From the holding cells next door, the detectives had selected half a dozen men roughly resembling Corbett—all of them with black hair and brown eyes. From the squadroom upstairs, they recruited Detectives Richard Genero and Jerry Barker, similarly hued. The prisoners, all wearing what they’d had on when arrested, presented a sartorial mix of sweaters, sports jackets, and—in the case of one gentleman pickpocket—a dapper pin-striped suit. Genero and Barker were wearing sports jackets. Daniel Corbett, who’d come to the precinct directly from Harlow House, was wearing a dark blue suit, a paler blue shirt, and a gold-and-blue silk rep tie. As the guest of honor he was allowed to choose his own position in the line. He elected to take the position fourth from the left. When all nine men had silently taken their places behind the one-way mirror, the spotlights went on over the stage. The auditorium beyond remained dark. Carella and Hawes were sitting together with Mandel in the second row center, flanking him.
“Recognize anybody?” Carella said.
“No, not yet,” Mandel said. He was, surprisingly for a skier, a chubby little man in his mid-fifties. He had told Carella, before the lineup, that he used to be a professional wrestler. Carella could not possibly imagine him throwing a hammerlock on anyone. Mandel kept staring at the men behind the plate glass.
“Can I eliminate the ones it definitely wasn’t?” he asked.
“Go right ahead.”
“Well, it wasn’t the ones on either end there, and it wasn’t the one in the middle.”
“Frank,” Carella said into the microphone on the stand before him, “you can take away Numbers One, Five, and Nine.” Genero was standing first in line; he slouched off the stage, looking oddly disappointed that he hadn’t been chosen the winner. The other two disqualified men were prisoners from the holding cells. In rapid sequence, Mandel eliminated two more of the prisoners and Detective Barker. There were now three men standing on the stage: the two remaining prisoners and Daniel Corbett.
“Could they say something for me?” Mandel whispered.
“Sure,” Carella said. “Gentlemen, would you mind saying in your normal voices, ‘I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.’ Number Four, we’ll start with you.”
Number Four was Daniel Corbett. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.”
“All right, Number Six,” Carella said.
Number Six said, “I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.”
“And Number Eight.”
Number Eight said, “I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.”
“What do you think?” Carella asked.
“I can’t be certain…” Mandel said, and paused, “but I think it’s the one on the right. Number Eight.”
Number Eight was a man named Anthony Ruggiero, who had been arrested early that morning for attempting to break down the door of an apartment just off Grover Avenue, three blocks from the police station. He was drunk at the time, and he claimed he thought it was his own apartment and that the woman who kept telling him to go away was his wife. Carella looked at Hawes, briefly and bleakly, and then thanked Mandel. He went behind the one-way mirror a moment later, like a stage-door Johnny without flowers, and apologized to Corbett for having taken so much of his time.
“So who the hell was it?” Carella asked Hawes.
“Somebody Craig knew, that’s for sure.”
“Had to be. Otherwise, why would he have let him into the apartment? And why would he have had a drink with him?”
“That’s right, the autopsy…”
“Right, he’d been drinking. In fact, he was drunk. But the lab techs couldn’t find alcohol traces in any of the glasses.”
“Which means they were washed afterwards.”
“Which doesn’t mean a thing if Craig was drinking alone. But Hillary told me he never drank while he was working. Never. We know he was working that afternoon because there was a sheet of paper in the typewriter. And the sentence just trailed off, which makes it reasonable to believe he was interrupted—probably when the killer rang the doorbell. But he let him in, Cotton! He knew it wasn’t Corbett, and he let him in anyway. And if he never drank while he was working, then he had to have started drinking after he quit working. Which means he sat down to have a drink with the man who murdered him.”
The two detectives looked at each other.
“What do you think?” Hawes asked.
“I don’t know what the hell to think. Maybe Craig thought it was just a friendly little visit, have a drink, make yourself comfortable, and out comes the knife.”
“It’s the knife that bothers me,” Hawes said. “The fact that he brought the knife with him.”
“Sure, that makes it premeditated.”
“Murder One, pure and simple.”
“Then why’d he accept a drink first?”
“And what did they talk about between five o’clock and whenever it was he began hacking away?”
The detectives looked at each other again.
“Esposito?” Hawes asked.
“Maybe,” Carella said. “He lived in the building, he could have presented himself as the member of some tenants’ committee or…”
“Then who was it downstairs?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who announced himself as Corbett? That couldn’t have been Esposito.”
“No,” Carella said. “Shit, let’s go talk to the Fire Department.”
At Engine Company Number Six, a half hour later, they spoke to Terry Brogan, the moonlighting bartender. Brogan looked at the photograph of Warren Esposito, nodded, and said, “Yeah, I know him.”
“Was he in Elmer’s Thursday night?” Carella asked.
“What was Thursday? The twenty-second?”
“The twenty-first.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I was working the bar that night.”
“Did Esposito come in?”
“Is that his name?”
“Warren Esposito, yes. Did he…?”
“Serve a guy drinks for months on end, never get to know his name,” Brogan said, and shook his head wonderingly.
“Was he there Thursday night?”
“Thursday night, Thursday night,” Brogan said, “let me see, what happened Thursday night?” He was thoughtful for several moments. From the second floor of the firehouse, spilling down through the hole surrounding the brass pole, Carella heard a voice saying, “Full boat, kings over.” Someone else said, “You’ve got a fuckin’ horseshoe up your ass.”
“I think Thursday was the night the redhead took off her blouse,” Brogan said.
“When was that? What time?”
“Musta been about six o’clock,” Brogan said. “She came in bombed, and she had three more drinks in an hour. Yeah, it musta been about six. What it was, some guy sitting at the bar said she had to be wearing falsies, tits like that. So she took off her blouse to show him she wasn’t.”
“Was Esposito there?” Carella said patiently.
“He coulda been. With all that excitement…I mean, who was looking anyplace but the redhead’s chest?”
“What time did you start work last Thursday?” Hawes said, figuring he’d come in by the side door.
“Four-thirty.”
“Esposito told us he was there at five-thirty.”
“He coulda been.”
“What time did the redhead come in?”
“An hour before she took off her blouse.”
“That would’ve been five o’clock, right?”