by Ed McBain
“Was she expecting you?” he said again.
The girl looked at her watch. “I’m five minutes early,” she said. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on here? Was she robbed or something?”
A native for sure, he thought. In this city, burglary was always confused with robbery—except by the police. The police only had trouble distinguishing one degree of burglary from another.
“What were your plans?” Carella asked.
“Plans?”
“With Miss Anderson.”
“Lunch and then the theater,” Tina said. “It’s a matinee day, half-hour is one-thirty.” She planted her feet firmly, put her hands on her hips, and said again, “Where is she?”
“Dead,” Carella said, and watched her eyes.
Only suspicion showed there. Not shock, not sudden grief, only suspicion. She hesitated a moment, and then said, “You’re putting me on.”
“I wish I were.”
“What do you mean, dead?” Tina said. “I saw her only last night. Dead?”
“Her body was found at twelve-thirty A.M.,” Carella said.
Something came into the eyes now. Belief. And then belated shock. And then something like fear.
“Who did it?” she asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“How? Where?”
“Outside the building here,” Carella said. “She was shot.”
“Shot?”
And suddenly she burst into tears. The detectives watched her. She fumbled in her shoulder bag for a tissue, wiped her eyes, began crying again, blew her nose, and continued crying. They watched her silently. They both felt huge and awkward in the presence of her tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and blew her nose again, and looked for an ashtray into which she could drop the crumpled tissue. She took another tissue from her bag, and dabbed at her eyes again. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“How well did you know her?” Meyer asked gently.
“We’re very good…” She stopped, correcting herself, realizing she was talking about Sally Anderson as though she were still alive. “We were very good friends,” she said softly.
“How long had you known her?”
“Since Fatback.”
“Are you a dancer, too, Miss Wong?”
She nodded again.
“And you’d known her since the show opened?”
“Since we went into rehearsal. Even longer ago than that, in fact. From when we were auditioning. We met at the first audition.”
“When was that, Miss Wong?” Meyer asked.
“Last June.”
“And you’ve been good friends since.”
“She was my best friend.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”
“You say you saw her only last night—”
“Yes.”
“Was there a performance last night?”
“Yes.”
“What time did the curtain come down?”
“About a quarter to eleven. We ran a little long last night. Joey—he’s our comic, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the show—”
“No,” Carella said.
“No,” Meyer said.
The girl looked surprised. She shrugged, dismissing their ignorance, and then said, “Joey Hart. He was bringing down the house in the second act, so he milked it for all it was worth. We ran fifteen minutes over.”
“The curtain usually comes down at ten-thirty, is that it?” Meyer asked.
“Give or take, either way. It varies. It depends on the house.”
“And is that the last time you saw Sally Anderson alive?”
“In the dressing room later,” Tina said.
“Who else was in the dressing room?”
“All the gypsies. The girls, anyway.”
“Gypsies?”
“The dancers in the chorus.”
“How many of them?”
“There are sixteen of us altogether. Boys and girls. Eight of us were in the girls’ dressing room. Five blondes, two blacks, and a token Chink—me.” She paused. “Jamie digs blondes.”
“Jamie?”
“Our choreographer. Jamie Atkins.”
“So you were in the dressing room—”
“All eight of us. Taking off our makeup, getting out of our costumes…like that.”
“What time did you leave the dressing room, Miss Wong?”
“I got out as fast as I could.” She paused. “I had a date.”
“Who was in the dressing room when you left?” Meyer asked.
“Just Sally and Molly.”
“Molly?”
“Maguire.” She paused. “She changed her name. It used to be Molly Materasso, which isn’t too terrific for the stage, am I right?” Carella guessed it was not too terrific for the stage. “In fact, it means ‘mattress.’ ” Carella knew it meant mattress. “In fact, that was her maiden name. She’s married now, and her real name is Molly Boyd, but she still uses Molly Maguire on the stage. It’s a good name. Because of the Molly Maguires, you know.” Carella looked at her blankly. “It was a secret society in Ireland. In the 1840s,” she said. Carella was still looking at her blankly. “And later in Pennsylvania,” she said. “Anyway, you hear the name, you think you know her from someplace. The name gets her lots of jobs because directors and producers think, ‘Hey, Molly Maguire, sure, I know her.’ Actually, she’s a pretty lousy dancer.”
“But she was there alone in the dressing room with Sally when you left,” Meyer said.
“Yes.”
“What time was that?”
“About five after eleven.”
“What were they talking about, do you know?”
“It was Molly who was doing all the talking.”
“About what?”
“Geoffrey. Her husband. That’s why I got out of there as fast as I could. Actually, I wasn’t supposed to meet my date till midnight.”
“I don’t understand,” Meyer said.
“Well, Molly keeps bitching about her husband, and it gets to be a drag. I wish she’d either shut up, or else divorce him.”
“Uh-huh,” Meyer said.
“And that’s the last time you saw her, right?” Carella said.
“Yeah, right. I still can’t believe this. I mean…God! We had a cup of coffee together just before half-hour last night.”
“What’d you talk about then, Miss Wong?”
“Girl talk,” Tina said, and shrugged.
“Men?” Carella said.
“Of course men,” Tina said, and shrugged again.
“Was she living with anybody?” Meyer asked.
“Not in that sense.”
“What sense is that?”
“Most of her clothes were here, most of his were there.”
“Whose clothes?” Carella asked.
“Timmy’s.”
“Is he a boyfriend or something?” Meyer asked.
“Or something,” Tina said.
“Timmy what?” Carella asked.
“Moore.”
“Is the Timmy for Timothy?”
“I think so.”
“Timothy Moore,” Meyer said, writing the name into his notebook. “Do you know where he lives?”
“Downtown, just outside the Quarter. He’s a med student at Ramsey U. His apartment is near the school someplace.”
“You wouldn’t know the address, would you?”
“I’m sorry,” Tina said.
“When you say ‘or something’…,” Carella said.
“Well, they were sort of on-again off-again.”
“But they were romantically involved?”
“Do you mean were they sleeping together?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“Yes, they were sleeping together,” Tina said. “Isn’t everybody?”
“I suppose,” Carella said. “Did she ever mention a man named Paco Lopez?”
“No. Who’s Paco Lopez? Is he in show business?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Never mentioned drugs to you?”
“Are you talking about a little pot every now and then, or what?”
“I’m talking about the hard stuff. Heroin,” he said, and paused. “Cocaine,” he said, and watched her closely.
“Sally smoked pot,” Tina said. “Who doesn’t? But as for anything else, I don’t think so.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, if that’s what you mean. But usually, you can get a pretty good idea of who’s doing what when you’re working in a show, and I don’t think Sally was doing any kind of hard drugs.”
“Are you suggesting that some members of the cast…?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Uh-huh,” Carella said.
“Not heroin,” Tina said, “nobody’s that stupid anymore. But some coke here and there, now and then, sure.”
“But not Sally.”
“Not to my knowledge.” Tina paused. “Not me, either, if that’s your next question.”
“That wasn’t my next question,” Carella said, and smiled. “Did Sally ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”
“Never.”
“Did she owe anybody money? To your knowledge?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Anything seem to be troubling her?”
“No. Well, yes.”
“What?”
“Nothing serious.”
“Well, what?”
“She wanted to take singing lessons again, but she didn’t know how she could find the time. She had dance every day, you know, and she was seeing a shrink three times a week.”
“And that’s it? That’s all that was troubling her?”
“That’s all she ever mentioned to me.”
“Would you know her shrink’s name?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
“How’d she get along with the rest of the cast?”
“Fine.”
“How about management?”
“Who do you mean? Allan?”
“Who’s Allan?”
“Our producer, Allan Carter. I mean, who do you mean by management? The company manager? The general manager?”
“Any or all of them. How’d she get along with the people who were running the show?”
“Fine, I guess,” Tina said, and shrugged. “Once a show opens, you rarely see any of those people anymore. Well, in our case, because we’re such a big hit, Freddie comes around to check it out once or twice a week, make sure we aren’t coasting. But for the most part—”
“Freddie?”
“Our director. Freddie Carlisle.”
“How do you spell that?” Meyer asked, beginning to write again.
“With an i and an s,” Tina said. “C-a-r-l-i-s-l-e.”
“And you said your producer’s—”
“Allan Carter. Two l‘s and an a.”
“Who’s your company manager?”
“Danny Epstein.”
“And your general manager?”
“Lew Eberhart.”
“Anybody else we should know about?” Carella asked.
Tina shrugged. “The stage managers? We’ve got three of them.” She shrugged again. “I mean, there are thirty-eight people in the cast alone, and God knows how many musicians and electricians and carpenters and property men and—”
“Any of them Hispanic?”
“In the crew, do you mean? I guess so. I don’t know too many of them. Except to pass them by in my underwear.”
She smiled suddenly and radiantly, and then seemed to remember what they were talking about here. The smile dropped from her face.
“How about the cast? Any Hispanics in the cast?” Carella asked.
“Two of the gypsies,” Tina said.
“Could we have their names, please?” Meyer said.
“Tony Asensio and Mike Roldan. Roldan doesn’t sound like a Spanish name, but it is. Actually, it’s Miguel Roldan.”
“Was Sally particularly friendly with either of them?”
“The gypsies in a show get to know each other pretty well,” Tina said.
“How well did she know these two men?” Carella asked.
“Same as the rest of us,” Tina said, and shrugged.
“Did she ever date either of them?”
“They’re both faggots,” Tina said. “In fact, they’re living together.” As though talk of the show had suddenly reminded her of the afternoon performance, she looked swiftly at her watch. “Oh, my God,” she said, “I’ve got to get out of here, I’ll be late!” And suddenly a look of self-chastisement crossed her face, and it appeared as if she would burst into tears again. “The show must go on, huh?” she said bitterly, shaking her head. “I’m worrying about the goddamn show, and Sally’s dead.”
From where the two patrolmen sat in the patrol car parked at the curb, it seemed evident that the priest was winning the fight. They had no desire to get out of the car and break up the fight, not with it being so cold out there, and especially since the priest seemed to be winning. Besides, they were sort of enjoying the way the priest was mopping up the street with his little spic opponent.
Up here in the Eight-Seven, you sometimes couldn’t tell the spics (Hispanics, you were supposed to say in your reports) from the whites because some of them had high Spanish blood in them and looked the same as your ordinary citizen. For all the patrolmen knew, the priest was a spic, too, but he had a very white complexion, and he was bigger than most of the cockroach-kickers up here. The two patrolmen sat in the heated comfort of the car and guessed aloud that he was maybe six three, six four, something like that, maybe weighing in at 240 pounds or thereabouts. They couldn’t figure which church he belonged to. None of the neighborhood churches had priests who dressed the way this one was dressed, but maybe he was visiting from someplace in California—they dressed that way in California, didn’t they, at those missions they had out there in the Napa Valley? The priest was wearing a brown woolen robe, and his head was shaved like a monk’s head, its bald crown glistening above the tonsure that encircled it like a wreath. One of the patrolmen in the car asked the other one what you called that brown thing the priest was wearing, that thing like a dress, you know? The other patrolman told him it was called a hassock, stupid, and the first patrolman said, “Oh yeah, right.” They were both rookies who had been working out of the Eight-Seven for only the past two weeks, otherwise they’d have known that the priest wasn’t a priest at all, even though he was known in the precinct as Brother Anthony.
Clearly, Brother Anthony was in fact beating the man to a pulp. The man was a little Puerto Rican pool shark who’d made the enormous mistake of trying to hustle him. Brother Anthony had dragged the little punk out of the pool hall and first had picked him up and hurled him against the brick wall of the tenement next door, just to stun him, you know, and then had swung a pool cue at his kneecaps, hoping to break them but breaking only the pool cue instead, and was now battering him senseless with his hamlike fists as the two patrolmen watched from the snug comfort of the patrol car. Brother Anthony weighed a lot, but he had lifted weights in prison, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. He sometimes asked people to hit him as hard as they could in the belly, and laughed with pleasure whenever anyone told him how hard and strong he was. All year round, even in the hot summer months, he wore the brown woolen cassock. During the summer months, he wore nothing at all under it. He would lift the hem of the cassock and show his sandals to the neighborhood hookers. “See?” he would say. “That’s all I got on under this thing.” The hookers would oooh and ahhh and try to lift the cassock higher, making believe they didn’t think he was really naked under it. Brother Anthony was very graceful for such a big man; he would laugh and dance away from them, dance away.
In the winter, he wore army combat boots instead of the
sandals. He was using those boots now to stomp the little Puerto Rican pool hustler into the icy sidewalk. In the patrol car, the two cops debated whether they should get out and break this thing up before the little spic got his brains squashed all over the sidewalk. They were spared having to make any decision because their radio erupted with a 1010, and they radioed back that they were rolling on it. They pulled away from the curb just as Brother Anthony leaned over the prostrate and unconscious hustler to take his wallet from his pocket. Only $10 of the money in that wallet had been hustled from Brother Anthony, but he figured he might as well take all of it because of all the trouble the little punk had put him to. He was cleaning out the wallet when Emma came around the corner.
Emma was known in the neighborhood as the Fat Lady, and most of the people in the precinct tried to steer very clear of her because she was known to possess a short temper and a straightedge razor. She carried the razor in her shoulder bag, hanging from the left shoulder, so that she could reach in there with her right hand, and whip open the razor in a flash, and lop off any dude’s ear, or slash his face or his hands, or sometimes go for the money, open the man’s windpipe and his jugular with one and the same stroke. Nobody liked to mess with the Fat Lady, which was perhaps why the crowd began to disperse the moment she came around the corner. On the other hand, the crowd might have dispersed anyway, now that the action had ended; nobody liked to stand around doing nothing on a cold day, especially in this neighborhood, where somehow it always seemed colder than anyplace else in the city. This neighborhood could have been Moscow. The park bordering this neighborhood could have been Gorky Park. Maybe it was. Or vice versa.
“Hello, bro,” the Fat Lady said.
“Hello, Emma,” he said, looking up from where he was crouched over the unconscious hustler. He had stomped the man real good. A thin trickle of blood was beginning to congeal on the ice beneath the stupid punk’s head. His face looked very blue. Brother Anthony tossed the empty wallet over his shoulder, stood up to his full height, and tucked the $500-odd into the pouchlike pocket at the front of the cassock. He began walking, and Emma fell into step beside him.
Emma was perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three years old, in any event a good six or seven years older than Brother Anthony. Her full name was Emma Forbes, which had been her name when she was still married to a black man named Jimmy Forbes, since deceased, the unfortunate victim of a shoot-out in a bank he’d been trying to hold up. The man who’d shot and killed Emma’s husband was a bank guard who’d been sixty-three years old at the time, a retired patrolman out of the 28th Precinct downtown. He’d never lived to be sixty-four because Emma sought him out a month after her husband’s funeral, and slit his throat from ear to ear one fine April night when the forsythias were just starting to bud. Emma did not like people who deprived her or her loved ones of anything they wanted or needed. Emma was fond of saying, “The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” an expression she used to justify her frequent vengeful attacks. It was uncertain whether the expression had preceded the nickname, or vice versa. When someone was five feet six inches tall and weighed 170 pounds, it was reasonable to expect—especially in this neighborhood, where street names were as common as legal names—that sooner or later someone would begin calling her the Fat Lady, even without having heard her operatic reference.