'Cloth coat and a silk scarf,' Carella said.
'Yeah.'
'You're saying that when she came in here at eleven o'clock last night...'
'No, I'm not saying that at all.'
'You're not saying she was wearing a cloth coat and a silk scarf?.'
'I'm not saying she came in at eleven last night.'
'If it wasn't eleven, what time was it?'
'Oh, it was eleven, all right. But it was eleven yesterday morning.'
They found the change purse in the pocket of a blue cloth coat hanging in, the bedroom closet.
There was a dollar and a penny in it.
In the year 1909, There used to be forty-four morning newspapers in this city. By 1929, that figure had dropped to thirty. Three years later, due to technological advances, competition for circulation, standardization of the product, managerial faults, and, by the way, the Great Depression, this number was reduced to a mere three. Now there were but two.
Since there was a killer out there, the detectives didn't want to wait till four, five A.M.' when both papers would hit the newsstands. Nor did they think a call to the morning tabloid would be fruitful, mainly because they didn't think it would run an obit on a concert pianist, however famous she once may have been. It later turned out they were wrong; the tabloid played the story up big, but only because Svetlana had been living in obscurity and poverty after three decades of celebrity, and her granddaughter but that was another story.
Hawes spoke on the phone to the obituary editor at the so-called quality paper, a most cooperative man who was ready to read the full obit to him until Hawes assured him that all he wanted were the names of Miss Dyalovich's surviving kin. The editor skipped to the last paragraph, which noted that Svetlana was survived by a daughter, Maria Stetson, who lived in London, and a granddaughter, Priscilla Stetson, who lived right here in the big bad city.
'You know who she is, don't you?' the editor asked. Hawes thought he meant Svetlana. 'Yes, of course,' he said.
'We couldn't mention it in the obit because that's supposed to be exclusively about the deceased.' 'I'm not following you,' Hawes said.
'The granddaughter. She's Priscilla Stetson. The singer.'
'Oh? What kind of singing does she do?' 'Supper club. Piano bar. Cabaret. Like that.'
'You wouldn't know where, would you?' Hawes asked.
In this city, many of the homeless sleep by day and roam by night. Nighttime is dangerous for them; there are predators out there and a cardboard box offers scant protection against someone intent on robbery or rape. So they wander the streets like shapeless wraiths, adding a stygian dimension to the nocturnal landscape.
The streetlamps are on. Traffic lights blink their intermittent reds, yellows and greens into the empty hours of the night, but the city seems dark. Here and there, a bathroom light snaps on. In the otherwise blank face of an apartment building, a lamp burns steadily in the bedroom of an insomniac. The commercial buildings are all ablaze with illumination, but the only people in them are the office cleaners, readying the spaces for the workday that will begin at nine Monday morning. Tonight it still feels like night even though the morning is already an hour and a half old the cables on the bridges that span the city's river are festooned with bright lights that reflect in the
black waters below. Yet all seems so dark, perhaps because it is so empty.
At one-thirty in the morning the theater crowd has been home and in bed for along time, and many of the hotel bars have been closed for a half hour already. The clubs and discos will be open till four A.M.' the outside legal limit for serving alcoholic beverages, at which time the' delis and diners will begin serving breakfast. The underground clubs will grind on till six in the morning. But for now and for the most part, the city is as still as any tomb.
Steam hisses up from sewer lids.
Yellow cabs streak like whispered lightning through deserted streets.
A black-and-white photograph of Priscilla Stetson was on an easel outside the entrance to the Cafe Mouton at the Hotel Powell. Like an identifying shot in a home movie, the script lettering above the photo read Mrs. Priscilla Stetson. Below the photo, the same script lettering announced:
Now Appearing
9:00 P.M. - 2:00 A.M.
The woman in the photo could have been Svetlana Dyalovich on the cover of Time magazine. The same flaxen hair falling straight to her shoulders and cut in bangs on her forehead. The same pale eyes. The same high Slavic cheekbones. The same imperial nose and confident smile.
The woman sitting at the piano was perhaps thirty years old, dressed in along black gown with a risky decolletage. A creamy white expanse of flesh from bosom to neck was interrupted at the throat by a silver choker studded with black and white stones. She was singing 'Gently, Sweetly' when the detectives came in and took stools at the bar. There were perhaps two dozen people sitting at tables scattered around the smallish candlelit room. It was twenty minutes to two in the morning.
Here with a kiss
In the mist on the shore Sip from my lips And whisper
I adore you... Gently, Sweetly,
Ever so completely, Take me, Make me Yours.
Priscilla Stetson struck the final chord of the song, bent her head, and looked reverently at her hands spread on the keys. There was a spatter of warm applause. 'Thank you,' she whispered into the piano mike. 'Thank you very much.' Raising her head, tossing the long blond hair. 'I'll be taking a short break before the last set, so if you'd like to order anything before closing, now's your chance.' A wide smile, a wink. She played a lithe signature riff, rose, and was walking toward a table where two burly men
sat alone, when the detectives came off their stools to intercept her.
'Miss Stetson?' Carella said.
She turned, smiling, the performer ready to greet an admirer. In high-heeled pumps, she was perhaps five-eight, five-nine. Her blue-grey eyes were almost level with his.
'Detective Carella,' he said. 'This is my partner,
Detective Hawes.'
'Yes?'
'Miss Stetson,' he said. 'I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but...'
'My grandmother,' she said at once, looking certain rather than alarmed.
'Yes. I'm sorry. She's dead.'
She nodded.
'What happened?' she asked. 'Did she fall in the bathtub again?'
'No, she was shot.' 'Shot? My grandmother?' 'I'm sorry,' Carella said.
'Jesus, shot,' Priscilla said. 'Why would... ?' She shook her head again. 'Well, this city,' she said. 'Where'd it happen? On the street someplace?'
'No. In her apartment. It may have been a burglar.' Or maybe not, Hawes thought, but said nothing, just allowed Carella to continue carrying the ball. This was the hardest part of police work, informing the relatives of a victim that something terrible had happened. Carella was doing a fine job, thanks, no sense g him. Not at a quarter to two in the when the whole damn world was asleep.
'Was she drunk?' Priscilla asked.
Flat out.
'There hasn't been an autopsy yet,' Carella said. 'She was probably drunk,' Priscilla said.
'We'll let you know,' Carella said. It came out more harshly than he'd intended. Or maybe it came out exactly as he'd intended. 'Miss Stetson,' he said, 'if this is what it looks like, a burglar surprised during the commission of a felony, then we're looking for a needle in a haystack. Because it would've been a random thing, you see.'
'Yes.'
'On the other hand, if this is someone who wanted your grandmother dead, who came into the apartment with the express purpose of killing her...'
