Romance

10

THE MOMENT CARELLA GOT OUT OF BED, HE CALLED RIGANTI hoping to set up an interview for later that Friday. Riganti told him a detective had already interviewed him last night.

“What detective?” Carella asked.

“Ollie Weeks,” Riganti said. “He was very valuable.”

Carella wondered what that meant.

“If you have a few minutes later on,” he said, “maybe we can…”

“Oh, sure, but I’ll he rehearsing from nine to…”

“Few other people I want to talk to at the theater, anyway.”

“Well, sure, come on down,” Riganti said. “Happy to talk to you.”

Valuable how? Carella wondered, and hurried into the shower.

A traffic jam on the Farley Expressway delayed him for a good forty minutes. He did not get to the theater till ten past nine. He scanned it quickly, relieved to see that Ollie hadn’t beat him to the punch again.

Riganti, in jeans, Italian loafers without socks, and a loose-fitting cotton sweater, was already onstage with Andrea Packer. This morning, she was wearing a moss-green wraparound mini, orange-colored sneakers and an orange-colored T-shirt with no bra. Her long blond hair was stacked on top of her head like a small sheaf of wheat.

Riganti was trying to explain something to their director and their playwright, who both sat in what Carella now realized were their customary seats out front. Carella stood at the back of the theater, his eyes adjusting to the dark, trying to see if anyone else was sitting out there.

“… a more realistic approach,” Riganti was saying. “To the scene.”

“Let me understand this,” Kendall said. “Are you saying that you and Andy got here early this morning…”

“Eight o’clock,” Andrea said.

Carella had called Riganti at seven-thirty.

“… to read this scene we’re about to rehearse?” Kendall asked.

“To go over it,” Riganti said.

“To do an improv on it, actually,” Andrea said.

“An improv?” Corbin asked.

“Well, yeah. Actually,” Riganti said.

“On the new scene?” Corbin asked.

“Just to see if we could get a handle on it,” Riganti said.

“Find a way into it,” Andrea said.

“Find a realistic approach to it,” Riganti said,

“My new scene?” Corbin asked.

“Well… yes. Your… uh… new scene.”

“Which is terrific, by the way,” Andrea said.

“Really terrific,” Riganti said. “We were just trying to get a handle on it, is all.”

“By doing an improv?” Corbin asked.

“By trying…”

“An improvisation? On my new scene?”

“Just to try for a little added reality,” Riganti said, and turned to Andrea for assistance.

“To go for that additional touch of realism,” she said, and smiled helpfully.

“I think it’s quite real enough, thank you,” Corbin said. “And by the way, improvs arc for acting classes, and this happens to be a play in rehearsal. So let’s just run the new scene, if you don’t mind. The way I wrote it, please. My words, please.”

“I’m curious to see what they’ve come up with,” Kendall said casually. “How long will this take?” he called to the stage.

“Ten minutes,” Riganti said.

“Why don’t we see it, Freddie?” Kendall said. “What possible harm can it do?”

“What possible good can it do?” Corbin asked. “We’ve got eight new pages to…”

“It’s just an exercise,” Kendall said. “Loosens them up.”

“Ashley…”

“If it’s good for them. it might be good for the scene. Let’s see it, Mark!” he called to the stage.

“Ashley…”

“What we tried to do…” Riganti started.

“Don’t tell it, show it,” Kendall said.

“Thank you.” Riganti said, and nodded to Andrea, who immediately sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, and folded her hands in her lap, and lowered her head. The stage and the theater went silent. There were just the two actors on stage with a work light and a chair, getting ready to do an improvisation for a director, a playwright and a detective in a hushed darkened theater. Riganti started circling the chair. Carella watched intently. Riganti didn’t say a word, just kept circling the chair.

“Look, miss,” he said at last, “let’s he realistic here, okay? Do you expect me to believe…?”

“Those aren’t my words,” Corbin said in a whisper that carried clear to where Carella was standing at the back of the theater.

“It’s an improv,” Kendall said in an equally loud whisper.

“I won’t have them changing…”

“For Christ’s sake, let’s just hear the thing!”

The theater went silent again.

On the stage, the two actors looked out into the darkness, puzzled, waiting for instructions.

“Again, please,” Kendall said softly.

Riganti hesitated a moment. Then he nodded to Andrea, who struck the same pose she had earlier, hands folded in her lap, head bent. Riganti began circling the chair again. Carella thought he did that very well, circling the chair. “Miss,” he said at last in a voice that sounded gruffly familiar, “let’s be realistic here, okay? Do you expect me to believe you’re understudyin the starring role in this play, and the girl gets killed and you never even once think Gee, maybe I’ll get to go on in her place?”

“I never once thought that, no,” Andrea said.

“Don’t you ever go to the fuckin movies, miss?”

“Of course I go to the…”

“Didn’t you ever see a movie where the star breaks her leg and the understudy has to go on for her?”

“These are not my words!” Corbin whispered.

“Shhh!” Kendall whispered.

“… and all these fuckin workmen are sittin up on these little catwalks,” Riganti said, “high above the stage where the lights are hangin, and they all catch their fuckin breaths when she starts singin? And this old guy who pulls the curtain is standin there with his fuckin mouth open in surprise,” Riganti said, circling the chair like a shark closing in for the kill, “and a little old lady with costumes in her hands and pins stickin in her dress is standin there like she got struck blind, too, and all over the fuckin theater they’re amazed by what this understudy is doin,” Riganti said, and stopped dead in front of Andrea and pointed his finger into her face and shouted, “You mean to tell me you never saw that scene, miss?”

“Yes, I saw that…”

“… you never saw that movie, miss?”

“I saw that movie, but…”

“Then let’s be realistic here!” Riganti shouted, and suddenly turned off the character he was playing, suddenly stopped being this raging detective in the scene he was improvising, becoming in the wink of an eye simply the self-effacing actor Mark Riganti again, standing there in jeans and a floppy sweater and Italian loafers without socks, smiling weakly and turning for approval to where Kendall and Corbin were sitting in the sixth row center in the dark.

“Bravo,” Kendall whispered.

“Bravo, my ass!“ Corbin shouted, and stormed out of the theater.

“If there is one thing I absolutely despise,” Kendall said, “it’s writers. I would truly be the happiest person on earth if I could direct the telephone book. Give me a handful of trained actors and I could make a hit out of the telephone book, i promise you.”

They were sitting in the delicatessen alongside the theater alley where Michelle Cassidy was first stabbed. Kendall had called a half-hour break after calming down his actors and promising them their playwright would be hack after he’d got over his little fit of pique.

“Which I’m not sure he really will, by the way — unless he’s a better actor than anyone in the cast.

““How do you mean?” Carella asked.

Both men were drinking coffee. Carella didn’t really give a damn about writers or telephone books, although he guessed somebody wrote even telephone books. But he let Kendall talk. When a person talked, you learned a little something about him. And sometimes, incidentally, about the person who’d been killed.

“Well, this was a monumental explosion, this was rage of heretofore unseen proportions!” Kendall said, and rolled his eyes. “How dare they this, how dare they that, I’m going directly to the DGA, I’ll have their heads…”

“The what?”

“What?” Kendall said. “Oh. The DGA. The Dramatists Guild. Of America, that is. Where else, Poland? Freddie threatened to go there and have all the actors fired, have me fired for encouraging them to subvert his play… his exact word, by the way, subvert… went out of the theater in high dudgeon. Now either this was the performance of the century, designed to let everyone know exactly who’s in charge here and don’t fuck with me, mister, or else he really was enjoying a totally childish temper tantrum unproductive to the collaborative theatrical effort.”

“Which do you think it was?”

“A tantrum,” Kendall said. “The trouble with writers—especially writers in the theater, where they do, in fact, have outrageous control — is that they mistakenly believe their contribution to the creative process is the most important one. Which, of course, is absolute drivel.”

“Mr. Kendall,” Carella said, “as I’m sure you know, we’re still investigating the murder of…”

“Yes, I assumed that’s why you were here,” Kendall said dryly.

“Yes. That’s why I am here, in fact. In fact, we can save a lot of time…”

“On the night Michelle was killed,” Kendall said, “I was with Cooper Haynes.”

“Who’s Cooper Haynes?”

“He’s the gentleman who plays the Director in Romance. I use the term advisedly. Gentleman, that is. Most actors aren’t. But Coop is a dignified, courteous gentleman, thank God for small favors. He thought it might be valuable if he had an in-depth conversation with a real director. This, mind you, all this time alter we went into rehearsal. Suddenly decided he ought to know what a real director was all about if he was to portray effectively a director onstage. They’re such children, really, even the best of them. So I spent several hours with him, holding his hand, trying to convey the essence of… when I say holding his hand, by the way, I don’t mean that literally. Coop is a happily married man with three children, straight as an arrow.”

“And you?”

“Is that a question? And if so, what does it have to do with Michelle’s death?”

“You raised the subject,” Carella said.

“So I did. I am homosexual, Mr. Carella, yes. I am currently living with a set designer named Jose Delacruz, who is similarly gay and fifteen years my junior. I will be forty-seven in October. If my arithmetic is correct, the last time I looked he was thirty-two. And, by the way, he was there with us on the night Michelle was killed.”

“There with you and Cooper Haynes, do you mean?”

“Yes. Well, not in the same room, we were working in the living room, and Joey was in his studio down the hall. He did the revival of Moon for the Misbegotten, did you hap-pen to see it?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

“Anyway, that’s where I was, and that’s who was with me. As Casey Stengel used to say, ’You could check it.’ ”

“When you say that’s where you were..

“My apartment. 827 Grover Park North.”

“Which you share with Mr. Delacruz.”

“As of the moment, yes. I do not believe in long-term relationships. Life is short and time is swift.”

“Speaking of which…”

“He got there at seven.”

“Cooper Haynes?”

“Precisely seven.”

“And left when?”

“Around ten. He would have stayed longer if Joey hadn’t begun making ugly sounds about how late it was getting. They’re such children, really.”

“Actors, do you mean?”

“Actors, writers, set designers, costume designers, any-one involved in the theater.”

Except directors, Carella noticed.

“Well, maybe not the technical people,” Kendall said. “Your stage managers, your lighting people, your musicians if it’s a musical. But anyone on the so-called creative end, dear God, spare me,” he said.

“Did Mr. Haynes leave the apartment at any time between seven and ten?”

“No, we were together all that time.”

“Didn’t go down for a sandwich or anything?”

“We have ample food and beverage in the house, thank you.”

“Step outside for a smoke?”

“He doesn’t smoke. I don’t, either.”

“Did you happen to read anything, or see anything on television — or hear it on the radio, for that matter — about the time Michelle Cassidy was killed?”

“Sometime between seven and eight o’clock, wasn’t it?”

“Then you know that?”

“I know that, yes.”

“You read it, or saw it, or heard it someplace.”

“Yes. I do not know the time from personal experience, if that’s what you’re hinting. I was not in Michelle’s apartment at the time of her murder.”

“Do you know where she lived?”

“No.”

“Never been there?”

“Never.”

“So you and Mr. Haynes were in each other’s company from seven to ten p.m. on Tuesday night, the seventh of April.”

“We were.”

“And neither of you left the apartment during that time. “We were both there from seven until ten.”

“Did Mr. Delacruz leave the apartment?”

Kendall hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “I have no idea.”

“Well, you said he began making ugly sounds around ten o’clock…”

“Yes, but…”

“So was he there all the time? Between seven and ten?”

“You would have to ask him.”

“Well, you’d have known if he left the apartment, wouldn’t you? For a sandwich? Or a smoke?”

“Joey doesn’t smoke. Besides, he didn’t even know Michelle. So if you’re suggesting he snuck uptown to kill the lady…”

“Nothing of the sort,” Carella said.

But he was thinking that Delacruz was the only person who could vouch for the whereabouts of Kendall and Haynes at the time of the murder. And both of them did know Michelle.

“Then what?” Kendall asked. “Oh, I see. It was Coop and I who did the deed in tandem, is that it? The real director and the make-believe director, running uptown to Diamondback to kill our star for reasons known only to God. By the way, before you even ask, Mr. Carella, I know she lived in Diamondback because, as already noted, I do read the papers, and watch television, and listen to the radio. I don’t know where in Diamondback, but do you really believe there’s anyone in this city who does not now know that Michelle lived uptown with the man arrested for having stabbed her? And, I would have thought, killed her as well. But here you are, playing detective…”

“No, sir, not play…”

“… in a cheap little mystery that has Coop and me…”

“No, sir, not a mystery…”

“… stabbing Michelle…”

“… cheap or otherwise.”

“No? Then what is it when you suggest…?”

“I’ve suggested nothing.”

“When you wonder aloud then… would that be a fair statement? When you wonder if Coop and I caught a cab uptown, broke down Michelle’s door, and brutally…

“Murdered her.” Carella supplied.

Kendall looked at him.

“That isn’t a cheap little mystery,” Carella said. “That is a woman getting murdered.”

“The difference eludes me.”

“The difference is she’s really dead.”

“Oh, I see.”

“And someone caused her to be that way.”

“Then it’s a good thing Coop and I have such an airtight alibi, isn’t it?” Kendall said.

“If Mr. Delacruz can vouch for it.”

“He can swear to it, I promise you.”

“Then you’ve got nothing at all to worry about. ”

“Nothing,” Kendall said.

Carella knew that both Cooper Haynes and Jose Delacruz had to be talked to because they were Kendall’s alibis, and all alibis had to be checked. Even then, the killer always turned out to be the good-looking, well-mannered, honor-student kid next door who always had a kind word for the neighbors and who wouldn’t have touched a fly, unless it was open. So who the hell knew?

But whereas he would have adored talking to yet some more doubtlessly delightful theater personalities, his son Mark had to be driven to an away softball game at four that afternoon. He had already explained to Lieutenant Byrnes that he would appreciate leaving the office an hour earlier today because their housekeeper was on vacation and this was his daughter April’s first day at ballet class and Teddy had to drive her there, which meant he had to drive Mark and four of his teammates to the Julian Pace Elementary School three miles from his own school.

Which was how, at six that evening, Carella was at the school’s ball field patiently waiting for the game to end, and Kling was outside the apartment building at 827 Grover Park North, waiting for Jose Delacruz to get home, and Teddy was coming down the steps of the Priscilla Hawkins School of Ballet, April’s sweaty little hand in her own, when she witnessed a red Buick station wagon backing into the grille of her own little red Geo.

The moment the doorman nodded that this was the person Kling was waiting for, he followed Delacruz into the building and caught up with him at the elevators.

“Mr. Delacruz?” he said.

Delacruz turned, startled. He was perhaps five feet four inches tall, thin and delicately honed, wearing a teal long-sleeved silk shirt buttoned at the cuffs, black pipestem trousers, and white Nike running shoes. His eyebrows were thick and black, matching exactly the straight black hair combed back from a pronounced widow’s peak. He had intensely brown eyes, androgynous Mick Jagger lips, and a thin, slightly tip-tilted nose that looked as if he’d bought it from a plastic surgeon. Except for the Nikes, he resembled a matador more than he did a set designer. On the other hand, Kling had never met anyone in either of those exotic professions.

“Mr. Delacruz?” he repeated.

“Yes?”

Faint Spanish accent detectable even in that single word. “Detective Kling, Eighty-seventh Squad,” Kling said, and showed him his shield.

“Are you a cop?” the woman screamed.

Teddy was having trouble reading her lips. Ten-year-old April, who could have heard the woman from a block away, so loud were the decibels, looked up at her mother and signed She wants to know i f you’re a cop.

They had run over to the Gen just as the woman got out of the Buick to examine its rear end. Teddy couldn’t imagine why the woman was looking for damage to her car when she was the one who’d just hacked into Teddy’s car.

No, I am not a cop, she signed.

“No, she is not a cop,” April said.

“Then what’s this?” the woman shouted, wildly flapping her hands at the DEA sticker plastered to the windshield on the passenger side. In this case, DEA stood not fur Drug Enforcement Agency but rather for Detectives Endowment Association. If Carella had been Irish, there would have been an Emerald Society sticker on the windshield as well. And if he didn’t devoutly believe that anyone born in America was simply an American and not an Italian-American or an Anything-American, there might have been a Columbia Society sticker there, too. As it was, the DEA sticker was on the windshield to indicate to any interested police officer that the car belonged either to a cop or a member of a cop’s family.

April started to sign She wants to know, but Teddy had already caught the gist. She signed to her daughter to tell the woman that her daddy was a cop, yes, a detective, in fact, but what did that have to do with the fact that the woman had just backed into her car, smashing the headlight..

“Slow down, Mom,” April said.

… and the grille and crumpling the hood?

“My father’s a detective,” April said calmly. “You smashed our headlight and grille and you wrinkled the hood, so what difference does it make what he is?“

Teddy was watching her daughter’s lips. She nodded emphatically and began reaching into her handbag for her wallet with her driver’s license in it. It occurred to her that her registration and insurance card were locked inside the car, in the glove compartment. She was unlocking the door on the passenger side when the woman yelled,“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Teddy didn’t hear her.

The woman grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, almost knocking her over.

“You hear me?” the woman shouted.

This time Teddy was reading her lips. She was also reading the spittle that spewed from the woman’s angry mouth in a fine spray reeking of onions.

“You think you can get away with murder just cause your husband’s a cop?”

The woman had both Teddy’s shoulders now, and was shaking her violently.

“Is that what you think? Well, you got another think…”

Teddy kicked her in the left shin.

April ran to a phone booth.

Kling thought the apartment looked like a stage set for a play about a French king. But Joey Delacruz promptly informed him that he himself had designed and decorated the apartment “in an eclectic mix of Queen Anne, Regency, Windsor, and William and Mary,” none of which sounded even remotely French to Kling, so much for that. Delacruz went on to say that he hoped his creation-the apartment, Kling guessed-would outlive his relationship with Kendall, which he sometimes felt was somewhat tenuous. Carella hadn’t mentioned that Delacruz was gay. Nor Kendall, for that matter. Perhaps he hadn’t felt it was important. Kling didn’t think it was too terribly important now, either, unless one or the other of them — or both of them — had murdered Michelle Cassidy.

“Tell me about the night of April seventh,” he said. “Oh, my, but we do sound like a television cop, don’t we?”

Kling didn’t think he sounded like a television cop. He found the comparison annoying.

“Where were you that night, for example?” he asked. “Right here,” Delacruz said. “Excuse me, hut am I sup-posed to know what this is all about?”

“Have you spoken to Ashley Kendall recently?”

“Not since this morning, when he kissed me goodbye and left for work.”

Kling wondered if Delacruz meant that to be annoying, too. The image of a man kissing another man goodbye when he left for work. He thought about it for a second or two and decided it was less annoying than being told he sounded like a television cop.

Trying not to sound like anyone on Hill Street Blues, he said, “Do you remember where you were on the night Michelle Cassidy was murdered?”

“Am I supposed to know this woman?”

“Your friend says no.”

“Ashley?”

“Mr. Kendall, yes.”

“Does it bother you that we’re gay?”

“Mr. Delacruz, I don’t care what you are, or what you do, so long as you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”

“Bravo! Queen Victoria⁺”

“You’re supposed to know other, however.”

“Queen Victoria?”

“Sure. Queen Victoria.”

“I never met Michelle Cassidy, but I do know what happened to her, yes. I would have to he deaf, dumb and blind not to know. ”

“Good. So where were you on the night she got kilted?”

“Right here.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Are you corroborating something Ashley told you?”

“You said you hadn’t spoken to him since…”

“That’s right.”

“Then what makes you think I’m trying to corroborate anything he said?”

“Oh, just a hunch, Detective Kling. Just a hunch.”

“Where were you all day?”

“Today?”

“Yes. I’ve been waiting downstairs since…”

“Why didn’t you simply ask Ashley where I was? He’d have told you in a…”

“I didn’t talk to him.”

“Well, someone must have. ”

“Yes, my partner did.”

“Couldn’t he have asked? Or did you want to make sure Ashley wouldn’t call ahead to warn me?”

“Warn you about what?”

“About what to say. In case you asked where l was on the night Michelle got killed.”

“You’ve already told me you were here. And you’ve already told me you haven’t spoken to Kendall since early this morning.”

“How do you know it was early?”

“Because rehearsal started at nine.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

“So what do you think, Mr. Delacruz?”

“Did Ashley tell your partner he was here with me on the night Michelle got killed?”

“Why don’t you just tell me where he was?”

“He was here.”

“All night long?”

“All night long.”

“Anyone who can confirm that?”

“Oh dear,” Delacruz said.

Kling waited.

“Don’t you think I already know you know, Detective Kling?”

“Know what?”

“That Ashley had a meeting here with the man playing the Director in that idiotic play he’s directing.”

“From what time to what time?”

“Cooper Haynes got here at seven and left at ten,” Delacruz said. “I know because that’s way past my usual bed-time.”

“Either of them leave the apartment at any time that night?”

“Not until ten o’clock. Mr. Haynes left at ten. Ashley stayed. Ashley does live here, you know.”

“Did you happen to leave the apartment?”

“I was here all the while Mr. Haynes was here,” Delacruz said, and smiled. “I know Ashley quite well, you see.”

The doorman at Cooper Haynes’s upper south side building told Kling that Mr. Haynes had left the building some ten minutes ago, to walk his dog. Kling caught up with him a good seven blocks uptown, following a leash to which a furry little dog was attached. The dog immediately began barking at Kling, the way all little dogs do in an attempt to convince people they’re really fierce German shepherds or Great Danes in disguise. Haynes kept saying, “No, no, Francis,” over and over again, but little Francis kept snap-ping at Kling, trying to bite him on the ankles. Kling wanted to step on the goddamn mutt, squash him flat into the pavement, dog lovers of the world, unite!

Haynes finally got Francis under control and they proceeded together up the avenue, the dog sniffing at each and every scrawny city tree they passed, occasionally peering up at Kling scornfully, as if it were his fault that none of the trees were compatible with his toilet habits. Haynes, dutiful citizen that he was, was wearing on his right hand a little plastic bag turned inside out. Once little Francis relieved himself, as they say, Haynes would pick up the leavings as required by law, and turn the plastic bag back upon itself so that nothing vile would have been touched by human hands.

Little Francis seemed particularly unwilling to oblige this evening. Haynes, like the patient master and good citizen he was, coaxed and cajoled but nothing seemed forthcoming. The dog merely kept turning up his nose in disdain at each and every spindly tree or stout fire hydrant they passed.

The dog’s reluctance, coupled with Haynes’s celebrity, caused a great many passersby to oooh and ahhh in amusement and appreciation. The recognition factor had nothing to do with the fact that Haynes was playing a director — in fact, the Director — in an awful little play uptown. Instead, it was due to his appearance five days a week on a soap opera called The Catherine Wheel, in which he portrayed a kind and friendly country physician named Dr. Jeremy Phipps. As they strolled up the avenue, incessantly stopping for the dog to sniff and dismiss, people greeted Haynes with a wave and a grin and a familiar, “Hey, Doc, how’s it going?” or, “Hey, Doc, where’s Annabelle?” which was the name of the duck who was the doctor’s pet on the serial, and who had been recently kidnapped by a band of illegal Chinese aliens who were stealing waterfowl of that ilk and selling them to restaurants specializing in Peking cuisine. What with all the attention the dog gave to potential elimination sites, and all the attention Haynes gave to wheedling an offering out of little Francis, plus the further attention each and every citizen of this city, it seemed, lavished upon the good Dr. Phipps, Kling found it difficult to ask his questions with any sense of continuity or gathering force. But ask them he did.

“Were you, in fact, at the Kendall-Delacruz apartment on the night of April seventh between seven and ten P.M.?”

“Yes, I was,” Haynes said. “I was looking for a mindset, you see. Ordinary people think that all an actor does is jump into a role, the way children do when they’re making believe. But, oh my, it isn’t that simple, I wish it were. There’s a great deal of craft involved, and skill, and research. Never mind talent, that goes without saying,” he said modestly. “It’s everything else that goes into a performance. I must say that Ashley gave me some valuable insights. I feel my interpretation of this enormously difficult role has improved a hundredfold since our discussion.”

Somehow, Kling was beginning to feel that everyone in the theater lived in some kind of peculiarly egocentric wonderland. He was beginning to believe, in fact, that none of the people involved in putting Romance on the stage could possibly have killed Michelle Cassidy. Each and every one of them seemed too thoroughly involved in himself or herself alone, and such self-dedication excluded awareness of any other being in the universe. Kill whom?

Nonetheless — and doggedly, so to speak:

“Did either you or Mr. Kendall leave the apartment at any time that night?”

“I left at ten.”

“But before then?”

“No. Neither of us.”

“How about Mr. Delacruz?”

“I did not see him leaving at any time that night,” Haynes said, and then, in triumph, “Good boy, Francis! Oh, what a good little boy you are!”

Alone in bed together later that night, they whispered in the dark.

“I’m afraid.”

“No, don’t be.”

“I’ve always been afraid of cops.”

“No, no.”

Stroking, touching, comforting.

“Even when I was small. Cops always frightened me.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Afraid they’d catch me doing something.”

“No, no.”

“Something wrong.“

“I’m here, don’t worry, darling.”

“They make me feel guilty. Cops. I don’t know why that should be.”

“There, there.”

Familiar flesh in the darkness, touching, stroking.

“They think we killed her.”

“They think everyone killed her.”

“Do you remember the Agatha Christie novel?”

“Which one?”

“Where everyone does kill her.”

“Oh, yes. The film, too.”

“Yes.”

“A marvelous film.”

“Yes.”

“On a train.”

“Yes, They all kill her.”

“Clouseau. He was the inspector.”

“No, that’s not his name.”

“What is it then?”

“Why did you have to say it?”

“I thought…”

“No, it isn’t Clouseau.”

“I realize that now.”

“Now I won’t be able to sleep all night.”

“I’m sorry, darling.”

“Between them and Clouseau, I won’t sleep a wink.”

“Just put it out of your mind.”

“Clouseau and the goddamn police.”

“I’m so sorry, really.”

“Thinking we killed her.”

“No, no, try to relax.”

“Closing in on us.”

“No, darling. Just relax.”

Silence.

“There.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that better?”

“Yes.”

More silence.

“What is his fucking name?”

“Just put it out of your mind.”

“The Belgian.”

“Yes, but relax…”

“The inspector.”

“Relax.”

“I’m trying.”

“Just let me…”

“I am.”

“…help you relax.”

“Yes.”

Kissing. Touching. Stroking the familiar flesh.

“Mmm.”

“Better, darling?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that better?”

“Yes.”

“Much better, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Now give it to me.”

“Yes.”

“Give me that hot juice.”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me, give it!”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Yes!”

“Yes!”

“Oh yes, my love.”

Silence. The ticking of a clock somewhere in the apartment. The sound of even breathing.

“Joey?”

“Mmm?”

“It was Maigret. The inspector.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Silence. On the street outside, the sound of a wailing police siren. Silence again.

“Ashley?”

“Mmmm?”

“It was Poirot”

Alone in bed together that night, she told him she’d been charged with assault. Her eyes blazed, her fingers flew, she was still mad as hell. He watched her hands, troubled by the fact that she’d been given a summons here in their local precinct, charged with a misdemeanor, no less.

“What did you do to this woman?” he asked, saying the words, signing them at the same time.

What did I do to her? she signed. Why don’t you ask what she did to me? bobbing her head whenever she emphasized a word, underscoring it further with dark laser beams that flashed from her darker brown eyes.

He could not resist smiling, and made the mistake of signing and simultaneously saying, “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” which Teddy didn’t find too terribly amusing at all.

Do you want to hear this, she shouted with her hands, or do you want to bring me chocolates in jail?

“I’m listening,” he said.

The way she told it, before a patrol car could respond to the frantic call April made from a phone booth not five feet from where the irate woman was still screaming at Teddy, refusing to let go of the lapels of her suit jacket even though Teddy kept kicking at her repeatedly…

I was wearing French heels, she signed, I had lunch downtown with Eileen…

“How is she?” Carella said.

First, I came straight home to pick up April, drove her over to her ballet class. French heels with a little pointed toe, she signed. Which is how she got the cut on her leg.

Carella thought Uh-oh.

The woman, according to Teddy, was a behemoth weighing some two thousand pounds, shaking her till her teeth rattled, virtually lifting her off the ground while Teddy kept trying to kick her again. The woman’s piercing shrieks finally attracted the attention of a police officer patrolling the parking lot on foot…

The dunce of the One-Five-Three, Teddy signed, naming their local Riverhead precinct, where six detectives had recently been arrested for stealing money and dope from various dealers.

The officer told them to break it up, calm down, relax, words to that effect, and then listened to the fat woman’s account of how Teddy had smashed into the rear of her Buick, a total lie which Officer Stupid listened to gravely and solemnly, wagging his head in wonder and amazement. Little April kept trying to tell him that none of this was true, it was the fat lady who’d smashed into their car, which prompted Officer Fool to tell her to please let her mother speak for herself. April then had to explain that their mother was both hearing- and speech-impaired and could not convey her thoughts except through signing, which language perhaps Officer Incompetent comprehended. He admitted he did not. But he now looked at Teddy as if wondering whether or not it was legal for a deaf-and-dumb person to be driving in the first place.

By now, the fat lady had lifted her skirt to show her tree-trunk legs, one of which was bleeding from a small cut undoubtedly caused by Teddy’s first kick to the shin. There were no visible signs of abuse or assault on Teddy herself, however, since all the woman had done was shake her till all her internal organs were hopelessly entangled. Officer Idiot was debating whether to just advise the ladies to exchange insurance information, and shake hands, and call it a day when the fat woman began screaming about her attacker being a police detective’s wife, and all the cops in this city were the same, and how could she expect any justice from a cop protecting his own, and I want your name and your badge number, and I intend to take this to the Supreme Court, you hear? So Officer Imbecile, perhaps remembering the recent riot in Grover Park, and not wishing any kind of trouble at all on his hitherto peaceful little beat outside a shopping mall, decided in his Solomon-like street wisdom that it would be far easier to ask the dummy to come back to the precinct with him, where someone would write out a Desk Appearance summons for her. His exact words were Let the court work this out, the coward!

Seething, Teddy showed Carella the summons now:

“I see you signed it,” Carella said.

Teddy nodded.

“What happened to the woman?”

She came to the police station with us. Stood with her hands on her hips, scowling, while a detective wrote the summons.

“You say she was screaming at you…”

Yes.

“Shaking you…”

Yes.

“Was she charged with anything?”

No.

“Those jackasses just let her walk?”

Yes.

Carella looked at the detective’s name in the space on the summons. He did not recognize it.

“I see they fingerprinted you, too,” he said.

She nodded.

“Took your picture…”

She nodded again. All her anger was gone now. She merely looked terribly worried.

Shaking his head, he looked back to the due date on the summons. “This is returnable in two weeks,” he said. “Your attorney’ll want to…”

My attorney!

“Honey, this is a misdemeanor here,” he said, “you can go to jail for a year on it. We’ll get somebody terrific, go for outright dismissal, or dismissal in the interests of justice, or even adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. If the D.A. pursues, we’ll file a cross-complaint against the woman, harassment for sure, maybe jazz it up to attempted assault. Don’t worry, honey,” he said, “really,” and held her close, and kissed the top of her head.

She lay very still in his arms.

“This never should’ve got this far,” he said. “The beat officer should have settled it on the spot, a goddamn traffic incident. They must be scared to death up there. All those detectives who got burned.”

She said nothing. He could feel her tenseness through her thin nightgown.

“Don’t worry about it.” he said. “Any reasonable D.A.’ll dismiss this in a minute.”

She nodded.

“This cop who took you in?” he said. “Was he white?”

Yes.

“And the detective who wrote the summons? Endicott? Was he white, too?”

Yes.

“How about the fat woman?”

Black.

Carella sighed heavily.

But I really don’t see what difference that makes, Teddy signed.

“Well, it shouldn’t,” he said.

The bedside clock read a quarter past ten.

He reached over to turn off the lamp.

He brought her hand to his lips.

“Goodnight, honey,” he said against her fingers.

Exactly one hour and ten minutes later, a naked man came hurtling through the open window of an apartment at 355 North River Street in downtown Isola, twisting and falling toward the sidewalk ten stories below.

His name was Chuck Madden.