“Oh, God,” Cindy said.
“You said it,” Kling answered. “Cheer up, here comes your lasagna.”
Because a white man punched a Negro in a bar on Culver Avenue just about the time Cindy Forrest was putting her first forkful of lasagna into her mouth, five detectives of the 87th Precinct were pressed into emergency duty to quell what looked like the beginnings of a full-scale riot. Two of those detectives were Meyer and Carella, the theory being that Stan Gifford was already dead and gone whereas the Culver Avenue fistfight could possibly lead to a good many more corpses before nightfall if something were not done about it immediately.
There was, of course, nothing that could be done about it immediately. A riot will either start or not start, and all too often the presence of policemen will only help to inflame a gathering crowd, defeating the reason for their being there in the first place. The patrolmen and detectives of the 87th could only play a waiting game, calming citizens wherever they could, spotting people they knew in the crowd and talking good sense to them, assuring them that both men involved in the fight had been arrested, and not only the Negro. There were some who could be placated, and others who would not. The cops roamed the streets like instant father images, trying to bind the wounds of a century by speaking belated words of peace, by patting a shoulder tolerantly, by asking to be accepted as friends. Too many of the cops were not friends and the people knew goddam well they weren’t. Too many of the cops were angry men with angry notions of their own about Negroes and Puerto Ricans, inborn prejudices that neither example nor reprimand could change. It was touch and go for a long while on that windy October afternoon.
By 4:00, the crowds began to disperse. The patrolmen were left behind in double strength, but the detectives were relieved to resume their investigations. Meyer and Carella went downtown to see Maria Vallejo.
Her street was in one of the city's better neighborhoods, a block of old brownstones with clean-swept stoops and curtained front doors. They entered the tiny lobby with its polished brass mailboxes and bell buttons, found a listing for Maria in apartment 22, and rang the bell. The answering buzz was long and insistent; it continued noisily behind them as they climbed the carpeted steps to the second floor. They rang the bell outside the door with its polished brass 2s. It opened almost immediately.
Maria was small and dark and bursting with energy. She was perhaps thirty-two, with thick black hair pulled tightly to the back of her head, flashing brown eyes, a generous mouth, and a nose that had been turned up by a plastic surgeon. She wore a white blouse and black tapered slacks. A pair of large gold hoop earrings adorned her ears, but she wore no other jewelry. She opened the door as though she were expecting party guests and then looked out at the detectives in undisguised puzzlement.
“Yes?” she said. “What is it?” She spoke without a trace of accent. If Carella had been forced to make a regional guess based on her speech, he’d have chosen Boston or one of its suburbs.
“We’re from the police,” he said, flashing his buzzer. “We’re investigating the death of Stan Gifford.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Come on in.”
They followed her into the apartment. The apartment was furnished in brimming good taste, cluttered with objects picked up in the city's better antique and junk shops. The shelves and walls were covered with ancient nutcrackers and old theater posters and a French puppet, and watercolor sketches for costumes and stage sets, and several enameled army medals, and a black silk fan, and pieces of driftwood. The living room was small, with wide curtained windows overlooking the street, luminous with the glow of the afternoon sun. It was furnished with a sofa and chair covered in deep-green velvet, a bentwood rocker, a low needlepoint footstool, a marble-topped table on which lay several copies of Paris Match.
“Do sit down,” Maria said. “Can I get you a drink? Oh, you’re not allowed, are you? Some coffee?”
“I can use a cup,” Carella said.
“It's on the stove. I’ll just pour it. I always keep a pot on the stove. I guess I drink a million cups of coffee a day.” She went into the small kitchen. They could see her standing at a round, glass-topped table over which hung a Tiffany lampshade, pouring the coffee from an enameled hand-painted pot. She carried the cups, spoons, sugar, and cream into the living room on a small teakwood tray, shoved aside the copies of the French magazine to make room for it, and then served the detectives. She went to sit in the bentwood rocker then, sipping at her coffee, rocking idly back and forth.
“I bought this when Kennedy was killed,” she said. “Do you like it? It keeps falling apart. What did you want to know about Stan?”
“We understand you were in his dressing room with him Wednesday night just before he went on, Miss Vallejo. Is that right?”
“That's right,” she said.
“Were you alone with him?”
“No, there were several people in the room.”
“Who?”
“Gee, I don’t remember offhand. I think Art was there, yes…and maybe one other person.”
“George Cooper?”
“Yes, that's right. Say, how did you know?”
Carella smiled. “But Mr. Cooper didn’t come into the room, did he?”
“Oh, sure he did.”
“What I mean is, he simply knocked on the door and called Mr. Gifford, isn’t that right?”
“No, he came in,” Maria said. “He was there quite a while.”
“How much time would you say Mr. Cooper spent in the dressing room?”
“Oh, maybe five minutes.”
“You remember that clearly, do you?”
“Oh, yes. He was there, all right.”
“What else do you remember, Miss Vallejo? What happened in that dressing room Wednesday night?”
“Oh, nothing. We were just talking. Stan was relaxing while those singers were on, and I just sort of drifted in to have a smoke and chat, that's all.”
“What did you chat about?”
“I don’t remember.” She shrugged. “It was just small talk. The monitor was going and those nuts were singing in the background, so we were just making small talk, that's all.”
“Did Mr. Gifford eat anything? Or drink anything?”
“Gee, no. No, he didn’t. We were just talking.”
“No coffee? Nothing like that?”
“No. No, I’m sorry.”
“Did he take a vitamin pill? Would you happen to have noticed that?”
“Gee, no, I didn’t notice.”
“Or any kind of a pill?”
“No, we were just talking, that's all.”
“Did you like Mr. Gifford?”
“Well…”
Maria hesitated. She got out of the rocker and walked to a coffee table near the couch. She put down her cup, and then walked back to the rocker again, and then shrugged.
“Did you like him, Miss Vallejo?”
“I don’t like to talk about the dead,” she said.
“We were talking about him just fine until a minute ago.”
“I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” she corrected.
“Then you didn’t like him?”
“Well, he was a little demanding, that's all.”
“Demanding how?”
“I’m the show's wardrobe mistress, you know.”
“Yes, we know.”
“I’ve got eight people working under me. That's a big staff. I’m responsible for all of them, and it's not easy to costume that show each week, believe me. Well, I…I don’t think Stan made the job any easier, that's all. He…well…well, really, he didn’t know very much about costumes, and he pretended he did, and…well, he got on my nerves sometimes, that's all.”