Lullaby

'Want to come someplace where we can talk?' Meyer asked.

'Why? What'd I do?' Strothers said.

'Nothing. We want to ask you some questions,' Carella said.

'About what?'

'About Scott Handler.'

'What'd he do?'

'Can we go outside in the garden?'

'In this weather?'

'Or the cafeteria. Take your choice.'

'Or we can sit right here,' Meyer said. 'It's up to you.'

Strothers kept looking at them.

'What do you say?' Carella asked.

'Let's go to the cafeteria,' Strothers said.

They walked like three old buddies through corridors lined with Picassos and Van Goghs and Chagalls and Gauguins. They followed the signs past the glass wall overlooking a sculpture garden dominated by a magnificent Chamberlain, and then up the escalator to the second floor and the newly installed Syd Solomon exhibition, and on up to the third floor where the signs led them past the museum's movie theater (which was currently running a Hitchcock retrospective that included The Birds) and finally into the cafeteria itself, only mildly busy at ten minutes past two in the afternoon.

'Would you like some coffee?' Carella asked.

'Sure,' Strothers said tentatively. He looked as if he was wondering whether they would dare use a rubber hose on him in a public place.

'What do you take in it?'

'Sugar and a little cream.'

'Meyer?'

'Black.'

Carella went to the counter. Meyer and Strothers sat at the table. Meyer smiled at him, trying to put him at ease. Strothers did not smile back. Carella returned, transferred the coffee cups and spoons from the tray to the table, and then sat with them.

'So,' Meyer said, and smiled again.

'Tell us where you were on New Year's Eve,' Carella said.

'I thought this was about Scott.'

'It is. Were you with him?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'At his house. His folks gave a party. Scott invited me.'

'What time did you get there?' What'd Scott do?'

'Nothing. Have you talked to him lately?'

'No.'

'What time did you get to the party?'

'About nine-thirty, ten o'clock.'

'Alone.'

'No, I had a girl with me.'

'What's her name?'

'Why?'

'Mr Strothers, this is a routine questioning, all we . . .'

'Well, thank you, but I'd like to know why you're . . .'

'We're trying to pinpoint Scott Handler's whereabouts on New Year's Eve,' Meyer said.

'So why do you need my girlfriend's name? If this is about Scott, why . . . ?'

'Only because she would have been another witness,' Carella said.

'A witness to what?'

'To where Scott Handler was at what time.'

'What time are you trying to pinpoint?' Strothers asked.

Carella noticed that he still hadn't given them his girlfriend's name. He guessed he admired that. He wondered now if he should level with the kid. Tell him they were interested in knowing where Handler was between twelve-thirty, when Annie Flynn received her last phone call, and two-thirty that same morning - when the Hoddings came into their apartment to find her dead. His eyes met Meyer's briefly. Meyer nodded with his eyelids. A blink. Go ahead, risk it.

'We're investigating a double homicide,' Carella said. 'One of the victims is a girl Scott Handler knew. We're trying to establish his whereabouts between twelve-thirty and two-thirty in the morning.'

'On New Year's Eve,' Strothers said.

'Yes. Well, New Year's Day, actually.'

'Right. So this is pretty serious, huh?'

'Yes, it's pretty serious.'

'But if those times are critical . . .'

'They are.'

'Then Scott isn't your man.'

'Why do you say that, Mr Strothers?'

'Because I know where he was during those hours, and it wasn't out killing anybody.'

'Where was he?'

'With me. And my girl. And his girl.'

'Do you want to tell us their names?'

'Isn't my word good enough?'

'Sure,' Carella said. 'But if two other people can swear to it, your friend would…'

'Who says he's my friend?'

'I thought . . .'

'I hardly know him. I met him at a gallery opening around Thanksgiving. He was down from Maine, he goes to a private school up there.'

'Uh-huh.'

'He'd just broken up with some girl, he was really . . .'

He stopped dead.

There was sudden understanding in his eyes.

'Yes?' Meyer said.

'Is that who got killed?'

The detectives waited.

'The girl who dumped him?'

'What'd he tell you about her?'

'Only that she'd shown him the door. It couldn't have been too serious a thing, he seemed to be over it by New Year's Eve.'

'Had you seen him at any time between Thanksgiving and . . .'

'No. I told you. We met at this opening, and then him and me and my girl went to a party afterward. At this loft an artist friend of mine has down in the Quarter. Scott seemed very down, so we asked him to come along. Then he called me just before New Year's Eve, told me there was going to be a party at his house, could I come and bring Doro . . .'

He cut himself short.

'Is that your girlfriend's name?' Carella asked. 'Dorothy?'

'Yes.'

'Dorothy what?'

'I'd like to leave her out of this, if that's okay with you,' Strothers said.

'Sure,' Carella said. 'So you got to this party at about nine-thirty, ten o'clock . . .'

'The pits,' Strothers said. 'If he'd told me we were gonna be the only young people there ... I mean, everybody there was thirty, forty years old!'

Meyer's expression said nothing.

'How long did you stay there?' Carella asked.

'We left a little after midnight.'

'You and Dorothy, and Scott and his girlfriend.'

'No, his girl wasn't there. That's where we went. To her place.'

'She wasn't at the Handler party?'