“Oh, yeah. It’s easy.”
“Where’d you work?” Kling asked.
“Chuck’s place mostly.”
“The apartment on North River?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you there last night?”
“No.”
“When were you there last?”
“Wednesday night, I guess it was.”
“This past Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“The eighth, is that right?”
“Whenever.”
One of the few nights this past week when someone wasn’t getting stabbed or shoved out a window, Kling thought.
“Did Madden live in that apartment?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think he just kept it as a place to work.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, it was just the impression I got.”
“What gave you that impression?”
“Hardly anything in the fridge.”
“You noticed that, huh?”
“Oh sure. I always wondered why he never offered me anything, you know? Then I realized he had practically nothing to offer. To eat or drink, I mean. It was Mother Hubbard’s cupboard up there.”
“Any idea where he was actually living?”
“With some woman, I think.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He was going over there one night.”
“Going over where?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know he was…?”
“He said we had to wrap early because his old lady was home waiting for him.”
“Were those his exact words? Old lady?”
“Exact.”
“You don’t think he meant his mother, do you?“
“I really don’t think so, fellas.”
“And he said she was home waiting for him, right?”
“Home waiting, yes.”
“He used the word ’home.’ ”
“Yes. Home.”
“Did you ask him where home might be?”
“Nope. None of my business.”
“Where else did you work? You said mostly his…”
“My place a couple of times.”
“Did he ever make any phone calls? Either from his apartment or yours?”
“Couple of times, I guess.”
“Any to this ‘old lady’ he mentioned?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Who did he call, would you know?”
“Well, people in the cast mostly. About theater business, you know. Changes in rehearsal time, new pages, whatever. I wasn’t really listening that hard.”
“Did he ever call Josie Beales, would you know?”
“Yes, I’m sure he did.”
“How’d he address her?”
“Address her?”
“Use any terms of endearment with her?”
“No, no. Just called her Josie, I guess.”
“Just theater business, huh?”
“Yes, that’s what it sounded like.”
“Ever call her honey or darling or anything like that?”
“No, not that I heard.”
“Was there a regular pattern to when you worked on the play?”
“Just whenever was convenient for both of us.”
“No set pattern? Like Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday…”
“Nothing like that.”
“Were you working with him on Tuesday night?”
Tuesday night. The night someone had stabbed Michelle Cassidy to death.
“This past Tuesday?” Jerry said. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Did you happen to talk to him that night?”
“No.”
“Any idea where he might have been that night?”
“None at all.”
“Where were you last night, Mr. Greenbaum?” Kling asked.
“At around eleven-thirty,” Carella said.
“Home asleep,” Jerry said.
“Alone?” Kling asked.
“More’s the pity.”
“Mr. Greenbaum, as soon as the lab finishes with that manuscript…”
“The lab?”
“Yes, sir, they’ll be checking it for latents, bloodstains, any other kind of…”
“Jesus.”
“Yes, sir. In any case, we’ll be having copies made…”
“Why? You going to produce it?”
“We just want to see what’s in it.”
“In it?”
“Is there anything in it we shouldn’t see?”
“Like what?”
“You tell us.”
“Like a character planning to shove another character out a ten-story window?” Jerry asked.
“Any characters like that in it?”
“No,” Jerry said. “The only person who gets killed is a woman. The Wench Is Dead, remember?”
“The guy is dead, too,” Carella reminded him.
There was no such thing as a melting pot anymore, that was the tragedy. We were supposed to take them all in, welcome them all with a warm embrace, hold them close and dear, cherish them as our precious own, forge from a thousand tribes a single strong and vital tribe. That had been the idea. Not a bad one, actually. One people. One good and decent, brave and honorable tribe.
But somewhere along the way, the idea began to dissipate. It had lasted longer than most ideas in America, where everything is in a state of incessant change. In America, there’s always a new president or a new war or a new television series or a new movie or a new talk show or a new hot writer. In view of the overwhelming wealth of ideas flooding America all the time, day and night, night and day, it wasn’t too surprising that people began thinking maybe the idea of mixing all those separate colors and languages and cultures hadn’t been such a hot one all along. That was probably when the flame burning bright and hot under the gigantic kettle that was this port-of-entry city began to dwindle until it burned too low for liquefaction.
The current hot idea was to keep sacred and separate the heritage of distant lands and foreign tongues. Not to contribute these treasures to the solitary tribe, not to share this wealth with the other members of this great tribe, but instead to protect this private hoard from all other hordes, to keep this fortune ever and always apart.
Where once “separate but equal” was a reviled notion, it was now viewed as something to which an entire people might actually aspire. Hey, separate, man, I can dig it! Long as it’s equal, too. Where once the noble idea of a “rainbow coalition” conjured an image of bands of different colors riding the sky together in a bonded arch that led to a shared pot of gold, the impoverished expression “gorgeous mosaic” now conjured a restricted vision of tiny chips of colors separated by boundaries, each unit secure in its own brilliance and beauty, none contributing to the grander concept of a unique and remarkable whole.
Where once people pounded on the doors of opportunity and shouted, “Forget we’re black, forget we’re Hispanic, forget we’re Asian,” these same people were now shouting, “Don’t forget we’re black, don’t forget we’re Hispanic, don’t forget we’re Asian!” Where once there was pride and honor and dignity and hope in being American, now there was only despair at what America had become. Small wonder that immigrants remembered their native lands as being more serene and stable than they ever were. Small wonder that they chose to cling to an ethnic identity that seemed eternally unchanging to them, rather than to fall for the bullshit of one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.