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"Well, what does . . .? Letters? Are you saying this woman wrote some letters to my husband?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Even so, that doesn't mean ..."
"We have his letters, too. The letters he wrote to her."
"Arthur wrote . . .?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"We found the letters in her apartment."
"Letters Arthur wrote to her?"
"They weren't signed, but we feel certain ..."
"Then how do you . . .? Where are these letters? I want to see these letters."
"Mrs Schumacher ..."
"I have a right to see these letters. If you're saying my husband was involved with another woman ..."
"Yes, ma'am, he was."
"Then I want to see proof. You're trying to ... to ... make it seem he was having an affair with . . . this . . . this woman, whatever her name was ..."
"Susan Brauer."
"I don't care what it was! I don't believe a word of what you're saying. Arthur was never unfaithful to me in his life! Don't you think I'd have known if he was unfaithful? Are you deliberately trying to hurt me?" she shouted. "Is that it?" Eyes flashing now, entire body trembling. "I don't have to answer any more of your questions," she said, and went immediately to the phone. "My husband was a partner in one of the biggest law firms in this city, you can just go fuck yourself," she said, and began dialing.
"Mrs Schumacher ..."
"There's the door," she said, and then, into the phone, "Mr Loeb, please."
Carella looked at Brown.
"Please leavel" Margaret shouted. Into the phone, in a quieter but still agitated voice, she said, "Lou, I have two detectives here who just violated my rights. What do I. . .?"
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They left.
In the hallway outside, while they waited for the elevator, Carella said, "What do you think?"
"Tough one to call," Brown said.
"This isn't new, you know."
"You're talking about last week, right?"
"Yeah, Saturday. I mean, she got angry from minute one, today isn't something new."
"Maybe we've got shitty bedside manners."
"I'm sure," Carella said.
The elevator doors slid open. They got into the car and hit the button for the lobby. They were both silent as the elevator hummed down the shaft, each of them separately thinking that Margaret Schumacher had just treated them to a fine display of surprise, shock, disbelief, indignation, anger, and hurt over the news of her husband's infidelity, but there was no way of knowing if any of it had been genuine.
As they stepped out of the building, the heat hit them like a closed fist.
"You think her lawyer's gonna call us?" Brown asked.
"Nope," Carella said.
He was wrong.
A detective named Mary Beth Mulhaney was working the door.
She normally worked out of the Three-One; Eileen had met her up there, oh, it must've been four years ago, when they'd called Special Forces for a decoy. Guy was beating up women on the street, running off into the night with their handbags. Eileen had run the job for a week straight without getting a single nibble. The hairbag lieutenant up there told her it was because she looked too much like a cop, SF should've sent him somebody else. Eileen suggested that maybe he'd like to go out there in basic black and pearls, see if he couldn't tempt the mugger to hit on him. The lieutenant told her not to get smart, young lady.
There was a lot of brass down here outside the lingerie
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shop. Emergency Service had contained the owner of the shop
and the woman she was keeping hostage, barricading the front
of the place and cordoning off the street. Mary Beth was
working the back door, far from the Monday morning crowd
that had gathered on the street side. The brass included Chief
of Patrol Dylan Curran, whose picture Eileen had seen in
police stations all over town, and Chief of Detectives Andrew
Brogan, who all those years ago had reprimanded Eileen for
talking back to the hairbag lieutenant at the Three-One, and
Deputy Inspector John Di Santis who was in command of the
Emergency Service and whom Eileen had seen on television
only the other night at the Calm's Point Bridge where a guy
who thought he was Superman was threatening to fly off into
the River Dix. But Brady was the star.
A sergeant from Emergency Service was softly explaining to Eileen and the other trainees that the lady in there had a .357 Magnum in her fist and that she'd threatened to kill the only customer still in her shop if the police didn't back off. The reason the police were here to begin with was that the lady in there had already chased another customer out of her shop when she complained that the elastic waistband on a pair of panties she'd bought there had disintegrated in the wash.
The lady - whose name was Hildy Banks - had yanked the Magnum she kept under the counter for protection against armed robbers and such, and had fired two shots at the complaining customer, who'd run in terror out of the shop. Hildy had then turned the gun on the other terrified woman and had told her to stop screaming or she'd kill her. The woman had not stopped screaming. Hildy had fired two more shots into the air, putting a hole in the ceiling and knocking a carton of half-slips off the topmost shelf in the store. The police were there by then. One of the responding blues yelled "Holy shit!" when Hildy slammed another shot through the front door. That was when Emergency Service was called. After which they'd beeped -
"Can we keep it down back there?"
Inspector Brady. Standing beside Mary Beth, who was
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talking calmly to the lady behind the door. Turning his head momentarily to scold the Emergency Service sergeant, and then giving Mary Beth his full attention again. Eileen wondered how long Mary Beth had been working with the unit. Brady seemed to be treating her like a rookie, whispering instructions to her, refusing to let her run with it. Mary Beth shot him an impatient look. He seemed not to catch it. He seemed to want to handle this one all by himself. Eileen guessed the only reason Mary Beth was outside that door was because the taker inside was a woman.
"Hildy?"
Mary Beth outside the door, cops everywhere you looked in that backyard. The rear door of the shop opened onto a small fenced-in courtyard. It was on the street-level floor of an apartment building, and clotheslines ran from the windows above to telephone poles spaced at irregular intervals all up and down the block. Trousers and shirts hung limply on the humid air, arms and legs dangling. Just in case Hildy in there decided to blow her head off, Mary Beth was crouched to one side of the door, well beyond the sight-lines of the single window on the brick wall. She was a round-faced woman with eyes as frosty blue as glare ice, wearing a blue shirt hanging open over a yellow T-shirt and gray slacks. No lipstick. No eye shadow. Cheeks rosy red from the heat. Perspiration dripping down her face. Eyes intent on that door. She was hoping nothing would come flying through it. Or the window, either.
"Hildy?" she said again.
"Go away! Get out of here! I'll kill her."
Voice on the edge of desperation. Eileen realized the woman in there was as terrified as her hostage. The cops outside here had to look like an army to her. Chief of Patrol Curran pacing back and forth, hands behind his back, a general wondering whether his troops would take this one or blow it. Chief of Detectives Brogan standing apart with two other beefy men in plainclothes, whispering softly, observing
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Mary Beth at the door. Uniformed policemen with rifles and handguns - out of sight, to be sure.
You promise them no guns, no shooting, Eileen thought. And you meant it. Unless or until. All these cops were here and ready to storm the joint the moment anyone got hurt. Kill the hostage in there, harm the hostage in there, you took the door. Hurt a cop outside here, same thing. You played the game until the rules changed. And then you went cop.