“My wife thought it was eleven,” Kling said.
“No, only ten. Which one you wife?”
“The redhead,” Kling said.
“No redhead,” the waiter said.
“Tall redhead,” Kling said. “Wearing a green jumpsuit.”
“No redhead,” the waiter said again, shaking his head. “Only three lady. Miss Mercier, black hair, another lady black hair, and one lady yellow hair. No redhead.”
“Did you serve the party?” Kling asked him.
“I am Ah Wong,” he said, drawing himself up proudly. “Miss Mercier very good customer, I wait on her myself last night.”
“This would’ve been around eight o’clock, maybe a little earlier,” Kling said.
“Reservation for eight o’clock,” Ah Wong said, nodding. “Ten people. But no redhead.”
“What time did it break up?”
“Late.”
“How late.”
“Finish eat, sit around drink. Leave here eleven o’clock.”
“Eleven o’clock,” Kling said. Eleven o’clock was when Augusta had walked into their apartment. “Well, listen, thanks,” he said, “that was really delicious.”
“Come back soon,” Ah Wong said.
Kling paid the check and left the restaurant. The meter maid’s scooter was gone; its chain was still wrapped around the iron post and locked with a huge padlock. He debated going crosstown and uptown to where Bianca Mercier lived in The Quarter, ask her whether Augusta had indeed been at that predinner cocktail party last night. He decided against it. Whether she’d been there or not was a matter of small concern. She’d left their apartment uptown at 6:00 p.m. (or so the note on the refrigerator door had said) and had presumably been at Bianca’s party till a little before seven-thirty. (“I left Bianca’s at seven twenty-two and fourteen seconds, okay?”) An hour and a half didn’t matter too much when there were a missing three hours to account for — the time between when she said she’d left Bianca’s and, later on, the restaurant. Three hours, Kling thought. He had known Augusta to climax in three minutes.
He took a deep breath and walked toward the subway kiosk on Aqueduct.
The hooker who picked up Halloran in a bar near Playhouse Square, farther uptown, told him she was from Minnesota. She wasn’t really from Minnesota, she was from the city’s Calm’s Point section, and the distinctive way in which she abused the King’s English should have informed Halloran of that fact in a minute. But Halloran was drunk for the first time in his life, and the girl’s story went down without a ripple. She had been telling prospective customers she was from Minnesota ever since the hookers from that state started getting so much free publicity in the papers and on television. To be from Minnesota meant you were a helpless victim in the clutches of an evil black pimp, selling yourself against your will, corn-fed and wholesome before the big bad city corrupted you. Men liked to think they were sticking it in some kind of technical virgin, and all those innocent-looking hookers from Minnesota were stars in this city.
Kim — whose real name was Louise Marschek — had been a blonde since she was fifteen, when a white pimp took her under his wing and turned her out with promises of unimagined riches and glamour, meanwhile buying her a three-dollar bottle of commercial bleach. It was he who suggested she change her name, professionally, to Kim — “You look a lot like Kim Novak,” he told her. With the new blonde hair, she did in fact believe she looked a lot like Kim Novak, except with smaller breasts. For the past year or so, ever since she’d begun telling customers she was from Minnesota, she’d been bleaching herself below as well, the better to promote the image of country-girl inviolability. The first words she said to Halloran when she took the stool next to his at the bar were, “Hi, I’m Kim — from Duluth, Minnesota.” She did not have the faintest idea where Duluth was, or even where Minnesota was, for that matter. Neither did Halloran, so they were even.
Sitting beside him, Kim thought how thrilled he probably was to have someone who looked so much like Kim Novak putting her widespread hand on his thigh and asking “Want to have a party?” Halloran had begun drinking at noon, when the city’s bars were allowed to open after everybody got out of church (and headed for the bars) and by one-thirty, when she sat down beside him, he had consumed three whiskey-sodas and was feeling a bit sick, to tell the truth. He was Irish, and the Irish were supposed to be big drinkers, but his grandfather had died young of cirrhosis of the liver, and his father had never touched a drop in his life, and he’d have beaten Halloran silly if ever he’d caught him lifting so much as a beer. He was just sober enough to recognize that the girl sitting there beside him with her hand close to his groin was maybe seventeen, eighteen years old, and he was drunk enough, more than enough, to think she looked just like his wife, Josie, when she was that age, or his daughter, Moira, the way she’d looked yesterday when she’d given him his walking papers. He said to the girl on the stool beside him, “You shouldn’t have done that, Moira.”
“Let’s go have a party, huh?” she whispered in his ear, her hand moving closer to his groin.
Halloran had been in prison for twelve years, and he wouldn’t have understood the expression even if he’d been sober enough to hear it correctly. He simply nodded.
“Okay?” she said. “Let’s go, okay? Pay for your drinks, and let’s get out of here.”
He said, “Sure,” and nodded again, and took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, and put it on top of the bar. Kim noticed that there was a sheaf of greenbacks in the bill compartment of the wallet. She had already noticed that he was bombed out of his mind, and she figured if she played her cards right this big jerk could be the only trick she’d have to turn this afternoon. Throw him a quickie, walk off with the billfold, thanks a lot, mister. The money in the wallet, minus the ten-dollar bill, actually totaled hundred and sixty dollars, all that Halloran had left of the two hundred he’d managed to borrow from an old friend who used to work at the telephone company with him. That was before the trouble, when Halloran had been one of the best linemen in the city. He got off the stool now, and the girl looped her arm through his. Together, they went out of the air-conditioned bar and into the afternoon blaze of the street outside.
By the time they got to the hotel on one of the side streets off Lassiter, he realized that the girl wasn’t his daughter, Moira, nor was she his wife, Josie, either, which she couldn’t have been anyway since Josie had been dead for a long time now, he had killed Josie with a hatchet twelve years ago. He realized, too, that the girl was a hooker, but he thought, What the hell, so what? It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. In prison, your women were the young boys. You put a shank to a kid’s throat, some dumb fish just inside the walls, you told him what you wanted and he either gave it to you or his pretty little face got messed up. If he went to The Man to complain about it, you got him alone someplace, more places to ambush a man in prison, and this time a dozen guys put it to him, and then he was yours forever, walked by your side, shaved his legs for you if that was what you wanted, let you paint tits on his back, that’s what it was like in prison. Take or be taken. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
“You live here?” he asked her.
“No, no, just rentin’ a room for now,” Kim said.
“What’s this gonna cost me?” he asked.
“We’ll talk about that upstairs, okay?” she said, and winked at the clerk behind the desk when he handed her the key.