Tricks полностью

Hawes watched her, awkward in the presence of her tears.

"I'm not sure I want to go home," she said, her voice muffled by the handkerchief. "With Frank gone…"

The sentence trailed.

She kept sobbing into the handkerchief.

"You have to go home sometime," Hawes said gently.

"I know, I know," she said, and blew her nose, and sniffed, and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "There are calls I'll have to make… Frank's mother in Atlanta, and his sister… and I guess… I suppose I'll have to make funeral arrangements… oh God, how are they going to… what will they…?"

Hawes was thinking the same thing. The body was in four separate pieces. The body didn't have hands or a head.

"That'll have to wait till autopsy, anyway," he said. "I'll let you know when…"

"I thought they'd already done that."

"Well, that was a prelim. We asked for a preliminary report, you see. But the M.E.'ll want to do a more thorough examination."

"Why?" she asked. "I've already identified him."

"Yes, but we're dealing with a murder here, Mrs. Sebastiani, and we need to know… well, for example, your husband may have been poisoned before the body was… well…"

He cut himself short.

He was talking too much.

This was a goddamn grieving widow here.

"There are lots of things the M.E. can tell us," he concluded lamely.

Marie nodded.

"So… will you be going home?" he asked.

"I suppose."

Hawes opened his wallet, pulled out two twenties and a ten. "This should get you there," he said, handing the money to her.

"That's too much," she said.

"Well, tide you over. I'll give you a ring later tonight, make sure you got home okay. And I'll be in touch as we go along. Sometimes these things take a little while, but we'll be work…"

"Yes," she said. "Let me know."

"I'll have one of the cars drop you off," he said. "Will you be going home by train or… ?"

"Train, yes."

She seemed numb.

"So… uh… whenever you're ready, I'll buzz the sergeant and he'll pull one of the cars off the street. I'd drive you myself, but Brown and I want to get over to the school."

Marie nodded.

And then she looked up and said—perhaps only to herself—"How am I going to live without him?"

Genero was annoyed.

He was the one who'd found the first piece of the body, and now all four pieces were out of his hands. So to speak. He blamed it on seniority. Both Brown and Hawes had been detectives longer than he had, and so they'd immediately taken charge of a juicy homicide. So here he was, back on the street again, cruising like a goddamn patrolman. He was more than annoyed. He was enormously pissed.

The streets at a quarter past ten were still teeming with people… well, sure, who expected this kind of weather at the end of October? Guys in shirt sleeves, girls in summer dresses, everybody strolling up the avenue like it was summertime in Paris, not that he'd ever been there. Lady there on the corner with a French poodle, letting the dog poop right on the sidewalk, even though it was against the law. He wondered if he should arrest her. He considered it beneath his dignity, a Detective/Third having to arrest a lady whose dog was illegally pooping. He let the dog poop, drove on by.

Made a cursory tour of the sector.

Who else was out here?

Kling?

Came onto Culver, began heading east.

Past the first liquor store got robbed tonight, then the second one…

What had they been talking about back there in the squad-room? Meyer and Carella. Midgets? Was it possible? Midgets holding up liquor stores? Those little Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz holding up liquor stores, for Christ's sake? He didn't know what kind of a world this was getting to be. He thanked God every night before he went to sleep that he had been chosen to enforce law and order in the kind of world this was getting to be. Even if sometimes he had a good ripe murder yanked out of his hands. The only way to get ahead in the Department was to crack a good homicide every now and then. Not that it had done Carella much good, all the homicides he'd cracked. Been a detective for how many years now? Still only Second Grade. Well, sometimes people got passed over. The meek shall inherit the earth, he thought. Still, he wished he'd had an honest crack at that homicide tonight. He was the one found the first piece, wasn't he?

Onto Mason Avenue, the hookers out in force, well, Halloween, lots of guys coming uptown to look for the Great Pumpkin. Went home with the Great Herpes and maybe the Great AIDS. He wouldn't screw a Mason Avenue hooker if you gave him a million dollars. Well, maybe he would. For a million, maybe. That one on the corner looked very clean, in fact. But you could never tell. Anyway, she was Puerto Rican, and his mother had warned him against fooling around with any girls who weren't Italian. He wondered if Italian girls ever got herpes. He was positive they never got AIDS.

Swinging north again, up one of the side streets, then onto the Stem, all gaudy and bright, he really loved this part of the…

"Boy One, Boy One…"