“Mr. Hart, please,” Carella said.
“Who’s calling?” the receptionist asked. She had a definite Calm’s Point accent, and she sounded as if she were chewing gum, even though she was not.
“Detectives Carella and Meyer.”
“Just a minute, please,” she said, and lifted her phone, and pushed a button in the base. “Mr. Hart,” she said, “there are some cops here to see you.” She listened for a moment, and then said, “Yes, sir.” She replaced the receiver on its cradle, gestured toward the inside corridor with a nod of her golden tresses, said, “Go right in, please. Door at the end of the hall,” and then went back to discovering what people were talking about in Vogue.
The gray skies had apparently got to Andrew Hart, too.
“You didn’t have to broadcast to the world that the police department is here,” he said immediately.
“We merely announced ourselves,” Carella said.
“Well, okay, now you’re here,” Hart said, “let’s get it over with.” He was a big man in his middle fifties, with iron-gray hair and black-rimmed eyeglasses. His eyes behind their lenses were brown and swift and cruel. His jacket was draped over the back of the chair behind his desk, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up over powerful forearms dense with black hair. A gold expansion bracelet, undoubtedly one of his own, held his watch fastened to his thick wrist. “If you want to know the truth,” he said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, anyway. I told you I don’t know any Sarah Fletcher, and I don’t.”
“Here’s her book, Mr. Hart,” Carella said, figuring there was no sense wasting time with a lot of bullshit. He handed the address book to Hart, opened to the MEMORANDA page. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Hart said, and shook his head. “But how it got there is beyond me.”
“You don’t know anybody named Sarah Fletcher, huh?”
“No.”
“Is it possible she’s someone you met at a party, someone you exchanged numbers with . . .”
“No.”
“Are you married, Mr. Hart?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“We’ve got a picture of Mrs. Fletcher, I wonder . . .”
“Don’t go showing me any pictures of a corpse,” Hart said.
“This was taken when she was alive. It’s a recent picture, it was on the dresser in her bedroom. Would you mind looking at it?”
“I don’t see any sense in this at all,” Hart said. “I told you I don’t know her. How’s looking at her picture . . . ?”
“Meyer?” Carella said, and Meyer handed him a manila envelope. Carella opened the flap and removed from the envelope a framed picture of Sarah Fletcher, which he handed to Hart. Hart looked at the photograph, and then immediately looked up at Carella.
“What is this?” he said.
“Do you recognize that picture, Mr. Hart?”
“Let me see your badge,” Hart said.
“What?”
“Your badge, your badge. Let me see your identification.”
Carella took out his wallet, and opened it to where his detective’s shield was pinned opposite his I.D. card. Hart studied both, and then said, “I thought this might be a shakedown.”
“Why’d you think that?”
Hart did not answer. He looked at the photograph again, shook his head, and said, “Somebody killed her, huh?”
“Yes, somebody did,” Carella answered. “Did you know her?”
“I knew her.”
“I thought you said you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know Sarah Fletcher, if that’s who you think she was. But I knew this broad, all right.”
“Who’d you think she was?” Meyer asked.
“Just who she told me she was.”
“Which was?”
“Sadie Collins. She introduced herself as Sadie Collins, and that’s who I knew her as. Sadie Collins.”
“Where was this, Mr. Hart? Where’d you meet her?”
“In a bar.”
“Where?”
“Who the hell remembers? A singles’ bar. The city’s full of them.”
“Would you remember when?”
“At least a year ago.”
“Ever go out with her?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Often enough.”
“How often?”
“I used to see her once or twice a week.”
“Used to? When did you stop seeing her?”
“Last summer.”
“But until then you used to see her quite regularly.”
“Yeah, on and off.”
“Twice a week, you said.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Did you know she was married?”
“Who? Sadie? You’re kidding.”
“She never told you she was married?”
“Never.”
“You saw her twice a week . . .”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t know she was married?”
“How was I supposed to know that? She never said a word about it. Listen, there are enough single girls in this city, I don’t have to go looking for trouble with somebody who’s married.”
“Where’d you pick her up?” Meyer asked suddenly.
“I told you. A bar. I don’t remember which . . .”
“When you went out, I mean.”
“What?”
“When you were going out, where’d you pick her up? At her apartment?”
“No. She used to come to my place.”
“Where’d you call her? When you wanted to reach her?”
“I didn’t. She used to call me.”
“Where’d you go, Mr. Hart? When you went out?”
“We didn’t go out too much.”
“What did you do?”
“She used to come to my place. We’d spend a lot of time there.”
“But when you did go out. . . .”
“Well, the truth is we never went out.”
“Never?”
“Never. She didn’t want to go out much.”
“Didn’t you think that was strange?”
“No.” Hart shrugged. “I figured she liked to stay home.”
“If you never went out, what did you do, exactly, Mr. Hart?”
“Well now, what the hell do you think we did, exactly?” Hart said.
“You tell us.”
“You’re big boys. Figure it out for yourself.”
“Why’d you stop seeing her, Mr. Hart?”
“I met somebody else. A nice girl. I’m very serious about her. That’s why I thought . . .”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s why you thought what, Mr. Hart?”
“Okay, that’s why I thought this was a shakedown. I thought somebody had found out about Sadie and me and . . . well . . . I’m very serious about this girl, I wouldn’t want her to know anything about the past. About Sadie and me. About seeing Sadie.”
“What was so terrible about seeing Sadie?” Meyer asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why would anyone want to shake you down?”
“I don’t know.”
“If there was nothing terrible . . .”
“There wasn’t.”
“Then what’s there to hide?”
“There’s nothing to hide. I’m just very serious about this girl, and I wouldn’t want her to know . . .”
“To know what?”
“About Sadie.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just wouldn’t.”
“Was there something wrong with Sadie?”
“No, no, she was a beautiful woman, beautiful.”
“Then why would you be ashamed . . . ?”
“Ashamed? Who said anything about being ashamed?”
“You said you wouldn’t want your girlfriend . . .”