cide here.'
And so it began.
Chapter Two
It was raining relentlessly on the morning of October thirtieth, a Saturday, the day after the body of Andrew Henry Hale was found dead in his bed in an apartment on Currey and Twelfth. Carella and Meyer came running out of the precinct and into the parking lot behind it, drenched to the bone before they'd taken half a dozen steps. Rain banged on the roof of the car. Rain drilled Carella's head as he fumbled the key into the lock on the driver's side, rain smashed his eyes, rain soaked the shoulders of his coat and plastered his hair onto his forehead. Meyer stood patiently hunched and hulking on the passenger side of the car, eyes squinched, drowning in the merciless rain.
'Just take all the time in the world,' he suggested.
Carella finally got the key into the lock, twisted it
open, hurried inside, and reached across the seat to unlock
the other door for Meyer.
'Whoosh!' Meyer said, and pulled the door shut behind him.
Both men sat breathless for a moment, enclosed now
in a rattling cocoon, the windshield and windows melting
with rain. Behind them, the precinct lights glowed yellow,
offering comfort and warmth, odd solace for a place they
rarely associated with either. Meyer shifted his weight,
reached into his back pants pockets for a handkerchief,
and dried his face and the top of his bald head. Carella
took several Dunkin' Donuts paper napkins from the side
pocket on the door and tried to blot water from his soaked
hair. 'Boy,' he said, and grabbed more napkins from the door.
Together, the two men in their bulky overcoats crowded the front seat of the 'company car,' as they mockingly called it. They were partnered as often as not, the twin peculiarities of exigency and coincidence frequently determining more effectively than any duty chart exactly who might be in the squadroom when the phone rang. They had caught the Hale squeal together yesterday morning. The case was now theirs until either they made an arrest or retired it in the so-called Open File.
Carella started the car.
I Meyer turned on the radio.
The insistent chatter of police calls scratched at the
beating rain. It took a while for the ancient heater to throw any real warmth into the car, adding its clanking clatter to the steady drumming of the rain, the drone of the dispatcher's voice, the hissing swish of tires on black asphalt. Cops on the job listened with one ear all the time, waiting to hear the dispatcher specifically calling their car, particularly waiting for the urgent signal that would tell them an officer was down, in which case every car in the vicinity would respond. Meanwhile, as the rain fell and the heater hurled uncertain hot air onto their faces and their feet, they talked idly about Carella's birthday party earlier this month—a subject he'd rather have forgotten since he'd just turned forty— and the trouble Meyer was having with his brother-in-law, who never had liked Meyer and who kept trying to sell him additional life insurance because he was in such a dangerous occupation.
'You think our occupation is dangerous?' he asked.
'Dangerous, no,' Carella said. 'Hazardous.'
'Enough to warrant what he calls combat insurance?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'I rented a video last week,' Meyer said, 'Robin Williams is dead in it, he goes to heaven. One of the worst movies I ever saw in my entire life.'
'I never go to movies where somebody dies and goes
to heaven,' Carella said.
'What you should never do is go to a movie with the word 'Dream' in the title,' Meyer said. 'Sarah likes these
pictures where movie stars die and go walking around so
mere mortals can't see them. So you never heard of it,
huh?' Meyer said.
'Never,' Carella said, and smiled. He was thinking if you worked with a man long enough, you began reading
his mind.
'Your kids aren't teenagers yet,' Meyer said. 'Rophies?
Roofies? Rope? R? Those are all names the kids use for
it.'
'New one on me,' Carella said.
'It used to come in one- and two-milligram tablets,'
Meyer said. 'Hoffman-La Roche—that's the company
that manufactures it—recently pulled the two-mill off
the retail market in Germany. But it's still available here. That's another name for it, by the way. La Roche. Or even just Roach. How much did Blaney say the old man had dropped?'
'At least two mills.'
'Would've knocked him out in half an hour. It's supposed to be ten times stronger than Valium, no taste, no odor. You really never heard of it?'
'Never,' Carella said.
'It's also called the Date-Rape drag,' Meyer said. 'When it first got popular in Texas, kids were using it to boost a heroin high or cushion a cocaine crash. Then
some cowboy discovered if he dropped a two-mill tab
in a girl's beer, it had the same effect as if she drank a
six-pack. In ten, twenty minutes, she's feeling no pain.
She loses all inhibitions, blacks out, and wakes up the
next morning with no memory of what happened.'
'Sounds like science-fiction,' Carella said.
'Small white tablet,' Meyer said, 'you can either dissolve it in a drink or snort it. Ruffles is another name. The Forget Pill, too. Or Roofenol. Or Rib. Costs three, four bucks a tab.'
'Thanks for the input,' Carella said.
The men were on their way to Andrew Male's bank.
They were now in possession of a court order auth
orizing them to open his safe deposit box. Inside that box, by Cynthia Keating's own admission, there was an insurance policy on her father's life. Her husband had also told them that his law firm was in possession of her father's will, which left to husband and wife all of the old man's earthly possessions—which did not amount to a
