“Yes. We used to joke about it. Made my mother sound like a nun or something.” He paused. “Has anyone contacted Mrs. Anderson? I’m sure she’d want to know. I guess.”
“Would you know her first name?” Carella asked.
“Yes, it’s Phyllis. Her number’s probably in Sally’s book. You did say Mr. Levine had sent you—”
“Yes, we have it here with some of her other stuff. The stuff the lab’s finished with.”
“What’s the lab looking for?” Moore asked.
“Who knows what they look for?” Carella said, and smiled. He knew damn well what they looked for. They looked for anything that might shed a little light on either the killer or the victim. The killer because he was still loose out there and the longer he stayed loose the harder it would be to get him. And the victim because very often the more you knew about what a person had been, the easier it became to learn why anyone would want that person to cease being.
“But surely,” Moore said, “nothing in Sally’s personal effects could possibly tell you anything about the lunatic who attacked her.”
Again, neither of the detectives mentioned that the same “lunatic” had attacked and killed a young cocaine dealer named Paco Lopez three nights before he’d killed Sally. Instead, both of them looked at the schedules in their hands. Taking his cue, Moore also looked at his schedule.
“Two performances every Wednesday and Saturday,” Moore said.
“Who’s Antoine?” Carella asked.
“Her hairdresser,” Moore said. “He’s on South Arundel, six blocks from her apartment.”
“There’s Herbie again,” Meyer said.
“Yes, she saw him often,” Moore said. “Well, an agent is very important to an actress’s career, you know.”
The listings for the remaining nine days between Wednesday, February 3 and Friday, February 12 — the last full day before she was murdered — followed much the same pattern. Dance class on Monday through Friday at 10:00 in the morning. Kaplan at 4:00 P.M. three times a week. Calls to Moore’s mother in Miami twice a week. Meetings with her agent Herbie at least twice a week, and sometimes more often. The page for Sunday, February 7, listed only the word “Del” without a time before it, and then the words “8:00 P.M. Party. Lonnie’s.”
“She’s one of the black dancers in the show,” Moore said. “Lonnie Cooper. That’s the party Sally wanted me to go to last week.”
“And who’s Del?” Carella asked.
“Del?”
“Right there on the sheet,” Carella said. “Del. No time, no place. Just Del.”
“Del? Oh,” Moore said. “Of course.”
“Who is he? Or she?”
“Neither,” Moore said, and smiled. “That stands for delicatessen.”
“Delicatessen?” Meyer said.
“Cohen’s Deli,” Moore said. “On the Stem and North Rogers. Sally went up there every Sunday. To pick up bagels and lox, cream cheese, the works.”
“And she put that on her calendar, huh?”
“Well, yes, she put everything on her calendar.”
“Went up there every Sunday.”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“It varied.”
“Uh-huh,” Carella said, and looked at the sheet again.
On Thursday, February 11, Sally had gone to her hairdresser again, and then later in the day to a meeting with a man named Samuel Lang at Twentieth Century-Fox. On the day before she was killed, she had taken her cat to the vet’s at 1:00 in the afternoon. The listed calendar appointments naturally spilled over into the weeks beyond her death; even in this city, no one ever expected a gun exploding out of the night. She had, for example, meticulously noted “Dance” for every February weekday at 10:00 A.M. and had similarly noted her appointments with Kaplan, her twice-weekly calls to Moore’s mother, and the times she was due at the theater. For Monday, February 15, she had noted that the cat had to be picked up at 3:00 P.M.
“Mr. Moore,” Carella said, “I hope you won’t mind if we ask some questions—”
“Anything,” Moore said.
“Of a more personal nature,” Carella said.
“Go ahead.”
“Well... would you know whether or not there was any other man in her life? Besides you. Someone who might have been jealous of the relationship she shared with you? Someone she might have known before she met you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Or another woman?”
“No, of course not.”
“No one who might have resented—”
“No one.”
“How about her agent, Herb Gotlieb? How old a man is he?”
“Why?”
“I was just wondering,” Carella said.
“Wondering what?”
“Well, she did see him a lot—”
“He was her agent; of course she saw him a lot.”
“I’m not suggesting—”
“Yes, you are, as a matter of fact,” Moore said. “First you ask me whether there was another man — or even another woman, for God’s sake — in Sally’s life, and then you zero in on Herb Gotlieb, who has to be at least fifty-five years old! How can you possibly believe someone like Herb could have—”
“I don’t believe anything yet,” Carella said. “I’m simply exploring the possibilities.”
And one of the possibilities, it belatedly occurred to him, was that Mr. Timothy Moore himself was a possible suspect in at least the murder of Sally Anderson. Carella had learned a long time ago that some 30 percent of all reported homicides were generated by family situations, and 20 percent were eventually identified as stemming from lovers’ quarrels. By his own admission, Timothy Moore had been Sally Anderson’s lover, and never mind that he had voluntarily walked into the squadroom — two squadrooms, in fact, by the most recent count.
“As a matter of fact,” Moore said, “the only thing that interests Herb is money. Sally could have danced for him naked and he wouldn’t have noticed unless she was also tossing gold doubloons in the air.”
Carella decided to run with it.
“But she wouldn’t have done that, right?” he said.
“Done what?”
“Danced naked for Herb Gotlieb. Or for anyone else.”
“Is that a question?”
“It’s a question.”
“The answer is no.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’m absolutely positive.”
“No other men or women in her life?”
“None.”
“She told you that?”
“She didn’t have to tell me. I knew.”
“How about you?”
“What about me?”
“Any other women in your life?”
“No.”
“Or men?”
“No.”
“Then this was pretty serious between you, is that right?”
“It was serious enough.”
“How serious is serious enough?”
“I don’t get this,” Moore said.
“What don’t you get?”
“I came up here to offer—”
“Yes, and we’re grateful for that.”
“You don’t seem too grateful,” Moore said. “What are you going to ask next? Where I was last night when Sally was getting killed?”
“I wasn’t going to ask that, Mr. Moore,” Carella said. “You already told us you were home studying.”
“Were you home?” Meyer asked.