Ice

4

From where the two patrolmen sat in the patrol car parked at the curb, it seemed evident that the priest was winning the fight. They had no desire to get out of the car and break up the fight, not with it being so cold out there, and especially since the priest seemed to be winning. Besides, they were sort of enjoying the way the priest was mopping up the street with his little spic opponent.

Up here in the Eight-Seven, you sometimes couldn’t tell the spics (Hispanics, you were supposed to say in your reports) from the whites because some of them had high Spanish blood in them and looked the same as your ordinary citizen. For all the patrolmen knew, the priest was a spic, too, but he had a very white complexion, and he was bigger than most of the cockroach-kickers up here. The two patrolmen sat in the heated comfort of the car and guessed aloud that he was maybe six three, six four, something like that, maybe weighing in at 240 pounds or thereabouts. They couldn’t figure which church he belonged to. None of the neighborhood churches had priests who dressed the way this one was dressed, but maybe he was visiting from someplace in California — they dressed that way in California, didn’t they, at those missions they had out there in the Napa Valley? The priest was wearing a brown woolen robe, and his head was shaved like a monk’s head, its bald crown glistening above the tonsure that encircled it like a wreath. One of the patrolmen in the car asked the other one what you called that brown thing the priest was wearing, that thing like a dress, you know? The other patrolman told him it was called a hassock, stupid, and the first patrolman said, “Oh yeah, right.” They were both rookies who had been working out of the Eight-Seven for only the past two weeks, otherwise they’d have known that the priest wasn’t a priest at all, even though he was known in the precinct as Brother Anthony.

Clearly, Brother Anthony was in fact beating the man to a pulp. The man was a little Puerto Rican pool shark who’d made the enormous mistake of trying to hustle him. Brother Anthony had dragged the little punk out of the pool hall and first had picked him up and hurled him against the brick wall of the tenement next door, just to stun him, you know, and then had swung a pool cue at his kneecaps, hoping to break them but breaking only the pool cue instead, and was now battering him senseless with his hamlike fists as the two patrolmen watched from the snug comfort of the patrol car. Brother Anthony weighed a lot, but he had lifted weights in prison, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. He sometimes asked people to hit him as hard as they could in the belly, and laughed with pleasure whenever anyone told him how hard and strong he was. All year round, even in the hot summer months, he wore the brown woolen cassock. During the summer months, he wore nothing at all under it. He would lift the hem of the cassock and show his sandals to the neighborhood hookers. “See?” he would say. “That’s all I got on under this thing.” The hookers would oooh and ahhh and try to lift the cassock higher, making believe they didn’t think he was really naked under it. Brother Anthony was very graceful for such a big man; he would laugh and dance away from them, dance away.

In the winter, he wore army combat boots instead of the sandals. He was using those boots now to stomp the little Puerto Rican pool hustler into the icy sidewalk. In the patrol car, the two cops debated whether they should get out and break this thing up before the little spic got his brains squashed all over the sidewalk. They were spared having to make any decision because their radio erupted with a 1010, and they radioed back that they were rolling on it. They pulled away from the curb just as Brother Anthony leaned over the prostrate and unconscious hustler to take his wallet from his pocket. Only $10 of the money in that wallet had been hustled from Brother Anthony, but he figured he might as well take all of it because of all the trouble the little punk had put him to. He was cleaning out the wallet when Emma came around the corner.

Emma was known in the neighborhood as the Fat Lady, and most of the people in the precinct tried to steer very clear of her because she was known to possess a short temper and a straight-edge razor. She carried the razor in her shoulder bag, hanging from the left shoulder, so that she could reach in there with her right hand, and whip open the razor in a flash, and lop off any dude’s ear, or slash his face or his hands, or sometimes go for the money, open the man’s windpipe and his jugular with one and the same stroke. Nobody liked to mess with the Fat Lady, which was perhaps why the crowd began to disperse the moment she came around the corner. On the other hand, the crowd might have dispersed anyway, now that the action had ended; nobody liked to stand around doing nothing on a cold day, especially in this neighborhood, where somehow it always seemed colder than anyplace else in the city. This neighborhood could have been Moscow. The park bordering this neighborhood could have been Gorky Park. Maybe it was. Or vice versa.

“Hello, bro,” the Fat Lady said.

“Hello, Emma,” he said, looking up from where he was crouched over the unconscious hustler. He had stomped the man real good. A thin trickle of blood was beginning to congeal on the ice beneath the stupid punk’s head. His face looked very blue. Brother Anthony tossed the empty wallet over his shoulder, stood up to his full height, and tucked the $500-odd into the pouchlike pocket at the front of the cassock. He began walking, and Emma fell into step beside him.

Emma was perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three years old, in any event a good six or seven years older than Brother Anthony. Her full name was Emma Forbes, which had been her name when she was still married to a black man named Jimmy Forbes, since deceased, the unfortunate victim of a shoot-out in a bank he’d been trying to hold up. The man who’d shot and killed Emma’s husband was a bank guard who’d been sixty-three years old at the time, a retired patrolman out of the 28th Precinct downtown. He’d never lived to be sixty-four because Emma sought him out a month after her husband’s funeral, and slit his throat from ear to ear one fine April night when the forsythias were just starting to bud. Emma did not like people who deprived her or her loved ones of anything they wanted or needed. Emma was fond of saying, “The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” an expression she used to justify her frequent vengeful attacks. It was uncertain whether the expression had preceded the nickname, or vice versa. When someone was five feet six inches tall and weighed 170 pounds, it was reasonable to expect — especially in this neighborhood, where street names were as common as legal names — that sooner or later someone would begin calling her the Fat Lady, even without having heard her operatic reference.

Brother Anthony was one of the very few people who knew that the name on her mailbox was Emma Forbes, and that she had been born Emma Goldberg, not to be confused with the anarchist Emma Goldman, who’d been around long before Emma Goldberg was even born. Brother Anthony was also one of the very few people who called her Emma, the rest preferring to call her either Lady (not daring to use the adjective in her presence) or nothing at all, lest she suddenly take offense at an inflection and whip out that razor of hers. Brother Anthony was the only person in the precinct, and perhaps the entire world, who thought Emma Goldberg Forbes aka the Fat Lady was exceptionally beautiful and extraordinarily sexy besides.

“Listen, there’s no accounting for taste,” a former acquaintance once said to Brother Anthony immediately after he’d mentioned how beautiful and sexy he thought Emma was. The man’s thoughtless comment was uttered a moment before Brother Anthony plucked him off his stool and hurled him through the plate glass mirror behind the bar at which they’d been sitting. Brother Anthony did not like people who belittled the way he felt about Emma. Brother Anthony saw her quite differently than most people saw her. Most people saw a dumpy little bleached blonde in a black cloth coat and black cotton stockings and blue track shoes and a black shoulder bag in which there was a straightedge razor with a bone handle. Brother Anthony — despite empirical knowledge to the contrary — saw a natural blonde with curly ringlets that framed a Madonna-like face and beautiful blue eyes; Brother Anthony saw breasts like watermelons and a behind like a brewer’s horse; Brother Anthony saw thick white thighs and acres and acres of billowy flesh; Brother Anthony saw a shy, retiring, timid, vulnerable darling dumpling caught in the whirlwind of a hostile society, someone to cuddle and cherish and console.

Just walking beside her, Brother Anthony had an erection, but perhaps that was due to the supreme satisfaction of having beaten that pool hustler to within an inch of his life; it was sometimes difficult to separate and categorize emotions, especially when it was so cold outside. He took Emma’s elbow and led her onto Mason Avenue toward a bar in the middle of a particularly sordid stretch of real estate that ran north and south for a total of three blocks. There was a time when the Street (as the three-block stretch was familiarly defined) was called the Hussy Hole by the Irish immigrants and later Foxy Way by the blacks. With the Puerto Rican influx, the street had changed its language — but not its major source of income. The Puerto Ricans referred to it as La Vía de Putas. The cops used to call it Whore Street before the word hooker became fashionable. They now referred to it as Hooker Heaven. In any language, you paid your money, and you took your choice.

Not too long a time ago, the madams who ran the sex emporiums called themselves Mama-this or Mama-that. In those days, Mama Teresa’s was the best-known joint on the street. Mama Carmen’s was the filthiest. Mama Luz’s had been raided most often by the cops because of the somewhat exotic things that went on behind its crumbling brick facade. Those days were gone forever. The brothel, as such, was a thing of the past, a quaint memory. Nowadays, the hookers operated out of the massage parlors and bars that lined the street, and turned their tricks in the hotbed hotels that blinked their eyeless neon to the night. The bar Brother Anthony chose was a hooker hangout named Sandy’s, but at 2:00 in the afternoon most of the neighborhood working girls were still sleeping off Friday night’s meaningless exercise. Only a black girl wearing a blonde wig was sitting at the bar.

“Hello, Brother Anthony,” she said. “Hello, Lady.”

“Dominus vobiscum,” Brother Anthony said, cleaving the air with the edge of his right hand in a downward stroke, and then passing the hand horizontally across the first invisible stroke to form the sign of the cross. He had no idea what the Latin words meant. He knew only that they added to the image he had consciously created for himself. “All is image,” he liked to tell Emma, the words rolling mellifluously off his tongue, his voice deep and resonant, “all is illusion.”

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked.

“A little red wine, please,” Brother Anthony said. “Emma?”

“Gin on the rocks, a twist,” Emma said.

“See what the other lady will have,” Brother Anthony said, indicating the black-and-blonde hooker. He was feeling flush. His encounter with the ambitious pool hustler had netted him a $500 profit. He asked the bartender for some change, went to the jukebox, and selected an assortment of rock-and-roll tunes. He loved rock-and-roll. He especially loved rock-and-roll groups that dressed up on stage so you couldn’t recognize them later on the street. The black-and-blonde hooker was telling the bartender she wanted another scotch and soda. As Brother Anthony went back to his stool at the other end of the bar, she said, “Thanks, Brother Anthony.”

The bartender, who was also the Sandy who owned the place, wasn’t too happy to see Brother Anthony in here. He did not like having to replace plate glass mirrors every time Brother Anthony took it in his head to get insulted by something somebody said. Luckily, the only other person in here today, besides Brother Anthony and his fat broad, was the peroxided nigger at the end of the bar, and Brother Anthony had just bought her a drink, so maybe there’d be no trouble this afternoon. Sandy hoped so. This was Saturday. There’d be plenty of trouble here tonight, whether Sandy wanted it or not.

In this neighborhood, and especially on this street, Saturday night was never the loneliest night of the week, no matter what the song said. In this neighborhood, and especially on this street, nobody had to go lonely on a Saturday night, not if he had yesterday’s paycheck in his pocket. Along about 10:00 tonight, there’d be more hookers cruising this bar than there’d be rats rummaging in the empty lot next door, black hookers and white ones, blondes and brunettes and redheads, even some with pink hair or lavender hair, males and females and some who were AC/DC. Two by two they came, it took all kinds to make a world, into the ark they came, your garden variety scaly-legged $20-a-blowjob beasts or your slinky racehorses who thought they should be working downtown at a C-note an hour, it took all kinds to make a pleasant family neighborhood bar. Two by two they came and were welcomed by Sandy, who recognized that all those men drinking at the bar were here to sample the flesh and not the spirits, and who was anyway getting a piece of the action from each of the nocturnal ladies who were allowed to cruise here, his recompense (or so he told them) for having to pay off the cops on the beat and also their sergeant who dropped in every now and again. Actually, Sandy was ahead of the game, except when the weekend trouble assumed larger proportions than it normally did. He dreaded weekends, even though it was the weekends that made it possible for the bar to remain open on weekdays.

“This is on the house,” he said to Brother Anthony, hoping the bribe would keep him away from here tonight, and then suddenly panicking when he realized Brother Anthony might like the hospitality and might decide to return for more of it later.

“I pay for my own drinks,” Brother Anthony said, and fetched the roll of bills from the pouchlike pocket running across the front of his cassock, and peeled off one of the pool hustler’s tens, and put it on the bar.

“Even so...,” Sandy started, but Brother Anthony silently made the sign of the cross on the air, and Sandy figured who was he to argue with a messenger of God? He picked up the ten-spot, rang up the sale, and then put Brother Anthony’s change on the bar in front of him. At the end of the bar, the black hooker in the frizzy blonde wig lifted her glass and said, “Cheers, Brother Anthony.”

“Dominus vobiscum,” Brother Anthony said, lifting his own glass.

Emma put her fleshy hand on his knee.

“Did you hear anything else?” she whispered.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Did you?”

“Only that he had eleven bills in his wallet when he caught it.”

“Eleven bills,” Brother Anthony whispered.

“And also, it was a .38. The gun.”

“Who told you that?”

“I heard two cops talking in the diner.”

“A .38,” Brother Anthony said. “Eleven bills.”

“That’s the kind of bread I’m talking about,” Emma said. “That’s cocaine bread, my dear.”

Brother Anthony let his eyes slide sidelong down the bar, just to make sure neither the bartender nor the black hooker was tuning in. The bartender was leaning over the bar, in deep and whispered conversation with the hooker. His fingertips roamed the yoke front of her dress, brushing the cleft her cushiony breasts formed. Brother Anthony smiled.

“The death of that little schwanz has left a gap,” Emma said.

“Indeed,” Brother Anthony said.

“There are customers adrift in the night,” Emma said.

“Indeed,” Brother Anthony said again.

“It would be nice if we could fill that gap,” Emma said. “Inherit the trade, so to speak. Find out who the man was servicing, become their new candyman and candylady.”

“There’s people who might not like that,” Brother Anthony said.

“I don’t agree with you. I don’t think the little pisher was killed for his trade. No, my dear, I definitely disagree with you.”

“Then why?”

“Was he killed? My educated guess?”

“Please,” Brother Anthony said.

“Because he was a stupid little man who probably got stingy with one of his customers. That’s my guess, bro. But, ah, my dear, when we begin selling the nose dust it’ll be a different story. We will be sugar-sweet to everybody; we will be Mr. and Mrs. Nice.”

“How do we get the stuff to sell?” Brother Anthony asked.

“First things first,” Emma said. “First we get the customers, then we get the candy.”

“How many customers do you think he had?” Brother Anthony asked.

“Hundreds,” Emma said. “Maybe thousands. We are going to get rich, my dear. We are going to thank God every day of the week that somebody killed Paco Lopez.”

“Dominus vobiscum,” Brother Anthony said, and made the sign of the cross.

Timothy Moore came into the squadroom not ten minutes after a package of Sally Anderson’s effects was delivered by a patrolman from Midtown East. The accompanying note from Detective Levine mentioned that he had talked with the dead girl’s boyfriend and they ought to expect a visit from him. So here he was now, standing just outside the slatted rail divider and introducing himself to Genero, who immediately said, “That ain’t my case.”

“In here, sir,” Meyer said, signaling to Moore, who looked up, nodded, found the release catch on the inside of the gate, and let himself into the squadroom. He was a tall, angular young man with wheat-colored hair and dark brown eyes. The trench coat he was wearing seemed too lightweight for this kind of weather, but perhaps the long striped muffler around his neck and the rubber boots on his feet were some sort of compensation. His eyes were quite solemn behind the aviator eyeglasses he wore. He took Meyer’s offered hand and said, “Detective Carella?”

“I’m Detective Meyer. This is Detective Carella.”

“How do you do?” Carella said, rising from behind his desk and extending his hand. Moore was just a trifle taller than he was; their eyes met at almost the same level.

“Detective Levine at Midtown East—”

“Yes, sir.”

“Told me the case had been turned over to you.”

“That’s right,” Carella said.

“I went up there the minute I learned about Sally.”

“When was that, sir?”

“This morning. I heard about it this morning.”

“Sit down, won’t you? Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you. I went up there at about ten o’clock, it must’ve been, right after I heard the news on the radio.”

“Where was this, Mr. Moore?”

“In my apartment.”

“And where’s that?”

“On Chelsea Place. Downtown, near the university. Ramsey.”

“We understand you’re a medical student there,” Carella said.

“Yes.” He seemed puzzled as to how they already knew this, but he let it pass, shrugging it aside. “I went back up there a little while ago—”

“Up there?”

“Midtown East. And Mr. Levine told me the case had been turned over to you. So I thought I’d check with you, just to see if there was anything I could do to help.”

“We appreciate that,” Carella said.

“How long had you known Miss Anderson?” Meyer asked.

“Since last July. I met her shortly after my father died.”

“How’d you happen to meet her?”

“At a party I crashed. She... the minute I saw her...” He looked down at his hands. The fingers were long and slender, the nails as clean as a surgeon’s. “She was... very beautiful. I... was attracted to her from the first minute I saw her.”

“So you began seeing her—”

“Yes—”

“Last July.”

“Yes. She’d just gotten the part in Fatback.”

“But you weren’t living together or anything,” Meyer said. “Or were you?”

“Not officially. That is, we didn’t share the same apartment,” Moore said. “But we saw each other virtually every night. I keep thinking...” He shook his head. The detectives waited. “I keep thinking if only I’d been with her last night...” He shook his head again. “I usually picked her up after the show. Last night...” Again he shook his head. The detectives waited. He said nothing further.

“Last night...,” Carella prompted.

“It’s stupid the way things work sometimes, isn’t it?” Moore said. “My grades were slipping. Too much partying. Okay. I made a New Year’s resolution to spend at least one weekend night studying. Either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. This week it was Friday.”

“You’re saying—”

“I’m saying... look, I don’t know who did this to her, but chances are it was just some lunatic who ran across her on the street, am I right? Saw her on the street and killed her, am I right? A chance victim.”

“Maybe,” Carella said.

“So what I’m saying is if this had been last week, I’d have been there to pick her up on Friday night. Because last week I stayed home on Sunday to study. I remember there was a party she wanted me to go to on Sunday, and I told her no, I had to study. Or the week before that, it would’ve been a Saturday. What I’m saying is why did it have to be a Friday this week, why couldn’t I have been waiting for her last night when she came out of that theater?”

“Mr. Moore,” Meyer said, “in the event this wasn’t a crazy—”

“It had to be,” Moore said.

“Yes, well,” Meyer said, and glanced at Carella, looking for some sort of expression on his face that would indicate whether or not it would be wise to mention Paco Lopez. Carella’s face said nothing, which was as good as telling Meyer to cool it. “But we have to explore every possibility,” Meyer said, “which is why the questions we’re about to ask may sound irrelevant, but we have to ask them anyway.”

“I understand,” Moore said.

“As the person closest to Miss Anderson—”

“Well, her mother is alive, you know,” Moore said.

“Does she live here in the city?”

“No, she lives in San Francisco.”

“Did Miss Anderson have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“Then essentially—”

“Yes, I suppose you could say I was closest... to her.”

“I’m assuming you confided things to each other.”

“Yes.”

“Did she ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”

“No.”

“Anyone following her?”

“No.”

“Or lurking about the building?”

“No.”

“Did she owe money to anyone?”

“No.”

“Did anyone owe her money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was she involved with drugs?”

“No.”

“Or any other illegal activity?”

“No.”

“Had she recently received any gifts from strangers?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“At the theater,” Carella said. “Flowers... or candy? From unknown admirers?”

“She never mentioned anything like that.”

“Did she ever have any trouble at the stage door?”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Someone waiting for her, trying to talk to her, or touch her—”

“You don’t mean autograph hounds?”

“Well, anyone who might have got overly aggressive.”

“No.”

“Or who was rejected by her—”

“No.”

“Nothing you saw or that she later mentioned to you.”

“Nothing.”

“Mr. Moore,” Carella said, “we’ve gone through Miss Anderson’s appointment calendar and had a schedule typed up for every day this month. We’ve just now received her address book from Midtown East, and we’ll be cross-checking that against the names on the calendar. But you might save us some time if you could identify—”

“I’ll be happy to,” Moore said.

Carella opened the top drawer of his desk and took out several photocopies of the sheet Miscolo had typed from their handwritten notes. He handed one of the copies to Moore and another to Meyer.

“Kaplan’s her shrink,” Moore said. “She saw him at four o’clock every Monday, Thursday, and Friday.”

“Would you know his first name?”

“Maurice, I think.”

“Know where his office is?”

“Yes, on Jefferson. I picked her up there once.”

“Who’s this Herbie she had lunch with?”

“Herb Gotlieb, her agent.”

“Know where his office is?”

“Midtown someplace. Near the theater.”

“That’s when she was due at the theater,” Moore said. “The curtain goes up at eight each night, two o’clock for the matinees. Half hour is one-thirty for the matinees, seven-thirty for the evening performances. That means the company gets to the theater a half hour before curtain.”

“What’s this audition at two o’clock?” Carella asked. “Do they audition for other parts when they’re already working in a hit?”

“Oh, yes, all the time,” Moore said.

“We’ve got her clocked for two calls a week to ‘Mother M,’ ” Meyer said. “Would that be her mother in San Francisco?”

“No,” Moore said. “That’s my mother. In Miami.”

“She called your mother twice a week?”

“Every week. Sally didn’t get along too well with her own mother. She left home at an early age, went to London to study ballet. Things were never the same afterward.”

“So your mother was... sort of a substitute, huh?”

“A surrogate, if you will.”

“Mother M. Does that stand for—?”

“Mother Moore, yes.”

“That’s what she called her, huh?”

“Yes. We used to joke about it. Made my mother sound like a nun or something.” He paused. “Has anyone contacted Mrs. Anderson? I’m sure she’d want to know. I guess.”

“Would you know her first name?” Carella asked.

“Yes, it’s Phyllis. Her number’s probably in Sally’s book. You did say Mr. Levine had sent you—”

“Yes, we have it here with some of her other stuff. The stuff the lab’s finished with.”

“What’s the lab looking for?” Moore asked.

“Who knows what they look for?” Carella said, and smiled. He knew damn well what they looked for. They looked for anything that might shed a little light on either the killer or the victim. The killer because he was still loose out there and the longer he stayed loose the harder it would be to get him. And the victim because very often the more you knew about what a person had been, the easier it became to learn why anyone would want that person to cease being.

“But surely,” Moore said, “nothing in Sally’s personal effects could possibly tell you anything about the lunatic who attacked her.”

Again, neither of the detectives mentioned that the same “lunatic” had attacked and killed a young cocaine dealer named Paco Lopez three nights before he’d killed Sally. Instead, both of them looked at the schedules in their hands. Taking his cue, Moore also looked at his schedule.

“Two performances every Wednesday and Saturday,” Moore said.

“Who’s Antoine?” Carella asked.

“Her hairdresser,” Moore said. “He’s on South Arundel, six blocks from her apartment.”

“There’s Herbie again,” Meyer said.

“Yes, she saw him often,” Moore said. “Well, an agent is very important to an actress’s career, you know.”

The listings for the remaining nine days between Wednesday, February 3 and Friday, February 12 — the last full day before she was murdered — followed much the same pattern. Dance class on Monday through Friday at 10:00 in the morning. Kaplan at 4:00 P.M. three times a week. Calls to Moore’s mother in Miami twice a week. Meetings with her agent Herbie at least twice a week, and sometimes more often. The page for Sunday, February 7, listed only the word “Del” without a time before it, and then the words “8:00 P.M. Party. Lonnie’s.”

“She’s one of the black dancers in the show,” Moore said. “Lonnie Cooper. That’s the party Sally wanted me to go to last week.”

“And who’s Del?” Carella asked.

“Del?”

“Right there on the sheet,” Carella said. “Del. No time, no place. Just Del.”

“Del? Oh,” Moore said. “Of course.”

“Who is he? Or she?”

“Neither,” Moore said, and smiled. “That stands for delicatessen.”

“Delicatessen?” Meyer said.

“Cohen’s Deli,” Moore said. “On the Stem and North Rogers. Sally went up there every Sunday. To pick up bagels and lox, cream cheese, the works.”

“And she put that on her calendar, huh?”

“Well, yes, she put everything on her calendar.”

“Went up there every Sunday.”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“It varied.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said, and looked at the sheet again.

On Thursday, February 11, Sally had gone to her hairdresser again, and then later in the day to a meeting with a man named Samuel Lang at Twentieth Century-Fox. On the day before she was killed, she had taken her cat to the vet’s at 1:00 in the afternoon. The listed calendar appointments naturally spilled over into the weeks beyond her death; even in this city, no one ever expected a gun exploding out of the night. She had, for example, meticulously noted “Dance” for every February weekday at 10:00 A.M. and had similarly noted her appointments with Kaplan, her twice-weekly calls to Moore’s mother, and the times she was due at the theater. For Monday, February 15, she had noted that the cat had to be picked up at 3:00 P.M.

“Mr. Moore,” Carella said, “I hope you won’t mind if we ask some questions—”

“Anything,” Moore said.

“Of a more personal nature,” Carella said.

“Go ahead.”

“Well... would you know whether or not there was any other man in her life? Besides you. Someone who might have been jealous of the relationship she shared with you? Someone she might have known before she met you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Or another woman?”

“No, of course not.”

“No one who might have resented—”

“No one.”

“How about her agent, Herb Gotlieb? How old a man is he?”

“Why?”

“I was just wondering,” Carella said.

“Wondering what?”

“Well, she did see him a lot—”

“He was her agent; of course she saw him a lot.”

“I’m not suggesting—”

“Yes, you are, as a matter of fact,” Moore said. “First you ask me whether there was another man — or even another woman, for God’s sake — in Sally’s life, and then you zero in on Herb Gotlieb, who has to be at least fifty-five years old! How can you possibly believe someone like Herb could have—”

“I don’t believe anything yet,” Carella said. “I’m simply exploring the possibilities.”

And one of the possibilities, it belatedly occurred to him, was that Mr. Timothy Moore himself was a possible suspect in at least the murder of Sally Anderson. Carella had learned a long time ago that some 30 percent of all reported homicides were generated by family situations, and 20 percent were eventually identified as stemming from lovers’ quarrels. By his own admission, Timothy Moore had been Sally Anderson’s lover, and never mind that he had voluntarily walked into the squadroom — two squadrooms, in fact, by the most recent count.

“As a matter of fact,” Moore said, “the only thing that interests Herb is money. Sally could have danced for him naked and he wouldn’t have noticed unless she was also tossing gold doubloons in the air.”

Carella decided to run with it.

“But she wouldn’t have done that, right?” he said.

“Done what?”

“Danced naked for Herb Gotlieb. Or for anyone else.”

“Is that a question?”

“It’s a question.”

“The answer is no.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’m absolutely positive.”

“No other men or women in her life?”

“None.”

“She told you that?”

“She didn’t have to tell me. I knew.”

“How about you?”

“What about me?”

“Any other women in your life?”

“No.”

“Or men?”

“No.”

“Then this was pretty serious between you, is that right?”

“It was serious enough.”

“How serious is serious enough?”

“I don’t get this,” Moore said.

“What don’t you get?”

“I came up here to offer—”

“Yes, and we’re grateful for that.”

“You don’t seem too grateful,” Moore said. “What are you going to ask next? Where I was last night when Sally was getting killed?”

“I wasn’t going to ask that, Mr. Moore,” Carella said. “You already told us you were home studying.”

“Were you home?” Meyer asked.

“You weren’t going to ask, huh? I was home.”

“All night long?”

“Here we go,” Moore said, and rolled his eyes.

“You were her boyfriend,” Meyer said flatly.

“Which means I killed her, right?” Moore said.

“You seem to be asking the questions and giving the answers both,” Meyer said. “Were you home all night?”

“All night.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean, not exactly? Either someone is with you or you’re alone. Were you alone?”

“I was alone. But I called a friend of mine at least half a dozen times.”

“What about?”

“The study material. Questions back and forth.”

“Is he a med student, too? This friend you called?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Karl Loeb.”

“Where does he live?”

“In the Quarter.”

“Do you know his address?”

“No. But I’m sure he’s in the phone book.”

“What time did you call him?”

“Off and on, all night long.”

“Did you call him at midnight?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did he call you at any time last night?”

“Several times.”

“When’s the last time you spoke to him?”

“Just before I went to sleep. I called Sally first, I tried her number—”

“Had you called her before that?”

“On and off, yes.”

“Last night, we’re talking about.”

“Yes, last night. I called her on and off.”

“Were you worried when you didn’t get her?”

“No.”

“How come? When’s the last time you tried her?”

“About three in the morning. Just before I called Karl for the last time.”

“And you got no answer?”

“No answer.”

“And you weren’t worried? Three in the morning, and she doesn’t answer the phone—”

“You’re talking about theater people,” Moore said. “Night people. Three o’clock is still early for them. Anyway, she knew I was studying. I figured she must’ve made other plans.”

“Did she tell you what plans?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“When did you call her again?”

“I didn’t. I heard about... when I woke up, I turned on the radio and I... I... heard... I heard...”

He suddenly buried his face in his hands and began weeping. The detectives watched him. Carella was thinking they’d been too harsh with him. Meyer was thinking the same thing. But why’d he come up here? Carella wondered. Meyer wondered the same thing. And why had a medical student expressed ignorance of what sort of evidence might be turned up by an examination of Sally’s personal effects? Weren’t medical schools teaching prospective doctors about bloodstains anymore? Or traces of semen? Or fingernail scrapings? Or human hair? Or any of the other little physical leftovers that could later lead to positive identification? Moore kept weeping into his hands.

“Are you all right?” Carella asked.

Moore nodded. He fumbled in his back pocket for a handkerchief, tossing the tails of the trench coat aside. There was a stethoscope in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. He found the handkerchief, blew his nose, dried his eyes.

“I loved her,” he said.

The detectives said nothing.

“And she loved me,” he said.

Still they said nothing.

“I know what you’re trained to look for, I know all about it. But I had nothing to do with her murder. I came up here because I wanted to help, period. You might do better to go looking for the son of a bitch who did it, instead of—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Moore,” Carella said.

“I’ll bet you are,” Moore said. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket. He looked up at the wall clock. He stood up and began buttoning the trench coat. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “You’ll find my number in Sally’s book, you can reach me at night there. During the day, I’m at Ramsey.”

“We appreciate your help,” Meyer said.

“Sure,” Moore said, and turned and walked out of the squadroom.

Both men looked at each other.

“What do you think?” Carella asked.

“The idea or the execution?”

“Well, I know I blew it, but the idea.”

“Good one.”

“I really was looking for a third party at first—”

“I know that. But the other way around, right?”

“Right. Some guy—”

“Or some lady—”

“Right, who was annoyed because Sally Anderson was seeing Moore—”

“Right.”

“And who decided to put the blocks to her.”

“A possibility,” Meyer said.

“But then Moore blew sky-high—”

“Right, I could see the wheels clicking inside your head, Steve.”

“Right, when I reversed field, right?”

“Right. You were thinking, ‘Hey, maybe Moore is the jealous party, maybe he’s the one who killed her.’ ”

“Well, yeah. But I blew it.”

“Maybe not, maybe now he’ll run a bit scared. Two things we’ve got to find out, Steve—”

“Right. The exact times he was on the phone talking to this guy Loeb—”

“Right, the other med student.”

“Right. And where he was on Tuesday night, when Lopez was getting his.”

“You decided not to go with Lopez, huh?”

“I wanted to see if Moore would volunteer an alibi for Tuesday.”

“Listen, you know something?” Meyer said. “Who says the same gun means the same killer?”

“Huh?” Carella said.

“I use a gun to kill somebody on Tuesday night. I throw the gun away. Somebody picks it up, and it finds its way onto the street. You come along and buy the gun to use on Friday night. No connection at all between the two murders, do you get it?”

“I get it,” Carella said, “and you’re making life difficult.”

“Only because I can’t see any connection at all between Paco Lopez and Sally Anderson.”

“Monday’s a holiday, isn’t it?” Carella asked abruptly.

“Huh?”

“Monday.”

“What about it?”

“It’s Washington’s Birthday, isn’t it?”

“No, that’s the twenty-second.”

“But we’re celebrating it on the fifteenth. We’re calling it ‘Presidents’ Day.’ ”

“What’s that got to do with Moore?”

“Nothing. I’m thinking about the cat.”

“What cat?”

“Sally’s cat. She was supposed to pick it up on Monday. Will the vet be open on Monday?”

“I guess if she put it in her book—”

“She listed a pickup for three o’clock.”

“Then I guess he’ll be open.”

“So who’ll pick up the cat?” Carella asked.

“Not me,” Meyer said at once.

“Maybe Sarah would like a cat,” Carella said.

“Sarah doesn’t like cats,” Meyer said. His wife did not like any animals. His wife thought animals were animals.

“Maybe the girl’s mother will take the cat,” Carella said, very seriously.

“The girl’s mother is in San Francisco,” Meyer said, and looked at him.

“So who’ll take the goddamn cat?” Carella said. He had once taken home a Seeing Eye dog he’d inherited on the job. Fanny, the Carella housekeeper, had not liked the dog. At all. The dog no longer resided at the big old house in Riverhead. Meyer was still looking at him.

“I just hate to think of that cat sitting there waiting,” Carella said, and the telephone rang. He snatched the receiver from the cradle.

“87th Squad, Carella,” he said.

“This is Allan Carter,” the voice on the other end said.

“Ah, Mr. Carter, good,” Carella said, “I’ve been trying to reach you. Thanks for returning my call.”

“Is this about Sally Anderson?” Carter asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I know nothing whatever about her death.”

“We’d like to talk to you anyway, sir,” Carella said. “As her employer—”

“I’ve never heard it described that way before,” Carter said.

“Sir?”

“I’ve never heard a producer described as an employer,” Carter said, raising his voice as though Carella hadn’t quite heard him the first time around. “In any event, I was in Philadelphia last night. Her death came as a total surprise to me.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure it did,” Carella said. He paused. “We’d still like to talk to you, Mr. Carter.”

“We’re talking now,” Carter said.

“In person, Mr. Carter.”

There was a silence on the line. Carella leaped into it.

“Can you see us at three?” he asked. “We won’t take up much of your time.”

“I have an appointment at three,” Carter said.

“When will you be free, sir?”

“This is Saturday,” Carter said. “I just got back from Philly, I’m calling you from home. Tomorrow’s Sunday, and Monday’s a holiday. Can we meet sometime Tuesday? Or Wednesday? I won’t be going back to Philly till late Wednesday.”

“No, sir,” Carella said, “I’m afraid we can’t.”

“Why not?” Carter said.

“Because a twenty-five-year-old girl’s been murdered,” Carella said, “and we’d like to talk to you today, sir — if that’s all right with you.”

Carter said nothing for several seconds.

Then he said, “Four o’clock,” and gave Carella the address, and hung up abruptly.