“Listen,” she said, “maybe we oughta just forget it, you know what I mean?”
He kept staring at her. She wondered if she should yell for help. She wondered if she should try to get past him to where she’d put her bag on the dresser. There was a single-edged razor blade in her bag, insurance against situations like this one. He seemed not to know she was in the room with him. He kept staring at her, but not seeing her.
“I mean, I... really, I’m a working girl, you know? I...” She wet her lips. Her hands were beginning to shake. “It’s just... you know... we’ve been here awhile now. If you... if you’re not interested, you know, in doing anything, then why don’t I just give you back the twenty-five, no hard feelings, and I can—”
“No, you can keep it,” he said.
“I don’t want to take money for something I didn’t—”
“Keep it!” he said.
“Well... well, okay, thanks, but I feel rotten taking your money when I—”
“Just get out of here, okay? Just leave me alone.”
“Well, okay,” she said, getting off the bed quickly and moving toward the dresser. She picked up her bag. “Will you be here awhile or what?” she asked. “’Cause what I do, the clerk lets me have the room for a half hour, you know? I give him five for a half hour. So if you’re gonna be longer than that...”
“That’s all right,” he said.
“That’s only, like you know, just another fifteen minutes or so.”
“That’s all right,” he said again.
“I’m sorry about your daughter,” she said, and opened the door.
He did not answer her.
“Well... so long,” she said, and went out, closing the door behind her.
He went to the bed, and sat on it where she’d been sitting, sat there for a long while without moving, and then lay back against the pillow, his hands behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling.
The night he’d killed her (well, it hadn’t been his fault) he’d driven downtown afterward to search for the man Josie had named. Found him standing outside a sleazy hotel on Culver Avenue, chased him down the street with the bloody hatchet in his hand, finally caught up with him and yanked him to the sidewalk and was about to do to him what he had already done to Josie when a car pulled up to the curb, and a young guy in plain-clothes jumped out waving a gun and yelling.
Staring at the ceiling, tears forming in his eyes, burning there with anger and regret and a sense of loss that made him feel powerless (“Big man like you,” and her eyes dropping to his crotch), he remembered that son of a bitch coming out of the car, waving his pistol in the air, “Police! Stop or I’ll shoot!” remembered telling him stupidly and in tears all about what had happened in the clapboard-and-brick house on Marien Street, “It wasn’t my fault,” repeating the words again and again, “It wasn’t my fault.” And the cop had answered, the son of a bitch had answered, “It’s never anybody’s fault, is it?” Those words echoed in his head for twelve long years — “It’s never anybody’s fault, is it?” — as if a man was supposed to ignore the fact that his wife was fucking somebody else, as if it was the man’s fault instead of...
That son of a bitch, he thought.
Twelve years in prison, he thought.
Twelve years of making love to young boys instead of Josie.
You son of a bitch.
The tears running down his face, his fists clenched, he knew whose fault it was, all right, never mind it never being anybody’s fault, never mind that fucking shit! Knew just who was responsible for all those years in prison, knew who to blame for the way his only daughter had treated him yesterday, exactly who to blame for all of it (“It’s never anybody’s fault, is it?”).
Detective 3rd/Grade Bertram A. Kling, he thought.
And nodded grimly.
Detective 3rd/Grade Richard Genero was Carella’s partner that Sunday. It could have been worse; Carella could have been partnered with Andy Parker. Genero, after months of trying, had finally given up on the spelling of “perpetrator.” In coping with that enormously difficult word and its accomplice “surveillance,” Genero had imaginatively come up with spellings like “perpetuater” and “sirvellance,” which sounded like the name of a medieval French knight, and “survillance” and even “perpitraitor,” which sounded like someone who might logically commit a crime of heinous proportion. He had settled for typing the abbreviations “perp” and “surv” in all of his reports, a practice that had since gained common currency in the squadroom, elevating Genero to the celebrity of a pacesetter.
Like a messenger working in the garment center, Genero never went anywhere without his portable radio. While he typed all those perps and survs in triplicate, his radio sat on the corner of his desk, blaring the latest rock and roll tune. Lieutenant Byrnes had informed him that the squadroom was not a ballroom (“This is not a ballroom up here, Genero, we are not ballroom dancers up here, Genero”) and had warned him that he would be back in uniform, walking a beat in Bethtown, if he did not get rid of that “noisy piece of nonregulation equipment forthwith.” But Lieutenant Byrnes was off today, and Genero’s radio, tuned to the rock station Carella’s ten-year-old twins listened to, was going full blast as Carella dialed the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles.
The assistant manager who spoke to him was courteous, polite, and eager to assist. Out there in Los Angeles, everybody tried to be as courteous, polite, and eager to assist as were the LAPD cops themselves. Carella could visualize an armed robber and a uniformed cop out there, bowing from the waist to each other before shooting it out in one of the canyons.
“I’m calling about a recent guest of yours,” Carella said.
“Yes, sir?”
“A woman named Mrs. Jeremiah Newman, she may have registered as Anne Newman. That would’ve been on August first, according to our information.”
“Yes, sir,” the assistant manager said. “Could you hold one moment while I check with Reservations?”
“I need some other information as well,” Carella said.
“I might be saving you time if I gave it all to you up front.”
“Yes, sir, happy to help.”
“I’ll want to know when she checked in — I’d like you to confirm that August first date for me — and also when she checked out. And then I’d like to know whether she made any long-distance telephone calls, the number she called, and the dates and duration of those calls.”
“I’d have to transfer you to the Cashier’s Office on the calls, sir,” the assistant manager said. “But let me check with Reservations first.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
There was a click on the line; he hoped he had not been cut off. Across the room, Genero’s radio was spewing a song with the repeated lyric “If I love you, how come you don’t love me?” He wondered why Genero didn’t get himself one of those little things you stuck in your ear. He would suggest it to him, as soon as he got off the phone.
“Mr. Carella?” the assistant manager said.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I have those dates for you, sir. We do indeed show an Anne Newman registering on the first of August and checking out late Thursday night, August seventh.”
“Thank you,” Carella said. “Could you put me through to someone who’d know about the phone calls?”
“It might take a few minutes for them to find the charge slips,” the assistant manager said. “Would you like us to call you back?”
“No, I’ll wait, thanks,” Carella said.
“Fine, it shouldn’t take too very long. Please hold on, won’t you?”