Oona Halligan materialized out of thin air at seven thirty that night. The two detectives who’d relieved Regan and Lowndes on the wiretap figured she’d been there all afternoon. Otherwise, since the tailor shop closed at five, how the hell had she got in?
Harry Arnucci was forty-eight years old, a bald and burly detective/first who’d worked Narcotics out of Manhattan North before his transfer to the DA’s Office Squad. The one thing he knew about hoods was that as smart as they thought they were, they were basically very stupid. He kept sitting the wire waiting for Faviola to say the one dumb thing that would send him away for a hundred years. Sooner or later they all said the one dumb thing. The minute Faviola fucked up, the minute they arrested him and the parade of bums who marched in and out of his office up there over the tailor shop, the sooner Harry would make lieutenant.
His partner’s name was Jerry Mandel, and he was shooting for lieutenant, too. He’d joined the police department over the protestations of a great-grandmother who could still remember when Irish cops were breaking Jewish heads on the Lower East Side. It was a fundamental principle of police work in this city that only an Irishman could rise above the rank of captain. Mandel wanted to prove this axiom false by becoming the first Jewish police commissioner in the city of New York. He was now only thirty-three years old, and was already a detective/second grade on the DAOS. Like Harry, he knew how important this case was, and was hoping it would result in an arrest that would almost certainly lead to a promotion.
Both men had felt insulted when Michael Welles gave them his little pitch about minimization this morning. They’d been keeping the line sheets scrupulously, turning off the equipment whenever Faviola was in bed with his Wednesday night bombshell. They knew what was riding on this wiretap, and they didn’t need to be told again. They were, in fact, about to turn off the equipment when they heard the Halligan girl’s voice out of the blue — where the hell had she come from? Must’ve been here all along, they figured, but then Faviola said, “Let me take your coat,” and Oona said, “Thanks,” and they realized she’d just come in, but how? There was a short silence, and then Oona murmured a long “Mmmmmmmm,” which meant they were kissing. “Can I mix you a drink?” Faviola said, which meant they weren’t in the bedroom, but were instead in the living room just above the tailor shop. Freddie Coulter had provided a rough diagram of all three floors, to assist them in visualizing movement from room to room. They were thinking now that maybe Faviola had gone down to let her in through the tailor shop, or maybe he’d given her a key to the tailor shop. In either event, the team running the video camera across the street would have picked her up coming in, if that’s how she’d got in, end of mystery.
Mandel signaled to Arnucci to turn off the equipment. Arnucci nodded, and was reaching for the switch when the girl said, “Why is that door fake?”
“Architect thought it would look better that way,” Faviola said.
“Hold it,” Mandel said.
Arnucci nodded again.
“Makes it look just like the rest of the wall,” Oona said.
“Well, that’s the whole idea,” Faviola said.
“I mean, no regular doorknob or anything. It looks like a panel there, instead of a door. Part of the walnut paneling.”
“The architect didn’t want to break the look of the wall.”
“Yeah, but a staircase should lead to a door, not a wall.”
“It is a door,” Faviola said. “On the other side.”
“Well, yes, I can see that.”
“With a regular doorknob,” he said.
“Not a knob that turns,” she said. “I never heard of a door with a knob you have to pull on to open the door.”
“That’s a touch latch,” Faviola said. “From this side, you push on the panel. From the other side, you pull on the knob.”
“Also, there’s no lock on it,” she said.
“There are two locks downstairs,” he said.
“Even so,” she said.
“How’s your drink coming along?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“Why don’t we go upstairs?”
“Finish my drink first.”
“Okay,” he said, “take your time.”
“Fine. Don’t rush me.”
“Nobody’s rushing you,” he said.
Edge to his voice. The cops figured she was beginning to get on his nerves. Toying with her drink, wanting to know why a door was designed to look like part of the wall, when all he wanted to do was take her upstairs and boff her.
“Why didn’t you let me know you were going out of town?” she asked.
Which they guessed was the reason for the stall. He hadn’t informed her of his comings and goings, so now she...
“I didn’t know I had to,” he said.
The edge to his voice was a bit sharper now. They wondered if little Oona here knew this guy was a hoodlum who could order people killed if he wanted to. Few weeks ago, he’d complained about some dumb ring, and the crackhead who’d unloaded it on Sal the Barber ended up dead in a basement room. They wondered if she knew who she was playing games with here.
“You keep telling me you love me...” she said.
“I do love you,” he said, which they guessed meant Finish your fuckin’ drink and let’s go upstairs.
“... but you’re out of town for two days and you don’t call me, and then you’re back and I can’t get in touch with you till Sunday.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Do you have some problem with that?”
“Well, no, not what you’d call a problem...”
“Then what is it?”
“I just think if you care for somebody, you’re a little more considerate to her. I didn’t even know you were leaving. You just all at once disappear, and...”
“Lovers’ quarrel,” Mandel said, and reached for the OFF switch.
“Hold it a minute,” Arnucci said.
“... wondering if you got hit by a car or something.”
“Harry,” Mandel warned. “This is...”
“Shhh, shhh.”
“... important came up, and I needed advice from one of our officers.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have gone wherever you went...”
“I went to Kansas.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, I...”
“Wherever you went, I’m saying you should have called me to tell me you were going. Or called me when you got there. Don’t they have phones in Kansas? Where in Kansas were you, anyway?”
“That’s none of your business,” Faviola said.
There was a dead silence.
“Hey, listen,” she said, “I don’t have to...”
“That’s right, you don’t,” he said.
“I mean... what do you mean it’s none of my business? I’m telling you I missed you, I was worried about you, I was hoping you’d call and you tell me it’s none of my business? What does that mean, it’s none of my business?”
“It means do you want to leave right now, or do you want to come upstairs with me?”
There was a long silence.
“Well?”
“I thought...”
“Never mind what you thought. There’s the stairway and there’s the door. What do you say?”
There was another silence, lengthier this time.
“It isn’t even a regular door,” she said, and laughed a curious laugh that sounded almost like a sob.