She looked at her hands. She had very beautiful hands, Carella noticed.
‘Detective Lipman said ... he’d read some sort of report that was sent to him ... he said she had to have been on her knees when she was shot. The angle, the trajectory, whatever the hell, indicated she’d been on her knees, with ... with ... with the ... person who ... who shot her standing behind her. Lizzie on her knees.’
She shook her head.
‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ she said, and reached into her handbag for another cigarette.
She was smoking again when the detectives left the room.
* * * *
‘His specialty is banks,’ Carella said.
‘Just what I was thinking,’ Brown said.
They were driving crosstown and downtown to Elizabeth Turner’s apartment and they were talking about the Deaf Man.
‘That’s if you consider two out of three a specialty,’ Carella said.
He was remembering that once, and only once, had the Deaf Man’s attempts at misdirection been designed to conceal and simultaneously reveal an elaborate extortion scheme. On the other two occasions it had been banks. Tell the police beforehand, but not really, what you’re planning to do, help them dope it out, in fact, and then do something different but almost the same—it all got terribly confusing when the Deaf Man put in an appearance.
Eight black horses, five walkie-talkies, and one white lady who probably had nothing whatever to do with the Deaf Man, except for the fact that she had worked in a bank.
‘Banks have security officers, you know,’ Brown said.
‘Yeah,’ Carella said.
‘And they carry walkie-talkies, don’t they?’
‘I don’t know. Do they?’
‘I guess they do,’ Brown said. ‘Do you think there might be a bank someplace in this city that’s got five security guards carrying walkie-talkies?’
‘I don’t know,’ Carella said.
‘Five walkie-talkies, you know?’ Brown said. ‘And she worked in a bank.’
‘The only real thing we’ve got...’
‘If it’s a connection.’
‘Which it probably isn’t.’
‘That’s the trouble with the Deaf Man,’ Carella said.
‘He drives you crazy,’ Brown said.
‘What’s that address again?’
‘Eight-oh-four.’
‘Where are we now?’
‘Eight-twenty.’
‘Just ahead then, huh?’
‘With the green canopy,’ Brown said.
Carella parked the car at the curb in front of the building and then threw down the visor on the driver’s side. A sign was attached to it with rubber hands. Visible through the windshield, it advised any overzealous foot patrolman that the guys who’d parked the car here were on the job. The city’s seal and the words isola p.d. printed on the sign were presumably insurance against a parking ticket. The sign didn’t always work. Only recently they had busted a cocaine dealer who’d stolen an identical sign from a car driven by two detectives from the Eight-One. In this city it was sometimes difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
It was difficult, too, to tell a good building from a bad building.
Usually a building with an awning out front indicated that there would be a doorman or some other sort of security. There was neither here. They found the superintendent’s apartment on the street level floor, identified themselves, and asked him to unlock the door to Elizabeth Anne Turner’s apartment. On the way up in the elevator Brown asked him if she’d lived here alone.
‘Yep,’ he said.
‘Sure about that?’ Carella said.
‘Yep,’ the super said.
‘No girlfriend living with her?’
‘Nope.’
‘No boyfriend?’
‘Nope.’
‘No roommate at all, right?’
‘Right.’
‘When’d you see her last?’
‘Beginning of October, musta been.’
‘Going out or coming in?’
‘Going out.’
‘Alone?’
‘Alone.’
‘Carrying anything?’
‘Just her handbag.’
‘What time was this?’
‘In the morning sometime. I figured she was on her way to work.’
‘And you didn’t see her again after that?’
‘Nope. But I don’t keep an eye out twenty-four hours a day, you know.’
There is a feel to an apartment that has been lived in.
Even the apartment of a recent homicide victim can tell you at once whether anyone had been living there. There was no such sense of habitation in Elizabeth Turner’s apartment.
The windows were closed tight and locked—not unusual for this city, even if someone were just going downstairs for a ten-minute stroll. But the air was still and stale, a certain indication that the windows hadn’t been opened for quite some time. Well, after all, Elizabeth Turner had been found dead eight days ago, and perhaps that was a long enough time for an apartment to have gone stale.
But a slab of butter in the refrigerator had turned rancid.
And a package of sliced Swiss cheese had mold growing on it.
And a container of milk was sour to the smell; the sell-by date stamped at the top of the carton read ‘oct. 1.’
There were no dishes on the drainboard, none in the dishwasher.
The ashtrays were spotlessly clean.
The apartment revealed none of the detritus of living—even if the living had been done by a compulsive house-keeper.
There was only one coat hanging in the hall closet.
The double bed in the bedroom was made.
A framed picture of Elizabeth was on the dresser opposite the bed. She looked prettier alive.
The three top drawers of the dresser were empty.
The middle row of drawers contained one blouse.
The bottom row of drawers contained two sweaters and a handful of mothballs.
Only a suit, a pair of slacks, and a ski parka were hanging in the bedroom closet. There were two pairs of high-heeled pumps on the closet floor. They could find no suitcases anywhere in the apartment.
The roll of toilet paper in the bathroom holder was almost all gone.
They could not find a toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.
Nor a diaphragm. Nor a birth control pill dispenser. Nor any of the artifacts, cosmetic or otherwise, they normally would have found in an apartment actively occupied by a woman.