which Ollie supposed was a town, what else could it be? “Wikes” was only one of the variants of the name “Weeks,” just like Weackes or Weacks or Weakes or Weaks or for that matter Weekes. Of course, people whose name was Wykes—of whom there were many, and please don’t write to me, Ollie thought—considered Weeks a variant of their name, same as people named Anne thought Ann was a variant and not vice versa, the world was full of fuckin nuts.

His sister—who always looked on the dim side because she herself was so dim, the jackass—told him he should stop putting on airs since there was absolute proof that there’d been a Robert Weeks living in Walberswick, Suffolk, in the year 1596, and he’d been a mere merchant. In fact, she had looked up his merchant’s mark, and had needle-pointed it into a sampler for Ollie, which he kept in the bathroom, hanging over the toilet bowl.

“Please observe the way the letter ‘W’ is worked into the design,” she’d said, the jackass. She had given him the sampler, framed, for Christmas one year, a gift as worthless as the stolen dispatch case, which was why he was here to see an Irishman like Walsh in the first place.

He greeted Walsh with his favorite Irish joke.

“These two Irishmen walk out of a bar?” he said.

“Yeah?” Walsh said, grinning in anticipation.

“It could happen,” Ollie said, and shrugged.

The grin dropped from Walsh’s face. Ollie guessed the man thought he was making some kind of remark about Irishmen being drunk all the time. Well, if he couldn’t take a joke, a fart on him.

“I’m looking for a cross-dressing whore named Emilio Herrera,” he said, “street name Emmy. Does it ring a bell?”

“I’m still thinking about that so-called joke of yours,” Walsh said.

He was perhaps six feet, two or three inches tall, a big redheaded mick going gray at the temples, wide shoulders, arms like oaks, the butt of a Glock sticking out of a shoulder holster on the left side of his body for an easy right-handed draw. He was in shirtsleeves on this bright April morning, the sleeves rolled up, the collar open, the tie pulled down. Ollie guessed Walsh thought he looked like a TV detective. TV detectives thought they looked like real-life detectives, which they didn’t. Trouble was, real-life detectives watched TV and then started acting like TV detectives, who were acting the way they thought real-life detectives did. It was a vicious cycle. Ollie was glad he looked like himself.

“Don’t worry about jokes,” he said. And then, because he was not only a real-life detective, but also a real- life writer, he added, “Jokes are the folk lore of truth.”

“Does that mean it’s true that two Irishmen can’twalkout of a bar?” Walsh asked.

“It could happen,” Ollie said, and shrugged again.

“That’s what’s offensive about the joke,” Walsh said. “Those words ‘It could happen.’ And the accompanying shrug, indicating that whereas it’s a remote possibility that a pair of Irishmencouldwalk out of a bar, the teller of the joke has certainly neverseensuch a phenomenon in his entire life, though that doesn’t mean to say itcouldn’thappen, two Irishmenwalkingout instead ofstaggeringout or falling down deaddrunkas they come out, is what that joke is saying,” Walsh concluded somewhat heatedly.

“Gee, is that so?” Ollie said, and shook his head in wonder. “I never thought of it that way. Can you help me find this Herrera punk?”

THE MANPatricia spoke to was a Serb named Branislav Something, she couldn’t catch the last name. Something with no vowels in it. He had been working here at the Hall since last December, just about when she’d started on the beat.

“I tink I see you valking around,” he said, grinning. He had bad teeth and patchy hair. He was probably fifty years old, she guessed, and was surprised when he later told her he was only forty-one. He had nice blue eyes. He kept smiling all the while he talked to her. He had been in Kosovo when the Americans bombed, he said. “I don’t blame Americans,” he said, “I blame Albanian bastards.”

“Were you here Monday morning?” she asked him. “When the councilman got shot?”

“Whoo,” he said, and rolled his blue eyes. “Vot a trouble!”

“Where were you?” she asked.

“In toilets,” he said. “Cleaning toilets.”

“Are the toilets anywhere near the stage?”

“Some toilet near, some not,” he said. “You tink I shot councilman?”

“No, no. I just wanted to know if you’d seen anybody running from the stage.”

“Nobody. Saw nobody.”

“Somebody with a gun?”

“Nobody. Saw nobody. Mop floors, wash windows, clean toilets, sinks, everything, make sparkle like new.”

“There are windows in these toilets?” Patricia asked.

“Two toilets got windows,” he said. “Let fresh air come in.”

“Can I see these toilets?”

“Both for men’s,” he said.

“That’s okay,” she said, “I’m a cop.”

When Patricia was eight years old and visiting her grandparents in San Juan, her father took them to a show in one of the big hotels one night, and she had to go to the bathroom after the show, but there was a big line of women out in the hall, the way there always is. He came out of the men’s room and saw her standing there, dancing from foot to foot, and he said, “Come with me, it’s empty in here,” and he took her into the men’s room and stood outside the door to make sure nobody came in while she was peeing. That was the first time she saw urinals.

The next time she saw urinals was just last week at the Sony Theater on Farley and First, where somebody had mugged some kid in the men’s room, smashing his face into a urinal that was running with blood and piss when she came in with her gun drawn and the perp long gone.Harry Potterwas playing on the screen outside.

The first men’s room Branislav showed her was just off the right side of the stage. The urinals here were sparkling clean, just as he’d promised. A pebbled glass window was on the wall opposite the urinals, at the far end of the room. The window was wide open. A hand dryer was on the adjoining wall. Patricia hated hand dryers. She did not know anyone who liked hand dryers. She figured hand dryers were designed not to dry a person’s hands but to save money on paper towels. She went to the window, bent over, and looked out.

She was looking out onto what appeared to be an airshaft that ran from right to left across the back of the building.

So much for an accomplice theory, she thought.

•   •   •

PORTOLES AND DOYLEwere just coming out of the Okeh Diner that Monday when Carella and Kling caught up with them. They seemed surprised to learn that the detectives were here about the murder at King Memorial; until now, they’d thought the Fat Boy was investigating that case.

“Was Weeks pulled off it?” Portoles asked. “Is that it?”

“No, we’re handling it together,” Kling said.

“You ain’t shooflies, are you?” Doyle asked.

“No, we’re just honest, decent law enforcement officers investigating a mere homicide,” Carella said.

Doyle looked at him, not sure whether he was kidding or not. Portoles wasn’t sure, either. Sometimes Internal Affairs sent around guys pretending to be what they weren’t.

“So what can we do for you?” he asked.

“We understand you talked to some bum in the alley outside the building,” Carella said. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, a Vietnam vet, he said he was.”

“Did you get his name?”

“No, he was an old drunk.”

“How old could he be, Vietnam?” Kling asked.

“Well, helookedold, let’s put it that way,” Doyle said.

“Did you get his name?”

“No. He was drunk, he didn’t see a weapon, what’s the uproar here?”

“You just didn’t bother to take his name, is that it?” Kling said. “An eye witness.”

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