“In other words, then, you feel the entire family is peculiar, is that right, Mrs. Moscowitz?”
“I wouldn’t say anything against neighbors,” Mrs. Moscowitz said. “Let’s put it this way. Let’s say I consider it odd, well, strange, well, let’s say peculiar, all right? Let’s say I find it peculiar that a nutty old lady like Mrs. Lasser is left in the hands of two other nuts like her husband and her son, okay? Which is why I thought maybe somebody was going to have her put away, is all I’m saying.”
“Who’s nutty?” the boy asked.
“Shut up, Manny,” Mrs. Moscowitz said.
“Mrs. Moscowitz,” Carella said, “can you tell us whether or not you saw Anthony Lasser leaving the house at any time today?”
“No, I did not,” Mrs. Moscowitz said.
“Can you say with certainty that he was inside that house all day long?”
“What?”
“Did you actually see him across the street at any time today?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then he could have been gone, without your knowing it?”
“Well, what do you think I do?” Mrs. Moscowitz asked. “Go peeking over my neighbors’ windowsills?”
“No, of course not.”
“I should hope not,” Mrs. Moscowitz said, offended.
“We were simply trying to—”
“Yes, I understand,” Mrs. Moscowitz said. “Come along, Manny. Say goodbye to the two gentlemen.”
“Goodbye,” Manny said.
“Goodbye,” Carella answered. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Moscowitz.”
Mrs. Moscowitz did not answer. With one hand on the handlebar of her son’s bike, she led bike and child up the walk and into the house, and then slammed the door.
“What did I do?” Carella asked.
“I don’t know how to handle kids, huh?”
“Well…”
“You don’t know how to handle women,” Hawes said.
3
The woman’s name was Teddy Carella, and she was his wife, and he knew how to handle her.
The positive identification of the dead man had been made from photographs by 5:30 that afternoon, after which Carella and Hawes had further questioned Anthony Lasser about his father, and then gone back to the squadroom to sign out. They left the station house at 6:15, a half hour later than they should have, said goodbye on the precinct steps and headed off in opposite directions. Hawes had a date with a girl named Christine Maxwell. Carella had a date with his wife and two children.
His wife had black hair and brown eyes and a figure even the bearing of twins had failed to intimidate. Full-breasted, widehipped, long-legged, she greeted him in the foyer with a sound kiss and a hug that almost cracked his spine.
“Hey!” he said. “Wow! What’s going on?”
Teddy Carella watched his lips as he spoke, because she was deaf and could “hear” only by watching a person’s lips or hands. Then, because she was mute as well, she raised her right hand and rapidly told him in the universal language of deaf mutes that the twins had already been fed and that Fanny, their housekeeper, was at this moment putting them to bed. Carella watched her moving hand, missing a word every now and then, but understanding the sense and meaning, and then smiled as she went on to outline her plans for the evening, as if her plans needed outlining after the kiss she had given him at the front door.
“You can get arrested for using that kind of language,” Carella said, grinning. “It’s a good thing everybody can’t read it.”
Teddy glanced over her shoulder to make sure the door to the twins’ room was closed, and then put her arms around his neck again and moved as close to him as it was possible to get and kissed him once again, and he almost forgot that it was his custom to go in to say good night to the twins before he had his dinner.
“Well, I don’t know what brought this on,” he said, and he raised one eyebrow appreciatively, and Teddy moved the fingers on her right hand rapidly and told him never to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“You’re the nicest-looking gift horse I’ve seen all week,” he said. He kissed the tip of her nose and then went down the hall to the twins’ room, knocking on the door before he entered. Fanny looked up from Mark’s bed where she was tucking him in.
“Well, if it isn’t himself,” she said, “and knocking on doors in his own house.”
“My dear young lady…” Carella started.
“Young lady, is it? My but he’s in a good mood.”
“My, but he’s in a good mood,” April echoed from her bed.
“My dear young lady,” Carella said to Fanny, “if a person expects children to knock on his door before entering, he must set the proper example by knocking on their door before entering. Right, Mark?”
“Right, Pop,” Mark said,
“April?”
“Right, right,” April said, and giggled.
“Now don’t get them all excited before bedtime,” Fanny warned.
Fanny, who was in her fifties, red-haired and buxom, as Irish as Mrs. Flanagan’s underdrawers, turned from Mark’s bed with a mock scowl on her face, kissed April perfunctorily, and said, “I’ll leave you kiddies now to your horrid old man who will tell you tales of criminal deduction.”
“One day,” Carella said to the air, “Fanny will marry someone and leave us, and all the humor will go out of our lives, and our house will be gloomy and sad.”
“Fat chance,” Fanny said, and grinned and went out of the room. She poked her head back around the doorjamb immediately and said, “Dinner in five minutes. Make it snappy, Sherlock.”
“Who’s Sherlock?” Mark asked.
“A cop,” Carella answered.
“Better than you?” Mark asked.
April scrambled out of her bed, peeked at the open door to make sure Fanny wasn’t coming back again, and then crawled into Carella’s lap where he was sitting on the edge of Mark’s bed. “There’s no cop better than Daddy,” she told her brother. “Isn’t that right, Daddy?”
Carella, not wishing to destroy a father image, modestly said, “That’s right, honey. I’m the best cop in the world.”
“Sure he is,” April said.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t,” Mark answered. “She’s always twisting it, Pop.”
“Don’t call him Pop,” April said. “His name is Daddy.”
“His name is Steve, smarthead,” Mark said.
“If you two are going to argue,” Carella said, “I’ll just leave.”
“She busted two of my models today,” Mark said.
“Why’d you do that, April?” Carella asked.
“Because he said I was a smarthead wetpants.”
“She is.”
“I didn’t wet my pants all week,” April said.
“You wet them last night,” Mark corrected.
“I don’t think that’s any of your concern, Mark,” Carella said. “What your sister does…”
“Sure, Pop,” Mark said. “All I’m saying is she’s a smarthead wetpants.”
“And I don’t like that kind of language,” Carella said.
“What language?”
“Wetpants, he means,” April said.
“Why? What’s wrong with that, Pop?”
“He only calls you Pop because he thinks that’s tough,” April said. “He’s always trying to be a tough guy, Daddy.”