"Who is it?" asked Kurtz.
"You can read about it in the papers tomorrow," said
the black cop. "But it looks like the guy was just after Officer O'Toole. If we find any connection between the shooter and you, I'll be the first to let you know."
"I bet you will," said Kurtz.
Kemper disconnected.
Kurtz took Goba's diary out of his jacket pocket and flipped through the pages. The scrawled entries were all dated, although Goba put the day first, then the month, and then the year, in the European manner. Much of it was in Arabic, but the English entries screamed out Goba's hatred of Parole Office "Zionist Bitch" O'Toole, how she was stealing Goba's future, keeping him from getting married, forcing him to return to a life of crime, discriminating against Arabs, part of the Zionist conspiracy, blah, blah.
The entries were made in a hard-tipped ballpoint pen, which was good. Kurtz flipped to the missing page. Only a ragged fringe remained. He found a pencil in his desk and began gently shading the next, empty page. The impressions from the heavily pressed ballpoint came up immediately.
Kurtz was asleep sitting at his desk when Arlene returned with the food, but she woke him gently and made him eat something. She'd brought two cold bottles of iced tea with the Chinese food.
They used chopsticks, sat at Arlene's desk, and ate in silence for a minute. Kurtz slid Goba's spiral notebook across to her. It was opened to the pencil-shaded page. "How does that read to you?" he asked.
Still holding her chopsticks, Arlene putted the notebook under her desk lamp and squinted for a minute, moving her glasses forward and back. "Letters missing," she said at last. "Lots of misspellings. But it looks like the final sentence reads I can't live with something, maybe the guilt , although he spelled it without a 'u, and then, I must also die ." Arlene looked at Kurtz. "Goba wrote a suicide note."
"Yeah. Convenient isn't it?"
"It doesn't make sense" began Arlene. "Wait a minute. These numbers above the scrawl."
"Yeah."
"It's dated Thursday," said Arlene.
"Uh-huh."
"Didn't you say that there was no sign that he'd crawled into the bedroom, Joe? No blood trail there?"
"That's what I said."
"So his diary ends with the announcement that he can't live with the guilt of shooting O'Toole, and presumably you, too, and that he's going to kill himself. On the day after he bled to death."
"A little peculiar, isn't it?" said Kurtz.
"But that page was missing," said Arlene. She pushed the notebook aside and began spearing at her beef and broccoli. "Maybe you shouldn't have taken this notebook, Joe. The cops might have noticed the missing page and shaded in this last entry's imprint just the way you did."
"Maybe," said Kurtz.
"And they'd know that Goba's confession was a fake." She looked at him over the desk lamp and adjusted her glasses. "But you don't want them to know."
"Not yet," said Kurtz. "So far, it's the only advantage I have in this whole mess."
They ate the rest of the meal in silence.
When he was finished and the white cartons were wrapped in plastic and tossed away, Kurtz stood, walked to his own desk, swayed slightly, shook his head, took the.38 out of the Sheep Dip drawer, and lifted his leather jacket off the back of the chair.
"Uh-uh," said Arlene, coming around her desk and taking the pistol out of his hands. "You're not going anywhere tonight, Joe."
"Need to talk to a man in Lackawanna," mumbled Kurtz. "Baby Doc. Have to find"
"Not tonight Your scalp is bleeding againsutures are all screwed up. I'm changing the bandages and you can sleep on the couch. You've done it enough times before."
Kurtz shook his head but allowed himself to be led into the little bathroom.
The bandages were blood-encrusted and they pulled scab and scalp when Arlene jerked them off, but Kurtz was too exhausted to react. If the headache was a noise, it was reaching jackhammer and jet-engine levels now. He sat dully on the edge of the sink while she brought out the serious first-aid kit cleaned and daubed the scalp wound, and set clean bandages in place.
"I have to see a guy," said Kurtz, still sitting, trying to visualize standing and retrieving his.38 and jacket. "Baby Doc will probably be at Curly's. It's Friday night."
"He'll be there tomorrow," said Arlene, leading him into the office and pressing against his shoulders until he sat down and then flopped back on the old couch. "Baby Doc always holds court at Curry's on Saturday mornings."
She turned to grab the old blanket they kept on the arm of the couch. When she turned back, Kurtz was asleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Dodger liked Saturday mornings. Always had. As a kid, he'd hated school, loved weekends, loved playing hooky. Saturdays were the best, even though none of the other kids in the area would play with him. Still, he'd had his Saturday-morning cartoons and then he'd go out alone into the woods adjoining the town. Sometimes he'd take a pet with him into the woodsa neighbor's cat, say, or Tom Herenson's old Labrador that time, or even that pale girl's, Shelley's, green and yellow parakeet. He'd always enjoyed taking the animals into the woods. Although the parakeet hadn't been that much fun.