"Look, mister, don't come bleeding on me, okay?" Riley said. "I really don't care if you're overworked and underpaid. Go tell it to the Salvation Army. Nobody forced you to become a cop."
"That's true," Carella said. "But I am one, and I'm here, and it won't kill you to extend a little common courtesy."
"A little common courtesy is picking up a phone before you barge in on a man trying to make it snow!"
"Only God can make it snow," Carella said, and Riley unexpectedly burst out laughing. Carella smiled uncertainly. "So can we talk?" he said.
"All right," Riley said, shaking his head, "but let's make it quick, okay? I really do have to get a handle on this."
You and me both, Carella thought.
Out loud, he said, "I just wanted to prod your memory again on the people my partner asked you about."
"What people?"
"Marilyn Hollis's friends."
"Here we go again with Marilyn and her friends," Riley said. "For Christ's sake, she had nothing to do with this guy's murder, whatever the hell his name was."
"McKennon," Carella said. "How do you know she had nothing to do with it?"
"Because first of all she was with me when he poisoned himself. That painting against the wall is all about where we were that weekend. If you look closely, you'll see Marilyn there near the chair lift, kneeling to adjust her bindings. The girl in the yellow parka, though she was wearing a sort of peach-colored thing that weekend. I prefer primary colors. And secondly, Marilyn swore she had nothing to do with the guy's death. And Marilyn never lies."
"Everybody lies," Carella said.
"Not Marilyn."
Saint Marilyn, Carella thought. Newly canonized. The only person in the universe who never lies.
"Everybody," he said again, leaning on the word.
Even me, he thought, if only by omission; he had still not mentioned Basil Hollander's death. But then again, neither had Riley. Maybe both of them were lying.
"When did she tell you that?" he asked.
"Tell me what?"
"That she'd had nothing to do with McKennon's death."
"We talked on the phone after the other cop…"
"Willis."
"The little guy, yeah. I talked to her after he was here. I told her I knew she was with me that weekend, but was it possible she'd hired some goon—for whatever reasons of her own—to drop the poison pellet in the guy's cup? That's when she swore up and down that she hadn't even known he was dead till you guys broke the news to her."
"Were those her exact words?"
"More or less."
"And, of course, you knew nothing about it until my partner informed you."
"Yeah, the little guy."
"Willis."
"Yeah."
"What made you think Miss Hollis—or anyone—might have hired a goon to do the job?"
"I didn't seriously think…"
"Well, seriously enough to have suggested it to her."
"Jokingly."
"Oh, you were joking about it."
"Not about the murder, nobody jokes about murder. About the goon."
"Because you felt it was a far-fetched notion."
"Well, who hires a goon to drop poison in somebody's drink?"
"Is that how you think McKennon got poisoned? Someone dropping the stuff in his drink?"
"I don't know how he got poisoned. I'm only saying. Goons break your arms or shoot you in the kneecaps. They don't do dainty little ladylike pois…"
He stopped dead.
"What are you getting me into?" he asked.
"I'm just listening," Carella said.
"Well, I don't like the way you listen," Riley said. "It's very selective listening."
"Do you think a goon might have forced that poison down McKennon's throat?"
"I have no idea how that poison got into McKennon."
Defensive now, muscular arms crossed over his burly chest, scowl on his craggy face, even the red handlebar mustache seeming to bristle.
"Well, let's talk about these other two men she was seeing," Carella said.
"I don't know those other two men, the ones your partner mentioned."
"Willis."
"Yeah, the little guy. I don't know them, and I didn't know McKennon and if I don't start making it snow soon, I'm going to get pretty fucking irritable, Mr. Carella."
"Chip Endicott?" Carella persisted. "Never heard of him? That would be Charles Endicott, Jr. He's a lawyer."
"I didn't know him when your partner was here, and I still don't know him."
"How about Basil Hollander?"
"I don't know him."
"The name isn't familiar to you?"
"It isn't…"
"It wasn't familiar to you when my partner came here on…" Carella checked his notebook and then looked up. "March twenty-fifth? The day after McKennon's murder? The name wasn't familiar to you then?"
"It was not."
"And it isn't familiar to you now?"
"It is not."
"Do you read the newspapers, Mr. Riley?"
"I do."
"Do you watch television?"
"I don't own a television set."
"Do you listen to the radio?"
"While I'm painting."
"And the name Basil Hollander still isn't familiar to you?"
"I just told you…"
"Do you know that Basil Hollander is dead?"
Watch the eyes.
"Do you know he was murdered?"
Keep watching the eyes.
"He was stabbed to death in his apartment on Addison Street, downtown in the Twelfth Precinct. But you didn't know that, did you?"
"No, I…"
"Have you talked to Marilyn Hollis since the beginning of the month?"
"Actually, no, I…"
"This is the fourth, Mr. Riley. You haven't spoken to Miss Hollis anytime since the first?"
"No, I haven't."
"I thought you were close friends."
"We are, but…"
The cavernous loft went silent. When Riley spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper.
"This is serious, isn't it?" he said.
"Very," Carella said.
"I mean… is someone knocking off all her friends?"
"Two so far," Carella said, and kept watching the eyes. He had seen nothing in those eyes when he'd broken the news about Basil Hollander, no quick lie-detector needle jump, no mirroring of a guilty soul, nothing to indicate that Riley had been anything but genuinely surprised. Now he saw in those eyes only something that looked like fear. Big redheaded grizzly bear of a man suddenly realizing that two of Marilyn's friends had been killed, and he was another of Marilyn's friends.
"Am I a suspect or a target?" he asked. His face had gone pale against the fiery red hair and the handlebar mustache.
"You tell me," Carella said.
"I want police protection," Riley said.
CHAPTER 9
So did Charles Ingersol Endicott, Jr. At eleven o'clock on that Friday morning, April 4, after having given considerable thought to the matter, and after having discussed it with his partners at Hackett, Rawlings, Pearson, Endicott, Lipstein and Marsh,he telephoned the squadroom and spoke not to Willis—who at that moment was still in bed with Marilyn Hollis—but instead to Carella, who had just returned from his brief encounter with Nelson Riley. He told Carella that it appeared to him and his colleagues that someone was systematically murdering Marilyn Hollis's friends—what with the second murder on April Fool's Day, did Carella attach any significance to the date?—and that it might be advisable,since he was after all a close friend of Marilyn's, to request some sort of police protection at this juncture. Didn't Carella agree that he might be in line for imminent extinction?