“The other musicians who were there that night — would you know them?”
“I know their names, but I’ve never met them.”
“What are their names?”
“Freddie Bones and Vincent Barragan.”
“Bones? Is that his real name?”
“I think so.”
“How do you spell the other name?”
“I think it’s B-A-R-R-A-G-A-N. It’s a Spanish name, he’s from Puerto Rico.”
“But you’ve never met either of them?”
“No, they were both before my time. I’ve only been married to George for four years.”
“How do you happen to know the names then?”
“Well, he mentioned them a lot. Because they were there the night his brother disappeared, you know. And he was always talking to them on the phone.”
“Recently?”
“No, not recently.”
“Four years,” Carella said. “Then you never met George’s brother, either.”
“Never.”
“Santo Chadderton, is it?”
“Santo Chadderton, yes.”
“Is this your first marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Was it George’s?”
“No. He was married before.” She hesitated. “To a white woman,” she said, and looked him straight in the eye.
“Divorce her or what?”
“Divorced her, yes.”
“When?”
“Couple of months after we met. They were already separated when we met.”
“What’s her name, would you know?”
“Irene Chadderton. That’s if she’s still using her married name.”
“What was her maiden name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she live here in the city?”
“Used to, I don’t know if she still does.”
“Would she have known Santo?”
“I suppose so.”
“Would she know anything about his disappearance?”
“Anybody who ever had anything to do with George knows about his brother’s disappearance, believe me. It was like a goddamn obsession with him. That’s the other thing we argued about, okay? My dancing here, and him talking about his brother all the time! Searching for him all the time, checking newspapers, and court records, and hospitals and driving everybody crazy.”
“You told me you had a good marriage,” Carella said flatly.
“It was good as most,” Chloe answered, and then shrugged. The flap of the gown slid away from one of her breasts with the motion, exposing it almost completely. She made no effort to close the gown. She stared into Carella’s eyes and said, “I didn’t kill him, Mr. Carella,” and then turned to look at the wall clock again. “I got to get back up there, my audience awaits,” she said breathlessly and smiled suddenly and radiantly.
“Don’t forget this,” Carella said, handing her the envelope.
“Thank you,” she said. “If you learn anything...”
“I have your number.”
“Yes,” she said, and nodded, and looked at him a moment longer and then turned to walk toward the bar. Carella put on his coat and hat — both still wet — and went to the register to pay his check. As he walked out of the place, he turned to look toward the bar again. Chloe was in the same position the other dancer had assumed less than forty-five minutes ago — back arched, elbows locked, legs widespread, furiously smiling and grinding at a customer sitting not a foot away from her crotch. As Carella pushed open the door to step into the rain, the customer slid a dollar bill into the waistband of her G-string.
6
It was almost 2:00 P.M. when he got back to the squadroom and began hitting the phone books. There were no listings for either Irene Chadderton or Frederick Bones in any of the city’s five directories, but he found a listing for Vicente Manuel Barragan in the Calm’s Point book. He dialed Directory Assistance for further information, and was told by the operator that she had nothing at all for an Irene Chadderton anywhere in the city, and whereas she did have a listing for a Frederick Bones, it was an unpublished one. Carella identified himself as a working detective and she said, “This’ll have to be a call-back, sir.”
“Yes, I know that,” he said. “I’m at the 87th Precinct, the number here is Frederick 7-8024.”
He hung up and waited. He knew the operator would first check out the number he had given her to make certain he was indeed calling from a police station. She would then need permission from her supervisor before revealing Bones’s unpublished number — even to a cop. The phone rang ten minutes later. Carella picked it up. The operator gave him a number in Isola, and when he requested the address, she supplied that as well. He thanked her and walked over to where Meyer Meyer was telling a joke to Bert Kling, who sat in a swivel chair behind his desk, his feet up on the desk, listening with something akin to childlike anticipation. Kling was the youngest detective on the squad, a tall, blond, strapping kid (they thought of him as a kid even though he was in his early thirties) with guileless hazel eyes and an open face more suited to a beet farmer in Grand Forks, North Dakota, than a detective here in the big bad city. Carella caught only the punch line as he approached Kling’s desk — “I say, old boy, are you trying to escape?”
Kling and Meyer burst out laughing simultaneously. Meyer stood beside the desk looking at Kling and laughing at his own joke, and Kling sat there in his chair, his feet on the floor now, laughing so hard Carella thought he would wet his pants. Both men laughed for what seemed a solid three minutes, though it was surely only thirty or forty seconds. Carella stood by, waiting. When Meyer stopped laughing at last, he handed him the sheet of paper on which he had listed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Frederick Bones and Vicente Manuel Barragan.
“What we’re looking for,” he said, “is information on what happened the night Santo disappeared, seven years ago.”
“You think somebody really did him in?” Meyer asked.
“His brother thought so, that’s for sure. Conducted a one-man investigation all over the city, even went back to Trinidad looking for him. If somebody really did knock off the kid...”
“And if George was getting close to who did it...”
“Right,” Carella said. “So let’s find out what happened back then, okay? Which one do you want?”
“They sound like a vaudeville team,” Meyer said. “Barragan and Bones.”
“I’ll flip you,” Carella said.
“Not with your coin,” Meyer said. “If we flip, we use a neutral coin.”
“My coin is neutral,” Carella said.
“No, your coin is crooked. He has a crooked coin, kid.”
“I say, old boy, are you trying to escape?” Kling said, and began laughing again.
“Have you got a quarter?” Carella asked him.
Still laughing, Kling reached into his pocket. Carella accepted the coin, examined both sides of it, and handed it to Meyer for his approval.
“Okay,” Meyer said, “heads or tails?”
“Heads,” Carella said.
Meyer flipped the coin. It hit the corner of Kling’s desk, flew off it at an angle, struck the floor on its edge and went rolling across the room to collide with the wall behind the water cooler. Carella and Meyer both ran across the room. Squatting near the cooler, they examined the coin.
“It’s tails,” Meyer said triumphantly.
“Okay, you get the vaudeville performer of your choice,” Carella said.