“Sandy’s.”
“Which is what?”
“Little Volkswagen.”
“Must have been uncomfortable. Crutches and all.”
“Mmm.”
“How long did it take you to get up there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Four, five hours. Something like that.”
“What time did you leave?”
“Here? The city?”
“Yes.”
“In the morning.”
“What time in the morning?”
“Nine? Ten? I don’t remember.”
“Did you come back down that night?”
“No. We stayed a few days. In Boston.”
“Where?”
“One of Sandy’s friends.”
“And came back when?”
“Late Monday night.”
“And today you posed for Sandy again.”
“That’s right.”
“How much does he pay you?”
Mary Margaret hesitated.
“How much does he pay you?” Carella asked again.
“Sandy’s my boyfriend,” she said. “He doesn’t pay me anything.”
“Where do you pose?”
“In the back of his shop. He’s got his studio there. In the back.”
“Are you living with him, Mary Margaret?”
“I live here. But I spend most of my time with Sandy.”
“Would you know the name of the doctor who treated his foot?”
“No.”
“What happened to it, anyway?”
“He had an accident.”
“Fell, did he?”
“Yes.”
“And tore the Achilles’ tendon, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Mary Margaret, do you think Sandy might have known that man in the picture I showed you?”
“Go ask Sandy.”
“I did.”
“So what did he say?”
“He said no.”
“Then I guess he didn’t know him.”
“Did you know him?”
“No.”
“You want to know what I think, Mary Margaret?”
“What?”
“I think Sandy was lying.”
Mary Margaret shrugged.
“I think you’re lying, too.”
“Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know yet,” Carella said.
He had been inside the apartment for perhaps twenty minutes when he heard a key turning in the lock. He knew that the Ungermans would be gone until the end of the week, and at first he thought the building superintendent was making an inopportune, routine check, but then he heard a man say, “Good to be home, eh, Karin?” and realized the Ungermans were back, and he was in the bedroom, and there were no exterior fire escapes; the only way out was through the front door, the way he had come in. He decided immediately that there was no percentage in waiting, the thing to do was make his move at once. The Ungermans were a couple in their late sixties, he would have no trouble getting past them, the difficult thing would be getting out of the building. They were moving toward the bedroom, Harry Ungerman carrying a pair of suitcases, his wife a step behind him, reaching up to take off her hat, when he charged them. He knocked Ungerman flat on his back, and then shoved out at Mrs. Ungerman, who reached out toward him for support, clutching at his clothes to keep from falling over backward the way her husband had done not ten seconds before. They danced an awkward, silent little jig for perhaps four seconds, her hands grasping, he trying to shove her away, and finally he wrenched loose, slamming her against the wall, and racing for the front door. He got the door unlocked, opened it, and was running for the stairway at the far end of the hall when Mrs. Ungerman began screaming.
Instead of heading down for the street, he went up toward the roof of the twelve-story building. The metal door was locked when he reached it. He backed off several paces, sprang the lock with a flat-footed kick, and sprinted out onto the roof. He hesitated a moment in the star-drenched night, to get his bearings. Then he ran for the parapet, looked down at the roof of the adjacent building, and leaped.
By the time Harry Ungerman put in his call to the police, the man who had tried to burglarize his apartment was already four blocks away, entering his own automobile.
But it had been a close call.
8
If you are going to go tiptoeing into empty apartments, you had best make certain they are going to stay empty all the while you are illegally on the premises. If they suddenly become anything less than empty, it is best not to try pushing around an elderly lady with a bad back, since she just might possibly grab you to keep from falling on her coccyx, and in the ensuing gavotte might get a very good look at you, particularly if she is a sharp-eyed old bat.
Karin Ungerman was a very sharp-eyed old bat, and mad as a hornet besides. What annoyed her particularly was the kitten. The kitten was a fluffy little tan thing who had wet on the gold brocade chaise in the Ungerman bedroom. Mrs. Ungerman was certain the stain would not come out, despite liberal and repeated sprinklings of a highly touted spot remover. The first thing she asked Kling when he arrived that morning was whether or not her insurance company would pay damages for the kitten’s indiscretion. The kitten had, after all, been brought there by a burglar and she was covered for fire and theft, so why shouldn’t they pay? Kling did not know the answer. Kling — who had arrived at the squadroom at 8 A.M., and been promptly informed of last night’s events — had rushed over to 641 Richardson Drive immediately, and was interested only in getting a description of the man both Ungermans had seen.
The Ungermans informed him that the only thing missing was a gold and pearl pin but that perhaps Karin Ungerman had given that to her sister who lived in Florida, she wasn’t quite sure. The burglar had undoubtedly been in the apartment for only a very short while; only the top drawer of the dresser had been disturbed. Luckily, Mrs. Ungerman hid all her good jewelry in a galosh in the closet whenever she went on a trip. If you lived to be sixty-eight years old, and have been burglarized four times in the past seventeen years, you learn how to deal with the bastards. But bringing in a cat to pee all over your gold brocade chaise! Really!
“What did the man look like, can you tell me that?” Kling asked.
“He was a tall man,” Mrs. Ungerman said.
“How tall?”
“Taller than you,” she said.
“Six feet two inches, around there,” Mr. Ungerman said.
“How was he dressed?”
“In dark clothes. Black, I think.”
“Blue,” Mr. Ungerman said.
“Dark, anyway,” Mrs. Ungerman said. “Trousers, jacket, shirt, all dark.”
“What kind of shirt?”
“A turtleneck,” Mrs. Ungerman said.
“Was he a white man or a black man?”
“White. The part of his face we could see.”
“What do you mean?”
“We only saw his eyes and forehead. He was wearing a mask.”
“What kind of a mask?”
“A handkerchief. Over the bridge of his nose, hanging down over his face.”
“You say you saw his eyes...”
“Yes, and his forehead.”
“And his hair, too,” Mr. Ungerman said. “He wasn’t wearing a hat.”
“What color were his eyes?” Kling asked.
“Brown.”
“And his hair?”
“Black.”
“Was it straight, wavy, curly?”
“Curly.”
“Long or close-cropped?”
“Just average length,” Mrs. Ungerman said.
“Anything else you may have noticed about him?”
“Nothing. Except that he moved very fast.”
“I’d move fast, too,” Mrs. Ungerman said, “if I’d just let a cat make a mess all over somebody’s gold brocade chaise.”
That morning Detective Steve Carella went down to the Criminal Courts Building and, being duly sworn, deposed and said in writing: