“This morning. I heard about it this morning.”
“Sit down, won’t you? Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you. I went up there at about ten o’clock, it must’ve been, right after I heard the news on the radio.”
“Where was this, Mr. Moore?”
“In my apartment.”
“And where’s that?”
“On Chelsea Place. Downtown, near the university. Ramsey.”
“We understand you’re a medical student there,” Carella said.
“Yes.” He seemed puzzled as to how they already knew this, but he let it pass, shrugging it aside. “I went back up there a little while ago—”
“Up there?”
“Midtown East. And Mr. Levine told me the case had been turned over to you. So I thought I’d check with you, just to see if there was anything I could do to help.”
“We appreciate that,” Carella said.
“How long had you known Miss Anderson?” Meyer asked.
“Since last July. I met her shortly after my father died.”
“How’d you happen to meet her?”
“At a party I crashed. She... the minute I saw her...” He looked down at his hands. The fingers were long and slender, the nails as clean as a surgeon’s. “She was... very beautiful. I... was attracted to her from the first minute I saw her.”
“So you began seeing her—”
“Yes—”
“Last July.”
“Yes. She’d just gotten the part in Fatback.”
“But you weren’t living together or anything,” Meyer said. “Or were you?”
“Not officially. That is, we didn’t share the same apartment,” Moore said. “But we saw each other virtually every night. I keep thinking...” He shook his head. The detectives waited. “I keep thinking if only I’d been with her last night...” He shook his head again. “I usually picked her up after the show. Last night...” Again he shook his head. The detectives waited. He said nothing further.
“Last night...,” Carella prompted.
“It’s stupid the way things work sometimes, isn’t it?” Moore said. “My grades were slipping. Too much partying. Okay. I made a New Year’s resolution to spend at least one weekend night studying. Either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. This week it was Friday.”
“You’re saying—”
“I’m saying... look, I don’t know who did this to her, but chances are it was just some lunatic who ran across her on the street, am I right? Saw her on the street and killed her, am I right? A chance victim.”
“Maybe,” Carella said.
“So what I’m saying is if this had been last week, I’d have been there to pick her up on Friday night. Because last week I stayed home on Sunday to study. I remember there was a party she wanted me to go to on Sunday, and I told her no, I had to study. Or the week before that, it would’ve been a Saturday. What I’m saying is why did it have to be a Friday this week, why couldn’t I have been waiting for her last night when she came out of that theater?”
“Mr. Moore,” Meyer said, “in the event this wasn’t a crazy—”
“It had to be,” Moore said.
“Yes, well,” Meyer said, and glanced at Carella, looking for some sort of expression on his face that would indicate whether or not it would be wise to mention Paco Lopez. Carella’s face said nothing, which was as good as telling Meyer to cool it. “But we have to explore every possibility,” Meyer said, “which is why the questions we’re about to ask may sound irrelevant, but we have to ask them anyway.”
“I understand,” Moore said.
“As the person closest to Miss Anderson—”
“Well, her mother is alive, you know,” Moore said.
“Does she live here in the city?”
“No, she lives in San Francisco.”
“Did Miss Anderson have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Then essentially—”
“Yes, I suppose you could say I was closest... to her.”
“I’m assuming you confided things to each other.”
“Yes.”
“Did she ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”
“No.”
“Anyone following her?”
“No.”
“Or lurking about the building?”
“No.”
“Did she owe money to anyone?”
“No.”
“Did anyone owe her money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she involved with drugs?”
“No.”
“Or any other illegal activity?”
“No.”
“Had she recently received any gifts from strangers?” Carella asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“At the theater,” Carella said. “Flowers... or candy? From unknown admirers?”
“She never mentioned anything like that.”
“Did she ever have any trouble at the stage door?”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Someone waiting for her, trying to talk to her, or touch her—”
“You don’t mean autograph hounds?”
“Well, anyone who might have got overly aggressive.”
“No.”
“Or who was rejected by her—”
“No.”
“Nothing you saw or that she later mentioned to you.”
“Nothing.”
“Mr. Moore,” Carella said, “we’ve gone through Miss Anderson’s appointment calendar and had a schedule typed up for every day this month. We’ve just now received her address book from Midtown East, and we’ll be cross-checking that against the names on the calendar. But you might save us some time if you could identify—”
“I’ll be happy to,” Moore said.
Carella opened the top drawer of his desk and took out several photocopies of the sheet Miscolo had typed from their handwritten notes. He handed one of the copies to Moore and another to Meyer.
“Kaplan’s her shrink,” Moore said. “She saw him at four o’clock every Monday, Thursday, and Friday.”
“Would you know his first name?”
“Maurice, I think.”
“Know where his office is?”
“Yes, on Jefferson. I picked her up there once.”
“Who’s this Herbie she had lunch with?”
“Herb Gotlieb, her agent.”
“Know where his office is?”
“Midtown someplace. Near the theater.”
“That’s when she was due at the theater,” Moore said. “The curtain goes up at eight each night, two o’clock for the matinees. Half hour is one-thirty for the matinees, seven-thirty for the evening performances. That means the company gets to the theater a half hour before curtain.”
“What’s this audition at two o’clock?” Carella asked. “Do they audition for other parts when they’re already working in a hit?”
“Oh, yes, all the time,” Moore said.
“We’ve got her clocked for two calls a week to ‘Mother M,’ ” Meyer said. “Would that be her mother in San Francisco?”
“No,” Moore said. “That’s my mother. In Miami.”
“She called your mother twice a week?”
“Every week. Sally didn’t get along too well with her own mother. She left home at an early age, went to London to study ballet. Things were never the same afterward.”
“So your mother was... sort of a substitute, huh?”
“A surrogate, if you will.”
“Mother M. Does that stand for—?”
“Mother Moore, yes.”
“That’s what she called her, huh?”