Blaney said nothing. He was kneeling beside the dead
woman, his thumb and forefinger spreading her eyelids wide, his own violet-colored eyes studying her pupils. A few moments later, he declared her dead, said the probable cause of death was gunshot wounds, and ventured the wild guess that the lady had been shot twice in the heart.
Same words the handyman had used.
The lady.
THE HANDYMAN TOLD them the lady's name was Gloria Stanford. He told Meyer and Carella what he'd already told the Homicide dicks. He'd come up to change a washer in the kitchen faucet and had found the lady dead on the bedroom floor.
'What were you doing in the bedroom?' Meyer wanted to know.
'Senor?'
'If you came up to change a washer in the kitchen, what were you doing in the bedroom?'
'I alwayss check the apar'menn, make sure anybody's
home.'
'So you went into the bedroom to see if the lady was in there, is that right?'
'Si. Before I begin work.'
'And what if the lady'd been in bed or something?' Meyer asked.
'Oh no. It wass eleven o'clock. She hass to be gone by
then, no?'
'Then why'd you go look in the bedroom for her?' 'To see if she wass there,' the handyman said, and
shrugged elaborately.
'This guy sounds like my Chinese manager,' Monoghan
said.
'What'd you do when you found her in here dead?' Carella asked.
'I run down get the super.'
'He's the one called it in,' Monroe said. 'The super.'
'Where is he now?'
'You got me. Probably hiding in the basement, keeping his nose clean.'
The boys from the mobile crime lab were just arriving.
It was going to be a long day.
ALONG ABOUT THREE-THIRTY every afternoon, the squadroom's often frantic boil dissipated, to be replaced by a more relaxed ambience. The shift would be relieved in fifteen minutes, and usually all the clerical odds and ends were tied up by now. This was a time to unwind, to relax a little before heading home. This was a time to enter the mental decompression chamber that separated the often ugly aspects of police work from the more civilized world of family and friends.
Meyer and Carella had jointly composed the Detective Division report on Gloria Stanford, the woman who'd been found dead this morning in a fourteenth-floor apartment on Silvermine Oval, an area that passed for the precinct's Gold Coast. One copy of this DD report would go to Homicide, another would go to the Chief of Detectives, and the third would be filed here. Meyer was on the phone with his wife, Sarah, discussing the bar mitzvah of his nephew Irwin's second son — my how the time does fly when you're having a good time; it seemed like only yesterday that they'd attended Irwin the Vermin's own bar mitzvah. But Irwin was a grown man now — albeit a lawyer, so perhaps the sobriquet still applied.
Carella was on the phone with his sister, Angela. She had just told him he was a cad. Not in those words, exactly. What she'd actually said was 'Sometimes you behave like a spoiled brat.' This from his kid sister. Not such a kid anymore, either. All grown up, divorced once, and about to marry the district attorney who'd let their father's killer escape justice. Or so it seemed to Carella. Which was probably why his sister expressed the opinion that he sometimes behaved like a spoiled brat.
1 don't know what you're talking about,' he said into the phone, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper because a squadroom was not particularly the most private place in the world.
'What you said to Mama,' Angela said. She was referring to dinner at their mother's house yesterday. Carella felt like telling her that what had made that Memorial Day memorable for a woman named Gloria Stanford was getting shot twice in the chest, with both bullets passing through her heart, and that this morning, he had looked down into that woman's dead eyes, staring up at him wide open before the ME gently lowered her lids. He wanted to tell her that it had been a long, tiring day, and that he had just finished typing up the details of the case, and was ready to call home to tell Teddy he'd be on the way in fifteen — he glanced up at the wall clock - make that thirteen minutes, and he didn't need a scolding just now from his kid sister, was what he felt like telling her.
Instead, he said, 'I told Mama I was very happy. In fact, I told both of you . . .'
'It was your tone,' Angela said. 'My what?'
'The tone of your voice.'
'I meant what I said. I'm very happy Mama is getting married so soon after Papa got killed, and I'm very happy you're ...'
'That's exactly what I mean. That sarcastic, sardonic tone of voice.'
'I did not mean to sound either sarcastic or sardonic. You're both getting married, and I'm very happy for you.'
'You still think Henry ran a shoddy trial.'
'No, I think he did his best to convict Papa's murderer. I just think the defense outfoxed him.'
'And you still hold that against him.'
'Sonny Cole is dead,' Carella said. 'It doesn't matter anymore.'
'Then why do you keep harping on it?'
'I don't.'
'Why do you keep behaving as if I shouldn't marry Henry, and Mama shouldn't marry Luigi?'
'I wish he'd change his name to Lou,' Carella said.
'That's just what I mean.'
'And I wish he'd move here instead of taking Mama with him to Italy'
'His business is in Italy.'
And mine is here.'
'You're not the one marrying Mama!' Angela said.
'That's true,' Carella said. 'I'm not the one marrying Henry Lowell, either.'
There was a long silence on the line. In the background, Carella could hear the voices of the other detectives in the squadroom, all of them on their own phones, at their own desks.
At last, Angela said, 'Get over it, Steve.'
'I'm over it,' he said. 'You're both getting married on
June twelfth. I'm giving both of you away. Period.'
'You even make that sound ominous. Giving us away. You make it sound so final. And yes, ominous.'
'Sis,' he said, 'I love you both. You get over it, okay?'
'Do you really?' Angela asked. 'Love us both?'
'With all my heart,' he said.
'Do you remember when you used to call me 'Slip'?' she asked.
'How could I forget?'
'I was thirteen. You told me a thirteen-year-old girl shouldn't still be wearing cotton slips.'
'I was right.'
You gave me an inferiority complex.'
1 gave you an insight into the mysterious ways of womanhood.'
Yeah, bullshit,' Angela said, but he could swear she
was smiling.
'I love you, bro,' she said.
'I love you, too,' he said, 'I have to get out of here. Talk to you later.'
'Give my love to Teddy and the kids.'
