Shotgun

6

At 11:30 Wednesday morning, Anne Gilroy called the squadroom and asked to talk to Kling.

“Hello,” she said, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Well, no,” he said, “I’ve been here for quite some time.”

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

“Yes, sure.”

“Gilroy was here,” she said.

“Mm-huh.”

“I thought of something,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Remember, you said if I thought of anything I should give you a call?”

“Well, actually you said it,” Kling said.

“That’s right, I did. You have a very good memory.”

“Well,” he said, and waited.

“Don’t you want to know what I thought of?”

“Is this in reference to the Leyden case?”

“Of course. You don’t think I’d call you just to chat and waste your time, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Of course not,” Anne said, and he knew she was smiling. He was surprised, moreover, to discover that he was smiling, too.

“Well, what is it?” he asked. “What did you think of?”

“I was the one who called Rose Leyden last Friday.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following you,” he said.

“I’m sorry you’re not following me, too,” she said, and the line went silent. “Hello?” she said.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Oh, good. Do you remember we got a wire from Mr. Leyden, asking the office to call his wife? About the checkbook?”

“Oh, yes,” Kling said.

“I was the one who called her.”

“I see.”

“Don’t you want to know what we talked about?”

“Yes, sure.”

“I can’t talk right now,” Anne said.

He almost said, Then why’d you call right now? But he didn’t. And then he wondered why he hadn’t.

“When can you talk?” he asked instead.

“I can meet you in a half hour,” she said. “We can discuss it over a nice long lunch.”

“I don’t take long lunches.”

“A short one, then. I’m very easy to get along with.”

“Even so, Miss Gilroy—”

“Call me Anne.”

“Even so, I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly meet you for lunch. Why don’t I stop by at the office later today, and we can—”

“I’ll meet you for a drink at five o’clock,” she said.

The line went silent.

“I know,” she said. “You’re not allowed to drink on duty.”

“I go off duty at four forty-five,” he said, and wondered why he’d said it.

“The Roundelay Bar on Jefferson,” she said. “Five o’clock.”

“Make it five-fifteen,” he said. “I’ll probably be coming straight from the squadroom.”

“Do bring your pistol,” Anne said, and hung up.

“Who was that?” Carella asked from his desk. “Cindy?”

“No,” Kling said, and debated lying. “It was the Gilroy girl.”

“What’d she want?”

“She was the one who talked to Rose Leyden last Friday.”

“Oh? Anything?”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t told me what they talked about yet.”

“Why not?”

“She couldn’t talk right then.”

“Then why’d she call right then?” Carella asked.

“To let me know.”

“Let you know what? She didn’t tell you anything.”

“I know. I’m going to see her later. She’ll fill me in then.”

“I’ll just bet she will,” Carella said, and paused. “Or vice versa,” he said, and opened the top drawer of his desk. He took his holstered.38 Detective’s Special from where it rested alongside a box of cartridges, and clipped it to his belt. “If you’re interested,” he said, “I was just talking to Pistol Permits. Nobody named Walter Damascus ever registered a .22 Iver Johnson.”

“Great,” Kling said.

“Let’s go,” Carella said. “Got to hit some of those people in the Leyden building.”

“Yeah,” Kling said, and put on his shoulder holster, and thought about Anne’s parting shot, and about what Cindy had said concerning fixed psychological symbols, and was suddenly very nervous and a little scared and also a little excited. He looked at Carella sheepishly, as though his partner could read his mind, and then followed him out of the squadroom.

Mrs. Carmen Leibowitz was a widow in her middle fifties, a chic woman with an agreeable and cooperative manner. She lived directly across the hall from the Leydens and was of course shocked, and not a little frightened, by what had happened. The neighbors were getting up a petition, she told the detectives, asking for better protection in the building. It was terrible the way the neighborhood was deteriorating, people getting killed and robbed in elevators and in their own beds, absolutely frightening. She had been living in this same building for thirty-four years now, had come here as a young bride, had raised a family here, had continued living here even after her husband’s fatal coronary more than three years ago. But it had never been like this, with animals waiting to stab you or shoot you, she was afraid of going downstairs any more.

“I’m a woman living alone,” she told them. “It’s very difficult for a woman living alone.”

She spoke in a very loud and somewhat grating voice, sitting on a well-worn Louis XVI settee against a paneled wall in a living room hung with oil paintings. She was wearing a Chanel suit, and Henri Bendel pumps, her hair meticulously coiffed, her makeup impeccable; she told the detectives they’d caught her on her way downtown to do some shopping. Carella promised they would not delay her long, and then declined her offer of coffee and raisin cake. In the kitchen, they could hear someone puttering around, dishes and silverware clinking.

“Who’s that?” Carella asked, and gestured toward the kitchen.

Mrs. Leibowitz, watching his face intently, said, “My girl.”

“Your daughter?”

Still studying his face, she said, “No, no, my maid.”

“Oh,” Carella said.

“Does she sleep in?” Kling asked.

“No,” Mrs. Leibowitz answered. She had given his face that same intense scrutiny, and she continued to gaze at him now, as though waiting for him to say something more. When it became apparent that he was not going to speak, she turned back to Carella, studying him with an identical attitude of concentrated expectancy.

“What time does she come in?” Carella asked.

“Nine in the morning. Except Thursdays and Sundays.”

“And what time does she leave?”

“After dinner. She does the dishes and goes.”

Carella turned toward Kling and said, “That means she wouldn’t have been here on the morning the murders were committed. It’d have been too early for her.”

He turned back toward Mrs. Leibowitz, who smiled, said, “Mmmm,” nodded, and then fastened her eyes to his face again. There was something terribly familiar about her scrutiny. It made Carella uncomfortable, creating a vague and elusive aura of déjà vu, the certain knowledge that he had been looked at in this same way by this same woman many many times before. And yet he knew he had never met her before this morning. Frowning, he said, “Were you at home on the morning of the murders, Mrs. Leibowitz?”

“Yes, I was,” she said.

“Did you hear anything across the hall?” he asked.

“I’m a very heavy sleeper,” she said.

“These would have been shotgun blasts,” Kling said, and she turned toward him and smiled. “Four of them,” he continued. “They would have been very loud.”

“The shots, do you mean?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kling said, and frowned. “The shotgun blasts.”

“I was asleep,” Mrs. Leibowitz said. “The newspapers said it happened in the middle of the night. I was asleep.”

“These shots would have been loud enough to have wakened you,” Carella said.

She turned to him, and did not answer.

“But you slept through them,” he said.

Studying his face, she said, “Yes. I slept through them.”

“We figure the murders took place sometime between three-thirty and four-thirty,” Carella said, “about that time. Would you remember—?”

“I’m sure I was asleep,” Mrs. Leibowitz said, watching him.

“And heard nothing?”

“I’m a very heavy sleeper,” she said again, and waited, watching Carella’s face. He suddenly knew what she was watching, suddenly knew why her expression looked so familiar. He rose abruptly, turning his back to her, walking from the settee and saying in a normal speaking voice, “I think you’re hard of hearing, Mrs. Leibowitz, am I right?” and then turned immediately, and looked at her, and saw that she was smiling and watching him, still waiting expectantly for him to speak.

His wife Teddy was a deaf-mute.

He had lived with her for a long time now, and he knew the look that came over her face, knew the intense concentration in her eyes whenever she “listened” to him, whenever she read his lips or his hands. That same expression was on Mrs. Leibowitz’s face now as she waited for him to speak again. The part of his face she studied so intently was his mouth.

“Mrs. Leibowitz,” he said gently, “who else lives on this floor?”

“There are only three apartments on the floor,” she said.

“Who’s in the third one?” Kling asked.

She turned quickly at the sound of his voice, but did not answer him. Kling glanced at Carella.

“The third apartment,” Carella said gently. “Who’s in it, Mrs. Leibowitz?”

“A family named Pimm. Mr. and Mrs. George Pimm. They’re not here now.”

“Where are they?”

“In Puerto Rico.”

“On vacation?”

“Vacation, yes,” she said.

She really carries it off very well, Carella thought. So long as she’s facing you, she can read your lips like an expert, even Teddy misses a word every now and then, but not Carmen Leibowitz, who fixes you with those very blue eyes of hers, clamps them to your lips, and refuses to let go until she has wrung from them the meaning of their movement, but only when she’s facing you. If she turns away, she misses the sense completely, probably hearing only a faint rumble that causes her to turn toward the speaker. She’s developed a lovely smile and a faint encouraging nod and a look of patient empathy, and she pulls off her deception really quite well because it would not do to wear a hearing aid, a hearing aid would not look good on a woman so chic, a woman so well-groomed. I wish she could meet Teddy, he thought. I wish she could meet my wonderful wife, who is as deaf and as mute as a sunrise.

“When did they leave?” he asked, taking pains to face her directly and to exaggerate each word.

“A week ago Sunday.”

“Then they were gone before the murders?”

“Yes, before.”

“When will they be back, do you know?”

“George said two weeks, I think. I’m not sure.”

“That would be... ” he started, inadvertently turning toward Kling, and then immediately correcting his oversight, and turning back to find Mrs. Leibowitz sitting with that same painfully expectant smile on her face, not having heard a word he’d said. “That would be next Sunday,” Carella said.

“Yes,” she answered. She knew now that he knew, but she sat in unshakable confidence that she could continue to deceive, or perhaps only confidence that he would allow her to deceive.

“So with the Pimms gone,” he said, “you’d have been the only person on this floor. And you of course were asleep.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, then, I guess there’s nothing further to ask,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

“Thank you,” she said, and showed them to the door.

They talked to everyone in the building that afternoon, hoping to find someone who might have been awakened by the shots, someone who might have gone to the window and looked outside, seen a car downstairs perhaps, a yellow Buick perhaps, read a license number and remembered it.

Seven people admitted they had heard the shots. Two of them said they figured it was a truck downstairs, the backfire cliché apparently having been pounded into the unconscious of the average man as a reasonable explanation for any loud and sudden noise. A man on the fourth floor said he had got out of bed when he heard the first explosions...

“Two of them?” Carella asked.

“Yes, two, and very loud. I got out of bed and then heard someone yelling—”

“A man or a woman?”

“Hard to tell, just somebody yelling, you know, and then two more explosions, also very loud.”

“What did you do?” Carella asked.

“I went back to bed,” the man said.

A woman on the ninth floor had heard the shots only distantly, and had been frightened by them, and had stayed in bed for a full five minutes before going to the window to investigate. She had seen a car pulling away from the curb.

“What kind of a car?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell makes.”

“What color was it?”

“A dark color.”

“Not yellow?”

“No. Oh, no. Definitely not yellow.”

“Did you see the license plate?”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t.”

The remaining three people said they had known immediately that the noise was gunfire. They also said they’d thought it had come from the street, but none of them had gone to the window for a look outside, nor had any of them thought of telephoning the police. Par for the course, Carella thought, and thanked them, and wearily trudged downstairs with Kling.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“The car pulling away could have been anybody,” Kling said. “Couple of kids necking, guy going to work, anybody.”

“Or maybe Walter Damascus.”

“His girlfriend drives a yellow Buick.”

“Sure, but what does he drive?”

“Nothing is my guess. Otherwise, why would he need her to pick him up?”

“It doesn’t seem possible, does it?” Carella said.

“What doesn’t?”

“That a guy could vanish into thin air this way. We know his name, we know where he lives, we’ve got his fingerprints, we’ve even got a good description of him. The only thing we haven’t got is him.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Kling said.

“When?” Carella asked.

The Roundelay Bar was on Jefferson Avenue, three blocks from the new museum. At 5:15 that afternoon, when Kling arrived for his business meeting with Anne Gilroy, it was thronged with advertising executives and pretty young secretaries and models, all of whom behaved like guests at a private cocktail party, moving, drinking, chattering, moving on again, hardly any of them sitting at the handful of tables scattered throughout the dimly lit room.

Anne Gilroy was sitting at a table in the far corner, wearing an open crochet dress over what appeared to be a body stocking. At least, Kling hoped it was a body stocking, and not just a body. He felt very much out of place in an atmosphere as sleek and as sophisticated as this one, where everyone seemed to be talking about the latest Doyle Dane campaign, or the big Solters and Sabinson coup, or the new Blaine Thompson three-sheet, whatever any of those were. He felt shabbily dressed in his blue plaid jacket, his tie all wrong and improperly knotted, his gun in its shoulder holster causing a very un-Chipplike bulge, felt in fact like a bumbling country hick who had inadvertently stumbled into whatever was making this city tick. And besides, he felt guilty as hell.

Anne waved the moment she saw him. He moved his way through the buzzing crowd and then sat beside her and looked around quickly, certain somehow that Cindy would be standing behind one of the pillars, brandishing a hatchet.

“You’re right on time,” Anne said, smiling. “I like punctual men.”

“Have you ordered yet?” he asked.

“No, I was waiting for you.”

“Well, what would you like?”

“Martinis give me a loose, free feeling,” she said. “I’ll have a martini. Straight up.”

He signaled to the waiter and ordered a martini for her and a scotch and water for himself.

“Do you like my dress?” Anne asked.

“Yes, it’s very pretty.”

“Did you think it was me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Underneath.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“It isn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, no. No. No.”

“You keep looking around the room.”

“Habit. Check it out, you know, known criminals, you know, types. Occupational hazard.”

“My, you’re nervous,” she said. “Does my dress make you nervous?”

“No, it’s a very nice dress.”

“I wish I had the guts to really wear it naked underneath,” Anne said, and giggled.

“Well, you’d get arrested,” Kling said. “Section 1140 of the Penal Law.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exposure of person,” Kling said, and began quoting. “A person who willfully and lewdly exposes his person, or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where others are present, or procures another so to expose himself, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

“Oh, my,” Anne said.

“Yes,” Kling said, suddenly embarrassed.

“ ‘Private parts,’ I love that.”

“Well, that’s what we call them. I mean, in police work. I mean, that’s the way we refer to them.”

“Yes, I love it.”

“Mmm,” Kling said. “Hey, here’re the drinks.”

“Shall I mix it, sir?” the waiter asked.

“What?”

“Did you want this mixed, sir?”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, just a little water in it, please,” he said, and smiled at Anne and almost knocked over her martini. The waiter poured a little water into the scotch and moved away.

“Cheers,” Kling said.

“Cheers,” Anne said, “do you have a girlfriend?”

Kling, who was already drinking, almost choked. “What?” he said.

“A girlfriend.”

“Yes,” he answered glumly, and nodded.

“Is that why you’re so worried?”

“Who’s worried?” he said.

“You shouldn’t be,” Anne said. “After all, this is only a business meeting.”

“That’s right, I’m not worried at all,” Kling said.

“What’s she like? Your girlfriend?” Anne said.

“Well, I’d much rather discuss the conversation you had with Mrs. Leyden.”

“Are you engaged?”

“Not officially.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we plan on getting married someday, I guess, but we—”

“You guess?”

“Well, no, actually there’s no guesswork involved. We simply haven’t set the date, that’s all. Cindy’s still in school, and—”

“Is that her name? Cindy?”

“Yes. For Cynthia.”

“And you say she’s still in school? How old is she?”

“Twenty-three. She’s finishing her master’s this June.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, and she’ll be going on for her doctorate in the fall.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Kling said.

“She must be very bright.”

“She is.”

“I barely finished high school,” Anne said, and paused. “Is she pretty?”

“Yes.” Kling took another swallow of scotch and then said, “I’m supposed to be the detective, but you’re asking all the questions.”

“I’m a very curious girl,” Anne said, and smiled. “But go ahead. What do you want to know?”

“What time did you call Mrs. Leyden last Friday?”

“Oh, I thought you were going to ask some questions about me.”

“No, actually I—”

“I’m twenty-five years old,” Anne said, “born and raised right here in the city. My father’s a Transit Authority employee, my mother’s a housewife. We’re all very Irish.” She paused and sipped at the martini. “I began working for AT&M right after I graduated high school, and I’ve been there since. I believe in making love not war, and I think you’re possibly the handsomest man I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Thank you,” Kling mumbled, and hastily lifted his glass to his lips.

“Does that embarrass you?”

“No.”

“What does it do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I believe in speaking honestly and frankly,” Anne said.

“I see that.”

“Would you like to go to bed with me?”

Kling did not answer immediately, because what popped into his mind instantly was the single word Yes! and it was followed by a succession of wild images interspersed with blinking neon lights that spelled out additional messages such as You’re goddamn right I’d like to go to bed with you and When? and Your place or mine? and things like that. So he waited until he had regained control of his libido, and then he calmly said, “I’ll have to think it over. In the meantime, let’s talk about Mrs. Leyden, shall we?”

“Sure,” Anne said. “What would you like to know?”

“What time did you call her?”

“Just before closing time Friday.”

“Which was?”

“About ten to five, something like that.”

“Do you remember the conversation?”

“Yes. I said, ‘Hello, may I please speak to Mrs. Leyden?’ and she said, ‘This is Mrs. Leyden.’ So I informed her that her husband had wired us from California to ask that she send him a fresh checkbook, and she said she knew all about it, but thanks anyway.”

“She knew all about what?”

“The checkbook.”

“How’d she know?”

“She said her husband had called from the Coast that morning to say he’d be in San Francisco all weekend, and that he’d be moving on to Portland on Monday morning and wanted her to send a fresh checkbook to the Logan Hotel there.”

“What time had he called her?”

“She didn’t say.”

“But if he’d already called her, why’d he bother sending a wire to the company?”

“I don’t know. Just double-checking, I guess.”

“I wonder if he called her again later to say he’d be coming home instead?”

“She didn’t mention getting two calls.”

“This was close to five, you said?”

“Yes, just before closing.”

“Was he normally so careful?”

“What do you mean?”

“Would he normally make a call and then back it with a wire asking the company to convey the identical information?”

“He may have sent the wire before he called his wife.”

“Even so.”

“Besides, the company paid his expenses, so why not?” Anne smiled. “Have you thought it over yet?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Think about it. I’d like to. Very much.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re stunning.”

“Oh, come on,” Kling said.

“You are. I’m not easily impressed, believe me. I think I’m in love with you.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Sure it is. A person can’t just fall in love with a person without knowing anything about the person. That only happens in the movies.”

“I know everything there is to know about you,” Anne said. “Let’s have another drink, shall we?”

“Sure,” Kling said, and signaled the waiter. “Another round,” he said when the waiter came over, and then turned to Anne, who was watching him with her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed, and he suddenly thought, Jesus, I think she really is in love with me. “Anyway, as you said, this is a business meeting, and—”

“It’s a lot more than that,” Anne said, “and you know it. I think you knew it when you agreed to meet me, but if you didn’t know it then, you certainly know it now. I love you and I want to go to bed with you. Let’s go to my apartment right this minute.”

“Hold it, hold it,” Kling said, thinking, What am I, crazy? Say Yes. Pay the check and get out of here, take this luscious little girl to wherever she wants to go, hurry up before she changes her mind. “You don’t know me at all,” he said, “really. We’ve hardly even talked to each other.”

“What’s there to talk about? You’re a wonderfully good-looking man, and you’re undoubtedly brave because you have to be brave in your line of work, and you’re idealistic because otherwise why would you be involved in crime prevention, and you’re bright as hell, and I think it’s very cute the way you’re so embarrassed because I’m begging you to take me to bed. There’s nothing else I have to know, do you have a mole on your thigh, or something?”

“No,” he said, and smiled.

“So?”

“Well, I... I can’t right now, anyway.”

“Why not?” Anne paused, and then moved closer to him, covering his hand with hers on the table top. “Bert,” she whispered, “I love you and I want you.”

“Listen,” he said, “let’s uh think this over a little, huh? I’m uh—”

“Don’t you want me?”

“Yes, but—”

“Ah, one for our side,” she said, and smiled. “What is it, then?”

“I’m uh engaged,” he said. “I already told you that.”

“So what?”

“Well, you uh wouldn’t want me to—”

“Yes, I would,” Anne said.

“Well, I couldn’t. Not now. I mean, maybe not ever.”

“My telephone number is Washington 6-3841. Call me later tonight, after you leave your girlfriend.”

“I’m not seeing her tonight.”

“You’re not?” Anne asked astonished.

“No. She goes to school on Wednesday nights.”

“Then, that settles it,” Anne said. “Pay the check.”

“I’ll pay the check,” Kling said, “but nothing’s settled.”

“You’re coming with me,” Anne said. “We’re going to make love six times, and then I’m going to cook you some dinner, and then we’ll make love another six times. What time do you have to be at work tomorrow morning?”

“The answer is no,” Kling said.

“Okay,” Anne said breezily. “But write down the telephone number.”

“I don’t have to write it down.”

“Oh, such a smart cop,” Anne said. “What’s the number?”

“Washington 6-3841.”

“You’ll call me,” she said. “You’ll call me later tonight when you think of me all alone in my bed, pining away for you.”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Maybe not tonight,” she amended. “But soon.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Anyway,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. Because if you don’t call me, I’ll call you. I have no pride, Bert. I want you, and I’m going to get you. Consider yourself forewarned.”

“You scare hell out of me,” he said honestly.

“Good. Do I also excite you just a little bit?”

“Yes,” he said, and smiled. “Just a little bit.”

“That’s two for our side,” she said, and squeezed his hand.