certainly made things difficult for a person trying to rescue her.
He thought of himself as her rescuer.
Her savior.
Her knight in shining armor.
The person who would kick in the door to that basement, wherever the hell it was, clutching her brave report in his hands and crying, “I’m here, Olivia, what ho!”
Was what they cried in novels and movies.
But, still, he wished she hadn’t made it so damn complicated. Things were complicated enough these days without imaginary cities with imaginary places in them. For example…
Where was this bar two blocks from Livvie’s station house?
And where was this factory across the river?
He had just learned from reading her report yet another time that there was a ladies underwear factory across the river, which was exciting in itself, all garter belts and panties and such. He supposed “dee River Dowd” was the River Dix in real life, and he further guessed that the “Queen Elizabeth side” of the river was Majesta, directly over the bridge. But none of this brought him any closer to finding the basement Livvie was trapped in.
He wondered if he should read her report yet another time from top to bottom because, to tell the truth, it was very lively reading and it gave him some very keen insights into the workings of a woman’s mind, which he could use in his business, as it were, or even was. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be more profitable to take a stroll over the bridge, scope the neighborhood there, see if there was anything that evensoundedlike Reve du Jour Underwear Factory at 2144 Riverview Place, which of course was a phony street name in Livvie’s imaginary city.
He wondered if Aine would like to come with him.
Sometimes, if you offered a dealer a two-fer, he gave you a break on the price.
Emilio let her phone ring a dozen times.
Either she was out looking for a bar two blocks from a police precinct, or else she was laying on the floor stoned out of her mind.
So he headed for the bridge all by his lonesome.
THE STREETS ONeither side of the Majesta Bridge were perhaps among the noisiest in the entire city. Teeming with vehicular traffic, the approaches to the bridge seemed miles long, although in actuality they measured only several blocks. The din was relentless. Taxis, trucks, passenger cars honked their horns incessantly.
The building Carolyn Harris lived in was in the shadow of the bridge. If Emilio Herrera had looked down as he started across the bridge that morning at ten, he would have seen two detectives talking to the doorman outside. He wouldn’t have recognized them, and in any case he wouldn’t have known they were detectives. Emilio had met many detectives in his checkered career, but not these two. Besides, the only detective on his mind right now was Olivia Wesley Watts.
The doorman was telling Carella and Kling that he’d seen Miss Harris leaving the building for church at a quarter to nine this morning. He expected she’d be back by eleven. What she usually did was go to nine o’clock mass, take holy communion, and then have breakfast afterward at a deli on Bradley.
“Did she do that last week, too?” Kling asked.
“No, sir,” the doorman said. “She was out of town last week.”
“Bradley and where?” Carella asked.
They recognized her at once because she was the only blonde eating in the place, sitting in a booth, her back to the entrance doors. They debated just going in and sitting opposite her in the booth, and then decided to wait outside until she’d finished her breakfast. They let her walk a respectable distance from the deli, and then caught up with her on the street corner. Even on a Sunday, the noise was horrific.
“Miss Harris?” Carella said.
She turned, surprised.
She was sporting a shiner the color of Burgundy wine.
“Yes?” she said.
“Detective Carella,” he said, and flashed the tin. “My partner, Detective Kling.”
She knew at once.
“This is about Lester, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes, miss, it’s about Lester. What happened to your eye?”
“Nothing. A bee stung me.”
Which was perhaps more inventive than “I walked into a door,” or “I got hit with a tennis ball,” or “I fell off the toilet bowl,” or any one of the dozen or more reasons abused women found to alibi the men who were abusing them.
Carella let it pass. For now.
“Few questions we’d like to ask you,” he said. “If you’ve got a minute.”
They walked several blocks downtown and then south to the river where a pocket park nestled at the water’s edge. The noise was less frightful here; it merely sounded like distant thunder. Across the river, they could see Majesta with its factories and smoke stacks. They did not know, nor would it have meant anything to them, that at about that time, Emilio Herrera was just leaving the bridge’s footpath and coming down the steps to the street below.
“How did you find me?” Carrie asked.
“The stationery,” Carella said.
“My mother’s,” she said, and nodded. “I shouldn’t have used her stationery. She let me take some home with me when I went down to see her last winter. She lives in Florida, you know…well, I guess youdoknow if that’s how you got to me, her stationery.”
“Miss Harris,” Carella said, “where were you last week at around this time?”
“I was with Lester Henderson.”
“Where?”
“The Raleigh Hotel. Upstate. The capital.”
“You had a room at the Raleigh, did you?”
“Yes. But we spent most of the time in his room.”
“Did you have dinner with him last Saturday night, at a restaurant called Amboise?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you go back there for lunch alone the next day? Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“And did you have dinner with him that Sunday night at a restaurant called The Unicorn?”
“Yes, I did. We did.”
“Did you spend Sunday night with him as well?”
“Yes.”
“Did you accompany him home on Monday morning?”
“Yes, we took the same plane back to the city, yes.”
“The same early plane.”
“Seven-ten, it was, I believe.”
“Then what, Miss Harris?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Where did you go from the airport?”
“Home.”
She looked surprised. Where do you think I went? Where would you go from the airport? You’d go home, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s where I went. Home.
“You didn’t go to King Memorial, did you?”
“No, of course not. Lester went his way, I went mine. He’s married, you know.”
Carella refrained from saying, Yes,Iknow. Didyouknow?
“What happened to your eye?” he asked again.
