'So according to you,' Meyer said, 'you . . .'
'Can you do that for me, please? 'Cause I'm cooperating here with you, ain't I?'
'Does this guy deliver all the way upstate?' Meyer asked.
'What do you mean?'
'You broke parole, Proctor. You're heading back to Castleview to see all your old buddies again. You don't have to worry about where your next vial's coming from.'
'Yeah, I didn't think of that,' Proctor said.
'But let's try to nail this down, okay?' Meyer said. 'You were in the Unger apartment at one-thirty . . .' 'Just leaving at one-thirty . . .'
'And you came down the fire escapes ...'
'Right.'
'No stops on the way down . . .'
'Right.'
'No detours ...'
'Right.'
'And you walked to The Bald Eagle on Culver and . . . where'd you say it is?'
All the way up near Saint Paul's.'
'Why'd you go all the way up there?'
''Cause I knew Jerry'd be there.'
'Jerry Macklin.'
'Yeah.'
'Your fence.'
'Yeah. Who I knew would take at least the VCR off my hands. So I could buy some vials to tide me over, you know?'
'You walked all the way up there, huh?'
'Yeah, I walked.'
'That's a long walk, cold night like that.'
'I like the cold.'
'And you got there just as the Joan Crawford movie was coming on.'
'A few minutes before. We were just beginning to talk price when it went on. It musta gone on about two o'clock, don't you think? I mean, they start them on the hour, don't they?'
'Usually. And you left there at a quarter after.'
'Yeah.'
'And took another little walk. This time to Glitter.'
'Well, that wasn't too far. Five minutes is all.'
'You like walking, huh?'
'As a matter of fact, I do.'
'So if all this is true . . .'
'Oh, it's true.'
'Then you can pretty much account for your time between one-thirty and a quarter past two. Provided Macklin and Gaines back your story.'
'Unless you scare them with shit about receiving stolen goods and dealing controlled substances, they should back my story, yes. Look, I'm going back to jail, anyway, I got no reason to lie to you.'
Except maybe a couple of dead bodies, Carella thought.
* * * *
They found Macklin at a little past nine that night.
He corroborated everything Proctor had said.
He even remembered the name of the Joan Crawford movie that had gone on at two in the morning.
And he remembered looking up at the clock when Proctor left the Eagle; he'd been invited to a New Year's Eve party, and he was wondering if it'd still be going at this hour. Which was a quarter past two in the morning.
It took them a while longer to find Fletcher Gaines.
Gaines was a black man living all the way uptown in Diamondback.
When finally they caught up with him at five minutes to ten that Monday night, he told them he was clean and asked them if they weren't just a wee bit off their own turf. They told him they weren't looking for a drug bust, which news Gaines treated with a skeptically raised eyebrow. All they wanted to know was about New Year's Eve. Did he at any time on New Year's Eve run into a person named Martin Proctor?
No mention of time.
No mention of place.
Gaines said he had run into Proctor in Glitter Park sometime that night, but he couldn't remember what time it had been.
They asked him if he could pinpoint that a bit closer.
Gaines figured his man Proctor was looking for a net.
No way to lie for him, though, because he didn't know what time Gaines needed covered.
So he told them he wasn't sure he could be more exact.
They told him that was a shame, and started to walk off.
He said, 'Hey, wait a minute, it just come to me. I looked at my watch and it was twenty minutes after two exact, is that of any help to you?'
They thanked him and went back downtown - to their own turf.
* * * *
Visiting hours at the hospital were eight to ten.
The old man was in what was called the Cancer Care Unit, he'd been there since the third of July, when they'd discovered a malignancy in his liver. Bit more than six months now. A person would've thought he'd be dead by now. Cancer of the liver? Supposed to be fatal and fast.
They visited him every night.
Two dutiful daughters.
Got there at a little before eight, came out of the hospital at a little after ten. Said their goodbyes in the parking lot, went to their separate cars. Joyce was driving the old man's car now. Big brown Mercedes. Living in the big house all alone. Went back to Seattle in August, soon as she found out the old man was going to die. Visited him in the hospital every night. A person could've set his watch by her comings and goings. Melissa was driving the old blue station wagon. Waddled like a duck, Melissa did.
It was foggy tonight.
Big surprise. Fog in Seattle. Like London in all those Jack the Ripper movies. Or those creepy werewolf movies. Only this was Seattle. If you didn't get fog here in January, then you got rain, take your choice, that's all there was. In this city, rain was only thicker fog. You wanted to get rich in Seattle, all you had to do was start an umbrella factory. But he figured the fog was good for what he had to do tonight.
The gun was a Smith & Wesson Model 59, which was a nine-millimeter double-action automatic pistol. Same as the 39 except that it had a fourteen-shot magazine instead of an eight. Otherwise, you couldn't tell the two apart: bit more than seven inches long overall, with a four-inch barrel, a blued finish and a checkered walnut stock. It looked something like an army Colt .45. He'd bought it on the street for two hundred bucks. You could get anything you wanted on the street these days. He planned to drop the gun in the Sound after he used it tonight, goodbye, darling. Even if they found it, they'd never be able to trace it. A gun bought on the street? No way they could link it to him.
He'd had the gun sent to Seattle. Just sent it UPS second-day air. Carried it all wrapped and sealed to one of those post-office alternatives that sent things by Federal Express and UPS, even wrapped things for you if you asked them to, though he wasn't about to have them wrap a gun for him. Told the girl who weighed it that it was a toy truck. The weight, with the packing and all, had come to twenty-eight pounds. She'd marked on the shipping label TOY TRUCK and asked if he wanted to insure it for more than the already covered hundred bucks. He'd said, no, it had only cost him twenty-five. That easy to send a gun. This was a democracy. He hated to think what real criminals were getting away with.