“Thank you, Louise,” Fowles said, and moved the sugar bowl closer to Meyer’s side of the table. “Sugar?” he asked. “Cream? Thank you, Louise, you can go back in the kitchen and bite your nails now, go on, thank you very much.” Louise pushed her way huffily through the swinging doors. “Total idiot,” Fowles said. “She’s my niece. My wife’s brother’s daughter. A trombenik, do you understand Yiddish? You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Meyer said.
“So am I, my maiden name is Feinstein, I changed it to Fowles when I went into show biz. The Bruce is genuine, my mother’s brilliant idea, she used to be in love with Bruce Cabot when he played Magua in Last of the Mohicans. Two hundred years before I’m born, right, but she remembers old Bruce Cabot, and she names me Bruce Feinstein, terrific, huh? I did some television work four or five years ago, never really made it, decided to open a restaurant instead. Anyway, that’s when I became Bruce Fowles, when I landed the part of Dr. Andrew Malloy on Time and the City. You are doubtless familiar with Time and the City? No? You mean the police force doesn’t spend its time in the day room watching soap operas on television?”
“Swing room,” Meyer said.
“I thought it was day room. We did an episode — some episode, it lasted six months — where some cops were quarantined inside the station house, one of them had the plague or some damn thing, and the writers called it the day room.”
“Swing room,” Meyer said.
“I take your word for it. Where were we?”
“We were talking about smart girls like Clara Jean Hawkins.”
“Right. She lasted here longer than I thought she would. Smart, young, and pretty besides. Clean for this shitty neighborhood. By which I mean no fooling around with dope. We get enough pushers in here during the lunch hour to supply the entire city of Istanbul for two weeks in August.”
“How about pimps?” Meyer asked.
“We get our share. This is Diamondback, you know. Would that I were operating a place downtown, but I’m not.”
“Know anybody named Joey Peace?”
“No, who is he?”
“A pimp.” Meyer hesitated. “Clara Jean Hawkins’s pimp.”
“You’re kidding me,” Fowles said. “Is that how she ended up?”
“Yes,” Meyer said.
“I can’t believe it. Clara Jean? Never in a million years. Hooking? Clara Jean?”
“Hooking,” Meyer said. “Clara Jean.”
“How the hell did she ever get into that?” Fowles said, shaking his head.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Meyer said. “Ever see her in deep conversation with anyone who might’ve been discussing career opportunities?”
“No, never. She was cheerful and friendly with everybody, but I didn’t see any pimps sounding her. You know how they come on, they usually look for drifters, do you know what I mean, lost souls. Clara Jean had a look of confidence about her. I can’t believe she ended up this way. I honestly cannot believe this.”
“Are you sure about the dope angle?” Meyer asked.
“Why? Was she a user when she died?”
“Not according to the autopsy.”
“Not according to me, either. One hundred percent clean.”
“Any of the dealers make noises around her?”
“When don’t they? If a nun came in here saying her beads, they’d sound her about a free fix. That’s their business, isn’t it? Without addicts, there are no dealers. Sure, they came on about junk joy...”
“Junk...?”
“Joy,” Fowles supplied. “Shit City — but she wasn’t buying, she saw clear through them. Look, Mr. Meyer, she was born and raised in this sewer called Diamondback. If a girl gets to be nineteen and she isn’t pregnant, or hooking, or supporting a habit — or sometimes all three — it’s a fuckin miracle. Okay. Clara Jean was her own person, not quite free, how the fuck can you be in Diamondback? Not quite twenty-one, and never going to be white — but with a good head on her shoulders and a hell of a lot going for her. So how does she end up a hooker bleeding out her life on a sidewalk at four o’clock in the morning? Isn’t that what the newspaper said? Four A.M.?”
“That’s what it said.”
“I should’ve realized right then. I mean, what kind of woman is out on the street alone at four in the morning?”
“Maybe she wasn’t alone,” Meyer said. “Maybe whoever killed her was a client. Or even her pimp.”
“Joey Peace, is that what you said his name was?”
“Joey Peace.”
“Changed from what? Joseph Pincus?”
“That’s possible,” Meyer said. “Lots of pimps...”
“I went to school with a kid named Joseph Pincus,” Fowles said idly. “Joey Peace, huh?” He shook his head. “It just doesn’t ring a bell. I know most of the customers who come in here, and that name just isn’t familiar to me.”
“Okay, let’s get off that for a minute. Maybe you’ll remember something later on. You said Clara Jean didn’t have much to do with your seamier customers...”
“Just a smile and a nice word or two, right.”
“Ever get a man named George Chadderton in here?”
“Chadderton, Chadderton. No, I don’t think so. White or black?”
“Black.”
“Chadderton. The name sounds familiar, but...”
“He was a calypso singer.”
“Was?”
“Was. He got killed Friday night, about four hours before Clara Jean bought it with the same pistol.”
“Maybe I read about it,” Fowles said. “I don’t think I know the name from the restaurant here.”
“He was supposed to meet Clara Jean here at twelve last Saturday. That would’ve been the sixteenth.”
“No, I can’t help you there.”
“Okay, how about while she was working here? Did she have any boyfriends? Anybody ever pick her up after work? Anybody call her on the phone?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Have you got any waiters here?”
“Just waitresses.”
“Busboys?”
“Four.”
“How about the kitchen? Any male help?”
“Yeah, my cooks and my dishwashers.”
“Was she friendly with any of them?”
“Yes, she was a friendly person by nature.”
“Was she dating any of them, is what I mean.”
“I don’t think so. I’d have noticed something like that, I’m in the place day in and day out, either in the kitchen or at the cash register. I’d have noticed something like that, don’t you think?”
“Anybody named Joey work here?” Meyer asked suddenly.
“Joey? No. I’ve got a Johnny washing dishes, and I once had a busboy named José — well, I suppose that’s a Joey, huh?”
“When was this?”
“José worked here... let me see... in the spring sometime.”
“March, would it have been?”
“March, April, something like that.”
“When Clara Jean worked here?”
“Well... yeah, come to think of it.”
“When did he quit the job?”
“Well... about the same time she did, as a matter of fact.”
“Uh-huh,” Meyer said. “José what?”
“La Paz,” Fowles said.
Some ten blocks from where Meyer Meyer was discovering that “Peace” was the English equivalent of the Spanish word Paz, Steve Carella was discovering that Ambrose Harding was a very frightened man. He had come there only to ask Chadderton’s business manager whether or not he knew anything about an album the singer might have discussed with Clara Jean Hawkins. Instead, Harding immediately showed Carella a corsage that had arrived not ten minutes earlier. There had been a knock on the door, and when Harding opened it — he did not take off the night chain — there was the box sitting outside in the hall. It was not the sort of box a corsage normally came in. Not a white, rectangular box with green paper inside it and a florist’s name imprinted on the top surface. Not that kind of a box at all.