“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Kling said.
“When?” Carella asked.
The Roundelay Bar was on Jefferson Avenue, three blocks from the new museum. At 5:15 that afternoon, when Kling arrived for his business meeting with Anne Gilroy, it was thronged with advertising executives and pretty young secretaries and models, all of whom behaved like guests at a private cocktail party, moving, drinking, chattering, moving on again, hardly any of them sitting at the handful of tables scattered throughout the dimly lit room.
Anne Gilroy was sitting at a table in the far corner, wearing an open crochet dress over what appeared to be a body stocking. At least, Kling hoped it was a body stocking, and not just a body. He felt very much out of place in an atmosphere as sleek and as sophisticated as this one, where everyone seemed to be talking about the latest Doyle Dane campaign, or the big Solters and Sabinson coup, or the new Blaine Thompson three-sheet, whatever any of those were. He felt shabbily dressed in his blue plaid jacket, his tie all wrong and improperly knotted, his gun in its shoulder holster causing a very un-Chipplike bulge, felt in fact like a bumbling country hick who had inadvertently stumbled into whatever was making this city tick. And besides, he felt guilty as hell.
Anne waved the moment she saw him. He moved his way through the buzzing crowd and then sat beside her and looked around quickly, certain somehow that Cindy would be standing behind one of the pillars, brandishing a hatchet.
“You’re right on time,” Anne said, smiling. “I like punctual men.”
“Have you ordered yet?” he asked.
“No, I was waiting for you.”
“Well, what would you like?”
“Martinis give me a loose, free feeling,” she said. “I’ll have a martini. Straight up.”
He signaled to the waiter and ordered a martini for her and a scotch and water for himself.
“Do you like my dress?” Anne asked.
“Yes, it’s very pretty.”
“Did you think it was me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Underneath.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“It isn’t.”
“Okay.”
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, no. No. No.”
“You keep looking around the room.”
“Habit. Check it out, you know, known criminals, you know, types. Occupational hazard.”
“My, you’re nervous,” she said. “Does my dress make you nervous?”
“No, it’s a very nice dress.”
“I wish I had the guts to really wear it naked underneath,” Anne said, and giggled.
“Well, you’d get arrested,” Kling said. “Section 1140 of the Penal Law.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exposure of person,” Kling said, and began quoting. “A person who willfully and lewdly exposes his person, or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where others are present, or procures another so to expose himself, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
“Oh, my,” Anne said.
“Yes,” Kling said, suddenly embarrassed.
“ ‘Private parts,’ I love that.”
“Well, that’s what we call them. I mean, in police work. I mean, that’s the way we refer to them.”
“Yes, I love it.”
“Mmm,” Kling said. “Hey, here’re the drinks.”
“Shall I mix it, sir?” the waiter asked.
“What?”
“Did you want this mixed, sir?”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, just a little water in it, please,” he said, and smiled at Anne and almost knocked over her martini. The waiter poured a little water into the scotch and moved away.
“Cheers,” Kling said.
“Cheers,” Anne said, “do you have a girlfriend?”
Kling, who was already drinking, almost choked. “What?” he said.
“A girlfriend.”
“Yes,” he answered glumly, and nodded.
“Is that why you’re so worried?”
“Who’s worried?” he said.
“You shouldn’t be,” Anne said. “After all, this is only a business meeting.”
“That’s right, I’m not worried at all,” Kling said.
“What’s she like? Your girlfriend?” Anne said.
“Well, I’d much rather discuss the conversation you had with Mrs. Leyden.”
“Are you engaged?”
“Not officially.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we plan on getting married someday, I guess, but we—”
“You guess?”
“Well, no, actually there’s no guesswork involved. We simply haven’t set the date, that’s all. Cindy’s still in school, and—”
“Is that her name? Cindy?”
“Yes. For Cynthia.”
“And you say she’s still in school? How old is she?”
“Twenty-three. She’s finishing her master’s this June.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, and she’ll be going on for her doctorate in the fall.”
“Oh.”
“Yes,” Kling said.
“She must be very bright.”
“She is.”
“I barely finished high school,” Anne said, and paused. “Is she pretty?”
“Yes.” Kling took another swallow of scotch and then said, “I’m supposed to be the detective, but you’re asking all the questions.”
“I’m a very curious girl,” Anne said, and smiled. “But go ahead. What do you want to know?”
“What time did you call Mrs. Leyden last Friday?”
“Oh, I thought you were going to ask some questions about me.”
“No, actually I—”
“I’m twenty-five years old,” Anne said, “born and raised right here in the city. My father’s a Transit Authority employee, my mother’s a housewife. We’re all very Irish.” She paused and sipped at the martini. “I began working for AT&M right after I graduated high school, and I’ve been there since. I believe in making love not war, and I think you’re possibly the handsomest man I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Thank you,” Kling mumbled, and hastily lifted his glass to his lips.
“Does that embarrass you?”
“No.”
“What does it do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I believe in speaking honestly and frankly,” Anne said.
“I see that.”
“Would you like to go to bed with me?”
Kling did not answer immediately, because what popped into his mind instantly was the single word Yes! and it was followed by a succession of wild images interspersed with blinking neon lights that spelled out additional messages such as You’re goddamn right I’d like to go to bed with you and When? and Your place or mine? and things like that. So he waited until he had regained control of his libido, and then he calmly said, “I’ll have to think it over. In the meantime, let’s talk about Mrs. Leyden, shall we?”
“Sure,” Anne said. “What would you like to know?”
“What time did you call her?”
“Just before closing time Friday.”
“Which was?”
“About ten to five, something like that.”
“Do you remember the conversation?”
“Yes. I said, ‘Hello, may I please speak to Mrs. Leyden?’ and she said, ‘This is Mrs. Leyden.’ So I informed her that her husband had wired us from California to ask that she send him a fresh checkbook, and she said she knew all about it, but thanks anyway.”
“She knew all about what?”
“The checkbook.”