“Can’t you break it? I need help.”
“If I break the date, the lady’ll break my head.” Christine, listening to the conversation, nodded emphatically.
“Come on. Big strong guy like you. You can take the girl with you.”
“Take her where?”
“To my sister’s wedding.”
“I don’t like weddings,” Hawes said. “They make me nervous.”
“Somebody’s threatened my future brother-in-law. Or at least it looks that way. I’d like a few people I can trust in the crowd. Just in case anything happens. What do you say?”
“Well...” Hawes started. Christine shook her head. “No, Steve. I’m sorry.”
“Look, Cotton, when’s the last time I asked you for a favor?”
“Well...” Hawes started, and again Christine shook her head. “I can’t, Steve.”
“There’ll be free booze,” Carella said.
“No.”
“Take the girl with you.”
“No.”
“Cotton, I’m asking a favor.”
“Just a second,” Hawes said, and he covered the mouthpiece.
“No,” Christine said immediately.
“You’re invited,” Hawes said. “To a wedding. What do you say?”
“I want to go on the boat ride. I haven’t been on a boat ride since I was eighteen.”
“We’ll go next Sunday, okay?”
“You’re not off next Sunday.”
“Well, the first Sunday I am off, okay?”
“No.”
“Christine?”
“No.”
“Honey?”
“Oh, damnit.”
“All right?”
“Damnit,” Christine said again.
“Steve,” Hawes said into the phone, “we’ll come.”
“Damnit,” Christine said.
“Where do you want us to meet you?”
“Can you come over to my place at about noon?”
“Sure. What’s the address?”
“837 Dartmouth. In Riverhead.”
“We’ll be there.”
“Thanks a lot, Cotton.”
“Send flowers to my funeral,” Hawes said, and he hung up.
Christine stood fuming by the telephone, her arms crossed over her breasts. Hawes reached for her and she said, “Don’t touch me, Mr. Hawes.”
“Honey...”
“Don’t honey me.”
“Christine, honey, he’s in a jam.”
“You promised we would go on this boat ride. I made the arrangements three weeks ago. Now—”
“This is something I couldn’t avoid. Look, Carella happens to be a friend of mine. And he needs help.”
“And what am I?”
“The girl I love,” Hawes said. He took her into his arms.
“Sure,” Christine answered coldly.
“You know I love you.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
“Sure. You love me, all right. I’m just the merry widow, to you. I’m just the girl you...”
“You’re a very lovely widow.”
“... picked up in a bookshop.”
“It’s a very lovely bookshop,” Hawes said, and he kissed the top of her head. “You’ve got nice soft hair.”
“I’m not quite as alone in the world as you may think,” Christine said, her arms still folded across her breasts. “I could have got a hundred men to take me on this boat ride.”
“I know,” he said, and he kissed her earlobe.
“You louse,” she said. “It just happens that I love you.”
“I know.” He kissed her neck.
“Stop that.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Why?”
“Stop it,” she said, but her voice was gentler, and her arms were beginning to relax. “We have to go to your friend’s house, don’t we?”
“Not until noon.”
Christine was silent. “I do love you,” she said.
“And I love you.”
“I’ll bet you do. I’ll just bet you—”
“Shhh, shhh,” he said, and he sought her mouth, and she brought her arms up around his neck. He clung to her, his big hands twisting in the long blonde hair. He kissed her again, and she buried her face in his shoulder, and he said, “Come. Come with me.”
“Your friend. There isn’t time...”
“There’s time.”
“We have to...”
“There’s time.”
“But won’t we...?”
“There’s time,” he said gently.
Bert Kling was reading the Sunday comics when Carella’s call came. He took a last wistful look at Dick Tracy’s wrist radio and then went to answer the phone.
“Bert Kling,” he said.
“Hi, Bert. This is Steve.”
“Uh-oh,” Kling said immediately.
“You busy?”
“I won’t answer any leading questions. What happened? What do you want?”
“Don’t be so brusque. Brusqueness is not flattering to youth.”
“Do I have to go to the squad?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“My sister’s getting married this afternoon. The groom received what could amount to a threatening note.”
“Yeah? Why doesn’t he call the police?”
“He did. And now I’m calling you. Feel like going to a wedding?”
“When? What time?”
“Can you be here at twelve?”
“I’ve got to pick up Claire at nine tonight. There’s a movie she wants to see.”
“Okay.”
“Where are you now?” Kling asked.
“Home. 837 Dartmouth. In Riverhead. Can you be here by noon?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you.”
“Bert?”
“What?”
“Bring your gun.”
“Okay,” Kling said, and he hung up. He walked back to the newspaper. He was a tall blond man of twenty-five years, and he looked younger in his undershorts because his legs were covered with a light blond fuzz. He curled up in the armchair, studying the wrist radio design again, and then he decided to call Claire. He went to the telephone and dialed her number.
“Claire,” he said, “this is Bert.”
“Hello, lover.”
“I’m going to a wedding this afternoon.”
“Not your own, I hope.”
“No. Steve’s sister. You want to come?”
“I can’t. I told you that I’ve got to drive my father out to the cemetery.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Okay, I’ll see you at nine then, okay?”
“Right. This movie’s at a drive-in. Is that all right?”
“That’s fine. We can neck if it gets dull.”
“We can neck even if it doesn’t get dull.”
“What’s the picture anyway?”
“It’s an old one,” Claire said, “but I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“What is it?”
“Dragnet,” she answered.
The packet from the Bureau of Criminal Identification arrived at the squadroom at 10:37 A.M.
Meyer Meyer was, in truth, surprised to see it. The chances of this Marty Whatever-His-Name-Was having a record were pretty slim to begin with. Add to that the possibility of his having a record in this city, and the chances were beyond the realm of plausibility. But record he had, and the record was in the voluminous files of the IB, and now a photostated copy of the file rested on Meyer’s desk, and he leafed through it leisurely.
Marty Sokolin was not a big-time thief. He wasn’t even, by any police standards, a small-time thief. He was a man who’d got into trouble once. His record happened to be in the IB’s files because he’d got into trouble in this city while on vacation from California.
It was perhaps significant that Marty Sokolin had not been discharged from the Army because of frostbite as Tommy Giordano had supposed. True enough, he had been medically discharged. But he’d been released to a mental hospital in Pasadena, California, as a neurasthenic patient.