Well, terrific, he thought.
Great way to start the weekend.
Guy breaks in last night, Marilyn breaks in this morning. Might as well have broken in, the news she brought. Sure, let's have some coffee, Nelson, and oh by the way I want to end it. Marilyn Hollis involved? Will wonders never! With a cop, no less. With a cop no bigger than my thumb.
He felt like crying.
Come on, he thought, this city is full of women. Swarm all over me at gallery openings, ooo, what lovely work. But none of them Marilyn, oh, what a lovely piece of work was Marilyn.
Past tense already.
Was.
Just like that.
Nelson, I want to end it.
Nelson… goodbye.
Yo te adoro, she'd told him once, the waterbed rippling beneath them, yo te adoro, I adore you in Spanish, which she'd picked up in South America. Spoke Spanish like a native, yo te adoro. Didn't mean it seriously, didn't mean she really adored him, really loved him, meant it within her own definition of their relationship, no commitments, no involvement, no strings.
He wondered now how deep his own involvement had been.
Out of his life for only ten minutes, and he felt like throwing himself out the window.
Yo te adoro.
Murmuring the words around his cock, talk about deep.
Come on, he thought, there are other women.
He rose from where he'd been sitting at the work table, the table stinking of turpentine, his hands stinking of turpentine, and he went into the living area, what she used to call the nook, their nook, nookie in the nook, he'd never had a woman like Marilyn in his life, never. He turned on the water tap, washed his hands over the sink, dried them on a dish towel.
He looked at the kitchen clock.
Twenty minutes to eleven.
Too early for a man to start drowning his sorrow?
Hell it was.
He went to the shelf near the bed, took down the bottle of scotch and uncorked it. He took a glass from the cabinet, and poured three fingers into it. He raised the glass in a toast.
"Marilyn," he said out loud, "I think I was in love with you."
He tilted the glass to his mouth and took a deep swallow.
The clock on the kitchen wall read eighteen minutes to eleven.
His first reaction was an automatic one.
He spit out the vile-tasting scotch at once, tried to spit it out, but most of it had already gone down his throat and only a thin, brown, residual spray spattered onto the refrigerator door.
He felt fire burning the inside of his mouth, fire burning his throat and his insides. He clutched for his throat, dropping the glass, the glass shattering in a hundred brilliant shards on the kitchen floor, turned toward the sink, water, grabbed for another glass on the drain board, reached for the water tap, and turned it open, his mouth filling with saliva. He spit into the sink, trying to clear his throat of whatever was burning it, burning his stomach now, saliva filling his mouth again, he spit again, and suddenly felt nauseous. He dropped the glass into the sink. It bounced but it did not break, he thought it remarkable that the glass didn't break and then he began vomiting into the sink, the stream of water splashing into the vomit as it spewed from his mouth, and clutched for his stomach when a sharp pain knifed his abdomen, causing him to bend over almost double.
He reeled away from the sink.
The phone.
A doctor.
He felt faint all at once. He fell forward onto the waterbed, the bed rippling beneath his weight as he reached for the telephone. His bowels let go in that moment, he felt a hot gush of liquid excrement in his pants, and this frightened him more than anything else had, letting go that way, but he had only seconds to consider his fear because all at once he was jerking spasmodically on the bed, arms and legs twitching, head snapping back, gasping for breath, he couldn't breathe, his lungs were closing, his throat was closing, his chest was caving in, oh Jesus, he thought, Marilyn, he thought, and then he didn't think anything else because he was dead.
The clock on the kitchen wall read sixteen minutes to eleven.
Due to the diligence of the Sixth Precinct, Carella and Willis were on the scene at ten minutes past twelve. A sculptor who lived down the hall from Riley had knocked on the door, eager to show him a new piece he'd just finished, tried the knob, found the door open, and discovered Riley lying dead on the waterbed. He'd run back to his own loft and immediately called the police. The responding patrolmen in Adam car were Charlie and Frank. They took one look, and then called back to their sergeant to say they had a stiff at 74 Carlson Street. They also told the sergeant that the Eight-Seven was working a pair of homicides the stiff had mentioned to them—when he was still alive, of course. The sergeant called the Eight-Seven at eleven forty-one. It took Willis and Carella less than a half-hour to get all the way downtown.
Charlie and Frank were still at the scene.
Their sergeant had arrived by then. A uniformed captain was also there; homicides sometimes brought out the brass.
"M.E.'s on the way," the captain said.
"Adam car responded to a previous complaint here at a little before ten this morning," the sergeant said. "Victim reporting a break-in last night."
"Nothing was stolen," Charlie said at once, eager to cover his ass. This damn thing had suddenly mushroomed into a homicide.
"We were gonna put in our report that the Eight-Seven had him covered," Frank said, which was stretching the truth a bit.
The captain looked at both men non-committally. Charlie and Frank knew that non-committal look. They both figured they were in deep shit.
"Bottle of scotch there on the cabinet, smells like a dozen politicians smoking in a backroom," the sergeant said.
Carella wondered if the sergeant had handled the bottle.
"Package of Virginia Slims and a woman's cigarette lighter on the table in the other room," the captain said. "Initials M.H. on it."
Carella looked at Willis.
"There was a lady came in around ten," Charlie said, figuring if he could solve this case on the spot, he was home free.
Carella said nothing.
"Tall blonde lady," Frank said.
"Good-looking broad," Charlie said.
"Dressed all in blue. To match her eyes."
"Victim said she was a friend of his."
"Did you get her name?" the sergeant asked.
"Carolyn, I think," Charlie said.
No, not Carolyn, Carella thought.
"Carolyn what?" the captain said.
"I don't know, sir," Charlie said.
"We were responding to a 10-21," Frank said. "The victim said the lady was a friend of his."
"Still, you shoulda got her full name."
We've already got her full name, Carella thought.
"Nothing was stolen," Charlie said again, and shrugged.
The M.E. came into the loft, breezing past the patrolman posted at the door.
"Did you see the naked lady on the elevator doors?" he said. "Where's the body?"
"There on the waterbed," the captain said.
"Oh my," the M.E. said, "it certainly does stink in here, doesn't it?"
He went directly to the waterbed, skirting the shards of glass on the floor.
"Puuu," he said, and knelt beside the body.
Carella walked into the working area of the loft. He looked down at the package of Virginia Slims on the table, the monogrammed gold lighter sitting squarely on top of it. M.H. You've come a long way, baby, he thought. He looked at the finished painting against the wall. Riley seemed to have worked out the problem of making it snow.