Текст книги "Ghosts"

Автор книги: Ed McBain

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Carella looked at her.

“Well, all right,” she said.

She yanked her gloves off, tucked them under her arm, and tied the leash around the stanchion of a no parking sign. The dog began howling at once, like Fang, Son of Claw. Carella led her to the sheltered doorway of a men’s clothing store, waited while she put on her gloves again, and then said, “Was Daniel Corbett a homosexual?”

She seemed genuinely startled. Her eyes opened wider. They were green, he now noticed. They searched his face as though eager for him to assure her he’d just told a bad joke.

“Was he?” Carella asked.

“He didn’t seem to be,” she said in the same tiny voice, almost a whisper now.

“Any indication at all that he might have been?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mrs. Lambeth, you’ve been intimate with him for the past month or so, according to what he—”

“Yes, but not that often.”

“Two or three times, is that right?”

“Well, yes, I suppose.”

“What I want to know is if during any of your meetings…”

“He performed adequately, if that’s what you want to know.”

“No, that’s not what I want to know.”

“I find this embarrassing,” Priscilla said.

“So did Corbett. But murder is the biggest embarrassment of them all. During any of your meetings did he in any way indicate to you that he might also be interested in men?”

“No.”

“Did he ever bring a man along with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m assuming you met someplace away from the office…”

“Yes.”

“Was there ever a man with him?”

“Once.”

“Who?”

“Alex Harrod.”

“Who’s that?”

“A paperback editor. At Absalom Books.”

“Is he a homosexual?”

“I’m not that familiar with homosexuals.”

“Why was he there?”

“Danny thought it would be…well…He thought we’d be less noticeable if someone else was there with us.”

“Where was this?”

“The Hotel Mandalay bar.”

“When?”

“Last month sometime.”

“What happened at that meeting, can you tell me?”

“Nothing. Alex had a few drinks, and then he left. Danny and I…went upstairs to a room he’d booked.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Danny and I?”

“No, the three of you. While you were together in the bar.”

“Books. Danny had some books he thought Absalom might want to buy.”

“That’s all? Books?”

“Yes. Well…yes.”

“What else, Mrs. Lambeth?”

“Nothing. Not then. Not in the bar.”

“Where then?”

“Really, I do find this…”

“Where, Mrs. Lambeth? In the room? What did you talk about in the room?”

The dog was howling like a hungry wolf waiting for an Eskimo to come out of his igloo. Together the dog and the wind created a veritable Antarctic symphony. Priscilla glanced at the dog and said, “I have to untie him.”

“No, you don’t have to,” Carella said. “I want to know what Corbett said to you after that meeting with Harrod.”

“It was pillow talk,” Priscilla said. “People say things in bed…”

“Yes, what did he say?”

“He asked me if I’d…if I’d ever had a two-on-one.”

“What did you think he meant by that?”

“He meant…me and two men.”

“Did he have any particular man in mind?”

“He asked me what I thought of Alex Harrod.”

“Was that the man he had in mind?”

“I…guess so. Yes. He asked me if I found Alex attractive. And he…he suggested that it might be…be fun to try it together with him sometime.”

“What was your reaction to that?”

“I said I thought Alex was attractive.”

Her voice was so low now that he almost could not hear her. The dog and the wind refused to end their collaboration. Carella could do nothing about the wind, but he wanted to shoot the dog.

“Did you agree to such an arrangement?”

“I said I’d…think about it.”

“Did the suggestion ever come up again?”

There was a long silence, broken only by the howling of the dog and the wind.

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“At the Christmas party.”

“Corbett again suggested that the three of you…”

“Yes.”

“And what was your response?”

Priscilla looked at the dog. Her arms were crossed over her breasts, her gloved hands tucked into her armpits. She kept watching the dog.

“What was your response?” Carella said.

“I told him I…I might like to try it. We had both had a little too much to drink, this was the annual Christmas party…”

“Did you set up a date?”

“Yes, we…we did.”

“For when?”

“My husband is going to Wisconsin this week. His mother lives in Wisconsin, she’s very sick, he’s going out there to see her. We planned to…to go to Danny’s place in the country over the New Year’s Eve weekend. My husband won’t be back till…till the second.”

“By the country, do you mean Gracelands?”

“Yes, Danny has a house up there.”

“Is it his house?”

“I think so.”

“Or does he share it with Alex Harrod?”

“I don’t know.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lambeth,” Carella said. “You can untie the dog now.”

The Isola directory listing for Alexander Harrod gave his address as 511 Jacaranda, downtown in the Quarter. Carella called first to say that he was investigating a homicide and wanted to talk to Harrod. He did not mention that the homicide victim was Daniel Corbett; he wanted to save that for the face-to-face. Harrod protested that it was already after 11:00 and wanted to know if this couldn’t wait till morning. Carella went into his long song and dance about the first twenty-four hours in a homicide being most important to the investigating detective and finally prevailed upon Harrod to give him a half hour of his time.

The building in which Harrod lived was a three-story brick walk-up painted white. Carella rang the downstairs bell, got an answering buzz, and climbed the stairs to the third floor. The apartment was at the end of the hall. He knocked on the door, and it opened at once, almost as if Harrod had been waiting impatiently behind it. Carella was surprised to find himself looking into the face of a tall, slender black man. Priscilla had not mentioned to him that the third man in the proposed ménage à trois was black.

“Mr. Harrod?” he said.

“Yes, please come in.”

He was wearing blue jeans and a tight-fitting white T-shirt under a blue cardigan sweater with a shawl collar. He was barefooted, and he padded now into a living room decorated in what Carella termed “tchotchke-potchke,” an expression he’d picked up from Meyer. The walls were lined with shelves and shelves of objets d’art and trinkets, small vases with dried flowers, photographs in miniature oval frames, keys picked up in antique shops, the letter A in various sizes, some in brass, others of wood painted gold, enough books to fill a good-sized bookstore, little framed notes that were obviously of sentimental value to Harrod. The sofa was done in soft black leather and heaped with pillows of various sizes, some of them mirrored, some of them tasseled, that spilled over onto the floor to form yet another seating area. A painting of two men wrestling was on the wall over the couch. The floor was covered with a white shag rug. The heat was turned up very high; Carella wondered if Harrod grew orchids in his spare time.

“Is this about Gregory Craig?” Harrod asked.

“What makes you think so?”

“I know he was killed, and Absalom published the paperback of Shades.”

“It’s about Daniel Corbett,” Carella said.

“Danny? What about him?”

“He was murdered early tonight,” Carella said, and watched for Harrod’s reaction. The reaction came at once. Harrod backed away a pace, as though Carella had punched him full in the face.

“You’re putting me on,” he said.

“I wish I were.”

“Danny?” he said.

“Daniel Corbett, yes. He was stabbed to death sometime between five-thirty and six o’clock tonight.”

“Danny?” Harrod repeated blankly, and suddenly he was weeping. Carella watched him and said nothing. Harrod pulled a tissue from the back pocket of his jeans and dried his eyes. “I’m sorry…we…we were good friends,” he said.

“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Harrod,” Carella said. “How close was your relationship?”

“I just told you. We were good friends.”

“Mr. Harrod, is it true that you and Mr. Corbett planned to go to Gracelands this weekend with a woman named Priscilla Lambeth?”

“Where’d you hear that?” Harrod asked.

“From Mrs. Lambeth.”

“Well, then…”

“Is it true?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Mr. Harrod, are you aware that Daniel Corbett suggested the three of you go to bed together?”

“I was aware of that, yes. It still doesn’t mean—”

“Wasn’t that the purpose of the planned trip to Gracelands?”

“Yes, but—”

“Had you and Mr. Corbett ever done this before?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean with Priscilla Lambeth. I mean with any woman.”

“What’s that got to do with his murder?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t have to answer a damn thing,” Harrod said. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Detective. If you didn’t think I was gay, would you be here asking the same questions?”

“I don’t give a damn about your sexual preferences, Mr. Harrod. That’s your business. I’m here to—”

“Sure,” Harrod said. “Go tell that to every other cop in this city.”

“I’m not every other cop in this city, I’m me. I want to know whether you went along with the idea of sharing a bed with Daniel Corbett and Priscilla Lambeth.”

“Why?”

“Were you and Corbett lovers?”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

“That’s true, you don’t. Where were you at five-forty tonight, Mr. Harrod?”

“Right here. I came here straight from work.”

“Where’s Absalom Books?”

“Uptown on Jefferson.”

“What time did you get here?”

“Five-thirty, little bit after.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Corbett at any time today?”

“We spoke, yes.”

“What about?”

“Nothing important.”

“The trip to Gracelands?”

“The subject may have come up.”

“How’d you feel about the trip?”

“Here comes the gay shit again,” Harrod said.

“You’re the one who keeps bringing it up. How’d you feel about the trip?”

“I didn’t want to go, all right?”

“Why not?”

“Because I was…” Harrod suddenly clenched his fists. “You have no right to hassle me this way. I was nowhere near Danny’s place when he was…when he was…” He began weeping again. “You son of a bitch,” he said, and again pulled the tattered tissue from his pocket and dried his eyes. “You’re always hassling us. Can’t you, for Christ’s sake, leave us alone?”

“Tell me about the trip,” Carella said.

“I didn’t want to go,” Harrod said, weeping. “I was sick and tired of…of Danny bringing all these fag hags around. He was AC-DC, all right, I could live with that. But these…these goddamn women he was always intruding into our relationship…” He shook his head. “I told him to make up his mind. He…he promised this would be the last time. He said I’d enjoy it. He said she found me attractive.”

“How’d you find her?”

“Repulsive,” Harrod said flatly.

“But you agreed to go.”

“For the last time. I told him I’d walk if he kept insisting on these outside relationships. This was to be it. The very last time.”

“It turned out to be just that, didn’t it?” Carella said.

“I was here at five-thirty,” Harrod said. “Check it.”

“With whom?”

Harrod hesitated.

“Who were you with, Mr. Harrod?”

“A friend of mine.”

“Who?”

“His name is Oliver Walsh. Are you going to hassle him, too?”

“Yes,” Carella said, “I’m going to hassle him, too.”

Oliver Walsh lived within walking distance of Harrod’s apartment. Carella got there at five minutes to midnight. He had not called first to announce himself, and he had warned Harrod not to pick up the phone the moment he left the apartment. Walsh seemed genuinely surprised to find a city detective on his doorstep. He was nineteen or twenty years old, Carella guessed, with a shock of red hair and a spate of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Carella saw all this through the wedge in the partially opened door; Walsh would not take off the night chain till Carella showed his shield and his plastic-encased ID card.

“I thought you might be a burglar or something,” Walsh said.

“Mr. Walsh,” Carella said, “I’ll tell you why I’m here. I want to know where you were between five-thirty and six o’clock tonight.”

“Why?” Walsh said at once.

“Were you here at home?” Carella asked, dodging the question.

“No.”

“Then where were you?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Mr. Walsh,” Carella said, “someone’s been murdered. All I want to know—”

“Well, Jesus…you don’t think…”

“Where were you?”

“Between…between…what time did you say?”

“Five-thirty and six.”

“With a friend of mine,” Walsh said, and looked enormously relieved.

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Alex Harrod. His phone number is Quinn 7-6430, call him. Go ahead, call him. He’ll tell you where I was.”

“Where was that?”

“What?”

“Where were you with your friend Alex Harrod?”

“At his apartment. 511 Jacaranda, third floor rear. Apartment 32. Go ahead, call him.”

“What time did you get there?”

“About twenty after five. He was just coming home from work.”

“How long did you stay there?”

“I left at about nine-thirty.”

“Did you leave the apartment at any time?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did Harrod?”

“No, we were there together.”

“How long have you known Harrod?”

“We met only recently.”

“When?”

“On Christmas Eve.”

“Where?”

“At a party.”

“Where was the party?”

“Here in the Quarter.”

“Where in the Quarter?”

“In Llewlyn Mews. A man named Daniel Corbett was giving a party, and a friend of mine asked me to go with him.”

“Had you known Corbett before then?”

“No, I met him that night.”

“And that’s when you met Harrod, too, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you spoken to him since you left his apartment tonight?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“We can check with the phone company for any calls made from his number to yours.”

“Check,” Walsh said. “I left him at nine-thirty, and I haven’t spoken to him since. Who got murdered? It wasn’t Alex, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t Alex,” Carella said. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Walsh.”

8

The way they reconstructed it later, the killer had gone after the wrong person. The mistake was reasonable; even Carella had made the same mistake earlier. The killer must have been watching her for the past several days, and when he saw her—or the person he assumed was Hillary Scott—coming out of the Stewart City apartment building at 8:30 Wednesday morning, he followed her all the way to the subway kiosk and then attempted to stab her with what Denise Scott later described as “the biggest damn knife I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Minutes after Denise rushed into the apartment with the front of her black cloth coat and her white satin blouse slashed, Hillary called first the local precinct and then Carella at home. He and Hawes got there an hour later. The patrolmen from Midtown South were already there, wondering what they were supposed to do. They asked Carella whether they should report this to their precinct as a 10-24—an “Assault Past”—or would the Eight-Seven take care of it? Carella explained that the attack might have been linked to a homicide they were working, and the patrolmen should forget about it. The patrolmen seemed unconvinced.

“What about the paper?” one of them asked. “Who’ll take care of the paper?”

“I will,” Carella said.

“So then maybe we get in a jam,” the second patrolman said.

“If you want to file, go ahead and file,” Carella said.

“As what? A 10-24?”

“That’s what it was.”

“Where do we say it was?”

“What do you mean?”

“The guy tried to stab her outside the subway on Masters. But she didn’t call us till she got back here. So what do we put down as the scene?”

“Here,” Carella said. “This is where you responded, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but this ain’t where it happened.”

“So let me file, okay?” Carella said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You ain’t got a sergeant like we got,” the first patrolman said.

“Look, I want to talk to the victim,” Carella said. “I told you this is a homicide we’re working, so how about letting me file, and then you won’t have to worry about it.”

“Get his name and shield number,” the second patrolman advised.

“Detective/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella,” Carella said patiently, “87th Squad. My shield number is 714-5632.”

“You got that?” the second patrolman asked his partner.

“I got it,” the first patrolman said, and they both left the apartment, still concerned about what their sergeant might say.

Denise Scott was in a state of numbed shock. Her face was pale, her lips were trembling, she had not taken off her coat—as if somehow it still afforded her protection against the assailant’s knife. Hillary brought her a whopping snifter of brandy, and when she had taken several swallows of it and the color had returned to her cheeks, she seemed ready to talk about what had happened. What had happened was really quite simple. Someone had grabbed her from behind as she was starting down the steps to the subway station, pulled her over backward, and then slashed at the front of her coat with the biggest damn knife she’d ever seen in her life. She’d hit out at him with her bag, and she’d begun screaming, and the man had turned and begun running when someone started up the steps from below.

“It was a man, you’re sure of that?” Carella said.

“Positive.”

“What did he look like?” Hawes asked.

“Black hair and brown eyes. A very narrow face,” Denise said.

“How old?”

“Late twenties, I’d say.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“In a minute.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Not a word. He just pulled me around and tried to stab me. Look what he did to my coat and blouse,” she said, and eased the torn blouse aside to study the sloping top of her left breast. Hawes seemed very interested in whether or not the knife had penetrated her flesh. He stared at the V opening of her blouse with all the scrutiny of an assistant medical examiner. “I was just lucky, that’s all,” Denise said, and let the blouse fall back into place.

“He was after me,” Hillary said.

Carella did not ask her why she thought so; he was thinking exactly the same thing.

“Let me have the coat,” she said.

“What?” her sister said.

“Your coat. Let me have it.”

Denise took off the coat. The knife thrust had torn the blouse over her left breast. Beneath the gaping satiny slash, Hawes could glimpse a promise of Denise’s flesh, a milkier white against the off-white of the satin. Hillary held the black coat against her own breasts like a phantom lover. Closing her eyes, she began to sway the way she had after she’d kissed Carella. Hawes looked at her and then looked at her sister and decided he would rather go to bed with Denise than with Hillary. Then he decided the exact opposite. Then he decided both of them wouldn’t be bad together, at the same time, in the king-sized bed in his apartment. Carella, not being psychic, didn’t know that everybody in the world had threesomes in mind this holiday season. Hillary, claiming to be what Carella knew he wasn’t, began intoning in a voice reminiscent of the one she’d used after she’d kissed him, “Tape, you stole, tape,” the same old routine.

Befuddled, Hawes watched her; he had never caught her act before. Denise, used to the ways of mediums, yawned. The brandy was reaching her. She seemed to have forgotten that less than an hour ago someone had tried to dispatch her to that great beyond her sister was now presumably tapping—Hillary had said it was a ghost who’d killed Gregory Craig, and now the same ghost had tried to kill her sister, and her black overcoat was giving off emanations that seemed to indicate either something or nothing at all.

“Hemp,” she said.

Carella wasn’t sure whether or not she was clearing her throat.

“Hemp,” she said again. “Stay.”

He hadn’t planned on leaving, so he didn’t know what the hell she meant.

“Hemp, stay,” she said. “Hempstead. Hampstead.”

Carella distinctively felt the hair on the back of his neck bristling. Hawes, watching Denise—who now crossed her legs recklessly and grinned at him in brandy-inspired abandon—felt only a bristling somewhere in the area of his groin.

“Mass,” Hillary intoned, her eyes still closed, her body swaying, the black overcoat clutched in her hands. “Mass. Massachusetts. Hampstead, Massachusetts,” and Carella’s mouth dropped open.

Hillary opened her eyes and stared blankly at him. His own stare was equally blank. Like a pair of blind idiot savants sharing the same mysterious knowledge, they stared at each other across an abyss no wider than three feet, but writhing with whispering demons and restless corpses. His feet were suddenly cold. He stared at her unblinkingly, and she stared back, and he could swear her eyes were on fire, the deep brown lighted from within with all the reds and yellows of glittering opals.

“Someone drowned in Hampstead, Massachusetts,” she said.

She said this directly to him, ignoring Hawes and her sister. And Carella, knowing full well that she had lived with Craig for the past year and more, knowing, too, that he might have told her all about the drowning of his former wife two miles from where he was renting the haunted house he made famous in Deadly Shades, nonetheless believed that the knowledge had come to her from the black overcoat she held in her hands.

When she said, “We’ll go to Massachusetts, you and I,” he knew that they would because Craig’s wife had drowned up there three summers ago, and now three more people were dead, and another murder attempt had been made—and maybe there were ghosts involved after all.

They had hoped to get there by one in the afternoon, a not unrealistic estimate in that they left the city at a little after 10:00 and Hampstead—by the map—was no more than 200 miles to the northeast. The roads outside the city were bone-dry; the storm that had blanketed Isola had left the surrounding areas untouched. It was only when they entered Massachusetts that they encountered difficulty. Whereas earlier Carella had maintained a steady fifty-five miles an hour in keeping with the federal energy-saving speed limit, he now eased off on the accelerator and hoped he would average thirty. Snow was not the problem; any state hoping for skiers during the winter months made certain the roads were plowed and scraped the instant the first snowflake fell. But the temperature had dropped to eighteen degrees Fahrenheit, and the roadside snow that had been melting during the midmorning hours had now frozen into a thin slick that covered the asphalt from median divider to shoulder and made driving treacherous and exhausting.

They reached Hampstead at 2:25 that afternoon. The sky was overcast, and a harsh wind blew in over the ocean, rattling the wooden shutters on the seaside buildings. The town seemed to have crawled up out of the Atlantic like some prehistoric thing seeking the sun, finding instead a rocky, inhospitable coastline and collapsing upon it in disappointment and exhaustion. The ramshackle buildings on the waterfront were uniformly gray, their weather-beaten shingles evoking a time when Hampstead was a small fishing village and men went down to the sea in ships. There were still nets and lobster pots in evidence, but the inevitable crush of progress had threaded through the town a gaudy string of motels and fast-food joints that thoroughly blighted what could not have been a particularly cheerful place to begin with.

The Common, such as it was, consisted of a sere rectangle of untended lawn surrounded by the town’s municipal buildings and a four-story brick hotel that called itself the Hampstead Arms. The tawdry tinsel of the season encompassed the square like a squadron of dancing girls in sequins and spangles. An unlighted Christmas tree was in the center of the Common, looking rather like a sodden seagull that had lost its bearings. Carella parked the car, and together he and Hillary walked to the Town Hall, where he hoped to find the Coroner’s Office and the records pertaining to the death of Gregory Craig’s former wife. Hillary was wearing a bulky raccoon coat, a brown woolen hat pulled down over her ears, brown gloves, brown boots, and the same outfit she’d been wearing in her sister’s apartment that morning: a tweedy beige skirt flecked with threads of green and brown, a turtleneck the color of bitter chocolate, and a green cardigan sweater with leather buttons. Carella was wearing much of the finery that had been given to him two days earlier: a pair of dark gray flannel slacks from Fanny, a red plaid flannel shirt from April, a tweed sports jacket the color of smoked herring from Teddy, a dark blue car coat with a fleece lining and a fake fur collar, also from Teddy, and a pair of fur-lined gloves from Mark. His feet were cold; he had put on loafers this morning, not expecting to be trodding the streets of an oceanfront town in Massachusetts, where the temperature lurked somewhat just above zero and the wind came in off the Atlantic like the revenge of every seaman ever lost in those dark waters offshore. As they crossed the Common, Hillary nodded and said, “Yes, I knew it would look like this.”

Hampstead’s Town Hall was a white clapboard building with a gray shingled roof. It faced westward, away from the ocean, shielding the sidewalk outside from the fierce Atlantic blasts. All the lights were on in defense against the afternoon gloom; they beckoned like beacons to lost mariners. Inside, the building was as toasty warm as a general store with a potbellied stove. Carella studied the information board in the lobby, a black rectangle with white plastic letters and numbers on it, announcing the various departments and the rooms in which they might be found. There was no listing for a Coroner’s Office. He settled for the Town Clerk’s Office and spoke there to a woman who sounded a lot like the late President Kennedy. She told him that the Coroner’s Office was located in Hampstead General Hospital, which was about two miles to the northeast, just the other side of the Bight. Reluctant to face the frozen waste yet another time, Carella nonetheless walked with Hillary to where he’d parked the car and then drove due north along an oceanfront road that curved past what appeared to be a large saltwater pond, but that was identified by a roadside sign as HAMPSTEAD BIGHT.

“That’s where she drowned,” Hillary said. “Stop the car.”

“No,” Carella said. “First let’s find out how she drowned.”

The coroner was a man in his late sixties, as pale and as thin as a cadaver, with a fringe of graying hair around his flaking bald pate. He was wearing a threadbare brown sweater, rumpled brown slacks, a white shirt with a frayed collar, and a tie the color of cow dung. His desk was cluttered with a sheaf of loosely scattered file folders and a black plastic sign that announced his name in white letters: MR. HIRAM HOLLISTER. Carella spoke to him alone; it was one thing to bring your medium with you when you went calling on ghosts; it was quite another to conduct official business in the presence of a startlingly beautiful twenty-two-year-old wearing a raccoon coat that made her look cozily cuddlesome. Hillary waited on a bench in the corridor outside.

“I’m investigating three possibly linked homicides in Isola,” Carella said, showing his shield. “One of the victims was a man named Gregory Craig, who—”

“What’s that say there?” Hollister asked, peering at the gold shield with its blue enameling and its embossed city seal.

“Detective,” Carella said.

“Oh, detective, yup,” Hollister said.

“One of the victims was a man named Gregory Craig. His former wife, Stephanie Craig, drowned in Hampstead Bight three summers ago. Your office concluded that the death was accidental. I wonder if I might—”

“Three summers ago, yup,” Hollister said.

“Do you remember the case?”

“No, but I remember three summers ago, all right. That was the year we got all that rain.”

“Would you have a record of what happened? I’m assuming there was an inquest…”

“Oh, yes, there woulda been in a drowning.”

“Stephanie Craig,” Carella said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Not offhand. We get tourists here, you know, they don’t know how tricky the currents can be. We get our share of drownings, I’ll tell you, same as any other coastal community.”

“How about Gregory Craig?”

“Don’t recollect him either.”

“He wrote a book called Deadly Shades.”

“Haven’t read it.”

“About a house in this town.”

“Nope, don’t know it.”

Carella thought briefly about the illusiveness of fame. Behind his desk Hollister was nodding as though he had suddenly remembered something he had not earlier revealed.

“Yup,” he said.

Carella waited.

“Lots of rain that summer. Washed away the dock outside Logan’s Pier.”

“Mr. Hollister,” Carella said, “where would I find a record of the inquest?”

“Right down the hall,” Hollister said, and looked at his watch. “But it’s getting on three o’clock, and I want to start home before the storm hits. Supposed to be getting at least six inches, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Carella said, and looked at his own watch. “If you’ll pull the folder for me,” he said, “I can take a look at it and then leave it on your desk, if that would be all right with you.”

“Well,” Hollister said.

“I can sign a receipt for it in my official capacity as—”

“Nope, don’t need a receipt,” Hollister said. “Just don’t want it getting all messed up and out of place.”

“I’ll be very careful with it,” Carella said.

“Get out-of-state police in here every so often,” Hollister said, “they don’t know about neatness and orderliness.”

“I can understand that, sir,” Carella said, figuring a “sir” wouldn’t hurt at this uneasy juncture. “But I’m used to handling files, and I promise I’ll return the folder in exactly the condition I receive it. Sir,” he added.

“Suppose it’d be all right,” Hollister said, and eased himself out of his swivel chair, surprising Carella with a six-foot-four frame that should have belonged to a basketball player. He followed Hollister down the corridor, past Hillary, who sat on the bench and looked up at him inquiringly, and then into an office succinctly marked records on the frosted glass panel of its door. The office was lined with dusty wooden file cabinets that would have fetched handsome prices in any of Isola’s antique shops.

“How do you spell that last name?” Hollister asked.

“C-R-A-I-G,” Carella said, and thought again about fame, and wondered if somewhere in America there was at this very moment someone asking how you spelled Hemingway or Faulkner or even Harold Robbins.

“C-R-A-I-G,” Hollister said, and then went to one of the file cabinets, and opened the drawer, and kept spelling the name over and over to himself as he leafed through the folders.