“Boy,” Monroe said.
The milkman was still in a state of shock. He and Kling made a perfect couple, each sitting pale and trembling across from Carella in the small luncheonette several blocks from the apartment building. It was 6:10 A.M. and the place had just opened. Several truck drivers were sitting at the counter, sharing a privileged early-morning jocularity with the owner of the place. A sleepy-eyed waitress wearing a uniform already soiled swiveled over to the leatherette booth where Carella and his wan companions sat, and took their breakfast orders. Both Kling and the milkman ordered only coffee.
“What time did you discover the open door, Mr. Novello?” Carella asked the milkman.
“About a quarter to five. Just before I called the police. What time was that?” he asked Kling.
“Murchison clocked the squeal in at four forty-seven,” Kling said.
“Is that when you usually deliver milk in that building?”
“Yeah, I start there about four-thirty. I’m generally out by five. I start on the top floor, you know, and work my way down. The Leydens live on the third floor.”
“All right, what happened?”
“I already told your partner.”
“Let’s hear it again.”
“Well, I come to the back door, which is where I usually make my delivery — they got a milk catch on the door, you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“It’s the wire thing,” Novello said, explaining anyway, “that has a loop goes around the neck of the bottle. You put the bottle in it, then you shove the catch back through this hole in the door, and it drops down on the inside, locking the bottle in, you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Carella said again.
“They take a bottle every other morning, the Leydens. You find with most people in the neighborhood, they just take enough to get them through breakfast, you see, and later they shop at the grocery for however much more they’ll need. That’s the way it works.”
“I see. Go on.”
“So I come down to the third floor—”
“How?”
“Huh? Oh, by the steps. I walked down from the fourth floor. I got Levine and Davidson on the fourth floor, and then only the Leydens on three. By the steps.”
“Yes?”
“And I put down the carrier, and I’m reaching for the bottle when I see the kitchen door is open.”
“Wide open or just ajar?”
“Wide open. I could see right in the kitchen and also some of the living room.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I figured maybe I should just close the door and beat it, you know? But then I wondered what the kitchen door was doing open at five o’clock in the morning. I mean, what’s the door doing open?”
“Did you go in?”
“I went in.”
“And saw the bodies?”
“I saw only Mrs. Leyden,” Novello said, and swallowed.
“Then what did you do?”
“I went downstairs and called the police.”
“Why didn’t you use the phone in the apartment?”
“I didn’t want to get my fingerprints on nothing. I didn’t touch nothing in that apartment, I didn’t want to get involved in nothing.”
“Where’d you make you call from?”
“There’s an all-night cafeteria on Dixon, I called from there.”
“Then what?”
“I was told to go back to the building and wait, which is what I did. That’s when Mr. Kling here come over to investigate.”
“Did you call your boss?”
“Yeah, right after I hung up with Mr. Kling. I’m a working man, you know, I still had milk to deliver.” Novello sighed and said, “He sent out another man to finish the route. I sure hope he don’t dock me for it.”
“You did the right thing, Mr. Novello,” Carella said.
“I hope so. It’s a tough decision to make, you know? Like your first instinct is to just get out of there, just get as far away as possible. It’s a funny thing. It scares you. A thing like that.”
“But you called the police.”
“Yeah, well... ” Novello shrugged. “I liked that lady. She was a nice lady. She used to give me a cup of coffee every Wednesday when I came around to collect the bill. What the hell, she didn’t have to do that.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand it. I met Mr. Leyden one Wednesday when he was home, he travels a lot, you know, I think he sells heavy machinery or something. He seemed like a very nice man. He was telling me about how he loved his job and all, you know, but how he didn’t like being away from home for such long periods of time, poor guy was sometimes on the road two or three months at a stretch. He seemed like a really nice man.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, I don’t know, during the summer sometime.”
“Was that the only time you’d seen them together?”
“Yeah, just that once. But they seemed like a real happy couple, you know what I mean? You know, you can tell when a man and his wife ain’t getting along. But she kept calling him ‘honey’ and ‘dearie’ and things like that, you could see they were happy. I don’t want to sound corny, but you could see they... ” Novello paused. “Loved each other,” he said at last.
“Now, you say you went into the building at four-fifteen, is that right, Mr. Novello?”
“No, four-thirty,” Novello said. “That’s the time I usually go in, about four-thirty.”
“And went directly to the tenth floor?”
“Yeah. There’s a self-service elevator, you know, so I just take that up each morning.”
“See anyone in the lobby?”
“Not a soul.”
“Anyone stirring in the building?”
“Just Mr. Jacobson, he’s a postman.”
“Where’d you see him?”
“On the fifth floor. He usually leaves about a quarter to five each morning, he works all the way up in Riverhead. He probably stops for breakfast, you know, and then goes to work. They got to be in early, those letter carriers.”
“He say anything to you?”
“Yeah, he said, ‘Good morning, Jimmy,’ and I said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Jacobson, little chilly out there this morning.’ Something like that. We usually exchange a few words, you know. They been taking milk from me for seven years now, the Jacobsons. We whisper, you know, because the whole building’s usually asleep.”
“See anybody else?”
“Not a soul.”
“Either before or after you discovered Mrs. Leyden’s body?”
“Just Mr. Jacobson, nobody else.”
“Okay, Mr. Novello, thanks very much,” Carella said. “Bert? You have anything to ask?”
“No, nothing,” Kling said. He was still pale. He had hardly touched his coffee.
“Why don’t you take a break, meet me at the building later?” Carella suggested.
“No, I’ll stick with it,” Kling said.
“It scares you, you know?” Novello said. “A thing like that.”
2
Because taking the fingerprints of a suicide or homicide victim is mandatory, someone inherited the pleasant task of holding hands with two separate corpses that Saturday morning.
The someone was a laboratory technician named Detective 3rd/Grade Marshall Davies. He was a new technician, and he generally got the crumby jobs like picking glass headlight slivers out of a dead accident victim’s back, or vacuuming the clothes of a man who’d been hit seven times with a hatchet, or — like now — fingerprinting corpses.
Fresh dead bodies are easier to fingerprint than those that have been around awhile. That’s one of the small consolations in this racket, Davies thought as he worked, the knowledge that all you have to do with a fresh dead body, where the fingers haven’t yet clenched up, is apply the ink directly to each separate finger, comme-ça! (he applied the ink to Rose Leyden’s extended forefinger, using a small roller), and then take your impression with paper attached to a spoon-shaped piece of wood, voilà, he thought, stop it, you’re not even French. Nine fingers to go on the lady, he thought, or, to be precise, seven fingers and two thumbs. We then administer to the gentleman in his undershorts in the bedroom, some job. My mother said I should become an accountant, but I said, No, Mama, police work is exciting. So here’s Saturday morning, and Detective 3rd/Grade Marshall Davies is taking fingerprints from dead people, instead of playing ball in the park with his three-year-old son. Come on, lady, give me your ring finger.