'Perpetrator. The one who did it.'
'Oh. Well, I hope you do. It was an awful, awful thing.'
They talked about the apartment they might one day share.
They talked about their mothers, about clothes, and foods they liked or hated. They recalled incidents from their girlhood, giggled about boys they had known, traded opinions on TV stars and novelists.
It was not a rare occurrence, this closeness between detective and suspect.
For did they not need each other? Even a murderer might find the obsession of his pursuer as important to himself as it was to the hunter. It gave meaning to their existence.
'Gotta work late on Friday night, dear,' Venable told her target.
'Reports and shit like that. I'll call you on Saturday and maybe we can have dinner or something.'
'I'd like that,' Joan said with her timid smile.
'I really look forward to seeing you and talking to you on the phone.'
'Me, too,' Helen said, troubled because she was telling the truth.
On Friday night at seven o'clock, Helen was slouched down in her Honda, parked two doors away from the Yesells' brownstone. She could watch the entrance in her rearview mirror, and kept herself alert with a little transistor radio turned to a hard-rock station.
She sat there for more than an hour, never taking her eyes from the doorway. It was almost 8:15 when Blanche Yesell came out, bundled up in a bulky fur coat that looked like a bearskin. There was no mistaking her; she was hatless and that beehive hairdo seemed to soar higher than ever.
Venable slid from the car and followed at a distance. It didn't last long; Mrs. Yesell scurried westward and darted into a brownstone one door from the corner. The detective quickened her pace, but by the time she got there, the subject had disappeared from vestibule and lobby, with no indication of which apartment she had entered.
Helen stood on the sidewalk, staring up, flummoxed. If Calazo had been faced with the problem, he probably would have rung every bell in the joint, demanding, 'Is Mrs. Blanche Yesell there?' And within an hour, he'd have statements from the other bridge club members and know if Mrs.
Yesell was or was not at home on the murder night and could or could not testify as to her daughter's presence.
But such direct action did not occur to Helen. She pondered how she might identify and question the bridge club members without alerting the Yesells that Joan's alibi was being investigated.
She went back to the Honda and sat there a long time, feeling angry and ineffective because she couldn't think of a clever scam. Finally, taking a deep breath, she decided she better write a complete report on Mrs.
Yesell's Friday night bridge club and dump the whole thing in Sergeant Boone's lap.
It was a personal failure, she acknowledged, and it infurated her. But the fear of committing a world-class boo-boo and being bounced down to uniformed duty again was enough to convince her to go by the book. It turned out to be a smart decision.
If Helen was suffering from doubts, Detective Ross Konigsbacher was inflated with confidence, convinced he was on a roll' On the same night Helen was brooding unhappily in her Honda, the Kraut was rubbing knees with L. Vincent Symington at a small table at the Dorian Gray.
Symington had insisted on ordering a bottle of Frascati, served in a silver ice bucket. The detective had made no objections, knowing that Symington would pick up the tab. That was one thing you could say for the creep: There were no moths in his wallet.
'A dreadful day,' he told Konigsbacher.
'Simply dreadful.
This is a nice little wine, isn't it? One crisis after another. I'm on Wall Street, you know-I don't think I told you that-and today the market simply collapsed. What do you do, Ross?'
'Import-export,' he said glibly, having prepared for the question.
'Plastic and leather findings. Very dull.'
'I can imagine. Are you in the market at all?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Well, if you ever decide to take a flier, talk to me first; I may be able to put you into something sweet.'
'I'll do that. But my wife has been nagging me about a new fur coat, so I won't be able to take a flier in stocks or anything else for a while.'
'What a shame,' Symington said.
'Women can be such bitches, can't they?
Are you still working out, Ross?'
'Every morning with the weights.'
'Oh, my!' the other man said, laughing brightly.
'You're getting me all excited. And what does your wife do while you're exercising in the morning?'
'She snores.'
'Now that is dull. Here, let me fill your glass. This goes down easily, doesn't it?'
'Like some people I know,' the Kraut said, and they both shook with silent laughter.
'Vince, have you had any more visits from the cops about the murder of your shrink?'
'Not a word. But I'm sure they're investigating me from A to Z. Let them; I have nothing to hide.'
'I hope you have a good alibi for the time it happened.'
'I certainly do,' Symington said virtuously.
'I was at a very posh affair at the Hilton. My company was giving a birthday dinner for the founder. A dozen people saw me there.'
'Come on, Vince,' Konigsbacher said, smiling.
'Don't tell me you were there all night. I know how boring those things can be. Didn't you sneak out for a teensy-weensy drink somewhere else?'
'Oh, Ross,' the other man said admiringly, 'you are clever. Of course I split for a while. Simply couldn't endure all that business chitchat. I found the grungiest, most vulgar bar in the city over near Eighth Avenue. It's called Stallions.
How does that grab you? Rough trade? You wouldn't believe!
I just sat in a corner, sipped my Perrier, and took it all in.
What a spectacle' You and I must drop by there some night just for laughs. I've never seen so much black leather in my life! '
'Meet anyone interesting?' the detective asked casually.
'Well, if you must know…' Symington said coyly, twirling his wineglass by the stem, 'there was one boy… I bought him a drink-he was having banana brandy; can you imagine!-and we talked awhile. His name was Nick. He was one Of those dese, demand dose boys, and said he wanted to be -fleff I asked, but it went right over his head! I an actor.
'Han spent a fun hour there, and then I went back to the party at the Hilton. I'm sure not a soul noticed I had been gone.'
'Oh, Vince,' the Kraut said seriously, 'I hope you weren't gone during the time your psychiatrist was killed. The cops aren't dummies, you know. They're liable to find out you left the party and come around to question you again,'
'You think so?' the other man said, beginning to worry.
'Well, as a matter of fact, I was away from the Hilton from about nine to ten o'clock or so, but I can't believe the cops could discover that.'
'They might,' Detective Konigsbacher said darkly.
'They have their ways.'
'Oh, God!' Symington said despairingly.
'What do you think I should do?
Maybe I'll look up those two cops who came to question me and tell them about it. That would prove I have nothing to hide, wouldn't it?'
'Don't do that,' the Kraut said swiftly.
'Don't volunteer anything. Just play it cool. And if they dump on you for not telling them about being away from
