The line-up that Wednesday morning followed the classic pattern of all line-ups. The detectives sat in the gymnasium on folding chairs, and the chief of detectives sat behind a high podium at the back of the gym. The green shades were drawn, and the stage illuminated, and the offenders who’d been arrested the day before were marched before the assembled bulls while the chief read off the charges and handled the interrogation. The pattern was a simple one. The arresting officer, uniformed or plain-clothes, would join the chief at the rear of the gym when his arrest came up. The chief would read off the felon’s name, and then the section of the city in which he’d been arrested, and then a number. He would say, for example, “Jones, John, Riverhead, three.” The “three” would simply indicate that this was the third arrest in Riverhead that day. Only felonies and special types of misdemeanors were handled at the line-up, so this narrowed the list of performers on any given day. Following the case number, the chief would read off the offense, and then say either “Statement” or “No statement,” telling the assembled cops that the thief either had or had not said anything when they’d put the collar on him. If there had been a statement, the chief would limit his questions to rather general topics since he didn’t want to lead the felon into saying anything that might contradict his usually incriminating initial statement, words that could be used against him in court. If there had been no statement, the chief would pull out all the stops. He was generally armed with whatever police records were available on the man who stood under the blinding lights, and it was the smart thief who understood the purpose of the line-up and who knew he was not bound to answer a goddamned thing they asked him. The chief of detectives was something like a deadly earnest Mike Wallace, but the stakes were slightly higher here because this involved something a little more important than a novelist plugging his new book or a senator explaining the stand he had taken on a farm bill. These were truly “interviews in depth,” and the booby prize was very often a long stretch up the river in a cozy one-windowed room.
The line-up bored the hell out of Kling. It always did. It was like seeing a stage show for the hundredth time. Every now and then somebody stopped the show with a really good routine. But usually it was the same old song and dance. It wasn’t any different that Wednesday. By the time the eighth offender had been paraded and subjected to the chief’s bludgeoning interrogation, Kling was beginning to doze. The detective sitting next to him nudged him gently in the ribs.
“... Reynolds, Ralph,” the chief was saying, “Isola, four. Caught burgling an apartment on North Third. No statement. How about it, Ralph?”
“How about what?”
“You do this sort of thing often?”
“What sort of thing?”
“Burglary.”
“I’m no burglar,” Reynolds said.
“I’ve got his B-sheet here,” the chief said. “Arrested for burglary in 1948, witness withdrew her testimony, claimed she had mistakenly identified him. Arrested again for burglary in 1952, convicted for Burglary One, sentenced to ten at Castleview, paroled in ‘58 on good behavior. You’re back at the old stand, huh, Ralph?”
“No, not me. I’ve been straight ever since I got out.”
“Then what were you doing in that apartment during the middle of the night?”
“I was a little drunk. I must have walked into the wrong building.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought it was my apartment.”
“Where do you live, Ralph?”
“On ...uh ...well.”
“Come on, Ralph.”
“Well, I live on South Fifth.”
“And the apartment you were in last night is on North Third. You must have been pretty drunk to wander that far off course.”
“Yeah, I guess I was pretty drunk.”
“Woman in that apartment said you hit her when she woke up. Is that true, Ralph?”
“No. No, hey, I never hit her.”
“She says so, Ralph.”
“Well, she’s mistaken.”
“Well, now, a doctor’s report says somebody clipped her on the jaw, Ralph, now how about that?”
“Well, maybe.”
“Yes or no?”
“Well, maybe when she started screaming she got me nervous. I mean, you know, I thought it was my apartment and all.”
“Ralph, you were burgling that apartment. How about telling us the truth?”
“No, I got in there by mistake.”
“How’d you get in?”
“The door was open.”
“In the middle of the night, huh? The door was open?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure you didn’t pick the lock or something, huh?”
“No, no. Why would I do that? I thought it was my apartment.”
“Ralph, what were you doing with burglar’s tools?”
“Who? Who me? Those weren’t burglar’s tools.”
“Then what are they? You had a glass cutter, and a bunch of jimmies, and some punches, and a drill and bits, and three celluloid strips, and some lock-picking tools, and eight skeleton keys. Those sound like burglar’s tools to me, Ralph.”
“No, I’m a carpenter.”
“Yeah, you’re a carpenter all right, Ralph. We searched your apartment, Ralph, and found a couple of things we’re curious about. Do you always keep sixteen wrist watches and four typewriters and twelve bracelets and eight rings and a mink stole and three sets of silverware, Ralph?”
“Yeah. I’m a collector.”
“Of other people’s things. We also found four hundred dollars in American currency and five thousand dollars in French francs.
“Where’d you get that money, Ralph?”
“Which?”
“Whichever you feel like telling us about.”
“Well, the U.S. stuff I ... I won at the track. And the other, well, a Frenchman owed me some gold, and so he paid me in francs. That’s all.”
“We’re checking our stolen-goods list right this minute, Ralph.”
“So check!” Reynolds said, suddenly angry. “What the hell do you want from me? Work for your goddamn living! You want it all on a platter! Like fun! I told you everything I’m gonna ...”
“Get him out of here,” the chief said. “Next, Blake, Donald, Bethtown, two. Attempted rape. No statement ...”
Bert Kling made himself comfortable on the folding chair and began to doze again.
11
The check made out to George Badueck was numbered 018. It was a small check., five dollars. It did not seem very important to Carella., but it was one of the unexplained three, and he decided to give it a whirl.
Badueck, as it turned out, was a photographer. His shop was directly across the street from the County Court Building in Isola. A sign in his window advised that he took photographs for chauffeurs’ licenses, hunting licenses, passports, taxicab permits, pistol permits, and the like. The shop was small and crowded. Badueck fitted into the shop like a beetle in an ant trap. He was a huge man with thick, unruly black hair and the smell of developing fluid on him.
“Who remembers?” he said. “I get millions of people in here every day of the week. They pay me in cash, they pay me with checks, they’re ugly, they’re pretty, they’re skinny, they’re fat, they all look the same on the pictures I take. Lousy. They all look like I’m photographing them for you guys. You never see any of these official-type pictures? Man, they look like mug shots, all of them. So who remembers this ... what’s her name? Claudia Davis, yeah. Another face that’s all. Another mug shot. Why? Is the check bad or something?”