Calypso (17 page)

    "That's right, Thursdays."

    "That'd mean she started visiting you in July, is that right?"

    "I spose," Mrs. Hawkins said.

    "Had she come to see you at all in May and June?"

    "No, that's when she just moved out, you know."

    "But in July she started coming up here every Thursday."

    "Yes," Mrs. Hawkins said. Her eyes still would not meet his. She rose suddenly, went to the cabinet, took down the bottle of bourbon and poured herself another shot. She drained the glass at once, and poured it full again. Silently, the detectives watched her.

    "Mrs. Hawkins," Carella said, "have you got any idea why your daughter suddenly started coming up here every Thursday?"

    "I tole you. To see her mama," Mrs. Hawkins said, and lifted the shot glass again.

    "What time did she usually get here?"

    "Oh, in the mornin sometime."

    "What time in the morning?"

    "Oh, sometime before noon. I'd be at work, you see, but I'd usually call on my lunch hour, and she'd be here."

    "Sleeping?"

    "What?"

    "When you called, would she be sleeping?"

    "No, no, wide awake."

    "Did she ever mention having worked the night before?"

    "Well, I never asked her. When she first started comin, I thought she was workin for that hotel, you see. Wednesday night was when she got paid, she tole me, an Thursday was when she come uptown to see her mama."

    "With her paycheck?"

    "Well, no, it was cash."

    "How much cash?"

    "Well… two hundred dollars ever Thursday."

    "And you never suspected that this money might be coming from prostitution?"

    "No, I never did. Clara Jean was a good girl."

    "But finally she told you."

    "Yes."

    "Just two or three weeks ago."

    "Yes."

    "What'd she tell you?"

    "That she was prostitutin herself, and that the man takin care of her and three other girls was somebody named Joey Peace."

    "Confessed all this to you, huh?"

    "Yes."

    "How come?"

    "We was feelin close that day. I had taken sick and didn't go to work, and when Clara Jean come to see me, she made me some soup an we sat in the bedroom watchin television together. Just before she went to the-" Mrs. Hawkins cut herself short.

    "Yes?" Carella said.

    "Down to the grocery," Mrs. Hawkins said. "She tole me what she'd been doin these past months, the prostitutin herself, you know."

    "Did she say anything about that two hundred dollars every week?"

    "Well, no, she didn't."

    "She didn't mention, for example, that this might be money she was keeping from Joey Peace?"

    "No, she never said nothin about that."

    "Because you know, I guess, that most pimps demand
all
of a girl's earnings," Carella said.

    "I woulda guessed that."

    "Yet your daughter came around with two hundred dollars in cash every Thursday."

    "Yes. Well, yes, she did," Mrs. Hawkins said, and lifted the shot glass again.

    "Did she leave that money with you, Mrs. Hawkins?"

    "No," Mrs. Hawkins said, and hastily swallowed the bourbon remaining in the glass.

    "Did she take it with her when she left?"

    "Well, I… I just never asked her what she done with it."

    "Then how'd you know she had it with her each week?"

    "She showed it to me one time."

    "Showed you two hundred dollars in cash?"

    "That's right, yes."

    "Just the one time?"

    "Well… I guess more than one time."

    "How
many
times, Mrs. Hawkins?"

    "Well, I guess… I spose ever time she come here."

    
"Every
time?
Every
Thursday?"

    "Yes."

    "Showed you two hundred dollars in cash every Thursday?"

    "Yes."

    "Why?"

    "I…1 don't unnerstan what you mean."

    "Why did she show you two hundred dollars in cash every Thursday?"

    "Well, she didn't exactly
show
it to me."

    "Then what
did
she do?"

    "Just tole me she had it, that's all."

    "Why?"

    "So I'd know what… so I'd… so in case anythin happened to her…"

    "Did she think something was about to happen to her?" Meyer asked at once.

    "No, no."

    "Then why'd she want you to know about the money?"

    "Well, just in case, that's all," Mrs. Hawkins said, and reached again for the bourbon bottle.

    "Hold off on the sauce a minute," Carella said. "What was your daughter doing with that two hundred bucks a week?"

    "I don't know," Mrs. Hawkins said, and shrugged.

    "Was she hiding it here from her pimp?" Meyer asked.

    "No," Mrs. Hawkins said, and shook her head.

    "Then where was she keeping it?" Carella asked.

    Mrs. Hawkins did not answer.

    "If not here, where?" Meyer said.

    "A bank?" Carella said.

    "What bank?" Meyer said.

    "Where?" Carella said.

    "A bank, yes," Mrs. Hawkins said.

    "Which one?"

    "The State National. On Culver and Hughes."

    "A savings account?" Carella asked.

    "Yes."

    "Where's the passbook?"

    "I don't know. Clara Jean kept it in her pocketbook, she always had it in her pocketbook when she come up here."

    "No, she didn't keep it in her pocketbook," Meyer said. "It wasn't in her pocketbook the night she was killed."

    "Well then maybe it's in that apartment she lived in with the other girls."

    "No, if she was hiding the money from her pimp, she wouldn't have kept the passbook in that apartment."

    "So where is it, Mrs. Hawkins?"

    "Well, I just got no idea."

    "Mrs. Hawkins, is it
here?
Is the passbook here in this apartment?"

    "Not to my knowledge. Not unless Clara Jean left it here without tellin me about it."

    "Mrs. Hawkins," Carella said, "I think it's here in this apartment, and I think you
know
it's here, I think you know
exactly
where it is, and I think you ought to go get it for us because it might-"

    "Why?" Mrs. Hawkins said, suddenly and angrily. "So you can go to the bank and take out all the money?"

    "How could we possibly do that?" Carella asked.

    "If you got the passbook, you could take out all the money."

    "Is that what
you
plan to do?" Meyer asked.

    "What
I
plan to do is
my
business, not
yours.
I know the police, don't think I don't know the police. Firemen, too, we don't call them the Forty Thieves for nothin in this neighborhood. I had a fire in my apartment on St. Sebastian once, they stole everthin wasn't nailed to the floor. So don't tell me about the police an the firemen. You done that autopsy on her thout checkin with me, didn't you? Her own mother, nobody ast was it all right to cut her up that way."

    "An autopsy is mandatory in a homicide," Carella said.

    "Ain't nobody ast me was it all right," Mrs. Hawkins said.

    "Ma'm, they were trying to-"

    "I
know
what they was trying to do, don't you think I know about bullets an all? But they shoulda ast. Was I a white woman livin on Hall Avenue, they'da ast in a minute. So you think I'm gonna turn over a bank account got twenty-six hundred dollars in it? So somebody can go draw out all the money, and that's the last I'll see or hear of it? I know the police, don't think I don't know how you operate, all of you. Take me six months to earn that kinda money after taxes."

    "Mrs. Hawkins," Meyer said, "the passbook is worthless to us. And possibly to you as well."

    "Worth twenty-six hundred dollars, that passbook."

    "Not unless it's a joint account," Meyer said.

    "Or a trust account," Carella said.

    "I don't know what neither of those mean."

    "Whose name is on the passbook?" Carella asked.

    "Clara Jean's."

    "Then, ma'm, the bank simply will not honor any signature but hers without letters testamentary or letters of administration."

    "Clara Jean's dead," Mrs. Hawkins said. "Ain't no way she can sign her name no more."

    "That's true. Which means the bank'll hold that money until a court determines what's to be done with it."

    "What you
think's
gonna be done with it? They was only me an Clara Jean in the family, I'm all who's left now, they'll give the money to me, that's what."

    "I'm sure they will. But in the meantime, no one can touch it, Mrs. Hawkins. Not you, not us, not anybody." Carella paused. "May we see the passbook? All we need is the account number."

    "Why? So you can get the bank to pay over the money to you?"

    "Mrs. Hawkins, you surely can't believe that any bank in this city would turn over money in a personal savings account-"

    "I don't know
what
to believe no more," Mrs. Hawkins said, and suddenly began weeping.

    "Where's the passbook?" Carella asked.

    "In the… there's a vase on top of the television set in my bedroom. It's in the vase. I figured nobody'd search in the vase," she said, drying her eyes and suddenly looking across the kitchen table to Carella. "Don't steal the money," she said. "If you got ways of stealing it from me, please don't. That's my daughter's blood in that account. That's the money was gonna buy her out of the life."

    "What do you mean?" Carella said.

    "The record album," Mrs. Hawkins said. "That's the money was gonna get that album made."

    "What album?" Meyer said.

    "The idea she had for an album."

    "Yes,
what
album?"

    "About all her experiences in the life."

    " 'In the Life,' " Carella said, and looked at Meyer. "There it is. There's the connection. Who was going to do this album, Mrs. Hawkins? Did she say?"

    "No, she only tole me she needed three thousand dollars for it. Said she was gonna get rich from it, take us both out of Diamondback, maybe move to California. So… please don't steal that money from me. If… if a court's got to decide, like you say, then let them decide. I was thinkin, you see, of maybe goin west, like Clara Jean wanted for us, but if you steal that money from me…" And suddenly she was weeping again.

    

    

    They did not take the passbook when they left Dorothy Hawkins's apartment because they frankly weren't sure of their right to do so, and they didn't want any static later about misappropriation, especially this month when fourteen cops at the Two-One in Majesta had been arrested by departmental shooflies for selling narcotics previously appropriated from sundry arrested addicts and pushers. Carella and Meyer were too experienced to go begging for trouble, not when they knew that all they needed was the passbook number and a court order asking the bank to release to them a duplicate statement on the account from the day of initial deposit to the present date.

    Early Tuesday morning, in a teeming rain that was causing all the city's forecasters to crack jokes about arks, they drove downtown to High Street, and requested and obtained an order from a municipal judge. At ten minutes to eleven that same Tuesday morning, September 19, the manager of the State National Bank on Culver Avenue and Hughes Street in Diamondback read the order and promptly asked his secretary to have a duplicate statement prepared for "these gentlemen from the Police Department." Carella and Meyer felt vaguely flattered. The photocopy was made within minutes; they left the bank at precisely 11:01, and went to sit in Carella's automobile, where together they looked over the figures. The day was not only wet, it had turned unseasonably cold as well. The engine was running, the heater was on, the windshield fogged over as the men read the statement.

    Clara Jean Hawkins had opened the account on June 22, with a deposit of two hundred dollars. There had since been twelve regular weekly deposits of two hundred dollars, up to and including the last one made on September 14, just before her death. Thirteen deposits in all, for a balance of twenty-six hundred dollars. A glance at Carella's pocket calendar showed that the dates of deposit were all Thursdays, corroborating Mrs. Hawkins's statement that her daughter visited every week on that day. That was all they learned from Clara Jean Hawkins's savings account.

    It seemed like a hell of a long way to have come for very little.

    

    

    Just as Meyer had felt
A Plethora of Daisies
would have been a magnificent title for a novel about, for example, a man who is stabbed through the heart with the stem of a frozen daisy, the murder weapon thereafter melting in the eighty-degree heat, if only something like that hadn't been done in Dick Tracy when Meyer was just a kid being chased around the goddamn neighborhood by friendly goyim, he now felt similarly-and in agreement with Mrs. Hawkins- that Caribou Corner was perhaps the worst name ever devised for a restaurant, and especially for a steak joint. In trying to think up names that were potentially worse when it came to attracting customers to an eatery, he could think only of The Hairy Buffalo. The hero of
A Plethora of Daisies
would take his girlfriend to a steak joint called The Hairy Buffalo. Somebody there would shoot at him from behind a purple curtain. The hero's name would be either Matthew, John, Peter, Andrew, Thomas, Jude, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, or James the Greater or Less since most good guys in fiction were named after the twelve apostles, the exception being anybody named Judas Iscariot who-five would get you ten-turned out to be a bad guy, and who- had already been replaced by Matthias, anyway. Sometimes good guys were named after Paul or Barnabas, alternate apostles. Sometimes they were named after other biblical chaps like Mark, Luke, or Timothy. Bad guys were generally called Frank, Randy, Jug, Billy Boy, or Baldy. Nice wishy-washy guys were called Larry, Eugene, Richie, and Sammy (but not Sam). Schlemiels were called Morris, Irving, Percy, Toby, and-come to think of it-Meyer, thank you, Pop.