But one of them was a killer.
"See you guys," the other girl said, and waved as she went off.
They stood in the sunlight, the detective and the two schoolgirls. It was three o'clock sharp. Students kept spilling out of the school. There was the sound of young voices everywhere around them. Neither of the girls seemed particularly apprehensive. But one of them was a killer.
"Alexis," he said, "I'd like to talk to you, please.”
She looked first at him, and then at Gloria. The serious brown eyes looked suddenly troubled.
"Okay," she said.
He took her aside. They chatted quietly, Alexis's eyes intent on his face, concentrating on everything he said, nodding, listening, occasionally murmuring a few words. A girl wearing the Graham School's uniform and a senior hat that looked like a Greek fisherman's cap, except that it was in the orange-and-blue colors of the school, came skipping down the front steps, said, "Hi, Lex," and then walked off toward the subway kiosk on the corner.
Some little distance away, Gloria watched them in conversation, her books pressed against her narrow chest, her eyes squinted against the sun.
Carella walked back to her.
"Few questions," he said.
"Sure," Gloria said. "Is something wrong?”
Books still clutched to her chest.
Behind them and off to the left, Alexis sat on school steps and tucked her skirt under her, them, puzzled.
"I spoke to Kristin Lund before coming Carella said. "I asked her if she'd seen you at church on the day of the murder. She said she Is that correct?”
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand the q "Did you go to the church at anytime before o'clock on the day of the murder?”
"No, I didn't.”
"I also spoke to Mrs. Hennessy. She told me hadn't seen you, either.”
"That's because I wasn't there, Mr. Carella.”
Blue eyes wide and innocent. But clicking intelligence.
"Gloria," he said.
Those eyes intent on his face now.
"When I talked to Alexis last week and I now verified this with her, to make sure I mistaken she told me you had the check for band deposit and wanted to know whether the was still on. This was on Tuesday afternoon, twenty-ninth of May. Is that right? Were you possession of the deposit check at that time?”
"Yes?”
Wariness in those eyes now.
"When did Father Michael give you that check?”
"I don't remember.”
"Try to remember, Gloria.”
"It must have been on Wednesday. Yes, I think I stopped by after school and he gave me the check then.”
"Are you talking about Wednesday, the twenty-third of May?”
"Yes.”
"The day before the murder?”
"Yes.”
"What time on Wednesday, would you remember?”
"After school. Three, four o'clock, something like that.”
"And that was when Father Michael gave you the deposit check made out to The Wanderers, is that correct? For a hundred dollars.”
"Yes.'“
"Gloria, when I spoke to Kristin Lund, I asked her if she was the person who'd written that check. She told me she was. She wrote that check and then asked Father Michael to sign it.”
Eyes steady on his face.
"She wrote it on the twenty-fourth of May, Gloria.”
Watching him, knowing where he was going now.
"You couldn't have picked it up on the twenty-third," he said.
"That's right," she said at once. "It was the twenty-fourth, I remember now.”
"When on the twenty-fourth?”
“After school. I told you. I went to the right after school.”
“No, you told me you didn't go to the church at, on the day of the murder.”
"That was when I couldn't remember.”
"Are you telling me now that you were at church?”
"Yes.”
"Before five o'clock?”
"I'm not sure.”
"Kristin left at five. She says you...”
"Then it must have been after five.”
"What time, Gloria?”
"I don't remember exactly, but it was long “
seven.
He looked at her.
They had not released to the media the time of the priest's death. Only the killer knew He saw realization in her eyes. So blue, intelligent, darting now, on the edge of panic. He not want to do this to a thirteen-year-old, but he straight for the jugular.
"We have the knife," he said.
The blue eyes hardened.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
Which words he had heard many times before, from murderers much older and wiser than young Gloria here.
"I'd like you to come with me," he said.
And in deference to her youth, he added, "Please.”
Maybe she's scared them off, he thought.
They hadn't heard from the two Argentinians since the day she'd cut the handsome one. That was on Saturday afternoon. A week tomorrow. And no word from them. Every night this past week, when he'd come home from work, his eyes had met hers expectantly. And every night she'd shaken her head, no. No word. So maybe they'd given her up as a lost cause.
Maybe they'd bandaged the handsome one's hands and packed up and gone home, no sense trying to ride a tigress.
Maybe.
He came down the steps from the street outside the Criminal Courts Building, into the tiled subway passageway, and was walking toward the turnstiles when he saw the roses. Lavender roses. A man selling long-stemmed lavender roses, just to the left of the token booth. A dollar a rose. In the Mexican prison, there'd been a woman from Veracruz who'd wistfully told Marilyn that all the days were golden there, all the nights were purple. Lovely in Spanish.
Lovely the way Marilyn repeated it. En Veracruz, todos los dfas eran dorados, y todas las noches violetas.
The roses weren't quite purple, but lave: would do.
Maybe it was time to celebrate, who the knew?
Maybe they were really gone for good.
"I'll take a dozen," he told the vendor.
The clock on the wall of the token booth read minutes past three.
In this city, the Afghani cab drivers had a radio network. You got into the taxi, you told where you wanted to go, they threw the flag, was the last you heard from them. For the rest of trip, they ignored the passenger entirely and incessantly into their radios, babbling in alan incomprehensible to the vast majority of the population. Maybe they were all spies. Maybe were plotting the overthrow of the United government.
This did not seem likely. reasonable was the assumption that they homesick and needed the sound of other voices to get them through the grinding day.
Carlos Ortega didn't care what the needs of Afghani people might be. He knew only someone with an impossible name printed on Hack Bureau license affixed to the dashboard of taxi was shrieking into the radio at the top of lungs in an unintelligible language that was and intrusive.
"You!" he said in English.
The cabbie kept babbling.
"You!" he shouted.
The cabbie turned to him.
"Shut up!" Carlos said.
"What?" the cabbie said.
"Shut your mouth," Carlos said in heavily accented English. "You're making too much noise.”
"What?" the cabbie said. "What?”
His ethnic group back home in the Wakhin Corridor was Kirghiz, although a moment ago he'd been speaking not the language of that area, but Farsi instead ... which was the lingua franca of the city's Afghani drivers.
His ancestors, nonetheless, had come from Turkey, and he tried now to muster some good old Turkish indignity, which disappeared in a flash the moment he looked at the ugly giant sitting in the back seat. He turned away at once, muttered something soft and Farsic into his radio, and then fell into an immediate and sullen silence.
Carlos merely nodded.
He was used to people shutting up when he told them to shut up.