The argument was about whether or not Augusta should stay at the beach for the entire long weekend, instead of going back to the city with Kling on Saturday. They’d been married for almost four years now; she should have realized by this time that the Police Department respected no holidays, and that a cop’s two successive days off sometimes fell in the middle of the week. He was lucky this year, in fact, to have caught the Glorious Fourth and the day preceding it, and he felt he was within his rights to ask his own wife, goddamn it, to accompany him back to the city when he left at ten tomorrow morning. Augusta maintained that the Fourth of July rarely was bracketed by an entire long weekend, as it was this year, and it was senseless for her to go back to what would be essentially a ghost town when he had to go to work anyway. What was she supposed to do while he was out chasing crooks? Sit in the empty apartment and twiddle her thumbs? He told her she was coming back with him, and that was that. She told him she was staying, and that was that.
They barely spoke to each other all through dinner, served on their host’s deck overlooking the crashing sea, and by the time the fireworks started at 9:00 p.m., Augusta had drifted over to a group of photographers with whom she’d immediately begun a spirited, and much too animated, conversation. The little blonde who sat down next to Kling while the first of the fireworks erupted was holding a martini glass in her hand, and it was evident from the first few words she spoke that she’d had at least four too many of them already. She was wearing very short white shorts and an orange blouse Kling had seen in Glamour (Augusta on the cover) the month before, slashed deep over her breasts and exposing at least one of them clear to the nipple. She said, “Hi,” and then tucked her bare feet up under her, her shoulder touching Kling’s as she performed the delicate maneuver, and then asked him in a gin-slurred voice where he’d been all afternoon, she hadn’t seen him around, and she thought sure she’d seen every good-looking man there. The fireworks kept exploding against the blackness of the sky.
The girl went on to say that she was a junior model with the Cutler Agency (the same agency that represented Augusta) and then asked whether he was a model himself, he was so good-looking, or just a mere photographer (she made photographers sound like child molesters), or did he work for one of the fashion magazines, or was he perhaps that lowest of the low, an agent? Kling told her he was a cop, and before she could ask to see his pistol (or anything else) promptly informed her that he was here with his wife. His wife, at the moment, was ooohing and aaahing over a spectacular swarm of golden fish that erupted overhead and swam erratically against the sky, dripping sparks as they fell toward the ocean. The girl, who seemed no older than eighteen or nineteen, and who had the largest blue eyes Kling had ever seen in his life, set in a pixie face with a somewhat lopsided chipmunk grin, asked Kling who his wife might be, and when he pointed her out and said, “Augusta Blair,” the name she still used when modeling, the girl raised her eyebrows and said, “Don’t shit me, man, Augusta’s not married.”
Well, Kling wasn’t used to being told he wasn’t married to Augusta, although at times he certainly felt that way. He explained, or started to explain, that he and Augusta had been married for — but the girl cut him off and said, “I see her all over town,” and shrugged and gulped at her martini. She was just drunk enough to have missed the fact that Kling was a cop, which breed (especially of the detective variety) are prone to ask all sorts of pertinent questions, and further too drunk to realize that she didn’t necessarily have to add, “with guys” after she’d swallowed the gin and vermouth, two words which — when coupled with her previous statement and forgiving the brief hiatus — came out altogether as “I see her all over town with guys.”
Kling knew, of course, that Augusta went to quite a few cocktail parties without him, and he also knew that undoubtedly she talked to people at those parties, and that some of those people were possibly men. But the blonde’s words seemed to imply something more than simple cocktail chatter, and he was about to ask her what she meant, exactly, when a waiter in black trousers and a white jacket came around with a refill, apparently having divined her need from across the wide expanse of the crowded deck. The blonde deftly lifted a fresh martini glass from the tray the waiter proffered, gulped down half its contents, and then — compounding the felony — said, “One guy especially.”
“What do you mean, exactly?” Kling managed to say this time.
“Come on, what do I mean?” the blonde said, and winked at him.
“Tell me about it,” Kling said. His heart was pounding in his chest.
“Go ask Augusta, you’re so interested in Augusta,” the blonde said.
“Are you saying she’s been seeing some guy?”
“Who cares? Listen, would you like to go inside with me? Don’t fireworks bore you to death? Let’s go inside and find someplace, okay?”
“No, tell me about Augusta.”
“Oh, fuck Augusta,” the blonde said, and untangled her legs from under her bottom and got unsteadily to her feet, and then said, “And you, too,” and tossed her hair and went staggering into the house through the French doors.
The last time he saw her that night, she was curled up, asleep in the master bedroom, her blouse open to the waist, both cherry-nippled breasts recklessly exposed. He was tempted to wake her and question her further about this “one guy especially,” but his host walked into the room at that moment, and cleared his throat, and Kling had the distinct impression he was being suspected of rape or at least sexual molestation. The blonde later disappeared into the night, as suddenly as she had materialized. But before leaving the next day (Augusta stayed behind, as she had promised, or perhaps threatened) Kling asked some discreet questions and learned that her name was Monica Thorpe. On Monday morning he called the Cutler Agency, identified himself as Augusta’s husband, said they wanted to invite Monica to a small dinner party, and got her unlisted number from them. When he called her at home, she said she didn’t know who he was, and didn’t remember saying anything about Augusta, who was anyway her dearest friend and one of the sweetest people on earth. She hung up before Kling could say another word. When he called back a moment later, she said, “Hey, knock it off, okay, man? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and hung up again.
“So that’s it,” Kling said.
“That’s it, huh?” Carella said. “Are you telling me...?”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Carella said. “Except some dumb blonde got drunk and filled your head with—”
“She said she saw Augusta all over town. With guys, Steve. With one guy especially, Steve.”