“No trouble,” Brown said.
“What’s your name, son?” Parker asked pleasantly.
He had determined over the years that using the word “son” also caused them to wet their pants, especially when they were nineteen years old and black, the way this kid seemed to be.
“Daryll Hinks,” the kid said.
“Do you know the lady who lives in 4C next door?”
“Only by sight.”
“Andrea Packer, that her name?” Brown asked.
“I don’t know her name. Long blond hair, nineteen, twenty years old, good-looking girl. What’d she do?”
“Nothing. Ever see her going in or out of that apartment?”
“Sure.”
“Apartment 4C, right?”
“Yeah. Next door.”
“Ever seen anybody else going in or out?”
“Sure.”
“A man, for example?”
“What is she, a hooker?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re asking about men going in and out…”
“No, no, we’re just thinking of a specific man.”
“Did this man do something?”
“Yeah, he threw himself out a window,” Parker said.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.’.
“Gee.”
“So would you have seen a guy maybe six feet tall, husky white guy, twenty-six years old, brown hair, brown…”
“Yeah,” Hinks said.
“Liked to wear painter’s coveralls, high-topped workman’s…”
“Yeah, I’ve seen him. Talked to him in the elevator, in fact.”
“Ever see him going in or coming out of apartment 4C?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Well, I leave for school early in the morning…”
“Ever see him coming out of there early in the morning?”
“Oh sure.”
“What time in the morning?”
“I leave at seven.”
“Thanks,” Brown said.
“What’d she do?” Hinks asked again.
The pharmacist at G&R Drugs on Hedley and Commerce knew Andrea Packer by name and by sight. She was, in fact, a regular customer at the store. He described her as a “lissome” blonde, maybe twenty years old or so, with dark brown eyes and a kind of “flamboyant” manner.
“I think she’s an actress or something,” he said. “Or a model. One or the other. We had some interesting talks about movies. Did you see the movie Orlando? We had some interesting talks about that movie. It’s about gender exchange, I guess you’d call it. It was very interesting. You should try to get it from your video store. We also talked about Speed, which is a different sort of film, but also very interesting. Either of the two are well worth…”
“When was she in here last?” Hawes asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, she’s in and out all the time. Toothpaste, lipstick, deodorant…”
“How about prescription drugs?” Meyer asked.
“I’d have to look that up. She had a cold recently, I know, and was taking an antibiotic…”
“How about sleeping pills?” Hawes asked.
“Oh, yes, she had a running prescription for those.”
“Running?”
“Refilled it every month or so.”
“When’s the last time she refilled it?”
“Couple of weeks ago, I guess. I’d have to check the computer.”
“What drug?”
“Dalmane.”
The judge struck out the last sentence of Carella’s affidavit as being too broad in its scope, something Carella knew, anyway.
Otherwise, the petition was granted.
They were waiting in the hallway outside her door when she got back from rehearsal that night at nine. Their court order for a search warrant had not included a No-Knock provision, which they’d have been foolish to ask for in the first place. This wasn’t an armed and dangerous desperado living in apartment 4C. This was merely a woman some five feet nine inches tall and weighing a possible hundred and twenty-five pounds, who’d first dragged a sedated man across the floor of his apartment, and hoisted him up onto the sill of an open window, and then shoved him out to the street ten stories below.
She was taking her keys out of her handbag as she stepped out of the elevator. She saw them at once, hesitated a moment, and then walked directly toward them.
She looked tired tonight.
It must have been a grueling rehearsal.
“Hello,” she said, “what a surprise,” and smiled faintly.
“Miss Packer,” Carella said, “I have here a court order authorizing the search of your apar…”
“A what?” she said.
“A search warrant,” Kling said. “Could you please unlock the door?”
“No, I will not unlock the door,” she said, backing away from them. “A search warrant? What in the hell for?”
“Maybe you ought to read it,” Carella said, and handed it to her.
She read it silently.
“I want to call my lawyer,” she said.
“Fine, you can call him while we conduct our search.”
“No, I want to call him now. Before I let you in the apartment.”
“Miss Packer,” Carella said, “I’m not sure you understand. This is a court order. If you refuse to…”
“I’m not refusing anything. I simply want my lawyer here while you…”
“Miss Packer,” Kling said, “I suggest…”
“Oh, stop with the Mutt and Jeff routine, will you please?”
“Either open the door or we’ll be forced to arrest you for obstructing governmental administration,” Carella said.
“What kind of double talk is that?”
“It means you’re preventing a search ordered by a court,” he said. “And if you persist, we’ll have to arrest you,”
“Is he telling me the truth?” she asked Kling.
“He’s telling you the truth.”
“What is this, Nazi Germany?”
“No, it’s America,” Carella said.
“Jesus,” she said, and angrily rammed her key into the keyway. She unlocked the door, threw it open, and stamped immediately to the phone on the kitchen wall. The detectives followed her into the apartment, pulling on white cotton gloves as she dialed.
“Where’s your bathroom?” Kling asked.
“Don’t you dare use my bathroom!” she shouted.
“Nobody’s going to use your bathroom,” Carella said. “You’ve already read the warrant, you know what we’re looking for.”
“You just keep out of my personal… Mr. Foley, please. This is Andrea Packer, tell him it’s urgent. Don’t you go anywhere in this apartment without me!” she warned.
“Miss Packer…”
“You can damn well wait till my lawyer…”
“No, we can’t,” Carella said.
“Holly?” she said into the phone. “This is Andrea. I’ve got two detectives here… where are you going?” she shouted to their backs. “Holly, you’d better get here right away,” she said into the phone again. “They’re searching my apartment, they’ve got something signed by a judge, just get here!” she shouted, and slammed down the phone and went flying through the apartment after them.
They had passed through the bedroom already, where they’d glanced toward an open closet door revealing what were clearly men’s clothes. If the judge hadn’t specifically deleted the “And any and all evidence” phrase from Carella’s petition, they might have risked taking the stuff as proof that Madden had been living here. After all, they hadn’t been searching for the clothing, but had merely happened to spot it hanging there “in plain view,” a favorite expression of confiscating cops the world over. But with Andrea Packer in hot pursuit, they were unwilling to jeopardize finding what they had come here for, so they barged straight into a bathroom done in pale blue tile and decorated with midnight-blue towels and went directly to the sink where they also happened to notice a man’s razor sitting an the rim in plain view. Carella yanked open the mirrored door of the cabinet with his gloved right hand, and he and Kling leaned in over the sink, their eyes riffling the labels on the various little brownish-orange, white-lidded plastic bottles on the shelves. Several of the drugs had been prescribed for Charles Madden, another pretty good sign that he’d been living here. Most of them were prescriptions in Andrea’s name, though, the 250-milligram capsules of amoxicillin, and the A.P.C. with codeine, and the 400-milligram tablets of meprohamate, and the Nasalcrom 4 % spray, and the Donnatal, and the 500-milligram capsules of tetracycline, and the AVC cream and…