“Were you with her Saturday night?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Her house.”
“Where were her parents?”
“They went to a movie.”
“What time did you go up there?”
“At about ten.”
“And what time did you leave her?”
“At a quarter to twelve.”
“What’s her name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Donatelli said. “If I give you her name, and you ask her about me, she’ll say she doesn’t know me. She knows I can get in trouble for being with her, she knows that. She’ll lie.”
“What’s her name?”
“What difference does it make?”
“What’s her goddamn name?”
“Gloria Hanley.”
“Where does she live?”
“831 North Sheridan.”
“How long have you known her?”
“I met her six months ago.”
“How old was she then?”
“Well, I... I suppose she was twelve.”
“You’re a very nice man, Mr. Donatelli,” Carella said.
“I love her,” Donatelli said.
The object of Mr. Donatelli’s affections was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when she opened the door to the apartment on North Sheridan. Gloria Hanley was a tall, angular girl with tiny breasts, boyish hips, green eyes, a dusting of freckles on her cheeks, and sun-washed blonde hair cut in a Dutch Boy bob. They had announced themselves as police officers, and she had asked them to hold up their shields to the peephole before she would open the door. She stood in the open doorway now in jeans and short-sleeved blouse, studying them with only mild interest.
“I was just having lunch,” she said. “What is it?”
“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Carella said. “Would it be all right if we came in?”
“This isn’t about that dope thing, is it?” Gloria said.
“What dope thing?”
“At school. Some kids were caught smoking dope in the toilet.”
“No, this isn’t about that.”
“Well, sure, come on in,” Gloria said. “I hope you won’t mind my eating while we talk. I go to school at the crack of dawn, you see, the bus picks me up at six-thirty, would you believe it? But I get home early, too, so I guess it’s not all that horrible. The thing is I’m positively starved when I get here. Would you care for something to eat?”
“Thank you, no,” Carella said.
They followed her into the kitchen. Gloria poured herself a glass of milk and drank half of it before she sat down at the table. “My mother should be home any minute,” she said, “if this is anything she ought to hear. She works part-time, usually gets home a little after I do. What’s this all about, anyway?”
“Gloria, I wonder if you can tell us where you were last Saturday night between ten and midnight.”
“Huh?” Gloria said.
“Last Saturday night,” Carella said. “That would have been Saturday, the sixth.”
“Gee, I don’t know where I was,” Gloria said.
“Would you have been here?”
“Home, you mean?”
“Yes. Here in the apartment.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Gloria said.
“Was anyone with you?”
“My parents, I guess.”
“Your parents were here with you?”
“Or maybe not. Saturday night, huh? No, wait a minute, they went out, that’s right.”
“Where’d they go?”
“A movie, I think. I’m not sure. Yeah, a movie. Mm-huh. You sure you don’t want something to eat?”
“Were you here alone?” Kling asked.
“I guess so. If my parents were out, then I guess I was here alone.”
“Any of your friends stop by to see you?” Carella asked.
“Not that I can remember.”
“Well, this was only Saturday night,” Carella said. “It shouldn’t really be too difficult to remember whether—”
“No, I’m pretty sure nobody stopped by,” Gloria said.
“So you were here alone.”
“Yes.”
“What’d you do?”
“Watched television, I guess.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Gloria, do you know a man named James Donatelli?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” Gloria said, and poured more milk from the container into her glass.
“He says he knows you.”
“Really? James who did you say?”
“Donatelli.”
“No,” she said, and shook her head. “I don’t know him. He must be mistaken.”
“He says he was here Saturday night.”
“Here? You’re kidding. I was here alone.”
“Then he wasn’t here, is that right?”
“I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
“James Donatelli.”
“Nobody by that name was here Saturday night. Or any other night, for that matter.”
“He said you might lie for him.”
“Why should I lie for somebody I don’t even know?”
“So he won’t go back to prison.”
“I don’t know anybody who’s been in prison. You’re making a mistake. Officers, really, I mean it. I don’t know this man, whoever he is.”
“Gloria, a girl was killed on Saturday night—”
“Well, I’m sorry, but—”
“Please hear me out. This man Donatelli has a prison record, we picked him up this morning because we wanted to question him about the murder.”
“I don’t know him, I’m sorry.”
“He says he was here Saturday night. That’s his alibi, Gloria. He was here at the time the girl was killed.”
“Well, that’s... Is that what he told you?”
“Yes. And he also said you’d deny it.”
“Well, he was right, I am denying it. He wasn’t here.”
“That means he hasn’t got an alibi.”
“I’m sorry about that, but how can I say he was here if he wasn’t here?”
“Gloria, we’re going to have to assume that Donatelli was lying to us. Which means we’re going to keep questioning him about where he really was on Saturday night. And if we still can’t get some satisfactory answers, we’ll run a lineup on him and try to get a positive identification from the girl who witnessed the murder.”
“Well, if he didn’t do it, he’s got nothing to worry about,” Gloria said.
“Before we put him through all that, I want to ask you again — are you sure you don’t know anyone named James Donatelli?”
“I’m positive.”
“No one by that name was here on Saturday night.”
“No one. I was here alone. I was here alone watching television.”
“Gloria,” Carella said, “if you know this man, please say so.”
“I do not know him,” she said.
At 2:00 that afternoon they ran a lineup in the squadroom. Six detectives and James Donatelli stood in a row. The detectives all had dark hair and light eyes, and they were all wearing dark suits and shirts without ties. None of them wore hats. James Donatelli was the third man in the line, flanked by two detectives on his left, and four detectives on his right. In addition to the seven men in the lineup, there were three other men in the room: Carella, Kling, and a man named Israel Mandelbaum who had been appointed as Donatelli’s attorney, and who still objected to the lineup, even though Donatelli had agreed to it.
“You’ll get a person in here,” Mandelbaum said, “she won’t remember what the hell she saw Saturday night, she’ll pick you out of the lineup, you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail. You want to go to jail for the rest of your life?”