Fat Ollie's Book

11

IT TOOK THREE HOURSby train to the state capital. It would have taken them a half-hour to get to the airport and—with security what it was these days—another two hours to get to the gate, all for an hour-long flight. If Carella had opted to drive up, the trip would have taken almost four hours. He figured it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. Besides, on the train, he and Teddy could talk.

Communicating with a person who could neither hear nor speak required, first, that you be able to see each other’s hands (because that’s what signing was all about, Gertie) and next that the impaired (what a word!) partner be able to see the other person’s lips so that she could read them.

Car rides were difficult. Without risking an accident, Carella could not turn his head away from the road to look at Teddy. And without leaning over at an impossible angle and virtually flashing her fingers in his face, Teddy simply could not communicate. They had tried. They knew. The only way it worked was to translate through the kids, Carella speaking, the kids in the back seat signing, and then Teddy signing back to the kids, and the kids speaking the words out loud to their father. But alone in a car? Forget about talking.

The train was a good solution.

Besides, this was Saturday, and Carella’s day off, and he was entitled.

The morning train they caught was virtually empty. He bought coffee and donuts in the café car and carried them back to where they’d spread out like pashas on two reclining seats. Leisurely, they watched the countryside flashing by outside, and talked about things there hadn’t been time to discuss in their busy workaday schedules.

Carella was most concerned about having to give away both his motherandhis sister at their joint weddings this coming June. How was he supposed to do that? Come down the aisle with one of them on each arm? Or lead his mother down first, a nod to seniority, and then go back up for his sister. While Luigi…

“I really wish his name wasn’t Luigi,” he said, signing simultaneously. “It really makes him sound like a wop.”

He’s Italian,Teddy signed.That’s a very common name in Italy.

“Yeah, well, this is America,” he said, and then something occurred to him. “You don’t think she’ll bemovingto Milan, do you?”

Well, of course, she will,Teddy signed.That’s where he lives.

“How come I didn’t think of that till now?”

Maybe that’s what’s troubling you about taking them down the aisle.

“Maybeeverythingis troubling me about taking them down the aisle.”

Get over it,Teddy signed.

He nodded, and then fell silent for a while, thinking again that his mother shouldn’t be remarrying so soon after his father’s death, and his sister shouldn’t be marrying the man who’d unsuccessfully prosecuted his father’s slayer. Well, get over it, he thought. You should have got over it last Christmas already, put it to rest, okay? They’re getting married, you’re giving them away, put on a happy face.

Come June sixteenth, his mother would be Mrs. Luigi—Jesus, I hate that name!—Fontero, and his sister would be Mrs. Henry Lowell, whom he suspected he’d have to start calling “Hank,” the way his sister did, “Could you please pass the gravy, Hank?”

Luigi and Hank.

Jesus.

Teddy was talking again. He turned to watch her hands. He loved the way she signed, her fingers moving almost liquidly, her eyes and her face adding expression to what she was saying, her lips mouthing the words her hands signaled. She was telling him she had to find a job. She was telling him she was tired of addressing envelopes at home, she wanted to get out into the real workplace. She’d been checking the want ads, but these were difficult times, and being so limited…

“You’re not limited,” he told her.

Well, if I can’t hear, I won’t exactly be hired as conductor of the Philharmonic,she said, and burst out laughing.

Carella laughed with her.

“How about moderator on a talk show?” he suggested.

Good idea,she said.Or a translator at the UN.

The countryside flashed by.

Spring was alive out there.

It was a very short ride.

THEY TOOK A TAXIto the Raleigh Hotel, and Carella settled her in the coffee shop while he went to find the manager.

The manager’s name was Floyd Morgan. He told Carella at once that he hated the job up here because the winters were so damn cold. “Well, look at it,” he said. “It’s already the end of April, and there’s still snow on the ground up here, can you believe it?” He told Carella that the last managerial position he’d held was in the Bahamas, at the Club Med there on Columbus Isle. “Nowthatwas a job,” he said. “Great people to work with, wonderful food, and an atmosphere of…joy,do you know? Happiness. Not like here. Here it’s doom and gloom all winter long and by the time May rolls around, you’re ready to jump out the window. Have a seat,” he said, “let me get some coffee for us. You’ve had a long journey, you must have a lot of questions to ask.”

Carella did indeed have a lot of questions to ask.

In police work, it was always a matter of how best to utilize one’s time and assets, especially now that travel had become so difficult. It would have seemed simpler and cheaper all around to have done this by telephone; he’d had to call, anyway, to set up this Saturday appointment. But there were too many people he needed to talk to here, and he couldn’t have done that on the phone. Moreover, there were no nuances in a phone call. You could not see a person’s face, his eyes, you could not detect the tremor of a lip, or a slight hesitation. A catch in the voice, a change of tone, any of which might indicate a lie or merely a bit of information being withheld. Face to face, you saw and heard it all.

He let Morgan have it flat out.

“I’m trying to find out if Lester Henderson had a woman with him last weekend,” he said.

Morgan hesitated, and then said, “You understand, of course…”

Carella was about to hear the speech he’d already heard from 10,012 hotel managers, the one about the privacy of guests and the hotel’s responsibility to protect a guest’s rights and privileges, the same speech he’d heard from priests and lawyers and even accountants, on occasion, so he cut immediately to the chase by saying the magic words, “Yes, but this is a homicide.”

Smiling understandingly as he said the words.

Yes, I know the difficulties of weighing civic duty against corporate obligation. But a grievous breach has taken place here, and I am but a mere public servant attempting to address this wrong and correct it, so I truly would appreciate candor and honesty because this is a homicide, you see, and that is the worst possible crime, sir, so please help me solve it because this is a homicide.

“I would have to check our records, sir,” Morgan said.

He led Carella into the Business Office and asked someone there to pull up the registration records for the past weekend. As Carella suspected, Lester Henderson had occupied a single room, albeit with a king-sized bed, and had registered as he himself alone, Lester Lyle Henderson.

“The rate would have been higher for a double,” Morgan said.

Carella was tempted to ask why hotels charged more for double occupancy than single. A room was a room, wasn’t it? No matter how many people were in it? Well, maybe they provided more towels and little bottles of shampoo if they rented it as a double. He was sure there had to be a reason. Maybe this went back to the so-called blue laws, when women weren’t allowed to drink at the bar, or—for all he knew—occupy hotel rooms with men who weren’t their husbands.

“Could you check your records for a woman with the first name Carrie?” he asked. “Who also might have been here last weekend.”

“That…might be difficult,” Morgan said.

“This is a homicide,” Carella said.

“Let me see if the computer can do a find.”

The computer did, in fact, “do a find”—but it found nothing for anyone named Carrie.

“How about the initials JSH?” Carella said.

“Really, I don’t see how…”

“Do a find for last names beginning with the letter ‘H,’” Carella said. “Then narrow it to first names beginning with ‘J,’ and if you get lucky, close in on the ‘S.’ This would’ve been a woman, too.”

“JSH,” Morgan said.

“Please.”

Three women whose last names began with the letter “H” had checked in last Saturday. All three worked for IBM. Only one of them had a first name beginning with the letter “J.” She had signed in as Miss Jacqueline Held, no middle initial, and had given an address in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“How old was she, would you know?” Carella asked.

“Our records would not show that,” Morgan said.

“How about the room clerk who checked her in? Would he remember?”

“She,” Morgan corrected. “Everyone behind the registration desk is a woman.”

“Would the same room clerk be working today?”

“Usually we have the same people on weekends, yes.”

“Can we find out which one of them checked in Miss Held?”

“Nothing is impossible,” Morgan said, and then added—somewhat sarcastically, Carella thought—“This is a homicide, you know.” But he was smiling.

The clerk who’d checked in Miss Jacqueline Held recalled her as a dark-haired woman in her forties with a distinct Southern accent.

“What room was Henderson in?” Carella asked.

“We’ll have to go back to the Business Office,” Morgan said, and briskly led the way down the corridor. Carella got the impression that he was beginning to enjoy himself. Well, it had been a long hard winter.

The computer showed that Henderson had stayed in room 1215, which was occupied at the moment.

“How about the maid who cleaned that room?” Carella asked. “Is she working today.”

“Well, let’s see if we can find her, shall we?” Morgan said, sounding positively ebullient now.

Two maids had worked the twelfth floor that weekend. Both of them were from Brazil. One of them was short, the other very tall. The short one spoke only Portuguese. The tall one’s English was halting at best. She told Carella that she vaguely remembered the people who had occupied—

“People?” he said.

“Man and girl,” she said, and nodded.

“Can you describe them for me?”

“Man short, eyeglasses, maybe forty-five. Girl blond, maybe eighteen, nineteen. Maybe was daughter, no?”

The short maid suddenly began shaking her head and speaking in rapid Portuguese.

“What is it?” Carella asked.

“She says wasn’t daughter. The girl.”

“She saw her, too?”

“Você também a viu?”

“Claro que vi ela. Eles estavam esperando o elevador.”

“She says, Yes, she saw her. They were waiting for the elevator.”

“What makes her think this wasn’t his daughter?”

“Por que você acha que ela não era filha dele?”the tall one asked.

“Porque eles estavam se beijando,”the short one said.

The tall one turned back to them and shrugged.

“Because they were kissing,” she said.

The Business Office showed no room service charges for Henderson on Saturday night. Neither had he charged anything to the hotel restaurant that night. The records did reveal, however, that he had charged his stay to an American Express card. Carella copied down the number and expiration date of his card, and then asked if he could use a telephone.

He stopped in the coffee shop first, found Teddy sitting alone at a table near the window, sneaked up behind her, kissed her on top of the head, and then came around to sit opposite her at the table.

“You okay?” he asked.

Her hands flying, she told him it was very nice sitting here in the window, watching all the comings and goings outside, somewhat like seeing a foreign movie with actors she didn’t recognize. She kept making up stories about them in her head. Which of them were married, which of them were having affairs, which of them were businessmen or spies…

I think I saw one who was positively a detective,she said.

He watched her hands, watched her lips mouthing the words.

“How do you know he was a detective?” he asked.

First off, he was very handsome…

“I don’t know any detectives who are handsome,” he said.

I know one,she said.

He took her hands, kissed first one, and then the other.

“I have to make one phone call,” he said. “Then we can have some lunch and start home. Will you be okay here?”

If I have any more coffee, I won’t beableto eat lunch,she said.

“This’ll take maybe ten, fifteen minutes,” he said.

Morgan found him a phone in a private little office, and provided him with an 800 number to call for American Express. The woman at the other end wanted to know how she could tell for sure he was a police detective. He gave her his shield number, gave her the number at the precinct, gave her his lieutenant’s name, even gave her the name of the Chief of Detectives and the number to call at Headquarters to verify that he was for real. She asked him to hold while she talked to her supervisor.

Carella waited.

The woman came back some five minutes later.

“Sorry, Detective Carella,” she said, “we have to check. What can I do for you?”

He explained what she could do for him.

AT LUNCH, he told Teddy what he had learned today.

“He was definitely here with the girl. One of the maids saw him kissing her while they were waiting for an elevator.”

Romantic,Teddy signed.

“Very. Unless you’re married to someone else.”

You’d better never,she said.

“My guess is she checked into a separate room, snuck down the hall each night to sleep with him.”

Like the English do,Teddy said.At country houses on weekends down from London.

“Yes, exactly like the English do,” he said. “How do you know what the English do in country houses on weekends?”

Movies,she said, and shrugged.

“His Sunday morning room service charge was fortwobreakfasts. Bit careless, huh?”

Not if you don’t think anyone’ll come around checking.

“American Express gave me two restaurant charges for him. One for dinner on Saturday night, the other for dinner on Sunday. Nothing for lunch Saturday, that’s when he was with the Governor. The Saturday night dinner cost two hundred bucks…”

Teddy rolled her eyes.

“You said it. Dinner on Sunday was a hundred and eighty. These were the best restaurants in town, but he couldn’t have been alone unless he had an enormous appetite.”

Teddy nodded agreement.

“I’d like to check both restaurants, if you still have the patience. What it looks like, he sent his aide home, dallied with the blonde on Saturday and Sunday nights, and then…”

You didn’t mention she was a blonde.

“A blonde, yes.”

Do you like blondes?

“Everyone likes blondes.”

How aboutyou?We’re talking aboutyouhere. Doyoulike blondes?

“I like brunettes with big brown eyes and enormous appetites.”

Am I eating too much?

“Not if you’re hungry.”

I’m very hungry. How about one of these women who sign to the deaf on television shows? The ones you see on the side of the screen in a little box?

“Hey,” he said. “Nowthat’sa good idea.”

You think so?

“I really do.”

Wouldn’t I have to hear what the anchors are saying?

“They work from scripts. You’ll have a script.”

Is that what they do?

“Absolutely.”

The problem is…

Her hands stopped.

“What?” he said.

I’m not pretty enough,she said, and shrugged.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Her eyes were suddenly brimming with tears.

But worthless,she signed.

He reached across the table and took her hands.

“Beautiful and valuable,” he said.

To you.

“To anyone with any sense at all,” he said, and got up in the crowded restaurant and walked around the table and tilted her face to his, and kissed her on the lips.

Someone across the room applauded.

THE MAITRE D’ ATAmboise, the restaurant Henderson and his little blond friend had dined at on Saturday night, remembered the couple well.

“Yes indeed,” he said. “He was a man in his late forties, I’d say, short, slim, with one of those haircuts you see on all those television politicians. They ought to get new barbers, don’t you think?”

“And the woman with him?”

“Oh, very pretty. Very. A young blond girl, I thought at first she was his daughter.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Well, to begin with, he asked for a quiet table. And the girl said, ‘Aromantictable, please,’ and squeezed his arm, you know the way they do. He ordered a bottle of champagne before dinner, and when they toasted, they looped their arms through each other, you know, hooked their arms together, and brought their heads close over the table, whispering to each other, you know the way they do. And they were holding hands all through dinner, and…well, to put it plainly, they were behaving like sweethearts. I’ve never seen a father and daughter behave that way, and I’ve been in this business thirty-one years now.”

“How old would you say she was?”

“Eighteen? Nineteen? No older than that.”

“You didn’t happen to hear her name, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Wouldn’t have heard him calling her ‘Carrie,’ would you?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“What time did they leave here?”

“Well, the reservation was for eight, I think they left at around nine-thirty, it must have been. He had his arm around her. They were definitely not father and daughter. He told me the food had been delicious, and the girl said, ‘Oh, yesss,’ gushing, you know the way they do. Well, I’msureshe enjoyed the meal, she came back for lunch the next day.”

“What do you mean? He brought her here again on Sun…?”

“No, no. She was here alone. The girl. She came back alone. Walked in at about twelve-thirty, asked for the same table they’d had the night before. I was happy to oblige. We don’t get much of a lunch crowd.”

“How did she pay?” Carella asked.

“Credit card,” the maitre d’ said.

“I don’t suppose…”

“Let me check.”

THE NAME ONthe credit card was Carolyn Harris.

This did not jibe with the JSH monogram on the stationery, but then again it never had, and now at least they had a last name.

And a first one, too, for that matter.

Carella called Kling from the train station and told him what he had. Kling said he’d get on it right away. The time was four fifty-nine, and the clock was ticking: Carella’s train left at five-oh-seven.

Kling could find no listing for a Carolyn Harris in any of the city’s phone directories.

Her credit card company adamantly refused to reveal her address. Kling told a supervisor in Arizona or wherever the hell she was that he would have to petition for a court order. She told him she was sorry he felt that way, but she had to protect the confidentiality of their clients, and so on and so forth, but at least she was live, which was better than listening to a menu with four hundred choices. But she knew damn well he would not petition for a court order.

Instead, he went down the list of the stores carrying Letter Perfect stationery, dialing each one in order, this time asking each and every one of them to please check for any monogrammed stationery order with the last name “Harris,” the first initial “J,” and the middle initial “S.”

Each of the stores promised to get back to him.

One of them phoned at six-thirty that Saturday night, just as Kling was about to leave the squadroom.

The woman on the phone told him they’d taken that particular stationery order six months ago, on the phone, from a charge customer named Joanna Susan Harris, who lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Kling wrote down her address, dialed 411 for information, and phoned her not a moment later. He told her who he was, and then asked if she had a daughter named Carolyn.

“What is it?” Mrs. Harris said at once. “Has something happened to her?”

“No, ma’am,” Kling said, “she’s fine. But we’re investigating a case here…”

“Has she done something wrong?”

“No, no, please, believe me, she’s not in any sort of trouble. We’d like to ask her some questions about the victim, though, a man we think she may have known.”

There was a long silence on the line. When Mrs. Harris spoke again, she sounded suddenly very distant.

“I see,” she said.

“Would you know where we can reach her, ma’am?”

“Why?”

“So we can…”

“Is she going to need a lawyer?” Mrs. Harris asked.

“I don’t think so. Why would she need a lawyer?”

“You said victim.”

“Yes, ma’am, this is a homicide we’re investigating.”

Another long silence. Then:

“Is she a suspect?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why…?”

“We’re tracking the victim’s whereabouts, we think your daughter may have been with him on the day before the murder.”

“Then sheisa suspect.”

“No, ma’am, I would not say she’s a suspect.”

“I won’t give you her address,” Mrs. Harris said, and hung up.

He called her back at once.

“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “don’t hang up on me again, okay? This is a homicide we’re investigating, and we need to know your daughter’s address. If I can’t get it from you on the phone, then I’ll go to the Grand Jury here for a subpoena compelling you to testify. Our DA will make a call to the prosecutor in Broward or Dade, or wherever you are, and he’ll go to a local court for an order supporting the subpoena. Next thing you know, there’ll be a sheriff on your doorstep, and you’ll be flying up here to face the Grand Jury, who’ll either get the address from you or charge you with contempt. Air travel is no picnic these days, ma’am, so why not save all of us a lot of trouble and give me the address right here and now?”

“You are a bully, young man,” Mrs. Harris said.

But she gave him the address.