“He’s after all of us who were in the play.”
“We think that’s a possibility, sir.”
“I knew it.”
“How did you know it, Mr. Di Pasquale?”
“What else could it be? Kid, I been selling stories to the movies since before you could walk. What else could it be? Some nut has taken it in his head to knock off everybody who was in that crummy play. Naturally. It stands to reason. Did he get Helen Struthers yet? Because that would be a real shame, believe me. This was a beautiful girl. Though who knows, she may have grown up to be a beast, huh? Who knows?”
“You don’t seem particularly frightened by the idea of…”
“Frightened? What do you mean?”
“Well, if he’s killing everyone who was in that play…”
“Me? You mean me?”
“You were in the play, Mr. Di Pasquale.”
“Yeah, but…”
“So, you see…”
“Nah,” Di Pasquale said. He looked at Kling seriously for a moment, and then asked, “Yeah?”
“Maybe.”
“Pssssss,” Di Pasquale said.
“Do you have any idea who might be doing this, Mr. Di Pasquale?”
“Have some more coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“Who could be doing this, huh? Six, you say, huh? Who? Who were the ones killed?”
“Anthony Forrest. I believe you said you didn’t know him.”
“No, it doesn’t register.”
“Randolph Norden.”
“Yeah.”
“Blanche Lettiger.”
“Blanche Lettiger, no, don’t remember her.”
“Salvatore Palumbo.”
“Oh, sure.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah, little Italian immigrant, hot stuff. He was studying English at night session, you know? So he wandered into a rehearsal one night after his class, and it happened we needed somebody for one of the bit parts, I forget which it was. So this little guy who could barely speak English, he took the part. He’s supposed to be British, you know? It was a hot sketch, him walking in and talking like a cockney with an Italian accent a mile long. Funny guy. He got killed, huh? That’s too bad. He was a nice little man.” Di Pasquale sighed. “Who else?”
“A man named Andrew Mulligan.”
“Yeah, I read that. The district attorney. I didn’t realize it was the same guy from the play.”
“And last night, a man named Rudy Fenstermacher.”
“That makes five,” Di Pasquale said.
“No, six,” Kling said.
“Norden, right?”
“Yes, and Forrest, and Lettiger...”
“And the little Italian guy…”
“Right, that’s four. And Mulligan and Fenstermacher. That’s six.”
“That’s right, six. You’re right.”
“Can you tell me a little about the play?”
“We did it in the round,” Di Pasquale said. “We were all kids, you know how these amateur things are. All of us except the little Italian guy, what was his name?”
“Palumbo.”
“Yeah, he must’ve been maybe thirty-five years old. But the rest of us were all kids, and I guess the play stunk. I can hardly remember it, tell you the truth. Except for this Helen Struthers, who played one of the whores, she wore one of these very low-cut peasant blouses. I wonder what ever happened to her.”
“We’re trying to locate her now. You wouldn’t know whether she got married, would you? Or left the city?”
“Never saw her before the play, or after it. Oh, yeah, maybe in the halls, you know, between classes, hello, goodbye, like that.”
“Did you graduate from Ramsey, Mr. Di Pasquale?”
“Sure. I don’t sound like a college graduate, do I?”
“You sound fine, sir.”
“Look, you don’t have to snow me. I know what I sound like. But the movie business is full of pants pressers. If I sounded like a college graduate, they’d all get nervous. They want me to sound like I work in a tailor shop, too. So that’s the way I sound.” He shrugged. “Listen, I can still quote Chaucer, Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote, but who wants to hear Chaucer in the movie business? You quote Chaucer in a producer’s office, he’ll send for the guys in the white jackets. Yeah, I graduated, class of June 1942.”
“Were you in the service, Mr. Di Pasquale?”
“Nope. Punctured eardrum.”
“Tell me some more about the play.”
“Like what? It was a little college play. We cast it, we rehearsed it, we performed it, we struck it. End of story.”
“Who directed it?”
“The faculty adviser, I forget his na—no, wait a minute. Richardson. Professor Richardson, that was it. Boy, the things you remember, huh? This was more than twenty years ago.” Di Pasquale paused. “You sure somebody’s trying to…?” He shrugged. “You know, twenty years is a long, long time. I mean, like, man, that has to be one hell of a grudge to carry for twenty years.”
“Was there any trouble during rehearsals, sir, would you remember?”
“Oh, the usual junk. You know actors. Even the pros are disgusting, all ego and a mile high. Well, amateurs are worse. But I can’t remember any big fight or anything like that. Nothing that would last twenty years.”
“How about Professor Richardson? Did everyone in the cast get along with him?”
“Yeah, a harmless guy. Nothing on the ball, but harmless.”
“Then you can’t remember anything that might have caused this kind of extreme reaction.”
“Nothing.” Di Pasquale paused reflectively. “You think this guy is really out to get all of us?”
“We’re going on that assumption, Mr. Di Pasquale.”
“So where does that leave me? Do I get police protection?”
“If you want it.”
“I want it.”
“You’ll get it.”
“Pssssss,” Di Pasquale said.
“There’s just one other thing, Mr. Di Pasquale,” Kling said.
“Yeah, I know. Don’t leave town.”
Kling smiled. “That’s just what I was going to say.”
“Sure, what else could you say? I’ve been in this movie business a long time, kid. I’ve read them all, I’ve seen them all. It don’t take too much brains to figure it.”
“To figure what?”
“That if somebody’s out to get all of us who were in the play, well, kid, figure it. The somebody who’s out to get us could be somebody who was in the play, too. Right? So, okay, I won’t leave town. When are you sending the protection?”
“I’ll get a patrolman here within the half-hour. I should tell you, Mr. Di Pasquale, that so far the killer has struck without warning and from a distance. I’m not sure what good our protection will…”
“Anything’s better than nothing,” Di Pasquale said. “Look, baby, you finished with me?”
“Yes, I think…”
“Well, then, good, kid,” he said, leading him to the door. “If you don’t mind, I’m in a hell of a hurry. That guy’s gonna call me back at the office, baby, and I’ve got a million things on my desk, so thanks for coming up and talking to me, huh? I’ll be looking for the cop, kid, send him over right away before I’m gone, huh, baby? Good, it was nice seeing you, take it easy, baby, so long, huh?”
And the door closed behind Kling.
13
David Arthur Cohen was a sour little man who made his living being funny.
He operated out of a one-room office on the fourteenth floor of a building on Jefferson, and it was in this office that he greeted the detectives sourly, offered them chairs sourly, and then said, “It’s about these killings, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Cohen,” Meyer said.
Cohen nodded. He was a thin man with a pained and suffering look in his brown eyes. He was almost as bald as Meyer, and the two men, sitting on opposite sides of the desk, with Carella standing between them at one end of the desk, looked like a pair of billiard balls waiting for a careful shooter to decide how he would bank them.