“Sally smoked pot,” Tina said. “Who doesn’t? But as for anything else, I don’t think so.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, if that’s what you mean. But usually, you can get a pretty good idea of who’s doing what when you’re working in a show, and I don’t think Sally was doing any kind of hard drugs.”
“Are you suggesting that some members of the cast...?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Uh-huh,” Carella said.
“Not heroin,” Tina said, “nobody’s that stupid anymore. But some coke here and there, now and then, sure.”
“But not Sally.”
“Not to my knowledge.” Tina paused. “Not me, either, if that’s your next question.”
“That wasn’t my next question,” Carella said, and smiled. “Did Sally ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”
“Never.”
“Did she owe anybody money? To your knowledge?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Anything seem to be troubling her?”
“No. Well, yes.”
“What?”
“Nothing serious.”
“Well, what?”
“She wanted to take singing lessons again, but she didn’t know how she could find the time. She had dance every day, you know, and she was seeing a shrink three times a week.”
“And that’s it? That’s all that was troubling her?”
“That’s all she ever mentioned to me.”
“Would you know her shrink’s name?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
“How’d she get along with the rest of the cast?”
“Fine.”
“How about management?”
“Who do you mean? Allan?”
“Who’s Allan?”
“Our producer, Allan Carter. I mean, who do you mean by management? The company manager? The general manager?”
“Any or all of them. How’d she get along with the people who were running the show?”
“Fine, I guess,” Tina said, and shrugged. “Once a show opens, you rarely see any of those people anymore. Well, in our case, because we’re such a big hit, Freddie comes around to check it out once or twice a week, make sure we aren’t coasting. But for the most part—”
“Freddie?”
“Our director. Freddie Carlisle.”
“How do you spell that?” Meyer asked, beginning to write again.
“With an i and an s,” Tina said. “C-a-r-l-i-s-l-e.”
“And you said your producer’s—”
“Allan Carter. Two l’s and an a.”
“Who’s your company manager?”
“Danny Epstein.”
“And your general manager?”
“Lew Eberhart.”
“Anybody else we should know about?” Carella asked.
Tina shrugged. “The stage managers? We’ve got three of them.” She shrugged again. “I mean, there are thirty-eight people in the cast alone, and God knows how many musicians and electricians and carpenters and property men and—”
“Any of them Hispanic?”
“In the crew, do you mean? I guess so. I don’t know too many of them. Except to pass them by in my underwear.”
She smiled suddenly and radiantly, and then seemed to remember what they were talking about here. The smile dropped from her face.
“How about the cast? Any Hispanics in the cast?” Carella asked.
“Two of the gypsies,” Tina said.
“Could we have their names, please?” Meyer said.
“Tony Asensio and Mike Roldan. Roldan doesn’t sound like a Spanish name, but it is. Actually, it’s Miguel Roldan.”
“Was Sally particularly friendly with either of them?”
“The gypsies in a show get to know each other pretty well,” Tina said.
“How well did she know these two men?” Carella asked.
“Same as the rest of us,” Tina said, and shrugged.
“Did she ever date either of them?”
“They’re both faggots,” Tina said. “In fact, they’re living together.” As though talk of the show had suddenly reminded her of the afternoon performance, she looked swiftly at her watch. “Oh, my God,” she said, “I’ve got to get out of here, I’ll be late!” And suddenly a look of self-chastisement crossed her face, and it appeared as if she would burst into tears again. “The show must go on, huh?” she said bitterly, shaking her head. “I’m worrying about the goddamn show, and Sally’s dead.”
4
From where the two patrolmen sat in the patrol car parked at the curb, it seemed evident that the priest was winning the fight. They had no desire to get out of the car and break up the fight, not with it being so cold out there, and especially since the priest seemed to be winning. Besides, they were sort of enjoying the way the priest was mopping up the street with his little spic opponent.
Up here in the Eight-Seven, you sometimes couldn’t tell the spics (Hispanics, you were supposed to say in your reports) from the whites because some of them had high Spanish blood in them and looked the same as your ordinary citizen. For all the patrolmen knew, the priest was a spic, too, but he had a very white complexion, and he was bigger than most of the cockroach-kickers up here. The two patrolmen sat in the heated comfort of the car and guessed aloud that he was maybe six three, six four, something like that, maybe weighing in at 240 pounds or thereabouts. They couldn’t figure which church he belonged to. None of the neighborhood churches had priests who dressed the way this one was dressed, but maybe he was visiting from someplace in California — they dressed that way in California, didn’t they, at those missions they had out there in the Napa Valley? The priest was wearing a brown woolen robe, and his head was shaved like a monk’s head, its bald crown glistening above the tonsure that encircled it like a wreath. One of the patrolmen in the car asked the other one what you called that brown thing the priest was wearing, that thing like a dress, you know? The other patrolman told him it was called a hassock, stupid, and the first patrolman said, “Oh yeah, right.” They were both rookies who had been working out of the Eight-Seven for only the past two weeks, otherwise they’d have known that the priest wasn’t a priest at all, even though he was known in the precinct as Brother Anthony.
Clearly, Brother Anthony was in fact beating the man to a pulp. The man was a little Puerto Rican pool shark who’d made the enormous mistake of trying to hustle him. Brother Anthony had dragged the little punk out of the pool hall and first had picked him up and hurled him against the brick wall of the tenement next door, just to stun him, you know, and then had swung a pool cue at his kneecaps, hoping to break them but breaking only the pool cue instead, and was now battering him senseless with his hamlike fists as the two patrolmen watched from the snug comfort of the patrol car. Brother Anthony weighed a lot, but he had lifted weights in prison, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. He sometimes asked people to hit him as hard as they could in the belly, and laughed with pleasure whenever anyone told him how hard and strong he was. All year round, even in the hot summer months, he wore the brown woolen cassock. During the summer months, he wore nothing at all under it. He would lift the hem of the cassock and show his sandals to the neighborhood hookers. “See?” he would say. “That’s all I got on under this thing.” The hookers would oooh and ahhh and try to lift the cassock higher, making believe they didn’t think he was really naked under it. Brother Anthony was very graceful for such a big man; he would laugh and dance away from them, dance away.