“I see,” Meyer said. “Can you describe her a little more fully?”
“Well, like I said, she’s got these enormous pineapples. And she’s got a mouth like a trap, and a pretty nose, and eyes like blue ice and blonde hair like a field of wheat.” He paused, retracing the path of his similes to see if he’d been guilty of another “cleesh.” Apparently satisfied of his innocence, he nodded and said, “If you find her, you can’t miss her.”
“That’s reassuring,” Meyer said. “Has she been in today?”
“No.”
“Did Sokolin ever play a horn in here?”
“A what?”
“A horn.”
“No. He plays a horn, does he? Boy, miracles will never cease.”
“What’s the name of this rooming house? Where they serve meals?”
“The Green Corner.” He shrugged. “The house is green, and it’s on the corner. Listen, who knows why people name places?”
“Is this your place?” Meyer asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you name it the Easy Dragon?”
“Oh, that was a mistake. The sign painter misunderstood me on the telephone. So after all the signs were painted, I figured why bother changing it to what I wanted originally?”
“What had you wanted originally?”
“The place was supposed to be called the Easy Drag Inn.” He shrugged. “Listen, people goof all the time. That’s why they’ve got erasers on penc—” and he stopped himself before uttering the banality.
“Well, come on, Bob,” Meyer said. “Thanks a lot for your time, mister.”
“Not at all. Think you’ll get her?”
“All we want to do is get him,” Meyer said.
All I want to do, the sniper thought, is get him.
What’s taking them so long in there? How many pictures do they have to snap, anyway?
He looked at his watch.
They had been inside the shop for forty minutes already. Weren’t they due back at the house? Shouldn’t the reception be starting any minute? For God’s sake, what was taking them so long?
The front door of the shop opened.
The sniper peered through the telescopic sight of the rifle, fixing the doorway smack on the intersection of the crosshairs.
He waited.
One by one, the wedding party began pouring through the open door of the shop.
Where the hell was Tommy Giordano?
Was that...? No. Not him.
There now, there’s the bride... there’s...
Tommy appeared in the doorway. The sniper held his breath.
One, two... now!
He squeezed the trigger, pulling off two shots in rapid succession.
From the street, the shots sounded like the backfire of an automobile. Already inside one of the limousines, Carella didn’t even hear them. Both slugs struck the brick wall to the left of the doorjamb and then ricocheted into the air, spent. Tommy, unaware, ran to the first car and climbed in with his bride.
The sniper cursed as the cars pulled away.
Then he packed his rifle.
Chapter 7
At one end of Tony Carella’s lot, close to the Carella-Birnbaum property line and to the left of the fireworks stage, Weddings-Fetes, Incorporated, had constructed a bandstand. Hung with white bunting, adorned with flowers, it provided a magnificent setting for the local band Tony had hired. The band was called the Sal Martino Orchestra. The band — or the “orchestra” as Sal preferred to call it — consisted of:
One piano player
One drummer
Four saxophonists (two tenor men and two alto men)
Two trumpeters (one lead trumpeter and one second-trumpeter)
And a trombonist
Actually, the ensemble would have been complete — oh, sure, the rhythm section could have used a bass player, but why be picky — would have been complete without the trombonist. A two-man brass section in an eight-piece band (orchestra, that is) was certainly enough brass power. The lead trumpeter would carry the section, and the second trumpeter would handle all the hot solos and screech work. Since the band (orchestra, of course) had a full sax section each member of which doubled on clarinet, the two trumpets would have afforded a well-balanced complement of brass. There really was no need for the trombone.
Sal Martino played the trombone.
He also played the French horn, but never on jobs. He restricted his French horning to the privacy of his bedroom. In all fairness, he was not a bad French hornist, nor was he a bad trombonist. It was just that the band needed him the way they needed a flatted fifth. Or an augmented seventh. The band preferred their chords to be simple and major. A diminished ninth could throw their rehearsals into a tizzy for a solid week. Simplicity was the keynote of the Sal Martino Orchestra. And simplicity certainly did not call for a trombonist in the brass section. But such are the vagaries of leadership.
Besides, Sal Martino looked like a real pro when he was up there leading the band. He was a man in his late twenties, with a high crown of black hair and a small black mustache. His eyes were blue and very soulful. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and long legs that he wobbled with Presley-like ease while conducting. He sometimes conducted with his right hand. He sometimes conducted with the end of his trombone. He sometimes simply smiled out at the crowd and didn’t conduct at all. Whichever way he did it, the band sounded the same.
Lousy.
Well, not lousy. But pretty bad.
They sounded especially bad when they were tuning up, but then all bands sound bad when they are taking their A from the piano player. At 4:45 that afternoon, the Martino Orchestra was warming up and tuning up and sounding very much like the Boston Pops Symphony minus the Boston and minus the Symphony. Hawes, a music lover by nature, could barely sit still as he listened to the cacophony. He was also slightly disturbed by the fact that neither Sam Jones nor Ben Darcy was yet in evidence anywhere on the grounds. In truth, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to locate anyone in the Carella back yard. Immediately following the ceremony, the Carella household had been overrun by wedding guests who hugged and embraced and kissed each other as if they had not seen each other since the last wedding or funeral — which, in all probability, they hadn’t. The bedroom and adjoining bathroom on the main floor of the Carella home had been set aside for the female guests, another similar setup upstairs having been made available for the gentlemen. As soon as all the embracing and kissing was concluded, the women trotted into the downstairs bedroom to freshen up, so that there was a constant flow of traffic from back yard to back porch to bedroom to bathroom and out again. Hawes was getting somewhat dizzy. In all that sea of strange faces, he longed only to see the vaguely familiar faces of Darcy and Jones, but for the time being he seemed to have lost them completely.
“What’s the matter?” Christine asked him.
“I’m just wondering where Darcy and Jones went.”
“Oh, they’re probably around somewhere.”
“Yes, but where?”
“Have you tried the men’s room?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you?”
“All right, I will. Don’t pick up any stray men while I’m gone.”
“Now, Cotton, would I do a thing like that?”
“Yes.”
He went into the house. A woman coming out of the bedroom said to another woman, “She’s pregnant again, can you imagine? I haven’t been to a wedding in the past five years that she hasn’t been pregnant.”
“She likes children,” her friend said.
“That isn’t what she likes,” the woman said, and they both laughed hysterically, almost bumping into Hawes as he made his way to the steps.