Roldan looked at Asensio.
“You were using it that night, too, weren’t you, Mike?”
“Well—”
“I know you were,” Meyer said.
“Well—”
“How about you, Tony? You snort a few lines last Sunday night?”
Asensio looked at Roldan.
“Who were you and Sally getting your stuff from?” Meyer asked.
“Listen,” Roldan said.
“I’m listening.”
“We had nothing to do with her murder.”
“Didn’t you?” Meyer said.
“We didn’t,” Asensio said, shaking his head, and then looking at Roldan. Meyer wondered which of them was the wife and which was the husband. They both seemed very demure. He tried to reconcile this with the fact that the homosexual murders in the precinct were among the most vicious and brutal the cops investigated.
“Do you know who might have killed her?” he asked.
“No, we don’t,” Roldan said.
“We don’t,” Asensio agreed.
“So who do you get your stuff from?” Meyer asked again.
“Why is that important?” Roldan asked.
“That’s assuming we’re users,” Asensio said quickly.
“Yes,” Roldan said, “If we’re users—”
“You are,” Meyer said, and again smiled knowingly.
“Well, if we are, what does it matter who we were getting it from?”
“Were?” Meyer asked at once.
“Are,” Roldan said, correcting himself.
“Assuming we’re users, that is,” Asensio said.
“Did something happen to your dealer?” Meyer asked.
“No, no,” Roldan said.
“That’s assuming we even needed a dealer,” Asensio said.
“Needed?” Meyer said.
“Need, I mean,” Asensio said, and looked at Roldan.
“Well, Tony,” Meyer said, “Mike... assuming you are users, and assuming you do have a dealer, or did have a dealer, who is the dealer? Or was the dealer, as the case may be.”
“Cocaine isn’t habit-forming,” Roldan said.
“A sniff every now and then never hurt anybody,” Asensio said.
“Ah, I know,” Meyer said. “It’s a shame it’s against the law, but what can you do? Who are you getting it from?”
The two men looked at each other.
“Something did happen to your dealer, huh?” Meyer said.
Neither of them answered.
“Were you getting it from Sally Anderson?” Meyer asked, taking a wild stab in the dark, and surprised when both men nodded simultaneously. “From Sally?” he said. The men nodded again. “Sally was dealing cocaine?”
“Well, not what you’d call dealing,” Roldan said. “Would you call it dealing, Tony?”
“No, I wouldn’t call it dealing,” Asensio said. “Besides, the coke had nothing to do with her murder.”
“How do you know?” Meyer said.
“Well, it wasn’t that big a deal.”
“How big a deal was it?”
“I mean, she wasn’t making any money from it, if that’s what you think,” Roldan said.
“What was she doing?” Meyer asked.
“Just bringing in a few grams a week, that’s all.”
“How many grams?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How many grams, Tony?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Asensio said.
“By bringing it in—”
“To the theater. For whichever of the kids needed it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say needed it,” Roldan said. “Cocaine isn’t habit-forming, you know.”
“Whoever wanted it, I should have said,” Asensio agreed, nodding.
“How many people wanted it?” Meyer asked.
“Well... Tony and I,” Roldan said. “And some of the other kids.”
“How many other kids?”
“Not many,” Asensio said. “Six or seven? Would you say six or seven, Mike?”
“I’d say six or seven,” Roldan said. “Not including Sally herself.”
“So what are we talking about here?” Meyer said. “A dozen grams a week, something like that?”
“Something like that. Maybe two dozen.”
“Two dozen grams,” Meyer said, nodding. “What was she charging?”
“The going street price. I mean, Sally wasn’t making anything on the deal, believe me. She just picked up our stuff when she was getting her own. She may have even got a discount for a bulk purchase, who knows?”
“I think, in fact,” Roldan said to Asensio, “that we were getting it cheaper than the going street price.”
“Maybe so,” Asensio said.
“How much were you paying?” Meyer said.
“Eighty-five dollars a gram.”
Meyer nodded. A gram of cocaine was the approximate equivalent of one twenty-eighth of an ounce. The going street price ranged from a hundred to a hundred and a quarter a gram, depending on the purity of the cocaine.
“Who was she getting it from?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Roldan said.
“I don’t know,” Asensio said.
“Who’s Paco Lopez?” Meyer asked.
“Who is he?” Roldan said.
Asensio shrugged.
“Are we supposed to know him?” Roldan said.
“You don’t know him, huh?”
“Never heard of him.”
“How about you, Tony?”
“Never heard of him,” Asensio said.
“Is he a dancer?” Roldan asked.
“Is he gay?” Asensio asked.
“He’s dead,” Meyer said.
Rebecca Edelman was a woman in her late forties, splendidly tanned and monumentally grief stricken. The detectives had called her early this morning, eager to talk to her after her flight back from Antigua the night before, but they had been advised by a daughter-in-law that Marvin Edelman’s funeral would be taking place at 11:00 that morning, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of burying a person within twenty-four hours after his death. As it was, the funeral and burial had been delayed, anyway, by the mandatory autopsy required in any cases of traumatic death.
Neither Kling nor Brown had ever witnessed a family sitting shiva before. The windows in the Edelman living room faced the river Harb. The sky beyond was still intensely blue, the light less golden than it might have been in that it was partially reflected from the icebound water below. There was a knife-edged clarity to the atmosphere that afternoon; Brown could make out in the sharpest detail the high-rises that perched atop the cliffs on the shore opposite, in the next state. Farther uptown, he could see the graceful curves of the Hamilton Bridge, its lacy outlines etched against the brilliant blue of the sky. In the living room, the family and friends of Marvin Edelman sat on wooden boxes and talked to each other in hushed voices.
She led them into a small room she obviously used as a sewing room, a machine in one corner, a basket of brightly colored fabrics sitting left of the treadle. She sat in the chair before the machine. They sat on a small sofa facing her. Her brown eyes were moist in her tanned face. She kept wringing her hands as she spoke. The sun had not been kind to her. Her face was wrinkled, her hands were wrinkled, her lips looked parched without lipstick. She directed her entire conversation to Kling, even though Brown asked most of the questions. Brown was used to this; sometimes even the blacks turned to the white cop, as though he himself were invisible.