The detectives looked at each other, puzzled.
“He’s married, okay?” Tina said.
At this point, they only wanted to talk to two people connected with the show.
The first was Miguel Roldan, who, coincidentally, was both Hispanic and a cocaine user. Sally Anderson had been a cocaine user, and Paco Lopez had been Hispanic. They wanted to ask Roldan where he got his stuff and whether Sally got it from the same place and whether that place happened to be Paco Lopez’s little candy stand. The second was Allan Carter, married producer of Fatback, who — according to Tina Wong — had been enjoying a little backstage romance with the Chinese dancer ever since September, when they’d discovered each other at the show’s opening-night party. They wanted to ask Carter why he had thought Sally Anderson was “a little redheaded thing.” Had Carter been involved in an extra extramarital fling with the blonde dancer as well? If not, why had he gone to such lengths to indicate he’d scarcely known her? They had not asked Tina anything at all about Carter’s seeming confusion. If there had existed any sort of relationship between him and the dead girl, it was entirely possible that Tina knew nothing about it, in which case they did not want her to alert him. They knew intuitively that he’d been lying when he denied remembering Sally Anderson. Now they wanted to find out why he’d been lying.
They did not find out that late Sunday afternoon.
The doorman at Carter’s building on Grover Park West told the detectives that both he and Mrs. Carter had left at close to 4:00 P.M. He did not know where they’d gone or when they’d be back. He suggested that perhaps Mr. Carter had gone down to Philadelphia again, but that didn’t seem to tie in with the fact that a chauffeured limousine had picked up the couple; Mr. Carter usually took the train to Philadelphia, and besides, he always went down alone. The Philadelphia possibility seemed unlikely to Carella as well. Carter had mentioned on the phone yesterday that he would not be going back to Philadelphia until late Wednesday. The detectives drove uptown and crosstown to the brownstone Miguel Roldan shared with Tony Asensio, the other Hispanic dancer in the show. No one was home there, either, and there was no doorman to offer suggestions or possibilities.
Carella said good night to Meyer at ten minutes past 6:00, and only then remembered he had not yet bought Teddy a present. He shopped the Stem until he found an open lingerie shop, only to discover that it featured panties of the open-crotch variety and some that could be eaten like candy, decided this was not quite what he had in mind, thank you, and then shopped fruitlessly for another hour before settling on a heart-shaped box of chocolates in an open drugstore. He felt he was letting Teddy down.
Her eyes and her face showed no disappointment when he presented the gift to her. He explained that it was only a temporary solution, and that he’d shop for her real present once the pressure of the case let up a little. He had no idea when that might be, but he promised himself that he would buy her something absolutely mind-boggling tomorrow, come hell or high water. He did not yet know that the case had already taken a peculiar turn or that he would learn about it tomorrow, when once again it would postpone his grandiose plans.
At the dinner table, ten-year-old April complained that she had received only one Valentine’s card, and that one from a doofus. She pronounced the word with a grimace her mother might have used more suitably, managing to look very much like Teddy in that moment — the dark eyes and darker hair, the beautiful mouth twisted in an expression of total distaste. Her ten-year-old brother Mark, who resembled Carella more than he did either his mother or his twin sister, offered the opinion that anyone who would send a card to April had to be a doofus, at which point April seized her half-finished pork chop by its rib, and threatened to use it on him like a hatchet. Carella calmed them down. Fanny came in from the kitchen and casually mentioned that these were the same pork chops she’d taken out of the freezer the night before and she hoped they tasted okay and wouldn’t give the whole family trichinosis. Mark wanted to know what trichinosis was. Fanny told him it was related to a cassoulet and winked at Carella.
They put the children to bed at 9:00.
They watched television for a while, and then they went into the bedroom. Teddy was in the bathroom for what seemed an inordinately long time. Carella guessed she was angry. When she came into the bedroom again, she was wearing a robe over her nightgown. Normally, she wasn’t quite so modest in their own bedroom. He began to think more and more that his gift of chocolates without even a selection chart under the lid had truly irritated her. So deep was his own guilt (“Italians and Jews,” Meyer was fond of saying, “are the guiltiest people on the face of the earth”) that he did not remember until she pulled back the covers in the dark and got into bed beside him that she hadn’t given him anything at all.
He snapped on the bedside lamp.
“Honey,” he said, “I’m really sorry. I know I should have done it earlier, it was stupid of me to leave it for the last minute. I promise you tomorrow I’ll—”
She put her fingers to his lips, silencing him.
She sat up.
She lowered the strap of her nightgown.
In the glow of the lamplight, he saw her shoulder. Where previously there had been only a single black butterfly tattoo, put there so long ago he could hardly remember when, he now saw two butterflies, the new one slightly larger than the other, its wings a bright yellow laced with black. The new butterfly seemed to hover over the original, as though kissing it with its outstretched wings.
His eyes suddenly flooded with tears.
He pulled her to him and kissed her fiercely and felt his tears mingling with hers as surely as did the butterflies on her shoulder.
8
For some people, it was still St. Valentine’s Day.
Many people do not believe a day ends at midnight. It is still the same day until they go to sleep. When they wake up in the morning, it is the next day. Two people who thought it was still St. Valentine’s Day were Brother Anthony and the Fat Lady. Even though it was 1:00 A.M. on the morning of February 15, they thought of it as still being a day for lovers, especially since they had learned the name of Paco Lopez’s girlfriend. Actually, they had learned her name when it was still St. Valentine’s Day, which they considered a good omen. But it was not until 1:00 A.M. that Brother Anthony knocked on the door of Judite Quadrado’s apartment.
In this neighborhood, a knock on the door at 1:00 A.M. meant only trouble. It meant either the police coming around to ask about a crime that had been committed in the building, or it meant a friend or neighbor coming to tell you that a loved one had either hurt someone or been hurt by someone. Either way, it meant bad news. The people in this neighborhood knew that a knock on the door at 1:00 A.M. did not mean a burglar or an armed robber. Thieves did not knock on doors unless it was going to be a shove-in and in this neighborhood most thieves knew that doors were double-locked and often reinforced as well with a Fox lock, the steel bar hooked into the door and wedged into a floor plate. Brother Anthony knew that someone awakened at 1:00 in the morning would be frightened; that was why he and Emma had waited until that time, even though they’d had their information at 10:00 P.M.
From behind the door, Judite said, “Who is it?”