“I was.”
“Did anyone come to the building asking for Mr. Craig?”
“Yes, someone did.”
“Who, would you remember?”
“A man named Daniel Corbett.”
“When was this?”
“About five o’clock. It was just starting to snow.”
“Did you announce him to Mr. Craig?”
“I did.”
“And what did Mr. Craig say?”
“He said, ‘Send him right up.’”
“Did he go up?”
“Yes, he did.”
“You saw him go up?”
“I saw him go into the elevator, yes.”
“At about five o’clock?”
“Around then.”
“Did you see him come down again?”
“No, I did not.”
“You quit at six…”
“At about a quarter after, when Jimmy relieved me. Jimmy Karlson.”
“And this man—Daniel Corbett—did not come down while you were on duty, is that right?”
“No, sir, he did not.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?”
“Yes, he was a youngish man, I’d say in his late twenties or early thirties, and he had black hair and brown eyes.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A dark overcoat, brown or black, I really don’t remember. And dark pants. I couldn’t see whether he was wearing a suit or a sports jacket under the coat. He had a yellow scarf around his neck. And he was carrying a dispatch case.”
“Was he wearing a hat?”
“No hat.”
“Gloves?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Would you know how he spelled his name?”
“I didn’t ask him. He said Daniel Corbett, and that was the name I gave Mr. Craig on the phone.”
“And Mr. Craig said, ‘Send him right up,’ is that correct?”
“Those were his exact words.”
“Where are you if I need you?” Carella asked.
“The Three Oaks Lodge, Mount Semanee.”
“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”
“I liked Mr. Craig a lot,” Mandel said, and hung up.
Carella put the receiver back on the cradle, turned to Hawes with a grin, and said, “We’re getting lucky, Cotton.”
Their luck ran out almost at once.
There were no Daniel Corbetts listed in any of the city’s five telephone directories. On the off chance that Hillary Scott might have known him, they called her at the apartment and were not surprised when the phone was not answered there; not many people chose to remain overnight in an apartment where a murder had been committed. They called her office and spoke to a woman there who said everybody had gone home and she was just the cleaning woman. They searched the Isola directory for a possible second listing for Hillary Scott. There was none. They ran down the list of sixty-four Scotts in the book, hoping one of them might be related to the Spook. None of the people they called had the faintest idea who Hillary Scott might be.
It would have to wait till morning after all.
3
Hillary Scott called Carella at home at 8:30 Saturday morning. He was still in bed. He propped himself up on one elbow and lifted the receiver of the phone on the night table.
“Hello,” he said.
“Were you trying to reach me?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I sensed it,” Hillary said. “What is it?”
“How’d you get my phone number?” he asked.
“From the phone book.”
Thank God, he thought. If she’d plucked his home phone number out of thin air, he’d begin believing all sorts of things. There was, in fact, something eerie about talking to her on the telephone, visualizing her as she spoke, conjuring the near-duplicate image of his wife, who lay beside him with her arms wrapped around the pillow, her black hair spread against the pillowcase. Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute; she had not heard the ringing telephone; she did not now hear Carella’s conversation with the woman who looked so much like her. He wondered, abruptly, whether—if Teddy had a voice—it would sound like Hillary Scott’s.
“You tried me at the apartment, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m here now,” she said. “I came back to get some clothes. The flux was strongest around the telephone.”
“Yes, well, good,” he said. “Can you tell me where you’re staying now, so in case I need to…?”
“You can reach me at my sister’s,” she said. “Her name is Denise Scott; the number there is Gardner 4-7706. You’d better write it down, it’s unlisted.”
He had already written it down. “And the address?” he said.
“3117 Laster Drive. What did you want, Detective Carella?”
“The security guard who normally has the noon to six at Harborview called last night. Jerry—”
“Jerry Mandel, yes.”
“Yes. He said Mr. Craig had a visitor at five P.M. on the day he was murdered. A man named Daniel Corbett. Does that name mean anything to you?”
There was a silence on the line.
“Miss Scott?”
“Yes. Daniel Corbett was Greg’s editor on Shades.”
“He was described to me as a young man with black hair and brown eyes.”
“Yes.”
“Miss Scott, when we were in the apartment yesterday—”
“Yes, I know what you’re about to say. The spirit I described.”
“A young male, you said. Black hair and brown eyes.” Carella paused. “Did you have any reason for…?”
“The flux was strongest at the desk.”
“Aside from the flux.”
“Only the flux,” she said.
“But you do know Daniel Corbett.”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Is he, in fact, a young man?”
“Thirty-two.”
“With black hair and brown eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Where do I reach him, Miss Scott?”
“At Harlow House.”
“Where’s that?”
“That’s the name of the publishing firm. Harlow House. It’s on Jefferson and Lloyd.”
“Today’s Saturday. Would you know his home number?”
“I’m sure Greg has it in his book.”
“Are you in the bedroom now?”
“No, I’m in the living room.”
“Could you go into the bedroom, please, and look up the number for me?”
“Yes, of course. But it wasn’t Daniel I was sensing yesterday. It wasn’t Daniel at all.”
“Even so…”
“Yes, just a minute, please.”
He waited. Beside him, Teddy rolled over, and stirred, and then sat up and blinked into the room. She was wearing a cream-colored baby-doll nightgown he’d given her for her birthday. She stretched, and smiled at him, and then kissed him on the cheek, got swiftly out of bed, and padded across the room to the bathroom. No panties. The twin crescents of her buttocks peeped from below the lace hem of the short gown. He watched her as she crossed the room, forgetting for a moment that she was his own wife.
“Hello?” Hillary said.
“Yes, I’m here.”
The bathroom door closed. He turned his full attention back to the medium on the telephone.
“I’ve got two numbers for him,” Hillary said. “One in Isola, and the other in Gracelands, upstate. He has a place up there he goes to on weekends.”
“Let me have both numbers, please.” In the bathroom, he heard the toilet flushing and then the water tap running. He wrote down the numbers and then said, “Thank you, Miss Scott, I’ll be in touch.”
“It wasn’t Daniel,” she said, and hung up.
Teddy came out of the bathroom. Her hair was sleep-tousled, her face was pale without makeup, but her dark eyes were sparkling and clear, and he watched her as she crossed to the bed and for perhaps the thousandth time thanked the phenomenal luck that had brought her into his life more years ago than he cared to remember. She was not the young girl he’d known then, she did not at her age possess the lithe body of a twenty-two-year-old like Hillary Scott, but her breasts were still firm, her legs long and supple, and she watched her weight like a hawk. Cozily she lay down beside him as he dialed the first of the numbers Hillary had given him. Her hand went under the blanket.