Ice

5

Allan Carter lived in a high-rise apartment building snugly nestled into a row of luxury hotels overlooking Grover Park West. Because the streets had not yet been plowed entirely clear of snow, it took the detectives almost a half-hour to drive the fifty-odd blocks from the station house to Carter’s building. Actually, if the forecast for more snow tomorrow was accurate, the sanitmen were laboring somewhat like Hercules in the Augean stables. The day was gloomy and bitterly cold. The snow had hardened and was difficult to move. As the detectives approached Carter’s building, a uniformed doorman was trying to break away the ice that had formed in front of the doorway after the sidewalk had been shoveled. He worked with a long-handled ice-chipper that would have made a good weapon, Carella thought. Meyer was thinking the same thing.

Another uniformed man was sitting behind a desk in the lobby. Carella and Meyer identified themselves, and the man picked up a phone, said, “Mr. Carella and Mr. Meyer to see you, sir,” and then cradled the receiver and said, “You can go right up, it’s apartment 37.”

The uniformed elevator man said, “They say it’s gonna snow again tomorrow.”

Meyer looked at Carella.

They got off on the third floor, walked a long carpeted hallway to Carter’s apartment, pressed the bell button set in the doorjamb, heard chimes sounding inside, and then a voice calling, “Come in, it’s open!”

Carella opened the door, and almost tripped over a piece of brown leather luggage in the entrance hall. He stepped around the bag, motioned for Meyer to be careful, and then moved from the foyer into a vast living room with wall-to-wall windows overlooking the park. The naked branches of the trees beyond were laden with snow. The sky behind them was gray and roiling. Allan Carter was sitting on a long sofa upholstered in a pale green springtime fabric. He had a telephone to his ear. He was wearing a dark brown business suit over a lemon-colored shirt. Gold cufflinks showed at his sleeves. A chocolate brown tie hung loose over his massive chest. The top button of his shirt was unfastened. Listening to whoever was on the other end of the phone connection, he gestured for the detectives to come in.

“Yes, I understand that,” he said into the phone. “But, Dave... uh-huh, uh-huh.” He listened impatiently, sighing, pulling a face, tugging simultaneously at a lock of the thick white hair that crowned his head. The white hair was premature, Carella guessed; Carter seemed to be a man in his early forties. His eyes were a piercing blue, reflecting wan, fading winter light from the window wall. He looked suntanned. Carella wondered if the weather was better in Philadelphia than it was here. He suddenly thought of all the Philadelphia jokes he knew. He had never been to Philadelphia.

“Well, what did Annie get?” Carter said into the phone. He listened and then said, “That’s exactly my point, Dave. This is a bigger hit than Annie ever was. Well, that’s just too damn bad, things are tough all over. You tell Orion the price is firm, and if they can’t meet it, tell them to pass, they’re just wasting our time here. I recognize I’m talking deal-breaker, Dave, I’m not a babe in the woods. Tell them.”

He hung up abruptly.

“Forgive me,” he said, rising and coming to where the detectives were standing, his hand extended. “I’m Allan Carter, can I get either one of you a drink?”

“No, thanks,” Carella said.

“Thanks,” Meyer said, shaking his head.

“So,” Carter said. “Hell of a thing, huh?”

“Yes, sir,” Carella said.

“Any idea yet who did it?”

“No, sir.”

“Some lunatic,” Carter said, shaking his head and walking toward the bar. He lifted a decanter. “Sure?” he said. “No?” He shrugged, poured two fingers of whiskey into a low glass, added a single ice cube to it, said, “Cheers,” drank the entire contents of the glass in a single swallow, and poured more whiskey into it. “Philadelphia,” he said, shaking his head as if simple mention of that city explained his need for alcoholic reinforcement.

“When did you learn about her death, Mr. Carter?” Carella asked.

“When I got off the train. I picked up a paper at the station.”

“What were you doing in Philadelphia?”

“Trying out a new play there.”

“Another musical?” Meyer asked.

“No, a straight play. Big headache,” Carter said. “It’s a thriller... have you seen Deathtrap?”

“No,” Meyer said.

“No,” Carella said.

“It’s sort of like Deathtrap. Except it’s lousy. I don’t know how I ever got talked into doing it. First time I’ve ever done a straight play.” He shrugged. “Probably go right down the drain when it gets here. If it ever gets here.”

“So you read about Miss Anderson in the papers,” Carella prompted.

“Yes,” Carter said.

“What’d you think?”

“What could I think? This city,” he said, and shook his head.

“How well did you know her?” Carella asked.

“Hardly at all. Just another one of the dancers, you know? We’ve got sixteen of them in the show. Have you seen the show?”

“No,” Meyer said.

“No,” Carella said.

“I’ll get you some house seats,” Carter said. “It’s a good show. Biggest hit this town has seen in a long time.”

“Who hired her, Mr. Carter?”

“What? Oh, the girl. It was a joint decision.”

“Whose?”

“Mine and Jamie’s and—”

“Jamie?”

“Our choreographer, Jamie Atkins. But... are you asking who was actually there when the dancers were cast?”

“Yes.”

“Well, as I said — this would be the final selection, you understand — I was there, and Freddie Carlisle, our director, and Jamie, and his assistant, and our musical director, and an Equity rep, I guess, and... let me see... two of the stage managers were there, and our press agent, I think, and, of course, a piano player. And... well, sure, the composer and the lyricist and the book writer.”

“The book writer?”

“The librettist. I think that was about it. This was a long time ago. We went into rehearsal last August, you know. We must’ve been doing our final casting in July sometime.”

“Quite a few people,” Carella said.

“Oh, yes, decision by committee,” Carter said, and smiled. “But when you figure a musical can cost anywhere between two and three million bucks — well, you’ve got to be cautious.”

“So all these people got together and... well, what did they do?” Carella asked. “Vote?”

“Not really. It’s more a sort of general agreement on a finalist, with the choreographer having the last word, of course. He’s the one who’s going to have to work with any given dancer, you know.”

“How many dancers didn’t get a part?”

“Thousands. Counting the cattle calls, and the Equity calls... sure. We must’ve seen every unemployed dancer in the city.”

“Miss Anderson must’ve been a good dancer,” Meyer said.

“I’m sure she was. She was, after all, hired for the part.”

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

“You’d have to ask either Freddie or Jamie about that.”

“Your director and choreographer.”

“Yes. But I’m sure there was no friction... aside from the usual tension generated by a show in rehearsal. What I’m saying... let me try to explain this.”

“Please,” Carella said.

“The company of any show, particularly a musical, has to perform as a tightly knit unit. I’m sure if there was any friction between Miss Anderson and anyone else in the cast, Jamie would’ve had a good long talk with her. When two million five is at stake, there’s no room for fooling around with artistic temperament.”

“Is that how much Fatback cost?”

“Give or take.”

“How long was the show in rehearsal, Mr. Carter?”

“Six weeks. Not counting previews. We did two weeks of previews before we felt we were ready for the critics.”

“Were you present at all those rehearsals?”

“Not all of them. After Freddie had mounted a good part of the show, yes. Usually, you try to give your creative people a free hand in the beginning. Once the run-throughs start, a producer — well, this producer, anyway — tries to be present at all the rehearsals.”

“Then you would have noticed if there was any friction between Miss Anderson and any other member of the cast.”

“I detected no such friction. Gentlemen, I wish I could help you, believe me. But I hardly knew the girl. I’ll confess something to you. When I read about her in the paper, I had difficulty recalling just which one of the dancers she was.”

“I see,” Carella said.

“Little redheaded thing, wasn’t she?” Carter said.

“We didn’t see the body, sir,” Carella said.

“What?” Carter said.

“We weren’t there at the scene, sir,” Carella said.

“The body was found in another precinct,” Meyer said at once.

“Sir,” Carella said, “it would help us if we could get a list of names, addresses, and telephone numbers for everyone in the cast and crew, anyone who might have had even the slightest contact with Miss Anderson.”

“You don’t plan to visit them all, do you?” Carter said.

“Well... yes,” Carella said.

Carter smiled. “Maybe I ought to give you some idea of what that would involve,” he said. “Fatback is a very large show. We’ve got six principals, four featured players, sixteen dancers plus twelve other people in the chorus, eighteen stagehands, twenty-six musicians, three stage managers, three property men, fourteen wardrobe people, including the dressers, three electricians, two carpenters, one sound man, three lighting-board-and-follow-spot men, one makeup woman, and two standby dancers — what we call ‘swing’ dancers.”

Carella looked at Meyer.

“That comes to one hundred fourteen people,” Carter said.

“I see,” Carella said. He paused. Then he said, “But does such a list exist? Of all these people?”

“Well, yes, several lists, in fact. Our general manager has one, and our company manager, and the production secretary... in fact, I’m sure there’s a list at the theater, too. Near the stage door phone. That might be your best bet. If you could stop by the theater—”

“Yes, sir, we’ll do that.”

“As a matter of fact, why don’t you kill two birds with one stone?” Carter said.

“Sir?” Carella said.

“I mean, as long as you’ll be at the theater.”

The detectives looked at him, puzzled.

“I’ve guaranteed a pair for a friend of mine, but there was a message on my machine that he won’t be coming into the city tonight because of the weather.” Carter looked at their blank faces. “I’m talking about the show,” he said. “Do you think you might like to see it? There’s a pair of house seats guaranteed at the box office.”

“Oh,” Carella said.

“Oh,” Meyer said.

“What do you think?” Carter asked.

“Well, thank you,” Meyer said, “but my wife and I are meeting some friends for dinner tonight.”

“How about you?”

“Well...” Carella said.

“You’ll enjoy it, believe me.”

“Well...”

He was hesitating because he didn’t know what “house seats” were and he didn’t know what “guaranteed” meant, but it sounded to him as if these might be free tickets, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to accept a gift from a man who claimed to believe a five-foot-eight blonde murder victim was a “little redheaded thing.” Carella had learned early on in the game that if you wanted to survive as a cop, you either took nothing at all or you took everything that wasn’t nailed down. Accept a cup of coffee on the arm from the guy who ran the local diner? Fine. Then also take a bribe from the friendly neighborhood fence who was running a tag sale on stolen goods every Sunday morning. A slightly dishonest cop was the same thing as a slightly pregnant woman.

“How much do these tickets cost?” he asked.

“Forget it,” Carter said, and waved the question aside, and Carella knew the man had figured he was seeking the grease; he was, after all, a cop in this fair city, wasn’t he? And cops copped; anytime and anyplace they could.

“Are house seats free tickets?” Carella asked.

“No, no, we do have investors, you know, we can’t go giving away seats to a hit,” Carter said. “But these are taken care of, don’t worry about them.”

“Who’s taking care of them?” Carella asked.

“I personally guaranteed them,” Carter said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Carella said. “Guaranteed.”

“I personally agreed to pay for them. Even if they weren’t claimed.”

“Claimed?”

“By law, house seats have to be claimed forty-eight hours before any performance. By guaranteeing them, I was — in effect — claiming them.”

“But they haven’t been paid for yet.”

“No, they haven’t.”

“Then I’ll pay for them myself, sir,” Carella said.

“Well, really—”

“I’d like to see the show, sir, but I’d like to pay for the tickets myself.”

“Fine, whatever you say. They’re being held at the box office in my friend’s name. Robert Harrington. You can claim them anytime before the curtain goes up.”

“Thank you,” Carella said.

“I’ll call the stage door, meanwhile, tell them you’ll be stopping by for that list.”

“Thank you.”

“I still don’t understand what house seats are,” Meyer said.

“Choice seats set aside for each performance,” Carter said. “For the producer, director, choreographer, stars—”

“Set aside?”

“Reserved,” Carter said, nodding. “By contract. So many seats for each performance. The higher you are in the pecking order, the more seats you’re entitled to buy. If you don’t claim them, of course, they go right back on sale in the box office, on a first-come, first-served basis.”

“Live and learn,” Meyer said, and smiled.

“Yes,” Carter said, and glanced at his watch.

“Anything else?” Carella asked Meyer.

“Nothing I can think of,” Meyer said.

“Then thank you, sir,” Carella said. “And thanks for making those seats available to me.”

“My pleasure,” Carter said.

The detectives were silent in the elevator down to the street. The elevator operator, who had already informed them earlier that it was going to snow tomorrow, seemed to have nothing more to say. The sky was even more threatening when they stepped outside again. Darkness was coming on. It would be a moonless night.

“I just want to make sure I heard her right,” Meyer said.

“Tina Wong, do you mean?”

“Yeah. She did say, ‘Five blondes, two blacks, and a token Chink,’ didn’t she?”

“That’s what she said.”

“So how could Carter think Sally Anderson was a redhead?”

“Maybe one of the understudies is a redhead.”

“Maybe I’m a redhead, too,” Meyer said. “Didn’t Carter say that once they started run-throughs he was at every rehearsal?”

“That’s what he said.”

“So he knows that damn show. How could he possibly think there was a redhead up there?”

“Maybe he’s color-blind.”

“You did catch it, didn’t you?”

“Oh, I caught it, all right.”

“I was wondering why you didn’t jump on it.”

“I wanted to see how far he’d go with it.”

“He didn’t go anywhere with it. He let it lay there like a lox.”

“Maybe he was just trying it for size.”

“Backing up what he said about not knowing her from a hole in the wall. Just another one of the girls, another face in the crowd.”

“Which may be true, Meyer. There are thirty-eight people in the cast. You can’t expect a man to remember—”

“What’s thirty-eight people, a nation?” Meyer said. “We’ve got close to two hundred cops in the precinct, and I know each and every one of them. By sight, at least.”

“You’re a trained observer,” Carella said, smiling.

“How long does it take to get from Philadelphia by train?” Meyer asked.

“About an hour and a half.”

“Easy to get here and back again,” Meyer said. “Time enough to do anything that had to be done here. If a person had anything to do here.”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Jamie digs blondes, remember?” Meyer said. “Isn’t that what she told us? The choreographer digs blondes. So how come every-body in the world knows this but Carter? He was there when the whole mishpocheh was picking the dancers. Decision by committee, remember? So how come, all of a sudden, he has trouble remembering what color her hair is? A little redheaded thing, he calls her. All of a sudden, his choreographer — who likes them blonde — ends up with a redhead in his chorus line. Steve, that stinks. I’m telling you it stinks. Do you buy it?”

“No,” Carella said.

Buying the tickets came as something of a shock.

Carella had not seen a hit show in a long time, and he did not know what current prices were. When the woman in the box office shoved the little white envelope across the counter to him, he glanced at the yellow tickets peeking out, thought he saw the price on one of them, figured he must be wrong, and then had verbal confirmation when the woman said, “That’ll be eighty dollars, please.” Carella blinked. Eighty divided by two came to $40 a seat! “Will that be charge or cash?” the woman asked.

Carella did not carry a credit card; he did not know any cops who carried credit cards. He panicked for a moment. Did he have $80 in cash in his wallet? As it turned out, he was carrying $92, which meant he would have to call home and ask Teddy to bring some cash with her tonight. He parted with the money reluctantly. This had better be some show, he thought, and walked to the pay phone in the lobby. Fanny, the Carella housekeeper, answered on the fourth ring.

“Carella residence,” she said.

“Fanny, hi, it’s me,” he said. “Can you give Teddy a message? First tell her I’ve got tickets to a show called Fatback, and I thought we’d have dinner down here tonight before the show. Ask her to meet me at six-thirty, at a place called O’Malley’s; she knows it, we’ve been there before. Next, tell her to bring a lot of cash; I’m running low.”

“That’s three messages,” Fanny said. “How much cash?”

“Enough to cover dinner.”

“I planned to make pork chops,” Fanny said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This came up all of a sudden.”

“Mm,” Fanny said.

He visualized her standing by the phone in the living room. Fanny Knowles was “fiftyish,” as she put it in her faint Irish brogue, and she had blue hair, and she wore a pince-nez, and she weighed about 150 pounds, and she’d ruled the Carella household with an iron fist from the day she’d arrived there as a temporary gift from Teddy’s father — ten years ago. Fanny was a registered nurse, and she’d originally been hired to stay with the Carellas for only a month, just long enough to give Teddy a hand till she was able to cope alone with the infant twins. It was Fanny who suggested that she ought to stay on a while longer, at a salary they could afford, telling them she never again wanted to stick another thermometer into a dying old man. She was still there. Her silence on the phone was ominous.

“Fanny, I’m really sorry,” he said. “This is sort of business.”

“What do I do with a dozen pork chops?” she said.

“Make a cassoulet,” he said.

“What in hell is a cassoulet?” she asked.

“Look it up,” he said. “Will you give her my message?”

“When she gets home,” Fanny said, “which should be any minute now. She’ll have to run a foot race to meet you downtown at six-thirty.”

“Well, tell her, okay?”

“I’ll tell her,” Fanny said, and hung up.

He put the receiver back on the hook, went out of the theater, found the alley leading to the stage door, went to the door, and knocked on it.

An old man opened the door and peered out at him.

“Box office is up front,” he said.

Carella showed him his shield and ID card. “I’m supposed to pick up a list,” he said.

“What list?”

“Of everyone in the company.”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Carter phoned me about it. Come on in. I got one on the clipboard here, but I can’t let you have it, it’s the only one I got.” The old man paused. “You can copy it down, if you like.”

Carella went to the list hanging on the wall near the telephone, and looked at it. Four typewritten pages. He glanced at his watch.

“Okay if I take it out and have it Xeroxed?” he asked.

“No way,” the old man said. “Only one I got.”

“I was hoping—”

“How’re we supposed to get in touch with anybody, case he don’t show up for half hour? How we supposed to know to put in a swing dancer case somebody’s sick or something? That list has to stay right there, right where it is.” The old man paused. “You want my advice?”

Carella sighed, sat on the high stool near the wall telephone, and began copying the list into his notebook.

The Laundromat was on the corner of Culver and Tenth, a neighborhood enclave that for many years had been exclusively Irish but that nowadays was a rich melting-pot mixture of Irish, black, and Puerto Rican. The melting pot here, as elsewhere in this city, never seemed to come to a precise boil, but that didn’t bother any of the residents; they all knew it was nonsense, anyway. Even though they all shopped the same supermarkets and clothing stores; even though they all bought gasoline at the same gas stations and rode the same subways; even though they washed their clothes at the same Laundromats and ate hamburgers side by side in the same greasy spoons, they all knew that when it came to socializing it was the Irish with the Irish and the blacks with the blacks and the Puerto Ricans with the Puerto Ricans and never mind that brotherhood-of-man stuff.

Eileen Burke, what with her peaches-and-cream complexion and her red hair and green eyes, could have passed for any daughter of Hibernian descent in the neighborhood — which, of course, was exactly what they were hoping for. It would not do to have the Dirty Panties Bandit, as the boys of the Eight-Seven had wittily taken to calling him, pop into the Laundromat with his .357 Magnum in his fist, spot Eileen for a policewoman, and put a hole the size of a bowling ball in her ample chest. No, no. Eileen Burke did not want to become a dead heroine. Eileen Burke wanted to become the first lady Chief of Detectives in this city, but not over her own dead body. For the job tonight, she was dressed rather more sedately than she would have been if she’d been on the street trying to flush a rapist. Her red hair was pulled to the back of her head, held there with a rubber band, and covered with a dun-colored scarf knotted under her chin and hiding the pair of gold loop earrings she considered her good-luck charms. She was wearing a cloth coat that matched the scarf, and knee-length brown socks and brown rubber boots and she was sitting on a yellow plastic chair in the very cold Laundromat, watching her dirty laundry (or rather the dirty laundry supplied by the Eight-Seven) turn over and over in one of the washing machines while the neon sign in the window of the place flashed LAUNDROMAT first in orange, and then LAVANDERÍA in green. In the open handbag on her lap, the butt of a .38 Detective’s Special beckoned from behind a wad of Kleenex tissues.

The manager of the place did not know Eileen was a cop. The manager of the place was the night man, who came on at 4:00 and worked through till midnight, at which time he locked up the place and went home. Every morning, the owner of the Laundromat would come around to unlock the machines, pour all the coins into a big gray sack, and take them to the bank. That was the owner’s job: emptying the machines of coins. The owner had thirty-seven Laundromats all over the city, and he lived in a very good section of Majesta. He did not empty the machines at closing time because he thought that might be dangerous, which in fact it would have been. He preferred that his thirty-seven night men all over the city simply lock the doors, turn on the burglar alarms, and go home. That was part of their job, the night men. The rest of their job was to make change for the ladies who brought in their dirty clothes, and to call for service if any of the machines broke down, and also to make sure nobody stole any of the cheap plastic furniture in the various Laundromats, although the owner didn’t care much about that since he’d got a break on the stuff from his brother-in-law. Every now and then it occurred to the owner that his thirty-seven night men each had keys to the thirty-seven separate burglar alarms in the thirty-seven different locations and if they decided to go into cahoots with one of the crazies in this city, they could open the stores and break open the machines — but so what? Easy come, easy go. Besides, he liked to think all of his night men were pure and innocent.

Detective Hal Willis knew for damn sure that the night man at the Laundromat on Tenth and Culver was as pure and as innocent as the driven snow so far as the true identity of Eileen Burke was concerned. The night man did not know she was a cop, nor did he know that Willis himself, angle-parked in an unmarked green Toronado in front of the bar next door to the Laundromat, was also a cop. In fact, the night man did not have the faintest inkling that the Eight-Seven had chosen his nice little establishment for a stakeout on the assumption that the Dirty Panties Bandit would hit it next. The assumption seemed a good educated guess. The man had been working his way straight down Culver Avenue for the past three weeks, hitting Laundromats on alternate sides of the avenue, inexorably moving farther and farther downtown. The place he’d hit three nights ago had been on the south side of the avenue. The Laundromat they were staking out tonight was eight blocks farther downtown, on the north side of the avenue.

The Dirty Panties Bandit was no small-time thief, oh no. In the two months during which he’d operated unchecked along Culver Avenue, first in the bordering precinct farther uptown, and then moving lower into the Eight-Seven’s territory, he had netted — or so the police had estimated from what the victimized women had told them — $600 in cash, twelve gold wedding bands, four gold lockets, a gold engagement ring with a one-carat diamond, and a total of twenty-two pairs of panties. These panties had not been lifted from the victims’ laundry baskets. Instead, the Dirty Panties Bandit — and hence his name — had asked all those hapless laundromat ladies to please remove their panties for him, which they had all readily agreed to do since they were looking into the rather large barrel of a .357 Magnum. No one had been raped — yet. No one had been harmed — yet. And whereas there was something darkly humorous, after all, about an armed robber taking home his victims’ panties, there was nothing at all humorous about the potential of a .357 Magnum. Sitting in the parked car outside the bar, Willis was very much aware of the caliber of the gun the Laundromat robber carried. Sitting inside the Laundromat, flanked by a Puerto Rican woman on her left and a black woman on her right, Eileen Burke was even more aware of the devastating power of that gun.

She looked up at the wall clock.

It was only 10:15, and the place wouldn’t be closing till midnight.

A little slip of paper in the program informed the audience that someone named Allison Greer would be replacing Sally Anderson that night, but none of the dancers in the show had character names, and they all looked very much alike with the exception of the two black girls (who in fact looked very much like each other) and Tina Wong, who looked like no one in the cast but herself. The blondes were indistinguishable one from the other. They were tall and leggy and, Carella thought, somewhat busty for dancers. They all had radiant smiles. They all were dressed in costumes that made them look even more alike, cut high on their thighs and hanging in tatters on their flashing legs, the sort of little nothing any young and ignorant southern girl might wear in the middle of a swamp, which was where Fatback was supposed to be taking place, and which was what the dancers in the cast were supposed to be. Given such a premise, given a curtain rising on what looked like a primeval bog, with mist floating in over it, and giant trees dripping moss onto slime-covered rocks, Carella had expected the worst. He turned to his right to look at Teddy. She was looking back at him. This was going to be yet another example of this city’s critics praising yet another lousy show to the skies, and thereby turning straw into gold — for the investors, at any rate.

Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute.

She often had difficulty at the theater. She could not hear what any of the performers were saying, of course, and usually she and Carella would be sitting too far back to read lips. Over the years, they had worked out a system whereby his hands — held chest high so as not to disturb anyone sitting behind them — flashed dialogue to her while she shifted her eyes back and forth from the stage to his rapidly moving fingers. Musicals, as a general rule, were somewhat easier for her. A singer usually faced the audience squarely when belting out a song, and his lip movements were more exaggerated than when he was simply speaking. Ballet was her favorite form of entertainment, and tonight she was delighted when — not ten seconds after the curtain had risen on that ominous bog — the entire stage seemed to fill with leaping, prancing, gyrating, twirling, frantically energetic dancers who virtually swung from the treetops and turned that steamy swamp into the sassiest, sexiest, most dazzling opening number Teddy had ever seen in her life. Spellbound, she sat beside Carella for what must have been ten full minutes of exposition through dance, squeezing his hand, her dark eyes flashing as she watched the story silently unfold. Carella sat there grinning. When the opening number ended, the house burst into tumultuous applause. He readied his hands for the translation he felt would be necessary as the act progressed, but he found that Teddy was impatiently nodding his moving fingers aside, understanding most of what was happening, able to read directly from the performers’ lips because the seats were sixth row center.

She asked him some questions during intermission. She was wearing a black, wool-knit dress with a simple cameo just above her breasts, black leather boots, a gold bracelet on her wrist. She had pulled her long black hair to the back of her head and fastened it there with a gold barrette. Except for eyeliner, shadow and lipstick, there was no makeup on her face. She needed none; she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known in his life. He watched her hands, watched the accompanying expressions that crossed her face. She wanted to know if she’d been right in assuming that the trapper and the girl moonshiner had had an affair years ago, and that this was the first time they’d seen each other since? No? Then what was all that hugging and kissing about? Carella explained, responding with his voice so that she could read his lips, accompanying his voice with hand signals (and always there were the fascinated observers in the crowd, nudging each other — Hey, take a look, Charlie, see the grown man talking to the dummy?) and she watched his lips and watched his hands and then signed, Well, they seem awfully lovey-dovey for cousins, and he explained that they were only second cousins, and she signed, Does that make incest legal?

Now, forty-five minutes into the second act, Carella looked at his watch because he sensed the evening was coming to an end and he simply did not want it to. He was having too good a time.

Eileen Burke was having a splendid time watching her laundry go round and round. The night man thought she was a little crazy, but then again everybody in this town was a little crazy. She had put the same batch of laundry through the machine five times already. Each time, she sat watching the laundry spinning in the machine. The night man didn’t notice that she alternately watched the front door of the place or looked through the plate glass window each time a car pulled in. The neon fixture splashed orange and green on the floor of the laundromat: LAVANDERÍA... LAUNDROMAT... LAVANDERÍA... LAUNDROMAT. The laundry in the machines went round and round.

A woman with a baby strapped to her back was at one of the machines, putting in another load. Eileen guessed she was no older than nineteen or twenty, a slender attractive blue-eyed blonde who directed a nonstop flow of soft chatter over her shoulder to her near dozing infant. Another woman was sitting on the yellow plastic chair next to Eileen’s, reading a magazine. She was a stout black woman, in her late thirties or early forties, Eileen guessed, wearing a bulky knit sweater over blue jeans and galoshes. Every now and then, she flipped a page of the magazine, looked up at the washing machines, and then flipped another page. A third woman came into the store, looked around frantically for a moment, seemed relieved to discover there were plenty of free machines, dashed out of the store, and returned a moment later with what appeared to be the week’s laundry for an entire Russian regiment. She asked the manager to change a $5 bill for her. He changed it from a coin dispenser attached to his belt, thumbing and clicking out the coins like a streetcar conductor. Eileen watched as he walked to a safe bolted to the floor and dropped the bill into a slot on its top, just as though he were making a night deposit at a bank. A sign on the wall advised any prospective holdup man: MANAGER DOES NOT HAVE COMBINATION TO SAFE. MANAGER CANNOT CHANGE BILLS LARGER THAN $5. Idly, Eileen wondered what the manager did when he ran out of coins. Did he run into the bar next door to ask the bartender for change? Did the bartender next door have a little coin dispenser attached to his belt? Idly, Eileen wondered why she wondered such things. And then she wondered if she’d ever meet a man who wondered the same things she wondered. That was when the Dirty Panties Bandit came into the store.

Eileen recognized him at once from the police-artist composites Willis had shown her back at the squadroom. He was a short slender white man wearing a navy pea coat and watch cap over dark brown, wide-wale corduroy trousers and tan suede desert boots. He had darting brown eyes and a very thin nose with a narrow mustache under it. There was a scar in his right eyebrow. The bell over the door tinkled as he came into the store. As he reached behind him with his left hand to close the door, Eileen’s hand went into the bag on her lap. She was closing her fingers around the butt of the .38 when the man’s right hand came out of his coat pocket. The Magnum would have looked enormous in any event. But because the man was so small and so thin, it looked like an artillery piece. The man’s hand was shaking. The gun in it flailed the room.

Eileen looked at the Magnum, looked at the man’s eyes, and felt the butt of her own pistol under her closing fingers. If she pulled the gun now, she had maybe a thirty/seventy chance of bringing him down before he sprayed the room with bullets that could tear a man’s head off his body. In addition to herself and the robber, there were five other people in the store, three of them women, one of them an infant. Her hand froze motionless around the butt of the gun.

“All right, all right,” the man said in a thin, almost girlish voice, “nobody moves, nobody gets hurt.” His eyes darted. His hand was still shaking. Suddenly, he giggled. The giggle scared Eileen more than the gun in his hand did. The giggle was high and nervous and just enough off center to send a shiver racing up her spine. Her hand on the butt of the .38 suddenly began sweating.

“All I want is your money, all your money,” the man said. “And your—”

“I don’t have the combination to the safe,” the manager said.

“Who asked you for anything?” the man said, turning to him. “You just shut up, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” the manager said.

“You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m talking to the ladies here, not you, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You!” the man said, and turned to the woman with the baby strapped to her back, jerking the gun at her, moving erratically, almost dancing across the floor of the Laundromat, turning this way and that as though playing to an audience from a stage. Each time he turned, the woman with the baby on her back turned with him, so that she was always facing him, her body forming a barricade between him and the baby. She doesn’t know, Eileen thought, that a slug from that gun can go clear through her and the baby and the wall behind them, too.

“Your money!” the man said. “Hurry up! Your rings, too, give me your rings!”

“Just don’t shoot,” the woman said.

“Shut up! Give me your panties!”

“What?”

“Your panties, take off your panties, give them to me!”

The woman stared at him.

“Are you deaf?” he said, and danced toward her, and jabbed the gun at her. The woman already had a wad of dollar bills clutched in one fist and her wedding ring and engagement ring in the other, and she stood there uncertainly, knowing she had heard him say he wanted her panties, but not knowing whether he wanted her to give him the money and the jewelry first or—

“Hurry up!” he said. “Take them off! Hurry up!”

The woman quickly handed him the bills and the rings and then reached up under her skirt and lowered her panties over her thighs and down to her ankles. She stepped out of them, picked them up, handed them to him, and quickly backed away from him as he stuffed them into his pocket.

“All of you!” he said, his voice higher now. “I want all of you to take off your panties! Give me your money! Give me all your money! And your rings! And your panties, take them off, hurry up!”

The black woman sitting on the chair alongside Eileen kept staring at the man as though he had popped out of a bottle, following his every move around the room, her eyes wide, disbelieving his demands, disbelieving the gun in his hand, disbelieving his very existence. She just kept staring at him and shaking her head in disbelief.

“You!” he said, dancing over to her. “Give me that necklace! Hurry up!”

“Ain’t but costume jewelry,” the woman said calmly.

“Give me your money!”

“Ain’t got but a dollar an’ a quarter in change,” the woman said.

“Give it to me!” he said, and held out his left hand.

The woman rummaged in her handbag. She took out a change purse. Ignoring the man, ignoring the gun not a foot from her nose, she unsnapped the purse, and reached into it, and took out coin after coin, transferring the coins from her right hand to the palm of her left hand, three quarters and five dimes, and then closing her fist on the coins, and bringing her fist to his open palm, and opening the fist and letting the coins fall (disdainfully, it seemed to Eileen) onto his palm.

“Now your panties,” he said.

“Nossir.”

“Take off your panties,” he said.

“Won’t do no such thing,” the woman said.

“What?”

“Won’t do no such thing. Ain’t just a matter of reachin’ up under m’skirt way that lady with the baby did, nossir. I’d have to take off fust m’galoshes and then m’jeans, an’ there ain’t no way I plan to stan’ here naked in front of two men I never seen in my life, nossir.”

The man waved the gun.

“Do what I tell you,” he said.

“Nossir,” the woman said.

Eileen tensed.

She wondered if she should make her move now, a bad situation could only get worse, she’d been taught that at the academy and it was a rule she’d lived by and survived by all the years she’d been on the force, but a rule she’d somehow neglected tonight when this silly little son of a bitch walked through the door and pulled the cannon from his pocket, a bad situation can only get worse, make your move now, do it now, go for the money, go for broke, but now, now! And she wondered, too, if he would bother turning to fire at her once she pulled the gun from her handbag or would he instead fire at the black woman who was willing to risk getting shot and maybe killed rather than take off her jeans and then her panties in a room containing a trembling night man and an armed robber who maybe was or maybe wasn’t bonkers, make your move, stop thinking, stop wondering — but what if the baby gets shot?

It occurred to her that maybe the black woman would actually succeed in staring down the little man with the penchant for panties, get him to turn away in defeat, run for the door, out into the cold and into the waiting arms of Detective Hal Willis— which reminds me, where the hell are you, Willis? It would not hurt to have my backup come in behind this guy right now, it would not hurt to have his attention diverted from me to you, two guns against one, the good guys against the bad guys, where the hell are you? The little man was trembling violently now, the struggle inside him so intense that it seemed he would rattle himself to pieces, crumble into a pile of broken pink chalk around a huge weapon — he’s a closet rapist, she thought suddenly, the man’s a closet rapist!

The thought was blinding in its clarity. She knew now, or felt she knew, why he was running around town holding up Laundromats. He was holding up Laundromats because there were women in Laundromats and he wanted to see those women taking off their panties. The holdups had nothing at all to do with money or jewelry, the man was after panties! The rings and the bracelets and the cash were all his cover, his beard, his smoke screen, the man wanted ladies’ panties, the man wanted the aroma of women on his loot, the man probably had a garageful of panties wherever he lived, the man was a closet rapist and she knew how to deal with rapists, she had certainly dealt with enough rapists in her lifetime, but that was her alone in a park, that was when the only life at stake had been her own, make your move, she thought, make it now!

“You!” she said sharply.

The man turned toward her. The gun turned at the same time.

“Take mine,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Leave her alone. Take my panties.”

“What?”

“Reach under my skirt,” she whispered. “Rip off my panties.”

She thought for a terrifying moment that she’d made a costly mistake. His face contorted in what appeared to be rage, and the gun began shaking even more violently in his fist. Oh, God, she thought, I’ve forced him out of the closet, I’ve forced him to see himself for what he is, that gun is his cock as sure as I’m sitting here, and he’s going to jerk it off into my face in the next ten seconds! And then a strange thing happened to his face, a strange smile replaced the anger, a strange secret smile touched the corners of his mouth, a secret communication flashed in his eyes, his eyes to her eyes, their secret, a secret to share, he lowered the gun, he moved toward her.

“Police!” she shouted, and the .38 came up out of the bag in the same instant that she came up off the plastic chair, and she rammed the muzzle of the gun into the hollow of his throat and said so quietly that only he could hear it, “Don’t even think it or I’ll shoot you dead!” And she would remember later and remember always the way the shouted word “Police!” had shattered the secret in his eyes, their shared secret, and she would always wonder if the way she’d disarmed him hadn’t been particularly cruel and unjust.

She clamped the handcuffs onto his wrists and then stooped to pick up the Magnum from where he’d dropped it on the Laundromat floor.