“I have no idea.”
“But they came to the office every Friday to pick up their pay checks.”
“That's correct.”
“Did you see them on those occasions?”
“Nancy made out their checks. Nancy Houlihan, my bookkeeper.”
“But you told me they knew Mrs. Harris.”
“Yes, I assume they did.”
“Well... did you ever see them talking to her?”
“Yes.”
“But you wouldn’t know whether either of them made advances—”
“No, I—”
“And were rebuffed—”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Mr. Preston, I think you know what I’m looking for. rm trying to find out whether anyone Isabel worked with would have the slightest possible reason for—”
“Yes, I know exactly what you’re looking for, but I can’t help you.”
“Okay,” Carella said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Preston. I'll call the office on Monday for those addresses.”
“Fine.”
“Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight,” Preston said, and hung up.
Carella sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for several moments. In the Riverhead house, just as in the squadroom, he had phone books for all five sections of the city. He lifted the Isola directory from the floor under the desk and opened it to the D’s. He knew he wouldn’t get the right time from Nancy Houlihan, but he was eager for more information, and he figured he might stand a chance with Jennie D’Amato. There were seventy-four D’Amatos in the Isola directory, and none of them were Jennies. He opened the Riverhead book. Twelve D’Amatos, no Jennies. In Calm’s Point, there were twenty-nine D’Amatos, no Jennies, but a J on Pierce Avenue. He jotted down the number. In the Majesta book, he found another J. D’Amato, and wrote down that number as well. He did not bother looking through the Bethtown directory. It was his contention that no one but retired cops lived on Bethtown, even now that a bridge had been put in. He dialed the Calm’s Point number first, and immediately hit pay dirt
“Hello?”
“Miss D’Amato, please.”
“This is Miss D’Amato.”
“Jennie D’Amato?”
“Yes?” Tentative, cautious.
“This is Detective Carella, I believe I spoke to you earlier today.”
“Oh.” Pause. The pause lengthened. “Yes.”
“This is the woman who works at Prestige Novelty?”
“Yes.”
“Miss D’Amato, I wonder if you can tell me a little about Isabel Harris.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I'm primarily interested in how she got along with the other people in the office.”
“Fine.”
“No arguments or anything?”
“No. Well...”
“Yes?”
“Well, the usual.”
“What do you mean by ‘the usual’?”
“Well, you know how it is in an office, especially a small one. There’d be irritations every now and then, but nothing—”
“What sort of irritations?”
“Oh, I can hardly remember. Someone would answer the phone and forget to take a message. Or someone would send out for coffee and forget to ask if everybody in the office wanted anything — like that.”
“You’re the one who normally answers the phone, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“But sometimes other people did, and they forgot to take messages.”
“Well, that only happened once.”
“Who answered the phone and forgot to take a message?”
“Isabel.”
“And who got irritated?”
“Well... Nancy. Because it was her boyfriend who’d called, and Isabel just forgot to mention it.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Last month sometime.”
“Were there any recent arguments?”
“No, not really.”
“What about sending out for coffee? You said—”
“That was me. I sent out for coffee one day and forgot to ask Nancy if she wanted anything, so she blew her stack. That wasn’t Isabel.”
“How about the two fellows who work at the warehouse?”
“Alex and Tommy, yes.”
“She get along with them?”
“Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, Alex was always kidding her about wanting... well, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know.”
“Take her out, do you mean?”
“Well, more than that. You know. Go away for the weekend or something. He was just kidding. He knew she was married.”
“How’d she react to these propositions?”
“Well, they weren’t propositions. He’d just say, you know, ‘Come on, Isabel, let’s run away together.’ And she’d laugh is all.”
“How about Tommy? Did he joke with her, too?”
“Well, they both sort of joked with her. Because she was blind, you know. To make her feel good. I guess.”
“Did it ever go beyond joking?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She never...”
“I don’t think so. It was just joking, that’s all. And maybe, you know, once in a while Alex’d lean over the desk and give her a kiss on the cheek, something like that.”
“Tommy, too?”
“No, he never did that.”
“But you don’t think she was seeing either one of them outside the office?”
“Well, they once in a while walked her to the subway. They only came up on Fridays, you understand, to get their pay checks. Isabel used to leave the office about two-thirty, and they’d be there before then so they could still get to the bank with their checks. So they’d walk her to the subway sometimes.”
“Alex and Tommy both?”
“Yes, both of them.”
“But you don’t think she was dating one of them, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think?”
“I think she was very flirtatious for a blind person.”
“In what way?”
“Well, the clothes she wore, and the way she sat... I just think she was very flirtatious.”
“What sort of clothes, Miss D’Amato?”
“Very revealing clothes. We’re none of us prudes at Prestige Novelty, we couldn’t be and—”
Her voice stopped. For a moment Carella thought they’d been cut off.
“Miss D’Amato?” he said.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“You were about to say?”
“Only that in my opinion she dressed suggestively.”
“But you were saying...”
“That’s what I was saying.”
Carella did not press it further. Instead, he changed the subject. “Miss D’Amato,” he said, “was anyone surprised when Isabel didn’t show up for work this morning?”
“We all were. She never missed a day, and she was always on time. The job was important to her. When she didn’t show up this morning, Mr. Preston asked me to call and find out if anything was the matter.”
“Were those his words?”
“What?”
“Did he say ‘Call and find out if anything’s the matter’?”
“I don’t recall his exact words. He thought she might be sick or something.”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes, he said Isabel had to be sick or something, otherwise she’d be there at work. So he asked me to call.”
“And did you call?”
“Yes.”
“What time was that?”
“About ten-thirty. She usually got to work by ten.”
“Did anyone answer the phone?”
“No.”
He and Meyer would still have been downstairs at ten-thirty waiting outside the building for the M.E. and the Lab crew to arrive. There would have been no one in the apartment but Isabel Harris — dead.
“Did you try again later?”