“You know that gold star the Texas Rangers carry? It looked a lot like that.”
“And he told you he was with the Secret Service, is that right?”
“Yes, sir. The U.S. Treasury Department.”
“What’d he want here?”
“He said a hundred-dollar bill I’d spent earlier in the day had serial numbers that matched the ones paid as ransom in a kidnapping. Which is why I thought it might be the President, the Secret Service and all.”
“Naturally,” Carella said.
“He took the rest of the money with him,” Struthers said.
“The rest ofwhat money?” Hawes asked.
“The money that was part of the misunderstanding between me and the Ridley woman.”
“The money youburglarized,” Brown said, and waved the nine for emphasis.
Struthers looked at the gun.
“I’m not admitting to any burglary here,” he said. “Or anything else.”
“Like what?” Carella asked.
“Like anything at all,” Struthers said.
“Maybe you’d like to tell us how your prints got in her apartment,” Brown said.
“I took down her drapes,” Struthers said.
Carella tried to remember if there’d been any drapes in the dead woman’s apartment.
“Because I was going to paint the place for her,” Struthers said. “Which is why I thought she wanted the furs moved. So they wouldn’t get any paint on them.” He nodded to the detectives, seeking approval and encouragement. “That was the misunderstanding,” he said.“I thought she wanted the furs moved, whereasshe didn’t want them moved.”
“How about the money?” Brown asked.
“That, too,” Struthers said.
“You didn’t want to get paint all over the money, is that it?”
“Exactly. There was just a misunderstanding, is all. She didn’t know I was planning to move it, you see.”
“Maybe she thought you’d be painting the place green.”
“Huh?” Struthers said.
“The color of money.”
“No, no …”
“In which case it wouldn’t’ve mattered if you got paint all over it.”
“No, it was beige.”
“Which made a difference, of course.”
“Yes.”
“So you moved the furs and the cash before you took down the drapes and got your fingerprints all over everything.”
“Well … yes.”
“Man, you are so full of shit,” Brown said.
“It wouldn’t have been eight thousand in cash, would it?” Carella asked.
“The money was returned to her,” Struthers said. “And I didn’t kill her.”
Whoa now, Carella thought.
“Who said anything about her beingdead?” he asked.
“Television,” Struthers said.
They all looked at him.
“I saw you and some fat cop on television early this morning. At the zoo? Where some lady got tossed to the lions? That was her, wasn’t it? That’s what this is all about, ain’t it?”
THE MAN THEY KNEW ONLY as Frank Holt was waiting in the other room while they tasted and tested the cocaine. What he was selling them here was a hundred kilos divided into ten-kilo packets. He was getting a million-nine for the lot, so they wanted to make sure it was good stuff. If it was anything but what he’d advertised it to be, they would kill him. He knew that, he was no fool.
The apartment they were in was a second-floor walkup on Decatur and Eighth. Tigo and Wiggy the Lid were in the second bedroom, such as it was. The man who called himself Frank was waiting outside, in what passed for a living room, chatting with a third man whose name was Thomas, and who was carrying a nine-millimeter Uzi. A radio playing rap music was on in the living room. Frank was the only white man in the apartment. He and Thomas were talking about recent movies they had seen. Thomas was saying he didn’t believe none of the gunplay shit in any of the so-called action-adventure movies because all that ricochet stuff and sparks flying and sound effects like
