The manager was dressed in brown, too, just like the girls behind the counter. His name tag read BUD, and beneath that MANAGER. He was eating a slice of pizza when he came out of the kitchen to where Bloom and Rawles were waiting for him. He was perhaps twenty years old, a thin, lanky kid growing a sparse mustache. In Florida, and maybe everywhere in the United States, all the fast-food joints are run by kids. You never see an employee over the age of twenty in a fast-food joint. Kids take the orders, kids wipe off the tables, kids do the cooking, kids do the supervising. If the kids of America ever decided to go on strike, half the population would starve to death.
“Can I help you?” Bud asked. He had finished the pizza and was now licking his fingers.
“Police,” Rawles said, and flashed his badge. “Anyplace we can sit down and talk?”
“Sure, plenty of empty tables,” Bud said. He gestured toward a table near the window. “Any trouble here, officers?”
“No, we just wondered if you could help us with something,” Bloom said.
“Sure, happy to be of assistance,” Bud said.
They went over to the table and sat. They had no pictures to show Bud. They had no names they could throw at him. They had only Barish’s vague description of the two girls who had come to his shop on foot — and the red dress one of them had been wearing when she died. Rawles took the dress out of the evidence envelope.
“Ever see this dress before?” he asked.
Bud looked at it.
“No, Officer, I have not,” Bud said. He looked suddenly nervous.
“Anybody wearing this dress ever come in here?” Bloom said.
“No, sir, not as I can recall.”
“Blonde girl, nineteen, twenty years old.”
“Well, sir, we get a lot of young people in here,” Bud said.
“This girl might have been friendly with one of your employees,” Bloom said.
Bud actually blanched. He did not yet know that the police were here to inquire into a homicide, but he had just been informed that one of his employees might be involved in whatever this was.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Which employee would that be, sir?”
“Girl with a good build,” Bloom said.
“Big tits,” Rawles said, less delicately.
“Well, we have lots of good-looking girls here,” Bud said. “Would you happen to know her name, officers? Because that would be of great assistance in locating the specific girl you have in mind.”
“No, we don’t have her name,” Rawles said.
“But she would have been friendly with the blonde girl who wore this dress,” Bloom said.
“Is this dress important in some way, officers?” Bud asked. “Has there been a crime committed in which this dress—?”
“Ink spot on it right here,” Rawles said. “See the ink spot?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t recall such a spot,” Bud said.
“Want to round up all the girls so we can talk to them?” Bloom said.
“Sir?”
“Bring them all in the kitchen,” Rawles said. “We want to talk to them privately.”
“Well, officers, we have pizzas to sell here,” Bud said.
“Won’t take a minute,” Bloom said.
“Bring them in the kitchen,” Rawles said.
“Sir, only employees are allowed in the kitchen. That’s a Board of Health regulation, officers. I’m sorry, but—”
“Then bring ’em out here,” Rawles said impatiently.
“Sir, that wouldn’t look right, my girls talking to police officers. Customers might think there was something wrong here.”
“Then let’s go in the goddamn kitchen,” Rawles said.
“I already told you, sir—”
“We’ll square it with the Board of Health,” Bloom said.
“Let’s get this fucking show moving,” Rawles said.
“Yes, sir,” Bud said. “I’ll ask the girls to come back, sir.”
The kitchen was hot. Three seventeen-year-old kids kept opening and closing the doors on the big ovens, peering in at the pizzas, moving them around on long wooden paddles, taking them out to place them either in white cardboard boxes or on metal platters, depending on whether the pizza was to be taken home or eaten here. A half-dozen girls filed into the kitchen, puzzled looks on their faces. None of them looked older than eighteen. Rawles immediately discounted two of them as titless wonders. The other four seemed substantially endowed. Bloom reflected later that this was the first time he’d run a lineup predicated on the size of a girl’s brassiere. Rawles sent the two luckless girls back outside to the counter. The name tags on the other four identified them as Margie, Peg, Corrie, and Mary Lou.
“Just relax, girls,” Bloom said, “nothing to worry about here.”
Once again, Rawles took the red dress out of the evidence envelope.
“Anybody recognize this dress?” he asked.
Bloom was watching the girls. One of the four widened her eyes in surprise.
“Anybody?” Rawles said.
“How about you, miss?” Bloom said.
The girl looked even more surprised. “Me?” she said, and one hand came up unconsciously to touch the plastic name tag pinned to her chest. The tag read CORRIE. The chest was as Barish had described it.
“The rest of you can go back to work,” Bloom said. “We want to talk to Corrie alone.”
“Me? What’d I do?” the girl said. Her voice was high and twangy, tinged with a faint southern accent.
“Nothing, miss,” Bloom said. “We just want to talk to you privately.”
Rawles, who hadn’t seen the girl’s expression when he’d held up the dress, knew that Bloom was onto something; he went along with it. “Let’s go, girls,” he said, “back to work now, no problems here, let’s all get back to work.”
“Are you accusing this girl of something?” Bud asked.
“Go manage the restaurant,” Rawles told him.
Corrie was not an attractive girl, and fear now made her seem even less attractive. She was perhaps five feet four inches tall and grossly overweight — which accounted for the “nice chest” Barish had described — her doughy face blighted with acne, her eyes a pale, watery blue, her hair a straight, mousy brown. A little brown cap sat crookedly on top of her head. The three teenage pizza bakers had turned their full attention on her and the detectives now, certain she was a hatchet murderess or something.
“Go check your pizzas,” Rawles said. “Come on back here, miss.”
They led her to where a small table stood against the wall under a hanging telephone. Sunlight streamed through a window over the table. Corrie was biting her lip now.
“You’re not in any trouble, Corrie,” Bloom told her at once. “We just want you to tell us everything you know about this dress.”
“Is she dead or something?” Corrie asked.
“Who?” Rawles said.
“Tracy. Is she dead?”
“Tracy who?” Bloom said.
“Kilbourne. Is she?”
“Is this her dress?”