“Are you Mike Chirapadano?” Carella asked.
“That ain’t him,” the landlady said. “Why’d you break the door in? You cops are all alike! Why didn’t you use the key like I told you?”
“I did use the damn key,” Carella said angrily. “All it did was lock the door. The door was already open. You sure this isn’t Chirapadano?”
“Of course I’m sure. How could the door have been open? I locked it myself.”
“Our friend here probably used a skeleton key on it. How about that, Mac?” Carella asked.
“Now you broke it,” the man said. “Now you went and broke it.”
“Broke what?”
“The drum. You broke the damn drum.”
“You’re the one who broke it,” Carella said.
“You hit me,” the man said. “I wouldn’t have tripped if you hadn’t hit me.”
“Who are you? What’s your name? How’d you get in here?”
“You figure it out, big man.”
“Why’d you leave the door unlocked?”
“Who expected anyone to come up here?”
“What do you want here anyway? Who are you?”
“I wanted the drums.”
“Why?”
“To hock them.”
“Mike’s drums?”
“Yes.”
“All right, now who are you?”
“What do you care? You broke the bass drum. Now I can’t hock it.”
“Did Mike ask you to hock his drums?”
“No.”
“You were stealing them?”
“I was borrowing them.”
“Sure. What’s your name?”
“Big man. Has a gun, so he thinks he’s a big man.” He touched his bleeding face. “You cut my cheek.”
“That’s right,” Carella said. “What’s your name?”
“Larry Daniels.”
“How do you know Chirapadano?”
“We played in the same band.”
“Where?”
“The King and Queen.”
“You a good friend of his?”
Daniels shrugged.
“What instrument do you play?”
“Trombone.”
“Do you know where Mike is?”
“No.”
“But you knew he wasn’t here, didn’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have sneaked up here with your skeleton key and tried to steal his drums. Isn’t that right?”
“I wasn’t stealing them. I was borrowing them. I was going to give him the pawn ticket when I saw him.”
“Why’d you want to hock the drums?”
“I need some loot.”
“Why don’t you hock your trombone?”
“I already hocked the horn.”
“You the junkie Randy Simms was talking about?”
“Who?”
“Simms. Randy Simms. The guy who owns The King and Queen. He said the trombone player on the band was a junkie. That you, Daniels?”
“Okay, that’s me. It ain’t no crime to be an addict. Check the law. It ain’t no crime. And I got no stuff on me, so put that in your pipe and smoke it. You ain’t got me on a goddamn thing.”
“Except attempted burglary,” Carella said.
“Burglary, my ass. I was borrowing the drums.”
“How’d you know Mike wouldn’t be here?”
“I knew, that’s all.”
“Sure. But how? Do you know where he is right this minute?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“But you knew he wasn’t here.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“A dope fiend,” the landlady said. “I knew it.”
“Where is he, Daniels?”
“Why do you want him?”
“We want him.”
“Why?”
“Because he owns a suit of clothes that may be connected with a murder. And if you withhold information from us, you can be brought in as an accessory after the fact. Now how about that, Daniels? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. That’s the truth.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Just before he made it with the dame.”
“What dame?”
“The stripper.”
“Bubbles Caesar?”
“That’s her name.”
“When was this, Daniels?”
“I don’t remember the date exactly. It was around Valentine’s Day. A few days before.”
“The twelfth?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Mike didn’t show up for work on the night of the twelfth. Was that the day you saw him?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“When did you see him?”
“In the afternoon sometime.”
“And what did he want?”
“He told me he wouldn’t be on the gig that night, and he give me the key to his pad.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“He said he wanted me to take his drums home for him. So when we quit playing that night, that’s what I done. I packed up his drums and took them here.”
“So that’s how you got in today. You still have Mike’s key.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s how you knew he wouldn’t be here. He never did get that key back from you, did he?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Daniels paused. “I was supposed to call him the next day and we was supposed to meet so I could give him the key. Only I called, and there was no answer. I called all that day, but nobody answered the phone.”
“This was the thirteenth of February?”
“Yeah, the next day.”
“And he had told you he would be with Bubbles Caesar?”
“Well, not directly. But when he give me the key and the telephone number, he made a little joke, you know? He said, ‘Larry, don’t be calling me in the middle of the night because Bubbles and me, we are very deep sleepers.’ Like that. So I figured he would be making it with Bubbles that night. Listen, I’m beginning to get itchy. I got to get out of here.”
“Relax, Daniels. What was the phone number Mike gave you?”
“I don’t remember. Listen, I got to get a shot. I mean, now listen, I ain’t kidding around here.”
“What was the number?”
“For Christ’s sake, who remembers? This was last month, for Christ’s sake. Look, now look, I ain’t kidding here. I mean, I got to get out of here. I know the signs, and this is gonna be bad unless I get—”
“Did you write the number down?”
“What?”
“The number. Did you write it down?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Daniels said, but he pulled out his wallet and began going through it, muttering all the while, “I have to get a shot, I have to get fixed, I have to get out of here,” his hands trembling as he riffled through the wallet’s compartments. “Here,” he said at last, “here it is, here’s the number. Let me out of here before I puke.”
Carella took the card.
“You can puke at the station house,” he said.
The telephone number was Economy 8-3165.
At the squadroom, Carella called the telephone company and got an operator who promptly told him she had no record of any such number.
“It may be an unlisted number,” Carella said. “Would you please check it?”
“If it’s an unlisted number, sir, I would have no record of it.”
“Look, this is the police department,” Carella said. “I know you’re not supposed to divulge—”
“It is not a matter of not divulging the number, sir. It is simply that I would have no record of it. What I’m trying to tell you, sir, is that we do not have a list labeled ‘Unlisted Numbers.’ Do you understand me, sir?”
“Yes, I understand you,” Carella said. “But the telephone company has a record of it someplace, doesn’t it? Somebody pays the damn bill. Somebody gets the bill each month. All I want to know is who gets it?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I wouldn’t know who—”
“Let me talk to your supervisor,” Carella said.
Charles Tudor had begun walking from his home in The Quarter, and Cotton Hawes walked directly behind him. At a respectable distance, to be sure. It was a wonderful day for walking, a day that whetted the appetite for spring. It was a day for idling along and stopping at each and every store window, a day for admiring the young ladies who had taken off their coats and blossomed earlier than the flowers.