in February. She put on some music. They had a few drinks. They danced. That's how it started. It all seemed so natural.
Toward the end of February . . .
This was after they'd been to bed together at least half a dozen times . . .
Toward the end of the month, she told him she was having trouble meeting the rent on the apartment and that the owner was threatening to throw her out on the street. She told him the rent was twenty-four hundred a month, which he found absolutely shocking in view of the fact that the mortgage on his house in Locksdale was only three thousand and some change a month, and she said it would be a shame if she lost the apartment because it was such a wonderful way for the two of them to be together in such lovely surroundings. She wasn't asking him to give her the money . . .
"I didn't know what she meant at first," Mott said.
. . . but only to lend it to her, you see.
Temporarily.
The twenty-four hundred.
Just for the March rent, you see. Because she had these modelling jobs coming up, and she'd get paid for them before the April rent was due, and then she'd have enough to pay him back and then some. If he could just lend her the twenty-four hundred. Because she just loved being with him and doing all the things they did together, didn't he love the things they did together?
"She was so beautiful," Mott said.
So very beautiful. And remarkably ...
"Well, in fact, amazingly ..."
He could not find the word. Or perhaps he knew the word and refused to share it with the detectives.
"I gave her the money," he said. "Drew it out of a savings account, handed it over to her. She asked if I wanted a written IOU, and I told her of course not, don't be ridiculous. Then ..."
When it came time to pay the April rent, she didn't have
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the money for that, either, so he'd loaned her another twenty-four hundred, and then another twenty-four in May, and when June came around, he realized this had become a regular thing, he was paying for the rent on her apartment, he was keeping her, she was in effect his ...
"Well, never mind in effect," he said. "That's what she was. My mistress."
Yours and Schumacher's both, Carella thought.
"God, I loved her so much," Mott said.
In July, he and his wife went away for the Fourth . . . well, actually, they'd left the city on the thirtieth of June, which was a Saturday, and spent the whole next week in Baltimore with her sister, didn't get back until the following Sunday. Susan came into the shop the very next day. Monday. The ninth. Came in around lunchtime, wanted to know if he hadn't forgotten a little something? He didn't know what she meant at first. Oh? she said. You don't know? You really don't know? Maybe you think a girl like me just comes along every day of the week, huh? Maybe next time you want me to ...
"Well, she made a reference to ... to what we ... to what we ... well, what she . . . uh. She said I might. . . she said I ought to think about that the next time I asked her to ... you know. Because if I was going to forget all about the rent coming due, then maybe she should start looking for someone who might enjoy being with her and taking advantage of her that way. She was furious. I'd never seen her like that. I hadn't really thought I was taking advantage of her, I thought she enjoyed it. I tried to explain ..."
He'd tried to explain. It had been the holiday, you see, the Fourth of July, the bank would be closed on Wednesday, anyway, and he'd had to go away with his wife, she knew he was married, she knew he had a wife. She said did he know how humiliating it was for her to receive a call from the woman who was renting her the apartment, asking her where the rent was, did he realize? He'd gone to the bank while she waited in the shop . . .
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"This was around twelve-thirty, the bank's record is correct," he said.
. . . and he'd brought the money back, and all of a sudden she was a different person, the same Susan he'd always known. In fact, right there in the shop, she'd . . .
"Well," he said.
They did not ask him what she'd done right there in the shop.
Instead, Carella said, "Where were you on the night she was killed?"
"Home with my wife," Mott said.
Isabelle Mott was a woman in her mid-to-late forties, some five feet seven or eight inches tall, with long straight black hair and dark brown eyes, which combined with the silver-and-turquoise jewelry she was wearing to give her the strikingly attractive look of a native American Indian, which she was not. She was, in fact, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, go figure.
They did not tell her that her husband, Thomas, had been enjoying of late an affair with a beautiful twenty-two-year-old blonde who'd been murdered only eight days after he'd last seen her. They figured there was no sense causing more trouble than already existed. They simply asked if she knew where he'd been on the night of July seventeenth, that would've been a Tuesday night, ma'am. When she asked why they wanted to know, they said what they said to any civilian who wanted to know why certain questions were being asked: Routine investigation, ma'am.
"He was here," she said.
"How do you happen to remember that?" Carella asked.
She had not looked at a calendar, she had not consulted an appointment -
"I was sick in bed that night," she said.
"Uh-huh," Carella said.
"Sick with what, ma'am?" Brown asked.
"Actually, I was recovering from surgery," she said.
"Uh-huh," Carella said.
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"What kind of surgery, ma'am?" Brown asked.
"Minor surgery," she said.
"Had you been hospitalized?" Carella asked.
"No. The surgery was done that morning, Tommy came to pick me up that afternoon."
"Where was this surgery done, ma'am?" Brown asked.
Both cops were thinking abortion. It sounded like abortion.
"At Hollingworth," she said.
A hospital not far from here, in the Three-Two Precinct.
"And what was the nature of the surgery?" Carella asked.
"If you must know," Isabelle said, "I had a D and C, okay?"
"I see," Carella said, and nodded.
Brown was thinking that's what they used to call abortions before Roe v. Wade.
"What time did you get home from the hospital?" Carella asked.
"Around four, four-thirty."
"And you say your husband was with you?"
"Yes."
"Did he leave the house at any time after that?"
"That night, do you mean?"
"Yes. The night of the seventeenth. After you got home from the hospital, did he leave the house at any time?"
"No."
Firm and emphatic.
"He was home all night long?"
"Yes," she said, positively nailing it to the wall.
"Well, thank you," Carella said.
Brown nodded glumly.
The signs on the corner lamppost read respectively Meriden St and Cooper St, white lettering on green, one sign running horizontally in an east-west direction, the other running north-south. Below these, white on blue, was a larger sign that read:
QUIET
HOSPITAL
ZONE
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Across the street, Farley General's huge illuminated windows glared a harsh yellow-white against a black moonless sky. It was fifteen minutes to midnight, and the street was silent and deserted. An occasional automobile passed, but for the most part the traffic was light; motorists tended to avoid this street because the speed limit here was only twenty miles an hour, and they preferred Averill as an approach to the bridge.
Standing in the shadows of the trees across the street, you could almost hear your own heartbeat, it was that still. Hand around the butt of the gun in the right-hand pocket of the long black coat, black again, wearing black again, the gun butt warm now, though it had felt cool earlier, there in the cool dark of the coat pocket. Warmer now. Palm of the hand somewhat moist on the walnut stock of the gun, but not from nervousness, you did this often enough it didn't make you nervous anymore. Moist with anticipation, the honest sweat of anticipation, expectation. Shoot her dead the moment she came through those doors. Empty it in her. Kill her.