“Occasionally,” Meyer said dryly.
“How’d you happen to meet her?” Kling asked.
“She admired the ring I was wearing. It was a good opening gambit because the ring happened to be one of my own.” Thornton paused. “I designed it and made it. Here at the shop.”
“Was she alone when you met her?” Kling asked.
“Alone and lonely,” Thornton said, and grinned. It was a knowing grin, a grin hoping for a similar grin in response from Kling and Meyer, who, being cops, had undoubtedly seen and heard all kinds of things and were therefore men of the world, as was Thornton himself, comrades three who knew all about lonely women in singles’ bars.
“Did you realize she was married?” Kling asked, sort of spoiling the Three Musketeers image.
“No. Is she?”
“Yes,” Meyer said. Neither of the detectives had yet informed Thornton that the lady in question, Sarah or Sadie or both, was now unfortunately deceased. They were saving that for last, like dessert.
“So what happened?” Kling said.
“Gee, I didn’t know she was married,” Thornton said, seeming truly surprised. “Otherwise nothing would’ve happened.”
“What did happen?”
“I bought her a few drinks, and then I took her home with me. I was living alone at the time, the same pad on South Lindner, but alone. We balled, and then I put her in a cab.”
“When did you see her next?”
“The following day. It was goofy. She called me in the morning, said she was on her way downtown. I was still in bed. I said, ‘So come on down, baby.’ And she did. Believe me, she did.” Thornton grinned his man-of-the-world grin again, inviting Kling and Meyer into his exclusive all-male club that knew all about women calling early in the morning to say they were on their way down, baby. Somehow, Kling and Meyer did not grin back.
Instead, Kling said, “Did you see her again after that?”
“Two or three times a week.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To the pad on South Lindner.”
“Never went any place but there?”
“Never. She’d give me a buzz on the phone, say she was on her way, and was I ready? Man, I was always ready for her.”
“Why’d you quit seeing her?”
“I went out of town for a while. When I got back, I just didn’t hear from her again.”
“Why didn’t you call her?”
“I didn’t know where to reach her.”
“She never gave you her phone number?”
“Nope. Wasn’t listed in the directory, either. No place in the city. I tried all five books.”
“Speaking of books,” Kling said, “what do you make of this?”
He opened Sarah Fletcher’s address book to the MEMORANDA page and extended it to Thornton. Thornton studied it and said, “Yeah, what about it? She wrote this down the night we met.”
“You saw her writing it?”
“Sure.”
“Did she write those initials at the same time?”
“What initials?”
“The ones in parentheses. Under your phone number.”
Thornton studied the page more closely. “How would I know?” he said, frowning.
“You said you saw her writing . . .”
“Yeah, but I didn’t see the actual page, I mean, we were in bed, man, this was like after the second time around, and she asked me what the address was, and how she could get in touch with me, and I told her. But I didn’t actually see the page itself. I only saw her writing in the book, you dig?”
“Got any idea what the initials mean?”
“TS can only mean ‘Tough Shit,’ ” Thornton said, and grinned.
“Any reason why she might want to write that in her book?” Meyer asked.
“Hey, I’m only kidding,” Thornton said, the grin expanding. “We had a ball together. Otherwise, why’d she keep coming back for more?”
“Who knows? She stopped coming back, didn’t she?”
“Only because I went out of town for a while.”
“How long a while?”
“Four days,” Thornton said. “I went out to Arizona to pick up some Indian silver. We sell some crap here, too, in addition to what Paul and I make.”
“Gone only four days, and the lady never called again,” Kling said.
“Yeah, well, maybe she got sore. I left kind of sudden like.”
“What day was it?”
“Huh?”
“The day you left?”
“I don’t know. Why? The middle of the week, I guess. I don’t remember. Anyway, who cares?” Thornton said. “There are plenty of broads in this city. What’s one more or less?” He shrugged, and then looked suddenly thoughtful.
“Yes?” Meyer said.
“Nothing. Just . . .”
“Yes?”
“She was kind of special, I have to admit it. I mean, she wasn’t the kind of broad you’d take home to mother, but she was something else. She was really something else.”
“How do you mean?”
“She was . . .” Thornton grinned. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “She took me places I’d never been before, you know what I mean?”
“No, what do you mean?” Kling said.
“Use your imagination,” Thornton said, still grinning.
“I can’t,” Kling answered. “There’s no place I’ve never been before.”
“Sadie would’ve found some for you,” Thornton said, and the grin suddenly dropped from his face. “She’ll call again, I’m sure of it. She’s got my number right there in her book, she’ll call.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Meyer said.
“Why not? She kept coming back, didn’t she? We had . . .”
“She’s dead,” Meyer said.
They kept watching his face. It did not crumble, it did not express grief, it did not even express shock. The only thing it expressed was sudden anger.
“The stupid twat,” Thornton said. “That’s all she ever was, a stupid twat.”
Police work (like life) is often not too tidy. Take surveillance, for example. On Friday afternoon, Carella had asked Byrnes for permission to begin surveillance of Gerald Fletcher on Sunday morning. Being a police officer himself, and knowing that police work (like life) is often not too tidy, Byrnes never once thought of asking Carella why he would not prefer to start his surveillance the very next day, Saturday, instead of waiting two days. The reason Carella did not choose to start the very next day was that police work (like life) is often not too tidy—as in the case of the noun “surveillance” and the noun/adjective “surveillant,” neither of which has a verb to go with it in the English language.
Carella had 640 odds-and-ends to clean up in the office on Saturday before he could begin the surveillance of Gerald Fletcher with anything resembling an easy conscience. So he had spent the day making phone calls and typing up reports and generally trying to put things in order. In all his years of police experience, he had never known a criminal who was so considerate of a policeman’s lot that he would wait patiently for one crime to be solved before committing another. There were four burglaries, two assaults, a robbery, and a forgery still unsolved in Carella’s case load; the least he could do was try to create some semblance of order from the information he had on each before embarking on a lengthy and tedious surveillance. Besides, surveillance (like police work) is often not too tidy.
On Sunday morning, Carella was ready to become a surveillant. That is to say, he was ready to adopt a surveillant stance and thereby begin surveillance of his suspect. The trouble was, just as the English language had been exceptionally untidy in not having stolen the verb from the French when it swiped the noun and the adjective, a surveillance (like life and like police work) is bound to get untidy if there is nobody to surveille.