Octagon Theater Spaces was a six-story building in a section of the city called King’s Road after the one in London, but bearing scant resemblance to it. The actual name of the street was Kenney Road, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare lined with furniture warehouses, electrical supply stores, auto repair shops, a garage for the city’s Department of Sanitation trucks, and an occasional restored and renovated factory like the Octagon and its virtual twin down the street, Theater Five, an eight-story structure divided into large rehearsal spaces. A receptionist told them there were six studios on each floor. In some of them, rehearsals were in progress; in others, auditions were being held. The Jenny’s Room auditions were in studio four, on the second floor.
A lumbering elevator dating back to the building’s factory days took them to the second floor, where they stepped out into a large entrance hall, one wall of which was hung with pay phones. The pleasant hum of busy chatter hung on the air. Good-looking men and women-this was their profession, after all-greeted each other familiarly, all of them seeming to know each other. Actors holding scripts, dancers in tights and leg warmers roamed from telephones to rehearsal halls, elevators to corridors, rest rooms to audition rooms. They glanced only cursorily at Carella and Brown, knowing at once that they weren’t actors, but unable to peg their occupations.
Brown hadn’t expected to be in the field today. He was wearing blue jeans, a ski sweater with a reindeer pattern, a green ski parka over it, and a blue woolen watch cap pulled down over his ears. He looked as square as a tuba. Carella could have passed for some guy here to read the gas meter. He was wearing a heavy mackinaw over a maroon sweater and gray corduroy trousers. No hat, although his mother constantly told him if his head got cold, he’d be cold all over. Both men were wearing wool-lined pull-on Bean boots. As they came down the corridor looking for studio four, a young girl in jeans and a leotard top chirped, “Hi,” smiled, and flitted on by.
A door with a frosted-glass upper panel was lettered with the words STUDIO FOUR . It opened onto a small waiting room lined with folding chairs upon which sat young men and women in street clothes, all of them intently studying pages Carella assumed had been photocopied from a master script.
A feverish-looking young man wearing glasses and a V-necked vest sweater over an apple green shirt asked Carella if he was here for Jenny. Carella showed him his shield and said he was here to see Mr Norman Zimmer. The young man didn’t seem to get it at first.
“Will you need sides?” he asked.
Carella didn’t know what sides were.
“I’m a police detective,” he said. “I’m here to see Mr Zimmer. Is he here?”
“Just a second, please, I’ll see,” the young man said, and opened a door beyond which Carella glimpsed a very large room lined with windows on one side. The door closed again. Brown shrugged. The man was back a moment later. He said auditions would be starting at ten, but Mr Zimmer could spare them a few minutes before then. “Please go right in,” he said.
Carella looked at his watch.
It was a quarter to ten.
At the far end of the room, Zimmer-or a man they assumed was Zimmer-stood alone behind a row of folding chairs behind a bank of long tables. The moment they stepped into the room, he said, “What’s this about, gentlemen?”
Brown blinked.
His voice. I recognized his voice. He had a very distinctive voice.
Whenever he got agitated, the voice just boomed out of him.
Mrs Kipp’s words. Describing the voice of the man who’ d visited Andrew Hale three times during the month of September, arguing with him each time, threatening him.
The voice was a trained voice, an actor’s voice, an opera singer’s voice, a radio announcer’s voice, something of that sort.
Carella-remembering the description from the report Kling and Brown had filed-was himself suddenly paying very close attention to the man who now came around the end of the row of tables, walking toward them.
“Mr Zimmer?” he asked.
“Yes?” His voice sounded as if it were coming over a bullhorn.
“Detective Carella. My partner, Detective Brown.”
“How do you do?” Zimmer said, and extended his hand. His grip was like a moray eel’s. “I haven’t much time,” he said. “What is it?”
Like Andrew Hale’s visitor, Zimmer had dark hair and blue eyes. He was about Brown’s size, a tank of a man with a barrel chest, and a belly that overhung the waistband of dark blue trousers. A blue jacket matching the pants was draped over the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar unbuttoned. The knot of his tie was pulled down. The tie sported alternating stripes, yellow to match his suspenders, navy blue to complement them and to pick up the color of his suit. A big man, Mrs Kipp had said. Very big.
“Sorry to bother you,” Carella said. “We know you’re busy.”
“I am.”
