Jigsaw (87th Precinct), page 10
“Well,” she said, and shrugged, “if you should change your mind…”
“I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I’m here to talk about a photograph.”
“Yeah, well come on in,” she said, gesturing toward the bedroom. “No sense standing here with the dirty dishes, huh?”
They walked into the other room. Dorothea sat on the bed and crossed her legs. Brown stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her. She had allowed the silk wrapper to fall open again. The bite mark near her nipple looked angry and swollen, the outline of the teeth stitched across her flabby breast in a small elongated oval.
“A photograph, huh?” Dorothea said.
“That’s right.”
“Man, you guys sure know how to bring up ancient history,” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to make trouble for me.” “I’m not.”
“I musta posed for those pictures twenty years ago. You mean to tell me one of them’s still around?” She shook her head in amazement. “I was some little piece in those days. I had guys coming to see me all the way from San Francisco. They’d get in town, pick up the phone, ‘Hello there, Dorothea, this is old Bruce, you ready to go, honey?’ I was always ready to go in those days. I knew how to show a man a good time.” She looked up at Brown. “I still do, I mean I’m not exactly what you’d call an old hag, you know. Not that I’m in the game, any more. I mean, I’m just saying.”
“When was your last arrest for prostitution?” Brown asked.
“I told you, musta been six or seven—”
“Come on, I can check it.”
“All right, last month. But I’ve been clean since. This is no kind of life for a person like me. So, you know, when you come around bringing up those pictures, Jesus, I can get in real trouble for something like that, can’t I?” She smiled suddenly. “Why don’t you just come on over here, sweetie, and we’ll forget all about those pictures, okay?”
“The picture I’m talking about isn’t pornography,” Brown said.
“No? What then?”
“A picture that may have come into your possession six years ago.”
“Jesus, who can remember six years ago?”
“You just now had no trouble remembering twenty years ago.”
“Yeah, but that was…You know, a girl remembers something like that. That’s the only time I ever done anything like that, you know, pose for pictures with some guy. I only let them take one roll, that was all, just one, and I got fifty bucks for it, which was more than I’d have got if I was just turning a trick without them taking pictures, you understand?”
“Sure,” Brown said. “What do you know about the National Savings and Loan Association holdup six years ago?”
“Oh, man, now we’re jumping around real fast,” Dorothea said. “First it’s hooking, then it’s dirty pictures, now it’s armed robbery. The stakes keep getting higher all the time.”
“What do you know about that holdup?”
“I think I remember reading about it.”
“What do you remember reading?”
“Look…I got your word you ain’t going to make trouble?”
“You’ve got it.”
“My nephew was one of the guys who pulled that job.”
“What’s his name?”
“Peter Ryan. He’s dead now. They all got killed on that job, some bank robbers,” she said, and grimaced.
“And the picture?”
“What picture? I don’t know what—”
“A piece of a snapshot. From what you’ve just told me, your nephew might have given it to you. Before the job. Would you remember anything like that?”
“Jesus, that was six years ago.”
“Try to remember.”
“When was the job? Do you remember what month it was?”
“August.”
“August. Six years ago. Let me see…” She grimaced again. “I wasn’t even living here at the time. God knows where the hell I was.”
“Think, Dorothea.”
“I think better when I’m drinking,” she said.
“Have you got anything in the house?”
“Yeah, but that’s like my insurance, you know? The Johns are few and far between these days.”
Brown reached into his wallet. “Here’s ten dollars,” he said. “Drink up your insurance and get yourself another bottle later.”
“And if I remember about the picture?”
“What about it?”
“How much is it worth to you?”
“Another twenty.”
“Make it fifty. You’re taking up a lot of my time, you know.”
“I don’t see a line of guys outside the door,” Brown said.
“Well, they come and go, come and go,” Dorothea said. “I’d hate to have to send a trick away just because I’m busy in here with a cop.” She paused, and then smiled. “Fifty?”
“Thirty-five.”
“It’s a deal.” She went into the kitchen, took a bottle of cheap rye from the shelf, poured herself a half tumblerful, looked up, and said, “You want some of this piss? Makes you go blind, I understand.”
“No, thanks,” Brown said.
“Here’s looking up your whole family,” Dorothea said, and drained the glass. “Whooo,” she said, “that’s poison, absolute poison.” She poured the glass full to the brim and carried it back into the bedroom with her. “I don’t remember any snapshot,” she said, shaking her head.
“Where were you living at the time?”
“Up on the North Side, I think. I think I had a room in a hotel up there.” She sipped at the rye thoughtfully. “Six years ago. That’s like a whole century, you know?”
“Think.”
“I’m thinking, just shut up. My nephew was in and out all the time; who remembers whether he ever gave me a snapshot?”
“This would be just a portion of a snapshot. Not the whole picture.”
“Better yet,” Dorothea said. “Even if he did give it to me, you know how many times I moved in the past six years? Don’t ask. Between The Law and the rent collector, I’m a very busy lady.”
“Where do you keep your valuables?”
“What valuables?”
“Where do you keep important papers?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Things like your birth certificate, your Social Security card…”
“Oh, yeah, I got them around someplace,” Dorothea said, and sipped at the drink again.
“Where?”
“I don’t keep much junk, you know. I don’t like memories. Too many fucking memories,” she said, and this time she took a healthy swallow of the drink, draining the glass. She got up from the bed, walked into the kitchen, and poured the glass full again. “You ever hear of a fighter named Tiger Willis?” she asked, coming back into the bedroom.
“No.”
“This was before your time, I guess. Twenty-five years ago, maybe even longer. He was a middleweight.”
“What about him?”
“I used to live with him. He had a shlong on him, man, it musta been a yard long.” Dorothea shook her head. “He got killed in the ring. This kid from Buenos Aires killed him. Hit him so hard, he…I was there that night, at ringside, you know. Freddie—that was his real name, Freddie Willis, the ‘Tiger’ shit was just for the ring—Freddie always got me a ringside seat for his fights, I was something in those days, I was real merchandise. This kid from Buenos Aires, he brought one up from the floor, almost knocked Freddie’s head off. And Freddie went down, he went down like a stone, he hit that canvas so hard…” She swallowed more rye and looked away from Brown. “Well, those are the old times,” she said.
“About the photograph,” Brown said gently.
“Yeah, yeah, the fucking photograph. Let me see what’s in the closet here.”
She went across the room, and opened the door to the closet. A black cloth coat hung on a wire hanger. Beside it was a blue satin dress. Nothing else was hanging on the wooden bar. On the floor of the closet, there were two pairs of high-heeled pumps. A cardboard box and a candy tin were on the shelf over the bar. Dorothea reached up, and came back to the bed with the candy tin in her hands. She pried off the lid.
“Not much here,” she said. “I don’t like to keep things.”
There was a birth certificate, a marriage certificate (Dorothea Pierce to Richard McNally), a snip of hair in a cheap gold-plated locket, a Playbill for an opening night long long ago, a photograph of a very young girl sitting on a swing behind a clapboard house, a faded valentine card, and a copy of Ring magazine with a picture of Tiger Willis on the cover.
“That’s all of it,” Dorothea said.
“Want to dump it all on the bed here?” Brown suggested. “What we’re looking for may be very small.” He picked up the Playbill and shook out its pages. Nothing. He picked up the copy of Ring magazine.
“Be careful with that,” Dorothea warned.
He gave it a single shake. The pages fluttered apart, and a glossy black-and-white photograph scrap fell onto the soiled sheets:
“Is that what you’re looking for?” Dorothea asked.
“That’s what I’m looking for,” Brown said.
“It resembles Donald Duck,” she said. “Or Woody Woodpecker.”
“Or the extinct dodo bird,” Brown said.
“I don’t remember Petey giving it to me,” Dorothea said, and shook her head. “I suppose he must have, but I really don’t remember.” Her look hardened. She held out her hand to Brown, and said, “That’s thirty-five bucks, mister.”
The address for the Robert Coombs who lived in Riverhead was 6451 Avondale, two miles from Carella’s house. Carella got there at about 4:30, pulling into the tree-lined street just behind a Good Humor ice-cream truck, the first he had seen this season. The houses on the block were mostly two-family homes. The community gave an appearance of neat lower-middle-class respectability. This was Sunday afternoon, and the Riverhead burghers were out on their front stoops reading their newspapers or listening to transistor radios. Carella counted twelve kids on bicycles as he drove up the street searching for 6451.
The house was on the corner of Avondale and Birch, a big brick-and-clapboard building on a comfortable plot. As Carella stepped out of the car, he smelled the aroma of cooking steak. He had eaten only a hamburger for lunch, and he was hungry as hell. A small black sign on the front lawn was lettered in white with the name R. COOMBS. Carella went up the walk to the front door, rang the bell, and waited. There was no answer. He rang again. He waited several moments more, and then walked around toward the back of the house. A man in a white apron was standing near an outdoor grille, a long fork in his right hand. Another man and two women were sitting at a redwood picnic table opposite the grille. The foursome was in conversation as Carella came around the side of the house, but they stopped talking the moment they saw him.
“I’m looking for Robert Coombs,” Carella said.
“Yes, I’m Coombs,” the man at the grille said.
“Sorry to intrude like this, Mr. Coombs,” Carella said, walking over to him. “I’m Detective Carella of the 87th Squad. I wonder if I might talk to you privately.”
“What is it, Bobby?” one of the women said, and rose immediately from where she was sitting at the picnic table. She was a tall woman wearing a blond fall, a snug blue cashmere sweater, tight navy-blue slacks. Her eyes were a shade lighter than the sweater, and she squinted them in suspicion, if not open hostility, as she approached the grille. “I’m Mrs. Coombs,” she said, as if she were announcing exactly who ran this household. “What is it you want?”
“He’s a detective, hon,” Coombs said.
“A detective? What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Coombs,” Carella said. “I simply wanted to ask your husband some questions.”
“What about? Are you in some kind of trouble, Bobby?”
“No, no, hon, I…”
“He’s not in any trouble, Mrs. Coombs. This has to do with—”
“Then it can wait,” Mrs. Coombs said. “The steaks are almost done. You just come back later, Detective…”
“Coppola,” Coombs said.
“Carella,” Carella said.
“We’re about to eat,” Mrs. Coombs said. “You come back later, do you hear?”
“Can you come back in an hour?” Coombs asked gently.
“Make it an hour and a half,” Mrs. Coombs snapped.
“Honey, an hour’s more time than—”
“I don’t want to rush through my Sunday dinner,” Mrs. Coombs said flatly. “An hour and a half, Detective Coppola.”
“Carella,” he said, “bon appétit,” and walked out of the yard, the aroma of the cooking steak nearly destroying him forever. He found an open luncheonette on Birch, ordered a cup of coffee and a cheese Danish, and then went out for a stroll around the neighborhood. Four little girls on the sidewalk ahead were skipping rope, chanting their ritualistic ditty, “Double-ee-Dutch, double-ee-Dutch,” and from the open lot on the corner, there came the crack of a bat against a baseball, and a shout went up from the middle-aged men in shirtsleeves who were watching their sons play. The sky, magnificently blue all day long, virtually cloudless, was succumbing to the pale violet of dusk. The balmy afternoon breeze was turning a bit cooler. All up and down the street, he could hear mothers calling their children in to dinner. It was the time of day when a man wanted to be home with his family. Carella looked at his watch and sighed.
Isabel Coombs was a ventriloquist, of that Carella was certain.
The Coombs’s guests had gone indoors the moment he’d returned, and he could see them now through the rear sliding glass doors of the house, standing near the record player and browsing through the album collection. He sat with Mr. and Mrs. Coombs at the redwood table and even though Robert Coombs occasionally tried to answer a question, he was really only the dummy in the act, and Isabel Coombs was doing most of the talking.
“Mr. Coombs,” Carella said, “I’ll make this as brief as I can. We found your name on a list allegedly—”
“His name?” Isabel said. “You found Bobby’s name on some list?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carella said, “a list—”
“His name is not on any list,” Isabel said.
“Well, maybe it is, hon,” Robert said.
“It is not,” Isabel said. “Detective Caretta—”
“Carella.”
“Yes, perhaps before we talk any further, we’d better get a lawyer.”
“Well, that’s entirely up to you, of course,” Carella said, “but there’s no intention here of charging your husband with any crime. We’re merely seeking information about—”
“Then why is his name on a list?” Isabel demanded.
Carella’s wife was a deaf mute. He looked at Isabel Coombs now, wearing her blond fall and her brassy voice, and silently contrasted her with Teddy—black hair and brown eyes, voiceless, gentle, beautiful.
Mrs. Coombs’s blue eyes flashed. “Well?” she said.
“Mrs. Coombs,” Carella said patiently, “maybe it’d be better if you just let me ask the questions before you decide what they’re going to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean that this can take ten minutes or ten hours. We can do it right here in your backyard, or I can request that your husband accompany me…”
“You’re going to arrest him?”
“No, ma’am, I’m only going to ask him some questions.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Carella was silent for a moment. Then he said only, “Yes, ma’am,” and fell silent again. He had forgotten for a moment just what it was he wanted to ask Coombs. He kept thinking of Teddy and wishing he were home in bed with her. “Well,” he said, “Mr. Coombs, would you have any knowledge of a robbery that took place…?”
“I thought you said there wasn’t any crime being investigated,” Isabel said.
“I didn’t say that. I said we had no intention of charging your husband with any crime.”
“You just now mentioned a robbery.”
“Yes, six years ago.” He turned to Robert and said, “Would you know anything about such a robbery, Mr. Coombs?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Who was robbed?”
“The National Savings and Loan Association.”
“What’s that?”
“A bank.”
“Where?”
“In this city,” Carella said. “Downtown.”
“Six years ago,” Isabel said flatly, “we were living in Detroit.”
“I see,” Carella said. “And when did you move here?”
“Just before Christmas,” Robert said.
“That’d be…about six months ago.”
“Almost six months ago exactly,” Robert said.
“Mr. Coombs, did anyone ever give you, or did you ever come into possession in any way whatsoever…”
“This has to do with the robbery, doesn’t it?” Isabel said shrewdly.
“…a piece of a photograph?” Carella continued, ignoring her.
“What do you mean?” Robert asked.
“A section of a picture.”
“A picture of what?” Isabel asked.
“We don’t know. That is, we’re not sure.”
“Then how would my husband know whether or not he has it?”
“If he has it, I guess he would know he has it,” Carella said. “Do you have it?”
“No,” Robert said.
“Do any of these names mean anything to you? Carmine Bonamico, Louis D’Amore…”
“No.”
“Jerry Stein…”
“No.”
“Pete Ryan?”
“No.”
“Never heard of any of them?”
“No. Who are they?”
“How about these names? Albert Weinberg, Donald Renninger, Alice Bonamico…”
“No, none of them.”
“Dorothea McNally? Geraldine Ferguson?”
Robert shook his head.
“Eugene Ehrbach?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Well, then,” Carella said, “I guess that’s it. Thank you very much for your time.” He rose, nodded briefly at Isabel Coombs, and started out of the yard.
