“How’d a college girl become a hooker?” Carella asked.
“What are you, a cop or a sociologist? There’s more hookers in this town who once went to college than I can count. Call the Vice Squad, they’ll tell you.”
“Never mind the Vice Squad,” Meyer said. “You got any idea who killed her?”
“None.”
“You sound very glad to be rid of her.”
“I am. That don’t mean I killed her. Look, you guys know I had nothing to do with this. Why are we wasting each other’s time?”
“What’s your hurry, Wallach? Another crap game?”
“Sure, I’d tell you about it, wouldn’t I?”
“Then take your time. We’ve got all day.”
“Okay, let’s shoot the day. What the hell. It’s only the taxpayers’ money.”
“You never paid a tax in your life, Wallach.”
“I pay taxes every year,” Wallach said indignantly. “Both federal and state, so don’t give me that.”
“What do you list as your occupation?”
“We going to go into that again?”
“No, let’s get back to Blanche. Did anyone ever threaten her? Would you know that?”
“How would I know? Johns are all different. Some are like little lost kids with their first broad, and some are tough guys who like to smack a girl around. There’s something wrong with a guy who goes to a whore in the first place.”
“He’s not a pimp,” Meyer said, “he’s a psychologist.”
“I know whores,” Wallach said simply.
“You don’t seem to know a hell of a lot about Blanche Lettiger.”
“I told you everything I know. What more can I say?”
“Tell us about her habits.”
“Like what?”
“Like what time she got up in the morning.”
“The morning? You kidding?”
“All right, what then? The afternoon?”
“She usually woke up about one, two in the afternoon and started looking for a bottle.”
“What time did she wake up the day she was killed?”
Wallach smiled, pointed a chiding finger at Carella, and said, “Ah-ah. Caught you.”
“Huh?” Carella said.
Still smiling, Wallach said, “I told you I didn’t see her at all yesterday, didn’t I?”
“I wasn’t trying to trip you, Wallach.”
“There ain’t a bull in the world who ain’t always trying to trip guys like me.”
“Look, Wallach,” Carella said, “we understand you’re just a decent, upright, put-upon citizen, okay? So let’s send the violinists home and get down to business. You’re beginning to get on my nerves.”
“You don’t exactly have a calming effect on me,” Wallach replied.
“What the hell is this?” Meyer said, annoyed. “A vaudeville routine at the Palace? One more crack out of you, you cheap punk, and I’ll bust your head open.”
Wallach opened his mouth and then closed it. He looked at Meyer sourly instead.
“Okay?” Meyer shouted.
“Okay, okay,” Wallach answered, sulking.
“Did she make a habit of leaving the apartment between five and five-thirty every afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d she go?”
“There was a factory nearby the pad. Sometimes the guys coming out of work were good for a strike.”
“She did this every afternoon?”
“Not every afternoon, but often enough. When you’re in the shape she was in, you’ve got to take them where they come.”
“Where’s the factory?”
“Culver and North Fourteenth.”
“So then almost every afternoon, sometime between five and five-thirty, she’d leave the apartment and walk up toward the factory, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Who knew this besides you, Wallach?”
“The cop on the beat knew it,” Wallach answered, unable to repress the crack. “Maybe he’s the one who put the blocks to her, huh?”
“Look, Wallach…”
“All right, all right, I don’t know who knew it. The guy who killed her, I guess. Anybody coulda known it. All they had to do was watch.”
“You’ve been a great help,” Carella said. “Get the hell out of here.”
“You only ruined my day,” Wallach said.
He rose, dusted cigar ash off his trousers, and was walking away from the desk when Meyer kicked him square in the behind. Wallach didn’t even turn. With great dignity he walked out of the squadroom.
7
So far, the police had done only one concrete thing toward solving the multiple murders: nothing.
That morning, after Wallach left, they tried to remedy the situation somewhat by putting in a call to Samuel Gottlieb of Gottlieb, Graham and Norden. They asked the senior partner of the firm how many criminal cases Norden had handled since he’d been with them, and he told them there had been a total of four. He promptly furnished them with the names of all four clients, and then broke the list down into those who had been acquitted, and those who had been convicted. They then took the list Mrs. Norden had given them, the one containing the names of the various other firms Norden had worked for over the years, and by 11:00 they had called each firm and had a further list of twelve convicted criminals who had once been clients of Norden. They sent the list to the city’s BCI with a request for the whereabouts of each man, and then checked out a car and drove downtown to Ramsey University, where they hoped to learn something, anything, about Blanche Lettiger, the dead prostitute.
The university was in the heart of the city, beginning where Hall Avenue ended, sprawling on the fringes of the Quarter, rubbing elbows with Chinatown. An outdoor art exhibition was in full swing on the bordering side streets. Carella parked the car in a no-parking zone, pulled down the sun visor with its hand-lettered sign advising policeman on duty call, and then walked with Meyer past the canvases lined up on the sidewalk. There seemed to be a predominance of seascapes this year. The smiling perpetrators of all this watery art peered hopefully at each passerby, trying to look aloof and not too eager, but placed nonetheless in the uncomfortable position of being merchants as well as creators.
Meyer glanced only cursorily at the seascapes, and then stopped before an “action” painting, the action consisting of several bold black slashes across a field of white, with two red dots in one corner. He nodded mysteriously, and then caught up with Carella.
“What happened to people?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Carella answered.
“There used to be a time when you looked at a painting, there were people in it. No more. Artists aren’t interested in people. They’re only interested in ‘expression.’ I read about a guy who covers a nude lady with paint, and then she rolls on a canvas, and what comes out is a painting.”
“You’re kidding,” Carella said.
“I swear to God,” Meyer said. “You can see where she rubbed with her leg or her thigh, or whatever. She’s like the guy’s paintbrush.”
“Does he clean his brushes at the end of the day?”
“I don’t know. The article didn’t say. It just told about how he worked, and it showed some examples.”
“That’s pretty far-out, isn’t it?”
“No, I think it’s a return to tradition.”
“How so?”
“The guy is obviously putting people back into painting.”
“There’s the school,” Carella said.
Ramsey University sat on the other side of a small park struck with May sunshine. There were several students sitting on the scattered benches discussing the conjugation of the verb aimer, discussing too the theory of ratio-mobility. They glanced up momentarily as Meyer and Carella crossed the park and climbed the steps of the administration building. The inside of the building was cool and dim. They stopped a student wearing a white shirt and a loose green sweater and asked him where the records office was.