“I will.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Maybe I could tuck it in my bra or something. The spare.”
“Yeah, get yourself one of those little guns—”
“Yeah, like a derringer or something.”
“No, that won’t help you, that’s Mickey Mouse time. I’m talking about something like a Browning or a Bernardelli, those little pocket automatics, you know?”
“Yeah,” she said, “tuck it in my bra.”
“As a spare, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“You can pick one up anywhere in the city,” Kling said. “Cost you something like thirty, forty dollars.”
“But those are small-caliber guns, aren’t they?” she asked. “ .22s? Or .25s?”
“That doesn’t mean anything, the caliber. A gun like a .22 can do more damage than a .38. When Reagan got shot, everybody was saying he was lucky it was only a .22 the guy used, but that was wrong thinking. I was talking to this guy at Ballistics... Dorfsman, do you know Dorfsman?”
“No,” Eileen said.
“Anyway, he told me you have to think of the human body like a room with furniture in it. You shoot a .38 or a .45 through one wall of the room, the slug goes right out through another wall. But you shoot a .22 or a .25 into that room, it hasn’t got the power to exit, you understand? It hits a sofa, it ricochets off and hits the television set, it ricochets off that and hits a lamp — those are all the organs inside the body, you understand? Like the heart, or the kidneys, or the lungs, the bullet just goes bouncing around inside there doing a lot of damage. So you don’t have to worry about the caliber, I mean it. Those little guns can really hurt somebody.”
“Yeah,” Eileen said, and hesitated. “I’m still scared,” she said.
“No, don’t be. You’ll be fine.”
“Maybe it’s because of what I told you yesterday,” she said. “My fantasy, you know. I never told that to anyone in my life. Now I feel as if I’m tempting God or something. Because I said it out loud. About... you know, wanting to get raped.”
“Well, you don’t really want to get raped.”
“I know I don’t.”
“So that’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Except for fun and games,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Getting raped.”
“Oh.”
“You know,” she said. “You tear off my panties and my bra, I struggle a little... like that. Pretending.”
“Sure,” he said.
“To spice it up a little,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“But not for real.”
“No.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “It’s too bad tomorrow night is for real.”
“Take the spare along,” Kling said.
“Oh, I will, don’t worry.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess—”
“No, don’t go,” she said. “Talk to me.”
Suddenly, and again, he could think of nothing else to say.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “The divorce.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” he said.
“Will you tell me one day?”
“Maybe.”
“Only if you want to,” she said. “Bert...” She hesitated. “Thank you. I feel a lot better now.”
“Well, good,” he said. “Listen, if you want to—”
“Yes?”
“Give me a call tomorrow night. When you come in, I mean. When it’s all over. Let me know how it went, okay?”
“Well, that’s liable to be pretty late.”
“I’m usually up late.”
“Well, if you’d like me to.”
“Yes, I would.”
“It’ll be after midnight, you know.”
“That’s okay.”
“Maybe later, if we make the collar. Time we book him—”
“Whenever,” Kling said. “Just call me whenever.”
“Okay,” she said. “Well,” she said.
“Well, good night,” he said.
“Good night, Bert,” she said, and hung up.
He put the receiver back on the cradle. The phone rang again almost instantly. He picked up the receiver at once.
“Hello?” he said.
“Bert, it’s Artie,” Brown said. “You weren’t asleep, were you?”
“No, no.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for the past half hour. I thought maybe you took the phone off the hook. You want to hear what I’ve got?”
“Shoot,” Kling said.
13
It was 9:00 in the morning, and the four detectives were gathered in the lieutenant’s office, trying to make some sense of what they now knew. It had snowed six inches’ worth overnight, and more snow was promised for later in the day. Byrnes wondered if it snowed this much in Alaska. He was willing to bet it didn’t snow this much in Alaska. The detectives had told him what they knew, and he had taken notes while they spoke — first Meyer and Carella, and then Kling and Brown — and now he guessed he was supposed to provide the sort of leadership that would pull the entire case together for them in a wink. The last time he had pulled an entire case together in a wink was never.
“So Quadrado identified the girl, huh?” he said.
“Yes, Pete,” Meyer said.
“Sally Anderson, huh?”
“Yes, Pete.”
“You showed him her picture yesterday afternoon.”
“Four pictures,” Meyer said. “Hers and three we pulled from the files. All blondes.”
“And he picked out the Anderson girl.”
“Yes.”
“And told you she used to live with Lopez and was supplying him with coke.”
“Yes.”
“He got this from his cousin, huh? The girl who was stabbed?”
“Only the coke part. The rest came from him.”
“About Lopez and the girl living together?”
“It checks out, Pete. We located the building Lopez used to live in — right next door to the drugstore on Ainsley and Sixth — and the super confirmed that the Anderson girl was living there with him until last August sometime.”
“Which is when Fatback went into rehearsal.”
“Right.”
“So there’s our connection,” Byrnes said.
“If we can trust it,” Meyer said.
“What’s not to trust?”
“Well, according to one of the dancers in the show, the Anderson girl went uptown every Sunday to buy coke.”
“So now it looks like she went up there to sell it,” Carella said.
“Big difference,” Meyer said.
“And Quadrado got this from his cousin, huh?” Byrnes said.
“Yes.”
“Reliable?’
“Maybe.”
“Told him the girl went up there every Sunday to sell coke to Lopez, huh?”
“Plus a roll in the hay,” Meyer said.
“How does that tie in with what her boyfriend said?” Byrnes asked.
“What do you mean?” Carella said.
“On one of your reports... where the hell is it?” Byrnes said, and began riffling through the DD forms on his desk. “Didn’t he mention something about a deli? About the girl picking up delicatessen on Sundays?”
“That’s right, but she could’ve been killing two birds with—”
“Here it is,” Byrnes said, and began reading out loud. “‘Moore identified word “Del” on calendar as—’ ”
“That’s right,” Carella said.
“ ‘Cohen’s Deli, Stem and North Rogers, where she went for bagels and lox, etcetera every Sunday.’ ”
“That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have come farther uptown afterward, to deliver the coke to Lopez.”
“He didn’t know anything about this, huh? The boyfriend?”