his sainted grandmother had spoken.
It occurred to Georgie that the so-called conversation between them was taking place in a market reputedly run by the mob, whose Italian limited to a few basic words like 'Boffon gool,' itself was a bastardization of the time-honored 'Va in culo,' better left uninterpreted in the presence of a fine lady like Priscilla Stetson.
Who now said, rather impatiently this time, ask him if he knew my goddamn grandmother.'
In Sicilian Italian, Tony asked if Lorenzo had known Priscilla's grandmother.
In Florentine Italian, Lorenzo asked who perchance her grandmother might have been.
'Svetlana Dyalovich,' Tony said.
And Lorenzo began running.
From where the detectives were coming down the center aisle of the indoor market, checking out the men selling fish from stalls and barrels and bins and ice chests on either side of them, they saw a tall blond man running toward them, chased by Svetlana's grand daughter and the two goons who'd braced them at the club on Saturday night.
If the tall runner was, in fact, Lorenzo Schiavinato, then he was the one who'd bought the gun that killed Priscilla's grandmother. Despite what was known in the trade as 'background' the number of innocent bystanders at any given scene the fact that Lorenzo had purchased the murder weapon was justification within the guidelines for Carella and Hawes to draw their own guns. Besides, the man was running. In this city, unless you were running to catch a bus, the very act was suspicious.
The guns came out.
'Stop!' Hawes shouted. 'Police!' 'Police!' Carella shouted. 'Stop!' Lorenzo wasn't stopping.
A hundred and eighty pounds of muscle and bone plowed right through them, knocking Hawes off his feet, tossing Carella back onto a stall of very nice iced salmon, and causing a mustached man in a brown derby to throw his hands over his head in fright. Both
detectives recovered at once, Carella first, Hawes an instant later.
'Stop!' they shouted simultaneously.
Hawes was in a crouch, pistol levered, holding gun steady in both hands.
Carella was standing beside him, gun extended both hands, ready to fire. 'Stop!' he shouted. Lorenzo kept running.
Hawes fired first. Carella fired an instant later Carella missed. Hawes did, too. He fired again. This time, his shot took Lorenzo in the left leg, sending him tumbling. Everywhere around them, the back was screaming. The mustached man in the derby was running in the opposite direction, from the shooting, waving his hands hysterically in the air. He tripped over Georgie, who had thrown himself flat on the floor the moment he'd heard shots, the way his uncle Dominick had taught him to do. Lorenzo trying to crawl away, dragging his wounded leg behind him. Hawes kicked him and then stepped on his back, holding him down while Carella cuffed him.
'Ask him if he knew my grandmother,' Priscilla said. 'Few things we'd like to ask you, too,' Carella said. Everyone was breathing very hard.
Fat Ollie Weeks was asking the computer for tri-state area high school, prep school, parochial: school, Christian academy or so-called alternative school whose name began with the letter P. There were fifteen such private schools in the metropolitan area alone.
Thirty-eight in the entire state.
Of the public schools, there were a hundred and forty-six, thirty of them beginning with the word 'Port.' Port This, Port That, more damn coastal towns than Ollie knew existed.
In the two neighboring states combined, there were thirty-nine private schools and a hundred and ninety eight public schools that began with the letter P. All of the public schools in this city were designated with the letters P.S. before the name, and so the computer belched out what looked to Ollie like more high schools than he could possibly cover in ten years of investigation. He limited the search to proper names alone and came up with sixty-three schools that had the letter P in their names.
Some of these schools were named for areas of the city, like Parkhurst or Pineview or Paley Hills. Others had been named after people. The computer did not differentiate between given names and surnames. The letter P appeared in Peter Lowell High, but it also appeared in Luis Perez High. But Ollie had been born and raised in this fair city, and he knew that kids never said they went to Harry High or Abraham High, but instead said they went to Truman High or Lincoln High. So he figured if the letter on those parkas stood for a person after whom a school had been named, then it sure as hell was the surname. Running down the printed list by hand, he limited the city's sixty-three public schools to a mere seventeen. He was making progress.
By the time he was ready to begin making his calls, his trimmed-down list seemed like a one... Sort of.
The way the joke goes, a woman is telling a woman about her son in medical school, and she's referring to him as a doctor. The other woman says 'By you, your son is a doctor. And by your son, son is a doctor. But by a doctor, is your son a
By Byrnes, Carella was Italian. And by Carella was Italian. But by an Italian, was Italian?
Lorenzo Schiavinato asked for an interpreter. The interpreter's name was John McNalley.
He had studied Italian in high school one because he'd wanted to become an opera singer. never did get to sing at La Scala or the Met because he had a lousy voice, but he did have a certain with language, and so in addition to interpreting for the police and the courts, he also worked for publishers, translating for worthy books from the Italian and Spanish.
He still wanted to sing opera.
McNalley informed Lorenzo that he was charged with murder in the second degree. In this state, you could be charged with Murder One only you killed someone during the commission of felony, or if you'd been earlier convicted of murder, if the currently charged murder was particularly wanton, or if it was a contract killing, or if the victim was a police officer, or a prison guard, or
prisoner in a state pen, or a witness to a prior crime, or a judge all of whom, according to one's personal opinion, might deserve killing.
Murder Two was killing almost anybody else.
Like murder in the first, murder in the second was also an A-1 felony. In accordance with the new law, Lorenzo was looking at the death penalty at worst, or fifteen to life at best, none of which added up to a tea party on the lawn.
Naturally, he asked for a lawyer.
He was an illegal alien in the United States of America, but, hey, he knew his rights.
Lorenzo's lawyer was a man named Alan Moscowitz. He was a tall angular man wearing a brown suit and Vest, looking very lawyerly in gold-rimmed spectacles and shiny brown shoes. Carella disliked most defense attorneys, but hope springs eternal so maybe one day he'd meet one who wouldn't rub him up the wrong way. Moscowitz didn't understand Italian at all. The melting pot realized.
They read Lorenzo his rights in Italian, and he said he understood them, and Moscowitz ascertained, through back-and-forth interpretation, that his client understood Miranda and was willing to answer whatever questions the detectives posed. The questions they posed had to do with shooting an eighty-three-year-old woman at close range in cold blood. Lorenzo didn't much look like a man who'd committed murder, but then again not many murderers did. What he looked like was a slightly bewildered Robert Redford who spoke only basic English like Me Tarzan, You Jane.
The back-and-forth, in English and Italian and
English again, went this way.
'Mr. Schiavinato...'
Very difficult name to pronounce. Skeeahve nah-toe..
'Mr. Schiavinato, do you know, or did you know, a woman named Svetlana Dyalovich?'
'No.'
'How about Svetlana Helder?'
'Her granddaughter told us... did you know she had a granddaughter?'
'We've been talking to her. She told us things we'd like to ask you about.'
'Umo'
'Mr. Schiavinato, did you deliver to Miss Stetson at the Hotel Powell the key to a pay locker at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal?'
