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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.
    â€œYou think our occupation is dangerous?” he asked.
    â€œDangerous, no,” Carella said. “Hazardous.”
    â€œEnough to warrant what he calls
combat
insurance?”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œI never go to movies where somebody dies and goes to heaven,” Carella said.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œNever,” Carella said, and smiled. He was thinking if you worked with a man long enough, you began reading his mind.
    â€œYour kids aren’t teenagers yet,” Meyer said. “Rophies? Roofies? Rope? R2? Those are all names the kids use for it.”
    â€œNew one on me,” Carella said.
    â€œIt 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?”
    â€œAt least two mills.”
    â€œWould’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?”
    â€œNever,” Carella said.
    â€œIt’s also called the Date-Rape drug,” 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.”
    â€œSounds like science fiction,” Carella said.
    â€œSmall white tablet,” Meyer said, “you can either dissolve it in a drink or snort it. Ruffies is another name. The Forget Pill, too. Or Roofenol. Or Rib. Costs three, four bucks a tab.”
    â€œThanks for the input,” Carella said.
    The men were on their way to Andrew Hale’s bank.
    They were now in possession of a court order authorizing 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 hell of a lot. A passbook they’d found in the apartment showed a bank balance of $2,476.12. The old man had also owned a collection of 78 rpm’s dating back to the thirties and forties, none of them rare, all of them swing hits of the day—Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glenn Miller—played and replayed over and over again until the shellac was scratched and the grooves worn. There were a few books in the apartment as well, most of them dog-eared paperbacks. There was an eight-piece setting of inexpensive silver plate.
    True enough, in a city where a five-dollar bill in a tattered billfold was often cause enough for murder, these belongings alone might have provided motive. But not for two people as well off as the Keatings.