Marilyn wondered if they were going to use police jargon all night long.
Eileen wondered if Marilyn knew Kling had used the word "Chinks" deliberately, as a reverse joke.
"That was deliberate," she said.
"What was?" Marilyn asked.
"Him saying 'Chinks.' "
"Actually, I like Chinks," Kling said. "Japs, too. We have a Jap on the squad."
"That, too," Eileen said. "Deliberate. His sense of humor."
"I have no sense of humor," Kling said, dead-panned.
"Have you ever wondered why there are no blue-eyed Chinese?" Willis said.
"Mendel's Law," Marilyn said. "If you mate a black cat and a white cat, you get one white kitten, one black kitten, and two grey kittens."
"What's that got to do with blue-eyed Chinese?" Willis asked.
"Brown eyes are dominant, blue eyes are recessive. If everybody in a country has brown eyes, then everybody's children will also have brown eyes. Well, that isn't quite true. It doesn't always work with people the way it works with fruit flies or cats, unless everybody's got dominant genes to begin with. For example, my father had brown eyes and my mother had blue eyes, but there must have been some recessive blues in previous generations. When two recessives get together, you get another recessive, which is what I am, a recessive blue."
"How do you happen to know that?" Willis asked.
"I saved a clipping on it," Marilyn said.
He wondered why she had saved a clipping for an electric distiller. He had not yet asked her. She had told him the moment he walked into the house this afternoon that she'd broken the news to Endicott. Met him for lunch, told him she didn't want to see him again. So he'd put off asking her about the distiller, even though Carella's last report had mentioned that one way to make homemade nicotine was by distilling tobacco.
"Are both your parents dead?" Kling said.
Uh-oh, Willis thought. Cop catching a discrepancy. She'd used the present tense in talking about her father earlier: I have a rich father. And just now she'd switched to past tense: My father had brown eyes.
Kling was waiting for an answer. Not probing, not a cop on the job, no suspicion here, just puzzlement. Waiting for clarification.
"Yes," Marilyn said.
"Because earlier," Eileen said, "I got the impression your father was still alive."
Another county heard from, Willis thought.
"No, he died several years ago. He left me quite a bit of money," Marilyn said, and lowered her eyes.
"I thought that was only in fairy tales," Eileen said.
"Sometimes in real life, too," Marilyn said.
"I used to love reading Grimm's fairy tales," Eileen said, somewhat wistfully, as if talking about an uncomplicated time long ago.
"Did you know that Jakob Grimm… the one who wrote the fairy tales… is the same Grimm who formulated Grimm's Law?"
Fancy footwork, Willis thought. Reverse the field, change the subject. Nice work, Marilyn.
"What's Grimm's Law?" Kling asked.
"Section 314.76," Eileen said. "Consorting with fairies."
"Sexist remark," Kling said.
"Something to do with p's becoming b's, and v's becoming w's or vice-versa, I forget which," Marilyn said. "It was in a clipping I saved. In German, of course, the German language."
"The clipping was in German?" Eileen said.
"No, no, the law. Grimm's Law. It pertained to the German language. He was German, you know."
"What's taking him so long with those drinks?" Willis said, and signaled to the waiter.
"Drinks coming," the waiter said, and went into the kitchen.
"See?" Kling said. "Surly as a boil."
"Maybe he doesn't understand English," Eileen said.
"Does anybody here speak Chinese?" Kling said.
"Marilyn speaks fluent Spanish," Willis said, and then immediately thought Jackass! You're opening the wrong can of peas!
"I wish I spoke fluent Spanish," Kling said. "Come in handy around the precinct."
"Well, you know a few words," Eileen said.
"Oh, sure, you pick them up, but that's not fluent. Where'd you learn it?" he asked Marilyn. "In school?"
"Yes," she said at once.
"Here in the city?" Eileen asked.
"No. In Los Angeles."
Getting in deeper and deeper, Willis thought.
"Did you go to college out there?"
"No. I learned it in high school."
Deeper and deeper and deeper.
"It's a much simpler language than English, actually," Marilyn said, sidestepping again. "I'd hate to be a foreigner learning English, wouldn't you? All those words that sound alike and are spelled differently? Like joke and oak and folk. Or all the words that have the same spelling but are pronounced differently? Like bough and though and rough. I'd go crazy."
"Say something in Spanish," Willis said.
"Yo te adoro," she said, and grinned.
"Talk about English," Eileen said, "I know a girl who when she knocks on the door and you ask, 'Who is it?' she answers, 'It is I.' "
"Well, that's proper English," Kling said. "Isn't it?"
"Oh, sure, but who ever uses it? Most people say 'It's me.' "
"Even when it's somebody else?" Kling said.
The second round of drinks arrived at the same time the dinner did.
"Terrific," Willis said sourly.
But he was happy for the intrusion. He'd felt back there a few minutes ago that Marilyn's diversionary tactic had become a bit obvious, so eager was she to get off the topic of where and how she'd learned Spanish. Were two experienced cops, both adept at detecting nuances of speech and behavior, really buying everything she told them? He wondered.
But only once during the meal was there an open clash, cop versus civilian, police mentality versus—hooker mentality? Kling was talking about a recent case he'd handled where this guy was regularly and repeatedly raping the woman who lived next door to him and the victim never told her husband about it because she was afraid the husband would beat her up if she did.
"I'd have killed them both," Marilyn said, with such sudden vehemence that all conversation stopped.
Eileen looked at her.
Kling said, "Actually, that's what almost happened. She took a cleaver to the guy next door. A neighbor heard all the ruckus and called 911. Before they got there, though, the husband came home. She'd already hacked off the neighbor's hand and was going for his head when all at once there's the husband. So she turns on him, goes at him with the cleaver. That was when 911 walked in. It took four cops to get her off him."
"The husband?" Eileen asked.
"Oh, sure. The other guy was passed out cold on the kitchen floor."
"So what happens to her now?" Marilyn asked.
"We charged her with two counts of attempted murder."
"Her lawyer'll plea-bargain it down to assault," Willis said.
"No, I'll bet he tries for self-defense," Eileen said.
"With the neighbor maybe," Kling said. "The husband didn't do anything but walk in there."
"Either way, she goes to jail, right?" Marilyn said.
"Well, she did chop both of them up a little," Kling said.
"They had her terrified," Marilyn said. "They deserved to be chopped up."
"There are laws against chopping up people," Eileen said.
"Go tell that to Lizzie Borden," Kling said. "She got away with it."
"Which makes the song wrong," Eileen said.
"What song?"
"About chopping up your Mama in Massachusetts."
"I really don't see anything funny about it," Marilyn said, and the table went silent again.
Willis cracked open his fortune cookie.
" 'You will have new clothes,' " he read out loud.