by Ed McBain
Meyer knocked on the door. Both men waited. He knocked again.
“Yes?” a woman’s voice said. “Who is it?”
“Police officers,” Meyer answered.
There was a short silence. Then the woman said, “Just a moment, please.”
“Think he’s home?” Meyer whispered.
Carella shrugged. They heard footsteps approaching the door. Through the closed door, the woman said, “What do you want?”
“We’re looking for Lou Kantor,” Meyer said.
“Why?”
“Routine investigation,” Meyer said.
The door opened a crack, held by a night-chain. “Let me see your badge,” the woman said. Whatever else they had learned, the citizens of this good city knew that you always asked a cop to show his badge because otherwise he might turn out to be a robber or a rapist or a murderer, and then where were you? Meyer held up his shield. The woman studied it through the narrow opening, and then closed the door again, slipped off the night-chain, and opened the door wide.
“Come in,” she said.
They went into the apartment. The woman closed and locked the door behind them. They were standing in a small, tidy kitchen. Through a doorless doorframe, they could see into the next room, obviously the living room, with two easy chairs, a sofa, a floor lamp, and a television set. The woman was perhaps thirty-five years old, five feet eight inches tall, with a solid frame, and a square face fringed with short dark hair. She was wearing a robe over pajamas, and she was barefoot. Her eyes were blue and suspicious. She looked from one cop to the other, waiting.
“Is he here?” Meyer asked.
“Is who here?”
“Mr. Kantor.”
The woman looked at him, puzzled. Understanding suddenly flashed in her blue eyes. A thin smile formed on her mouth. “I’m Lou Kantor,” she said. “Louise Kantor. What can I do for you?”
“Oh,” Meyer said, and studied her.
“What can I do for you?” Lou repeated. The smile had vanished from her mouth; she was frowning again.
Carella took the photostat from his notebook, and handed it to her. “Do you know this woman?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lou said.
“Do you know her name?”
“Yes,” Lou said wearily. “That’s Sadie Collins. What about her?”
Carella decided to play it straight. “She’s been murdered,” he said.
“Mmm,” Lou said, and handed the stat back to him. “I thought so.”
“What made you think so?”
“I saw her picture in the newspaper last week. Or at least a picture of somebody who looked a hell of a lot like her. The name was different, and I told myself, No, it isn’t her, but Jesus, there was her picture staring up at me, it had to be her.” Lou shrugged and then walked to the stove. “You want some coffee?” she asked. “I’ll get some going, if you like.”
“Thank you, no,” Carella said. “How well did you know her, Miss Kantor?”
Lou shrugged again. “I only knew her a short while. I met her in, I guess it was September. Saw her three or four times after that.”
“Where’d you meet her?” Carella asked.
“In a bar called The Purple Chairs,” Lou answered. “That’s right,” she added quickly, “that’s what I am.”
“Nobody asked,” Carella said.
“Your eyes asked.”
“What about Sadie Collins?”
“What about her? Spell it out, officer, I’m not going to help you.”
“Why not?”
“Mainly because I don’t like being hassled.”
“Nobody’s hassling you, Miss Kantor. You practice your religion and I’ll practice mine. We’re here to talk about a dead woman.”
“Then talk about her, spit it out. What do you want to know? Was she straight? Everybody’s straight until they’re not straight anymore, isn’t that right? She was willing to learn. I taught her.”
“Did you know she was married?”
“I knew. So what?”
“She told you?”
“She told me. Broke down in tears one night, lay in my arms all night crying. I knew she was married.”
“What’d she say about her husband?”
“Nothing that surprised me.”
“What, exactly?”
“She said he had another woman. Said he ran off to see her every weekend, told little Sadie he had out-of-town business. Every goddamn weekend, can you imagine that?”
“How long had it been going on?”
“Who knows? She found out about it just before Christmas last year.”
“How often did you say you saw her?”
“Three or four times. She used to come here on weekends, when he was away. Sauce for the goose.”
“What do you make of this?” Carella said, and handed her Sarah’s address book, opened to the MEMORANDA page.
“I don’t know any of these people,” Lou said.
“The initials under your name,” Carella said.
“Mmm. What about them?”
“TPC and then TG. Got any ideas?”
“Well, the TPC is obvious, isn’t it?”
“Obvious?” Carella said.
“Sure. I met her at The Purple Chairs,” Lou said. “What else could it mean?”
Carella suddenly felt very stupid. “Of course,” he said, “what else could it mean?”
“How about those other initials?” Meyer said.
“Haven’t the faintest,” Lou answered, and handed back the book. “Are you finished with me?”
“Yes, thank you very much,” Carella said.
“I miss her,” Lou said suddenly. “She was a wild one.”
Cracking a code is like learning to roller-skate; once you know how to do it, it’s easy. With a little help from Gerald Fletcher, who had provided a guided tour the night before, and with a lot of help from Lou Kantor, who had generously provided the key, Carella was able to study the list in Sarah’s book and crack the code wide open. Well, almost wide open.
Last night, Fletcher had taken him, in geographical rather than numerical order, to Paddy’s Bar & Grille (PB&G), Fanny’s (F), The Purple Chairs (TPC), and Quigley’s Rest (QR). For some reason, perhaps to avoid duplication, Sarah Fletcher had felt it necessary to list in code the places in which she had met her various bedmates. It seemed obvious to Carella, now that he knew how to roller-skate, that the TS beneath Michael Thornton’s telephone number was meant to indicate nothing more than The Saloon, where Thornton had admitted first meeting her. Gerald Fletcher had not taken Carella there last night, but perhaps the place had been on his itinerary, with the scheduled stop preempted by his own drunkenness and the fight in Quigley’s Rest.
But what the hell did TG mean?
By Carella’s own modest estimate, he had been in more damn bars in the past twenty-four hours than he had in the past twenty-four years. But he decided nonetheless to hit The Saloon that night. You never learned anything if you didn’t ask, and there were imponderables even in roller-skating.
Three wandering violinists moved from table to table playing a medley of “Ebb Tide,” “Strangers in the Night,” and “Where or When,” none of which seemed to move Nora as much as “Something” had. Fake potted palms dangled limpid plastic fronds while a small pool, honoring the name of the place, gushed before a painted backdrop of desert sand and sky.
“I’m glad you called,” Nora said. “I hate to go straight home after the end of a busy day. The apartment always feels so empty. And the meeting today was a disaster. The art director is a man who started in the stockroom forty years ago, after a correspondence course from one of those schools that advertise on matchbook covers. So he had the gall to tell me what was wrong with the girl’s hand.” She looked up from her drink and said, in explanation, “It was this drawing of a girl, with her hand sort of brushing a strand of hair away from her cheek.”
“I see,” Kling said.
“Do you have to p
ut up with that kind of crap?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Anyway, I’m glad you called. There’s nothing like a drink after a session with a moron.”
“How about the company?”
“What?”
“I’m glad you appreciate the drink . . .”
“Oh, stop it,” Nora said, “you know I like the company.”
“Since when?”
“Since always. Now just cut it out.”
“May I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you here with me, instead of your boyfriend?”
“Well,” Nora said, and turned away preparatory to lying, “as I told you . . . oh, look, the violinists are coming over. Think of a request, quick.”
“Ask them to play ‘Something,’” Kling said, and Nora turned back toward him immediately, her eyes flashing.
“That isn’t funny, Bert,” she said.
“Tell me about your boyfriend.”
“There’s nothing to tell you. He’s a doctor and he spends a lot of time in his office and at the hospital. As a result, he’s not always free when I’d like him to be, and, therefore, I felt it perfectly all right to have a drink with you. In fact, if you wouldn’t be so smart all the time, saying I should request ‘Something’ when you know the song has particular meaning for me, you might ask me to have dinner with you, and I might possibly say ‘yes.’”
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Kling asked, astonished.
“Yes,” Nora said.
“There isn’t a boyfriend at all, is there?” he said.
“Don’t make that mistake, Bert. There is one, and I love him. And I’m going to marry him as soon as . . .” She cut herself short, and turned away again.
“As soon as what?” Kling asked.
“Here are the violinists,” Nora said.
One storm had blown out to sea, but another was approaching, and this time it looked as though the forecasters would be right. The first flakes had not yet begun to fall as Carella walked up the street toward The Saloon, but snow was in the air, you could smell it, you could sense it, the goddamn city would be a frozen tundra by morning. Carella did not particularly like snow. His one brief romance with it had been, oh, several years ago, when some punk arsonists had set fire to him (talk about Dick Tracy!) and he had put out the flames by rolling in a bank of the stuff. But how long can any hot love affair last? Not very. Carella’s disaffection had begun again the very next week, when it again snowed, and he again slipped and slogged and sloshed along with ten million other winter-weary citizens of the city. He looked up at the sky now, pulled a sour face, and went inside.
The Saloon was just that: a saloon.
A cigarette-scarred bar behind which ran a mottled, flaking mirror. Wooden booths with patched leatherette seat cushions. Bowls of pretzels and potato chips. Jukebox bubbling and gurgling, rock music babbling and bursting, the smell of steamy bodies and steamy garments, the incessant rise and fall of too many voices talking too loud. He hung his coat on the sagging rack near the cigarette machine, found himself a relatively uncrowded spot at the far end of the bar, and ordered a beer. Because of the frantic activity behind and in front of the bar, he knew it would be quite some while before he could catch the bartender’s ear. As it turned out, he did not actually get to talk to him until eleven-thirty, at which time the business of drinking yielded to the more serious business of trying to make out.
“They come in here,” the bartender said, “at all hours of the night, each and every one of them looking for the same thing. Relentless. You know what that word means? Relentless? That’s what the action is here.”
“Yeah, it is kind of frantic,” Carella said.
“Frantic? That’s the word, all right. Frantic. Men and women both. Mostly men. The women come for the same thing, you understand? But it takes a lot more fortitude for a woman to go in a bar alone, even if it’s this kind of place where the only reason anybody comes at all is to meet people, you understand? Fortitude. You know what that word means? Fortitude?”
“Yeah,” Carella said, and nodded.
“Take yourself,” the bartender said. “You’re here to meet a girl, am I right?”
“I’m here mostly to have a few beers and relax,” Carella said.
“Relax? With that music? You could just as easy relax in World War II, on the battlefield. Were you in World War II?”
“Yes, I was,” Carella said.
“That was some war,” the bartender said. “The wars they got nowadays are bullshit wars. But World War II?” He grinned fondly and appreciatively. “That was a glorious war! You know what that word means? Glorious?”
“Yeah,” Carella said.
“Excuse me, I got a customer down the other end,” the bartender said, and walked off. Carella sipped at his beer. Through the plate-glass window facing the side street, he could see the first snowflakes beginning to fall. Great, he thought, and looked at his watch.
The bartender mixed and served the drink, and then came back. “What’d you do in the war?” he asked.
“Goof off, mostly,” Carella said, and smiled.
“No, seriously. Be serious.”
“I was in the Infantry,” Carella said.
“Who wasn’t? Did you get overseas?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Italy.”
“See any action?”
“A little,” Carella said. “Listen . . . getting back to the idea of meeting somebody . . .”
“In here, it always gets back to that.”
“There was someone I was hoping to see.”
“Who?” the bartender said.
“A girl named Sadie Collins.”
“Yeah,” the bartender said, and nodded.
“Do you know her?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you seen her around lately?”
“No. She used to come in a lot, but I ain’t seen her in months. What do you want to fool around with her for?”
“Why? What’s the matter with her?”
“You want to know something?” the bartender said. “I thought she was a hooker at first. I almost had her thrown out. The boss don’t like hookers hanging around here.”
“What made you think she was a hooker?”
“Aggressive. You know what that word means? Aggressive? She used to come dressed down to here and up to here, which is pretty far out, even compared to some of the things they’re wearing today. She was ready for action, you understand? She was selling everything she had.”
“Well, most women try to . . .”
“No, no, this wasn’t like most women, don’t give me that most women crap. She’d come in here, pick out a guy she wanted, and go after him like the world was gonna end at midnight. All business, just like a hooker, except she wasn’t charging. Knew just what she wanted, and went straight for it, bam. And I could always tell exactly who she was gonna end up with, even before she knew it herself.”
“How could you tell?”
“Always the same type.”
“What type?”
“Big guys, first of all. You wouldn’t stand a chance with her, you’re lucky she ain’t here. Not that you ain’t big, don’t misunderstand me. But Sadie liked them gigantic. You know what that word means? Gigantic? That was Sadie’s type. Gigantic and mean. All I had to do was look around the room and pick out the biggest, meanest son of a bitch in the place, and that’s who Sadie would end up with. You want to know something?”
“What?”
“I’m glad she don’t come in here anymore. She used to make me nervous. There was something about her . . . don’t know.” The bartender shook his head. “Like she was compulsive. You know what that word means? Compulsive?”
He had left Nora at the door to her apartment, where she had given him her customary handshake and her now-expected “Thank you, I had a very nice time,” and rode down in the elevator now, wonder
ing what his next move should be. He did not believe her doctor-boyfriend existed (he seemed to be having a lot of trouble lately with girls and their goddamn doctor-boyfriends) but at the same time he accepted the fact that there was a man in her life, a flesh-and-blood person whose identity, for some bewildering reason, Nora chose not to reveal. Kling did not appreciate anonymous competition. He wondered if a blitz might not be in order, telephone call when he got back to his apartment, another call in the morning, a dozen roses, a telegram, another dozen calls, another dozen roses, the whole stupid adolescent barrage, all of it designed to convince a girl that somebody out there was madly in love with her.
He wondered if he was madly in love with her.
He decided he was not.
Then why was he expending all this energy? He recalled reading someplace that when a man and a woman got divorced, it was usually the man who remarried first. He supposed that what he had shared with Cindy was a marriage, of sorts, and the sudden termination of it . . . well, it was silly to think of it in terms of a marriage. But he supposed the end of it (and it certainly seemed to have ended) could be considered a divorce, of sorts. In which case, his frantic pursuit of Nora was merely a part of the reaction syndrome, and . . .
Damn it, he thought. Hang around with a psychologist long enough and you begin to sound like one.
He stepped out of the elevator, walked swiftly through the lobby, and came out of the building into a blinding snowstorm. It had not been this bad ten minutes ago, when the taxi had dropped them off. The snow was thick and fast now, the wind blowing it in angry swirls that lashed his face and flicked away, successively, incessantly. He ducked his head, and began walking up toward the lighted avenue at the end of the block, his hands in his pockets. He was on the verge of deciding that he would not try to see Nora Simonov again, would not even call her again, when three men stepped out of a doorway, directly into his path.