“Take my advice,” Carella said. “Don’t suggest this to Rollie. I don’t think he’d understand.”
“Do you understand?” Fletcher asked.
“Not entirely,” Carella said.
Fletcher finished his drink. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said. “Unless you see something you want.”
“I already have everything I want,” Carella answered, and wondered if he should tell Teddy about the brunette in the peekaboo blouse.
The Purple Chairs was a bar farther downtown, apparently misnamed, since everything in the place was purple except the chairs. Ceiling, walls, bar, tables, curtains, napkins, mirrors, lights, all were purple. The chairs were white.
The misnomer was intentional.
The Purple Chairs was a Lesbian bar, and the subtle question being asked was: Is everybody out of step but Johnny? The chairs were white. Pure. Pristine. Innocent. Virginal. Then why insist on calling them purple? Where did perversity lie, in the actuality or in the labeling?
“Why here?” Carella asked immediately.
“Why not?” Fletcher answered. “I’m showing you some of the city’s more frequented spots.”
Carella strenuously doubted that this was one of the city’s more frequented spots. It was now a little past eleven, and the place was only sparsely populated, entirely by women—women talking, women smiling, women dancing to the jukebox, women touching, women kissing. As Carella and Fletcher moved toward the bar, tended by a bull dagger with shirt sleeves rolled up over her powerful forearms, a rush of concerted hostility focused upon them like the beam of a death ray. The bartender verbalized it.
“Sightseeing?” she asked.
“Just browsing,” Fletcher answered.
“Try the public library.”
“It’s closed.”
“Maybe you’re not getting my message.”
“What’s your message?”
“Is anybody bothering you?” the bartender asked.
“No.”
“Then stop bothering us. We don’t need you here, and we don’t want you here. You like to see freaks, go to the circus.” The bartender turned away, moving swiftly to a woman at the end of the bar.
“I think we’ve been invited to leave,” Carella said.
“We certainly haven’t been invited to stay,” Fletcher said. “Did you get a good look?”
“I’ve been inside dyke bars before.”
“Really? My first time was in September. Just goes to show,” he said, and moved unsteadily toward the purple entrance door.
The cold December air worked furiously on the martinis Fletcher had consumed, so that by the time they got to a bar named Quigley’s Rest, just off Skid Row, he was stumbling along drunkenly and clutching Carella’s arm for support. Carella suggested that perhaps it was time to be heading home, but Fletcher said he wanted Carella to see them all, see them all, and then led him into the kind of joint Carella had mentioned earlier, where he knew instantly that he was stepping into a hangout frequented by denizens, and was instantly grateful for the .38 holstered at his hip. The floor of Quigley’s Rest was covered with sawdust, the lights were dim, the place at twenty minutes to midnight was crowded with people who had undoubtedly awoken at 10 P . M . and who would go till ten the next morning. There was very little about their external appearances to distinguish them from the customers in the first bar Fletcher and Carella had visited. They were similarly dressed, they spoke in the same carefully modulated voices, they were neither as blatant as the crowd in Fanny’s nor as subdued as the crowd in The Purple Chairs. But if a speeding shark in cloudy water can still be distinguished from a similarly speeding dolphin, so were the customers in Quigley’s immediately identified as dangerous and deadly. Carella was not sure that Fletcher sensed this as strongly as he, himself, did. He knew only that he did not wish to stay here long, especially with Fletcher as drunk as he was.
The trouble started almost at once.
Fletcher shoved his way into position at the bar, and a thin-faced young man wearing a dark blue suit and a flowered tie more appropriate to April than December turned toward him sharply and said, “Watch it.” He barely whispered the words, but they hung on the air with deadly menace, and before Fletcher could react or reply, the young man shoved the flat of his palm against Fletcher’s upper arm, with such force that he knocked him to the floor. Fletcher blinked up at him, and started to get drunkenly to his feet. The young man suddenly kicked him in the chest, a flatfooted kick that was less powerful than the shove had been but had the same effect. Fletcher fell back to the floor again, and this time his head crashed heavily against the sawdust. The young man swung his body in preparation for another kick, this time aiming it at Fletcher’s head.
“That’s it,” Carella said.
The young man hesitated. Still poised on the ball of one foot, the other slightly back and cocked for release, he looked at Carella and said, “What’s it?” He was smiling. He seemed to welcome the opportunity of taking on another victim. He turned fully toward Carella now, balancing his weight evenly on both feet, fists bunched. “Did you say something?” he asked, still smiling.
“Pack your bag, sonny,” Carella said, and bent down to help Fletcher to his feet. He was prepared for what happened next, and was not surprised by it. The only one surprised was the young man, who threw his right fist at the crouching Carella and suddenly found himself flying over Carella’s head to land flat on his back in the sawdust. He did next what he had done instinctively since the time he was twelve years old. He reached for a knife in the side pocket of his trousers. Carella did not wait for the knife to clear his pocket. Carella kicked him cleanly and swiftly in the balls. Then he turned to the bar, where another young man seemed ready to spring into action, and very quietly said, “I’m a police officer. Let’s cool it, huh?”
The second young man cooled it very quickly. The place was very silent now. With his back to the bar, and hoping the bartender would not hit him on the head with a sap or a bottle or both, Carella reached under Fletcher’s arms and helped him up.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yes, fine,” Fletcher said.
“Come on.”
He walked Fletcher to the door, moving as swiftly as possible. He fully recognized that his shield afforded little enough protection in a place like this, and all he wanted to do was get the hell out fast. On the street, as they stumbled toward the automobile, he prayed only that they would not be cold-cocked before they got to it.
A half-dozen men came out of the bar just as they climbed into the automobile. “Lock that door!” Carella snapped, and then turned the ignition key, and stepped on the gas, and the car lurched away from the curb in a squeal of burning rubber. He did not ease up on the accelerator until they were a mile from Quigley’s, by which time he was certain they were not being followed.
“That was very nice,” Fletcher said.
“Yes, very nice indeed,” Carella said.
“I admire that. I admire a man who can do that,” Fletcher said.
“Why in hell did you pick that sweet dive?” Carella asked.
“I wanted you to see them all,” Fletcher said, and then eased his head back against the seat cushion, and fell promptly asleep.
11
E arly Monday morning, on Kling’s day off, he called Cindy Forrest. It was only seven-thirty, but he knew her sleeping and waking habits as well as he knew his own, and since the phone was on the kitchen wall near the refrigerator, and since she would at that moment be preparing breakfast, he was not surprised when she answered it on the second ring.