It took Carella two hours to get to work that morning. He spent the time on the subway trying to figure out what he would buy Teddy for Valentine’s Day — which was today, a Sunday, when most of the city’s shops would be closed. He had expected to pick up something yesterday, but that was before he’d inherited the Sally Anderson homicide. Teddy had told him at breakfast this morning, a secretive smile on her mouth, her hands flashing, that she would be getting him his gift sometime this afternoon, and would present it to him tonight when he got home from work. He told her there was no rush; despite the makeshift Presidents’ Day holiday tomorrow, many of the stores would be open, and besides, the roads would be cleared and sanded by then. Teddy told him she’d already made the appointment. An appointment for what? he wondered.
Meyer Meyer was wearing his Valentine’s Day present.
His Valentine’s Day present was a woolen watch cap that would have caused Carella’s Uncle Salvatore to beam with pride. Meyer’s wife Sarah had knitted the watch cap herself. It was a white cap with a border of linked red hearts. Meyer was marching around the squadroom with the hat pulled down over his ears, showing it off.
“You can hardly tell you’re bald with that hat,” Tack Fujiwara said, and noticed Carella coming through the gate in the railing. “Hello, cousin,” he said.
“Oh-hi-oh,” Carella said.
“What do you mean ‘hardly’?” Meyer said. “Do I look bald?” he asked Carella.
“You look hairy,” Carella said. “Where’d you get that hat?”
“Sarah made it. For Valentine’s Day.”
“Very nice,” Carella said. “Is the Loot in?”
“Ten minutes ago,” Fujiwara said. “What’d you get for Valentine’s Day?”
“A murder,” Carella said.
“Shake hands with Kling,” Fujiwara said, but Carella was already knocking on the lieutenant’s door, and he didn’t catch the words.
“Come!” Byrnes shouted.
Carella opened the door. The lieutenant was sitting behind his desk studying the open lid of a box of candy. “Hello, Steve,” he said. “This chart tells you what each piece of candy in the box is. Would you like a piece of candy?”
“Thanks, Pete, no,” Carella said.
Byrnes kept studying the chart, running his finger over it. He was a compact man with a head of thinning iron gray hair, flinty blue eyes, and a craggy nose that had been broken with a lead pipe when he was still a patrolman in Majesta, but that had miraculously knitted itself together without any trace of the injury save a faintly visible scar across the bridge. No one ever noticed the scar except when Byrnes touched it, as he sometimes did during a particularly knotty skull session in his office. He was touching it now as he studied the varied selection promised by the chart on the inside lid of the candy box.
“My Valentine’s present,” he said, fingering the scar on his nose, studying the list of goodies to be sampled.
“I’ll be getting mine tonight,” Carella said, feeling somehow defensive.
“So have some candy now,” Byrnes said, and plucked a square-shaped piece of chocolate from the box. “The square ones are always caramels,” he said. “I don’t need a chart to tell me this is a caramel.” He bit into it. “See?” he said, smiling and chewing. “Good, too. Have one,” he said, and shoved the box across his desk.
“Pete, we’ve got a hundred fourteen people to track down,” Carella said. “That’s how many people are in the Fatback company, and that’s how many people Meyer and I have got to question if we’re going to get any kind of a lead on this dead dancer.”
“What’s her connection with this Lopez character?” Byrnes asked, chewing.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Dope?” Byrnes asked.
“Not that we know. The lab’s checking.”
“Was he her boyfriend or something?”
“No, her boyfriend is a med student at Ramsey.”
“Where was he when the girl was cashing it in?”
“Home studying.”
“Who says?”
“He says.”
“Check it.”
“We will. Meanwhile, Pete—”
“Let me guess,” Byrnes said. “You sure you don’t want one of these?” he said, and took another chocolate from the box.
“Thanks,” Carella said, and shook his head.
“Meanwhile,” Byrnes said, “I’m trying to guess what you want from me.”
“Triple us,” Carella said.
“Who’d you have in mind?”
“Bert Kling.”
“Bert’s got headaches of his own just now.”
“What do you mean?”
“He caught a homicide last night.”
“Well, that takes care of that,” Carella said. “Who can you spare?”
“Who said I can spare anybody?”
“Pete, this girl is all over the newspapers.”
“So what?”
“She’ll be making news as long as that show runs... and that’ll be forever.”
“So what?”
“So how long do you think it’ll be before the Chief of Detectives picks up the telephone and gives you a little jingle? ‘Hello, Pete, about this dancer? In that big hit musical? Any leads yet, Pete? Lots of reporters calling here, Pete. What are your boys doing up there, Pete, besides sitting on their duffs while people go around shooting other people?’ ”
Byrnes looked at him.
“Never mind the Chief of Detectives,” he said. “The Chief of Detectives doesn’t have to come to work up here every day, the Chief of Detectives has a nice big corner office in the Headquarters Building downtown. And if the Chief of Detectives thinks we’re moving too slowly on this one, then maybe we ought to remind him it wasn’t even ours to begin with, the girl was shot and killed in Midtown East, if the Chief of Detectives would like to know, and not up here in the Eight-Seven. What we have as our very own up here is the murder of a crumby little gram dealer, if that would interest the Chief of Detectives, though I doubt he could care less. Now if you want to make your request to me on the basis of something sensible, Steve, like how talking to a hundred fourteen people — are there really that many people attached to that show?”
“A hundred fourteen, yes.”
“If you want to come to me and tell me it’ll take you and Meyer a week, ten days, two weeks, however long to question all hundred fourteen of those people while a murderer is running around out there with a gun in his hand, if you want to present your case sensibly and logically and not threaten me with what the Chief of Detectives is going to think—”
“Okay, Pete, how’s this?” Carella said, smiling. “It’s going to take Meyer and me at least ten days to question all those people while a murderer is running around out there with a gun in his hand. We can cut the working time to maybe five days, unless we hit pay dirt before then, so all I’m asking for is one other man on the case, triple us up, Pete, and turn us loose out there. Okay? Who can you spare?”