"We went there to make positive identification."
For a moment he didn't quite understand. Or didn't choose to understand.
"What do you mean?" he said.
"We had to identify the body."
"Why? Angela, what happened?"
"He was killed."
"Killed? What. . .?"
"In the bakery shop."
"No."
"Steve …"
"Jesus, what. . .?"
"Two men came in. Papa was alone. They cleaned out the cash register …"
"Angela, don't tell me this, please."
"I'm sorry," she said.
And suddenly he was crying.
"Who's . . . who's … is it the … the … it's the Four-Five, isn't it? Up there? Who's working the … do you know who's working the . . . the . . . Angela," he said, "honey? Did they . . . did they hurt him? I mean, did they . . . they didn't hurt him, did they? Oh God, Angela," he said, "oh God oh God oh God …"
He pulled the phone from his mouth and clutched it to his chest, tears streaming down his face, great racking sobs choking him. "Steve?" his sister said. "Are you all right?" Her voice muffled against his shirt where the receiver was pressed fiercely to his chest. "Steve? Are you all right? Steve?" Over and over again. Until at last he moved the phone to his mouth again, and still crying, said, "Honey?"
"Yes, Steve."
"Tell Mama I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Drive carefully."
"Did you call Teddy?"
"She's on the way."
"Is Tommy there with you?"
"No, we're alone here. Mama and me."
"What do you . . .? Where's Tommy?"
"I don't know," she said. "Please hurry."
And hung up.
The two detectives from the 45th Squad in Riverhead felt uncomfortable talking to the detective whose father had been killed. Neither of the men knew Carella; the Eight-Seven was a long way from home. Moreover, both detectives were black, and from all accounts the two men who'd robbed Tony Carella's bakery shop and then killed the old man were black themselves.
Neither of the detectives knew how Carella felt about blacks in general. But the murderers were blacks in particular, and the way the black/white thing was shaping up in this city, the two Riverhead cops felt they might be treading dangerous ground here. Carella was a professional, though, and they knew they could safely cut through a lot of the bullshit. He knew what they'd be doing to apprehend the men who'd killed his father. They didn't have to spell out routine step by step, the way you had to do with civilians.
The bigger of the two cops was named Charlie Bent, a Detective/Second. He was wearing a sports jacket over blue jeans and an open-collared shirt. Carella could see the bulge of his shoulder holster on the right-hand side of his body. Left-handed, he figured. Bent spoke very quietly, either because he was naturally soft-spoken or else because he was in a funeral home.
The other cop was a Detective/Third, just got his promotion last month, he mentioned to Carella in passing. He was big, too, but not as wide across the shoulders and chest as Bent was. His name was Randy Wade, the Randy being short for Randall, not Randolph. His face was badly pockmarked, and there was an old knife scar over his left eye. He looked as mean as Saturday night, but this was ten o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they were inside the Loretti Brothers Funeral Home on Vandermeer Hill, and so he was speaking softly, too.
Everyone was speaking softly, tiptoeing around Carella, who for all they knew might be as bigoted as most white men in this city, but whose father had certainly been killed by two black men like themselves, bigot or not. The three detectives were standing in the large entrance foyer that separated the east and west wings. Carella's father was in a coffin in Chapel A in the east wing.
There was a hush in the funeral home.
Carella could remember when he was a kid and his father's sister got run over by an automobile. His Aunt Katie. Killed instantly. Carella had loved her to death. They'd laid her out in this very same funeral home, in one of the chapels over in the west wing.
Back when Aunt Katie died, the family still had older people in it who'd come from the Other Side, as they'd called Europe in general. Some of them could barely speak English. Carella's mother, and sometimes his father - but not too often because his own English showed traces of having been raised in an immigrant home - laughed at the fractured English some of their older relatives spoke. Nobody was laughing when Aunt Katie was here in this place. Aunt Katie was twenty-seven years old when the car knocked her down and killed her.
Carella could still remember the women keening.
The women keening were more frightening than the fact that his dear Aunt Katie lay young and dead in a coffin in the west wing.
Today, there was no keening. The old ways had become American, and Americans did not keen. Today, there was only the hush of death in this silent place where two black cops tiptoed around a white cop because his father had been killed by two black men like themselves.
"The witness seems reliable," Bent said softly. "We've been showing him …"
