The apartment building was in a Calm’s Point neighborhood with a large Arab population, mostly Egyptians, Moroccans, and other immigrants from North Africa. The streets here were lined with Turkish coffee houses, shops selling hummus and baklava, katayif and kibbi, mjddara and tabbouleh. And although there were only twelve mosques in the entire city, one of them was located two blocks from the furnished room Calvin Robert Wilkins supposedly rented at the end of last year.
“We’re looking for the man who was renting a furnished room here from just before Thanksgiving to shortly after Christmas,” Carella told the landlady.
The landlady nodded.
“Know who we mean?” Hawes asked.
“Yes, I know,” she said.
They followed her up to the third floor.
“Rent was coming due on January one,” she told them. “Guess he was in a big hurry to leave, eh?”
Kirby Strauss the parole officer was right: The room Wilkins had been renting before he’d absconded was “perfectly decent.” Small, neat, tidy, inexpensively appointed with thrift-shop furniture.
“When he rented it, did he say he’d be leaving in January?” Carella asked.
“No. Said he wanted it on a month-to-month basis,” the woman said. “Which was okey-dokey with me.”
Showing off her American slang. Brown eyes flashing. Left hand on her hip. Big silver ring on the thumb of that hand. Some kind of bright green stone set in it. Not jade, something else. Not emerald either, not in a silver setting.
“When did he first tell you he’d be leaving?”
“Just after Christmas.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Sure. Jamaica.”
“No kidding? Jamaica, huh?”
“Sure. You know Jamaica? I asked was he going with his friends, he said no, just himself.”
“What friends?” Hawes asked at once.
“The two who came here all the time. Man and a woman.”
“When you say all the time…?”
The woman shrugged under her voluminous garment. Ripples flowed down to her toes. He noticed she was barefoot. Ring on the big toe of her right foot, too. Red stone on this one.
“Three, four times. He had the room only a month, you know. Little more than a month.”
“Would you know their names? These friends of his?”
“I don’t ask visitors’ names. There’s no trouble, I don’t ask visitors’ names.”
“What’d they look like?” Carella asked.
“The man was something like your height. Brown eyes like yours, curly black hair, very nice build,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “The girl was a redhead. Not like your red,” she said, turning to Hawes, “more brown in color, yes? With green eyes and…what do you call them? When there are spots on the face?”
“Freckles?” Hawes suggested.
“English,” she said, shaking her head. “Freckles, yes. I don’t think they were married, those two, but I think they were close, eh?” she said, and winked.
“You mean, like engaged,” Hawes said, nodding.
“No, I mean like sleeping together,” she said, and winked again.
“So he was leaving for Jamaica, but he wasn’t taking his friends with him, is that it?” Carella said.
“Well, not right that moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t going to Jamaica that very moment when he left the room here.”
“Then whenwas he going to Jamaica?”
“He said in the spring.”
“When in the spring?”
“He only said the spring. ‘In the spring, I’ll be on a beach in Jamaica.’ Was what he said.”
“So he might be in Jamaica right this minute, is that what you’re saying?”
“This is the spring, yes,” she said. “So he could be there now, yes. Who knows? I don’t even know where Jamaica is. Do you know where Jamaica is?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been to Jamaica?”
“No, but I know where it is.”
“Where is it?”
“In the Caribbean.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s that, the Caribbean?”
“It’s where Mr. Wilkins might be right this minute,” Hawes said.
“Mr.Who? ” she asked.
“Wilkins. Calvin Wilkins.”
“That’s not the name he gave me,” she said.
Hawes looked at her.
“He told me something else, not that.”
“What did he tell you?”
“I have to look,” she said.
They followed her downstairs to her apartment. There were beaded curtains and a double bed, and a calendar with Arabic lettering on it. She opened the top drawer of a small painted chest and took from it a ledger of some sort. She opened the book, trailed her forefinger down the page. Her fingernails were painted a green the color of the stone in the ring.
“Here,” she said, and tapped one of the names.
They looked at the page.
The name written there in a delicate feminine hand was:
Richard Martin
“Ricky, that’s right,” the landlady said.
“Ricky Martin,” Hawes said.
“Yes. That’s who his friends asked for, first time they came here.”
“Ricky Martin,” Hawes said again.
“Yes.”
“Ricky Martin is a singer.”
“This man was asinger? ”
“No, this man was a thief. RickyMartin is the singer.”
“He lived here more than a month, I never heard him sing,” the woman said, and shrugged again under the black garment.
“Did he say where he might be going? When he left here?”
“I told you. Jamaica.”
“I mean in January. When he moved out. Right then. Where was he going? Did he tell you?”
“Yes, he told me.”
“Where?”
“To stay with his friends. I think perhaps they had in mind aménage à trois, eh? Perhaps that’s why he was in such a big hurry.”
Hawes had once known a woman named Jeanette, or was it Annette, who’d called it a “ménagedetrois. ” For the longest time, he himself had called it that.
“Are you fellows in such a big hurry, too?” the landlady asked. “Or shall I brew the three of us some nice jasmine tea?”
Laurette, Hawes guessed it was.
“Thanks,” he said, “you’ve been very helpful.”
“You think it’s because of the record store?” she asked.
Neither of the detectives knew what she meant.
“That he picked a singer’s name?”
They still didn’t know what she meant.
“Because he worked in a record store?” she said.
“Which one?” Carella asked at once.
“Laura something,” she said. “In the city. Someplace downtown.”
SOMEPLACEdowntown could have been anywhere.
In this city, when you crossed any of the bridges from the outlying sectors, you were heading into “The City.” And once you got into the city, you invariably headed “downtown” because that’s where all the action was.
They started with the yellow pages for Isola, a literal translation of the Italian word“isola,” for “island.” They looked first under RECORDS, TAPES & COMPACT DISCS, and found a sub-heading that readSee Compact Discs, Tapes & Records—Retail. They turned back to the Cs, and found a listing for exactly one hundred and twelve record shops. None of them were named Laura Something or Laura Anything. Under the L listings, they found seventeen. They called Wilkins’ former landlady at once.