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but the River Harb lay beyond it and the next state. In this exclusive corner of the Eight-Seven, Smoke Rise provided the ultra-urban face of the city with an atmosphere at once countrified and otherworldly. Smoke Rise signified wealth and exclusivity.
    It was here, on a tree-shaded street named Prospect Lane, that City Councilman Lester Henderson had lived with his wife and two children. And it was not seven miles away and a hundred miles distant—at the Martin Luther King Memorial Hall on St. Sebastian Avenue in Diamondback, a black and Hispanic section of the city coiling like a rattlesnake on the fringes of civilization—that Henderson had been shot to death yesterday morning.
    â€œMeans we can expect Ollie any minute,” Byrnes said.
    Both men looked at each other.
    Carella actually sighed.
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    OLLIE DID NOT , in fact, show up at the precinct until twelve noon that Tuesday, just in time for lunch. Ollie’s internal mechanism always told him when it was time to eat. Ollie sometimes believed it told him it was always time to eat.
    â€œAnybody for lunch?” he asked.
    He had opened the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squadroom from the long corridor outside, and was waddling—the proper word, Carella thought—across the room toward where Carella sat behind his desk. On this bright April morning, Ollie was wearing a plaid sports jacket over a lime green golfing shirt and blue Dacron trousers. He looked like a Roman galley under full sail. By contrast, Carella—who was expecting the imminent appearance of a burglary victim he’d scheduled for an interview—looked sartorially elegant in a wheat-colored linen shirt with the throat open and the sleeves rolled up over his forearms, and dark brown trousers that matched the color of his eyes. Ollie noticed for the first time that Carella’s eyes slanted downward, giving his face a somewhat Oriental appearance. He wondered if there was a little Chink in the armor back there someplace, huh, kiddies?
    â€œHow’s my eternally grateful friend?” he asked.
    He was referring to the fact that around Christmastime, he had saved Carella’s life—twice, no less.
    â€œEternally grateful,” Carella said. In all honesty, he didn’t enjoy the idea of being indebted to Ollie in any which way whatever. “What brings you to this part of town?” he asked. As if he didn’t know.
    â€œSeems a resident here got himself aced yesterday morning, ah yes,” Ollie said.
    â€œSo I understand,” Carella said.
    â€œThen why’d you ask, m’little chickadee?” Ollie said, once again doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation. The pity was—but hedidn’t realize this—nobody today knew who W. C. Fields was. Whenever Ollie did his impersonation, everyone thought he was doing Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.
    â€œWant to go get a bite to eat?”
    â€œGee, what else is new?” Carella said.
    Sarcasm, Ollie thought. Everybody today is into sarcasm.
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    THE PLACE they chose was a diner on Culver and South Eleventh, which Ollie said was run by the Mob, which Carella doubted since he’d only been working in this precinct forever, and except for prostitution and numbers, the boys had pretty much ceded the hood to black gangs and Colombian posses. The black gangs used to devote their time to street rumbles until they realized there was money to be made dealing dope. The Colombian gangs knew this all along. Unfortunately, dope didn’t stop anyone from killing anyone else. In fact, it seemed to encourage the activity.
    â€œI need your help,” Ollie said. “I’m gonna have my hands full checking out the Hall and how somebody could’ve got in and out of there with what Ballistics now tells me was a .32 aced Henderson. His views weren’t particularly appreciated in the so-called Negro community, you know,