“The Special.”
“Mm, well, your Regulation comes only with a four-inch barrel. Your Terrier comes with a two-inch barrel, and it’s a lighter gun, seventeen ounces as opposed to eighteen for the Regulation. Are we dealing with a man or a woman here?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Not that the ounce makes any difference, but the shorter barrel might. Easier to get in a handbag, do you see?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“So that’s it,” Gombes said. “A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, either the Regulation Police Model 33 or the Terrier Model 32. Hope I was able to help you,” he said, and hung up.
Meyer was still on the phone. Carella went down the hall to the Clerical Office and asked Miscolo to contact Communications and ask them to send out an interdepartmental flyer to all precincts asking for any information bearing on a suspect .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, Regulation Police Model 33 or Terrier Model 32, used in a fatal shooting on the night of September 15. Miscolo said he would call Communications as soon as his coffee perked. Carella went back up the hall to the squadroom, where Meyer was just putting up the phone.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“It wasn’t muscular dystrophy, and it wasn’t multiple sclerosis,” Meyer said. “Maybe it was a wedding, after all. Maybe the groom was a Dr. Harvey Cooper and maybe—”
“Let’s try the A.F. of M.,” Carella said. “Find out if they’ve got a member named Harvey Cooper. If they do—”
“Yeah, but will their job records go back seven years?”
“It’s worth a try. If you get anything, move on it. I want to start visiting some of these people who were in Chadderton’s appointment calendar.”
“How many names you got there?”
“Ten or so. Let me see,” Carella said, and began counting the names he’d listed in his notebook. “Eight that Chloe Chadderton could identify, two she didn’t know, and two sets of initials — C.J. and C.C.”
“Have you called any of them yet?”
“I was about to do that now.”
“Want to split the list with me?”
“First see what you get at the A.F. of M.”
Cynthia Rogers Hargrove was wearing a quilted dressing gown over what appeared to be a granny nightgown with a lace Peter Pan collar. A pearl choker was around her neck. Mrs. Hargrove was seventy-six years old if she was a day. She sat opposite Meyer Meyer at a damask-covered table in the dining alcove of her Hall Avenue apartment, the pouring rain streaking eastern windows that might otherwise have been streaming sunshine. Mrs. Hargrove spoke with the sort of voice Meyer associated with only the very wealthy — it was not only in Britain that a person’s vocal inflections gave away his class. Mrs. Hargrove was Vassar out of Rosemary Hall out of private elementary school someplace in the city. Mrs. Hargrove was sleek-lined sloops racing off Newport. Mrs. Hargrove was afternoon tea in Palm Beach. Mrs. Hargrove was breakfast at ten o’clock on a Monday morning when almost everyone else in the city had been up since seven and had consumed his first meal of the day before eight. In this land of the free and home of the brave, in this nation where all men were created equal, Mrs. Hargrove was nonetheless living testament to the wag’s adage that some men were created more equal than others. Meyer felt somewhat intimidated in her presence. Perhaps because he’d never eaten a toasted English muffin with genuine Scottish gooseberry jam on it. As he bit into it, he was certain the crunch could be heard clear uptown and crosstown in the very muster room of the Eight-Seven. Hastily, he sipped at his coffee, hoping to muffle the sounds of mastication.
“The Blondie Ball, we called it,” Mrs. Hargrove said.
Meyer blinked at her, and then said, “The Blondie Ball?”
“Yes. Do you know the comic-strip characters? Blondie and Dagwood? Are they familiar to you?”
“Yes, certainly,” Meyer said.
“That was our theme. The comic strip. More coffee?” she asked, and reached for the silver coffeepot just to the right of her plate. “How did you happen to get to me?” she asked, pouring.
“I called the A.F. of M.,” Meyer said, “and they—”
“A.F. of M.?”
“American Federation of Musicians.”
“Yes, surely,” Mrs. Hargrove said.
“Yes,” Meyer said, “and asked them if they could check their records... I discovered the leader has to file contracts with them, the band leader...”
“Oh, yes, I would imagine,” Mrs. Hargrove said.
“Yes,” Meyer said, “and I asked them to check on a musician named Harvey Cooper...”
“Oh, yes.”
“The name means something to you?”
“Yes, he’s the man I hired for the job.”
“Yes,” Meyer said, “this was seven years ago, September the eleventh, to be exact, this is all information the union gave me. And they also supplied me with your name and address, which was on the contract you signed.”
“Yes, how simple really.”
“It took us a little while to get there,” Meyer said. “Earlier, we were looking for something sponsored by either the Muscular Dystrophy Association or the National Multiple Sclerosis—”
“Oh no, nothing quite that grand,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “Do have another muffin, Mr. Meyer. They will go to waste otherwise.”
“But it was a charity ball, isn’t that so?”
“Yes. But what one might call a private charity, rather than one of the national organizations, do you understand?”
“What was the charity?”
“We were trying to establish a scholarship fund for the local high school. So that deserving youngsters might go on to college. Most of the local residents, as you can appreciate, send their children to preparatory schools when they’re of age. But the neighborhood high school is really quite good, and we felt the youngsters there should be given the same opportunities the more privileged youngsters enjoy.”
“I see,” Meyer said. “So the purpose of the ball was to raise money for this scholarship fund?”
“Yes.”
“How much did you hope to raise?”
“The estimated four-year tuition and living expenses for a student at a quality institution of higher learning was approximately twenty thousand dollars. We hoped to raise enough to send three students to college for the full four-year terms.”
“Then you hoped to raise sixty thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“And how much did you actually raise?”
“Twenty thousand more than that. The ball was quite successful. I imagine the Blondie theme had a lot to do with it.”
“What does that mean actually,” Meyer asked, “the Blondie theme?”