Teddy shrugged speculatively and then went past him, half naked, into the bathroom. She closed the door, and he heard the lock clicking shut. The door opened again. She cocked her head around the door frame, grinned mischievously, and then brought her right hand up suddenly. Quickly her fingers moved.
Go talk to your children, she said.
Then, at the end of the sentence, she waved goodbye, her head and hand disappeared, the door clicked shut, the lock snapped. In a moment, Carella heard the shower going. He smiled, put on a fresh T-shirt and went downstairs to find the twins and Fanny.
Fanny was sitting on a bench under the single huge tree in the Carella backyard, a big Irish woman in her early fifties who looked up the moment Carella came out of the house.
“Well,” she said, “it’s himself.”
“Daddy!” Mark yelled, his fist poised to sock his sister in the eye. He ran across the yard and leaped into Carella’s arms. April, a little slower to respond, especially since she’d expected a punch just a moment before, did a small take and then shot across the lawn as if she’d been propelled from a launching pad. The twins were almost two and a half years old, fraternal twins who had managed to combine the best features of their parents in faces that looked similar but not identical. Both had Carella’s high cheekbones and slanting oriental eyes. Both had Teddy’s black hair and full mouths. At the moment, Mark also had a strangle hold on Carella’s neck, and April was doing her best to climb to a sitting position on his waist by clambering up his legs.
“It’s himself,” April said, mimicking Fanny, from whom she heard most of her English during the day.
“It’s himself indeed,” Carella said. “How come you weren’t waiting at the front door to greet me?”
“Well, who knows when you minions of the law will come home?” Fanny asked smiling.
“Sure, who knows when the minnows,” April said.
“Well, Daddy,” Mark said seriously, “How was business today?”
“Fine, just fine,” Carella said.
“Did you catch a crook?” April asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Will you catch...” She paused and rephrased it. “Will you catch...” Apparently the rephrasing didn’t satisfy her either. “Will you catch...” she said, paused again, gave it up, and then completed the sentence. “Will you catch one tomorrow?”
“Oh, if the weather’s good, maybe we will,” Carella said.
“Well, that’s good, Daddy,” Mark said.
“ ‘If the weather’s good,’ he said,” April put in.
“Well, if you catch one, bring him home,” Mark said.
“Those two are gonna be G-men,” Fanny said. She sat in bright, redheaded splendor under the bold autumn foliage of the tree, grinning approval at her brood. A trained nurse who supplemented the meager salary Carella could afford by taking night calls whenever she could, she had been working for the Carellas ever since the twins were brought home from the hospital.
“Daddy, what do crooks look like?” Mark asked.
“Well, some of them look like Fanny,” Carella said.
“That’s right, teach them,” Fanny said.
“Are there lady crooks?” April asked.
“There are lady crooks and men crooks, yes,” Carella said.
“But no chi’drun,” Mark said. He always had difficulty with the word.
“Children,” Fanny corrected, as she invariably did.
“Chi’drun,” Mark repeated, and he nodded.
“No, no children crooks,” Carella said. “Children are too smart to be crooks.” He put the twins down and said, “Fanny, I brought you something.”
“What?”
“A swear box.”
“What in hell is a swear box?”
“I left it in the kitchen for you. You’ve got to put money in it every time you use a swear word.”
“Like hell I will.”
“Like hell she will,” April said.
“See?” Carella said.
“I don’t know where they pick it up,” Fanny answered, shaking her head in mock puzzlement.
“You feel like giving us the night off?” Carella asked.
“It’s Saturday, ain’t it? Young people have to go out on Saturday.”
“Good,” Mark said.
“Huh?” Carella asked.
“We’re young people.”
“Yes, but Fanny’s going to feed you and put you to bed, and Mommy and Daddy are going to a movie.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Go see a monster fimm,” Mark said.
“A what?”
“A monster fimm.”
“Film?”
“Yeah.”
“Why should I? I have two monsters right here.”
“Don’t, Daddy,” April said. “You’ll scare us.”
He sat with them in the yard while Teddy showered and dusk claimed the city. He read to them from Winnie the Pooh until it was time for their dinner. Then he went upstairs to change his clothes. He and Teddy had a good dinner and saw a good movie. When they got home to the old Riverhead house, they made love. He leaned back against the pillow afterward and smoked a cigarette in the dark.
And somehow Kling’s loss seemed enormously magnified.
Chapter 8
728 Peterson Avenue was in the heart of Riverhead in a good middle-class neighborhood dotted with low apartment buildings and two-story frame houses. Ralph Townsend lived there in apartment number 47. At 9:00 on Sunday morning, October 15, Detectives Meyer Meyer and Steve Carella rang the bell outside the closed door and waited. Kling had told them the night before that Claire’s father was a night watchman, and he’d advised them to call at the apartment around 9:00, when the old man would be returning home from his shift and before he went to bed. As it was, they caught Townsend in the middle of breakfast. He invited them into the apartment and then poured coffee for them. They sat together in the small kitchen, with sunlight streaming through the window and burnishing the oilcloth on the table. Townsend was in his middle fifties, a man with all his hair, as black as his daughter’s had been. He had a huge barrel chest and muscular arms. He wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up over his biceps. He wore bright-green suspenders. He also wore a black tie.
“I won’t be going to sleep today,” he said. “I have to go over to the funeral parlor.”
“You went to work last night, Mr. Townsend?” Meyer asked.
“A man has to work,” Townsend said simply. “I mean... well, you didn’t know Claire, but... well, you see, in this family, we thought... her mother died when she was just a little girl, you know, and... we... we sort of made up between us that what we owed to Mary — that was her name, Claire’s mother — we made up that what we owed to Mary was to live, you see. To carry on. To live. So... I feel I owe the same thing to Claire. I owe it to her to... to miss her with all my heart, but to go on living. And working is a part of life.” He fell silent. Then he said, “So I went to work last night.” And he fell silent again. He sipped at his coffee. “Last night I went to work, and today I’ll go to the funeral parlor where my little girl is lying dead.” He sipped at the coffee again. He was a strong man, and the grief on his face was strong, in keeping with his character. There were no tears in his eyes, but sorrow sat within him like a heavy stone.
“Mr. Townsend,” Carella said, “we have to ask you some questions. I know you’ll understand...”
“I understand,” Townsend said, “but I’d like to ask you a question first, if that’s all right.”
“Sure,” Carella said.
“I want to know... Did this have anything to do with Bert?”
“What do you mean?”