'Yes, of course.' And there were a number of possibilities there; a little imagination would produce a dozen different ideas. He thought about some of them-(Ehrlich, the attendants, the other kids)-as he thanked the girl for coming in. Alison came out of his office with Hackett and was sympathetic, friendly with Teresa, asking conventionally about the funeral. The girl was a little stiff, responding, using more care with her manners and grammar.
'Well, I-I guess that’s all I wanted tell you, Lieutenant, I better get home-'
Alison sent Mendoza a glance he missed and another at Hackett which connected; he said he was going that way, be glad to drive her home, and gave Alison a mock-reproachful backward look, shepherding Teresa off.
'Your draft’s quite all right. Hey, wake up, I said-'
'Yes,' said Mendoza. 'Is it? Good.' He summoned one of the stenos on duty, took Alison back to his office to wait, gave her a chair and cigarette but no conversation. She sat quietly, watching him with a slight smile, looking round the room; when the typed pages were brought in she signed obediently where she was told and announced meekly that she could get home by herself.
Mendoza said, 'Don’t be foolish.' But he was mostly silent on the drive across town. When he drew into the curb at the apartment building, he cut the motor, didn’t move immediately. 'Tell me something. Did you like dolls when you were a little girl?'
'Against my better judgment you do intrigue me. Most little girls do.'
He grunted. 'Ever know any little boys who did?'
'When they’re very young, otherwise not. Though I believe there are some, but they can’t be very normal little boys. The psychiatrists-'
'I beg you, not the doubletalk about Id and Ego and Superego. Especially not about infantile sexuality and the traumatic formation of the homosexual personality. Esta queda entre los dos. Just between the two of us, I find a most suggestive resemblance between the Freudians and those puritanical old maids who put the worst interpretation on everything-and with such damned smug-satisfaction into the bargain.'
She laughed. 'Oh, I’m with you every time! But what’s all this about dolls?'
He got out a cigarette, looked at it without flicking his lighter. 'Suppose you’re taking one of those word- association tests, what do you say to that?-doll.'
'Why, I guess-little girls. Why?'
'And me too,' he said. 'Which is what makes it difficult. Well, never mind-inquisition over for today.' He lit the cigarette and turned to her with a smile. 'You’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night, tell me what you get out of your girls, if anything?
Alison cocked her auburn head at him. 'I seem to remember you said you didn’t mix business and pleasure. Do I infer I’m absolved already?'
'I’m always making these impossible resolutions.' He got out, went round and opened the door for her. 'Black,' he said, gesturing, 'something elegant, and decollete. Maybe pearls. Seven o’clock.'
She got out of the car, leisurely and graceful, and tucked her bag under her arm; she said, 'Charm isn’t the word. But I have heard-speaking of the Freudians-that there are some women who really I enjoy being dominated. Seven o’clock it is, and I’ll wear what I damned well please, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza!'
' Mi gatita roja,' he said, smiling.
'And,' said Alison, 'I am not your little red kitten, you-you- tu macho insolente! '
'What language for a lady. Until tomorrow.' He grinned at her straight back; there was-he was aware-a certain promise in being called an insolent male animal, by a female like Alison.
It sat on the corner of Matson and San Rafael, a block up and a block over from Commerce and Humboldt. Not really much of a walk home for Elena, a quarter of an hour by daylight: down San Rafael to Commerce, to Humboldt, across the empty lot and down a block to Foster where Humboldt made a jog to bypass a gloomy little cul-de-sac misleadingly called a court: another block to Main, another to Liggitt and half a block more to home. Little more than half a mile, but that could be a long way at night. Main was neon lights and crowds up to midnight anyway, but these other streets were dark and lonely.
It was a big barn of a building. Matson Street wasn’t residential, but strung with small warehouses, small business that must permanently balance on the edge of inso1vency-rug cleaning, said the faded signs, tools sharpened, speedy shoe repair, cleaning amp; dyeing-and in between, the secretive warehouses unlabeled or reticent with WHOLESALE PARTS, INC.-MASTERSON BROS.-ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES. At Matson and San Rafael, there was a graveyard for old cars on one corner, with a high iron fence around it (SECONDHAND PARTS CHEAP), and warehouses on two other corners, and on the fourth the Palace Roller Rink. The building wasn’t flush to the sidewalk like the warehouses, but set back fifteen or twenty feet, to provide off-street parking on two sides.
Mendoza parked there, among six or eight other cars: mostly old family sedans, a couple of worked-over hot- rods. It was ten past four, a good time for the experiment he had in mind. He fished up a handful of change from his pocket, picked out a quarter, a dime, and a nickel, and walked up to the entrance.
There were big double doors fastened back, but at this time of year, the place facing north, not much light fell into the foyer. That was perhaps ten feet wide, three times as long up to the restroom doors at either end. There was a Coke-dispensing freezer and a big trash basket under a wall dispenser for paper cups. In the middle of the foyer was a three-sided plywood enclosure with a narrow counter bearing an ancient cash register; and inside, on a high stool with a back, sat Ehrlich the proprietor, a grossly fat man in the late sixties, bald bullet-shaped head descending to several rolls of fat front and rear, pudgy hands clasped over a remarkable paunch: wrinkled khaki shirt and pants, no tie. Ehrlich, peacefully drowsing-still, very likely, digesting a solid noon dinner which had ended with several glasses of beer. Mendoza surveyed him with satisfaction, walked quietly up and laid the silver on the counter. The fat man roused with a little grunt, scooped it up and punched the register, and produced from a box under the counter a sleazy paper ticket, slid it across. Mendoza picked it up and passed by. At the narrower door into the main part of the building, he glanced back: Ehrlich’s head was again bowed over his clasped hands. So there we are, thought Mendoza. The man had raised his eyes just far enough to check the money: if the exact change was laid out, a gorilla in pink tights could walk by him without notice.
The second door led Mendoza into more than semi-darkness. It was a rectangle within a rectangle: a fifteen- foot-wide strip of dark around all four sides of the skating floor. That was a good hundred and fifty feet long, a little more than half as wide, of well-laid hardwood like a dance floor. There was an iron pipe railing enclosing it, with two or three gaps in each side for access to the occasional hard wooden benches, scattered groups of folding wooden chairs, along the four dark borders. A big square skylight, several unshaded electric bulbs around it, poured light directly down on the skating floor, but not enough to reach beyond: anywhere off the edge of that floor it was dark. The effect was that of a theater, about that quality of light, looking from the borders to the big floor.
Straight ahead from the single entrance, at the gap in the rail there, sat one of the attendants, sidewise in a chair to catch the light on his magazine. Beside him was a card table, a cardboard carton on it and another on the floor; those would hold the skates. Not just the skates, Mendoza remembered from the statements taken: flat shoes with skates already fastened on-something to do with the insurance, because as Hayes (or was it Murphy) had put it, otherwise some of these dumb girls would come in with four-inch heels on. As Elena had, he remembered.
It was shoddy, it was dirty, a place of garish light and dense shadow, of drafts and queer echoes from its very size. No attempt was evident to make it attractive or comfortable: the sole amenities, if you could so call them, appeared to be the Coke machine and, at the opposite side of the floor, an old nickel jukebox which was presently emitting a tired rendition of 'The Beautiful Blue Danube.' And yet the fifteen or twenty teenagers on the floor seemed to be enjoying themselves, mostly skating in couples round and round-one pair in the center showing off, with complicated breakaways and dance steps-half a dozen in single file daring the hazards lined down the far side, a little artificial hill, a low bar-jump. Those girls shrieked simulated terror, speeding down the sharp drop; the boys jeered, affected nonchalance. It was all very innocent and juvenile-depressingly so, Mendoza reflected sadly from the vantage point of his nearly forty years.
But he hadn’t come here to philosophize on the vagaries of adolescence… If you went straight down to the attendant, to give up your ticket and acquire your skates, you would be noticed; otherwise, he could easily miss seeing you. Mendoza had wandered a little way to the side from the door, and stood with his back to the wall; he
