“Were you living with him or weren’t you?” Carella asked.
“We had separate apartments,” Mandy said.
“Where’s your apartment, Miss Pope?”
“Oh, please call me Mandy.”
Kling cleared his throat. “Where’s your apartment?” he repeated.
“Mandy,” she said, as though teaching a difficult word to a small child.
“Mandy,” Kling said, and then cleared his throat again.
“My apartment is on Randall and Fifth,” she said. Her voice was as delicate as her beauty, she spoke clearly but softly, looking up at the detectives, the smile touching her mouth, behaving as though she were enjoying polite cocktail conversation in the presence of three charming and attentive men at an afternoon party.
“Now, Mandy,” Carella said, “when’s the last time you saw Damascus?”
“Last week,” she said.
“When last week?” Brown asked.
“Last Friday night.”
“Where’d you see him?”
“I picked him up at The Cozy Corners. That’s a nightclub. He works there. He’s a bouncer there.”
“What time’d you pick him up?”
“Closing time. Two o’clock.”
“Where’d you go from there?”
“To his apartment.”
“How long did you stay there?”
“In his apartment?”
“Yes.”
“An hour or so.”
“Doing what?”
“Well, you know,” Mandy said, and again lowered her eyes.
“And then what?” Kling asked.
“I drove him uptown.”
“Where uptown?”
“To South Engels.”
“Why?”
“It’s where he wanted to go.”
“Did he say why?”
“Yes. He said there was a poker game he’d promised to go to.”
“So you drove him there.”
“Yes.”
“First you went to his apartment to make love, and then you drove him uptown to his poker game.”
“Yes.”
“What time was this?”
“Oh, I don’t know exactly. It must have been sometime between three and four in the morning.”
“And that was the last time you saw him?”
“Yes. When he got out of the car.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No.”
“Talked to him?”
“No.”
“He hasn’t called you?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“Have you called him?”
“He hasn’t got a phone.” Mandy paused. “Well, I did call the club, but they said he hasn’t been to work all week. So I thought I’d stop by the apartment this afternoon to see if anything was wrong.”
“Ever hear him mention some people named Leyden?”
“Layton? No.”
“Leyden. L-E-Y-D-E-N.”
“No, never.”
“Did he have anything with him when you left the apartment?”
“Like what?”
“Well, you tell us.”
“Yes, but I don’t know what you mean.”
“Was he carrying a gun?”
“I don’t think so. But I know he has a gun. A little pistol.”
“This would have been a big gun, Miss Pope—”
“Mandy.”
“... Mandy. You couldn’t have missed it.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Miss Pope, was he carrying a shotgun?”
“A shotgun? No. Of course not. Why would he—?”
“Do you know what a shotgun looks like?”
“Well, no, but... well, yes, it’s like a rifle, isn’t it?”
“Somewhat.”
“No, I would have noticed something like that.”
“Was he carrying any sort of a large—”
“No.”
“... anything that could have been a shotgun wrapped up, or in a case—”
“No, he wasn’t carrying anything.”
“Mmm,” Carella said.
“Why would he take a gun to a poker game?” Mandy asked, and looked up at the cops.
“Maybe he wasn’t going to a poker game, Miss Pope.”
“Mandy.”
“Maybe he was going uptown to kill some people.”
“Oh, no.”
“Some people named Rose and Andrew Leyden.”
“No,” Mandy said again.
“You’re sure you haven’t seen him since last Friday night?”
“Yes. And that’s not like Wally, believe me. He’ll usually call me three, four times a week.”
“But this week he hasn’t called you at all?”
“Not once.”
“Did he mention anything about going out of town?”
“Where would he go?”
“You tell us.”
“No place. He has a job here. Why would he leave town?”
“If he killed some people, he might have decided it was best to leave town.”
“Well, I’m sure he didn’t kill anyone.”
“Did you ever go out of town with him?”
“No.”
“Know if he has any relatives outside the city?”
“I don’t know. He never mentioned any.”
“Miss Pope, if you—”
“Mandy.”
“... hear from Damascus, I want you to call this squadroom at once. I’m warning you now that he’s suspected of having committed multiple homicide, and if you know of his whereabouts now—”
“I don’t.”
“... or learn of them at any time in the future, and withhold this information from the police, you would then be considered an accessory.”
“Oh, I’m sure Wally hasn’t killed anyone,” Mandy said.
“An accessory as described in Section 2 of the Penal Law, Miss Pope... Mandy... ‘is a person who, after the commission of a felony, harbors, conceals, or aids the offender, with intent that he may avoid or escape from arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment, having knowledge or reasonable ground to believe that such offender is liable to arrest.’ Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I do. But Wally—”
“We’ve just told you that if we find him we’re going to arrest him, so you now have knowledge of that fact,” Brown said, and paused. “Do you know where he is?”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“Will you call us if you hear from him?”
“Yes, of course I will. But you’re really mistaken. Wally couldn’t have killed anyone.”
“All right, Miss Pope, you’re free to go now, Mandy,” Carella said.
“Show her out, somebody,” Kling said.
Brown showed her out.
9
Everybody likes to spend Saturday in a different way.
Meyer and Hawes went to a poetry reading, Carella got hit on the head, and Bert Kling got beat up.
It was a nice Saturday.
The poetry reading was scheduled to start at 11:00 A.M. in the YMCA on Butler Street, but it did not actually get underway until 11:15, at which time a portly young man wearing muttonchop whiskers and a brown tweed suit stepped through the curtains and told the assembled crowd — some fifty people in all — that this was to be, as they all knew, a memorial service for Marguerite Ryder, who had been buried yesterday. The portly young man then went on to say that ten of Margie’s closest friends and fellow poets had written elegies for her, and that they would be read by their authors this morning accompanied by the guitarist, Luis-Josafat Garzon. The portly young man then introduced Garzon, a sallow-faced gentleman wearing a dark-gray suit. Garzon solemnly sat on a black stool stage left, and the curtains opened, and the first poet stepped forward and began reading his tribute to the dead woman.