Evan Hunter - Candyland

"Just the way Cathy told it to me," Morgan says, and smiles pleasantly at Emma.

"What else can you tell us about him?" she asks.

"Like what?"

"Tattoos, scars, birth marks, any other identifying…?"

"He was just your everyday John," T.J. says wearily. "No better, no worse, no different from any of the others. They're all the same, each and every one of them."

She is carrying folded underwear into the bedroom when they let themselves out of the apartment. On the television screen, the anchors are describing the makeshift shrine on the sidewalk outside Kennedy's TriBeCa apartment…

"Mounds of flowers," the blonde is saying, "and candles…"

"Flags and balloons," the black man says.

"… and photos of a small boy in short pants saluting his dead father's coffin," the blonde says.

In the street outside, as they walk to the car, Morgan says, "Couple of things."

"Yeah?" Emma says.

"First, I been dealing with hookers a long time now…"

"And I've been dealing with…"

"I just don't need…"

"… rapists a long time. So if you're about to tell me…"

"I'm telling you I don't need advice on how to deal with hookers."

"Who the hell gave you any advice?"

"You wanted to hear the story from her, isn't that what you said? Why? You think it was gonna be any different from the story I heard?"

"I just wanted to get her version. As opposed to Cathy's."

"Just don't ever again diss me in front of a two-bit whore, okay?"

"Fine."

"And don't look so pissed off. If we're gonna work together, we gotta be honest with each other."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I said okay."

"Good."

"What's the second thing?" Emma asks.

"What?"

"You said a couple of things."

"The second thing is we ought to arrange some signals we can use. If we're gonna be working together any amount of time. Like if I touch my nose, for example, it'll mean you're Good Cop, I'm Bad Cop. Or if I call you Em instead of Emma…"

"I told you I don't like being called Em."

"That's just what I'm saying. If I call you Em in front of somebody we're questioning, that'll mean Don't go there. Same as if you call me James. Don't go there, leave it be, shift the topic to something else."

"Okay, but I don't think we'll be working together that long. That we have to arrange signals."

"How come? You know something I don't know?"

"We have a name. Stanley."

"I had the same name three weeks ago. It doesn't mean a thing. In fact, we have two names, if you want to get technical. Michael and Stanley. Both phony. These guys never use their real names."

"Stanley was drunk," Emma says.

" Even when they're drunk," Morgan insists.

"I'm saying if Stanley is his real name…"

"It's not, believe me."

"… and if he's an actor."

"That was all bullshit."

"Maybe not. He gave them the names of both movies he was in."

"He was trying to impress them. You heard T.J. One guy told her he worked for the State Department."

"He got upset cause they called him an extra."

"All part of the act."

"But if he really was in those movies, he got paid for his work. And if he got paid, there's a record someplace."

Morgan thinks this over for a minute.

"Maybe," he says, and nods.

"Let's make some phone calls," Emma says.

The lieutenant in command of the One-Nine Squad on East Sixty-seventh Street knows Emma from other rape cases she's worked in the precinct, especially the one Morgan earlier called "The Phantom Rape Artist," the black guy in the watch cap who has every cop on the Upper East Side running around in circles. He gives her and Morgan desks and telephones upstairs and tells them to yell if they need anything. The first call they make is to Manzetti, who tells Morgan at once that they already have two witnesses to what happened this morning. Surprised, Morgan turns to Emma and says, "You'd better pick up, he's got two witnesses."

Emma lifts the receiver on the extension phone. "Hi, Tony," she says. "You kidding?"

"No, we're gettin lucky here all of a sudden," Manzetti says. "There's this guy's a bartender in an after-hours joint on Second Avenue, he gets off work at three-thirty, four o'clock in the morning. He walks up to Third, and is heading uptown where he lives a few blocks away when this cab speeds by and splashes him with water from a puddle, all that rain we had last night, you remember? The cab pulls in just ahead, drops off a passenger, and pulls away. But he gets the license plate number, which is the same number as the medallion. It's also on both side doors and in a light on the roof, there's no question he got the right number, it's only three digits and a single letter."

Emma is wondering where all this is going.

"Well," Manzetti says, "the bartender's really pissed off, you know? When he wakes up today — which is around ten o'clock or so — he walks over to the One-Nine, which is the precinct where he got splashed…"

O- kay, Emma thinks.

"… so he can make a complaint because this was a new suit he was wearing and all. The sergeant he talks to takes down the cab's license plate number and then asks where the incident occurred…"

"I'm ahead of you," Emma says.

"Seventy-fourth and Third," Manzetti says.

"The XS Salon," Morgan says, nodding.

"You got it. That's where the cabbie dropped off his passenger. Guy was still standing outside the place with a blonde — you hearing this? — when the bartender leaves. Well, the sergeant is for a change alert, they just had a freakin homicide this morning and the vic happened to work on Seventy-fourth and Third. So he takes the guy upstairs to the detective who caught the squeal, who gets a descrip…"

"What'd he look like?" Morgan asks.

"Five-ten or so, medium build, dark hair."

"Could be our Stanley."

"Who's our Stanley?"

"Guy who caused the trouble up the XS I was telling you about. Emma thinks he might have given them his real name — cause he was drunk and all. We're just about to call the Screen Actors Guild, see if they got anything on him."

"He's a movie actor?"

"An extra."

"Well, let me know," Manzetti says dubiously.

"Who's your second witness?" Emma asks.

"A black cleaning lady going home from doing offices. She saw what looks like the same guy beating on a blonde, her words, on the corner of Seventieth and Second, this is now around four-fifteen, four-thirty, she didn't look at her watch, she just got the hell out of there fast. So if we get anybody we can parade for these two people, we're maybe getting someplace."

"Anybody call STED?" Morgan asks.

STED is the acronym for Surface Transit Enforcement Division. If Emma had that medallion number in her possession, first place she'd call would be the Taxi Enforcement Unit at STED. In New York City, every cab driver is required by law to fill out a so-called trip sheet, on which he writes down the location and time of every pick-up and drop-off he makes. Individual cab owners, fleet owners, and lease managers all keep these trip sheets on file until they're eventually turned over to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Morgan was getting back to basics. A cab had dropped off a possible suspect who was waiting outside the XS at close to the time Cathy Frese left work this morning. The trip sheet would tell them where the passenger was picked up. So had anyone called STED?

"Working it now," Manzetti says. "There's a hundred and four cabs in this particular fleet, they park in a garage here on the West Side. The night dispatcher'll go through the trip sheets soon as he gets in."

"Be nice to know," Morgan says.

"You realize, of course…"