As she spoke, Kling smiled unconsciously, forming a mental picture of her in the university phone booth. He knew she would be leaning over very close to the mouthpiece. She was five feet seven inches tall, and the booth would seem too small for her. Her hair, as black as sin, would be brushed back from her face, her brown eyes intensely alive as she spoke, perhaps with a faint smile on her mouth. The full white blouse would taper to a narrow waist, the black skirt hanging on wide hips, dropping in a straight line over her thighs and her long legs.
“… no stockings because the weather’s so damn hot,” Claire said, “and high-heeled black pumps, and that’s it.”
“So, where’s the disguise?”
“Well, I bought a new bra,” Claire whispered.
“Oh?”
“You should see what it does for me, Bert.” She paused. “Do you love me, Bert?”
“You know I do,” he said.
“She just asked him does he love her,” Meyer said, and Kling pulled a lace.
“Tell me,” Claire whispered.
“I can’t right now.”
“Will you tell me later?”
“Mmmm,” Kling said, and he glanced apprehensively at Meyer.
“Wait until you see this bra,” Claire said.
“Yes, I’m looking forward to it,” Kling said, watching Meyer, phrasing his words carefully.
“You don’t sound very interested,” Claire said.
“I am. It’s a little difficult, that’s all.”
“It’s called Abundance,” Claire said.
“What is?”
“The bra.”
“That’s nice,” Kling said.
“What are they doing up there? Standing around your desk and breathing down your neck?”
“Well, not exactly, but I think I’d better say good-bye now. I’ll see you at six-thirty, honey.”
“Seven,” Claire corrected.
“Okay. ‘Bye, doll.”
“Abundance,” she whispered, and she hung up. Kling put the receiver back into the cradle.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to call the telephone company and ask them to put in a phone booth.”
“You’re not supposed to make private calls on the city’s time,” Carella said, and he winked at Meyer.
“I didn’t make this call. I received it. Also, a man is entitled to a certain amount of privacy, even if he works with a bunch of horny bastards. I don’t see why I can’t talk to my fiancée without—”
“He’s sore,” Meyer said. “He called her his fiancée instead of his girl. Look, talk to her. Call her back and tell her you sent all us gorillas out of the room and now you can talk to her. Go ahead.”
“Go to hell,” Kling said. Angrily, he turned back to his typewriter, forgetting that he’d been in the middle of an erasure. He began typing again and then realized he was overscoring what he’d already typed. Viciously, he ripped the almost-completed report from the machine. “See what you made me do?” he shouted impotently. “Now I have to start all over again!” He shook his head despairingly, took a white, a blue, and a yellow Detective Division report from his top drawer, separated the three sheets with carbon paper, and began typing again, banging the keys with a vengeance.
It was 5:15 p.m. when the telephone rang.
Meyer lifted the receiver and said, “87th Squad, Detective Meyer.” He moved a pad into place on his desk. “Yeah, go ahead,” he said. He began writing on the pad. “Yep,” he said. He wrote down an address. “Yep.” He continued writing. “Yep, right away.” He hung up. “Steve, Bert,” he said, “you want to take this?”
“What is it?” Carella asked.
“Some nut just shot up a bookstore on Culver Avenue,” Meyer said. “There’s three people lying dead on the floor.”
The crowd had already gathered around the bookshop. A sign out front read “Good Books, Good Reading.” There were two uniformed cops on the sidewalk, and a squad car was pulled up to the curb across the street. The people pulled back instinctively when they heard the wail of the siren on the police sedan. Carella got out first, slamming the door behind him. He waited for Kling to come around the car, and then both men started for the shop. At the door, the patrolman said, “Lot of dead people in there, sir.”
“When’d you get here?”
“Few minutes ago. We were just cruising when we took the squeal. We called back the minute we saw what it was.”
“Know how to keep a timetable?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come along and keep it, then.”
“Yes, sir.”
They started into the shop. Not three feet from the door, they saw the first body. The man was partially slumped against one of the book stalls, partially sprawled on the floor. He was wearing a blue seersucker suit, and his hand was still holding a book, and a line of blood had run down his arm, and stained his sleeve, and continued down over the hand holding the book. Kling looked at him and knew instantly that this was going to be a bad one. Just how bad, he did not yet realize.
“Here’s another one,” Carella said.
The second body was some ten feet away from the first, another man. Coatless, his head twisted and fitting snugly into the angle formed by the book stall and the floor. As they approached, he moved his head slightly, trying to raise it from its uncomfortable position. A new flow of blood spilled onto his shirt collar. He dropped his head again. The patrol man, his throat parched, his voice containing something like awe, said, “He’s alive.”
Carella stooped down beside the man. The man’s neck had been ripped open by the force of the bullet which had struck him. Carella looked at torn flesh and muscle, and for an instant he closed his eyes, the action coming as swiftly as the clicking shutter of a camera, the eyes opening again at once, a tight hard mask claiming his face.
“Did you call for a meat wagon?” he asked.
“The minute I got here,” the patrolman said.
“Good.”
“There are two others,” a voice said.
Kling turned away from the dead man in the seersucker suit. The man who’d spoken was a small, birdlike man with a bald head. He stood crouched against one of the bookstalls, his hand to his mouth. He was wearing a shabby brown sweater open over a white shirt. There was abject terror on his face and in his eyes. He was sobbing low, muted sobs which accompanied the tears that flowed from his eyes, oddly channeling themselves along either side of his nose. As Kling approached him, he thought, Two others. Meyer said there were three. But it’s four.
“Are you the owner of this shop?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “Please look at the others. Back there. Is an ambulance coming? A wild man, a wild man. Look at the others, please. They may be alive. One of them is a woman. Please look at them.”
Kling nodded and walked to the back of the shop. He found the third man bent double over one of the counters, an open book beside him; he had undoubtedly been browsing when the shots were loosed. The man was dead, his mouth open, his eyes staring sightlessly. Unconsciously, Kling’s hand went to the man’s eyelids. Gently he closed them.
The woman lay on the floor beside him.
She was wearing a red blouse.
She had undoubtedly been carrying an armful of books when the bullets took her. She had fallen to the floor, and the books had fallen around her and upon her. One book lay just under her extended right hand. Another, open like a tent, covered her face and her black hair. A third leaned against her curving hip. The red blouse had pulled free from the woman’s black skirt as she had fallen. The skirt had risen over the backs of her long legs. One leg was bent, the other rigid and straight. A black high-heeled pump lay several inches away from one naked foot. The woman wore no stockings.