“What’d you do all that time?” Hawes asked.
Hall grinned. “What do you think we did?”
“I don’t know. You tell us.”
Hall was still grinning. “We played Parchesi,” he said.
“Leave the room at all during that time?”
“Nope. Here all night. I like Parchesi.”
“Do you know a man named Sy Kramer?” Carella asked.
“Oh,” Hall said. “That. I mighta known.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. Never met him. I read about the killing in the newspapers.”
“But you’d never met him?”
“Nope.”
“Ever hear of him before?”
“Nope.”
“Why’d you come here from Boston?”
“A little rest. See some of the shows. You know. Like that.”
“What shows have you seen so far?” Hawes asked.
“None,” Hall admitted. “It’s pretty rough to get tickets, you know? Except for the longhair stuff. Who wants to see the longhair stuff? I like musicals. Songs, girls, that’s for me. Good-time Charlie, that’s me.” He snapped his fingers. “I got a friend who gets ice, you know what that is?”
“What is it?” Hawes asked.
“Free tickets. Not really free. Well, like they’re paid for at box-office prices, but he sells them back a little higher, you know what I mean? The difference between the box-office price and what he gets is called ice. So he gets ice. Only he can’t fix me up yet. Tickets are hard to get nowadays.”
“And that’s why you’re here, right? To see a few shows.”
“Yeah, and to take a rest.”
“But you haven’t seen any shows yet?”
“No.”
“Have you rested?”
“Well, you know…”
“Good-time Charlie, that’s you,” Carella said.
“Sure. Good-time Charlie, that’s me.”
“Where do we get in touch with this Carmela Fresco?”
“Why drag her into this?” Hall said.
“Have you got a better alibi?”
“No, but…She’s just a kid. I know her, and we…”
“How old?” Hawes snapped.
“Nothing like that,” Hall said. “She ain’t underage, don’t worry about that. I wasn’t born yesterday. But she’s a kid. You go around asking questions, you’ll scare the hell out of her. Also, you might ruin a good thing for me.”
“That’s too bad,” Carella said.
“What makes you think I had anything to do with the Kramer kill, anyway?” Hall said.
“Do you know who did?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“Why?”
“Let’s assume I did know, okay? Let’s assume I know who hired some guys to kill Kramer. To kill him, now. Not to scare him or warn him or anything like that. To kill him. Cool him. Put him away. So these guys mean business, right? These guys ain’t playing around. So do you think I would open my mouth on these guys who mean business, these guys who ain’t playing around, these guys who hired some other guys to kill a guy? To kill him! Oh, you got to be real foolish to open your mouth on these rough fellows, don’t you?”
“Are there some rough fellows in this, Hall?”
“I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t usually assist bul—detectives, but this time I think you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. If this was a rackets thing, I woulda heard about it. And I didn’t hear nothin’.”
“There’s another possibility, of course,” Hawes said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“You could have killed Kramer.”
“The only thing I killed on Wednesday night was a girl named Carmela Fresco. I send that kid, believe me. I send her! When she leaves me, she’s killed. Dead. Unconscious.” Hall smiled. “I tell you the truth, she kills me, too. It’s a good arrangement.”
“Like Murder, Incorporated,” Carella said.
“Something like that. A mutual stoning society, so to speak. We stone each other. Oh Jesus, does that kid stone me!”
“How do we reach her, Hall?”
“She’s in the book.”
“What’s the number?”
“I told you. She’s in the book.”
“We can’t read,” Hawes said.
“Aw, come on, don’t let me be the bastard, huh?” Hall said. “This way you can tell her you got it from the book. You’ll be tellin’ the truth.”
“We don’t mind lying a little,” Carella said. “What’s her number? We’ll say we got it from the book.”
Hall shrugged. “Hunter 1-3800,” he said. “I wish you’d leave her out of it.”
“You’re not out of it yourself yet,” Hawes told him.
“Oh, brother, I’m clean,” Hall said. “I wish I was always so clean as I am on this one. I’m so clean, I glisten. I shine. I gleam.”
“We’ll see about that,” Hawes said.
They started for the door. At the door, Carella turned.
“Oh. One more thing, Sun God.”
“Yeah?” Hall said.
“Don’t go back to Boston before checking with us.”
“I’ll be around,” Hall said tiredly. “I got a few shows to see. Music, girls, you know. Good-time Charlie, that’s—”
The door slammed on his sentence.
CARMELA FRESCO was somewhat shy and hesitant at the beginning. She was a good girl, she insisted, who would certainly never spend the night in any man’s hotel room. What kind of girl did they think she was, anyway? Did she look like that kind of girl? Had this man Newton—or whatever his name was—said that she was that kind of girl?
Carella and Hawes were very patient with her.
The girl repeated her story again and again. She had certainly not been with this Newton—or whatever his name was—on Wednesday night or any other night. Over and over again, Carella and Hawes had her repeat the story of how she’d gone to a church bingo with her mother that night.
And then, in the middle of a sentence, she hesitated and then shouted, “That son of a bitch! Does he think I’m a slut, telling everybody in the world I spent the goddamn night with him?”
And that was it.
The reputation of Carmela Fresco may have emerged in a somewhat blemished condition. But the alibi of Newton Hall was clean, and glistening, and shining, and gleaming.
Hawes called him and told him he was free to go back to Boston any damn time he wanted to—the sooner the better, in fact.
3.
ON THE NIGHT OF June twenty-sixth, when Sy Kramer was murdered, a passer-by came upon the body lying on the pavement and immediately telephoned the police. The call was taken by a patrolman who sat at one of the two Headquarters switchboards with a pad of printed forms before him. He took down the information exactly as it was excitedly delivered to him.