Doll

Chapter 3

When Carella left the agency at two o’clock that Monday afternoon, he was in possession of little more than he’d had when he first climbed those blue-carpeted steps. The receptionist, radiating wide-eyed helpfulness, could not remember any of the phone messages that had been left for Tinka Sachs on the day of her death. She knew they were all personal calls, and she remembered that some of them were from men, but she could not recall any of the men’s names. Neither could she remember the names of the women callers — yes, some of them were women, she said, but she didn’t know exactly how many — nor could she remember why any of the callers were trying to contact Tinka.

Carella thanked her for her help, and then sat down with Leslie Cutler — who was still fuming over Kling’s treatment of her husband — and tried to compile a list of men Tinka knew. He drew another blank here because Leslie informed him at once that Tinka, unlike most of the agency’s mannequins (the word ‘mannequin’ was beginning to rankle a little) kept her private affairs to herself, never allowing a date to pick her up at the agency, and never discussing the men in her life, not even with any of the other mannequins (in fact, the word was beginning to rankle a lot). Carella thought at first that Leslie was suppressing information because of the jackass manner in which Kling had conducted the earlier interview. But as he questioned her more completely, he came to believe that she really knew nothing at all about Tinka’s personal matters. Even on the few occasions when she and her husband had been invited to Tinka’s home, it had been for a simple dinner for three, with no one else in attendance, and with the child Anna asleep in her own room. Comparatively charmed to pieces by Carella’s patience after Kling’s earlier display, Leslie offered him the agency flyer on Tinka, the composite that went to all photographers, advertising agency art directors, and prospective clients. He took it, thanked her, and left.

Sitting over a cup of coffee and a hamburger now, in a luncheonette two blocks from the squadroom, Carella took the composite out of its manila envelope and remembered again the way Tinka Sachs had looked the last time he’d seen her. The composite was an eight-by-ten black-and-white presentation consisting of a larger sheet folded in half to form two pages, each printed front and back with photographs of Tinka in various poses.

Carella studied the composite from first page to last.

The only thing the composite told him was that Tinka posed fully clothed, modeling neither lingerie nor swimwear, a fact he considered interesting, but hardly pertinent. He put the composite into the manila envelope, finished his coffee, and went back to the squadroom.

Kling was waiting and angry.

‘What was the idea, Steve?’ he asked immediately.

‘Here’s a composite on Tinka Sachs,’ Carella said. ‘We might as well add it to our file.’

‘Never mind the composite. How about answering my question?’

‘I’d rather not. Did Grossman call?’

‘Yes. The only print they’ve found in the room so far are the dead girl’s. They haven’t yet examined the knife, or her pocketbook. Don’t try to get me off this, Steve. I’m goddamn good and sore.’

‘Bert, I don’t want to get into an argument with you. Let’s drop it, okay?’

‘No.’

‘We’re going to be working on this case together for what may turn out to be a long time. I don’t want to start by—’

‘Yes, that’s right, and I don’t like being ordered back to the squadroom just because someone doesn’t like my line of questioning.’

‘Nobody ordered you back to the squadroom.’

‘Steve, you outrank me, and you told me to come back, and that was ordering me back. I want to know why.’

‘Because you were behaving like a jerk, okay?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then maybe you ought to step back and take an objective look at yourself.’

‘Damnit, it was you who said the old man’s identification seemed reliable! Okay, so we walk into that office and we’re face to face with the man who’d just been described to us! What’d you expect me to do? Serve him a cup of tea?’

‘No, I expected you to accuse him—’

‘Nobody accused him of anything!’

‘—of murder and take him right up here to book him,’ Carella said sarcastically. ‘That’s what I expected.’

‘I asked perfectly reasonable questions!’

‘You asked questions that were snotty and surly and hostile and amateurish. You treated him like a criminal from go, when you had no reason to. You immediately put him on the defensive instead of disarming him. If I were in his place, I’d have lied to you just out of spite. You made an enemy instead of a friend out of someone who might have been able to help us. That means if I need any further information about Tinka’s professional life, I’ll have to beg it from a man who now has good reason to hate the police.’

‘He fit our description! Anyone would have asked—’

‘Why the hell couldn’t you ask in a civil manner? And then check on those friends he said he was with, and then get tough if you had something to work with? What did you accomplish your way? Not a goddamn thing. Okay, you asked me, so I’m telling you. I had work to do up there, and I couldn’t afford to waste more time while you threw mud at the walls. That’s why I sent you back here. Okay? Good. Did you check Cutler’s alibi?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he with those people?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did they leave the restaurant at ten and walk around for a while?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then Cutler couldn’t have been the man Cyclops took up in his elevator.’

‘Unless Cyclops got the time wrong.’

That’s a possibility, and I suggest we check it. But the checking should have been done before you started hurling accusations around.’

‘I didn’t accuse anybody of anything!’

‘Your entire approach did! Who the hell do you think you are, a Gestapo agent? You can’t go marching into a man’s office with nothing but an idea and start—’

‘I was doing my best!’ Kling said. ‘If that’s not good enough, you can go to hell.’

‘It’s not good enough,’ Carella said, ‘and I don’t plan to go to hell, either.’

‘I’m asking Pete to take me off this,’ Kling said.

‘He won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I outrank you, like you said, and I want you on it.’

‘Then don’t ever try that again, I’m warning you. You embarrass me in front of a civilian again and—’

‘If you had any sense, you’d have been embarrassed long before I asked you to go.’

‘Listen, Carella—’

‘Oh, it’s Carella now, huh?’

‘I don’t have to take any crap from you, just remember that. I don’t care what your badge says. Just remember I don’t have to take any crap from you.’

‘Or from anybody.’

‘Or from anybody, right.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘See that you do,’ Kling said, and he walked through the gate in the slatted railing and out of the squadroom.

Carella clenched his fists, unclenched them again, and then slapped one open hand against the top of his desk.

Detective Meyer Meyer came out of the men’s room in the corridor, zipping up his fly. He glanced to his left toward the iron-runged steps and cocked his head, listening to the angry clatter of Kling’s descending footfalls. When he came into the squadroom, Carella was leaning over, straight-armed, on his desk. A dead, cold expression was on his face.

‘What was all the noise about?’ Meyer asked.

‘Nothing,’ Carella said. He was seething with anger, and the word came out as thin as a razor blade.

‘Kling again?’ Meyer asked.

‘Kling again.’

‘Boy,’ Meyer said, and shook his head, and said nothing more.

On his way home late that afternoon, Carella stopped at the Sachs apartment, showed his shield to the patrolman still stationed outside her door, and then went into the apartment to search for anything that might give him a line on the men Tinka Sachs had known — correspondence, a memo pad, an address book, anything. The apartment was empty and still. The child Anna Sachs had been taken to the Children’s Shelter on Saturday and then released into the custody of Harvey Sadler — who was Tinka’s lawyer — to await the arrival of the little girl’s father from Arizona. Carella walked through the corridor past Anna’s room, the same route the murderer must have taken, glanced in through the open door at the rows of dolls lined up in the bookcase, and then went past the room and into Tinka’s spacious bedroom. The bed had been stripped, the blood-stained sheets and blanket sent to the police laboratory. There had been blood stains on the drapes as well, and these too had been taken down and shipped off to Grossman. The windows were bare now, overlooking the rooftops below, the boats moving slowly on the River Dix. Dusk was coming fast, a reminder that it was still only April. Carella flicked on the lights and walked around the chalked outline of Tinka’s body on the thick green carpet, the blood soaked into it and dried to an ugly brown. He went to an oval table serving as a desk on the wall opposite the bed, sat in the pedestal chair before it, and began rummaging through the papers scattered over its top. The disorder told him that detectives from Homicide had already been through all this and had found nothing they felt worthy of calling to his attention. He sighed and picked up an envelope with an airmail border, turned it over to look at the flap, and saw that it had come from Dennis Sachs — Tinka’s ex-husband — in Rainfield, Arizona. Carella took the letter from the envelope, unfolded it, and began reading:

Carella refolded the letter and put it back into the envelope. He had just learned that Dennis Sachs was out in the desert on some sort of project involving the Hohokam, whoever the hell they were, and that apparently he was still carrying the torch for his ex-wife. But beyond that Carella also learned that Tinka had been going through what Dennis called a ‘monumental struggle’ and ‘ordeal’. What ordeal? Carella wondered. What struggle? And what exactly was the ‘nightmare’ Dennis mentioned later in his letter? Or was the nightmare the struggle itself, the ordeal, and not something that predated it? Dennis Sachs had been phoned in Arizona this morning by the authorities at the Children’s Shelter, and was presumably already on his way East. Whether he yet realized it or not, he would have a great many questions to answer when he arrived.

Carella put the letter in his jacket pocket and began leafing through the other correspondence on the desk. There were bills from the electric company, the telephone company, most of the city’s department stores, the Diners’ Club, and many of the local merchants. There was a letter from a woman who had done house cleaning for Tinka and who was writing to say she could no longer work for her because she and her family were moving back to Jamaica, B.W.I. There was a letter from the editor of one of the fashion magazines, outlining her plans for shooting the new Paris line with Tinka and several other mannequins that summer, and asking whether she would be available or not. Carella read these cursorily, putting them into a small neat pile at one edge of the oval table, and then found Tinka’s address book.

There were a great many names, addresses, and telephone numbers in the small red leather book. Some of the people listed were men. Carella studied each name carefully, going through the book several times. Most of the names were run-of-the-mill Georges and Franks and Charlies, while others were a bit more rare like Clyde and Adrian, and still others were pretty exotic like Rion and Dink and Fritz. None of them rang a bell. Carella closed the book, put it into his jacket pocket and went through the remainder of the papers on the desk. The only other item of interest was a partially completed poem in Tinka’s handwriting:

He folded the poem carefully and put it into his jacket pocket together with the address book. Then he rose, walked to the door, took a last look into the room, and snapped out the light He went down the corridor toward the front door. The last pale light of day glanced through Anna’s windows into her room, glowing feebly on the faces of her dolls lined up in rows on the bookcase shelves. He went into the room and gently lifted one of the dolls from the top shelf, replaced it, and then recognized another doll as the one Anna had been holding in her lap on Saturday when he’d talked to her. He lifted the doll from the shelf.

The patrolman outside the apartment was startled to see a grown detective rushing by him with a doll under his arm. Carella got into the elevator, hurriedly found what he wanted in Tinka’s address book, and debated whether he should call the squad to tell where he was headed, possibly get Kling to assist him with the arrest. He suddenly remembered that Kling had left the squadroom early. His anger boiled to the surface again. The hell with him, he thought, and came out into the street at a trot, running for his car. His thoughts came in a disorderly jumble, one following the next, the brutality of it, the goddamn stalking animal brutality of it, should I try making the collar alone, God that poor kid listening to her mother’s murder, maybe I ought to go back to the office first, get Meyer to assist, but suppose my man is getting ready to cut out, why doesn’t Kling shape up. Oh God, slashed again and again. He started the car. The child’s doll was on the seat beside him. He looked again at the name and address in Tinka’s book. Well? he thought. Which? Get help or go it alone?

He stepped on the accelerator.

There was an excitement pounding inside him now, coupled with the anger, a high anticipatory clamor that drowned out whatever note of caution whispered automatically in his mind. It did not usually happen this way, there were usually weeks or months of drudgery. The surprise of his windfall, the idea of a sudden culmination to a chase barely begun, unleashed a wild energy inside him, forced his foot onto the gas pedal more firmly. His hands were tight on the wheel. He drove with a recklessness that would have brought a summons to a civilian, weaving in and out of traffic, hitting the horn and the brake, his hands and his feet a part of the machine that hurtled steadily downtown toward the address listed in Tinka’s book.

He parked the car, and came out onto the sidewalk, leaving the doll on the front seat. He studied the name plates in the entrance hallway — yes, this was it. He pushed a bell button at random, turned the knob on the locked inside door when the answering buzz sounded. Swiftly he began climbing the steps to the third floor. On the second-floor landing, he drew his service revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson Police Model 10. The gun had a two-inch barrel that made it virtually impossible to snag on clothing when drawn. It weighed only two ounces and was six and seven-eighths of an inch long, with a blue finish and a checked walnut Magna stock with the familiar S&W monogram. It was capable of firing six shots without reloading.

He reached the third floor and started down the hallway. The mailbox had told him the apartment number was 34. He found it at the end of the hall, and put his ear to the door, listening. He could hear the muted voices of a man and a woman inside the apartment. Kick it in, he thought. You’ve got enough for an arrest. Kick in the door, and go in shooting if necessary — he’s your man. He backed away from the door. He braced himself against the corridor wall opposite the door, lifted his right leg high, pulling back the knee, and then stepped forward and simultaneously unleashed a piston kick, aiming for the lock high on the door.

The wood splintered, the lock ripped from the jamb, the door shot inward. He followed the opening door into the room, the gun leveled in his right hand. He saw only a big beautiful dark-haired woman sitting on a couch facing the door, her legs crossed, a look of startled surprise on her face. But he had heard a man from outside. Where—?

He turned suddenly. He had abruptly realized that the apartment fanned out on both sides of the entrance door, and that the man could easily be to his right or his left, beyond his field of vision. He turned naturally to the right because he was right-handed, because the gun was in his right hand, and made the mistake that could have cost him his life.

The man was on his left.

Carella heard the sound of his approach too late, reversed his direction, caught a single glimpse of straight blond hair like Sonny Tufts, and then felt something hard and heavy smashing into his face.