“No, they haven’t.”
“Then I’ll pay for them myself, sir,” Carella said.
“Well, really—”
“I’d like to see the show, sir, but I’d like to pay for the tickets myself.”
“Fine, whatever you say. They’re being held at the box office in my friend’s name. Robert Harrington. You can claim them anytime before the curtain goes up.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
“I’ll call the stage door, meanwhile, tell them you’ll be stopping by for that list.”
“Thank you.”
“I still don’t understand what house seats are,” Meyer said.
“Choice seats set aside for each performance,” Carter said. “For the producer, director, choreographer, stars—”
“Set aside?”
“Reserved,” Carter said, nodding. “By contract. So many seats for each performance. The higher you are in the pecking order, the more seats you’re entitled to buy. If you don’t claim them, of course, they go right back on sale in the box office, on a first-come, first-served basis.”
“Live and learn,” Meyer said, and smiled.
“Yes,” Carter said, and glanced at his watch.
“Anything else?” Carella asked Meyer.
“Nothing I can think of,” Meyer said.
“Then thank you, sir,” Carella said. “And thanks for making those seats available to me.”
“My pleasure,” Carter said.
The detectives were silent in the elevator down to the street. The elevator operator, who had already informed them earlier that it was going to snow tomorrow, seemed to have nothing more to say. The sky was even more threatening when they stepped outside again. Darkness was coming on. It would be a moonless night.
“I just want to make sure I heard her right,” Meyer said.
“Tina Wong, do you mean?”
“Yeah. She did say, ‘Five blondes, two blacks, and a token Chink,’ didn’t she?”
“That’s what she said.”
“So how could Carter think Sally Anderson was a redhead?”
“Maybe one of the understudies is a redhead.”
“Maybe I’m a redhead, too,” Meyer said. “Didn’t Carter say that once they started run-throughs he was at every rehearsal?”
“That’s what he said.”
“So he knows that damn show. How could he possibly think there was a redhead up there?”
“Maybe he’s color-blind.”
“You did catch it, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I caught it, all right.”
“I was wondering why you didn’t jump on it.”
“I wanted to see how far he’d go with it.”
“He didn’t go anywhere with it. He let it lay there like a lox.”
“Maybe he was just trying it for size.”
“Backing up what he said about not knowing her from a hole in the wall. Just another one of the girls, another face in the crowd.”
“Which may be true, Meyer. There are thirty-eight people in the cast. You can’t expect a man to remember—”
“What’s thirty-eight people, a nation?” Meyer said. “We’ve got close to two hundred cops in the precinct, and I know each and every one of them. By sight, at least.”
“You’re a trained observer,” Carella said, smiling.
“How long does it take to get from Philadelphia by train?” Meyer asked.
“About an hour and a half.”
“Easy to get here and back again,” Meyer said. “Time enough to do anything that had to be done here. If a person had anything to do here.”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“Jamie digs blondes, remember?” Meyer said. “Isn’t that what she told us? The choreographer digs blondes. So how come every-body in the world knows this but Carter? He was there when the whole mishpocheh was picking the dancers. Decision by committee, remember? So how come, all of a sudden, he has trouble remembering what color her hair is? A little redheaded thing, he calls her. All of a sudden, his choreographer — who likes them blonde — ends up with a redhead in his chorus line. Steve, that stinks. I’m telling you it stinks. Do you buy it?”
“No,” Carella said.
Buying the tickets came as something of a shock.
Carella had not seen a hit show in a long time, and he did not know what current prices were. When the woman in the box office shoved the little white envelope across the counter to him, he glanced at the yellow tickets peeking out, thought he saw the price on one of them, figured he must be wrong, and then had verbal confirmation when the woman said, “That’ll be eighty dollars, please.” Carella blinked. Eighty divided by two came to $40 a seat! “Will that be charge or cash?” the woman asked.
Carella did not carry a credit card; he did not know any cops who carried credit cards. He panicked for a moment. Did he have $80 in cash in his wallet? As it turned out, he was carrying $92, which meant he would have to call home and ask Teddy to bring some cash with her tonight. He parted with the money reluctantly. This had better be some show, he thought, and walked to the pay phone in the lobby. Fanny, the Carella housekeeper, answered on the fourth ring.
“Carella residence,” she said.
“Fanny, hi, it’s me,” he said. “Can you give Teddy a message? First tell her I’ve got tickets to a show called Fatback, and I thought we’d have dinner down here tonight before the show. Ask her to meet me at six-thirty, at a place called O’Malley’s; she knows it, we’ve been there before. Next, tell her to bring a lot of cash; I’m running low.”
“That’s three messages,” Fanny said. “How much cash?”
“Enough to cover dinner.”
“I planned to make pork chops,” Fanny said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This came up all of a sudden.”
“Mm,” Fanny said.
He visualized her standing by the phone in the living room. Fanny Knowles was “fiftyish,” as she put it in her faint Irish brogue, and she had blue hair, and she wore a pince-nez, and she weighed about 150 pounds, and she’d ruled the Carella household with an iron fist from the day she’d arrived there as a temporary gift from Teddy’s father — ten years ago. Fanny was a registered nurse, and she’d originally been hired to stay with the Carellas for only a month, just long enough to give Teddy a hand till she was able to cope alone with the infant twins. It was Fanny who suggested that she ought to stay on a while longer, at a salary they could afford, telling them she never again wanted to stick another thermometer into a dying old man. She was still there. Her silence on the phone was ominous.
“Fanny, I’m really sorry,” he said. “This is sort of business.”
“What do I do with a dozen pork chops?” she said.
“Make a cassoulet,” he said.
“What in hell is a cassoulet?” she asked.
“Look it up,” he said. “Will you give her my message?”
“When she gets home,” Fanny said, “which should be any minute now. She’ll have to run a foot race to meet you downtown at six-thirty.”
“Well, tell her, okay?”
“I’ll tell her,” Fanny said, and hung up.
He put the receiver back on the hook, went out of the theater, found the alley leading to the stage door, went to the door, and knocked on it.
An old man opened the door and peered out at him.
“Box office is up front,” he said.
Carella showed him his shield and ID card. “I’m supposed to pick up a list,” he said.