Ice

3

Carella did not call Levine back until ten minutes past 11:00, because that was how long it took to straighten out the protocol regarding the two corpses. By that time, the squadroom had quieted down considerably. The no-longer-pregnant hooker and her operatic new daughter had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, and the four drunks had been booked for Public Intoxication and led out of the station house to the waiting van by a triumphant Detective Genero, who perhaps did not realize that Public Intoxication was a mere violation as opposed to a misdemeanor or a felony, and was punishable only by a sentence not to exceed fifteen days. There was not a man or woman in that squadroom on that bright February morning who did not realize that Genero was wasting the city’s time and therefore money by dragging those drunks downtown, where they would undoubtedly be turned loose at once by a judge who knew that every available inch of cell space was needed for more serious offenders than a quartet of happy imbibers. Blithely, Genero went his way. The men — and the one woman who arrived at the squadroom at 11:00 A.M. that Saturday, just as Genero was leading his procession of prisoners out — shook their heads in unison and moved on to the more serious matters at hand.

The woman was a detective/2nd on loan from Headquarters Division’s Special Forces Unit. Her name was Eileen Burke, and she worked out of the Eight-Seven only occasionally, usually on cases requiring a female decoy. Which meant that whenever Eileen worked up here, she walked the streets alone as bait for a mad rapist, or any other kind of degenerate person out there. Eileen had red hair and green eyes; Eileen had long legs, sleek and clean, full-calved and tapering to slender ankles; Eileen had very good breasts and flaring hips and Eileen was five feet nine inches tall, all of which added up to someone who could not be missed on a city street if someone else had rape on his mind. But Eileen had once worked a mugging case up here, too, with Hal Willis as her backup, and she’d coincidentally worked another case with Willis as her partner in a sleeping bag in the park, both of them pretending to be passionate lovers in a complicated stakeout that included Detectives Meyer and Kling dressed as nuns and sitting on a nearby bench.

Eileen could not later remember the purpose of the elaborate stakeout. She remembered only that Willis kept putting his hand on her behind while she tried to watch a third bench on which there was a lunch pail that was supposed to contain $50,000 but instead contained fifty thousand scraps of newspaper. Willis — in his role as ardent lover — kissed her a lot while they huddled together in the sleeping bag on that bitterly cold day. The necking came to an abrupt halt when a young man picked up the lunchpail bait and began walking away toward the bench upon which the fake blind man Genero was sitting, whereupon Genero leaped to his feet, ripped off his dark glasses, unbuttoned the third button of his coat the way he had seen detectives do on television, reached in for his revolver, and shot himself in the leg. In the sleeping bag, Willis managed to slide the walkie-talkie up between Eileen’s breasts and began yelling to Hawes, who was parked in an unmarked car on Grover Avenue, that their man was heading his way — it was always fun working out of the Eight-Seven, Eileen thought now. She also thought it was a shame she only got to see Willis every once in a while. Idly, she wondered if Willis was married. Idly, she wondered why she had begun thinking of marriage so often these past few days. Was it because no one had sent her a valentine this year?

The squadroom was relatively quiet with Genero and all of his prisoners (the delivered hooker had escaped his grasp — for the time being, anyway) gone their separate ways. Cotton Hawes, at his desk, was taking a complaint from a fat black man who insisted that his wife threw hot grits all over him every time he got home late because she thought he was out larking around with another woman. Those were his words: larking around. Hawes found them somewhat poetic. Hal Willis had already gone down to book the two juves and was leading them into the alley running through the station house and adjacent to the detention cells on the street level, where Genero’s drunks were already in the van that would take them downtown. The juves still refused to take off the ski masks. One of the drunks in the van asked them if they were going to a party. As Willis delivered them to the uniformed cop, who slammed the locked door of the van behind them, Eileen Burke perched herself on the edge of Willis’s desk upstairs, and crossed her splendid legs, and then looked at her watch, and then lit a cigarette.

“Hello, Eileen,” Hawes said to her as he led the fat black gritsvictim past her and out of the squadroom, presumably to confront the grits-tossing wife in the sanctity of their own peaceful home. Eileen watched Hawes as he disappeared down the corridor. He had red hair, much like her own. She wondered idly if the progeny of two redheaded people would also be redheads. She wondered idly if Hawes was married. She began jiggling one foot.

Some three feet away from where she smoked her cigarette and impatiently jiggled her foot, Meyer was on the telephone with his wife, telling her he’d delivered a baby right here in the squadroom with a little — but only a little — help from Alf Miscolo, who was at the moment down the hall in the Clerical Office, brewing another pot of coffee now that his hot water was no longer urgently needed in maternity cases. On another telephone, at his own desk, Carella finally made contact with Levine at Midtown East, and began apologizing to him for having taken so long to get back.

It had taken him all this while to get back because a police department is like a small army, and a homicide is like a big battle in a continuing war. In big armies, even small battles get serious consideration. In a small army like a police department, a big battle like homicide commands a great deal of attention and participation from a great many people all up and down the line. In the city for which these men worked, the precinct detective assigned to any homicide was the one who’d caught the original squeal, generally assisted by any member of the detective team who’d been catching with him at the time. The moment a squadroom detective said, “I’ve got it,” or, “I’m rolling,” or some such other colorful jargon to that effect, the case was officially his, and he was expected to stick with it until he solved it, or cleared it (which was not the same thing as solving it), or simply threw up his hands in despair on it. But since homicide was such a big deal — a major offensive, so to speak — there were other people in the department who were terribly interested in the activity down there at the squadroom level. In this city, once a squadroom detective caught a bona fide or “good” homicide, he had to inform:

The Police Commissioner

The Chief of Detectives

The District Commander of the Detective Division

Homicide East or Homicide West, depending upon where the body was found

The Squad and Precinct Commanding Officers of the precinct in which the body was found

The Medical Examiner

The District Attorney

The Telegraph, Telephone, and Teletype Bureau at Headquarters

The Police Laboratory

The Police Photo Unit

Not all of these people had to be consulted on protocol that Saturday morning. But the situation was knotty enough to cause Lieutenant Byrnes, in command of the 87th Squad, to wrinkle his brow and phone Captain Frick, in command of the entire 87th Precinct, who in turn hemmed and hawed a bit and then cleverly said, “Well, Pete, this would seem to be a matter of ‘member of the force,’ wouldn’t it?” which Byrnes took to mean “member of the force handling the case,” which is exactly what he’d called Frick about in the first place. Frick advised Byrnes to go to superior rank within the division on this, which necessitated a call to the Chief of Detectives, something Byrnes would have preferred avoiding lest his superior officer think he was not up on current regs. The Chief of Detectives did a little telephonic head scratching and told Byrnes he had not had one like this in a great many years and since the police department changed its rules and regulations as often as it changed its metaphoric underwear, he would have to check on what current procedure might be, after which he would get back to Byrnes. Byrnes, eager to remind his superior officer that the men of the Eight-Seven were conscientious law enforcers, casually mentioned that there were two homicides involved here, and two detectives in separate parts of the city waiting to get moving on the second and freshest of the killings (which wasn’t quite true; neither Levine nor Carella was particularly hot to trot) so he would appreciate it if the Chief could get back to him as soon as possible on this. The Chief did not get back until close to 11:00 A.M., after he’d had a conversation with the Chief of Operations, whose office was two stories above the Chief’s own in the Headquarters Building. The Chief told Byrnes that in the opinion of the Chief of Operations, the former homicide took priority over the latter; the member of the force handling the case should be the squadroom detective who’d caught the initial squeal, whenever that had been. Byrnes didn’t know when it had been, either; he simply said, “Yes, whenever. Thank you, Chief,” and hung up, and summoned Carella to his office and said, “It’s ours,” meaning not that it was actually theirs (although in a greater sense it was) but that it was his — Carella’s. When Carella reported all this to Levine, Levine said, “Good luck,” managing to convey an enormous sense of relief in those two simple words.

Hal Willis came back into the squadroom some five minutes later, just as a windblown and frostbitten patrolman from Midtown East was delivering the packet promised by Levine when he’d first spoken to Carella earlier this morning. Willis spotted Eileen sitting on the edge of his desk, smiled, and virtually tap-danced over to her. Grinning, he said, “Hey, they sent you, huh?”

“Here’s that stuff from Levine,” Carella said to Meyer.

“You were hoping for Raquel Welch maybe?” Eileen said.

“Who’s complaining?” Willis said.

“Who raped who this time?” Eileen asked.

“Don’t talk dirty in my squadroom,” Meyer said, and winked at Carella.

“Looks very thin,” Carella said, hefting the yellow manila envelope he had just signed for.

“That it?” the patrolman asked, rubbing his hands together.

“That’s it,” Carella said.

“Anyplace I can get a cup of coffee here?” the patrolman asked.

“There’s a machine downstairs in the swing room,” Carella said.

“I got no change,” the patrolman said.

“Oh, the old Got-No-Change Ploy,” Meyer said.

“Huh?” the patrolman said.

“Try the Clerical Office down the hall,” Carella said.

“Is your insurance paid up?” Meyer said.

“Huh?” the patrolman said, and shrugged, and went down the hall.

“Where do you want to discuss this?” Willis asked Eileen.

“Oh, the old Your-Place-Or-Mine Ploy,” Meyer said. He was feeling terrific! He had just delivered a baby! There was nothing like collaborating in an act of creation to make a man feel marvelous! “Is this the Laundromat case?” he asked Willis.

“It’s the Laundromat case,” Willis said.

“A rapist in a Laundromat?” Eileen asked, and stubbed out her cigarette.

“No, a guy who’s been holding up Laundromats late at night. We figured we’d plant you in the one he’s gonna hit next—”

“How do you know which one he’ll hit next?” Eileen asked.

“Well, we’re guessing,” Willis said. “But there’s sort of a pattern.”

“Oh, the old Modus-Operandi Ploy,” Meyer said, and actually burst out laughing. Carella looked at him. Meyer shrugged and stopped laughing.

“Dress you up like a lady with dirty laundry,” Willis said.

“Sounds good to me,” Eileen said. “You’re the backup, huh?”

“I’m the backup.”

“Where will you be?”

“In a sleeping bag outside,” Willis said, and grinned.

“Sure,” she said, and grinned back.

“Remember?” he said.

“Memory like a judge,” she said.

“We’ll leave you two to work out your strategy,” Meyer said. “Come on, Steve, let’s use the interrogation room.”

“When do we start?” Eileen asked, and lit another cigarette.

“Tonight?” Willis said.

In the interrogation room down the hall, Meyer and Carella studied the single sheet of paper that had been in the envelope Levine sent them:

“He types neat,” Meyer said.

“Not much here though,” Carella said.

“This must’ve been before he got that call from Dorfsman, huh?”

“Got fast action with his BOLO,” Carella said.

“Let’s see what we’ve got on the other one,” Meyer said.

In the Clerical Office, Alf Miscolo was brewing the city’s worst coffee. Its strong aroma assailed their nostrils the moment they stepped into the room.

“Halloween has come and gone,” Meyer said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Miscolo said.

“You can stop throwing newts and frogs in your coffeepot.”

“Ha-ha,” Miscolo said. “You don’t like it, don’t drink it.” He sniffed the air. “This is a new Colombian blend,” he said, and rolled his eyes appreciatively.

“Your coffee smells just like Meyer’s cigars,” Carella said.

“I give him all my old butts,” Meyer said, and then realized his cigars were being attacked. “What do you mean?” he said. “What’s the matter with my cigars?”

“Did you come in here to waste my time, or what?” Miscolo said.

“We need the file on Paco Lopez,” Carella said.

“That was only a few days ago, wasn’t it?”

“The homicide on Culver,” Carella said, nodding. “Tuesday night.”

“It ain’t filed yet,” Miscolo said.

“So where is it?”

“Here on my desk someplace,” Miscolo said, and gestured toward the wilderness of unfiled reports covering its top.

“Can you dig it out?” Carella said.

Miscolo did not answer. He sat in the swivel chair behind the desk and began sorting out the reports. “My wife gave me that coffee for Valentine’s Day,” he said, sulking.

“She must love you a lot,” Meyer said.

“What’d your wife give you?”

“Valentine’s Day isn’t till tomorrow.”

“Maybe she’ll give you some terrific cigars,” Carella said. “Like the ones you’re already smoking.”

“Here’s a Gofredo Lopez, is that who you’re looking for?”

“Paco,” Carella said.

“There’s nothing wrong with my cigars,” Meyer said.

“You know how many Lopezes we got up here in the Eight-Seven?” Miscolo said. “Lopez up here is just like Smith or Jones in the real world.”

“Only one Lopez got shot last Tuesday,” Carella said.

“I sometimes wish all of them would,” Miscolo said.

“Give them a sip of your coffee instead,” Meyer said. “Do ’em in as sure as a sawed-off shotgun.”

“Ha-ha,” Miscolo said. “Paco, where the hell’s Paco?”

“When are you going to get around to filing all this stuff?” Meyer said.

“When I get around to it,” Miscolo said. “If all our upstanding citizens out there would stop shooting each other, and robbing each other, and stabbing each other—”

“You’d be out of a job,” Carella said.

“Shove the job,” Miscolo said. “I’ve had the job up to here. Three more years, I’ll be out of it. Three more years, I’ll be living in Miami.”

“No crime at all down there in Miami,” Meyer said.

“Nothing that’ll bother me,” Miscolo said. “I’ll be out on my boat fishing.”

“Don’t forget to take your coffeepot with you,” Meyer said.

“Here it is,” Miscolo said. “Paco Lopez. Bring it back when you’re finished with it.”

“So you can file it next Friday,” Meyer said.

“Ha-ha,” Miscolo said.

In the late-morning stillness of the squadroom, they looked over the sheaf of papers on Paco Lopez. The shooting had taken place last Tuesday night, a bit more than seventy-three hours before Sally Anderson was killed with the same gun half a city away. The girl’s body had been found at 12:30 A.M. on the morning of the thirteenth; Paco Lopez had been killed at 11:00 P.M. on the night of the ninth. The dead girl had been twenty-five years old, a white female, gainfully employed. Lopez had been nineteen, a Hispanic male, with one previous arrest for possession of narcotics with intent to sell; he had gotten off with a suspended sentence because he’d been only fifteen at the time. When they’d gone through his pockets on Tuesday night, they’d found six grams of cocaine and a rubber-banded roll of $100 bills totaling $1,100. Sally Anderson’s wallet had contained $23. There seemed very little connection between the two victims. But the same gun had been used in both slayings.

The supplementary reports on Lopez confirmed that he’d continued dealing drugs after his initial bust; his street name was El Snorto. No such word existed in the Spanish language, but the Hispanic residents in the 87th Precinct were not without their own wry sense of humor. The people Carella and Meyer had interrogated and interviewed all seemed to agree that Paco Lopez was a mean son of a bitch who’d deserved killing. Many of them suggested alternate means of death slower and more painful than the two .38 caliber bullets that had been fired into his chest at close range. One of his previous girlfriends unbuttoned her blouse for the detectives and showed them the cigarette burns Lopez had left as souvenirs on both her breasts. Even Lopez’s mother seemed to agree (although she’d crossed herself when she admitted this) that the world would be much better off without the likes of her son around.

A round-up of known gram dealers had brought up the information that Lopez was truly a small-time operator, something slightly higher than a mule in the hierarchy of cocaine “redistribution” — as one of the dealers euphemistically called it. Lopez had enjoyed a small following of users whom he’d supplied on a modest basis, but if he pulled down ten, twelve bills a week, that was a lot. Listening to this, Meyer and Carella, who each and separately pulled down only twenty bills a month, wondered if perhaps they were not in the wrong profession. All of these more successful dealers agreed that Lopez hadn’t even been worth killing. He was a threat to nobody, operating as he was on the fringes of gram-dealer society. They all figured some angry cokie had iced him. Maybe Lopez got fancy, started cutting his stuff too fine in an attempt to get more mileage out of the dust, and maybe an irate user had put the blocks to him. As simple as that. But how did a cocaine murder tie in with Sally Anderson?

“You know what I wish?” Carella said.

“What?”

“I wish we hadn’t inherited this one.”

But they had.

The superintendent of Sally Anderson’s building on North Campbell Street was not happy to see them. He had been awakened at close to 1:00 in the morning and interrogated by two other detectives, and he had not been able to fall asleep again till almost 2:30, and then he’d had to get up at 6:00 to put out the garbage cans before the Sanitation Department trucks arrived, and then he’d had to shovel the sidewalk in front of the building clear of snow, and now it was ten minutes to 12:00, and he was hungry, and he wanted his lunch, and he didn’t want to be talking to two more detectives when he hadn’t even seen what happened and hardly knew the girl from a hole in the wall.

“All I know is she lives in the building,” he said. “Her name’s Sally Anderson, she lives in apartment 3-A.” He kept using the present tense when referring to her, as though her death had never happened, and even if it had was of small consequence to him — which was the truth.

“Did she live here alone?” Carella asked.

“Far as I know.”

“What does that mean?”

“These girls today, who knows who they live with? A guy, two guys, another girl, a cat, a dog, a goldfish — who knows, and who cares?”

“But as far as you know,” Meyer said patiently, “she was living here alone.”

“As far as I know,” the super said. He was a gaunt and graying man who had lived in this city all his life. There were burglaries day and night in this building and in all the other buildings he’d ever worked in over the years. He was no stranger to violence, and had little patience with the minor details of it.

“Mind if we take a look at the apartment?” Carella asked.

“Makes no matter to me,” the super said, and led them upstairs, and unlocked the door for them.

The apartment was small and furnished eclectically, modern pieces and antiques rubbing elbows side by side, throw pillows on the black leather sofa and the carpeted floor surrounding it, framed three-sheets from various shows, including the current hit Fatback, hanging on all the walls. There were several framed professional photographs of the girl in ballet tights, in various ballet positions, hanging on the wall outside the bathroom. There was a poster for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. There was a bottle of white wine on the kitchen counter. They found her appointment calendar near the telephone in her bedroom, on a night table alongside a king-sized bed covered with a patchwork quilt.

“Did you call the lab?” Meyer asked.

“They’re through here,” Carella said, nodding, and picked up the appointment calendar. It was one of those large, spiral-bound books that, when opened, showed each separate day at a glance. A large, orange-colored, plastic paper clip allowed the calendar to fall open easily to the twelfth of February. Meyer took out his notebook and began listing her daily appointments since the beginning of the month. He had come through Thursday, February 4, when the doorbell rang. Both detectives looked at each other. Carella went to the door, half expecting the super would be standing out there in the hall, asking for a search warrant or something.

The girl outside the door looked at Carella and said, “Oh.”

She looked at the numeral on the door as if somehow she’d made a mistake, and then she frowned. She was a tall, lissome Oriental girl, perhaps five nine or five ten, with midnight black hair and slanted eyes the color of loam. She was wearing a black ski parka over blue jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. A yellow watch cap was tilted saucily over one brow. A long yellow-and-black muffler hung loose over the front of the parka.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Carella said.

“Where’s Sally?” she asked, and peered past him into the apartment. Meyer had come out of the bedroom and stood in the living room now, within her frame of vision. Both men were still wearing overcoats. She glanced briefly at Meyer, and then looked back at Carella again.

“What is this?” she said. “What’s going on here?”

She backed away a pace, and then quickly glanced over her shoulder toward the elevator. Carella knew just what she was thinking. Two strangers in overcoats, no sign of her girlfriend Sally — she was interrupting a burglary in progress. Before she could panic, he said, “We’re policemen.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said skeptically, and glanced again toward the elevator.

A native, Carella thought, and almost smiled.

He took a small leather case from his pocket, and opened it to show his shield and his ID card. “Detective Carella,” he said, “87th Squad. This is my partner, Detective Meyer.”

The girl bent to look at the shield. She bent from the waist, her legs and her back stiff. A dancer, he thought. She straightened up again and looked him dead in the eye.

“What’s the matter?’ she said. “Where’s Sally?’

“Can you tell us who you are, please?” Carella asked.

“Tina Wong. Where’s Sally?”

Carella hesitated.

“What are you doing here, Miss Wong?” he said.

“Where’s Sally?” she said again, and moved past him into the apartment. She was obviously familiar with the place; she went first into the kitchen and then the bedroom and then came back into the living room, where the two detectives were waiting. “Where is she?” she said.

“Was she expecting you, Miss Wong?” Carella asked.

The girl did not answer him. Her eyes were beginning to reflect the knowledge that something was wrong. They darted nervously in her narrow face, moving from one detective to the other. Carella did not want to tell her, not yet, that Sally Anderson was dead. The story had not made the morning’s papers, but it was certain to be in the afternoon editions, on the newsstands by now. If she already knew Sally was dead, Carella wanted the information to come from her.

“Was she expecting you?” he said again.

The girl looked at her watch. “I’m five minutes early,” she said. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on here? Was she robbed or something?”

A native for sure, he thought. In this city, burglary was always confused with robbery — except by the police. The police only had trouble distinguishing one degree of burglary from another.

“What were your plans?” Carella asked.

“Plans?”

“With Miss Anderson.”

“Lunch and then the theater,” Tina said. “It’s a matinee day, half-hour is one-thirty.” She planted her feet firmly, put her hands on her hips, and said again, “Where is she?”

“Dead,” Carella said, and watched her eyes.

Only suspicion showed there. Not shock, not sudden grief, only suspicion. She hesitated a moment, and then said, “You’re putting me on.”

“I wish I were.”

“What do you mean, dead?” Tina said. “I saw her only last night. Dead?”

“Her body was found at twelve-thirty A.M.,” Carella said.

Something came into the eyes now. Belief. And then belated shock. And then something like fear.

“Who did it?” she asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“How? Where?”

“Outside the building here,” Carella said. “She was shot.”

“Shot?”

And suddenly she burst into tears. The detectives watched her. She fumbled in her shoulder bag for a tissue, wiped her eyes, began crying again, blew her nose, and continued crying. They watched her silently. They both felt huge and awkward in the presence of her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and blew her nose again, and looked for an ashtray into which she could drop the crumpled tissue. She took another tissue from her bag, and dabbed at her eyes again. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“How well did you know her?” Meyer asked gently.

“We’re very good...” She stopped, correcting herself, realizing she was talking about Sally Anderson as though she were still alive. “We were very good friends,” she said softly.

“How long had you known her?”

“Since Fatback.”

“Are you a dancer, too, Miss Wong?”

She nodded again.

“And you’d known her since the show opened?”

“Since we went into rehearsal. Even longer ago than that, in fact. From when we were auditioning. We met at the first audition.”

“When was that, Miss Wong?” Meyer asked.

“Last June.”

“And you’ve been good friends since.”

“She was my best friend.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

“You say you saw her only last night—”

“Yes.”

“Was there a performance last night?”

“Yes.”

“What time did the curtain come down?”

“About a quarter to eleven. We ran a little long last night. Joey — he’s our comic, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the show—”

“No,” Carella said.

“No,” Meyer said.

The girl looked surprised. She shrugged, dismissing their ignorance, and then said, “Joey Hart. He was bringing down the house in the second act, so he milked it for all it was worth. We ran fifteen minutes over.”

“The curtain usually comes down at ten-thirty, is that it?” Meyer asked.

“Give or take, either way. It varies. It depends on the house.”

“And is that the last time you saw Sally Anderson alive?”

“In the dressing room later,” Tina said.

“Who else was in the dressing room?”

“All the gypsies. The girls, anyway.”

“Gypsies?”

“The dancers in the chorus.”

“How many of them?”

“There are sixteen of us altogether. Boys and girls. Eight of us were in the girls’ dressing room. Five blondes, two blacks, and a token Chink — me.” She paused. “Jamie digs blondes.”

“Jamie?”

“Our choreographer. Jamie Atkins.”

“So you were in the dressing room—”

“All eight of us. Taking off our makeup, getting out of our costumes... like that.”

“What time did you leave the dressing room, Miss Wong?”

“I got out as fast as I could.” She paused. “I had a date.”

“Who was in the dressing room when you left?” Meyer asked.

“Just Sally and Molly.”

“Molly?”

“Maguire.” She paused. “She changed her name. It used to be Molly Materasso, which isn’t too terrific for the stage, am I right?” Carella guessed it was not too terrific for the stage. “In fact, it means ‘mattress.’ ” Carella knew it meant mattress. “In fact, that was her maiden name. She’s married now, and her real name is Molly Boyd, but she still uses Molly Maguire on the stage. It’s a good name. Because of the Molly Maguires, you know.” Carella looked at her blankly. “It was a secret society in Ireland. In the 1840s,” she said. Carella was still looking at her blankly. “And later in Pennsylvania,” she said. “Anyway, you hear the name, you think you know her from someplace. The name gets her lots of jobs because directors and producers think, ‘Hey, Molly Maguire, sure, I know her.’ Actually, she’s a pretty lousy dancer.”

“But she was there alone in the dressing room with Sally when you left,” Meyer said.

“Yes.”

“What time was that?”

“About five after eleven.”

“What were they talking about, do you know?”

“It was Molly who was doing all the talking.”

“About what?”

“Geoffrey. Her husband. That’s why I got out of there as fast as I could. Actually, I wasn’t supposed to meet my date till midnight.”

“I don’t understand,” Meyer said.

“Well, Molly keeps bitching about her husband, and it gets to be a drag. I wish she’d either shut up, or else divorce him.”

“Uh-huh,” Meyer said.

“And that’s the last time you saw her, right?” Carella said.

“Yeah, right. I still can’t believe this. I mean... God! We had a cup of coffee together just before half-hour last night.”

“What’d you talk about then, Miss Wong?”

“Girl talk,” Tina said, and shrugged.

“Men?” Carella said.

“Of course men,” Tina said, and shrugged again.

“Was she living with anybody?” Meyer asked.

“Not in that sense.”

“What sense is that?”

“Most of her clothes were here, most of his were there.”

“Whose clothes?” Carella asked.

“Timmy’s.”

“Is he a boyfriend or something?” Meyer asked.

“Or something,” Tina said.

“Timmy what?” Carella asked.

“Moore.”

“Is the Timmy for Timothy?”

“I think so.”

“Timothy Moore,” Meyer said, writing the name into his notebook. “Do you know where he lives?”

“Downtown, just outside the Quarter. He’s a med student at Ramsey U. His apartment is near the school someplace.”

“You wouldn’t know the address, would you?”

“I’m sorry,” Tina said.

“When you say ‘or something’...,” Carella said.

“Well, they were sort of on-again off-again.”

“But they were romantically involved?”

“Do you mean were they sleeping together?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Yes, they were sleeping together,” Tina said. “Isn’t everybody?”

“I suppose,” Carella said. “Did she ever mention a man named Paco Lopez?”

“No. Who’s Paco Lopez? Is he in show business?”

Carella hesitated a moment, and then said, “Was Sally doing drugs?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Never mentioned drugs to you?”

“Are you talking about a little pot every now and then, or what?”

“I’m talking about the hard stuff. Heroin,” he said, and paused. “Cocaine,” he said, and watched her closely.

“Sally smoked pot,” Tina said. “Who doesn’t? But as for anything else, I don’t think so.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, if that’s what you mean. But usually, you can get a pretty good idea of who’s doing what when you’re working in a show, and I don’t think Sally was doing any kind of hard drugs.”

“Are you suggesting that some members of the cast...?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said.

“Not heroin,” Tina said, “nobody’s that stupid anymore. But some coke here and there, now and then, sure.”

“But not Sally.”

“Not to my knowledge.” Tina paused. “Not me, either, if that’s your next question.”

“That wasn’t my next question,” Carella said, and smiled. “Did Sally ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”

“Never.”

“Did she owe anybody money? To your knowledge?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Anything seem to be troubling her?”

“No. Well, yes.”

“What?”

“Nothing serious.”

“Well, what?”

“She wanted to take singing lessons again, but she didn’t know how she could find the time. She had dance every day, you know, and she was seeing a shrink three times a week.”

“And that’s it? That’s all that was troubling her?”

“That’s all she ever mentioned to me.”

“Would you know her shrink’s name?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“How’d she get along with the rest of the cast?”

“Fine.”

“How about management?”

“Who do you mean? Allan?”

“Who’s Allan?”

“Our producer, Allan Carter. I mean, who do you mean by management? The company manager? The general manager?”

“Any or all of them. How’d she get along with the people who were running the show?”

“Fine, I guess,” Tina said, and shrugged. “Once a show opens, you rarely see any of those people anymore. Well, in our case, because we’re such a big hit, Freddie comes around to check it out once or twice a week, make sure we aren’t coasting. But for the most part—”

“Freddie?”

“Our director. Freddie Carlisle.”

“How do you spell that?” Meyer asked, beginning to write again.

“With an i and an s,” Tina said. “C-a-r-l-i-s-l-e.”

“And you said your producer’s—”

“Allan Carter. Two l’s and an a.”

“Who’s your company manager?”

“Danny Epstein.”

“And your general manager?”

“Lew Eberhart.”

“Anybody else we should know about?” Carella asked.

Tina shrugged. “The stage managers? We’ve got three of them.” She shrugged again. “I mean, there are thirty-eight people in the cast alone, and God knows how many musicians and electricians and carpenters and property men and—”

“Any of them Hispanic?”

“In the crew, do you mean? I guess so. I don’t know too many of them. Except to pass them by in my underwear.”

She smiled suddenly and radiantly, and then seemed to remember what they were talking about here. The smile dropped from her face.

“How about the cast? Any Hispanics in the cast?” Carella asked.

“Two of the gypsies,” Tina said.

“Could we have their names, please?” Meyer said.

“Tony Asensio and Mike Roldan. Roldan doesn’t sound like a Spanish name, but it is. Actually, it’s Miguel Roldan.”

“Was Sally particularly friendly with either of them?”

“The gypsies in a show get to know each other pretty well,” Tina said.

“How well did she know these two men?” Carella asked.

“Same as the rest of us,” Tina said, and shrugged.

“Did she ever date either of them?”

“They’re both faggots,” Tina said. “In fact, they’re living together.” As though talk of the show had suddenly reminded her of the afternoon performance, she looked swiftly at her watch. “Oh, my God,” she said, “I’ve got to get out of here, I’ll be late!” And suddenly a look of self-chastisement crossed her face, and it appeared as if she would burst into tears again. “The show must go on, huh?” she said bitterly, shaking her head. “I’m worrying about the goddamn show, and Sally’s dead.”