“Maybe somebody found the handbag,” Brown said.
“Read about her in the newspapers, figured he’d send the bag over to us.”
“Didn’t want to get involved.”
“This city, nobody wants to get involved.”
“Maybe,” Carella said.
But they were still thinking it was the Deaf Man.
The physician conducting the autopsy for the Medical Examiner’s Office had agreed with Blaney’s original diagnosis at the scene, while expanding upon it somewhat: death had been caused not only by dislocation and fracturing of the upper cervical vertebrae but also by crushing of the spinal cord, typical of what occurred in legal execution by hanging. But the report went on to give an estimated time of death that was eight hours earlier than the moment Carella and Genero had walked out of the construction site to find the victim dangling from a lamppost.
On the telephone with Carella, the man from the Medical Examiner’s Office expressed the opinion that the victim had been killed elsewhere — either by the indicated hanging or else by physical force sufficient to fracture the vertebrae and crush the spinal cord — and then transported to the scene of the discovery. The man from the Medical Examiner’s Office was very careful not to say “the scene of the crime.” In his opinion, the actual scene of the crime was not that deserted street with its abandoned buildings and its gaping construction craters. This seemed to jibe with what Carella was already thinking. Neither he nor Genero had seen anybody hanging anyplace on that street when they’d gone in to talk to the night watchman.
The address on the dead girl’s I.D. card added further weight to the supposition that she had been killed somewhere else and only later transported to the lucky Eight-Seven. The girl lived in an apartment building some four miles west of the precinct territory, in a section of the city that contained its bustling garment manufacturing center. Cloak City, as the area was familiarly and historically known, had as its nucleus the workshops and showrooms that supplied ready-to-wear clothing for the rest of the nation and indeed for many countries in the non-Communist world. But in the avenues north of the factories, the tenements had been razed and luxury high-rise apartments and expensive restaurants had sprung up in their place to create a Gold Coast ambiance, attracting a show biz clientele who preferred living close to the theater district, and who joyously referred to their new neighborhood not as Cloak City but as Coke City.
Neither Carella nor Hawes — with whom he was partnered this Tuesday morning, Genero being happily away in court where he was testifying against a hot dog vendor he’d arrested for peddling without a license — knew whether estimates of the flourishing cocaine trade in this precinct were valid or not. As far as they were concerned, they had enough headaches of their own uptown, one of which had dragged them down here this morning. The day was one of those sparkling clear days October often lavished on the citizens of this city. Both men were glad to be out of the squadroom. On days like today, you could not help but fall in love with this city all over again.
The dead girl — whose I.D. card gave her age as almost twenty-one — had lived in one of the surviving old neighborhood buildings, a five-story, red-brick edifice covered with the soot and grime of centuries. Coatless and hatless, Carella and Hawes climbed the front stoop and rang the superintendent’s bell.
“What’d you think of Meyer’s wig?” Carella asked.
“What wig? You’re kidding me.”
“You didn’t see it?”
“No. He’s got a wig?”
“Yeah.”
“You know why the Indian bought a hat?” Hawes asked, and the front door opened.
The girl who stood there was ten feet tall. Or at least she seemed to be ten feet tall. Both detectives had to look up at her, and neither of them were elves. She was twenty years old, Carella guessed, perhaps twenty-one, with short brown hair, luminous brown eyes, and a slender lupine face. She was wearing blue jeans and a Ramsey University sweatshirt, and she was carrying a canvas book bag printed with the words book bag.
“Police officers,” Carella said, and showed her his shield. “We’re looking for the super.”
“We don’t have a super,” the girl said.
“We just rang the super’s bell,” Hawes said.
“Just ’cause there’s a super’s bell doesn’t mean there’s a super,” he girl said, turning to Hawes. Hawes got the feeling she was thinking he was too short for her. And too old. And probably too dumb. He almost shrugged. “There hasn’t been a super in this building for almost a year now,” the girl said. And then, because people in this city loved nothing better than to stick it to the cops whenever they could, she added, “Maybe that’s why we have so many burglaries here.”
“This isn’t our precinct,” Hawes said defensively.
“Then what are you doing here?” the girl asked.
“Do you live here, Miss?” Carella asked.
“Of course I live here,” she said. “What do you think I’m doing here? Delivering groceries?”
“Do you know a tenant named Marcia Schaffer?”
“Sure. Listen, she’s in 3A, you can talk to her personally, okay? I was just on my way out, I’ll be late for class.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?” Carella asked.
“At school Thursday.”
“Ramsey U?” Hawes asked, looking at the sweatshirt.
“Brilliant deduction,” the girl said.
“You went to school together?”
“Give the man another cigar.”
“How long did you know her?” Carella asked.
“Since my freshman year. I’m a junior now. We’re both juniors.”
“She from here originally? The city?”
“No. Some little town in Kansas. Buffalo Dung, Kansas.”
“How about you?” Hawes asked.
“Born and bred right here.”
“You sound like it.”
“Proud of it, too,” she said.
“What was she wearing last Thursday? When you saw her?”
“A track suit. Why? We’re both on the track team.”
“What time was this?”
“At practice, around four in the afternoon. Why?”
“Did you see her anytime after that?”
“We took the subway home together. Listen, what...?”
“Did you see her anytime after that? Anytime Thursday night?”
“No.”
“See her leave the building anytime Thursday night?”
“No.”
“What apartment do you live in?”
“3B, right across the hall from her.”
“And you say she lived in 3A?”
She suddenly caught the past tense.
“She still lives there,” she said.
“Did you see or hear anybody outside her apartment on Thursday night? Anybody knocking on the door? Anybody...”
“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking these questions?”
Carella took a deep breath. “Marcia Schaffer is dead,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the girl said.
Both detectives looked at her.
“Marcia isn’t dead,” she said.
They kept looking at her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said again.
“Can you tell me your name, Miss?” Carella asked.
“Jenny Compton,” she said, and then at once, “But Marcia isn’t dead, you’ve made a mistake.”
“Miss Compton, we’re reasonably certain the victim...”
“No,” Jenny said, and shook her head.
“Did Miss Schaffer live here?” Hawes asked.