“I might call myself Steve,” he said.
At the time, she didn’t think there was anything remarkable about what he’d said. The name he’d chosen. Steve. She didn’t even think it was a particularly WASPy name. She knew a lot of Irish Catholics named Steve, and she didn’t think they considered themselves WASPs.
His voice faltered, his fingers fumbled, the first time he asked her to go to bed with him.
“Do you…is it possible…could we…do you think…is there a chance we might…?”
She kissed him and guided his long slender fingers to the buttons on her blouse.
She went steady with him until her graduation a year later. He was in his junior year at the time. She was eighteen—what her father called “a young woman”—and Salvie was seventeen. While she was still debating whether or not she wanted to go to college, he transferred to a school specializing in music and drama, and the next time she saw him he was completely changed. He had new friends now, new pursuits, new encouraged ambitions. And although in high school he had professed his undying love for her, she now had the feeling he considered her a person from another life, a deaf person he had once known only casually.
She learned much later that he had finally changed his name. Not to Steve. To Sam. Sam Knapp. For Di Napoli. Samuel Knapp. Who’d written a musical that was being performed in Chicago, and who was dating the blonde (andhearing) actress playing the lead role. Teddy remembered that once, long ago, when they were in high school together, he had taken her to see La Traviata .
When she was twenty…
Quite out of the blue…
Steve Carella entered her life.
On the fifth day of February that winter, a Sunday, someone burglarized the offices where she worked, and on Monday morning the sixth, a detective named Stephen Louis Carella came around to ask questions.
She thought it was…well,odd …him having the very first name Salvie Di Napoli would have chosen for himself, although he’d finally ended up with Sam Knapp, dating a cute little blonde and hearing actress in the Second City.
Steve Carella.
She had already decided by then that there were two separate worlds, the world of the hearing and the world of those who could not hear. Or speak. And she had pretty much decided that she didn’t want to have anything more to do with any man in that other world, the hearing world, because Sam Knapp had in the long run made her feel hopelessly and helplessly defective . She did not want to feel defective ever again in her life. Ever.
The second time he came to the office, he brought along a police interpreter. This was two days after the burglary. Tuesday, the seventh of February. The name of the firm for which she’d been working was Endicott Mail Order, Inc., she still remembered it after all these years. She used to address envelopes for them, a not unimportant job in that most of their business was conducted by mail—well, Endicott Mail Order, would they have used carrier pigeons? He had already asked everyone in the office a lot of questions, and now he was back with an interpreter who knew how to sign, and she immediately figured he considered her a prime suspect.
“I thought we could save some time if I brought along an interpreter,” he said, and she thought He doesn’t think I’m a suspect, thank God, he only thinks I’m a dummy .
But he didn’t think that, either.
What he wanted to know was whether any of the people who made deliveries or pickups at the office might have had access to the key to the front door.
“Because you see,” he said, and waited for the interpreter to translate, “there are no marks on the door or around the keyway. There doesn’t seem to have been any forced entry, you see. So I’ve got to think someone got in with a key.”
Watching the interpreter’s flying fingers.
There are lots of people making pickups and deliveries, Teddy signed.
“What’d she say?” Carella asked.
“Lots of pickups and deliveries,” the interpreter said.
“Names,” Carella said, keeping it short, figuring it’d be easier that way. “Can she give me names?”
The interpreter’s fingers flashed.
She watched. Big brown eyes. Brownest eyes Carella had ever seen in his life.
I know a few of them by name, she signed.But usually I know them by their companies .
“She only knows the company names,” the interpreter said.
She had been watching his lips.
She shook her head.
I know some of themessengers’names, too , she signed,but not all of them .
The interpreter shrugged.
“What’d she say?” Carella asked.
“She said she knows some of the messengers’ names.”
“So why didn’t you translate it?”
“I did,” he said, and shrugged again.
“I want to hear everything she has to say.”
“Sure,” the interpreter said. His look said Fuck you.
“Ask her to write them down for me. All the company names, all the individual names.”
Teddy began writing.
“Does the key always hang in that same place?” Carella asked.
She looked up. The interpreter translated.
Yes, she signed.Because we keep the front door locked, and when anyone goes to the bathroom he has to take the door key with him, too. To get back in.
The lock on the door was a spring bolt. The key to it hung on a rack behind Teddy’s desk, alongside a key to the men’s room and a key to the ladies’ room. An experienced burglar wouldn’t have had to steal a key to get into the place. He’d have loided the lock with a credit card. Actually, the burglar who’d done the job here had only borrowed the key and replaced it before he’d left the premises. Throw the police off the scent, he probably figured. Brilliant burglar making no attempt to conceal the absence of forced entry, but hangs the key back up before he leaves. A rocket scientist, this burglar. Carella was willing to bet a week’s salary that he was one of the kids who made deliveries or pickups here. Two weeks’ salary.
He watched her as she completed the list.
Short list.
This one would be a piece of cake.
“Ask her if that’s all of them,” he said to the interpreter.
She had read his lips, she knew the question before it formed on the interpreter’s hands, answered it before he signed the first word.
Yes, she signed.That’s all I can remember .
“Ask her if she’d like to have dinner with me tomorrow night,” Carella said.
“What?” the interpreter said.
“Ask her.”
The interpreter shrugged. His fingers moved. She watched his hands. She turned to look at Carella, surprised. Her own fingers moved. Briefly.
“She wants to know why?” the interpreter said.
“Tell her I think she’s beautiful.”
He signed it to her. Teddy signed back.
“She says she knows she’s beautiful.”
“Tell her I’d like to get to know her better.”
Tell him I’m busy tomorrow night.
“She’s busy tomorrow night.”
“Then how about lunch the next day?”
I’m busy then, too.
“She’s busy then, too.”
“Then how about dinner that night? Friday night. How about dinner?”
I’m busy for dinner Friday, too.