'Are the acoustics in here bad? I told you. Murder Two. Murder for hire. Lethal injection. That's what I'm looking for.'
'This wasn't murder for hire, and you know it.' 'He got twenty-five grand to kill her!'
'But she's the one who gave it to him. This wasn't some outside party who hired him to kill her. This was the victim herself who...'
'Victim, you've got it, Alan.'
'... who wanted to die, but didn't have the nerve to kill herself. She's arthritic, she's got a brain tumor, she's about to go stone-deaf, she's about to lose the nerves in her face, all she wants is out. My client helped her.'
'Right, he's a Good Samaritan.'
'No, he's a compassionate man who...'
'Who murdered her for twenty-five grand so he could pay off his bookie!'
'The best you've got here is Criminal Facilitation One. But this case is something that'll bring tears to a jury's eyes. Give him Facilitation Four, and we've got...'
'Facil . ' She almost choked on it. 'That's a class-A mis!'
''Okay, forget it then. Take a look at 120.30 instead. Promoting a Suicide Attempt. A person is guilty of promoting a suicide attempt when he intentionally
'
causes... ' or aids another person to attempt suicide,' Nellie finished for him. 'This wasn't an attempt, Alan! This was eminently successful. The woman is dead. And so's her cat.'
'Lay off the goddamn cat, will you? We're talking about a woman in agony and pain, we're talking about a sympathetic man who...'
'You're talking about a lousy class-E felony, is what you're talking about. We're wasting time here, Alan. Let's roll the dice.'
'All right, I'll grant you the suicide attempt was a
'
success ..
'What suicide? He murdered her.'
'Didn't you just say the attempt was successful? Eminently successful, weren't those your words? So what's it going to be, Nellie? Did the guy go in there and shoot her in cold blood, or did he merely help her commit suicide? You go for Murder Two, that's what the jury'll have to decide.'
'Good, let them decide.' 'Take a look at Michigan.' 'Don't sing me Kevorkian.'
'Gets kicked out each and every time.'
'This isn't Michigan. And Kevorkian didn't shoot anybody.'
'A jury might not see it that way, Nell.'
'Don't call me Nell. I wasn't raised in the woods.' 'Tell you what...' 'Sure, tell me.'
'We're forgetting murder for hire, am I right?' 'Who said so?'
'Arguendo. And I guess you know that an affirmative defense...'
'Don't insult me, Alan.'
'... under 125.25 is that the defendant caused or aided another person to commit suicide.'
'That's an affirmative defence, all right.'
'Which happens to be the case here. An assisted suicide.'
'So?'
'So you're absolutely right. You go for Murder Two,
we'd be rolling the dice. And you just might lose.' 'What do you suggest?' 'man Two.' 'No way.'
'A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree...'
'I know the section.'
'... when he intentionally causes or aids another person to commit suicide.'
'Man One is the best I can give you, Alan. Provided we agree on the max.'
'That's too much to pay for a mitzvah.'
'A mitzvah, my ass. Man One. The max, Alan.
Eight and a third to twenty-five. Take it or leave it.' 'Make it two to six.' 'No.'
'The poor bastard's a foreigner.'
'Tough.'
'He can't speak English, he looks like Robert Redford. You know what they'll do to him in prison?'
'He should've thought of that before he murdered the old lady.'
'Come on, Nellie. You know he's not a killer. What do you say? The minimum, okay? Two to six, okay?'
'I'll give you a straight five to fifteen. And we'll oppose parole after five.'
'You're a hard woman.'
'I'll also throw in the cat. Have we got a deal?' 'A hard woman,' Moscowitz said, shaking his head. 'Yes or no?'
'What choice do I have?'
'Good. Let's go home.'
It was almost twelve' thirty when Carella and Hawes finished all the paperwork. They both looked bone- weary.
'Go home,' Byrnes told them, 'it's been along night.'
'Uh-huh,' Carella said. 'Get some sleep.' 'Uh-huh,' Hawes said.
'You've still got a dead hooker on your plate,' Byrnes reminded them.
To qualify, a school had to answer positively to two questions: 'Do you have a football team?' and 'Are your school colors navy blue and white?'
Didn't matter if he was talking to St. Peter's High or John Parker High. If he got an affirmative answer to both questions, he saddled his horse and rode on over.
By one o'clock that afternoon, Fat Ollie Weeks had personally visited all of the qualifying P schools in the metropolitan area and had struck nothing even faintly resembling pay dirt.
Only twelve of the blue and white schools had football teams. Only eight of those had parkas with a big white P on the back of them. Of those, only two had a white football logo under the letter P. Ollie talked to some sixty football players, all of them shitting their pants, trying to determine what each and every one of them had been doing this past weekend while a white hooker and two black dudes were respectively being eviscerated, drowned, and stabbed. These kids were used to TV violence, but man, this was real life.
The way Ollie looked at it, nobody in this country was really concerned about violence, anyway. If they were, they'd put the V-chip on football and hockey
games. What really bugged Americans was sex. It was okay to talk about it obliquely on all those morning and afternoon TV programs, but show two people actually doing it, and, man, the house suddenly got hushed, and all at once everybody was running to protect the little kiddies smoking crack in the next room. Sex was The Great American Hang-up, legacy of those fuckin Puritans who came over from England. Speaking of which, he hadn't had any in a week and a half sex, not Puritans and here he was shagging ass all over the universe trying to find three football players who maybe had got a little bit sexy and violent off the playing field, and whose head hairs might just match those he already had.
He was back in the squad room again by a quarter past one.
He checked his computer list again.
Began making phone calls again.
At two-fifteen that afternoon, he began driving upstate to a school named Pierce Academy, whose colors were blue and white and whose football team wore hooded parkas with a white letter P and a white football logo on the back.
At two-thirty that afternoon, Georgie looked up the name Karen Todd in the Isola directory and found a listing for a K. Todd at 1217 Lincoln Street. He dialed the number, and her answering machine told him she could be reached at work and gave him the number for St. Mary's Hospital.
He hadn't known she was a nurse, if she was a nurse, This only whetted his appetite.
He dialed the number and was connected to a woman who said, 'Records Office,' immediately shattering a young boy's dreams.
