There were a few moments of hesitation, then the bathroom door opened. The girl was a tall plain brunette wearing a short terrycloth robe. She sidled into the room cautiously, as though expecting to be struck in the face at any moment. Her brown eyes were wide with expectancy. She knew fuzz, she knew what it was like to be arrested on a narcotics charge, and she had listened to the conversation from behind the closed bathroom door; and now she waited for whatever was coming, expecting the worst.
“What’s your name, Miss?” Hawes asked.
“Beatrice Norden.”
“What time did you get here tonight, Beatrice?”
“About eleven.”
“Was this man with you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he leave here at any time tonight?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. He picked me up about nine o’clock—”
“Where do you live, Beatrice?”
“Well, that’s the thing, you see,” the girl said. “I been put out of my room.”
“So where’d he pick you up?”
“At my girl friend’s house. You can ask her, she was there when he came. Her name is Rosalie Dawes. Anyway, Timmy picked me up at nine, and we went out to eat, and we came up here around eleven.”
“I hope you’re telling us the truth, Miss Norden,” Carella said.
“I swear to God, we been here all night,” Beatrice answered.
“All right, Ames,” Hawes said, “we’d like a sample of your handwriting.”
“My what?”
“Your handwriting.”
“What for?”
“We collect autographs,” Carella said.
“Gee, these guys really break me up,” Ames said to the girl. “Regular night-club comics we get in the middle of the night.”
Carella handed him a pencil and then tore a sheet from his pad. “You want to write this for me?” he said. “The first part’s in block lettering.”
“What the hell is block lettering?” Ames asked.
“He means print it,” Hawes said.
“Then why didn’t he say so?”
“Put on your clothes, Miss,” Carella said.
“What for?” Beatrice said.
“That’s what I want him to write,” Carella explained.
“Oh.”
“Put on your clothes, Miss,” Ames repeated, and lettered it onto the sheet of paper. “What else?” he asked, looking up.
“Now sign it in your own handwriting with the following words: The Avenging Angel.”
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Ames asked.
“You want to write it, please?”
Ames wrote the words, then handed the slip of paper to Carella. He and Hawes compared it with the note that had been mailed to Mercy Howelclass="underline"
“So?” Ames asked.
“So you’re clean,” Hawes said.
At the desk downstairs, Ronnie Sanford was still immersed in his accounting textbook. He got to his feet again as the detectives came out of the elevator, adjusted his glasses on his nose, and said, “Any luck?”
“Afraid not,” Carella answered. “We’re going to need this register for a while, if that’s okay.”
“Well—”
“Give him a receipt for it, Cotton,” Carella said. It was late, and he didn’t want a debate in the lobby of a rundown hotel. Hawes quickly made out a receipt in duplicate, signed both copies, and handed one to Sanford.
“What about this tom cover?” Hawes asked belatedly.
“Yeah,” Carella said. There was a small rip on the leather binding of the book. He fingered it briefly now, then said, “Better note that on the receipt, Cotton.” Hawes took back the receipt and, on both copies, jotted the words Small rip on front cover. He handed the receipts back to Sanford.
“Want to just sign these, Mr. Sanford?” he said.
“What for?” Sanford asked.
“To indicate we received the register in this condition.”
“Oh, sure,” Sanford said. He picked up a ballpoint pen from its desk holder, and asked, “What do you want me to write?”
“Your name and your title that’s all.”
“My title?”
“Night Clerk, The Addison Hotel.”
“Oh, sure,” Sanford said, and signed both receipts. “This okay?” he asked. The detectives looked at what he had written.
“You like girls?” Carella asked suddenly.
“What?” Sanford asked.
“Girls,” Hawes said.
“Sure. Sure, I like girls.”
“Dressed or naked?”
“What?”
“With clothes or without?”
“I… I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“Where were you tonight between eleven twenty and midnight?” Hawes asked.
“Getting — getting ready to come to — to work,” Sanford said.
“You sure you weren’t in the alley of the Eleventh Street Theater stabbing a girl named Mercy Howell?”
“What? No… no, of course not. I was… I was home — getting dressed—” Sanford took a deep breath and decided to get indignant. “Listen, what’s this all about?” he said. “Would you mind telling me?”
“It’s all about this,” Carella said, and turned one of the receipts so that Sanford could read the signature:
“Get your hat,” Hawes said. “Study hall’s over.”
It was 5:25 when Adele Gorman came into the room with Meyer’s cup of tea. He was crouched near the air-conditioning unit recessed into the wall to the left of the drapes; he glanced up when he heard her, then rose.
“I didn’t know what you took,” she said, “so I brought everything.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Just a little sugar is fine.”
“Have you measured the room?” she asked, and put the tray down on the table in front of the sofa.
“Yes, I think I have everything I need now,” Meyer said. He put a spoonful of sugar into the tea, stirred it, then lifted the cup to his mouth. “Hot,” he said.
Adele Gorman was watching him silently. She said nothing. He kept sipping his tea. The ornate clock on the mantelpiece ticked in a swift whispering tempo.
“Do you always keep this room so dim?” Meyer asked.
“Well, my husband is blind, you know,” Adele said. “There’s really no need for brighter light.”
“Mmm. But your father reads in this room, doesn’t he?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The night you came home from that party. He was sitting in the chair over there near the floor lamp. Reading. Remember?”
“Oh. Yes, he was.”
“Bad light to read by.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“I think maybe those bulbs are defective,” Meyer said.
“Do you think so?”
“Mmm. I happened to look at the lamp, and there are three one-hundred-watt bulbs in it, all of them burning. You should be getting a lot more light with that much wattage.”
“Well, I really don’t know about such—”
“Unless the lamp is on a rheostat, of course.”
“I’m afraid I don’t even know what a rheostat is.”
“It’s an adjustable resistor. You can dim your lights or make them brighter with it. I thought maybe the lamp was on a rheostat, but I couldn’t find a control knob anywhere in the room.” Meyer paused. “You wouldn’t know if there’s a rheostat control in the house, would you?”
“I’m sure there isn’t,” Adele said.
“Must be defective bulbs then,” Meyer said, and smiled. “Also, I think your air conditioner is broken.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t.”
“Well, I was just looking at it, and all the switches are turned to the ‘On’ position, but it isn’t working. So I guess it’s broken. That’s a shame, too, because it’s such a nice unit. Sixteen thousand BTUs. That’s a lot of cooling power for a room this size. We’ve got one of those big old price-fixed apartments on Concord, my wife and I, with a large bedroom, and we get adequate cooling from a half-ton unit. It’s a shame this one is broken.”