"What'd she look like?" Carella asked.
"Brassy, but ugly as homemade sin," the pawnbroker said. "Too much lipstick, too much blush, didn't help a damn. Plain is plain."
"How was she dressed?" Meyer asked.
"Brown sweater and skirt, dark brown panty hose. She had on a ratty brown coat, too, long scarf around her neck."
"What color was the scarf?" Carella asked.
"Purple," the pawnbroker said. "A long purple scarf."
The detectives looked at each other.
They found Haskins at the Actors Equity Building, downtown on Stemmler Avenue. He was standing in front of a bulletin board that listed casting calls for incoming shows, making pencil notes in the margins of a copy of Variety. He was wearing his brown overcoat and long purple muffler.
"Hey, hi," he said, surprised. "How're we doing? Locate any of my stuff yet?"
"Quite a bit of it," Carella said.
"Great! When do I get it back?"
"Mr. Haskins," Meyer said, "can you let us have your sister's name and telephone number?"
"My sister?"
"The one you went to visit last Thursday. Upstate."
"The one who keeps some clothes in your apartment. The one you stayed with over the weekend."
"While your apartment was being burglarized."
"That one," Carella said.
"Wh— Why would you want her number?"
"Because we think you were right here in the city all weekend, Mr. Haskins. Pawning your own belongings all over town."
"Stuff you later reported stolen."
"So we'd like to call her to see if you were really there."
Haskins stared at them.
"Figured you'd kill two birds with one stone, right?" Carella said.
"Get cash from the pawnshops and then get paid all over again from your insurance company," Meyer said.
"I was broke," Haskins said. "The rerun money ran out. I didn't know when the next check was coming."
"You could have hocked the stuff, period. You didn't have to go for insurance fraud."
"Which one was it?" Haskins asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Which characterization gave me away? Was it the old man? The blond? I'll bet it was the Puerto Rican. I never could do accents."
"It was the TV set," Carella said. "Why'd you leave it behind?"
"To see the reruns. To catch myself."
"Well, you did," Carella said.
Ed McBain's latest novel, Nocturne, will be published this spring by Warner Books. NBC will air Ed McBain's 87th Precinct: Heatwave on Sunday, January 12, at 9 P.M./ET.