“Well, no. I’m just assuming…I really don’t know.”
“Was there a restaurant in the hotel?”
“Oh, sure.”
“So he might’ve had dinner there.”
“He might’ve. Or anywhere else in town, for that matter. There are lots of good restaurants up there. Italian ones, especially. There’s a large Italian constituency up there. Population, I should say.”
“Did you talk to him on Sunday morning?”
“No. I was catching a sevenA.M. flight.”
“Didn’t want to wake him, was that it?” Carella asked.
“Exactly. Besides, there was really nothing more to say. We’d said it all the night before.”
“Had a talk the night before?”
“Yes. After our last meeting.”
“At around six, six-thirty?”
“Around then, yes. We had a drink in the lobby…”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes. To rehash the day. Then I went to my room, had dinner, and went to bed. I don’t know where Lester went.”
“He didn’t say where hemightbe going, did he?”
“No.”
“But you think he might have called room service.”
“That was just a guess. He seemed tired…that was just an educated guess.”
“Were there any women at these meetings?” Kling asked.
“Oh yes. This isn’t Afghanistan, you know,” Pierce said, and smiled.
“Did any of these women come up from the city?” Carella asked.
“No. They were all based up there.”
“Any of them named Carrie?”
“Carrie?”
“C-A…”
“No, not that I recall. Carrie? Where’d that come from?” Pierce asked.
“Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No. Who is she?”
“You don’t know anyone named Carrie?”
“No one at all.”
“Did Mr. Henderson know anyone named Carrie?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“This wouldn’t have to be professionally,” Carella said.
“I’m not sure I…”
“Personally. This would have been someone he knew personally.”
“You’d have to ask Pamela about that. She’d be more familiar with their personal acquaintances.”
“She doesn’t know anyone named Carrie,” Carella said.
“I don’t, either. I’m sorry.”
“You were Mr. Henderson’s aide…”
“Yes.”
“His assistant.”
“Yes.”
“His right hand man.”
“Yes?”
“He would have told you if he knew someone named Carrie, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose so. Gentlemen, I’m still not sure I under…”
“How do you suppose a letter without a return address on it got through to Mr. Henderson?”
“I have no idea. Everything coming into the office is screened. No one in public life takes any chances nowadays.”
“Would anyone besides Mr. Henderson have had access to an envelope marked ‘Personal and Private’?”
“An envelope with no return address on it?” Carella said.
“Well…Josh maybe.”
“Coogan?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk to him. Is he here?”
“No, I’m sorry, he’s not.”
“When will he be back?”
“He won’t. He’s gone for the day. You have no idea how many calls we’ve had following Lester’s murder. Both of us have been running around like crazy.”
“I’m sure,” Carella said. “Can we reach him at home?”
“I’ll give you his address, sure,” Pierce said. “But you’d have a better shot at the school.”
“The school?”
“Ramsey U. He takes film courses there at night. He wants to be a director.”
“What time is he usually there?”
“Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Seven to eleven.”
“Today’s Friday,” Kling said.
“So it is,” Pierce said, and both cops suddenly disliked him intensely.
“Just one other question,” Carella said. “When you were upstate with Mr. Henderson, did you at any time see him in the company of a nineteen-year-old girl?”
“Not that I can recall. Do you mean at any of our meetings? Most of the women were older than…”
“No, I mean alone. Alone with a nineteen-year-old girl.”
“No. Never. Lester? Never.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
In the corridor outside, Kling said, “He’s lying about the girl.”
“I know,” Carella said.
AINE DUGGANpronounced her name Anya Doogan. This was surprising to Emilio, but then again he wasn’t Irish. She told him onetime, while they were both stoned on crack when it was still fashionable, that Aine was an old Celtic name. He believed her. She certainly looked Irish. Or even Celtic, what with her bright green eyes, when she wasn’t stoned, and hair that had a burnt October look, somewhat like what he imagined Livvie’s hair to be. He had known Aine for it had to’ve been seven, eight years now, when crack was all the rage and you could get high for a few bucks, man, those were the days. That was before either of them started hooking.
Back then, Aine was still bartending and Emilio was working as a dishwasher at the same little Italian restaurant down near the Quarter. But even after they both began using, there always seemed to be enough money for their daily needs plus a movie every now and then or a rock concert out on The Bight, crack was so friggincheapthen. It was one of the busboys first turned them on to crack. Emilio hardly ever saw Aine socially anymore. No time for music or flicks anymore, too busy out there rushing the buck.
She looked tired these days.
Twenty-five years old, she looked tired.
He wondered if he looked the same way.
“What I’m searching for is a bar named O’Malley’s,” he said.
“Must be ten thousand bars named O’Malley’s in this city,” Aine said.
She still talked with a Calm’s Point accent, the Irish variety, not the Italian or black style. On the telephone, Emilio always could tell if he was talking to a Spanish person like himself or somebody Irish or Italian or black or Jewish. Some people said you couldn’t tell a book by its cover, but that was all democracy bullshit. On the telephone, the minute anybody opened his mouth, Emilio nailed him. When Aine opened her mouth, it was like you
