“I’ll bet. They pull eight large from it, send Struthers on his way, nice to know you, kid, don’t bother us anymore.”
Ollie looked at him.
“Too fucking deep for me,” he said.
“Don’t you see?” Carella said. “Why would two blond hitters carrying a bottle of champagne go up to a lone woman’s apartment on a bullshit birthday story, stick an ice pick in her head, waltz her over to the park, strip her naked, and toss her into the lion’s den where she gets eaten beyond all recognition? Why did they want her to disappear?”
“Why?” Ollie asked.
“Because she stumbled into something down there in Eagle Branch, Texas.”
“Eagle Branch?” Ollie said, and stopped chewing.
“What is it?” Carella said at once.
“My publisher has a sales rep lives down there.”
“Your publisher?”
“Yeah, I’m writing a book, didn’t I tell you?”
Carella glanced at Meyer.
“I happened by chance on a publisher looking for a good thriller,” Ollie said. “So when I’m not practicing piano, I work on the book. The countdown hasbegun!” he announced dramatically, and popped another slice of pizza into his mouth.
“You happened upon a publisher by chance,” Carella said. “With a sales rep who lives …”
“I caught a guy stuffed in a garbage can on Christmas Eve,” Ollie explained. “Bullet at the back of his head. Looked like a drug hit to me, but turned out he’s an honest-to-God sales rep. Wadsworth and Dodds. That’s the name of the publishing house he worked for.”
“Ollie,” Carella said. “Eagle Branch is where Cass Ridley hooked up with the two guys who sent her to Mexico.”
“Well, Iknow that, Steve-a-rino.”
“Eagle Branch is where this allstarted.”
“Well, why do you think I mentioned it?”
“Are you saying you’ve got a linked homicide?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying I caught a stiff who worked for a publishing house that has a sales rep who lives in Eagle Branch, Texas. Is what I’m saying.”
“What’s his name, this guy in Texas?”
“Randolph Biggs.”
“The Texas Ranger,” Carella said to Meyer.
“No, he’s a sales rep,” Ollie said.
“Your stiff didn’t happen to be carrying any phony hundred-dollar bills, did he?” Meyer asked.
“Well, I don’t know if they’re phony or not,” Ollie said, “but you’re welcome to look at them. I already turned them over to the Property Clerk’s Office.”
THEY SIGNED FOR and checked out the seven $100 bills Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks had recovered from Jerome Hoskins’ wallet and deposited for security with the Property Clerk’s Office. At ten minutes to ten that night, when the last FBI pouch left for Washington, D.C., the money was on the plane, together with an urgent note to the Federal Reserve, asking for an immediate authenticity pop.
The bills and the response from the Fed were waiting on Carella’s desk when he got to work early the next morning, the twenty-eighth day of December.
The money was real.
9 .
IT REALLY UPSET Nikmaddu Zarzour to be treated like a terrorist. Even if he looked like one. Even if hewas one. Which, in fact, he happened to be.
The problems started the moment he transferred from Air France’s flight 613 from Damascus to Paris, onto their connecting flight 006 to the United States. He was wearing a black linen suit, a white shirt without a tie, and a little red fez of the sort favored by Turkish gentlemen though he was neither Turkish nor a gentleman. On the Syrian leg of the flight, he was merely another Arab, his complexion the color of desert sand, his black mustache neatly trimmed, a single gold tooth occasionally glinting in the upper left hand corner of his mouth. But the moment he transferred planes in Paris he became someone whose shabby-looking suitcase and clothes called him to the attention of the security guard who was boarding the 3:15P.M. flight to the States. It never occurred to the guard that if Nikmaddu were truly a terrorist—which, in fact, he was—he would have been carrying a Louis Vuitton suitcase or something less likely to call attention to his appearance. The guard riffled through his meager belongings, and then questioned—and confiscated—the little box of fresh figs Nikmaddu said he was taking to the U.S. for his maiden aunt. The guard did not suspect that the battered and scarred brown leather suitcase contained a false bottom. He could not have imagined that close to two million dollars in U.S. currency was neatly layered along the bottom of the suitcase; X-ray machines do not pick up paper.
And, of course, there was the same hassle coming through Customs and Immigration here on the eastern shores of the munificent United States of America, even though his passport was in order, even though he showed them a visa, little did it matter to them. He looked like a terrorist, ergo hewas a terrorist. Which, in fact, he was. But it rankled.
