“Because it’s a homicide,” Monoghan said.
“Two homicides, if you count the broad got juked,” Monroe said.
“No, that’s why I’m in charge here,” Ollie said. “Because the broad got juked first. You still here, Henry?” he asked, making the name sound like a racial slur. “Take your partner and go home. This is your partner, ain’t it?” he said, jerking a thumb at Jabeem, who stood glowering at him now. “He sure looks like he might be your partner,”
“You want to sort out whose case this is,” Biggs said calmly, shooting Jabeem a glance that clearly said Cool it, “then go downtown and talk to the Chief of Detectives. Meanwhile, while you and him’re debatin eight ninety-three seven, somebody jumped out a window right here in the Two-One, and that gives us a clear mandate to investigate the occur…”
“The note in that typewriter…”
“But like you said…”
“…mentions the girl…”
“Yes, but…”
“…who got killed in my precinct!”
“But the note don’t mean a shit, remember?”
“We’ll see what the Chief has to say about that,” Ollie said.
“Good, go talk to him.”
“That’s just what I’m gonna do. Right this fuckin minute!”
“Good,” Biggs said. “Go.”
“We’ll go with you,” Monoghan said.
“Straighten out this mess,” Monroe said.
“Good, go,” Biggs said. “All three of you.”
All three of them flapped out of the apartment.
“Shouldn’t one of us talk to the super again?” Carella asked.
The superintendent was standing on the sidewalk outside the building, his hands on his hips, watching a pair of moving men struggling a huge sofa off a truck parked at the curb. He was a trim little man with graying hair, wearing blue polyester slacks and a long-sleeved blue sports shirt, the sleeves rolled up onto his forearms.
He had previously informed Biggs that his name was Siegfried Seifert, and that he had come to America from his native town of Stuttgart some twenty years ago. He still spoke with a marked German accent as he told the moving men to use the elevator on the left, which he advised them had been padded in anticipation of their arrival. Both moving men were black. Kling noticed. Mr. Seifert was white.
“I am standing here on the sidewalk,” he told the four assembled detectives now, two of them white, two of them black, “when up from there he comes flying down,” gesturing with his head to the ten stories above them. “He is almost falling on my head,” he said, touching it in wonder and awe. His speech began sounding somewhat less accented — a phenomenon perhaps bred of familiarity — as he explained what a shock it was to see this nice young man splattered all over the sidewalk that way, “Naked, too,” he added, as if Madden’s state of undress had been more impressive than his plunge from the window above. Sounding more and more like a professor of English literature at Oxford (but such are the benefits of a second language, dollinks), he went on to say that he had recognized the man at once the moment he rushed over to the body. “His face,” he added, not wishing the detectives to think he had checked out any other part of the poor fellow’s anatomy, which he wouldn’t have recognized in any case, never having seen him naked before.
What the detectives wanted to know was whether Madden lived in the apartment full-time.
“Because he don’t seem to have too many clothes up there,” Jabeem said, using the same head gesture Seifert had earlier used to indicate the ten floors above them. Or eleven if you counted ground level as ground zero. Some buildings in this city numbered apartments on the ground floor with only the letters A, B, C and so on, no numbers.
“What is it you mean?” Seifert asked.
“Clothes,” Jabeem explained, beginning to wonder all over again if this fuckin Nazi understood English. “In his closet, in his drawers.”
“Not many clothes,” Biggs translated.
“I see him always wearing the same thing,” Seifert said, shrugging. “Workman’s overalls, tall shoes, a blue wool hat. No shirt.”
“How about in the winter?” Carella asked.
“He is only living here since January,” Seifert said.
“That’s winter,” Kling said.
“Well, a jacket sometimes. He sometimes wears a brown leather jacket.”
“See anything like that up there?” Jabeem asked Kling.
Kling shook his head.
“What else have you seen him wearing?” Carella asked.
“I don’t watch so much what he wears.”
“Past four months, huh?” Biggs said.
“Three and a half,” Seifert said.
“Some very cold weather during those months,” Carella said. “Ever see him wearing an overcoat?”
“He was a healthy young fellow,” Seifert said, shaking his head.
“Even healthy young fellas can catch pneumonia,” Jabeem said.
The moving men kept going past with furniture. A woman living in the building came out to where they were standing in the sunshine and complained to Seifert that she’d had to wait ten minutes for the elevator. She told him that either people were always moving in or out or else one or another of the damn elevators was always out of order. She told him she was going to complain to the maintenance company. Seifert listened patiently, sympathetically clucking his tongue, explaining that this was an old building, and the elevators didn’t always work proper how they should.
“Ever see him moving any of his stuff out?” Biggs asked. Carella was about to ask the same thing, all this activity.
“Well, even when he first moves in, there is not much furniture,” Seifert said.
“I mean clothes,” Biggs said. “Ever see him leaving with a suitcase? Or a trunk? Putting a trunk in a taxi? Anything like that?”
Carella was thinking along the same lines. Man comes through a bitter winter with nothing but the clothes on his back and a few things in his closet?
“I have never seen him moving things,” Seifert asked.
“Been any burglaries in the building recently?” Kling asked.
He was thinking maybe somebody had stolen Madden’s clothes.
“Not since before last September,” Seifert said. “This is remarkable,” he added, “a building without a doorman.”
The detectives were inclined to agree with him.
“What kind of hours did he keep?” Jabeem asked.
“He is always coming and going,” Seifert said. “He worked in the theater, you know, this is not like an honest job.”
Carella smiled.
None of the other detectives did. Perhaps they agreed with Seifert’s observation.
“Ever see any of the people he worked with?”
“Any of them ever come here?”
“The men or women he worked with? Ever see any of them?”
“I don’t know who he worked with,” Seifert said.
“If we showed you pictures, could you tell us whether any of them were here last night?”
“I wasn’t here myself last night,” Seifert said.
The detectives looked at him.
“I thought you said…”
“I was at a movie,” Seifert said.
“You said you were standin here on the sidewalk…”
“Yes, after.”
“After what?”
“The movie.”
“Let me get this…”
“I came home from the movie, and I was on the sidewalk taking the air, when Mr. Madden comes down.”
“What time was this?”