Doll

Chapter 2

Sometimes a case starts like sevens coming out.

The Sachs case started just that way on Monday morning when Steve Carella and Bert Kling arrived at the apartment building on Stafford Place to question the elevator operator.

The elevator operator was close to seventy years old, but he was still in remarkable good health, standing straight and tall, almost as tall as Carella and of the same general build. He had only one eye, however — he was called Cyclops by the superintendent of the building and by just about everyone else he knew — and it was this single fact that seemed to make him a somewhat less than reliable witness. He had lost his eye, he explained, in World War I. It had been bayoneted out of his head by an advancing German in the Ardennes Forest. Cyclops — who up to that time had been called Ernest — had backed away from the blade before it had a chance to pass completely through his eye and into his brain, and then had carefully and passionlessly shot the German three times in the chest, killing him. He did not realize his eye was gone until he got back to the aid station. Until then, he thought the bayonet had only gashed his brow and caused a flow of blood that made it difficult to see. He was proud of his missing eye, and proud of the nickname Cyclops. Cyclops had been a giant, and although Ernest Messner was only six feet tall, he had lost his eye for democracy, which is as good a cause as any for which to lose an eye. He was also very proud of his remaining eye, which he claimed was capable of twenty/twenty vision. His remaining eye was a clear penetrating blue, as sharp as the mind lurking somewhere behind it. He listened intelligently to everything the two detectives asked him, and then he said, ‘Sure, I took him up myself.’

‘You took a man up to Mrs Sachs’s apartment Friday night?’ Carella asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘What time was this?’

Cyclops thought for a moment. He wore a black patch over his empty socket, and he might have looked a little like an aging Hathaway Shirt man in an elevator uniform, except that he was bald. ‘Must have been nine or nine-thirty, around then.’

‘Did you take the man down, too?’

‘Nope.’

‘What time did you go off?’

‘I didn’t leave the building until eight o’clock in the morning.’

‘You work from when to when, Mr Messner?’

‘We’ve got three shifts in the building,’ Cyclops explained. ‘The morning shift is eight a.m. to four p.m. The afternoon shift is four p.m. to midnight. And the graveyard shift is midnight to eight a.m.’

‘Which shift is yours?’ Kling asked.

‘The graveyard shift. You just caught me, in fact. I’ll be relieved here in ten minutes.’

‘If you start work at midnight, what were you doing here at nine p.m. Monday?’

‘Fellow who has the shift before mine went home sick. The super called me about eight o’clock, asked if I could come in early. I did him the favor. That was a long night, believe me.’

‘It was an even longer night for Tinka Sachs,’ Kling said.

‘Yeah. Well, anyway, I took that fellow up at nine, nine-thirty, and he still hadn’t come down by the time I was relieved.’

‘At eight in the morning,’ Carella said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Is that usual?’ Kling asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did Tinka Sachs usually have men coming here who went up to her apartment at nine, nine-thirty, and weren’t down by eight the next morning?’

Cyclops blinked with his single eye. ‘I don’t like to talk about the dead,’ he said.

‘We’re here precisely so you can talk about the dead,’ Kling answered. ‘And about the living who visited the dead. I asked a simple question, and I’d appreciate a simple answer. Was Tinka Sachs in the habit of entertaining men all night long?’

Cyclops blinked again. Take it easy, young fellow,’ he said. ‘You’ll scare me right back into my elevator.’

Carella chose to laugh at this point, breaking the tension. Cyclops smiled in appreciation.

‘You understand, don’t you?’ he said to Carella. ‘What Mrs Sachs did up there in her apartment was her business, not anyone else’s.’

‘Of course,’ Carella said. ‘I guess my partner was just wondering why you weren’t suspicious. About taking a man up who didn’t come down again. That’s all.’

‘Oh,’ Cyclops thought for a moment. Then he said ‘Well, I didn’t give it a second thought.’

‘Then it was usual, is that right?’ Kling asked.

‘I’m not saying it was usual, and I’m not saying it wasn’t. I’m saying if a woman over twenty-one wants to have a man in her apartment, it’s not for me to say how long he should stay, all day or all night, it doesn’t matter to me, sonny. You got that?’

‘I’ve got it,’ Kling said flatly.

‘And I don’t give a damn what they do up there, either, all day or all night, that’s their business if they’re old enough to vote. You got that, too?’

‘I’ve got it,’ Kling said.

‘Fine,’ Cyclops answered, and he nodded.

‘Actually,’ Carella said, ‘the man didn’t have to take the elevator down, did he? He could have gone up to the roof, and crossed over to the next building.’

‘Sure,’ Cyclops said. ‘I’m only saying that neither me nor anybody else working in this building has the right to wonder about what anybody’s doing up there or how long they’re taking to do it, or whether they choose to leave the building by the front door or the roof or the steps leading to the basement or even by jumping out the window, it’s none of our business. You close that door, you’re private. That’s my notion.’

‘That’s a good notion,’ Carella said.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘What’d the man look like?’ Kling asked. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Cyclops said. He glanced at Kling coldly, and then turned to Carella. ‘Have you got a pencil and some paper?’

‘Yes,’ Carella said. He took a notebook and a slender gold pen from his inside jacket pocket. ‘Go ahead.’

‘He was a tall man, maybe six-two or six-three. He was blond. His hair was very straight, the kind of hair Sonny Tufts has, do you know him?’

‘Sonny Tufts?’ Carella said.

‘That’s right, the movie star, him. This fellow didn’t look at all like him, but his hair was the same sort of straight blond hair.’

‘What color were his eyes?’ Kling asked.

‘Didn’t see them. He was wearing sunglasses.’

‘At night?’

‘Lots of people wear sunglasses at night nowadays,’ Cyclops said.

‘That’s true,’ Carella said.

‘Like masks,’ Cyclops added.

‘Yes.’

‘He was wearing sunglasses, and also he had a very deep tan, as if he’d just come back from down south someplace. He had on a light grey raincoat; it was drizzling a little Friday night, do you recall?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Carella said. ‘Was he carrying an umbrella?’

‘No umbrella.’

‘Did you notice any of his clothing under the raincoat?’

‘His suit was a dark grey, charcoal grey, I could tell that by his trousers. He was wearing a white shirt — it showed up here, in the opening of the coat — and a black tie.’

‘What color were his shoes?’

‘Black.’

‘Did you notice any scars or other marks on his face or hands?’

‘No.’

‘Was he wearing any rings?’

‘A gold ring with a green stone on the pinky of his right hand — no, wait a minute, it was his left hand.’

‘Any other jewelry you might have noticed? Cuff links, tie clasp?’

‘No, I didn’t see any.’

‘Was he wearing a hat?’

‘No hat.’

‘Was he clean-shaven?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did he have a beard or a mustache?’ Kling said.

‘No. He was clean-shaven.’

‘How old would you say he was?’

‘Late thirties, early forties.’

‘What about his build? Heavy, medium, or slight?’

‘He was a big man. He wasn’t fat, but he was a big man, muscular. I guess I’d have to say he was heavy. He had very big hands. I noticed the ring on his pinky looked very small for his hand. He was heavy, I’d say, yes, very definitely.’

‘Was he carrying anything? Briefcase, suitcase, attaché—’

‘Nothing.’

‘Did he speak to you?’

‘He just gave me the floor number, that’s all. Nine, he said. That was all.’

‘What sort of voice did he have? Deep, medium, high?’

‘Deep.’

‘Did you notice any accent or regional dialect?’

‘He only said one word. He sounded like anybody else in the city.’

‘I’m going to say that word several ways,’ Carella said. ‘Would you tell me which way sounded most like him?’

‘Sure, go ahead.’

‘Ny-un,’ Carella said.

‘Nope.’

‘Noin.’

‘Nope.’

‘Nahn.’

‘Nope.’

‘Nan.’

‘Nope.’

‘Nine.’

‘That’s it. Straight out. No decorations.’

‘Okay, good,’ Carella said. ‘You got anything else, Bert?’

‘Nothing else,’ Kling said.

‘You’re a very observant man,’ Carella said to Cyclops.

‘All I do every day is look at the people I take up and down,’ Cyclops answered. He shrugged. ‘It makes the job a little more interesting.’

‘We appreciate everything you’ve told us,’ Carella said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

Outside the building, Kling said, ‘The snotty old bastard.’

‘He gave us a lot,’ Carella said mildly.

‘Yeah.’

‘We’ve really got a good description now.’

‘Too good, if you ask me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The guy has one eye in his head, and one foot in the grave. So he reels off details even a trained observer would have missed. He might have been making up the whole thing, just to prove he’s not a worthless old man.’

‘Nobody’s worthless,’ Carella said mildly. ‘Old or otherwise.’

‘The humanitarian school of criminal detection,’ Kling said.

‘What’s wrong with humanity?’

‘Nothing. It was a human being who slashed Tinka Sachs to ribbons, wasn’t it?’ Kling asked.

And to this, Carella had no answer.

A good modeling agency serves as a great deal more than a booking office for the girls it represents. It provides an answering service for the busy young girl about town, a baby-sitting service for the working mother, a guidance-and-counseling service for the man-beleagured model, a pied-à-terre for the harried and hurried between-sittings beauty.

Art and Leslie Cutler ran a good modeling agency. They ran it with the precision of a computer and the understanding of an analyst. Their offices were smart and walnut-paneled, a suite of three rooms on Carrington Avenue, near the bridge leading to Calm’s Point. The address of the agency was announced over a doorway leading to a flight of carpeted steps. The address plate resembled a Parisian street sign, white enameled on a blue field, 21 Carrington, with the blue-carpeted steps beyond leading to the second story of the building. At the top of the stairs there was a second blue-and-white enameled sign, Paris again, except that this one was lettered in lowercase and it read, the cutlers.

Carella and Kling climbed the steps to the second floor, observed the chic nameplate without any noticeable show of appreciation, and walked into a small carpeted entrance foyer in which stood a white desk starkly fashionable against the walnut walls, nothing else. A girl sat behind the desk. She was astonishingly beautiful, exactly the sort of receptionist one would expect in a modeling agency; if she was only the receptionist, my God, what did the models look like?

‘Yes, gentlemen, may I help you?’ she asked. Her voice was Vassar out of finishing school out of country day. She wore eyeglasses with exaggerated black frames that did nothing whatever to hide the dazzling brilliance of her big blue eyes. Her makeup was subdued and wickedly innocent, a touch of pale pink on her lips, a blush of rose at her cheeks, the frames of her spectacles serving as liner for her eyes. Her hair was black and her smile was sunshine. Carella answered with a sunshine smile of his own, the one he usually reserved for movie queens he met at the governor’s mansion.

‘We’re from the police,’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Carella; this is my partner, Detective Kling.’

‘Yes?’ the girl said. She seemed completely surprised to have policemen in her reception room.

‘We’d like to talk to either Mr or Mrs Cutler,’ Kling said. ‘Are they in?’

‘Yes, but what is this in reference to?’ the girl asked.

‘It’s in reference to the murder of Tinka Sachs,’ Kling said.

‘Oh,’ the girl said. ‘Oh, yes.’ She reached for a button on the executive phone panel, hesitated, shrugged, looked up at them with radiant blue-eyed innocence, and said, ‘I suppose you have identification and all that.’

Carella showed her his shield. The girl looked expectantly at Kling. Kling sighed, reached into his pocket, and opened his wallet to where his shield was pinned to the leather.

‘We never get detectives up here,’ the girl said in explanation, and pressed the button on the panel.

‘Yes?’ a voice said.

‘Mr Cutler, there are two detectives to see you, a Mr King and a Mr Coppola.’

‘Kling and Carella,’ Carella corrected.

‘Kling and Capella,’ the girl said.

Carella let it go.

‘Ask them to come right in,’ Cutler said.

‘Yes, sir.’ The girl clicked off and looked up at the detectives. ‘Won’t you go in, please? Through the bull pen and straight back.’

‘Through the what?’

‘The bull pen. Oh, that’s the main office, you’ll see it. It’s right inside the door there.’ The telephone rang. The girl gestured vaguely toward what looked like a solid walnut wall, and then picked up the receiver. ‘The Cutlers,’ she said. ‘One moment, please.’ She pressed a button and then said, ‘Mrs Cutler, it’s Alex Jamison on five-seven, do you want to take it?’ She nodded, listened for a moment, and then replaced the receiver. Carella and Kling had just located the walnut knob on the walnut door hidden in the walnut wall. Carella smiled sheepishly at the girl (blue eyes blinked back radiantly) and opened the door.

The bull pen, as the girl had promised, was just behind the reception room. It was a large open area with the same basic walnut-and-white decor, broken by the color of the drapes and the upholstery fabric on two huge couches against the left-hand window wall. The windows were draped in diaphanous saffron nylon, and the couches were done in a complementary brown, the fabric nubby and coarse in contrast to the nylon. Three girls sat on the couches, their long legs crossed. All of them were reading Vogue. One of them had her head inside a portable hair dryer. None of them looked up as the men came into the room. On the right-hand side of the room, a fourth woman sat behind a long white Formica counter, a phone to her ear, busily scribbling on a pad as she listened. The woman was in her early forties, with the unmistakable bones of an ex-model. She glanced up briefly as Carella and Kling hesitated inside the doorway, and then went back to her jottings, ignoring them.

There were three huge charts affixed to the wall behind her. Each chart was divided into two-by-two-inch squares, somewhat like a colorless checkerboard. Running down the extreme left-hand side of each chart was a column of small photographs. Running across the top of each chart was a listing for every working hour of the day. The charts were covered with plexiglass panels, and a black crayon pencil hung on a cord to the right of each one. Alongside the photographs, crayoned onto the charts in the appropriate time slots, was a record and a reminder of any model’s sittings for the week, readable at a glance. To the right of the charts, and accessible through an opening in the counter, there was a cubbyhole arrangement of mailboxes, each separate slot marked with similar small photographs.

The wall bearing the door through which Carella and Kling had entered was covered with eight-by-ten black-and-white photos of every model the agency represented, some seventy-five in all. The photos bore no identifying names. A waist-high runner carried black crayon pencils spaced at intervals along the length of the wall. A wide white band under each photograph, plexiglass-covered, served as the writing area for telephone messages. A model entering the room could, in turn, check her eight-by-ten photo for any calls, her photo-marked mailbox for any letters, and her photo-marked slot on one of the three charts for her next assignment. Looking into the room, you somehow got the vague impression that photography played a major part in the business of this agency. You also had the disquieting feeling that you had seen all of these faces a hundred times before, staring down at you from billboards and up at you from magazine covers. Putting an identifying name under any single one of them would have been akin to labeling the Taj Mahal or the Empire State Building. The only naked wall was the one facing them as they entered, and it — like the reception-room wall — seemed to be made of solid walnut, with nary a door in sight.

‘I think I see a knob,’ Carella whispered, and they started across the room toward the far wall. The woman behind the counter glanced up as they passed, and then pulled the phone abruptly from her ear with a ‘Just a second, Alex,’ and said to the two detectives, ‘Yes, may I help you?’

‘We’re looking for Mr Cutler’s office,’ Carella said.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Yes, we’re detectives. We’re investigating the murder of Tinka Sachs.’

‘Oh. Straight ahead,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Leslie Cutler. I’ll join you as soon as I’m off the phone.’

‘Thank you,’ Carella said. He walked to the walnut wall, Kling following close behind him, and knocked on what he supposed was the door.

‘Come in,’ a man’s voice said.

Art Cutler was a man in his forties with straight blond hair like Sunny Tufts, and with at least six feet four inches of muscle and bone that stood revealed in a dark blue suit as he rose behind his desk, smiling, and extended his hand.

‘Come in, gentlemen,’ he said. His voice was deep. He kept his hand extended while Carella and Kling crossed to the desk, and then he shook hands with each in turn, his grip firm and strong. ‘Sit down, won’t you?’ he said, and indicated a pair of Saarinen chairs, one at each comer of his desk. ‘You’re here about Tinka,’ he said dolefully.

‘Yes,’ Carella said.

‘Terrible thing. A maniac must have done it, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Carella said.

‘Well, it must have been, don’t you think?’ he said to Kling.

‘I don’t know,’ Kling said.

‘That’s why we’re here, Mr Cutler,’ Carella explained. To find out what we can about the girl. We’re assuming that an agent would know a great deal about the people he repre—’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Cutler interrupted, ‘and especially in Tinka’s case.’

‘Why especially in her case?’

‘Well, we’d handled her career almost from the very beginning.’

‘How long would that be, Mr Cutler?’

‘Oh, at least ten years. She was only nineteen when we took her on, and she was… well, let me see, she was thirty in February, no, it’d be almost eleven years, that’s right.’

‘February what?’ Kling asked.

‘February third,’ Cutler replied. ‘She’d done a little modeling on the coast before she signed with us, but nothing very impressive. We got her into all the important magazines, Vogue. Harper’s, Mademoiselle, well, you name them. Do you know what Tinka Sachs was earning?’

‘No, what?’ Kling said.

‘Sixty dollars an hour. Multiply that by an eight- or ten-hour day, an average of six days a week, and you’ve got somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.’ Cutler paused. ‘That’s a lot of money. That’s more than the president of the United States earns.’

‘With none of the headaches,’ Kling said.

‘Mr Cutler,’ Carella said, ‘when did you last see Tinka Sachs alive?’

‘Late Friday afternoon,’ Cutler said.

‘Can you give us the circumstances?’

‘Well, she had a sitting at five, and she stopped in around seven to pick up her mail and to see if there had been any calls. That’s all.’

‘Had there?’ Kling asked.

‘Had there what?’

‘Been any calls?’

‘I’m sure I don’t remember. The receptionist usually posts all calls shortly after they’re received. You may have seen our photo wall—’

‘Yes,’ Kling said.

‘Well, our receptionist takes care of that. If you want me to check with her, she may have a record, though I doubt it. Once a call is crayoned onto the wall—’

‘What about mail?’

‘I don’t know if she had any or… wait a minute, yes, I think she did pick some up. I remember she was leafing through some envelopes when I came out of my office to chat with her.’

‘What time did she leave here?’ Carella asked.

‘About seven-fifteen.’

‘For another sitting?’

‘No, she was heading home. She has a daughter, you know. A five-year-old.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Carella said.

‘Well, she was going home,’ Cutler said.

‘Do you know where she lives?’ Kling asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Stafford Place.’

‘Have you ever been there?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘How long do you suppose it would take to get from this office to her apartment?’

‘No more than fifteen minutes.’

‘Then Tinka would have been home by seven-thirty … if she went directly home.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Did she say she was going directly home?’

‘Yes. No, she said she wanted to pick up some cake, and then she was going home.’

‘Cake?’

‘Yes. There’s a shop up the street that’s exceptionally good. Many of our mannequins buy cakes and pastry there.’

‘Did she say she was expecting someone later on in the evening?’ Kling asked.

‘No, she didn’t say what her plans were.’

‘Would your receptionist know if any of those telephone messages related to her plans for the evening?’

‘I don’t know, we can ask her.’

‘Yes, we’d like to,’ Carella said.

‘What were your plans for last Friday night, Mr Cutler?’ Kling asked.

‘My plans?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What time did you leave the office?’

‘Why would you possibly want to know that?’ Cutler asked.

‘You were the last person to see her alive,’ Kling said.

‘No, her murderer was the last person to see her alive,’ Cutler corrected. ‘And if I can believe what I read in the newspapers, her daughter was the next-to-last person to see her alive. So I really can’t understand how Tinka’s visit to the agency or my plans for the evening are in any way germane, or even related, to her death.’

‘Perhaps they’re not, Mr Cutler,’ Carella said, ‘but I’m sure you realize we’re obliged to investigate every possibility.’

Cutler frowned, including Carella in whatever hostility he had originally reserved for Kling. He hesitated a moment and then grudgingly said, ‘My wife and I joined some friends for dinner at Les Trois Chats. ’ He paused and added caustically, ‘That’s a French restaurant.’

‘What time was that?’ Kling asked.

‘Eight o’clock.’

‘Where were you at nine?’

‘Still having dinner.’

‘And at nine-thirty?’

Cutler sighed and said, ‘We didn’t leave the restaurant until a little after ten.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘Really, is this necessary?’ Cutler said, and scowled at the detectives. Neither of them answered. He sighed again and said, ‘We walked along Hall Avenue for a while, and then my wife and I left our friends and took a cab home.’

The door opened.

Leslie Cutler breezed into the office, saw the expression on her husband’s face, weighed the silence that greeted her entrance, and immediately said, ‘What is it?’

Tell them where we went when we left here Friday night,’ Cutler said. ‘The gentlemen are intent on playing cops and robbers.’

‘You’re joking,’ Leslie said, and realized at once that they were not. ‘We went to dinner with some friends,’ she said quickly. ‘Marge and Daniel Ronet — she’s one of our mannequins. Why?’

‘What time did you leave the restaurant, Mrs Cutler?’

‘At ten.’

‘Was your husband with you all that time?’

‘Yes, of course he was.’ She turned to Cutler and said, ‘Are they allowed to do this? Shouldn’t we call Eddie?’

‘Who’s Eddie?’ Kling said.

‘Our lawyer.’

‘You won’t need a lawyer.’

‘Are you a new detective?’ Cutler asked Kling suddenly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s supposed to mean your interviewing technique leaves something to be desired.’

‘Oh? In what respect? What do you find lacking in my approach, Mr Cutler?’

‘Subtlety, to coin a word.’

‘That’s very funny,’ Kling said.

‘I’m glad it amuses you.’

‘Would it amuse you to know that the elevator operator at 791 Stafford Place gave us an excellent description of the man he took up to Tinka’s apartment on the night she was killed? And would it amuse you further to know that the description fits you to a tee? How does that hit your funny bone, Mr Cutler?’

‘I was nowhere near Tinka’s apartment last Friday night.’

‘Apparently not. I know you won’t mind our contacting the friends you had dinner with, though — just to check.’

‘The receptionist will give you their number,’ Cutler said coldly.

‘Thank you.’

Cutler looked at his watch. ‘I have a lunch date,’ he said. ‘If you gentlemen are finished with your—’

‘I wanted to ask your receptionist about those telephone messages,’ Carella said. ‘And I’d also appreciate any information you can give me about Tinka’s friends and acquaintances.’

‘My wife will have to help you with that.’ Cutler glanced sourly at Kling and said, ‘I’m not planning to leave town. Isn’t that what you always warn a suspect not to do?’

‘Yes, don’t leave town,’ Kling said.

‘Bert,’ Carella said casually, ‘I think you’d better get back to the squad. Grossman promised to call with a lab report sometime this afternoon. One of us ought to be there to take it.’

‘Sure,’ Kling said. He went to the door and opened it. ‘My partner’s a little more subtle than I am,’ he said, and left.

Carella, with his work cut out for him, gave a brief sigh, and said, ‘Could we talk to your receptionist now, Mrs Cutler?’