“Then maybe I ought to call my lawyer.”
“Maybe you ought to hear us out first,” Carella said. “You always seem to be in a hurry to call your lawyer.”
“If you’re accusing me of—”
“Mr. Carter, isn’t it true that Sally Anderson was a courier in your ice operation?”
“What ice operation?”
“We’ve been told Sally Anderson delivered house seats to various brokers, and collected cash for those seats, and then brought the cash back to your company manager. Isn’t that true, Mr. Carter? Wasn’t Sally Anderson, in effect, a bag lady for your ice operation?”
“If someone in my theater is making money on ice—”
“Someone is, Mr. Carter.”
“Not me.”
“Let’s take this a step further, shall we?” Carella said.
“No, let’s call my lawyer,” Carter said, and picked up the phone receiver.
“We have proof,” Carella said.
He was lying; they had no proof at all. Lonnie Cooper had hinted that Sally had been earning extra cash someplace. Timothy Moore had told them she’d been running ice money for Carter. None of that was proof. But Carella’s words stopped Carter dead in his tracks. He put the receiver back onto the cradle. He shook a cigarette free from the package on his desk and lighted it. He blew out a cloud of smoke.
“What proof?” he said.
“Let’s go back a bit,” Carella said.
“What proof?” Carter said again.
“Why’d you tell us you hardly knew Sally?” Carella asked.
“Here we go again,” Carter said.
“Once more ‘round the mulberry bush,” Meyer said, and smiled.
“We think it’s because she was involved in this ice operation with you,” Carella said.
“I don’t know anything about any ice operation.”
“And maybe wanted a bigger piece of the pie—”
“Ridiculous!”
“Or maybe even threatened to blow the whistle—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carter said.
“We’re talking about murder.”
“Murder? For what? Because you think Sally was somehow involved with ice?”
“We know she was involved,” Meyer said. “And not somehow. She was involved with you, Mr. Carter. She was your goddamn courier. She delivered tickets and she picked up—”
“Once!” Carter shouted.
The room went silent.
The detectives looked at him.
“I had nothing to do with her murder,” Carter said.
“We’re listening,” Meyer said.
“It was only once.”
“When?”
“Last November.”
“Why only once?”
“Tina was sick.”
“Tina Wong?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She couldn’t make the rounds that day. She asked Sally to substitute for her.”
“Without your knowledge?”
“She checked with me first. She was sick in bed with the flu, she had a fever. I told her it would be okay. Sally was her closest friend, I figured we could trust her.”
“Is that why you denied knowing her?”
“Yes. I figured... well, if any of this came to light, you might think—”
“We might think exactly what we are thinking, Mr. Carter.”
“No. You’re mistaken. It was just that once. Sally never wanted anything more, Sally never threatened me with—”
“How much did she get for her services?” Meyer asked.
“Two hundred bucks. But that was the one and only time.”
“How much do you give Tina? Is she your regular bag lady?”
“Yes. She gets the same.”
“Two hundred for each pickup and delivery?”
“Yes.”
“Twelve hundred a week?”
“Yes.”
“And your end?”
“We’re splitting it four ways.”
“Who?”
“Me, my general manager, my company manager, and the box-office treasurer.”
“Splitting thirty-two thousand a week?”
“More or less.”
“So your end is something like four hundred grand a year,” Meyer said.
“Tax free,” Carella said.
“Weren’t the show’s profits enough for you?” Meyer asked.
“Nobody’s getting hurt,” Carter said.
“Except you and your pals,” Carella said. “Get your coat.”
“Why?” Carter said. “Are you wired?”
The detectives looked at each other.
“Let’s hear the proof,” Carter said.
“A man named Timothy Moore knows all about it,” Carella said. “So does Lonnie Cooper, one of your dancers. Maybe Sally wasn’t as trustworthy as you thought she was. Get your coat.”
Carter stubbed out his cigarette and smiled thinly. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If there’s ice — and I don’t remember having this conversation today, do you? — and if Sally Anderson, once upon a time very long ago, really and truly delivered some tickets and picked up some cash, it seems to me you’d need more proof than... hearsay, do you call it? So let’s say you run over to my box office straight from here. Do you know what you’ll find? You’ll find that all of our brokers, from this minute on, are getting only their legitimate allotments of tickets, and anything we sell them beyond their usual quotas will be at box-office prices. Our top ticket sells for forty dollars. If we send a house seat to a broker, that’s what he’ll pay for it. Forty dollars. Everything open and honest. Now tell me, gentlemen, are you going to try tracking down whatever cash has changed hands since the show opened? Impossible.”
The detectives looked at each other.
“You can go to the attorney general with this,” Carter said, still smiling, “but without proof you’d only look foolish.”
Carella began buttoning his coat.
Meyer put on his hat.
“And, anyway...,” Carter said.
The detectives were already heading for the door.
“...a hot show always generates ice.”
In the corridor outside, Meyer said, “Nothing ever hurts anybody, right? Snow isn’t habit-forming, and ice is a time-honored scam. Marvelous.”
“Lovely,” Carella said, and pressed the button for the elevator.
“He knows we have no proof, he knows we can’t do a damn thing. So he walks,” Meyer said.
“Maybe he’ll clean up his act, though.”
“For how long?” Meyer asked.
Both men fell silent, listening to the elevator as it lumbered slowly up the shaft. Through a window at the far end of the corridor, they could see that the sunshine was waning, the day was turning gray again.
“What do you think about the other?” Carella asked.
“The dead girl?”
“Yes.”
“I think he’s clean, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
The elevator doors slid open.
“There ain’t no justice in this world,” Meyer said.
Years ago, when Brother Anthony was spending a little time at Castleview State Penitentiary on that manslaughter conviction, his cellmate was a burglar. Guy named Jack Greenspan. Big Jack Greenspan, they used to call him. Jewish guy. You hardly ever ran into any Jewish burglars. Big Jack taught him a lot of things, but Brother Anthony never figured any of them would help him on the outside.
Until today.
Today, all the things Big Jack had told him all those years ago seemed of immense value to Brother Anthony because what he planned to do was break into the Anderson girl’s apartment. This was not a sudden whim. He had discussed it thoroughly with Emma yesterday, after he’d learned that the Anderson girl had been killed. The reason he had gone to see her in the first place was because Judite Quadrado had told them she was the source from which the sweet snow flowed. It was one thing to have a list of customers, but customers weren’t worth beans without what to sell them. So he had gone there yesterday hoping to strike up a business relationship with the girl, only to discover she wouldn’t be doing business as usual no more, someone had seen to that.