“No, we think it’s gonna lead us to the hitter from Houston.”
“World’s just full of hitters these days, ain’t it?” Ollie said philosophically. “You think your Houston hitter and the two pizzeria shooters are connected?”
“No.”
“Then what are you…?”
“Don’t you work in the Eight-Three?” the waitress asked, and put down Ollie’s bagel and the two coffees.
“I used to work in the Eight-Three,” Ollie said. “I got transferred.”
“You want more coffee?”
“Ah, yes, m’dear,” Ollie said, doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation. “If it’s not too much trouble, ah, yes.”
“You like it here better than the Eight-Three?” the waitress asked, pouring.
“I like it better wherever you are, m’little chickadee.”
“Sweet talker,” she said, and smiled and walked off, shaking her considerable booty.
“People ask me that all the time,” Ollie said. “Don’t you work in the Eight-Three? As if I don’t know where the fuck I work. As if I’m making a fuckin mistake about where I work. The world’s full of people playin Gotcha! They got nothin to do with their time but look for mistakes. Ain’t your middle name Lloyd? Hell, no, it’s Wendell. Oliver Wendell Weeks, I don’t know my own fuckin middle name? If I told you once it was Lloyd or Frank or Ralph, I was lying, it was all part of my fuckin cover.”
A faint effluvial odor seemed to rise from Ollie whenever he became agitated, as he was now. Ignoring his own bodily emanations, he picked up the bagel and bit into it, his gnashing teeth unleashing a gush of cream cheese that spilled onto the right lapel of his jacket.
“Has this guy got a name?” he asked. “The fag was in the card game with your hitter?”
“Harpo,” Carella said.
“Works at the First Bap?” Ollie said.
Both detectives looked at him.
“Only Harpo I know up here,” Ollie said. “I’m surprised he was in a card game, though. If it’s the same guy.”
“Harpo what?” Meyer asked.
“His square handle is Walter Hopwell, don’t ask me how it got to be Harpo. I never knew he was queer till you guys mentioned it just now. Goes to show, don’t it? Ain’t you hungry?” he asked, and signaled to the waitress again. “Bring my friends here some more coffee,” he said, “they’re famous sleuths from a neighboring precinct. And I’ll have one of them croissants there.” He pronounced the word as if he were fluent in French, but it was only his stomach talking. “Thing I’m askin myself,” he said, “is how come a white stoolie is pals with a Negro fag?”
Ollie liked using the word “Negro” every now and then because he believed it showed how tolerant he was, even though he realized it pissed off persons of color who preferred being called either blacks or AfricanAmericans. But it had taken him long enough to learn how to say “Negro,” so if they wanted to keep changing it on him all the time, they could go fuck themselves.
“Would he be at the church now?” Carella asked.
“Should be. They got a regular office setup on the top floor.”
“Let’s go,” Meyer said.
“You wanna start a race riot?” Ollie asked, and grinned as if he relished the prospect. “The First Bap’s listed as a sensitive location. I was you, I’d look up Mr Hopwell in the phone book, go see him when he gets home from work.”
“Our man’s leaving town tomorrow,” Carella said.
“In that case, darlings, let me finish my breakfast,” Ollie said. “Then we can all go to church.”
Brown’s mother used to call her “The Barber’s Wife.” This was another name for the neighborhood gossip. The theory was that a guy went to get a haircut or a shave, he was captive in the barber’s chair for an hour or so, he told the barber everything on his mind. The barber went home that night, and over supper told his wife everything he’d heard from all his customers all day long. The Barber’s Wife knew more about what was happening in any neighborhood than any cop on the beat. What Brown and Kling wanted to do now was find The Barber’s Wife in Andrew Bale’s building.
There were six stories in the building, three tenants to each floor.
When they got there that morning at a little past ten, most of the tenants were off to work. They knocked on six doors before they got an answer, and then another two before they found the woman they were looking for. Her apartment was on the same floor as Andrew Hale’s. She lived at the far end of the hall, in apartment 3C. When she asked them to come in, please, they hesitated on the door sill because she was cooking something that smelled unspeakably vile.
The stench was coming from a big aluminum pot on the kitchen stove.
When she lifted the lid to stir whatever was inside the pot, noxious clouds filled the air, and Kling caught sight of a bubbling liquid that appeared viscous and black. He wondered whether there was eye of newt in the pot.
