Evan Hunter - Candyland

Anger flashes in her dark eyes.

"How'd you get this address?" she says.

"Harry gave it to me."

"I'll kill him."

"You hear this, Emma?" he says, and grins again. "Nothing better happen to him, huh? We just heard a death threat."

"He had no right telling you where I live."

"I could've got it from the files."

"No, you couldn't. I've never been busted."

"Anyway, we're here," Morgan says. "Offer us some lemonade."

"Lemonade, sure," she says.

"This is Detective Boyle," he says. "Few questions we'd like to ask you. Okay to come in?"

She glances at Emma appraisingly, gives Morgan a dirty look, and then steps aside to let them enter.

The apartment is cool and tidy and somehow barren. A small kitchen is to the left as they enter. In the living room, sunlight streams through windows overlooking low rooftops. Emma and Morgan sit on a cheap modern sofa with their backs to the windows. Consuelo sits in a straight-backed chair facing them. An air conditioner hums. A clock ticks.

"So what is this?" she asks.

"Somebody killed Cathy Frese," Morgan says.

"What?"

"Little Heidi."

"Jesus! Where? Up the place?"

"On the street," Morgan says.

"Outside the salon?"

"Few blocks away."

"I'll tell you the truth, that's what scares hell out of me."

"What's that?"

"Some john waiting for me outside. The weirdoes we get up there?" she says, and shakes her head.

"You didn't see anybody waiting outside for Cathy, did you?" Morgan asks. "This morning?"

"I left after she did."

"Any other time?"

"No. It's just the whole idea scares me."

"She didn't leave with anyone this morning, did she?" Emma asks.

"Harry would've busted her head."

"Why? Was he doing her, too?" Morgan asks.

"Go ask him."

"We will," Emma says. "Do you remember an incident with some guy who was drunk? Two, three weeks ago? Do you remember him?"

"Yeah, what about him?"

"Did he come back last night?"

"If he did, I didn't see him."

"Who was the other girl he roughed up, would you remember?"

"I think it was T.J. You know her?" she asks Morgan. "She wears these little Wizard of Oz shoes? Red sequins on them? You ever see her up there?"

"Alice," he says, and taps his temple.

"Yeah, Alice, that's what she calls herself up there. She did a lot of three-ways with Cathy."

"How about you?"

"Only once or twice. In fact, Cathy and me almost did one together last night."

"Almost?"

"Yeah. Guy wanted a room with a little blue light in it. I asked her did we have a room with a little blue light, some of these guys we get, I have to tell you. What it was, I went upstairs to take this John down because his time was up, and then I helped him find his raincoat in the closet, there's like this little closet as you come in. He found his coat…"

" This one's mine," he said, and took the coat off its wire hanger.

" You still here?" Heidi said, and grinned at him, the gold tooth in her mouth flashing.

" I'm waiting to talk to the manager," he said.

" I'll go get him," Bianca said. "We got a room with a little blue light, Heidi?"

"You want a little blue light?" Heidi asked him.

" How about both of you and a little blue light?" he said. "I've got plenty of time coming."

"He thinks he has time coming," Bianca said, and started out of the room.

" No kidding?" Heidi said, and grinned as if she'd just heard something very comical. "You really think so, Michael?"

" Was that his name?" Emma asks. "Michael?"

"That's what she called him."

"Why'd he want to see the manager?"

"He thought he had time coming."

"What's that mean?"

"He thought he didn't get his full hour or something, who the fuck knows? Harry threw him out on his ass."

"What do you mean?"

"Threw him down the stairs, beat the shit out of him."

"What time was this?" Emma asks at once.

"Two, three in the morning, who knows? He wanted to do me and Cathy in the time he had coming."

"And you say Cathy knew him?"

"Called him by name."

"Michael."

"Michael."

"What was his last name?"

"If that was even his first name," Consuelo says. "None of these guys give you their right names, am I right, Jimmy?"

"None of them," Morgan says. "What'd he look like?"

"Average-looking guy."

"Meaning?"

"Who knows what these guys look like?"

"Remember what he was wearing?" Emma asks.

"Sure. A gray cashmere jacket, dark gray flannel trousers, a blue button-down shirt and a dark blue tie."

"But you don't remember what he looked like."

"I notice what people are wearing."

"You say you went upstairs to get him…"

"Yeah. Cause his time was up."

"Who was he with?" Morgan asks.

"He was alone."

"I mean who'd be been with?"

"Oh. Josie and one of the other girls, I don't know who."

"Josie?" Emma says.

"Zampada. Up there, she goes by Fatima. She lives in Brooklyn. Right over the bridge."

"Looks like an Arab spy, right?" Morgan says, and taps his temple.

"You think so?" Consuelo says, and shrugs. "But you know, I don't think Cathy knew him that way, you know what I mean, this guy Michael, whatever his name was. I mean, they were just like trains that pass in the night, you know? Hello, goodbye, nice to see you, let's fuck, and Harry throws him down the stairs. I don't want to tell you how to run your business, but I'd be lookin for the guy who smacked her and T.J. around that time."

"Where does this T.J. live?" Emma asks.

"She's on Harry's list," Morgan says, and reaches into his jacket pocket for his notebook.

"She thinks she looks like Judy Garland," Conseulo says. "If you go see her, humor her."

Except for her brown eyes, Terri Jean Ryan doesn't look at all like Judy Garland. She isn't even wearing the signature red-sequined slippers she wears when she's Alice at the XS. When Morgan asks about them, she says simply, "That's for the job," and goes back to folding the laundry she's just carried up from the laundromat around the corner. Her television set is tuned to CNN. The newscaster is telling them that while most Americans are pleased that no expense was spared in locating the Kennedy plane, many are still wondering why the government exhausted such unusual efforts on the case. Occasionally, she glances up from the laundry to the TV screen. Her apartment is in the Ninth Precinct. Morgan tells both T.J. and Emma that he used to work out of the Ninth, when he first started as a patrolman.

"Used to be a lot of drugs in this precinct, it's much better now, gentrification. Back then, we had young people squatting in abandoned apartments here in Alphabet City, these “Too-Late Hippies,” I used to call them, feathers in their hair, no bras. They used to get beat up all the time by junkies who came crashing in. This was some wild precinct for a new cop, I gotta tell you."

T.J. is folding towels now. She listens to Morgan as if he is talking about another city here, this long-ago precinct when he was a rookie cop. Now there are decent restaurants all up and down the avenues, little theater groups, even art galleries. Emma tries to imagine a much younger Morgan strutting the streets in his brand new blues. She herself used to work out of the Three-Two up in Harlem, on West a Hun" Thirty-fifth and Seventh — which by the way was no picnic either. The male cops there used to jimmy open her locker and piss in her shoes, made her feel right at home, you know. She caught one with his penis in his hand one time, about to let go. She rammed her baton into his back, and he pissed all over his own pants. That was the last time she found soggy shoes in her locker.