on the table, blowing his nose, crumpling the napkins and stuffing them into the pockets of his coat, which he had not yet removed. He did not look healthy. But more than that, he looked unkempt, odd for a man who’d always prided himself on what he considered sartorial elegance. Danny needed a shave.
Soiled shirt cuffs showed at the edges of his ragged coat sleeves. His face was dotted with blackheads, his fingernails edged with grime. Sensing Carella’s scrutiny, he said in seeming explanation, “The leg’s been bothering me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, it still bothers me. From when I got shot that time.”
“Uh-huh.”
Actually, Danny had never been shot in his life. He limped because he’d had polio as a child. But pretending he’d been wounded in a big gang shoot-out gave him a certain street cred he considered essential to the gathering of incidental information. Carella was willing to forgive him the lie.
“You want some pizza?” he asked.
“Coffee might be better,” Danny said, and started to rise.
“Sit,” Carella said, “I’ll get it. You want anything with it?”
“The pastry looks good,” Danny said. “Bring me one of them chocolate things, okay?”
Carella went up to the counter and came back some five minutes later with two chocolate eclairs and two cups of coffee. Danny was blowing on his hands, trying to warm them. A constant flow of traffic through the entrance doors and past the counter kept bringing in the cold from outside.
He picked up his coffee cup, warmed his hands on that for a while. Carella bit into his chocolate eclair. Danny bit into his. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, “that is delicious,” and took another bite. “Oh, Jesus,” he said again.
