They'd called first and spoken to Pauline Weed's assistant, a young girl who'd told them she was out getting something to eat, expected her back in half an hour or so. They'd driven directly downtown to Bide-A-Wee Pets on Jefferson, where they'd learned that the girl's name was Hannah Kemp, that she was sixteen years old and wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up, and that she worked here after school every Tuesday and Friday, when the shop was open till eight o'clock. She was with a customer up front when Pauline walked in some five minutes later. She pointed to where the detectives were standing near the gliding tropical fish, and said something they couldn't hear. Pauline looked up the aisle at them in surprise, and then walked to where they stood trying to remember the name of that movie.
239
"Hey, hi," she said.
"Hello, Miss Weed," Carella said.
"Can I sell you some fish?" she asked, and smiled.
Blonde and beautiful and blue-eyed, the type the man favored. Smile a bit wavering, though.
"Miss Weed," Carella said, "when we called here earlier tonight, your assistant..."
"Hannah," she said. "Great girl."
"Yes, she told us you were out getting something to eat . . ."
"Uh-huh."
"And you'd be back in half an hour or so."
"And here I am," she said, and grinned.
"Miss Weed, have you ever been married?" Brown asked.
"No, I haven't," she said, looking surprised.
"I thought the middle name might be ..."
"Oh. No, that was my mother's maiden name. It's where I got the name of the shop, actually. The Bide and the Wee. From my middle name and my last name."
"Byerly and Weed," Brown said.
"Yes. Bide-A-Wee."
"Miss Weed," Carella said, "when we called here, we asked to speak to you, and Hannah said ..."
"Great girl," she said again.
But she looked nervous now.
"She said . . . these are her exact words . . . she said, 'Bye's out getting something to eat.'"
"Uh-huh."
"She called you Bye."
"Uh-huh."
"Do a lot of people call you that?"
"Fair amount, I guess."
"Short for Byerly, is that it?"
"Well, my first name's Pauline, that's not such great shakes, is it?"
"Do you call yourself Bye?"
"Yes."
240
"How do you sign yourself?"
"Pauline Byerly Weed."
"You sign all your . . .?"
"I sign everything Pauline Byerly Weed, yes."
"How about personal correspondence?" Brown asked.
She turned to him.
"Yes," she said. "That, too. Everything."
"You call yourself Bye, but you sign yourself Pauline Byerly Weed."
"Yes."
"Miss Weed," Carella said, "do you own a typewriter?"
Her eyes flashed. Danger. Careful. That's what her eyes were saying.
"We can get a search warrant," Brown said.
"I own a typewriter," she said, "yes."
"Did you own this same typewriter in June of last year?"
"Yes."
"July of last year?"
"Yes."
"May we see it, please?"
"Why?"
"Because we think you wrote some letters to Arthur Schumacher," Brown said.
"I may very well have written ..."
"Erotic letters," Carella said.
"Can we see that typewriter, please?" Brown said.
"I didn't kill him," she said.
"What it was," Dolly said, "they started out as tricks, you know? I was working Casper . . . you know Casper and the Fields, up there near the old cemetery? St Augustus Cemetery? Where there used to be like this little stone building got knocked down? Just inside the gates? Well, a lot of girls line up there at night because cars come through to pick up the Expressway, the Casper Avenue entrance, you know where I mean? Anyway, that's where I met them, they came walkin' up the street, lookin' over the merchandise, there's lot of girls
241
along that cemetery stretch, well, I guess I don't have to tell you. I'm tryin' to explain I don't want to take a rap for a cop's old man got killed. I hardly know these guys, they started out as tricks."
"When was this?" Wade asked.
"Last Sunday night."
"Almost a week ago."
"Almost."
"What does that make it, Charlie?"
Bent took a little celluloid bank calendar from his notebook.
"The twenty-second," he said.
Five days after Carella's father got killed.
"So they came up to you ..."
"Yeah, and they told me they kind of liked my looks," she said, and shrugged modestly, "and would I be interested in a three-way. So I told them I usually get more for a three-way, and they asked me how much, and I told them a nun' fifty and they said that sounded okay, and we went to this little hot-bed place the girls use, it's near that big hall on Casper, where they cater weddings and things? Right next door to it? So that's how it started," she said, and shrugged again.
"How'd you end up in an abandoned building on Sloane?"
"Well, it turns out these guys were loaded ..."
There'd been twelve hundred dollars in Tony Carella's cash register.
"... and they liked crack as much as I do. Well, I mean, who don't? I had my way, I'd marry crack. So we had a nice little arrangement, you know what I mean? I'd do whatever they wanted me to do, and they supplied me with crack."
A simple business arrangement. Basic barter. A usual arrangement at that. Sex for dope. And because everyone was stoned or about to get stoned, it was rarely if ever safe sex. When crack's on the scene, nobody's worrying about a rubber. Which is why you had a lot of crack addicts getting pregnant. Which is why you had a lot of tormented crack babies crying for cocaine. What goes around comes around.
"I don't know where they got all that money ..." she said.
242
Killed a man for it, Wade thought.
". . . but listen, who cares?"
Twelve hundred dollars, he thought.
"I do you, you do me, one hand washes the other, am I right? No questions asked, just beam me up, Scottie."
Just beam you up, he thought.
"How'd you end up on Sloane Street?" he asked.
"I think they were on the run."
"What do you mean?"
"I think they done a job that night. They called me up, told me they didn't want to come home. They were afraid ..."
"Which is where?"
"So we like went to this crack house, you know, but the guy on the door looks at us through the peephole, he says 'How the fuck / know who you are?' Like we're cops, right?" she said sarcastically. "I been hookin' since I was thirteen, I suddenly look like I'm undercover, right? Sonny and Diz, too, you ain't gonna mistake either one of them for nothing but an ex-con. So the guy at the door gives us all this bullshit and we're forced to score on the street. Which is no big deal, I mean I do it all the time, you can buy crack on any street corner, look who I'm tellin'. But it would've been easier we could've smoked there in private without having to find a place to go. 'Cause we couldn't go back to the pad, you know. 'Cause Sonny and Diz thought the cops would come lookin' for them there."
"And where's that?" Bent asked.
"So that's how we ended up on Sloane, in that building, Jesus, what a place! Rats the size of alligators, I swear to God. So that was you guys, huh?"
"Yeah, that was us," Wade said.
"Scared the shit out of us," Dolly said, and giggled the way she had that night. "We went down the fire escape."
"We figured."
"I almost broke my neck."
"Where're Sonny and Diz now?"
"I already told you everything I know about them."
243
"Except where they are."
"I don't know where they are."
"You said you were living together ..."
"But not no more."
"You said you had a pad ..."