The Heckler

10.

THE HOTEL ALBION was on Jefferson Avenue near South Third Street. A narrow green canopy stretched from the hotel entrance to the street, and a doorman wearing a green uniform and watching the girls strut by in their April cottons, sprang to attention as Carella approached, promptly pulled open one of the brass-bound doors for him, and damn near threw a salute.

“Thank you,” Carella said.

“You’re-welcome-sir!” the doorman shouted smartly.

Carella raised his eyebrows appreciatively, went into the lobby, and felt immediately that he had left the city somewhere far behind him. The lobby was small and quiet. Rich dark woods dominated the ceilings and the walls. A thick Persian carpet covered the floor. The furniture was upholstered in vibrant red-and-green velvet, and a huge cut-glass chandelier dominated the ceiling. He felt that he was no longer in the United States, felt somehow that Venice must look like this, rich and vibrant and somehow decadent, somehow out of place with the bustling twentieth century, a city misplaced in time. He had never been to Venice, never indeed been outside of America except during the war, and yet he knew instinctively that this hotel would have fit into that waterlogged city with uninhibited ease. He took off his hat and walked to the main desk. There was no one behind it. The hotel, in fact, seemed to be deserted, as if news of an impending atom bomb blast had sent everyone creaking downstairs to the wine cellar. A bell rested on the counter. He reached out with one hand and tapped it. The bell tinkled in the small lobby, cushioned by the velvet chairs and the Persian rug and the thick draperies on the windows, muffled by the overwhelming soddenness of the surrounding materials.

Carella heard the shuffle of soft-soled slippers sliding over steps. He looked up. A small thin man was coming down from the first floor. He walked with a slight stoop, a man in his sixties wearing a green eye shade and a brown cardigan sweater which had been knitted for him by a maternal aunt in New Hampshire. He looked like that Yankee-type fellow who plays the small-town hotel clerk in all the movies or the small-town postmaster, or the one the convertible pulls alongside to ask directions of, that guy, you know the one. He looked exactly like him. For a moment, listening to his creaky tread on the steps, watching him come into the cloistered silence of the lobby, Carella had the feeling that he was in a movie himself, that he would speak a line which had been written for him by some Hollywood mastermind and would be answered in turn with another scripted line.

“Hello, young feller,” the Yankee-type said. “Can I be of some assistance?”

“I’m from the police,” Carella said. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and opened it to where his shield was pinned to the leather.

“Um-hum,” the Yankee said, nodding. “What can I do for you?”

“I don’t believe I caught your name, sir,” Carella said and knew instantly that the man would reply “Didn’t throw it young feller,” and almost winced before the words left the old-timer’s mouth.

“Didn’t throw it, young feller,” the Yankee said. “But it’s Pitt. Roger Pitt.”

“How do you do, Mr. Pitt. My name is Detective Carella. We found the remains of a—”

“Carella, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“Carella?”

“Yes.”

“How d’do?” Pitt said.

“Fine, thank you. We found the remains of a uniform in an incinerator, sir, and we also found a matchbook from your hotel, the Hotel Albion, and there’s the possibility that this uniform might tie in with a case we are investigating, and so I wondered—”

“Youinvestigating the case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You a detective?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, what was it you wanted to know?”

“To begin with, do you know anyone named Johnny?”

“Johnny what?”

“We don’t know. But he might have been the person who was wearing this uniform.”

“Johnny, huh?”

“Yes. Johnny.”

“Sure.”

The lobby was silent.

“You know him?” Carella asked.

“Sure.”

“What’s his last name?”

“Don’t know.”

“But…”

“Lotte’s feller,” Pitt said.

“Lotte?”

“Lotte Constantine. Lives right upstairs. He’s been by here a lot, Johnny.”

“I see. And this Lotte Constantine is his girl friend, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Pitt said.

“How old a man would you say this Johnny was?”

“Was?” Pitt asked quickly, his eyes narrowing. “In his sixties, I guess.”

Carella reached into his inside jacket pocket. He pulled out a photograph encased in lucite. He put it face up on the counter. It was the photo of the dead man which had run in the metropolitan dailies.

“Is that the man you’re thinking of?” Carella asked.

Pitt studied the photo. “Course,” he said, “I never seen him in a bathing suit. Or asleep.”

“But is that him?”

“It could be. This ain’t a very good picture, is it?”

“Perhaps not.”

“I mean, it looks like Johnny, and yet it don’t. There seems to be something missing.”

“There is,” Carella said.

“What’s that?”

“Life. The man in that picture is dead.”

“Oh.” Pitt seemed to wash his hands of the matter quite suddenly. “Look, maybe you better ask Lotte. I mean, she’d know better than me.”

“Where can I reach her?”

“She’s right upstairs. I’ll give her a ring, and maybe she’ll come on down to the lobby.”

“No, that’s all right, I’ll go up. I wouldn’t want—”

“Won’t take a second to buzz her,” Pitt said. He went to the switchboard and plugged in one of the rubber snakes there. Holding the earpiece to his right ear, he waited a moment and then said, “Lotte? This is Roger downstairs. There’s a feller here asking questions about Johnny. Yes, that’s right,your Johnny. Well I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind talking to him. Well, he’s from the police, Lotte. Now, Lotte, there’s no need to go getting upset. No, he seems to be a very nice young feller. Okay, I’ll tell him.”

Pitt put down the headset, pulled out the plug, and said, “She’ll be right down. She got a little upset when she heard you was a cop.”

“Everybody gets upset when they hear that,” Carella said, smiling.

He leaned against the counter and waited for the arrival of Miss Lotte Constantine. If there was one thing he disliked, he supposed it was interrogating old people. Actually, there were a great many things he disliked, and a great many people who would testify to the fact that Steve Carella was, on occasion, a goddammed crab. So it was an understatement to say, “If there wasone thing he disliked.” But, among his other dislikes, interrogating oldsters took high priority, and interrogating oldwomen particularly annoyed him. He had no idea why he disliked old women unless it had something to do with the fact that they were no longer young. In any case, he found talking to them trying to his patience, and he was not now looking forward to meeting Miss Lotte Constantine, the girl friend of a man who had been in his sixties.

He watched a luscious redhead in a very tight skirt as she navigated her way down the carpet-covered steps from the first floor. Because the skirt was so tight, the girl had lifted it above her knees, and she walked downstairs with her head slightly bent, watching the steps, a hank of red hair falling over one eye.

“Here she is now,” Pitt said, and Carella turned to look into the lobby, saw no one there, and then looked up the steps beyond the redhead, still seeing no one, and then the redhead was swiveling over to the desk with a lubricated hip and thigh movement that made him seasick, and she extended a hand tipped with scarlet claws and she said in the sexiest voice since Mae West was a girl, “Hello, I’m Lotte Constantine.”

Carella swallowed hard and said, “You? Are? Miss Constantine?”

The girl smiled. Her lips moved back from her teeth like tinted clouds pulling aside to let the sunshine through. A dimple appeared in either cheek. Her green eyes flashed. “Yes,” she said. “And you are…?”

“Detective Carella,” he said, struggling to regain some of his composure. He had expected a woman in her late fifties and when he’d been confronted with azaftig redhead who’d seemed at a distance, to be in her early thirties, he’d been flabbergasted, to say the least. At close range, however, he realized this girl was no older than twenty-three, bursting all over the place with youth and vitality and abundant flesh that threatened every stitch of clothing she wore. So he automatically thought of the old man who had been Johnny Something-or-other, and then he automatically thought ofMiddle of the Night, and Oh my, he thought, oh my, oh my.

“Could we sit down and talk a little, Miss Constantine?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she said. She smiled shyly, as if she were unused to sitting with strange men. Her lashes fluttered. She sucked in a deep breath and Carella turned away, pretending to look for a chair.

“We can sit over there,” Lotte said, and she began leading the way. Carella walked behind her. Married man and all, he had to admit this girl had the plumpest, most inviting bottom he had seen in a dog’s age. He was tempted to pinch her, but he restrained himself. I’m much too young for her, he thought, and he grinned.

“Why are you smiling?” the girl asked, sitting and crossing her legs.

“I was only thinking you’re a lot younger than I imagined you would be.”

“What did you imagine?”

“Truthfully?”

“Of course,” Lotte said.

“A woman in her fifties.”

“Why?”

“Well…” Carella shrugged. He took the picture from his pocket again. “Know this man?”

She glanced at the picture and nodded immediately. “Yes,” she said. “What’s happened to him?” She did not blench or gasp or wince or blush or grimace. She simply said, “Yes,” and then, matter-of-factly and just as quickly, said, “What’s happened to him?”

“He’s dead,” Carella said.

She nodded. She said nothing. Then she gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, and then she nodded again.

“Who was he?” Carella asked.

“Johnny.”

“Johnny who?”

“Smith.”

Carella stared at her.

“Yes, Smith,” she said. “John Smith.”

“And who are you? Pocahontas?”

“I don’t think that’s funny. He told me his name was John Smith. Why shouldn’t I believe him?”

“Why shouldn’t you indeed? How long had you known him, Miss Constantine?”

“Since January.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Last month sometime.”

“Can you remember when last month?”

“The end of the month.”

“Were you and he very serious?”

Lotte shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said wistfully. “What’s serious?”

“Were you…more than just friends, Miss Constantine?”

“Yes,” she said abruptly. She nodded, as if lost in thought, as if alone in the silent lobby that reminded Carella of Venice. “Yes.” She nodded again. “Yes, we were more than just friends.” She lifted her eyes and then tossed her head and brushed a long strand of red hair away from her forehead. Defiantly she said, “We were lovers.”

“All right,” Carella said. “Any idea who’d want him dead, Miss Constantine?”

“No,” She paused. “How—how did he die?”

“I was wondering when you’d get to that.”

Lotte Constantine looked Carella straight in the eye. “What the hell are you?” she asked. “A tough cop?”

Carella did not answer.

“Do Ihave to want to know how he died?” she said. “Isn’t it enough that he’s dead?”

“Most people would be curious,” Carella said.

“I’m notmost people,” she answered. “I’m me. Lotte Constantine. You’re a great one, aren’t you? A regular little IBM machine, aren’t you? Punch-punch, put in the card and out comes the right answer. You come here telling me Johnny is dead and then you start asking a lot of fool questions and then you tell me what the reaction ofmost people would be, well the hell with you, Detective Whatever-your-name-is,most twenty-two-year-old girls wouldn’t fall in love with a man who’s sixty-six years old, yes, sixty-six, don’t look so goddamned surprised, that’s how old Johnny was, so don’t go telling me whatmost people would do, you can takemost people and drown them, for all I care.”

“He was shot at close range with a shotgun,” Carella said, and he did not take his eyes from her face. Nothing crossed that face. No expression, not the slightest nuance of emotion.

“All right,” she said, “he was shot at close range with a shotgun. Who did it?”

“We don’t know.”

“Ididn’t.”

“Nobody said you did.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

“We’re only trying to make a positive identification, Miss Constantine.”

“Well, you’ve made it. Your dead man is John Smith.”

“Would you say that name was a great deal of help, Miss Constantine?”

“What the hell do you want from me? It washis name, not mine.”

“And he never told you his real name?”

“He said his name was John Smith.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose he’d told you his name was John Doe?”

“Mister, I’d have believed him if he told me his name was Joseph Stalin. Now how about that?”

“That’s how it was, huh?” Carella asked.

“That’s how it was.”

“What’d he do for a living?” Carella asked.

“Retired. He was getting social security.”

“And the uniform?”

“What uniform?” Lotte Constantine asked with wide open eyes.

“The uniform. The one somebody stripped off of him and dumped into an incinerator.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You never saw him in a uniform?”

“Never.”

“Did he have any job? Besides the retirement money. Did he run an elevator or anything?”

“No. I gave him—” Lotte stopped suddenly.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“You gave him money? Is that what you were about to say?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he live, Miss Constantine?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you—”

“I don’t know where he lived. He…he came here a lot.”

“To stay?”

“Sometimes.”

“For how long?”

“The…the longest he ever stayed was…was for two weeks.”

“Pitt know about this?”

Lotte shrugged. “I don’t know. What difference does it make? I’m a good customer. I’ve been living in this hotel ever since I came to the city four years ago. What difference would it make if an old man—” She caught herself, stopped speaking, and returned Carella’s level gaze. “Stop staring at me as if I was Lolita or something. I loved him.”

“And he never mentioned a uniform, is that right? Or a job?”

“He mentioned a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” Carella asked, leaning forward.

The girl uncrossed her legs. “He didn’t say.”

“But he did mention a deal?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“The last time I saw him.”

“What did he say?”

“Only that he had a deal cooking with the deaf man.”

They were sitting in velvet chairs around a small coffee table in an ornate lobby which suddenly went as still as death.

“The deaf man?” Carella said.

“Yes.”

He sucked in a deep breath.

“Who’s the deaf man?”

“I don’t know.”

“But Johnny had some kind of a deal with him, right?”

“Yes. That’s what he said. He said he had a deal with the deaf man, and that he’d be very rich soon. He was going—We were going to get married.”

“The deaf man,” Carella said aloud. He sighed heavily. “Where can I reach you if I need you, Miss Constantine?”

“Either here or at The Harem Club.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a cigarette girl. I sell cigarettes. That’s where I met Johnny. At the club.”

“He bought cigarettes from you?”

“No. He smokes—hesmoked —a pipe. I sold him pipe tobacco.”

“Smoker’s Pipe?” Carella asked. “Was that the brand?”

“Why…why, yes. How—”

“Here’s my card, Miss Constantine,” Carella said. “If you should think of anything else that might help me, give me a call, won’t you?”

“Like what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like what do you want me to call you about? How do I know what’ll help you?”

“Well, any further information about this deaf man would—”

“I don’t know anything else about him.”

“Or anything Johnny might have said regarding this deal of hi—”

“I told you everything he said.”

Carella shrugged.

“You want your card back?” Lotte Constantine asked.

THAT NIGHT,the deaf man celebrated.

Perhaps things were going well at the ice-cream store behind the construction site. Or perhaps he was simply anticipating what would begin happening the next day. Perhaps, like a good general, he was drinking a symbolic toast on the eve of battle.

The symbolic toast, in this case, was the taking of a nineteen-year-old girl whose attributes were surely not mental.

But the deaf man, you see, was an economical man and a man who never lost sight of his goals. He was not interested, that evening, in a discussion of mathematics. Nor was he interested in learning about the ambitions or tribulations or strivings for independence or strugglings for realization of self of any member of the opposite sex. He was interested in making love, pure and simple. He had been casing his love partner in much the same way he’d have cased the site of a future robbery. He had been casing her for two weeks, attracted by her obvious beauty at first—the girl was a brunette with luminous brown eyes and a full pouting mouth; her breasts, even in the waitress uniform she wore, were large and inviting; her legs beneath the hem of the white garment were splendidly curved to a trim ankle—and attracted, too, by the smooth-skinned freshness of her youth.

But youth and beauty were not, to the deaf man, qualities which when taken alone would assure a good bed partner. He had explored the girl further.

He had noticed that her luminous eyes carried a challenge, and that the challenge was directed toward any man who walked into the restaurant. He was surprised to find such blatancy in the eyes of a nineteen-year-old, and he tried to evaluate it. He did not want a nymphomaniac. He knew that satisfaction could be multiplied to infinity when allowed to ricochet off the simultaneous pleasures of two, and he had no desire to become involved with an insatiable woman. At the same time, he did not want an uninitiated girl who would allow the evening to dissolve into a literal shower of blood, sweat and tears. The challenge in this girl’s eyes boldly stated that she had been had, and that she could be had again, and that the taking might well be worth the efforts of whoever successfully met the challenge. Pleased with what he saw, he continued his surveillance.

The girl’s breasts, while admittedly comfortable-looking, could have amounted to nothing more than so much excess fat imbued with a nonexistent sexuality by a culture with an obsessive mammary fetish—were it not for the way the girl carried them. She knew they were there. She never once took them for granted. Her every motion, her every step indicated an extreme awareness of the rich curve below her throat. He was sure that her awareness was sensual, an awareness so total could be nothing else. And, observing her secure knowledge, he never once doubted her potential passion.

Her legs, too, indicated a promising sensuality. They were well-shaped, with a full, curving calf that dropped with surprising grace and swiftness to a narrowness of ankle and a sharpness of arch. The girl was a waitress, and her expected footgear should have been flat-soled shoes. But she chose to emphasize the shape of her leg, and whereas she did not commit the folly of wearing a bona fide high-heeled spike she nonetheless wore a pump with a French heel that was both flattering and promising. She used her legs in two ways. One was strictly utilitarian. They were strong legs, and they carried her from table to table with speed and directness. The other use was calculated and strictly decorative. She used her legs as pistons to manipulate her buttocks.

Casually, the deaf man struck up a conversation with her. The girl, as he’d suspected, would not qualify for a teaching position at Harvard. Their first conversation, as he later recalled it, went something like this. He had ordered a chocolate eclair for dessert.

The girl said, “I see you have a sweet tooth.”

“Yes, indeed,” the deaf man said.

She had cocked one eyebrow coquettishly. “Well, sweets for the sweet,” she answered, and swiveled away from the table.

Slowly, he had engaged her in further conversations, strengthening his opinion of her potential. When he finally asked her out, he was certain she would accept immediately—and she did.

That evening, the fourteenth of April, he had dazzled her with his brilliance at dinner. She sat in wide-eyed wonder, contributing little to the conversation, fascinated with his speech. They walked under a star-scattered sky later, guided imperceptibly by the deaf man to an apartment on Franklin Street. When the deaf man suggested that they go up for a drink, the girl demurred slightly, and he felt a quickening of passion; this would not be a pushover; there would be a struggle and a chase to whet his appetite.

They did not talk much in the apartment. They sat on the modern couch in the sunken living room and the girl took off her shoes and pulled her knees up under her, and the deaf man poured two large snifters of brandy, and they sat rolling the glasses in their hands, the girl peeking over the edge of her glass the way she had seen movie stars do, the deaf man drinking the brandy slowly, savoring the taste of the lip-tingling alcohol, anticipating what he would do to this girl, anticipating his pleasure with a slow cruelty that began mounting inside him, a carefully controlled cruelty—control, he reminded himself, control.

By midnight, the girl was totally witless.

Half naked, she did not know what was happenng to her, nor did she care; she had no mind; she possessed only a body which was alive in his arms as he carried her down a long white corridor to the first of three bedrooms. Her stockings were off, she realized; he had taken off her stockings; firmly cradled in his arms, her skirt pulled back, she realized she was naked beneath the skirt, her blouse hung open; he had somehow removed her bra without taking off her blouse, she could see the white beating expanse below her neck and suddenly he was standing over her and she was looking up at him expectantly and seeing him and feeling sudden fear, the fear of true and total invasion, and then she knew nothing.

Nothing. She knew nothing. She was drawn toward a blazing sun, pulled away from it, he knew nothing inviolate, every secret place of her succumbed totally to his vicious onslaught, every aching pore of her was his to claim, she was drugged, she was not herself, she was not anyone she knew, she had been carried mindlessly to the edge of totality, violated and adored, cherished and possessed, worshiped and ravaged, there was no cessation, no beginning and no end, she would remember this night with longing and excitement, remember it too with shame and guilt as the night she surrendered privacy to a total stranger, with an abandon she had not known she’d possessed.

At three in the morning, he gave her a gift. He crossed the room and she was too weary to follow him even with her eyes, and suddenly he was beside her again, opening a long carton, pulling the filmy silk from within its tissue paper folds.

“Put this on,” he said.

She obeyed him. She would have obeyed whatever command he’d given her. She rose and pulled the black gown over her head.

“And your shoes.”

She obeyed. She felt somewhat dizzy, and yet she longed to be in his arms again. The short nightgown ended abruptly above her thighs. She felt his eyes upon her, sweeping the curve of her leg, the long accentuated curve dropping to the high-heeled spike.

“Come here,” he said, and she went to him hungrily.