Black again, he noticed.
“… breaking into her apartment and killing her…”
Which wouldn’t have been a bad supposition, except that there’d been no signs of forcible entry, something they hadn’t reported to the media, and something she could not possibly have known unless Michelle had unlocked the door for her and opened it on a knife.
“Then who?” she asked.
Kling said nothing. Carella said nothing. They both knew when somebody more talented was taking the spot-light.
“Me?” she asked.
They still said nothing.
“Was I in Diamondback on Tuesday night at seven-thirty, eight o’clock? Was I on Carter and Stein?” she asked. “All the way uptown?”
They waited. Sometimes, if you waited long enough, they outsmarted themselves.
“Was I up there doing Michelle in her own bed?”
Michelle had been killed in the doorway to her apartment. Nowhere — not in the papers, not on television — had it even been suggested that she’d been killed in bed.
“Were you?” Kling asked.
“I was taking a singing lesson,” she said, and smiled. “All the way downtown.“
“All the way downtown where?” he asked.
“In the Quarter. On Sampson Street,” she said. “My teacher’s name is Aida Renaldi, I’ve been taking from her for four years, I go every Tuesday night at seven — unless there’s a performance or a rehearsal. On Tuesday, we quit rehearsing at five. I was downtown at ten to seven. My lesson started at seven and ended at eight. I went directly home afterward. I’ll give you Aida’s card if you like.”
“Thank you,” Kling said.
She searched in her purse, decided she didn’t have a card after all, and wrote down an address all the way downtown. Carella had just come from all the way downtown. He did not feel like going all the way downtown again.
“Call her first,” Josie said. “She’s very busy.”
“I will,” he said.
“I didn’t kill Michelle,” Josie said. “In fact, I feel very sorry for her.”
She looked suddenly mournful.
“But at the same time,” she said, “I feel happy for myself.”
Aida Renaldi was delighted that one of the detectives visiting her was Italian She didn’t know that Carella thought of himself as American, perhaps because he’d been born in the United States and had never been informed otherwise. Aida, on the other hand, had been born in Milan, Italy, and rightfully considered herself Italian since she was still an Italian citizen here in the country on a work visa. In fact, she planned to go back to Italy as soon as she’d saved enough money to finance an operatic career interrupted by marriage, childbirth and divorce, not necessarily in that order.
Aida was forty-six years old and she weighed a hundred and eighty-seven pounds, which qualified her as a diva in at least one respect. Her hair was dyed a midnight black and she was dressed like a Gypsy when Carella and Kling arrived at her studio later that night. Both detectives figured she had just done a performance of Carmen. Instead, she had just given a lesson to a girl who did not know Verdi from Puccini, but who — like Aida — was hefty enough to entertain operatic aspirations. The girl smiled at Kling on the way out. Carella noticed that a lot of girls smiled at Kling. He wondered again who Sharyn might be.
During the interview with Aida, the teacher sat at the piano and sang an impromptu aria from Butterfly, discoursed mightily on the benefits of knowing both French and Italian if one desired to sing opera…
“German no matter too much, eh?” she said.
… told them she far preferred Domingo to Pavarotti, and incidentally confirmed that Josie Beales…
“Nize-a girl…”
… had been there for a singing lesson on Tuesday night between seven and eight o’clock.
“Nize-a voice,” she said.
“So what’s this all about?” Carella asked out of the blue.
This was now a little past ten that night, and they were eating what cops always ate whenever they had a chance, hamburgers and fries, in a coffee shop on Avery and West, a block from Aida Renaldi’s studio apartment.
“What’s what all about?” Kling asked, and bit into a hamburger dripping with ketchup and mustard.
“I always thought we could talk about…”
“We can…”
“… anything together. I always felt…”
“So do I…”
“Like a goddamn older brother to you…”
“Yes, me, too, but…”
“So what’s this about you’re dating a black girl and you can’t tell me about her? I mean, goddamn it, Bert, what the hell is that about, you can’t tell me about a black girl you’re dating, you have to tell Artie about her, you can’t tell me about her? What the hell do you think I am, some kind of racist.jackass? What the hell is this, Bert?”
“Wow!” Kling said.
“Yeah, wow, shit!” Carella said.
“I just didn’t know how you’d feel,” Kling said.
“Oh, terrific!” Carella said. “Compound the felony, tell me you don’t know how I’d feel about a black-white relationship, tell me…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sure, kid, terrific!”
“I just don’t know how I feel myself!” Kling said, and both men looked at each other in startled surprise, and just then the bigot of the universe walked in.
“I’ve been tracking you all over this fuckin city,” Fat Ollie Weeks said, and shoved his way into the booth. “Hey, miss!” he yelled, and ordered three hamburgers and a side of fries. “My lieutenant says if it turns out Johnny Milton done the girl, the Eight-Eight definitely wants the homicide collar.”
“So take it,” Carella said. “If it turns out that way.”
“Sure. Meanwhile, when Nellie indicts next Tuesday…”
“If she indicts.”
“She’ll indict. And by then we’ll have a strong case to back her up.”
“What do you mean?”
“My loot wants me to keep digging.”
“Forget it!” Carella snapped.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ollie asked, looking offended. “If Milton done this, you should be glad we’re lendin a hand here.”
“No, we’ve got two different agendas here,” Carella said. “We want to catch whoever killed Michelle Cassidy. All you want to do is nail Milton.”
“That’s one and the same person, pal.”
“We don’t think so.”
“Who don’t think so? Your lieutenant? Nellie? I was there, remember? You’re the only one don’t think so. They’d both be grateful if I came up with something makes the case stronger. If I can get people who’ll testify…”
“What people? What are you talking about?”
“People who knew both Milton and the girl. People who can say…”
“Ollie, stay away from this! The people who knew them are the people we’re already talking to. If you screw this up…
“Hey, come on, screw it up! What’s the matter with you?”
“You hear me, Ollie? Keep out of it. Come on, Bert.”
“Where you going? What’s the matter with you?”
“Enjoy your hamburgers,” Kling said.
Whenever Mark Riganti played a detective, which was often, he prepped for the role by wearing a fake pistol in a shoulder holster day and night. The gun was weighted to give it heft and it had come from the factory in the same bluish-black color as a real.38 Smith & Wesson. Riganti had purchased it before toy manufacturers realized that somebody shoving a fake gun into a shop owner’s face could cause him to wet his pants and open his cash register as easily as a real gun could. This gun looked real and it felt real and it made Riganti feel like a real cop. Truth was, even without the gun, he’d played so many detectives in his lifetime that sometimes he felt more like a cop than he did an actor.