Vespers, p.12
Vespers, page 12
large American cities. Here in city, the centralized 911 emergency
response s' had gone into effect some thirty years ago, brin with it the
need for quick motorized response, leaving in its wake a reduction in
the number of fo patrols. Then, as so often happened when became
confused with quality, many police began thinking that motorized patrol
was in a more diverse and interesting assignment, with attendant result
that those poor souls assigned to foot beat approached the job with less
than enthusiasm. All by way of saying that the officer was almost
entirely eliminated in the scheme of law enforcement and crime
prevention.
CPEP pronounced Cee-Pep by the department had been designed to correct
was now perceived as an error. Its sole intent was re-establish the
foot-patrol cop as an essential part the process of essential contact
between police and community. Di Napoli had been a part of the highly
effective Narcpoc Drive, a combined blues-and-suits operation aimed at
narcotic pockets in the Fifty-First precinct and resulting in a total of
some ten thousand buy-and-bust arrests. It was a measure of the man that
he considered it a challenge to be transferred to the newly organized
CPEP Unit at the Eight-Seven, under the command of a sergeant who'd
initiated Operation Clean Sweep out of the notorious Hundred-and-First
in Majesta. Di Napoli was a good cop and a dedicated cop. Like any good
cop, he listened. And like any dedicated cop, he put what he heard to
good use.
He would not have known that Carella was on the job if Carella hadn't
introduced himself. Di Napoli couldn't recall seeing him around the
station house, but then again he was new here. They exchanged the usual
pleasantries... "How's it going?"
"Little quiet."
"Well, give it time, it's Saturday."
"Yeah, I can't wait."
... and then Carella got straight to the point.
"I'm investigating the murder of that priest at St. Kate's," he said.
"Yeah, Thursday night," Di Napoli said.
"That's the one. I'm looking for whoever chased a black kid into the
church on Easter Sunday." "I wasn't here then," Di Napoli said. "I only
got transferred the first of the month." He hesitated then said, "I hear
Edward-car panicked, huh?"
"Let's say they got out of there fast."
"The people around here laugh about it."
I'll bet." "Bad for the old image, huh?" Di Napoli said, raised his
eyebrows. "I bust my ass out here day night and two jerks run when it
gets hot."
"Have you heard anything about who it have been?"
"That jumped the black kid?"
"Yeah."
"I'll tell you," Di Napoli said, "there's a happening around here where
they're starting to proud of it, you know what I mean? neighborhood
people. They like the idea these beat up the black kid and got away with
it. That cops cooled it, you know? For whatever reason, the hell knows,
maybe Edward-car was afraid they'., have a riot on their hands, who
knows? The point a kid got beat up, and nobody paid for it. Nobody.
around here they're saying Yeah, it served him n he shoulda stayed in
his own neighborhood, wh he come around here, and so on, this is a
neighborhood, we don't need niggers coming in...!
Di Napoli shook his head.
"I'm Italian, you know," he said, "I guess you too, but I can't stand
the way Italians feel people. It's a fuckin' shame the way they Maybe
they don't know how much prejudice there still around about us, you
know? Italians. Maybe they don't know you say somebody's Italian he's
supposed to be a thief or a ditchdigger or a guy singing 0 Sole Mio in a
restaurant with checked tablecloths and Chianti bottles dripping wax.
I'm only a cop, I mean I know I'm not a fuckin' account executive or a
bank president, but there're Italians who are, you realize that? So you
get these dumb wops in this neighborhood ... that's exactly what they
are, excuse me, they're dumb fucking wops .. they beat up this black kid
and then they laugh about it later and all Italians suffer. All of us. I
hate it. Man, I absolutely hate it."
"You sound like you know who did it," Carella said.
"Not completely. But I've been listening, believe me."
"And what've you heard?"
"I heard a guy in his forties, he's in the construction business, his
name is Vinnie Corrente, I heard he's been bragging to people that his
son Bobby was the one used the bat. I didn't hear him say this
personally, otherwise his ass would be up the station house and I'd be
reading him Miranda, the dumb fucking wop."
"On the other hand..."
"On the other hand, you're investigating a "Uh-huh."
"So maybe you got probable to pull him in."
"Let's say I'd like to talk to him."
"Let's say he's in apartment 41 at 304 North." "Thanks," Carella said.
"Hey, come on," Di Napoli said, pleased.
304 North Eleventh was a five-story brick set in row of identical
buildings undoubtedly put up by same contractor at the turn of the
century, when neighborhood was still considered desirable. three-thirty
that afternoon, several old wearing the black mourning dresses and you
could see on widows all over Italy were in late afternoon sunshine on
the front chatting in Italian. Carella nodded good them, and then walked
through them and past into the building foyer. He found a nameplate for
V. Corrente in apartment 41, began climbing the steps.
The building was scrupulously clean.
Mouth-watering cooking smells wafted in hallways, suffused the
stairwells. Oregano thyme. Sweet sausage. Fresh basil. Delectable
simmering in olive oil and garlic.
Carella kept climbing.
He found apartment 41 to the right of the on the fourth-floor landing.
He listened at the for a moment, heard nothing, and knocked on door.
"Who is it?" a man's voice said.
"Police," Carella answered.
There was a brief silence.
"Just a minute," the man said.
Carella waited.
He heard several locks coming undone, and then the door opened some
three inches or so, held by a night chain.
"Let's see your badge," the man said.
Gruff no-nonsense voice, somewhat gravelly. A smoker's voice. Or a
drinker's.
Carella flipped open his leather case to show a blue-enameled, gold
detective's shield and a laminated I.D. card. "Detective Carella," he
said.
"Eighty-seventh Squad." "What's this about, Carella. the man asked. He
had still not taken the chain off the door. In the narrow wedge between
door and jamb, Carella could dimly perceive a heavyset man with a
stubble on his cheeks, dark hooded eyes.
"Want to open the door?" he asked.
"Not till I know what this is about," the man said.
"Are you Vincent Corrente?"
"Yeah?"
Surprise in his voice.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Corrente, ifthat''s okay with
you," Carella said.
"Like I said, what about?"
"Easter Sunday."
"What about Easter Sunday?"
"Well, I won't really know until I can ask some questions."
There was silence behind the door. In the wed Carella thought he
detected the eyes narrowing.
"What do you say?" he asked.
"I say tell me more," the man said.
"Mr. Corrente, I want to ask you about an" that occurred at St.
Catherine's Church on Sunday." "I don't go to church," Corrente said.
"Neither do I," Carella said. "Mr. Corrente, investigating a murder."
There was another silence. And then, and unsurprisingly'm the word
"murder" some worked magic -- the night chain came off rattle, and the
door opened wide.
Corrente was wearing a pair of brown and a tank top undershirt. He was a
jowly, unkempt man with a cigar in his mouth and a on his face, Hey,
come in, how nice to see the here on my doorstep, come in, come in,
don't the way the place looks, my wife's been sick, in, Detective,
please.
Carella went in.
A modest apartment, spotlessly clean Corrente's protestations and
apologies. kitchen to the right, living room dead ahead, opening from
either side of it, presumably to bedrooms. From behind one of the closed
television set was going.
"Come on in the kitchen," Corrente said, "so we won't bother my wife.
She's got the flu, I hadda get the doctor in yesterday. You want a beer
or anything?"
"Thanks, no," Carella said.
They went into the kitchen and sat opposite each other at a round,
Formica-topped table. The air-shaft window was open. In the backyard,
four stories below, Carella could hear some kids playing Ring-a-Leevio.
From the other room, he could hear the unintelligible drone of the
television set.
Corrente lifted an open can of beer that was sitting on the table, took
a long swallow from it, and then said, "So what's this about St.
Catherine's?"
"You tell me."
"All I know is I heard there was some fuss there on Easter."
"That's true."
"But I don't know what."
"A black boy was badly beaten by a gang of six white boys. We think the
boys were from..."
"There are no gangs in this neighborhood," Corrente said.
"Anything more than two in number, we call a gang," Carella said. "Any
idea who they might've been?"
"Why should that be important to you?" Corrente asked. His cigar had
gone out. He took a matchbook from his trouser pocket, struck a match
and held it to the tip of the cigar, puffing, filling the kitchen with
billowing smoke. "'Cause, you know," he sai, "maybe this black kid had
no right comin' to neighborhood, you understand?"
"I understand that's the prevailing attitude, Carella said.
"Which may not be the wrong attitude, Corrente said. "I know what you're
thinking, thinking this is a bunch of prejudiced people they don't like
the colored, is what you're But maybe the same thing woulda happened if
kid hadda been white, you follow me, Detective?" "No," Carella said,
"I'm afraid I don't."
He did not like this man. He did not like the stubble on his face, or
the potbelly hanging over belt, or the stench of his cigar, or his
alleged boasts that his son Bobby had wielded the bat had broken Nathan
Hooper's head. Even the way said "Detective" rankled.
"This is a nice neighborhood," Corrente said." family neighborhood.
Hardworking people, clean kids. We want to keep it that way."
"Mr. Corrente," Carella said, "on Easter half a dozen nice clean kids
from this nel. attacked a black kid with baseball bats and can lids and
chased him down the street to..."
"Yeah, the Hooper kid," Corrente said.
"Yes," Carella said. "The Hooper kid."
All of a sudden, Corrente seemed to know name of the Easter Sunday
victim. All of a he seemed to know all about the fuss that happened at
St. Catherine's, although not ten minutes ago he hadn't known nothing
from nothing.
"You familiar with this kid?" Corrente asked.
"I've talked to him."
"What'd he tell you?" "He told me what happened to him here on Eleventh
Street."
"Did he tell you what he was doing here on Eleventh Street?"
"He was on his way home from the..."
"No, no, never mind the bullshit," Corrente said, taking his cigar from
his mouth and waving it like a conductor's baton. "Did he tell you what
he was doing here?"
"What was he doing here, Mr. Corrente?"
"Do you know what they call him down the schoolyard? On Ninth Street?
The elementary school? You know what they call him there?" "No," Carella
said. "What do they call him there?"
"His nickname? Did he tell you his nickname?"
"No, he didn't."
"Go ask him what his nickname is down the schoolyard. Go ask him what he
was doing here Easter Sunday, go ahead."
"Why don't you save me the trouble?" Carella said.
"Sure," Corrente said, and inhaled deeply on the cigar. Blowing out a
cloud of smoke, he said, "Mr. Crack."
Carella looked at him.
"Is his nickname, right," Corrente said. fucking nigger Crack."
There was a need that took him back here.
Something inexplicable that did, in fact, take back to the scene of any
murder he'd ew investigated, time and again, to stand alone in center of
a bedroom or a hallway or a kitchen or roof or -- as was the case now --
a small cloisl garden suffused with the late afternoon scent hundreds of
roses in riotous bloom.
The Crime Scene signs had all been taken the police were through with
the place so far gathering evidence was concerned. But stood alone in
the center of the garden, under spreading branches of the old maple, and
tried sense what had happened here this past evening at sunset. It was
yet only a little before the priest had been slain some two hours later,
Carella was not here now to weigh and to to discern and to deduce, he
was here to feel courtyard and this murder, to absorb the essence it,
breathe it deeply into his lungs, have it seep his bloodstream to become
a part of him as his liver or his heart- for only then could he to
understand it.
Mystical, yes.
A detective searching for a muse of sorts.
He recognized the absurdity of what he was doing, but bowed to it
nonetheless, standing there in pled shade, listening to the sounds of
the springtime city beyond the high stone walls, trying to absorb
through his very flesh whatever secrets the garden contained. Had not
something of the murderer's rage and the victim's terror flown
helter-skelter about this small, contained and silent space, to be
claimed by stone or rose or blade of grass, and held forever in time
like the image of a killer in a dead man's eye? And if so, if this was
in fact a possibility, then was it not also possible that the terror and
the rage of that final awful moment whenknife entered flesh could now be
recovered from all that had borne silent witness here in this garden?
He stood alone, scarcely dating to breathe.
He was not a religious man, but perhaps he was praying.
He stood there for what seemed a long time, some
ten or fifteen minutes, head bent, waiting for... He didn't know what.
And at last, he took a deep breath and nodded and Went back into the
rectory and into the small office :led into a nook that judging from the
g had once served as something else, could not imagine what. There were
secrets here, perhaps there were secrets everywhere.
The report from the Fingerprint Section had d him that any latents
recovered from the open drawer of the file cabinet had been smudged to
be useful in any meaningful se There had been latents as well on the
various scattered on the floor and separately delivered in evidence
envelope marked CORRES FLOOR and then initialed by the lab's R.] whoever
he might be. Some of the latents the prints lifted from the dead
priest's fingers thumbs. The rest of them were wild, with possibility
that some had been left on correspondence by Kristin Lund.
Carella knelt beside the filing cabinet.
The bottom drawer, the one that had been open, was labeled:
