"I'll catch a cab, be up there in half an hour or so.”
"Well, all right," she said. "But really, I'd be perfectly safe by my ...”
"Be no trouble at all," he said. "See you soon.
She heard a click on the other end of the line.
She put the receiver back on the cradle and stood by the phone, one hand on the receiver, the other holding to her mouth an Elsa Peretti lowercase letter e in gold. She nibbled on the e for an instant, and then let it drop on its slender chain to fall between her naked breasts.
Carmen Sanchez stood tall and loose-limbed in a blue spotlight that turned her long silvery gown to brilliant glare ice.
A rhinestone clip twinkled on the right side of her head, caught in a mop of curly black hair that echoed eyes as black as midnight, sparkling in the cold blue beam, scattering reflected glints of light. She held the microphone in her right hand, its long cord trailing down one thigh and then curling behind her like a slender black snake. She had just broken a single chord into at least seven shimmering pieces, riding it to the ceiling of the club like a diatonic rocket, and following it with an expectant silence as deep and as dark as an ocean.
Smoke drifted up languidly on the air, blue in the light that bathed her. She looked out beyond the light, into the room, into the crowd, dark eyes slyly insinuating, microphone close to her mouth, lips opening in a caress around the single word that began the next song, the word hissing out of her mouth, her lips caressing it, whispering it onto the air and into the darkness.
"Kiss ...”
From where they sat at the bar, Meyer and Carella listened and watched.
"It all begins with a ...
Kiss ...
But kisses wither And die Unless The first Caress Is true.
"Kiss ...
These lips that burn in a Kiss ...
Are only learning To lie Unless The first Caress Is true.
"So hold me tight and whisper Words of Love Against my eyes.
And kiss me sweet and promise Me your Kisses won't be lies.
"Kiss ...
And show me, tell me of Bliss ...
Because I know I Will die Unless This first Caress Is true.”
The last word of the song hung on the air, drifted, faded, to be replaced by a silence as deep as the earlier expectant hush had been.
And then someone shouted, "Yeah!" and the - crowd leaped to its feet in thunderous applause.
Carmen snapped the mike back onto its stand, and then, smiling graciously, she put her hands together as if in prayer and bowed her head in acknowledgment, the rhinestone clip tossing bouquets of glistening light to the audience. Still smiling, she swept the long silver gown around her long legs, and moved sinuously off the stage, one arm raised in a final salute, the blue light following her. The clock in a green neon circle over the bar read twenty minutes to eleven. Carella and Meyer nodded to each other and then got off the barstools and headed for the small curtained doorway to the right of the stage.
She knew they were here, she was expecting them.
They told her how terrific she was ...
"Thanks, I appreciate it," she said.
... and then got down to business.
"The telephone calls that morning ...”
"Here we go with the telephone again," she said, and looked suddenly very tired. She took a towel from where it was hanging on her dressing table, and draped it over her shoulders and the sloping tops of her breasts in the low-cut gown. Sitting before the mirror with its edging of small bright lights, she began taking off her makeup. Cold-creaming the makeup away, slowly revealing the shining face of a young and beautiful woman.
"Are you sure there were only two calls? The one that came in, and the one he ...”
"Yes, I'm positive.”
"Just the two calls, right?”
"What did I just say?”
Eyes watching them in the mirror. Eyeliner gone, lipstick coming off. A fresh-faced beauty underneath. Watching them.
"If we gave you some names, would you remember Tilly ever mentioning them?”
"How would I know? Try me.”
"Ray Androtti," Carella said. "Or Ramón Andros.”
"Neither one.”
"How about Gofredo Cabrera?”
"No.”
She took the towel from her shoulders and wiped her face clean with it. Rising suddenly and splendidly in the long silver gown and sequined silver slippers, she whisked across the room to a door, opened it, went into the bathroom on the other side of it, said, "I'll just be a minute," and closed the door behind her.
The detectives waited.
They could hear water running in there.
They kept waiting.
The water stopped running.
She was humming inside there now, the same tune that had closed her act. Kiss. Humming it softly. Some five minutes later, the door opened again. She was wearing a short skirt and a white blouse, low-heeled shoes, no makeup.
She went over to the dressing table and began combing out her hair.
"This is Saturday night," she said, "I have another show at midnight. I usually go out for something to eat between shows. The food here is terrible.”
"We won't be long," Meyer said.
"I hope not. 'Cause I work up a real hunger out there.”
"What we want to know is everything you can remember about that second call.”
"I told you everything I knew.”
"Are you sure you heard Tilly say the name Bowles?”
"That's what I heard.”
"Because if this is the man he was going downstairs to meet ...”
"... and if it had something to do with money,”
Meyer said, "you remember telling us the conversation had something to do with money, don't you?”
"Yes, I remember.”
"Tilly wanting the rest of his money from Bowles.”
"Yes, I think that's what they were saying. I told you, I was in the shower. ...”
"No, you said you were dressing, don't you remember? This was after ...”
"Either way, I wasn't paying too much attention to what Roger was saying on the phone.”
"Well, let's go over it one more time, okay?" Meyer said.
"You know," Carmen said, "every time you guys come to see me, I'm on the way somewhere. And you always tell me this won't take long, this'll just take a minute, and it always takes forever. Only this time I just finished doing a show, and I'm starving to death, and I don't want it to take forever. I want to go eat, okay? You think you got that?
I'm hungry, I'm famished, I'm starving to ...”
“So let's go eat," Carella said, and smiled.
The movie let out at five minutes past eleven. It was a cold, clear starlit night, and Emma suggested that they walk back to the apartment.
She had not worn her mink to the theater. Instead, she was wearing the long gray cavalry officer's coat and a gray woolen hat with a red stripe.
Andrew was wearing the only coat he'd brought with him from Chicago, the camel-hair Burberry.
Under that, he had on a tan Shetland sweater with a shawl collar, a brown wool turtleneck, and brown tweed slacks. He liked to look casually elegant, even if he was only going to a movie. He hoped she appreciated this.
Even if it was a lousy movie. He was telling her he had not liked the movie because he'd found it unbelievable.
"All that stuff about the hooker," he said.
"I guess you know a lot of hookers,”
Emma said. "Your line of work.”
"Well, I've run into a few of them, let's say that.”
"What did you find unbelievable?" she asked.
As they walked rapidly through the windswept streets, he reeled off all the inconsistencies he had spotted. She was amazed that he'd watched an essentially mindless film so carefully. When at last they reached her building, she said, "Thanks a lot for coming all the way up here, I really appreciate it.”
"It was no trouble," he said.