“There with you and Cooper Haynes, do you mean?”
“Yes. Well, not in the same room, we were working in the living room, and Joey was in his studio down the hall. He did the revival of Moon for the Misbegotten, did you hap-pen to see it?”
“No.”
“Pity.”
“Anyway, that’s where I was, and that’s who was with me. As Casey Stengel used to say, ’You could check it.’ ”
“When you say that’s where you were..
“My apartment. 827 Grover Park North.”
“Which you share with Mr. Delacruz.”
“As of the moment, yes. I do not believe in long-term relationships. Life is short and time is swift.”
“Speaking of which…”
“He got there at seven.”
“Cooper Haynes?”
“Precisely seven.”
“And left when?”
“Around ten. He would have stayed longer if Joey hadn’t begun making ugly sounds about how late it was getting. They’re such children, really.”
“Actors, do you mean?”
“Actors, writers, set designers, costume designers, any-one involved in the theater.”
Except directors, Carella noticed.
“Well, maybe not the technical people,” Kendall said. “Your stage managers, your lighting people, your musicians if it’s a musical. But anyone on the so-called creative end, dear God, spare me,” he said.
“Did Mr. Haynes leave the apartment at any time between seven and ten?”
“No, we were together all that time.”
“Didn’t go down for a sandwich or anything?”
“We have ample food and beverage in the house, thank you.”
“Step outside for a smoke?”
“He doesn’t smoke. I don’t, either.”
“Did you happen to read anything, or see anything on television — or hear it on the radio, for that matter — about the time Michelle Cassidy was killed?”
“Sometime between seven and eight o’clock, wasn’t it?”
“Then you know that?”
“I know that, yes.”
“You read it, or saw it, or heard it someplace.”
“Yes. I do not know the time from personal experience, if that’s what you’re hinting. I was not in Michelle’s apartment at the time of her murder.”
“Do you know where she lived?”
“No.”
“Never been there?”
“Never.”
“So you and Mr. Haynes were in each other’s company from seven to ten p.m. on Tuesday night, the seventh of April.”
“We were.”
“And neither of you left the apartment during that time. “We were both there from seven until ten.”
“Did Mr. Delacruz leave the apartment?”
Kendall hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “I have no idea.”
“Well, you said he began making ugly sounds around ten o’clock…”
“Yes, but…”
“So was he there all the time? Between seven and ten?”
“You would have to ask him.”
“Well, you’d have known if he left the apartment, wouldn’t you? For a sandwich? Or a smoke?”
“Joey doesn’t smoke. Besides, he didn’t even know Michelle. So if you’re suggesting he snuck uptown to kill the lady…”
“Nothing of the sort,” Carella said.
But he was thinking that Delacruz was the only person who could vouch for the whereabouts of Kendall and Haynes at the time of the murder. And both of them did know Michelle.
“Then what?” Kendall asked. “Oh, I see. It was Coop and I who did the deed in tandem, is that it? The real director and the make-believe director, running uptown to Diamondback to kill our star for reasons known only to God. By the way, before you even ask, Mr. Carella, I know she lived in Diamondback because, as already noted, I do read the papers, and watch television, and listen to the radio. I don’t know where in Diamondback, but do you really believe there’s anyone in this city who does not now know that Michelle lived uptown with the man arrested for having stabbed her? And, I would have thought, killed her as well. But here you are, playing detective…”
“No, sir, not play…”
“… in a cheap little mystery that has Coop and me…”
“No, sir, not a mystery…”
“… stabbing Michelle…”
“… cheap or otherwise.”
“No? Then what is it when you suggest…?”
“I’ve suggested nothing.”
“When you wonder aloud then… would that be a fair statement? When you wonder if Coop and I caught a cab uptown, broke down Michelle’s door, and brutally…
“Murdered her.” Carella supplied.
Kendall looked at him.
“That isn’t a cheap little mystery,” Carella said. “That is a woman getting murdered.”
“The difference eludes me.”
“The difference is she’s really dead.”
“Oh, I see.”
“And someone caused her to be that way.”
“Then it’s a good thing Coop and I have such an airtight alibi, isn’t it?” Kendall said.
“If Mr. Delacruz can vouch for it.”
“He can swear to it, I promise you.”
“Then you’ve got nothing at all to worry about. ”
“Nothing,” Kendall said.
Carella knew that both Cooper Haynes and Jose Delacruz had to be talked to because they were Kendall’s alibis, and all alibis had to be checked. Even then, the killer always turned out to be the good-looking, well-mannered, honor-student kid next door who always had a kind word for the neighbors and who wouldn’t have touched a fly, unless it was open. So who the hell knew?
But whereas he would have adored talking to yet some more doubtlessly delightful theater personalities, his son Mark had to be driven to an away softball game at four that afternoon. He had already explained to Lieutenant Byrnes that he would appreciate leaving the office an hour earlier today because their housekeeper was on vacation and this was his daughter April’s first day at ballet class and Teddy had to drive her there, which meant he had to drive Mark and four of his teammates to the Julian Pace Elementary School three miles from his own school.
Which was how, at six that evening, Carella was at the school’s ball field patiently waiting for the game to end, and Kling was outside the apartment building at 827 Grover Park North, waiting for Jose Delacruz to get home, and Teddy was coming down the steps of the Priscilla Hawkins School of Ballet, April’s sweaty little hand in her own, when she witnessed a red Buick station wagon backing into the grille of her own little red Geo.
The moment the doorman nodded that this was the person Kling was waiting for, he followed Delacruz into the building and caught up with him at the elevators.
“Mr. Delacruz?” he said.
Delacruz turned, startled. He was perhaps five feet four inches tall, thin and delicately honed, wearing a teal long-sleeved silk shirt buttoned at the cuffs, black pipestem trousers, and white Nike running shoes. His eyebrows were thick and black, matching exactly the straight black hair combed back from a pronounced widow’s peak. He had intensely brown eyes, androgynous Mick Jagger lips, and a thin, slightly tip-tilted nose that looked as if he’d bought it from a plastic surgeon. Except for the Nikes, he resembled a matador more than he did a set designer. On the other hand, Kling had never met anyone in either of those exotic professions.