“He’s fine, by the way.”
“Good.”
“Bert?”
“Yes, Cindy?”
“Never mind, nothing.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I’ll put the shirt in the mail. I washed it and ironed it, I hope it doesn’t get messed up.”
“I hope not.”
“Good-bye, Bert,” she said, and hung up.
Kling put the receiver back onto its cradle, sighed, and went into the kitchen. He ate a breakfast of grapefruit juice, coffee, and two slices of toast, and then went back into the bedroom and dialed Nora Simonov’s number. When he asked her if she would like to have lunch with him, she politely refused, saying she had an appointment with an art director. Fearful of being turned down for dinner as well, he hedged his bet by asking if she’d like to meet him for a drink at about five, five-thirty. She surprised him by saying she would love it, and they agreed to meet at The Oasis, a quiet cocktail lounge in one of the city’s oldest hotels, near the western end of Grover Park. Kling went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
434 North Sixteenth Street was a brownstone within the precinct territory, between Ainsley and Culver avenues. Meyer and Carella found a listing for an L. Kantor in one of the mailboxes downstairs, tried the inner lobby door, found it unlocked, and started up to the fourth floor without ringing the downstairs bell. They had tried calling the number listed in Sarah’s address book, but the telephone company had reported it temporarily out of service. Whether this was true or not was a serious question for debate.
“The Telephone Blues” was a dirge still being sung by most residents of the city, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult these days to know if a phone was busy, out of order, disconnected, temporarily out of service, or stolen in the night by an international band of telephone thieves. The direct-dialing system had been a brilliant innovation, except that after directly dialing the digits necessary to place a call, the caller was more often than not greeted with: (a) silence; (b) a recording; (c) a busy signal, or (d) a series of strange beeps and boops. After trying to direct-dial the same number three or four times, the caller was inevitably reduced to dealing with one or more operators (all of whom sounded as if they were in a trainee program for people with ratings of less than 48 on the Standford-Binet scale of intelligence) and sometimes actually got to talk to the party he was calling. On too many occasions, Carella visualized someone in desperate trouble trying to reach a doctor, a policeman, or a fireman. The police had a number to call for emergency assistance—but what the hell good was the number if you could never get the
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. “
“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.
