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Feeling somewhat like a Peeping Tom, Kling began reading Mary Louise Proschek’s letter to her parents: November 1st Dear Mom and Daddy: I know your not worried I was kidnapped or anything because Betty Anders happened to spy me at the station this morning and by now it is probly all over town. So I know your not worried but I suppose you are wondering why I have left and when I am coming back. I suppose I shouldn’t have left without an explanation, but I don’t think you would understand or improve what Im about to do. I have been planning on it for a long time, and it is something I have to do
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The girl was still missing. Perhaps she was the 87th’s floater.
There had been a tattoo on the flap of skin between the girl’s right thumb and forefinger—the word MAC in a heart. On Mary Louise Proschek’s missing person report, under the heading TATTOOS, there was one word—and that word was “None.”
“That’s what I baptized her. Mary Louise. Everybody else called her just plain Mary, but that wasn’t the way I intended it. I intended it Mary Louise. That’s a pretty name, isn’t it? Mary Louise. Mary is too…plain.” He blinked. “Too plain.” He blinked again. “I want to see that girl. Where is that girl?” “At the mortuary,” Kling said. “Then take me there. A relative’s supposed to identify a…a body, isn’t he? Isn’t that the case?” Kling looked at Carella. “We’ll check out a car and take Mr. Proschek to the hospital,” Carella said wearily.
“Oh my God, she’s dead. My Mary Louise is dead. My daughter is dead. My daughter…” and then he couldn’t say anything else because his body was trembling and his tears were choking him.
“This girl,” he said. “Mary Louise Proschek.” Teddy nodded. “Thirty-three years old, comes to the city to start a new life. Turns up floating in the Harb. Letter to her folks was full of good spirits. Even if we suspected suicide, which we don’t, the letter would fairly well eliminate that. The ME says she was dead before she hit the water. Cause of death was acute arsenic poisoning. You following me?” Teddy nodded, her eyes wide. “She’s got a tattoo mark right here”—he showed the spot on his right hand—”the word MAC in a heart. Didn’t have it when she left Scranton, her hometown. How many
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Widower. Mature. Attractive. 35 years old. Seeks alliance with understanding woman of good background. Write P.O. Box 137.
“Marty” is a nice-enough fiction, but the girls outnumber the men in this world of ours, and not many people care whether or not you can do differential calculus so long as you’ve got a beautiful phizz. Besides, she couldn’t do differential calculus.
She had said good-bye to her virginity when she turned twenty-nine. She had been disappointed. No trumpets blasting, no banners unfurling, no clamorous medley of gonging bells. Just pain. Since that time, she had dabbled. She considered sex the periodic gratification of a purely natural urge. She approached sex with the paradoxical relentlessness of an uncaged jungle beast and the precise aloofness of a Quaker bride. Sex was like sleep. You needed both, but you didn’t spend your life in bed.
She crossed out the words. This man deserved complete honesty. She tore up the fifth letter, picked up the pen, and in a neat, precise hand—except for the t’s, which were crossed with somewhat animalistic ferocity—she began writing her letter again:
You asked for an understanding woman. I ask for an understanding man. It is not easy to write this letter. I can imagine how difficult it was for you to place your ad, and I can understand what led you to do so. I can only ask for the same understanding on your part. I felt almost as if I were applying for a position somewhere. I don’t want to feel that way, but I can see no other way of letting you know what I am like and I wish (if you decide to answer my letter) that you will follow the same pattern. I am going to tell you what I am, and who I am.
I don’t read very much anymore. I’ve become disillusioned with fiction, and the non-fiction is either inspirational stuff or stuff about mountain climbing, and I neither want to be inspired nor do I desire to climb Everest. I thought for a while that foreign novels might offer me something American novels didn’t—but everyone is selling the same thing these days, and the product usually suffers in translation. Perhaps you’ve run across some reading which I haven’t discovered yet, and which could offer me the deep pleasure I got from books when I was a little girl. If so, I’d appreciate knowing
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My tastes are simple. I like good music. I don’t mean Rock and Roll. I’ve sort of outgrown the candy stick and dungaree set. I like Brahms and I like Wagner-Wagner especially. There is something wild in his music, and I find it exciting. I like pop music on the sentimental side. I don’t mean the current hit parade rages. I mean old standards done up in albums. Stuff like Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Stardust and This Love Of Mine, you get the idea. I think my favorite record album is Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours. I’ve always liked him, and whatever his trouble with Ava Gardner, it’s none of
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Oh…religion. I’m Protestant. I hope you’re Protestant, too, but it really doesn’t matter that much. I hope you’re white, too, because I am and that would matter to me—not that I’m prejudiced or anything. Honestly, I’m not. But I’m too mature to be defiant, and I don’t feel like battling the good fight for democracy, not at this late stage of the game. I hope you understand this isn’t bigotry. It’s caution, it’s fear, it’s wanting to belong, it’s whatever you choose to call it. But it’s not bigotry.
Sincerely, PRISCILLA AMES 41 La Mesa Street Phoenix, Arizona
Priscilla Ames folded the letter—which ran to some six pages— and then put it into the envelope. She copied the address from the magazine onto the face of the envelope, sealed the envelope, and then went out to mail it. Priscilla Ames didn’t know what she was asking for.
It’s the little things in life that get you down.
The 87th’s big problem was the floater. It’s not often you get a floater. The 87th’s little problem was the con man.
“Thing that interests me about him is that he’s a jack of all trades,” Brown said. “You get a con man, he usually sticks to one game if it’s working for him. This guy varies his game. Like the louse we got roaming the 87th. He must be pretty smooth, too, because he’s barely a kid and he only took one fall.”
“I got no Deutsches in my regulars.”
“Who’s Frank Darren?” he asked. “Huh?” “Frank Darren.” Brown pointed at the name. “This one.” “Oh.” The clerk shrugged. “A guy. One of the guests.”
“What room’s he in?” “312,” the clerk said. “I thought you was looking for somebody named Deutsch?” “I am,” Brown said. “Give me the key to 312.”
Darren, of course, might very well be Darren and not Deutsch, he reasoned. But an elementary piece of police knowledge was that a man registering under a phony name—especially if his luggage, shirts, or handkerchiefs were monogrammed—would generally pick a name with the same initials as his real name. Frederick Deutsch, Frank Darren—it was worth a try. Besides, the RKC card had given this as Deutsch’s last address.
Inside the room, there was sudden movement. Brown turned the key quickly and kicked open the door. There was a man on the bed, and the man was in the process of reaching for a gun that lay on the night table. “Better leave it where it is,” Brown said.
“Put on your coat,” Brown said. “I want to talk to you back at the squad.” “What about?” “Swindling,” Brown said. “You can just blow it out,” the man said. “Can I?” “Damn right you can. I’m as legitimate as the Virgin Mary.” “Is that why you carry a gun?” Brown asked. “I’ve got a permit,” the man said. “We’ll check that back at the precinct, too.” “Go get a warrant for my arrest,” the man said. “I don’t need any goddamn warrant!” Brown snapped. “Now, get the hell off that bed and into your coat, or I’ll have to help you. And you won’t like my help, believe me.”
The man slid off the bed. “I got nothing to hide,” he said. “You got nothing on me.” “I hope not,” Brown said. “I hope you’re clean, and I hope you’ve got a permit for that gun, and I hope you went to confession last week. In the meantime, let’s go back to the precinct.” “Jesus, can’t we talk here?” the man asked. “No,” Brown said. He grinned. “They don’t allow niggers in this hotel.”
Deutsch looked up at Brown, and his eyes were wide and serious. “It’s full of bums, you know that?” He paused and sucked in a deep breath. “And I ain’t a bum anymore.”
There would be a close-up, and the close-up would show a hand suddenly breaking the surface of the water, the fingers stiff and widespread. And then a body would appear, and the water would nudge the body until it washed ashore and lay lifeless with the other debris while the rain drilled down unrelentingly. The con men would have written it with flourish and filmed it with style, and they had a fine day for the plying of their trades.
The men of the 87th Precinct weren’t con men. They only knew they had another floater.
There was a tattoo on the flap of skin between her right thumb and forefinger. The tattoo was a heart. There was a word in the heart. And the word was NAC. And, obviously, the tattoo was a mistake. Obviously, the man or woman who had been paid to decorate the skin had made a mistake.
Not a MAC this time, but a NAC. The man who’d thrown those girls into the water must have been absolutely furious. Nobody likes his byline misspelled.
Many men longed for the day when their ship would come in. Carella’s ship had come in—and it had launched a thousand faces.
He spotted her instantly. By this time, he was not surprised by what the sight of her could do to him. He had come to accept the instant quickening of his heart and the automatic smile on his face. She had not yet seen him, and he watched her from his secret vantage point, feeling somewhat sneaky, but what the hell!
When she saw him, she broke into a run. He did not know what it was between them that made the shortest separation seem like a ten-year stretch at Alcatraz. Whatever it was, they had it. She came into his arms, and he kissed her soundly, and he wouldn’t have given a damn if Twentieth Century Fox had been filming the entire sequence for a film titled The Mating Season Jungle.
He had grown used to her eyes, and perhaps he missed what they were saying to him, over and over again, repeatedly. Teddy Carella didn’t need a tongue.
The man who ran the tattoo parlor was Chinese. The name on the plateglass window was Charlie Chen.
“About this girl,” Carella said to Chen. “When did she come in for the tattoo?” “Oh, long time ago,” Chen said. “Maybe five months, maybe six. Nice lady. Not so pretty like your lady, but very nice.” “Was she alone?” “No. She with tall man.” Chen scrutinized Carella’s face. “Prettier than you, Detective.”
“Anything you remember about him?” “He smile all the time,” Chen said. “Big white teeth. Very pretty teeth. Very handsome man. Movie star.”
“They come in shop. He say the girl want tattoo. I show them designs on wall. I try to sell her butterfly. Nobody like butterfly. Butterfly my own design. Very pretty. Good for shoulder. I do butterfly on one lady’s back, near base of spine. Very pretty, only nobody see. Good for shoulder. I try to sell her butterfly, but man say he wants heart. She say she wants heart, too. Stars in eyes, you know? Big love, big thing, shining all over. I show them big hearts. Very pretty hearts, very complicated, many colors.” “They didn’t want a big heart?” “Man wants small heart. He show me where.” Chen
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Carella sighed. He lifted the flap of the manila envelope in his hands and drew out the glossy prints that were inside it. “Is this the girl?” he asked Chen. Chen looked at the pictures. “That she,” he said. “She dead, huh?” “Yes, she’s dead.”
What kind of a cop was he? What did the other cops think of him? She felt a sudden exclusion. Faced with the impenetrable privacy that was any man’s work, she felt alone and unwanted. Quickly, she drained the martini glass.
“No trouble at all,” Dave said, turning to face Carella with an arrogant smile. “You’re annoying my wife,” Carella said. “Take off.” “Oh, was I annoying her? Is the little lady your wife?” He spread his legs wide and let his arms dangle at his sides, and Carella knew instantly that he was looking for trouble and wouldn’t be happy until he found it.
Carella’s left fist hit him in the gut, and he doubled over in pain, and then Carella threw a flashing uppercut, which caught Dave under the chin and sent him sprawling backward against the table again. Carella moved quickly and effortlessly, like a cue ball under the hands of an expert pool player, sinking one ball and then rolling to position for a good shot at the next ball. Before Dave clambered off the table, Carella was in position again, waiting.
And then Carella’s left hand descended. Hard and straight, like the sharp biting edge of an ax, it moved downward with remarkable swiftness. Dave felt the impact of the blow. The hard, calloused edge of Carella’s hand struck him on the side of his neck, and then Dave bellowed and Carella swung his left hand across his own body, and again, the hand fell, this time on the opposite side of Dave’s neck, and he fell to the floor, both arms paralyzed for the moment, unable to move. Carella stood over him, waiting.
