he was in.
“Detective Kling,” he said, and opened the leather fob to which his shield was pinned. “This is my partner, Detective Carella.”
“Is he in?” Carella asked.
“Let me see, sir,” she asked.
Sir. Made Carella feel like forty. Which he was.
The blonde lifted a phone receiver, tapped a button on the phone base, smiled up at Kling, listened, and then said, “Alan, there are two detectives here to see you.” She listened again, said, “Right,” and then put the phone back on the receiver. Smiling at Kling again, she said, “Through the door there, and into the main office. Then through that to Mr. Pierce’s office at the far end. If you need me, just whistle.”
The line sounded familiar to Kling.
They walked past a wall hung with framed campaign posters of bygone years to an unmarked door with a brass knob. Beyond that door was a huge open room banked on one side with windows now open to breezes that blew in off the water where the rivers clashed. There were perhaps twenty desks in this room, all of them the same color as the computers sitting on top of them, an array of greens and purples and grays that seemed as cheerful as springtime. Behind each desk sat the so-called T-Generation, kids who had come of age when the terrorists bombed America, none of them older than twenty-five, all of them staring at their computers as if transfixed, fingers flying, performing God only knew what political tasks for their now deceased leader. None of them looked up as Carella and Kling worked their way to the rear of the room where three identical doors sat like props in a stage farce. One of them bore a plaque that read:A.PIERCE.
“Lauren Bacall,” Carella said.“To Have and Have Not.”
Kling looked at him.
“The next line is, ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.’”
“Oh,” Kling said. “Yeah,” and knocked on the door.
“Bogart’s name was Steve,” Carella explained. “In the picture.”
“Come in,” a voice called.
Alan Pierce was a man in his late thirties, Carella guessed, old by comparison to the cadre of kids manning the computers outside. He came from behind his desk with his hand extended, a tall, slender man exhibiting the obvious end results of hours in the gym, a flat tummy, a narrow waist, and wide shoulders clearly his own since he was in shirtsleeves. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Nice to see you. Sit down. Please.”
Carella wondered if Pierce was doing an imitation of President Bush, who couldn’t seem to get through a sentence longer than five words without parsing it. “We are. Going to. Find and destroy. The Evil One.” Pierce here seemed to go him one better. Or perhaps this was just a memorized way of greeting people. He shook hands vigorously now, as if he were soliciting votes.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
Same words the blond receptionist had used. Carella wondered if this was office protocol. He suddenly realized he did not trust politicians. And he wondered if this attitude had been reinforced by the letters Henderson had received from someone named Carrie—which, after all, was why they were here today.
“Mr. Pierce,” he said, “I under…”
“Alan,” he said. “Please.”
“Alan,” Carella said, and cleared his throat, “I understand that you and Mr. Henderson flew up to the state capital together last…”
“Yes, we did.”
“That would have been last Saturday, is that right?”
“Yes. Saturday morning.”
“April twentieth, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just the two of you?” Carella asked.
“Just the two of us, yes.”
“And you came back the next morning, is that correct?”
“Correct. Sunday the twenty-first.”
“Alone.”
“I came back alone, yes.”
“You left Mr. Henderson up there and flew back alone.”
“Yes. I had some personal matters to attend to here in the city. And he no longer needed me.”
“What’d you guys do up there, anyway?” Kling asked.
“Attended meetings. As you probably know, the Governor had approached Lester about running for mayor. We met with his people on Saturday. And Lester had a lunch meeting with the Governor himself scheduled for Sunday. That’s why he stayed over. It was a summit thing, just the two of them.”
The telephone rang.
Pierce picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” he said. “Who? Oh, yes, certainly, put him through. Sorry,” he said to the detectives, and then, into the phone again, “Hello, Roger,” he said, “how can I help you?”
There it is again, Carella thought. How can I help you?
“Well, I have to tell you frankly,” Pierce said, “I find it not only premature but also somewhat ghoulish for you people to be asking that question so soon after we put the councilman in the ground.” He listened and then said, “I don’t carewhatthe Governor’s office is putting out. No one has talked to me about it, and I just told you I don’t wish to entertain any questions about it.” He listened and then said, “Then can you please extend me that courtesy?” He looked at the detectives, rolled his eyes, listened again, and then said, “When I’mreadyto discuss it. When a decent interval has passed.Ifthen. Goodbye, Rog,” he said, “thanks for calling.”
He put the receiver back on the cradle rest, said, “I’m sorry, gentlemen. They keep asking me if I plan to run for mayor now that Lester…” He shook his head. “No fucking decency left in this world, is there? Forgive me, but they’re like animals.” He sighed heavily, sat in the big leather chair behind his desk again, and said, “We were discussing?”
“Your coming back home early,” Kling said.
“No, I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I neverexpectedto stay any longer.”
“I thought…”
“No.”
“When you said you had some personal matters…”
“Yes, but I knew before I went upstate that Lester would be lunching with the Governor. This wasn’t something that came as a surprise.”
“Sorry I misinterpreted it,” Kling said.
“Sorry if I misled you.”
“What sort of meetings did you have up there?” Carella asked.
“Well, first with some members of the Governor’s exploratory committee, it’s called, and then with the Governor’s campaign people, and then with people from the national party itself. Mayor of this city is a big deal, you know. Both parties would like their own man in there.”
“This was all day long?” Carella asked. “The meetings.”
“Well, the first one was at ten Saturday morning. We broke for lunch, and then met with the campaign people at two. Our last meeting was at four.”
“What time did that end?” Carella asked.
“Oh, around six, six-thirty.”
“What then?”
“We had dinner and went to sleep. I had an early flight the next morning.”
“You had dinner together?” Kling asked.
“Well, no, actually. I called room service. I don’t know where Lester ate. I imagine he did the same thing. We’d had a long day.”
“Did he say he was going to call room service?”
