“Landlady saw them going out.”
“Was it a mistake?”
“Looks that way. The building he lived in is full of dope dealers.”
“What a break, huh?”
“Awful. I’ve got to run,” Hudson said, and rose, and shook hands with Kling again, and said, “Nice meeting you,” and then turned to Sharyn and said, “See you at eight.”
“Eight, Jamie,” she said, and waggled her fingers at him as he rushed off.
They were both silent for several moments.
“A mutual patient,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” Kling said.
He was thinking he didn’t stand a chance against Dr. James Melvin Hudson.
“Another thing I hate about doctors,” he said.
He and Carella were standing under the theater marquee, waiting for Josie Beales to arrive. The clock in front of the hot-bed hotel across the street read ten minutes to two. Carella’s watch read eight minutes to two. Either way, she wasn’t here yet.
“…is they think their time is more valuable than anyone else’s,” Kling said. “Have you ever noticed that if you’re going to a hospital for the least little thing, they always get you there two hours beforehand? That’s so the doctor won’t waste any of his time, he can finish one lobotomy and rush next door to do another one. Meanwhile, you’re waiting there since noon for a two o’clock removal of a cyst on your ass…”
“Did you ever have a cyst on your ass?” Carella asked.
“No. On my hand once. The point is, you haven’t had anything to eat since the night before, even though this is going to be local anesthesia, and they drag you in two hours before to sit and wait for the doctor’s convenience. It doesn’t matter who you are, how important you may be, the minute you’re in a doctor’s office or a hospital, the doctor reigns supreme. You can be working a case where a homicidal maniac has killed fourteen people with an ice pick and he’s working on number fifteen right that minute, but the doctor’s time is more important than yours, and you can just sit there reading last year’s magazines, pal, until he’s damn good and ready to sec you. I hate doctors.”
“Boy,” Carella said.
“I hate nurses, too. I go to a doctor’s office, the nurse right away calls me Bert. I never met her in my life, we’re all of a sudden on a first-name basis. President of the United States goes into a doctor’s office, the nurse says, ’Have a seat, Bill, doctor will be with you shortly.’ The only time I use anybody’s first name is if I know him or if he’s a thief. Nurses call anybody who walks in the office by his first name. Sit down, Jack. Sit down, Helen. Does she call the doctor by his first name? Does she buzz him and say, ’Mel, Bert is here.’ No. It’s ’Doctor will see you shortly, Bert.’ I hate doctors and nurses.”
“But how do you really feel about them?”
“This guy doing the autopsy is supposed to be good, though,” Kling said. “Dwyer.”
“How do you know?”
“Sharyn told me.”
“Who’s…oh, Sharyn. How does she know?”
“She’s a doctor.”
“I thought you said she’s a cop.”
“She’s a doctor cop.”
“I thought you hated doctors.”
“Not Sharyn.”
“You’re a very complicated person, Bert,” Carella said. “If I may call you Bert.”
A yellow cab was pulling into the curb. The way the sun was hitting the windows, they couldn’t tell who was inside paying the driver. They watched, waited. The door opened, and Josie Beales swiveled on the seat, reaching with one leg for the sidewalk. She was wearing jeans, a tangerine-colored, cotton tank-top shirt with no bra, and brown sandals. Her strawberry-blond hair was pulled hack in a ponytail, held with a brown ribbon that matched her eyes. A brown leather tote bag was slung over her shoulder, a blue-bound copy of Romance jutting up out of it. She glanced at her watch as she stepped out of the cab, looked up, and saw Carella and Kling approaching her. She appeared startled for a moment. Sunlight struck the single ruby-red earring in her left ear.
“Hi,” she said, and smiled.
Something about the smile and the way she said that single word told them they had her.
“Few questions we’d like to ask,” Carella said.
“Rehearsal starts at two,” she said, and looked at her watch again.
“Won’t take a minute.”
“Is this about Chuck last night?”
“Yes. Few other things, too.”
“Why would he have done such a thing?” she asked, and shook her head and sighed heavily. Carella had the feeling she’d done just that in a play sometime before. Maybe several plays.
“This is the note he left,” he said, and took from his pocket a folded scrap of paper on which he’d copied the note in Madden’s machine.
DEAR GOD, PLEASE FORGIVE ME
FOR WHAT I DID TOMKHELLE
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought you already had the…”
“Yes, we thought so, too,” Carella said.
Or at least Ollie thought so, and Nellie Brand thought so, and even Lieutenant Byrnes thought so. But they’d just found the twin to Josie’s ruby-red earring under the bed in Madden’s apartment.
“This would make it seem he’d…well…done something to her,” Josie said.
Carella was thinking it sometimes worked if you opened the garden gate and led them down the path.
“It would make it seem he’d killed her, in fact,” he said.
“Well…yes. But I thought…”
She looked at the note again.
“How do you know he wrote this?” she said. “It isn’t signed.”
“It was in his typewriter.”
“This isn’t even his handwriting,” she said.
“That’s right, it’s mine,” Carella said. “I copied it from…”
“How do you know what his handwriting looks like?” Kling asked.
“He was our stage manager. Stage managers write notes about rehearsal calls or costume fittings or whatever. Everybody on the show knows Chuck’s handwriting. Knew it. Whatever. I think this is awful, him killing himself.”
“How about him killing Michelle?” Kling asked. “If that’s what he did.”
“Well, he doesn’t actually say that’s what he…”
“No.”
“In fact, the lines could be given any number of readings.”
“Lines?”
“In his note. What he says in his note. If it is his note. You don’t really know he wrote it for a fact, do you?”
“No, we don’t,” Carella admitted. “But if he did…”
“Then it would seem he killed Michelle,” Josie said, and did the head-shaking, heavy-sighing bit again.
“How well did he know her?” Carella asked.
“I don’t think he knew her at all well. I mean, she was living with her agent, I didn’t think…why would Chuck have killed her? What did he have to do with her?”
“It does seem odd, doesn’t it?”
Gently down the garden, he thought.
“I mean, he only seemed to know her casually,” Josie said. “I can’t believe there was anything between…”
“How well did he know you, Miss Beales?”