McBain's Ladies Too: More Women of the 87th Precinct

Chloe Chadderton

Chloe Chadderton responded to their insistent knocking in a voice still unraveling sleep. When they identified themselves as police officers, she opened the door a crack, and asked that they show her their shields. Only when she was satisfied that these were truly policemen standing there in the hallway, did she take off the night chain and open the door.

She was a tall slender woman in her late twenties, her complexion a flawless beige, her sloe eyes dark and luminous in the narrow oval of her face. Standing in the doorway wearing a long pink robe over a pink nightgown, she looked only sleepy and a trifle annoyed. No anticipation in those eyes or on that face, no expectation of bad news, no sense of alarm. In this neighborhood, visits from the police were commonplace. They were always knocking on doors, investigating this or that burglary or mugging, usually in the daytime, but sometimes at night if the crime was more serious.

"Mrs. Chadderton?" Carella asked, and the first faint suspicion flickered on her face. He had called her by name, this was not a routine door-to-door inquiry, they had come here specifically to talk to her, to talk to Mrs. Chadderton; the time was two in the morning, and her husband wasn't yet home.

"What is it?" she said at once.

"Are you Chloe Chadderton?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"Mrs. Chadderton, I'm sorry to tell you this," Carella said, "but your husband…"

"What is it?" she said. "Has he been hurt?"

"He's dead," Carella said.

The woman flinched at his words. She backed away from him, shaking her head as she moved out of the doorway, back into the kitchen, against the refrigerator, shaking her head, staring at him.

"I'm sorry," Carella said. "May we come in?"

"George?" she said. "Is it George Chadderton? Are you sure you have the right…"

"Ma'am, I'm sorry," Carella said.

She screamed then. She screamed and immediately brought her hand to her mouth, and bit down hard on the knuckle of her bent index finger. She turned her back to them. She stood by the refrigerator, the scream trailing into a choking sob that swelled into a torrent of tears. Carella and Meyer stood just outside the open door. Meyer was looking down at his shoes.

"Mrs. Chadderton?" Carella said.

Weeping, she shook her head, and — still with her back to them — gestured with one hand widespread behind her, the fingers patting the air, silently asking them to wait. They waited. She fumbled in the pocket of the robe for a handkerchief, found none, went to the sink where a roll of paper towels hung over the drainboard, tore one loose, and buried her face in it, sobbing. She blew her nose. She began sobbing again, and again buried her face in the toweling. A door down the hall opened. A woman with her hair tied in rags poked her head out.

"What is it?" she shouted. "Chloe?"

"It's all right," Carella said. "We're the police."

"They're the police," Chloe murmured.

"It's all right, go back to sleep," Carella said, and entered the apartment behind Meyer, and closed the door.

It wasn't all right; there was no going back to sleep for Chloe Chadderton. She wanted to know what had happened, and they told her. She listened, numbed. She cried again. She asked for details. They gave her the details. She asked if they had caught who'd done it. They told her they had just begun working on it. All the formula answers. Strangers bearing witness to a stranger's naked grief. Strangers who had to ask questions now at ten past two in the morning because someone had taken another man's life, and these first twenty-four hours were the most important.

"We can come back in the morning," Carella said, hoping she would not ask them to. He wanted the time edge. The killer had all the time in the world. Only the detectives were working against time.

"What difference will it make?" she said, and began weeping softly again. She went to the kitchen table, took a chair from it, and sat. The flap of the robe fell open, revealing long slender legs and the laced edge of the baby-doll nightgown. "Please sit down," she said.

Carella took a chair at the table. Meyer stood near the refrigerator. He had taken off the Professor Higgins hat. His coat was sopping wet from the rain outside.

"Mrs. Chadderton," Carella said gently, "can you tell me when you last saw your husband alive?"

"When he left the apartment tonight."

"When was that? What time?"

"About seven-thirty. Ame stopped by to pick him up."

"Ame?"

"Ambrose Harding. His manager."

"Did your husband receive any phone calls before he left the apartment?"

"No calls."

"Did anyone try to reach him after he left?"

"No one."

"Were you here all night, Mrs. Chadderton?"

"Yes, all night."

"Then you would have heard the phone—"

"Yes."

"And answered it, if it had rung."

"Yes."

"Mrs. Chadderton, have you ever answered the phone in recent weeks only to have the caller hang up on you?"

"No."

"If your husband had received any threatening calls, would he have mentioned them to you?"

"Yes, I'm sure he would have."

"Were there any such calls?"

"No."

"Any hate mail?"

"No."

"Has he had any recent arguments with anyone about money, or—"

"Everybody has arguments," she said.

"Did your husband have a recent argument with someone?"

"What kind of argument?"

"About anything at all, however insignificant it might have seemed at the time."

"Well, everybody has arguments," she said again.

Carella was silent for a moment. Then, very gently, he asked, "Did you and he argue about something, is that it?"

"Sometimes."

"What about, Mrs. Chadderton?"

"My job. He wanted me to quit my job."

"What is your job?"

"I'm a dancer."

"Where do you dance?"

"At the Flamingo. On Landis Avenue." She hesitated. Her eyes met his. "It's a topless club."

"I see," Carella said.

"My husband didn't like the idea of me dancing there. He asked me to quit the job. But it brings in money," she said. "George wasn't earning all that much with his calypso."

"How much would you say he normally—"

"Two, three hundred a week, some weeks. Other weeks, nothing."

"Did he owe anyone money?"

"No. But that's only because of the dancing. That's why I didn't want to quit the job. We wouldn't have been able to make ends meet otherwise."

"But aside from any arguments you had about your job…"

"We didn't argue about anything else," she said, and suddenly burst into tears again.

"I'm sorry," Carella said at once. "If this is difficult for you right now, we'll come back in the morning. Would you prefer that?"

"No, that's all right," she said.

"Then… can you tell me if your husband argued with anyone else recently?"

"Nobody I can think of."

"Mrs. Chadderton, in the past several days have you noticed anyone who seemed particularly interested in your husband's comings and goings? Anyone lurking around outside the building or in the hallway, for example."

"No," she said, shaking her head.

"How about tonight? Notice anyone in the hallway when your husband left?"

"I didn't go out in the hall with him."

"Hear anything in the hall after he was gone? Anyone who might have been listening or watching, trying to find out if he was still home?"

"I didn't hear anything."

"Would anyone else have heard anything?"

"How would I know?"

"I meant, was there anyone here with you? A neighbor? A friend?"

"I was alone."

"Mrs. Chadderton," he said, "I have to ask this next question, I hope you'll forgive me for asking it."

"George wasn't fooling around with any other women," she said at once. "Is that the question?"

"That was the question, yes."

"And I wasn't fooling around with any other men."

"The reason he had to ask," Meyer said, "is—"

"I know why he had to ask," Chloe said. "But I don't think he'd have asked a white woman that same question."

"White or black, the questions are the same," Carella said flatly. "If you were having trouble in your marriage—"

"There was no trouble in my marriage," she said, turning to him, her dark eyes blazing.

"Fine then, the matter is closed."

It was not closed, not so far as Carella was concerned. He would come back to it later if only because Chloe's reaction had been so violent. In the meantime, he picked up again on the line of questioning that was mandatory in any homicide.

"Mrs. Chadderton," he said, "at any time during the past few weeks—"

"Because I guess it's impossible for two black people to have a good marriage, right?" she said, again coming back to the matter — which apparently was not yet closed for her, either.

Carella wondered what to say next. Should he go through the tired "Some of My Best Friends Are Blacks" routine? Should he explain that Arthur Brown, a detective on the 87th Squad, was in fact happily married and that he and his wife, Caroline, had spent hours in the Carellas' house discussing toilet training and school busing and, yes, even racial prejudice? Should he defend himself as a white man in a white man's world, when this woman's husband — a black man — had been robbed of his life in a section of the precinct that was at least fifty-percent black? Should he ignore the possibility that Chloe Chadderton, who had immediately flared upon mention of marital infidelity, was as suspect in this damn case as anyone else in the city? More suspect, in fact, despite the screaming and the hollering and the tears, despite the numbness as she'd listened to the details.

White or black, they all seemed numb, even the ones who'd stuck an icepick in someone's skull an hour earlier; they all seemed numb. The tears were sometimes genuine and sometimes not; sometimes, they were only tears of guilt or relief. In this city where husbands killed wives and lovers killed rivals; in this city where children were starved or beaten to death by their parents, and grandmothers were slain by their junkie grandsons for the few dollars in their purses; in this city any immediate member of the family was not only a possible murderer but a probable one. The crime statistics here changed as often as did the weather, but the latest ones indicated a swing back to so-called family homicides, as opposed to those involving total strangers, where the victim and the murderer alike were unknown to each other before that final moment of obscene intimacy.

A witness had described George Chadderton's killer as a tall, skinny man, almost a boy. A man who looked like a teen-ager. Chloe Chadderton was perhaps five feet nine inches tall, with the lithe, supple body of a dancer. Given the poor visibility of the rain-drenched night, mightn't she have passed for a teenage boy? In Shakespeare's time, it was the teen-age boys who'd acted the women's roles in his plays. Chloe had taken offense at a question routinely asked and now chose to cloud the issue with black indignation, perhaps genuine, perhaps intended only to bewilder and confuse. So Carella looked at her, and wondered what he should say next. Get tough? Get apologetic? Ignore the challenge? What? In the silence, rain lashed the single window in the kitchen. Carella had the feeling it would never stop raining.

"Ma'am," he said, "we want to find your husband's murderer. If you'd feel more comfortable with a black cop, we've got plenty of black cops, and we'll send some around. They'll ask the same questions."

She looked at him.

"The same questions," he repeated.

"Ask your questions," she said, and folded her arms across her breasts.

"All right," he said, and nodded. "At any time during the past few weeks did you notice anything strange about your husband's behavior?"

"Strange how?" Chloe said. Her voice was still edged with anger, her arms were still folded defensively across her breasts.

"Anything out of the ordinary, any breaks in his usual routine — I take it you knew most of his friends and business acquaintances."

"Yes, I did."

"Were there any such breaks in his usual routine?"

"I don't think so."

"Did your husband keep an appointment calendar?"

"Yes."

"Is it here in the apartment?"

"In the bedroom. On the dresser."

"Could I see it, Mrs. Chadderton?"

"Yes," she said, and rose and left the room. Carella and Meyer waited. Somewhere outside, far below, a drainpipe dripped steadily and noisily. When Chloe came back into the room, she was carrying a black appointment book in her hand. She gave it to Carella, and he immediately opened it to the two facing pages for the month of September.

"Today's the fifteenth," Meyer said.

Carella nodded, and then began scanning the entries of the week beginning September eleventh. On Monday at 3:00 p.m., according to the entry scrawled in black ink in the square for that date, George Chadderton had gone for a haircut. On Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., he'd had lunch with someone identified only as Charlie. Carella looked up.

"Who's Charlie?" he said.

"Charlie?"

"'Lunch 12:30 p.m., Charlie,'" Carella read.

"Oh. That's not a person, it's a place. Restaurant called Charlie down on Granada Street."

"Have any idea who your husband had lunch with that day?"

"No. He was always meeting with people, discussing gigs and contracts and like that."

"Didn't Ambrose Harding handle all his business affairs?"

"Yes, but George liked to meet who he'd be playing for, the promoter or the man who owned the hall or whoever."

Carella nodded and looked down at the calendar again. There were no entries for Wednesday. For Thursday, the fourteenth, there were two entries: "Office, 11:00 a.m." and "Lunch 1:00 p.m. Harry Caine."

"What would 'Office' be?" Carella asked.

"Ames office."

"And who's Harry Caine?"

"I don't know."

Carella looked at the book again. For tonight, Friday, September fifteenth, Chadderton had written "Graham Palmer Hall, 8:30, Ame pickup 7:30." For tomorrow, Saturday the sixteenth, he had written "C. J. at C. C. 12 noon."

"Who's C. J.?" Carella asked, looking up.

"I don't know," Chloe said.

"How about C. C? Does that mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Would it be a person or a place?"

"I have no idea."

"But you did know most of his friends and business acquaintances?"

"Yes, I did."

"Were there any recent conversations or meetings with strangers?"

"Strangers?"

"People you didn't know. Like this C. J., for example. Were there people whose names you didn't recognize when they phoned? Or people you saw him with, who—"

"No, there was nobody like that."

"Did anyone named C. J. ever phone here?"

"No."

"Did your husband mention that he had a meeting with this C. J. tomorrow at noon?"

"No."

"Mind if I take this with me?" Carella asked.

"Why do you need it?"

"I want to study it more closely, prepare a list of names, see if you can identify any of them for me. Would that be all right?"

"Yes, fine."

"I'll give you a receipt for the book."

"Fine."

"Mrs. Chadderton, when I spoke to Ambrose Harding earlier tonight, he mentioned that your husband's songs — some of his songs — dealt with situations and perhaps personalities here in Diamondback. Is that true?"

"George wrote about anything that bothered him."

"Would he have been associating lately with any of the people he wrote about? To gather material, or to—"

"You don't have to do research to know what's happening in Diamondback," Chloe said. "All you need is eyes in your head."

"When you say he wrote these songs—"

"He wrote the songs down before he sang them. I know that's not what calypso used to be, people used to make them up right on the spot. But George wrote them all down before hand."

"The words and the music?"

"Just the words. In calypso, the melody's almost always the same. There're a dozen melody lines they use over and again. It's the words that count."

"Where did he write these words?"

"What do you mean where? Here in the apartment."

"No, I meant…"

"Oh. In a notebook. A spiral notebook."

"Do you have that notebook?"

"Yes, it's in the bedroom, too."

"Could I see it?"

"I suppose so," she said, and rose wearily.

"I wonder if I could look through his closet, too," Carella said."

"What for?"

"He was dressed distinctively tonight, the red pants and the yellow shirt. I was wondering…"

"That was for the gig. He always dressed that way for a gig."

"Same outfit?"

"No, different ones. But always colorful. He was singing calypso, he was trying to make people think of Carnival time."

"Could I see some of those other outfits?"

"I still don't know why."

"I'm trying to figure out whether anyone might have recognized him from the costume alone. It was raining very hard, you know, visibility…"

"Well, nobody would've seen the costume. He was wearing a raincoat over it."

"Even so. Would it be all right?"

Chloe shrugged, and walked wordlessly out of the kitchen. The detectives followed her through the living room, and then into a bedroom furnished with a rumpled king-sized bed, a pair of night tables, a large mahogany dresser, and a standing floor lamp beside an easy chair. Chloe opened the top drawer of the dresser, rummaged among the handkerchiefs and socks there, and found a spiral notebook with a battered blue cover. She handed the book to Carella.

"Thank you," he said, and immediately began leafing through the pages. There were penciled lyrics for what appeared to be a dozen or more songs. There were pages of doodles, apparently scrawled while Chadderton was awaiting inspiration. On one of the pages, doodled all across it in block lettering and script lettering alike, overlapping and crisscrossing, were the words "IN THE LIFE."

"What's this?" Carella said, and showed the page to Chloe.

"I don't know. Maybe a song title."

"Did he sing anything called 'In the Life'?"

"No, but maybe it's just the idea for a song, just the title."

"Do you know what that expression means?" Carella asked.

"Yes, I think so. It refers to criminals, doesn't it? People in… well, in the criminal life."

"Yes," Carella said. "But your husband wasn't associating with any criminals, was he?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"None of the pushers or prostitutes he wrote about?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"That's a common expression among prostitutes," Carella said. "In the life."

Chloe said nothing.

"Is that the closet?" Carella asked.

"Yes, right there," she said, gesturing with her head. Carella handed the spiral notebook to Meyer, and then opened the closet door. Chloe watched him as he began moving hangers and clothing. She watched him intently. He wondered if she realized he was not looking for any of the colorful costumes her husband had worn on his various gigs, but instead was looking for black boots, a black raincoat, and a black hat — preferably wet. "These are what he wore, huh?" he asked.

"Yes. He had them made for him by a woman on St. Sab's."

"Nice," Carella said. Chloe was still watching him. He shoved aside several of the garments on their hangers, looked deeper into the closet.

"Mrs. Chadderton," Meyer said, "can you tell us whether your husband seemed worried or depressed lately? Were there any unexplained absences, did he seem to have any inkling at all that his life was in danger?"

Searching the closet, hoping that his search appeared casual, Carella recognized that Meyer had buried his "unexplained absences" question in a heap of camouflaging debris, circling back to the matter of possible infidelity in a way that might not ruffle Chloe's already substantially ruffled feathers. In the closet, there were several coats, none of them black and none of them wet. On the floor, a row of women's high-heeled pumps, several pairs of men's shoes, some low-heeled women's walking shoes, and a pair of medium-heeled women's boots — tan. Chloe had still not answered Meyer's question. Her attention had focused on Carella again.

"Mrs. Chadderton?" Meyer said.

"No. He seemed the same as always," she said. "What are you looking for?" she asked Carella abruptly. "A gun?"

"No, ma'am," Carella said. "You don't own a gun, do you?"

"This has got to be some kind of comedy act," Chloe said, and stalked out of the bedroom. They followed her into the kitchen. She was standing by the refrigerator, weeping again.

"I didn't kill him," she said.

Neither of the detectives said anything.

"If you're done here, I wish you'd leave," she said.

"May I take the notebook with me?" Carella asked.

"Take it. Just go."

"I'll give you a receipt, ma'am, if you—"

"I don't need a receipt," she said, and burst into fresh tears.

"Ma'am…"

"Would you please go?" she said. "Would you please get the hell out of here?"

They left silently.

In the hallway outside, Meyer said, "We were clumsy."

"We were worse than that," Carella said.

Both plate-glass windows of the Club Flamingo were painted over pink. In the center of the window on the left was a huge hand-lettered sign advertising TOPLESS, BOTTOMLESS, NOON TO 4:00 A.M. The club apparently offered more by way of spectacle than Chloe had revealed to him last night. "It's a topless club," she'd said, the difference between topless and bottomless being somewhat akin to that between Manslaughter and Murder One. In the other window was an equally large sign promising GENEROUS DRINKS, FREE LUNCH. Carella was hungry — he'd had only a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee for breakfast. He opened one of the two entrance doors and stepped into the club's dim interior. Adjusting his eyes to the gloom, he stood just inside the entrance doors, listening to the canned rock music that blared from speakers all around the room. Dead ahead was a long oval bar. Two girls, one on either side of the bar, were gyrating in time to the rock music. Both girls were wearing sequined, high-heeled, ankle-strapped pumps and fringed G-strings. Both girls were bare-breasted. Neither of them wore anything under the G-strings. Neither of them was Chloe Chadderton.

He noticed now that there were small tables around the perimeter of the room. The place was not very crowded. He suspected the rain was keeping customers away. But at one of the tables, a blond girl danced — if one could call it that — for the exclusive pleasure of a man who sat there alone, nursing a beer. There were four men sitting at the bar, two on each side of it, three of them white, one of them black. Carella took a seat midway down the bar. One of the bartenders — a young redheaded girl wearing a black leotard and black net stockings — walked to where he was sitting, her high-heeled pumps clicking on the hard wooden floor.

"Something to drink, sir?" she said.

"Have you got anything soft?" Carella asked.

"Oh, yes indeed," she said, and rolled her eyes and took in a deep breath, at once imparting sexual innuendo to his innocuous question. He looked at her. She figured she'd somehow made a mistake and immediately said, "Pepsi, Coke, Seven-Up, or ginger ale. It'll cost you same as the whiskey, though."

"How much is that?"

"Three-fifty. But that includes the lunch bar."

"Coke or Pepsi, either one's fine," Carella said. "Has Chloe Chadderton come in yet?"

"She's taking her break just now," the redhead said, and then casually asked, "You a cop?"

"Yes," Carella said, "I'm a cop."

"Figures. Guy comes in here wanting an ice-cream soda, he's got to be a cop on duty. What do you want with Chloe?"

"That's between her and me, isn't it?"

"This is a clean place, mister."

"Nobody said it wasn't."

"Chloe dances same as the other girls. You won't see nothing here you can't see in any one of the legitimate theaters downtown. They got big stage shows downtown with nude dancers in them, same as here."

"Mm-huh," Carella said.

The redhead turned away, uncapped his soft drink, and poured it into a glass. "Nobody is allowed to touch the girls here. They just dance, period. Same as downtown. If it isn't against the law in a legitimate theater, then it isn't against the law here, either."

"Relax," Carella said. "I'm not looking for a bust."

The girl rolled her eyes again. For a moment, he didn't quite understand her reaction. And then he realized she was deliberately equating the police expression for "arrest" — a term he was certain she'd heard a hundred times before — with what was bursting exuberantly in the black leotard top. He looked at her again. She shrugged elaborately, turned away, and walked to the cash register at the end of the bar. One of the dancers was squatting before the solitary black customer now, her legs widespread, tossing aside the fringe of the G-string to reveal herself completely. The man stared at her exposed genitals. The girl smiled at him. She licked her lips. The man was wearing eyeglasses. The girl took the glasses from his eyes, and wiped them slowly over her opening, a mock expression of shocked propriety on her face. She returned the glasses to the man's head, and then arched herself over backward, supporting herself with her arms, thrusting her open crotch toward his face and pumping at him while he continued staring. Just like the legitimate theaters downtown, Carella thought.

The state's obscenity laws were defined in Article 235, Section 2 of the Criminal Law, wherein "producing, presenting or directing an obscene performance or participating in a portion thereof which is obscene and contributes to its obscenity" was considered a Class-A misdemeanor. A related provision — PL 235.00, Subdivision 1 — stated: "Any material or performance is 'obscene' if (a) considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to prurient, shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, excretion, sadism or masochism, AND (b) it goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in describing or representing such matters, AND (c) it is utterly without redeeming social value."

There was no question in Carella's mind but that the girl down the bar, her back arched, her own hand now toying with her vulva for the obvious pleasure of the man seated before her, was performing an act the predominant appeal of which was to a prurient interest in nudity and sex. But as the redheaded bartender had pointed out to him a moment ago, there wasn't anything you could see here that you couldn't see in some of the legitimate theaters downtown, provided you had a first-row seat. Make the bust, and you found yourself in endless courtroom squabbles about the difference between art and pornography, a thin line Carella himself — and even the Supreme Court of the United States — was quite unready to define.

When you thought about it — and he thought about it often — what the hell was so terrible about pornography, anyway? He had seen motion pictures rated "R" (no one under seventeen admitted unless in the company of an adult) or even "PG" (parental guidance advised) that he had found to be dirtier than any of the "X"-rated porn flicks running in the sleazy theaters along The Stem. The language in these socially acceptable films was identical to what he heard in the squadroom and on the street every single waking day of his life — and he was a man whose job placed him in constant contact with the lowest elements of society. The sex in these approved films was equally candid, sparing an audience only the explicit intercourse, fellatio, and cunnilingus common in "X"-rated films. So where did you draw the line? If it was okay for a big-name male star to make simulated love to a totally naked woman in a multimillion-dollar epic (provided he kept his pants on), then why was it wrong to depict the actual sex act in a low-budget film starring unknowns? Put a serious actress up there on the screen, show her simulating the sex act (but, God forbid, never actually performing it), and somehow this became high cinema art, while Deep Throat remained cheap porn. He guessed it was all in the camera angles. He guessed he was a cop who shouldn't be wondering so often about the laws he was being paid to enforce.

But what if he walked down the length of the bar right this minute and busted the dancer there for "participating in an obscene performance" (screwing a man's eyeglasses was certainly obscene, wasn't it?) and then busted the owner of the joint for "producing, presenting or directing an obscene performance" — what then? The offense was a Class-A misdemeanor, punishable by not more than a year in jail or more than a thousand-dollar fine. Get your conviction (which was unlikely), and they'd be out on the street again in three months' time. Meanwhile, there were killers, rapists, burglars, muggers, armed robbers, child molesters, and pushers roaming the city and victimizing the populace. So what was an honest cop to do? An honest cop sipped at his Pepsi or his Coca-Cola, whichever the redhead with the inventive pornographic mind had served him, and listened to the blaring rock, and watched the naked backside of the blond dancer across the bar as she leaned over to bring her enormous breasts to within an inch of a customer's lips.

At twenty minutes to one, Chloe Chadderton — naked except for high-heeled shoes and a silvery fringed G-string — stepped up onto the bar at the far end of it. The dancer she was replacing, the one who'd wiped the black man's glasses over what the Vice Squad would have called her "privates," patted Chloe on the behind as she strutted past her and down the ramp leading off the bartop. A new rock record dropped into place on the turntable. Smiling broadly, Chloe began dancing to it, high-stepping down the bar past the black man with the steamy eyeglasses, shaking her naked breasts, thrusting her hips, bumping and grinding to the frantic rhythm of the canned guitars, and finally stopping directly in front of Carella. Still shaking wildly, she began kneeling before him, arms stretched above her head, fingers widespread, breasts quaking, knees opening — and suddenly recognized him. A look of shocked embarrassment crossed her face. The smile dropped from her mouth.

"I'll talk to you during your next break," Carella said.

Chloe nodded. She rose, listened for a moment to recapture the beat, and then swiveled long-leggedly to where the black man sat at the other end of the bar.

She danced for half an hour, and then came to the small table where Carella was eating the sandwich he'd made at the lunch bar. She explained at once that she had only a ten-minute break. Her embarrassment seemed to have passed. She was wearing a flimsy nylon wrapper belted at the waist, but she was still naked beneath it, and when she leaned over to rest her folded arms on the tabletop, he could see her breasts and nipples in the V-necked opening of the gown.

"I want to apologize for last night," he said at once, and she opened her eyes wide in surprise. "I'm sorry. I was trying to touch all the bases, but I guess I slid into second with my cleats flying."

"That's okay," she said.

"I'm sorry. I mean it."

"I said it's okay. Did you look at George's notebook?"

"Yes. I have it here with me," he said, reaching under his chair to where he'd placed the manila envelope. "I didn't find anything I can use. Would you mind if I asked you a few more questions?"

"Go ahead," she said, and turned to look at the wall clock. "Just remember it's a half hour on the bar, and a ten-minute break. They don't pay me for sitting around talking to cops."

"Do they know your husband was killed last night?"

"The boss knows, he read it in the newspaper. I don't think any of the others do."

"I was surprised you came to work today."

"Got to eat," Chloe said, and shrugged. "What did you want to ask me?"

"I'm going to start by getting you sore again," he said, and smiled.

"Go ahead," she said, but she did not return the smile.

"You lied about this place," he said.

"Yes."

"Did you lie about anything else?"

"Nothing."

"Positive about that?"

"Positive."

"Really no trouble between you and your husband? No unexplained absences on his part? No mysterious phone calls?"

"What makes you think there might have been?"

"I'm asking, that's all."

"No trouble between us. None at all," she said.

"How about unexplained absences?"

"He was gone a lot of the time, but that had nothing to do with another woman."

"What did it have to do with?"

"Business."

"I jotted some names down," Carella said, nodding. "Got them from his appointment calendar, people he had lunch with or meetings with in the past month, people he was scheduled to see in the next few weeks ahead. I wonder if you can identify them for me."

"I'll try," Chloe said.

Carella opened his notebook, found the page he wanted, and began reading. "Buster Greerson," he said.

"Saxophone player. He was trying to get George to join a band he's putting together."

"Lester… Handey, is it?"

"Hanley. He's George's vocal coach."

"Okay, that explains the regularity. Once every two weeks, right?"

"Yes, on Tuesdays."

"Hawkins. Who's that?"

"I don't know. What's his first name?"

"No first name. Just Hawkins. Appears in the calendar for the first time on August tenth, that was a Thursday. Then again on August twenty-fourth, another Thursday."

"I don't know anybody named Hawkins."

"How about Lou Davis?"

"He's the man who owns Graham Palmer Hall. That's where George—"

"Oh, sure," Carella said, "how dumb." He looked at his notebook again. "Jerri Lincoln."

"Girl singer. Another one of George's album ideas. He wanted to do a double with her. But that was a long time ago."

"Saw her on August thirtieth, according to his calendar."

"Well, maybe she started bugging him again."

"Just business between them."

"You should see her," Chloe said, and smiled. "Strictly business, believe me."

"Don Latham," Carella said.

"Head of a company called Latham Records. The label is Black Power."

"C. J.," Carella said. "Your husband saw him — or her," he said, with a shrug, "on the thirty-first of August, and again on September seventh, and he was supposed to have lunch with whoever it is today — I guess it was going to be lunch — at twelve noon. Mean anything to you?"

"No, you asked me that last night."

"C. J.," Carella said again.

"No, I'm sorry."

"Okay, who's Jimmy Talbot?"

"Don't know him."

"Davey… Kennemer, is it?"

"Kennemer, yes, he's a trumpet player."

"And Arthur Spessard?"

"Another musician, I forget what he plays."

"Okay, that's it," Carella said, and closed the notebook. "Tell me about George's brother," he said abruptly.

"Santo? What do you want to know about him?"

"Is is true he ran away seven years ago?"

"Who told you that?"

"Ambrose Harding. Is it true?"

"Yes."

"Ambrose said he may have gone back to Trinidad."

"He didn't go to Trinidad. George went there looking for him, and he wasn't there."

"Have any ideas where he might be?"

Chloe hesitated.

"Yes?" Carella said.

"George thought…"

"Yes, what?"

"That somebody killed his brother."

"What made him think that?"

"The way it happened, the way he just disappeared from sight."

"Did George mention any names? Anybody he suspected?"

"No. But he kept at it all the time. Wasn't a day went bv he wasn't asking somebody or other about his brother.''

"Where'd he do the asking?"

"Everywhere."

"In Diamondback?"

"In Diamondback, yes, but not only there. He was involved in a whole big private investigation. Police wouldn't do nothing, so George went out on his own."

"When you say his brother just disappeared, what do you mean?"

"After a job one night."

"Tell me what happened."

"I don't know what happened, exactly. Neither does anyone else, for that matter. It was after a job — they used to play in a band together, George and his brother."

"Yes, I know that."

"George and two other guys in the band were waiting in the van for Santo to come out. He'd gone to the men's room or something, I'm not sure. Anyway, he never did come out. George went back inside the place, searched it top to bottom, couldn't find him."

"The other musicians who were there that night — would you know them?"

"I know their names, but I've never met them."

"What are their names?"

"Freddie Bones and Vincent Barragan."

"Bones? Is that his real name?"

"I think so."

"How do you spell the other name?"

"I think it's B-A-R-R-A-G-A-N. It's a Spanish name, he's from Puerto Rico."

"But you've never met either of them?"

"No, they were both before my time. I've only been married to George for four years."

"How do you happen to know the names then?"

"Well, he mentioned them a lot. Because they were there the night his brother disappeared, you know. And he was always talking to them on the phone."

"Recently?"

"No, not recently."

"Four years," Carella said. "Then you never met George's brother, either."

"Never."

"Santo Chadderton, is it?"

"Santo Chadderton, yes."

"Is this your first marriage?"

"Yes."

"Was it George's?"

"No. He was married before." She hesitated. "To a white woman," she said, and looked him straight in the eye.

"Divorce her or what?"

"Divorced her, yes."

"When?"

"Couple of months after we met. They were already separated when we met."

"What's her name, would you know?"

"Irene Chadderton. That's if she's still using her married name."

"What was her maiden name?"

"I don't know."

"Does she live here in the city?"

"Used to, I don't know if she still does."

"Would she have known Santo?"

"I suppose so."

"Would she know anything about his disappearance?"

"Anybody who ever had anything to do with George knows about his brother's disappearance, believe me. It was like a goddamn obsession with him. That's the other thing we argued about, okay? My dancing here, and him talking about his brother all the time! Searching for him all the time, checking newspapers, and court records, and hospitals and driving everybody crazy."

"You told me you had a good marriage," Carella said flatly.

"It was good as most," Chloe answered, and then shrugged. The flap of the gown slid away from one of her breasts with the motion, exposing it almost completely. She made no effort to close the gown. She stared into Carella's eyes and said, "I didn't kill him, Mr. Carella," and then turned to look at the wall clock again. "I got to get back up there, my audience awaits," she said breathlessly and smiled suddenly and radiantly.

"Don't forget this," Carella said, handing her the envelope.

"Thank you," she said. "If you learn anything…"

"I have your number."

"Yes," she said, and nodded, and looked at him a moment longer and then turned to walk toward the bar. Carella put on his coat and hat — both still wet — and went to the register to pay his check. As he walked out of the place, he turned to look toward the bar again. Chloe was in the same position the other dancer had assumed less than forty-five minutes ago — back arched, elbows locked, legs widespread, furiously smiling and grinding at a customer sitting not a foot away from her crotch. As Carella pushed open the door to step into the rain, the customer slid a dollar bill into the waistband of her G-string.

After forty-eight hours, you begin to get a little desperate. After seventy-two, you start praying for a break; it is amazing how many cops get religion after putting in seventy-two hours on a cold homicide case. After four days, you're sure you'll never solve the damn thing. When you hit the six-day mark, you begin getting desperate all over again. It is a different sort of desperation. It is a desperation bordering on obsession; you begin to see murderers under every rock. If your grandmother looks at you cockeyed, you begin to suspect her. You go over your typed reports again and again, you study your crime-scene drawings, you read homicide reports from other precincts, you search through the files looking for homicide cases in which the weapon was a .38 or the victim was a hooker or a singer or a business manager, you hash over homicide cases involving frauds or semifrauds like Harry Caine's vanity-house caper, you rehash homicide cases involving missing or kidnapped persons — and eventually you become an expert on all such homicides committed in the goddamn city during the past ten years but you still don't know who the hell killed three people in the immediate past, never mind ten years ago.

It was now 9:40 a.m. on Friday morning, September 22, only fourteen hours short of 11:40 p.m., when exactly one week ago a concerned citizen dialed Emergency 911 to report two men bleeding on the sidewalk at Culver and South Eleventh. Fourteen hours short of a week. Fourteen short hours short. At twenty minutes to midnight tonight, George C. Chadderton would have been dead a full week. At 3:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, Clara Jean Hawkins would likewise have been dead a full week. Ambrose Harding, who was at present lying in a coffin at the Monroe Funeral Home on St. Sebastian Avenue, would be buried tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m., by which time he'd have been dead almost four days. And the case continued to lie there like a lox without a bagel.

At 9:40 that morning, Carella went to see Chloe Chadderton at her apartment in Diamondback. He had called from home first, and was therefore somewhat surprised to find her wearing the same long pink robe she'd worn on that night almost a week ago, when he and Meyer had knocked on her door at two in the morning. It occurred to him, as she let him into the apartment that he had never seen Chloe in street clothes. She was always either in a nightgown with a robe over it, as she was now, or else strutting half-naked on a bartop, or else sitting at a table and wearing only a flimsy nylon wrapper over her dancing costume. He could understand why George Chadderton wanted his wife to get out of "show biz," considering what she seemed intent on showing day and night to any interested viewer. Sitting opposite her in the living room now, Carella looked across at the long length of leg revealed in the opening of her robe and silently admitted that he himself was an interested viewer. Embarrassed, recalling Chloe's total exposure on the bartop at the Flamingo, he quickly took out his notebook and busied himself leafing through its pages.

"Would you like some coffee?" she asked. "I have some on the stove."

"No, thanks," Carella said. "I just want to ask you some questions, and then I'll be on my way."

"No hurry," she said, and smiled.

"Mrs. Chadderton," he said, "I tried to fill you in a little on the phone about what we believe is the connection between your husband and C. J. Hawkins, the fact that they'd been talking about doing an album together."

"Yes, but George never mentioned that to me," Chloe said.

"Something called 'In the Life.' Do you remember in his notebook…"

"Yes…"

"The night we were here…"

"Yes, I remember."

"That's what we think the title of the album was going to be."

"Mm-huh," Chloe said.

"But he never mentioned this album to you." No.

"Or Miss Hawkins. He never mentioned anyone named Clara Jean Hawkins or C. J. Hawkins."

"Never," Chloe said, and shifted her weight on the sofa.

Carella looked at his notebook again. "Mrs. Chadderton…" he said.

"I wish you'd call me Chloe," she said.

"Well… uh… yes, fine," he said, but instead skirted the name the way he might have a puddle on the sidewalk. "In the appointment calendar you let me have, the name Hawkins and the initials C. J. appeared on the following dates: August tenth, August twenty-fourth, August thirty-first, and September seventh. Those are all Thursdays. We know that Miss Hawkins's day off was Thursday—"

"Just like a cleaning woman," Chloe said, and smiled.

"What?" Carella said.

"Thursdays and every other Sunday," Chloe said.

"Oh. Well, I hadn't made that connection," Carella said.

"Don't worry, I'm not about to start another racial hassle," Chloe said.

"I didn't think you were."

"I was wrong about you that night," she said. "That first night."

"Well," he said, "that's—"

"Do you know when I realized you were okay?"

"No, when was that?"

"At the Flamingo. You were checking names and dates in your little notebook, same as you're doing now, and you asked me who Lou Davis was and I told you he was the man who owned the hall my husband…"

"Yes, I remember."

"And you said 'How dumb,' or something like that. About yourself, I mean. You were calling yourself dumb."

"I was right, too," Carella said, and smiled.

"So I decided I liked you."

"Well… good. I'm glad to hear that."

"In fact, I was very happy when you called this morning," Chloe said.

"Well… uh… good," he said, and smiled. "I was saying that your husband's meetings with C. J. Hawkins—"

"She was a hooker, is that right?"

"Yes — always took place on Thursdays, which was her day oft, Thursday. We've got reason to believe that some sort of beach party took place every Wednesday night, however, and I wonder if your husband ever mentioned any such party to you."

"A beach party?"

"Well, we don't know if it was a party on the beach. We only know that C. J. went out to the beach someplace—"

"What beach?"

"We don't know — and got paid for her services out there."

"Oh."

"Yes, we think it was, you know, some sort of regular, uh, prostitution she was performing out there someplace."

"With George, are you saying?"

"No, I'm not suggesting that. I know you had a good marriage, I know there was no trouble—"

"Bullshit," Chloe said.

Carella looked at her.

"I know that's what I told you," she said.

"Yes, more than once, Mrs. Chadderton."

"More than twice, in fact," she said, and smiled. "And it's Chloe. I wish you'd call me Chloe."

"Are you telling me now that things weren't good in your marriage?"

"Things were rotten," she said.

"Other women?"

"I would guess."

"Hookers?"

"I wouldn't put it past him, for all his 'Sister Woman' bullshit."

"Then you're not discounting the possibility of a sexual relationship between your husband and Miss Hawkins."

"I'm not discounting anything."

"Was he ever gone from the apartment on a Wednesday night?"

"He was gone from the apartment almost every night."

"I'm trying to find out—"

"You're trying to find out whether he and this woman were together on Wednesday nights."

"Yes, Mrs. Chadderton, because—"

"Chloe," she said.

"Chloe, right — because if I can establish that there was something more than this cockamamie record album between them, if I can establish that they were seeing each other, and maybe got somebody angry about it—"

"Not me," Chloe said at once.

"I wasn't suggesting that."

"Why not? I just told you we were unhappy. I just told you he had other women. Isn't that reason…"

"Well, maybe," Carella said, "but the logistics aren't right. We were here until almost three a.m. last Friday night, and C. J. was killed at three-thirty. You couldn't possibly have dressed, traveled all the way downtown, and found her on the street in that short a time."

"Then you did consider it?"

"I considered it," Carella said, and smiled. "I've been considering everything these past few days. That's why I'd appreciate any help you can give me. What I'm looking for is a connection between the two of them."

"Two of them? What about Ame?"

"No. I think Harding was killed because the murderer was afraid of identification. He was even warned beforehand."

"Warned?"

"Warned. With a pink orchid called Calypso bulbosa. I think the killer wants to be caught. I think it's like that guy years ago who scrawled it in lipstick on a mirror. That orchid is the same damn thing. Otherwise why warn the man? Why not just kill him? He wants to be stopped, whoever he is. So if you can remember anything at all about any Wednesday night your husband was out of this apartment…"

"I don't think you understand," Chloe said. "He was gone more often than he was here. There were times, this last little while, when I'd be sitting here talking to the four walls. I'd find myself longing to go back to the club. I'd get home sometime around eight-thirty, nine o'clock, and I'd eat here alone in the apartment, George'd be gone, and I'd sit here wondering what the hell I was doing here, why didn't I just go on back to the club? Talk to the girls, have someone to talk to. Dance for the men, have someone looking at me as if he knew I was alive, do you understand? George was so involved with his own damn self, he never… Well, look at me, I'm a pretty woman, at least I think I'm a pretty woman, and he was — do you think I'm pretty?"

"Yes," Carella said, "I do."

"Sure, but not to George. George was so much in love with himself, so completely involved in his own projects, his pipe-dream record albums that never got made, his big-shot calypso singer bullshit, his search for his goddamn brother who probably ran off and left him cause he couldn't stand him any more than anyone else could! George, George, George, it was all George, George, George, he named himself right, the bastard, King George, that's exactly what he thought he was, a fuckin king! You know what he told me when he wanted me to quit the Flamingo? He told me my dancing there reflected badly on his image as a popular singer. His image! I was embarrassing him, do you understand? It never once occurred to him that maybe I was embarrassing myself, too. I mean, man, that's degrading, isn't it? Squatting on a bartop and shoving myself in some man's face? You look nervous," she said suddenly. "Am I making you nervous?"

"A little."

"Why? Because you've seen me naked?"

"Maybe."

"Join the club," she said airily, and waved one arm languidly over her head. "Do you understand what I'm saying though?"

"I think so."

"There was nothing between us anymore is what I'm saying. When you brought me the news that night, when you came here and told me George had got killed, I started crying because… because I thought, hell, George got killed a long time ago. The George I loved and married got killed more years ago than I can remember. All that was left was somebody running around trying to be the big star he didn't have a chance in hell of becoming. That's why I began crying that night. I began crying because I suddenly realized how long he'd been dead. How long we'd been dead, in fact."

Carella nodded and said nothing.

"I've been lonely a long time," she said. And then softly, so softly that it seemed a part of the whisper of rain against the windows, she said, "Steve."

The room went silent. In the kitchen, he could hear the steady hiss of the gas jet under the coffeepot. Somewhere in the distance, there was the low rumble of thunder. He looked at her, looked at the long length of tan leg and thigh in the opening of the pink gown, looked at the slender ankle and the jiggling foot, and remembered her on the Flamingo bartop.

"If… if there's nothing more you can tell me," he said, "I'd better be going."

"Stay," she said.

"Chloe…" he said.

"Stay. You liked what you saw that day, didn't you?"

"I liked what I saw, yes," Carella said.

"Then stay," she whispered. "The rain is gentler in the other room."

He looked at her and wished he could tell her he didn't want to make love to her without having to say it straight out. He knew a hundred cops in the department — well, fifty anyway — who claimed they'd been to bed with every burglary, robbery, assault, or what-have-you victim they'd ever met, and maybe they had, Carella guessed maybe they had. He guessed Cotton Hawes had, though he wasn't too sure about that, and he supposed Hal Willis had, and he knew Andy Parker had or else was lying when he boasted in the squadroom about all his bedroom conquests. But he knew Meyer hadn't, and he knew that he himself would rather cut off his right arm than be unfaithful to Teddy, though there were many times — like right this goddamn minute with Chloe Chadderton sitting there opposite him, the smile gone from her face now, her eyes narrowed, her foot jiggling, her robe open clear to Sunday — when he would have liked nothing better than to spend a wet Friday in bed with a warm stranger in another room where the rain was gentler. He looked at her. Their eyes locked.

"Chloe," he said, "you're a beautiful, exciting woman — but I'm a working cop with three homicides to solve."

"Suppose you didn't have all those homicides to solve?" she asked.

"I'm also a married man," he said.

"Does that mean anything nowadays?"

"Yes."

"Okay," she said.

"Please," he said.

"I said okay," she snapped. And then, her voice rising, her words clipped and angry, she said, "I don't know anything about George's Wednesday night parties, or the whore's either. If there's nothing else, I'd like to get dressed now."

She folded her arms defensively across her breasts, and pulled the robe closed around her crossed legs. She was sitting that way when he left the apartment.

Calypso, 1979