Carella did indeed have a lot of questions to ask.
In police work, it was always a matter of how best to utilize one’s time and assets, especially now that travel had become so difficult. It would have seemed simpler and cheaper all around to have done this by telephone; he’d had to call, anyway, to set up this Saturday appointment. But there were too many people he needed to talk to here, and he couldn’t have done that on the phone. Moreover, there were no nuances in a phone call. You could not see a person’s face, his eyes, you could not detect the tremor of a lip, or a slight hesitation. A catch in the voice, a change of tone, any of which might indicate a lie or merely a bit of information being withheld. Face to face, you saw and heard it all.
He let Morgan have it flat out.
“I’m trying to find out if Lester Henderson had a woman with him last weekend,” he said.
Morgan hesitated, and then said, “You understand, of course…”
Carella was about to hear the speech he’d already heard from 10,012 hotel managers, the one about the privacy of guests and the hotel’s responsibility to protect a guest’s rights and privileges, the same speech he’d heard from priests and lawyers and even accountants, on occasion, so he cut immediately to the chase by saying the magic words, “Yes, but this is a homicide.”
Smiling understandingly as he said the words.
Yes, I know the difficulties of weighing civic duty against corporate obligation. But a grievous breach has taken place here, and I am but a mere public servant attempting to address this wrong and correct it, so I truly would appreciate candor and honesty because this is a homicide, you see, and that is the worst possible crime, sir, so please help me solve it because this is a homicide.
“I would have to check our records, sir,” Morgan said.
He led Carella into the Business Office and asked someone there to pull up the registration records for the past weekend. As Carella suspected, Lester Henderson had occupied a single room, albeit with a king-sized bed, and had registered as he himself alone, Lester Lyle Henderson.
“The rate would have been higher for a double,” Morgan said.
Carella was tempted to ask why hotels charged more for double occupancy than single. A room was a room, wasn’t it? No matter how many people were in it? Well, maybe they provided more towels and little bottles of shampoo if they rented it as a double. He was sure there had to be a reason. Maybe this went back to the so-called blue laws, when women weren’t allowed to drink at the bar, or—for all he knew—occupy hotel rooms with men who weren’t their husbands.
“Could you check your records for a woman with the first name Carrie?” he asked. “Who also might have been here last weekend.”
“That…might be difficult,” Morgan said.
“This is a homicide,” Carella said.
“Let me see if the computer can do a find.”
The computer did, in fact, “do a find”—but it found nothing for anyone named Carrie.
“How about the initials JSH?” Carella said.
“Really, I don’t see how…”
“Do a find for last names beginning with the letter ‘H,’” Carella said. “Then narrow it to first names beginning with ‘J,’ and if you get lucky, close in on the ‘S.’ This would’ve been a woman, too.”
“JSH,” Morgan said.
“Please.”
Three women whose last names began with the letter “H” had checked in last Saturday. All three worked for IBM. Only one of them had a first name beginning with the letter “J.” She had signed in as Miss Jacqueline Held, no middle initial, and had given an address in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“How old was she, would you know?” Carella asked.
“Our records would not show that,” Morgan said.
“How about the room clerk who checked her in? Would he remember?”
“She,” Morgan corrected. “Everyone behind the registration desk is a woman.”
“Would the same room clerk be working today?”
“Usually we have the same people on weekends, yes.”
“Can we find out which one of them checked in Miss Held?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Morgan said, and then added—somewhat sarcastically, Carella thought—“This is a homicide, you know.” But he was smiling.
The clerk who’d checked in Miss Jacqueline Held recalled her as a dark-haired woman in her forties with a distinct Southern accent.
“What room was Henderson in?” Carella asked.
“We’ll have to go back to the Business Office,” Morgan said, and briskly led the way down the corridor. Carella got the impression that he was beginning to enjoy himself. Well, it had been a long hard winter.
The computer showed that Henderson had stayed in room 1215, which was occupied at the moment.
“How about the maid who cleaned that room?” Carella asked. “Is she working today.”
“Well, let’s see if we can find her, shall we?” Morgan said, sounding positively ebullient now.
Two maids had worked the twelfth floor that weekend. Both of them were from Brazil. One of them was short, the other very tall. The short one spoke only Portuguese. The tall one’s English was halting at best. She told Carella that she vaguely remembered the people who had occupied—
“People?” he said.
“Man and girl,” she said, and nodded.
“Can you describe them for me?”
“Man short, eyeglasses, maybe forty-five. Girl blond, maybe eighteen, nineteen. Maybe was daughter, no?”
The short maid suddenly began shaking her head and speaking in rapid Portuguese.
“What is it?” Carella asked.
“She says wasn’t daughter. The girl.”
“She saw her, too?”
“Você também a viu?”
“Claro que vi ela. Eles estavam esperando o elevador.”
“She says, Yes, she saw her. They were waiting for the elevator.”
“What makes her think this wasn’t his daughter?”
“Por que você acha que ela não era filha dele?”the tall one asked.
“Porque eles estavam se beijando,”the short one said.
The tall one turned back to them and shrugged.
“Because they were kissing,” she said.
The Business Office showed no room service charges for Henderson on Saturday night. Neither had he charged anything to the hotel restaurant that night. The records did reveal, however, that he had charged his stay to an American Express card. Carella copied down the number and expiration date of his card, and then asked if he could use a telephone.
He stopped in the coffee shop first, found Teddy sitting alone at a table near the window, sneaked up behind her, kissed her on top of the head, and then came around to sit opposite her at the table.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her hands flying, she told him it was very nice sitting here in the window, watching all the comings and goings outside, somewhat like seeing a foreign movie with actors she didn’t recognize. She kept making up stories about them in her head. Which of them were married, which of them were having affairs, which of them were businessmen or spies…
I think I saw one who was positively a detective,she said.