Done each other, Ollie thought.
'The bag, I mean,' Flaherty said. 'A clutch.' 'It's called a clutch,' Flanagan said. 'The type of bag,' Flaherty said. 'A clutch bag.'
'A handbag without handles.'
'What's that got to do with the price of fish?' Ollie asked impatiently.
'For the sake of accuracy,' Flaherty said. 'In your report. You should call it a clutch bag.'
'A red patent-leather clutch handbag,' Flanagan said. Most Homicide Division detectives favored wearing black, the color of mourning, the color of death. But black suited these two more than it did many of their colleagues. Tall and thin, with pale features and slender waxen hands, the two resembled vampires who had wandered in out of the snowy cold, the shoulders of their black coats damp, their eyes a watery blue, their lips bloodless, their shoes a sodden black. They were both wearing white woolen mufflers, a limp sartorial touch.
'How much money is that on the floor?' Flanagan asked.
'Five C-notes,' Sloat said.
C-notes, Ollie thought.
'Don't forget the three jumbo vials,' Flaherty said. 'Hey, you!' Ollie yelled to one of the technicians. 'Okay to look in this bag now? This clutch bag? This red patent-leather clutch handbag?'
The technician turned off his vacuum cleaner, walked over to where they were standing, and began dusting the bag for latents. The detectives wandered around the apartment, waiting for him to finish.
'No sheets on the bed, you notice that?' Flaherty said.
'What do these people know about sheets?' Ollie said. 'You think they have sheets in Africa? In Africa they sleep in huts with mud floors, they have flies in their fuckin eyes day and night, they drink goat's milk with blood in it, what the fuck do they know about sheets?'
'This ain't Africa,' Flanagan said.
'And there still ain't no sheets on the bed,' Flaherty said.
'Looks like somebody really tossed the place,' Flanagan said, observing the clothes strewn everywhere, the open dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets, the overturned trash basket.
'Maybe it was an interrupted crib job,' Sloat suggested.
'Jamal's a fuckin pimp,' Ollie said. 'What does he know about burglaries?'
'Which one is Jamal?'
'The one with his tonsils showing.'
'Maybe he was the one being burglarized, Maybe he walked in and found the other guy...'
'No, the mailbox says Cooper. Who don't like to be called Richie. You gonna take all day with that fuckin clutch bag?' Ollie yelled to the technician.
'You can have it now,' the technician said, handing it to him.
'What'd you get?'
'Some good ones. Patent's a good surface.' 'What do they look like?'
'Smaller ones may be female. The others, who knows.'?'
'When can I have something?'
'Later today?'
'How much later? I go home at midnight.' 'A quarter to midnight,' Sloat amended. 'Soon as we process them,' the technician said.
'Run them through Records at the same time,
okay?' Ollie said. 'See if we come up roses.' 'Sure.'
'So what timeT'
'What's the rush? They're not going anywhere,' he said, and glanced toward the open bathroom door, where the police photographer was taking his Polaroids.
'I'm just wonderin what really happened here, is all,' Ollie said. 'Send me what you get the minute you get it, okay? The Eight-Eight. Oliver Weeks.'
'Sure,' the technician said, and shrugged and went back to his vacuuming.
'I think what happened here is what the kid says happened here,' Flaherty said.
Sloat looked flattered.
'They killed each other, right?' Ollie said. He was already beginning to go through the bag the technician had handed him. The clutch bag, excuse me all to hell. Looked like some more hundred-dollar bills in here..
'Dude's about to take a bath,' Sloat suggested, 'he hears somebody coming in the apartment, he immediately grabs for a knife ...' '
'I think the kid's got it,' Flaherty said, and approval again.
Fuckin Homicide jackass, Ollie thought. Fourteen hundred in the bag, plus the five on the `:-3,' floor, came to nineteen. Money like that spelled dope or prostitution. More red tops on the bottom of the bag, looked more, like a dope thing every minute. He fished out a driver's license with a photo ID on it.
'What've you got?' Flanagan asked. 'Ohio driver's license,' Ollie said. 'Out-of-towner,' Sloat surmised.
'Probably mugged her, one or the other of them, then got into a fight over the bag.'
'When was this?' Ollie asked. 'Before he turned apartment upside down or after?'
'What?'
'Whoever got killed first. Give me the sequence, Wilbur.'
He made the name sound like a dirty word. 'Start with the muggin,' Flanagan said.
'Cooper mugged her, brought the bag back to his apartment,' Sloat said.
'Who's Cooper?' Flaherty asked.
'The one who drowned.'
From the door, where he was putting on his hat, the
M.E. called, 'I didn't say he drowned.'
'If he drowned,' Sloat said.
'For all I know, he was poisoned.'
Yeah, bullshit, Ollie thought.
'Good night, gentlemen,' the M.E. said, and headed downstairs to the snow and the wind. Ollie looked at his watch. A quarter to seven.
'So let's hear it, Wilbur,' he said.
'I've got an even better idea,' Sloat said.
'Even better than your first one?' Ollie said, sounding surprised.
'They both mugged her.'
'That's very good,' Flaherty said appreciatively.
'Came back here to celebrate. All these empty champagne bottles? They were drinking champagne.'
'Got drunk, got wild, started throwing around clothes and stuff,' Flanagan suggested.
'I like it,' Flaherty said.
'A drunken party,' Sloat said. 'Cooper goes in the bathroom to run a tub. Jamal comes in after him, and they start arguing about how to split the money.' 'Better all the time,' Flaherty said.
'Cooper pulls a knife, slashes Jamal. Jamal shoves out at him as he goes down. Cooper falls in the tub and drowns.'
'Case closed,' Flaherty said, grinning.
Assholes, Ollie thought.
'Hey, you!' he yelled to the technician.
The technician turned off his vacuum cleaner again.
'I want the knife and the champagne bottles dusted. I want every fuckin surface in this dump dusted. I want comparison prints lifted from both those two black shits in the bathroom. I want comparison hairs from their heads, and comparison fibers from their clothes, and I want them checked against whatever you pick up with. that fuckin noisy vacuum of yours. Where'd you buy that vacuum, anyway? From a pushcart Majesta?'
'It's standard departmental issue,' the technician said, offended.
'Stand on this awhile,' Ollie said, and clutched his own genitals with his right hand and then released them at once. 'I want to know was there anybody else in this dump besides those two ugly bastards in the bathroom. Cause there's nothing I'd like better than to nail another son of a bitch up here in Diamondback. You got that?'
