“That’s the first thing, for sure.”
“So what I think you should do,” Emma said, “is get dressed and go pay this Sally Anderson a little visit.”
“Later,” Brother Anthony said, and took her in his arms.
“Mmm,” Emma said, and cuddled closer to him, and licked her lips.
Eileen Burke called the squadroom while Kling was still on the phone with Communications Division. Brown asked her to wait, and then put a note on Kling’s desk, advising him that Detective Burke was on six. Kling nodded. For a moment, he didn’t know who Detective Burke was.
“I’ve got the printout right here in my hand,” the supervisor in the Dispatcher’s Office said. “That was last July twenty-eighth, eight-oh-two P.M., 621 North Greenfield, room 207. Adam Car responded at eight-twelve.”
“What’d they find?”
“Radioed back with a Ten-Twenty. That’s a Robbery Past.”
Kling knew what a 10–20 was.
“Which precinct was that?”
“Midtown East,” the supervisor said.
“Would you know who handled the case there?”
“That’s not on the printout.”
“Okay, thanks,” Kling said, and pressed the lighted 6 button in the base of his phone. “Kling,” he said.
“Bert, it’s Eileen.”
“I didn’t get a chance to look for that earring,” he said.
“Didn’t turn up in the squadroom, huh?”
“Well, we’ve got a lost-and-found box, but there’s nothing in it.”
“How about the car?”
“I haven’t checked the car yet,” he said. “I haven’t used that particular car since Saturday night.”
“Well, if you do get a chance—”
“Sure,” he said.
“It’s just that... they’re sort of my good-luck earrings.”
Kling said nothing.
“I feel naked without them,” she said.
He still said nothing.
“Can’t go around wearing just one good-luck earring, can I?” she said.
“I guess not,” he said.
“Cut my luck in half,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“How’s the weather up there?” she asked.
“Cold.”
“Here, too,” she said. “Well, let me know if you find it, okay?”
“I will.”
“Thanks,” she said, and hung up.
On the same slip of paper Brown had placed on his desk, Kling scrawled “E’s earring,” and then put the slip of paper in his jacket pocket. He flipped his precinct directory till he found the number for Midtown East, dialed it, told the desk sergeant there what he was looking for, and was put through to a detective named Garrido, who spoke with a Spanish accent and who remembered the case at once because he himself had been staked out in the back of the Greenfield Street pawnshop when the armed robber walked in trying to hock all the stuff he’d stolen from Edelman two days earlier and three doors south.
“The whole list,” Garrido said, “ever’ting on it from soup to nuts. We had him cold.”
“So what happened?” Kling asked.
“Guess who we got for the jutch?” Garrido asked.
“Who?” Kling asked.
“Harris.”
Kling knew the Honorable Wilbur Harris. The Honorable Wilbur Harris was known in the trade as Walking Wilbur. His specialty was allowing criminals to march out of his courtroom.
“What happened?” Kling asked.
“The kid wass a junkie, first time he did any ting like this. He wass almos’ cryin’ in the cour’room. So Harris less him off with a suspended sentence.”
“Even though you caught him with the goods, huh?”
“All of it!” Garrido said. “Ever’ting on the list! Ah, wha’s the sense?”
“What was the kid’s name?”
“Andrew someting. You wann me to pull the file?”
“If it’s not any trouble.”
“Sure,” Garrido said. “Juss a secon’, okay?”
He was back five minutes later with a name and a last known address for the seventeen-year-old boy who had held up Marvin Edelman the summer before.
The apartment Allan Carter had described as “one of those big old rent-controlled apartments on the park” was in fact on the park, and most certainly old, and possibly rent-controlled, but only a dwarf would have considered it “big.” Lonnie Cooper, one of the two black dancers in Fatback, was almost as tall as the two detectives she admitted into her home that late Tuesday morning; together, the three of them caused the tiny place to assume the dimensions of a clothes closet. Compounding the felony, Miss Cooper had jammed the place chock-full of furniture, knickknacks, paintings, and pieces of sculpture so that there was hardly an uncovered patch of wall or floor surface; both Meyer and Carella felt they had wandered into the business office of a fence selling stolen goods.
“I like clutter,” the dancer explained. “Most dancers don’t, but I do. On stage, I can fly. When I’m home, I like to fold my wings.”
She was even more beautiful than Carella remembered her on stage, a lissome woman with skin the color of cork, high cheekbones, a nose like Nefertiti’s, a generous mouth, and a dazzling smile. She was wearing a man’s red woolen shawl-collared sweater over a black leotard top and black tights. She was barefooted, but she was wearing striped leg warmers over the tights. She asked the detectives if they would like some coffee or anything, and when they declined, she asked them to make themselves comfortable. Carella and Meyer took seats beside each other on a sofa cluttered with throw pillows. Lonnie Cooper sat opposite them in an easy chair with antimacassars pinned to the back and the arms. A coffee table between them was covered with glass paperweights, miniature dolls, letter openers, campaign buttons, and a trylon-and-perisphere souvenir ashtray from New York City’s 1939 World’s Fair. Catching Carella’s glance, she explained, “I collect things.”
“Miss Cooper,” he said, “I wonder if—”
“Lonnie,” she said.
“Fine,” he said. “Lonnie, I—”
“What’s your first name?” she asked.
“Steve,” he said.
“And yours?” she asked Meyer.
“Meyer,” he said.
“I thought that was your last name.”
“It is. It’s also my first name.”
“How terrific!” she said.
Meyer shrugged. He had never thought of his name as being particularly terrific, except once when a lady fiction writer used it as the title of a novel about a college professor. He had called Rollie Chabrier in the DA’s office, wanting to know if he could sue. Chabrier told him he should feel honored. Meyer guessed he’d felt a little bit honored. But it continued to bother him that somebody out there had used the name of a real person for a mere character in a work of fiction. A college professor, no less.
“Are you sure you don’t want any coffee?” Lonnie asked.
“Positive, thanks,” Carella said.
“We’re about coffeed out,” Meyer said. “This weather.”
“Yeah, do you find yourself drinking a lot of coffee, too?” Lonnie said.
“Yes,” Meyer said.
“Me, too,” she said. “Gee.”
There was something very girlish about her, Carella decided. She looked to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven, but her movements and her facial expressions and even her somewhat highpitched voice were more like those of a seventeen-year-old. She curled up in the easy chair now, and folded her legs under her, the way his daughter April might have.
“I guess you realize we’re here about Sally Anderson,” Carella said.