“How old would you say they were?”
“Centuries, I would guess.”
“No, I mean—”
“Oh, how old do they look? Well, the man—”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Oh, yes, many times.”
“Uh-huh,” Meyer said.
“I’ll be right over,” Kling said into the telephone. “You stay there.” He slammed down the receiver, opened his desk drawer, pulled out a holstered revolver, and hurriedly clipped it to his belt. “Somebody threw a bomb into a store-front church. One-seven-three-three Culver Avenue. I’m heading over.”
“Right,” Meyer said. “Get back to me.”
“We’ll need a couple of meat wagons. The minister and two others were killed, and it sounds as if there’re a lot of injured.”
“Will you tell Dave?”
“On the way out,” Kling said, and was gone.
“Mrs. Gorman,” Meyer said, “as you can see, we’re pretty busy here just now. I wonder if your ghosts can wait till morning.”
“No, they can’t,” Adele said. “Why not?”
“Because they appear precisely at two forty-five A.M. and I want someone to see them.”
“Why don’t you and your husband look at them?” Meyer said.
“You think I’m a nut, don’t you?” Adele said.
“No, no, Mrs. Gorman, not at all.”
“Oh, yes you do,” Adele said. “I didn’t believe in ghosts either — until I saw these two.”
“Well, this is all very interesting, I assure you, Mrs. Gorman, but really we do have our hands full right now, and I don’t know what we can do about these ghosts of yours, even if we did come over to take a look at them.”
“They’ve been stealing things from us,” Adele said, and Meyer thought: Oh, we have got ourselves a prime lunatic this time.
“What sort of things?”
“A diamond brooch that used to belong to my mother when she was alive. They stole that from my father’s safe.”
“What else?”
“A pair of emerald earrings. They were in the safe, too.”
“When did these thefts occur?”
“Last month.”
“Isn’t it possible the jewelry’s been mislaid?”
“You don’t mislay a diamond brooch and a pair of emerald earrings that are locked inside a wall safe.”
“Did you report these thefts?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew you’d think I was crazy. Which is just what you’re thinking right this minute.”
“No, Mrs. Gorman, but I’m sure you can appreciate the fact that we — uh — can’t go around arresting ghosts,” Meyer said, and tried a smile.
Adele Gorman did not smile back. “Forget the ghosts,” she said, “I was foolish to mention them. I should have known better.” She took a deep breath, looked him squarely in the eye, and said, “I’m here to report the theft of a diamond brooch valued at six thousand dollars, and a pair of earrings worth thirty-five hundred dollars. Will you send a man to investigate tonight, or should I ask my father to get in touch with your superior officer?”
“Your father? What’s he got to—”
“My father is a retired Surrogate’s Court judge,” Adele said.
“I see.”
“Yes, I hope you do.”
“What time did you say these ghosts arrive?” Meyer asked, and sighed heavily.
Between midnight and 2:00 the city does not change very much. The theaters have all let out, and the average Saturday night revelers, good citizens from Bethtown or Calm’s Point, Riverhead or Majesta, have come into the Isola streets again in search of a snack or a giggle before heading home. The city is an ant’s nest of after-theater eateries ranging from chic French cafés to pizzerias to luncheonettes to coffee shops to hot-dog stands to delicatessens, all of them packed to the ceilings because Saturday night is not only the loneliest night of the week, it is also the night to howl. And howl they do, these good burghers who have put in five long hard days of labor and who are anxious now to relax and enjoy themselves before Sunday arrives, bringing with it the attendant boredom of too much leisure time, anathema for the American male.
The crowds shove and jostle their way along The Stem, moving in and out of bowling alleys, shooting galleries, penny arcades, strip joints, night clubs, jazz emporiums, souvenir shops, lining the sidewalks outside plate-glass windows in which go-go girls gyrate, or watching with fascination as a roast beef slowly turns on a spit. Saturday night is a time for pleasure for the good people of Isola and environs, with nothing more on their minds than a little enjoyment of the short respite between Friday night at 5:00 and Monday morning at 9:00.
But along around 2:00 A.M. the city begins to change.
The good citizens have waited to get their cars out of parking garages (more garages than there are barber shops) or have staggered their way sleepily into subways to make the long trip back to the outlying sections, the furry toy dog won in the Pokerino palace clutched limply, the laughter a bit thin, the voice a bit croaked, a college song being sung on a rattling subway car, but without much force or spirit. Saturday night has ended, it is really Sunday morning already, and the morning hours are truly upon the city — and now the denizens appear.
The predators approach, with the attendant danger of the good citizens getting mugged and rolled. The junkies are out in force, looking for cars foolishly left unlocked and parked on the streets, or — lacking such fortuitous circumstance — experienced enough to force the side vent with a screwdriver, hook the lock button with a wire hanger, and open the door that way. There are pushers peddling their dream stuff, from pot to speed to hoss, a nickel bag or a twenty-dollar deck; fences hawking their stolen goodies, anything from a transistor radio to a refrigerator, the biggest bargain basement in town; burglars jimmying windows or forcing doors with a celluloid strip, this being an excellent hour to break into apartments, when the occupants are asleep and the street sounds are hushed.
But worse than any of these are the predators who roam the night in search of trouble. In cruising wedges of three or four, sometimes high but more often not, they look for victims — a taxicab driver coming out of a cafeteria, an old woman poking around garbage cans for hidden treasures, a teenage couple necking in a parked automobile — it doesn’t matter. You can get killed in this city at any time of the day or night, but your chances for extinction are best after 2:00 A.M. because, paradoxically the night people take over in the morning. There are neighborhoods that terrify even cops in this lunar landscape, and there are certain places the cops will not enter unless they have first checked to see that there are two doors, one to get in by, and the other to get out through, fast, should someone decide to block the exit from behind.
The Painted Parasol was just such an establishment.
They had found in Mercy Howell’s appointment book a notation that read: Harry, 2:00 A.M. The Painted Parasol; and since they knew this particular joint for exactly the kind of hole it was, and since they wondered what connection the slain girl might have had with the various unappetizing types who frequented the place from dusk till dawn, they decided to hit it and find out. The front entrance opened on a long flight of stairs that led down to the main room of what was not a restaurant, and not a club, though it combined features of both. It did not possess a liquor license, and so it served only coffee and sandwiches; but occasionally a rock singer would plug in his amplifier and guitar and whack out a few numbers for the patrons. The back door of the — hangout? — opened onto a sidestreet alley. Hawes checked it out, reported back to Carella, and they both made a mental floor plan just in case they needed it later.