Fiddlers Read Online Free

in the Gomez living room. A framed picture of Jesus was on the piano top. The picture made Ollie nervous, staring at him that way. What made him even more nervous was Patricia�s father. Ollie got the feeling her father didn�t like him too much. Probably thought Ollie was going to violate his virgin daughter, though Ollie guessed she wasn�t one at all.
    Patricia and her mother knew the words by heart. It was Patricia�s mother, in fact, who�d taught her the song. Her sister Isabella seemed to be hearing it for the first time. She seemed to like it, kept swaying back and forth to it. When they�d met tonight, Ollie told her his sister�s name was Isabel, too, and she�d said, �Get out!� She looked a little like Patricia, but Patricia was prettier. Nobody in the family was as good-looking as Patricia. In fact, nobody in this entire city was as good-looking as Patricia.
    Tito Gomez, the father, kept scowling at Ollie. The brother was doing a good imitation of his father, too.
    Patricia and her mother kept singing along.
    Isabella kept swaying to the music.
    In the kitchen, asopao de polio was cooking.
    * * * *
    At first, Alicia thought she was hearing things. She�d turned on the air conditioner and closed all the windows the minute she�d come into the apartment, but now she heard what sounded like a window going up in the bedroom. There were two windows in the bedroom, one of them opening on the fire escape, the other with an air-conditioning unit in it. She did not want to believe that someone had just opened the fire-escape window, but�
    �Hello?� she called.
    From outside, she heard the sudden rush of traffic below. Would she be hearing traffic if the window wasn�t� ?
    �Hello?� she said again.
    �Hello, Alicia,� a voice called.
    A man�s voice.
    She froze to the spot.
    She�d sliced the mushrooms with a big carving knife, and she lifted that from the counter now, and was backing away toward the entrance door to the apartment when he came out of the bedroom. There was a large gun in his right hand. There was some kind of thing fastened to the barrel. An instant before he spoke, she recognized it as a silencer.
    �Remember me?� he said. �Chuck?�
    And shot her twice in the face.
    * * * *
    2.
    THE TWO DETECTIVES met for lunch in a diner on Albermarle, two hours after Carella received the telephone call. He figured he knew what Kramer wanted. He wasn�t wrong.
    �The thing is,� Kramer was telling him, �we don�t catch many homicides up the Nine-Eight. This is more up your alley, you know what I mean.�
    Low crime rate in the Nine-Eight, was what Kramer was saying. As compared to the soaring statistics uptown in the asshole of creation, was what Kramer was saying. What�s another homicide more or less to you guys, Kramer was saying. Carella was inclined to tell him, Thanks, pal, but our platter is full right now. If only it weren�t for the First Man Up rule.
    Kramer wouldn�t have called if the Ballistics match hadn�t come through so fast. You get a blind man shot dead outside a nightclub Wednesday night, and then Friday night, at the other end of the city, you get a woman killed cooking an omelet in her own apartment, there�s no connection, right? Unless Ballistics calls early Monday morning to tell you the same nine-millimeter Glock was used in both shootings. That can capture a person�s attention, all right. It had certainly caught Kramer�s, who was now munching on a ham and egg sandwich while trying not to be too aggressive about the department�s time-honored First Man Up rule. Hence his song and dance about the Nine-Eight�s inexperience with matters homicidal.
    �So what do you say?� he asked Carella. �I�ll turn over our paper to you, the Eight-Seven can pick it up from there. This should be a snap for you guys, you already got a gun match.�
    A snap, Carella thought, and wondered how many nines were loose in the city.
    �I�d have to check with the