“What drug? Heroin? Cocaine?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she knew, either.”
“Who was she working for?”
“A man named Frank Holt. He was the one who gave her the suitcases with the money in them. He was the one buying the stuff.”
“Who is he, do you know?”
“Some guy she got introduced to in a bar in Eagle Branch. This is why I thought it all sounded so risky. I mean who the hellwere these people? She said they were okay. Ordinary guys, she told me. Guys trying to make a buck. One of them was a Texas Ranger she’d dated once or twice. The guy who introduced her to Holt.”
“What washis name? The Ranger?”
“Riggs? Briggs? Something like that.”
“How much were they paying her?”
“Alotof money.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot,” Carella agreed. He was thinking they had to be big buys. You didn’t pay fifty grand a pop for a two-bit pickup and delivery.
“How’d they pay her, did she say? Was it in hundred-dollar bills?”
“I don’t know. She got fifty on a handshake, the rest after the last run.” Ridley paused. “Plus what they tipped her.”
“What do you mean? Tipped her?”
“Yeah, they tipped her.”
“Who did?”
“The Mexicans in Guenerando. They gave her a ten-thousand-dollar tip. She told me she was going to buy a couple of fur coats.”
The line went silent.
“Did she ever buy the coats?” Ridley asked. “Would you know?”
“She bought the coats,” Carella said.
FAT OLLIE WEEKS stopped by after his piano lesson to see if anybody up the Eight-Seven wanted to go for pizza or anything. They went to a place on Culver and U. Ollie ordered a large pie for himself. Meyer and Carella shared a nine-incher. The men were off-duty, they ordered beers all around.
“You look tired,” Ollie told Carella.
“Must be all this accounting work,” Carella said.
Ollie bit into a wedge of pizza. Cheese and sauce spilled onto the lapel of his sports jacket. He dipped up a dollop of mozzarella with the tip of his forefinger, and daintily brought it to his mouth. Licking it off, he asked, “What accounting?”
“On the Ridley case.”
“What accounting?” Ollie asked again.
“I’ve been trying to chase down all her money. I spoke to her brother in Germany half an hour ago …”
“The one whose wife dumped him,” Ollie said, nodding. He was already on his second slice of pizza. “The one who sent the wedding band.”
“That’s the one. He told me she got paid two hundred grand for picking up some dope in Mexico.”
“We’re in the wrong racket,” Ollie said.
“Plusa ten-grand tip.”
“Dope dealers are tipping people nowadays, huh?”
“The way I figure it, she kept the ten grand aside for petty cash. Struthers stole whatever was left of it.”
“Eight thousand bucks,” Meyer said.
He was wondering how many calories were in the slice of pizza he now picked off the tray. Ollie seemed to have no such problems.
“Popped two hundred grand into her safe deposit box,” Carella said, “and then slowly transferred it into two separate checking accounts and a savings account.”
“Placement and layering,” Meyer said.
“Smurfing,” Ollie agreed, and picked up a third slice of pizza.
“All accounted for,” Carella said. “And, incidentally, all good money. What’s left of it.”
“Who says?”
