Ed McBain: Doll

‘I was nowhere near Tinka’s apartment last Friday night.’

‘Apparently not. I know you won’t mind our contacting the friends you had dinner with, though — just to check.’

‘The receptionist will give you their number,’ Cutler said coldly.

‘Thank you.’

Cutler looked at his watch. ‘I have a lunch date,’ he said. ‘If you gentlemen are finished with your—’

‘I wanted to ask your receptionist about those telephone messages,’ Carella said. ‘And I’d also appreciate any information you can give me about Tinka’s friends and acquaintances.’

‘My wife will have to help you with that.’ Cutler glanced sourly at Kling and said, ‘I’m not planning to leave town. Isn’t that what you always warn a suspect not to do?’

‘Yes, don’t leave town,’ Kling said.

‘Bert,’ Carella said casually, ‘I think you’d better get back to the squad. Grossman promised to call with a lab report sometime this afternoon. One of us ought to be there to take it.’

‘Sure,’ Kling said. He went to the door and opened it. ‘My partner’s a little more subtle than I am,’ he said, and left.

Carella, with his work cut out for him, gave a brief sigh, and said, ‘Could we talk to your receptionist now, Mrs Cutler?’

When Carella left the agency at two o’clock that Monday afternoon, he was in possession of little more than he’d had when he first climbed those blue-carpeted steps. The receptionist, radiating wide-eyed helpfulness, could not remember any of the phone messages that had been left for Tinka Sachs on the day of her death. She knew they were all personal calls, and she remembered that some of them were from men, but she could not recall any of the men’s names. Neither could she remember the names of the women callers — yes, some of them were women, she said, but she didn’t know exactly how many — nor could she remember why any of the callers were trying to contact Tinka.

Carella thanked her for her help, and then sat down with Leslie Cutler — who was still fuming over Kling’s treatment of her husband — and tried to compile a list of men Tinka knew. He drew another blank here because Leslie informed him at once that Tinka, unlike most of the agency’s mannequins (the word ‘mannequin’ was beginning to rankle a little) kept her private affairs to herself, never allowing a date to pick her up at the agency, and never discussing the men in her life, not even with any of the other mannequins (in fact, the word was beginning to rankle a lot). Carella thought at first that Leslie was suppressing information because of the jackass manner in which Kling had conducted the earlier interview. But as he questioned her more completely, he came to believe that she really knew nothing at all about Tinka’s personal matters. Even on the few occasions when she and her husband had been invited to Tinka’s home, it had been for a simple dinner for three, with no one else in attendance, and with the child Anna asleep in her own room. Comparatively charmed to pieces by Carella’s patience after Kling’s earlier display, Leslie offered him the agency flyer on Tinka, the composite that went to all photographers, advertising agency art directors, and prospective clients. He took it, thanked her, and left.

Sitting over a cup of coffee and a hamburger now, in a luncheonette two blocks from the squadroom, Carella took the composite out of its manila envelope and remembered again the way Tinka Sachs had looked the last time he’d seen her. The composite was an eight-by-ten black-and-white presentation consisting of a larger sheet folded in half to form two pages, each printed front and back with photographs of Tinka in various poses.

Carella studied the composite from first page to last.

The only thing the composite told him was that Tinka posed fully clothed, modeling neither lingerie nor swimwear, a fact he considered interesting, but hardly pertinent. He put the composite into the manila envelope, finished his coffee, and went back to the squadroom.

Kling was waiting and angry.

‘What was the idea, Steve?’ he asked immediately.

‘Here’s a composite on Tinka Sachs,’ Carella said. ‘We might as well add it to our file.’

‘Never mind the composite. How about answering my question?’

‘I’d rather not. Did Grossman call?’

‘Yes. The only print they’ve found in the room so far are the dead girl’s. They haven’t yet examined the knife, or her pocketbook. Don’t try to get me off this, Steve. I’m goddamn good and sore.’

‘Bert, I don’t want to get into an argument with you. Let’s drop it, okay?’

‘No.’

‘We’re going to be working on this case together for what may turn out to be a long time. I don’t want to start by—’

‘Yes, that’s right, and I don’t like being ordered back to the squadroom just because someone doesn’t like my line of questioning.’

‘Nobody ordered you back to the squadroom.’

‘Steve, you outrank me, and you told me to come back, and that was ordering me back. I want to know why.’

‘Because you were behaving like a jerk, okay?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then maybe you ought to step back and take an objective look at yourself.’

‘Damnit, it was you who said the old man’s identification seemed reliable! Okay, so we walk into that office and we’re face to face with the man who’d just been described to us! What’d you expect me to do? Serve him a cup of tea?’

‘No, I expected you to accuse him—’

‘Nobody accused him of anything!’

‘—of murder and take him right up here to book him,’ Carella said sarcastically. ‘ That’s what I expected.’

‘I asked perfectly reasonable questions!’

‘You asked questions that were snotty and surly and hostile and amateurish. You treated him like a criminal from go, when you had no reason to. You immediately put him on the defensive instead of disarming him. If I were in his place, I’d have lied to you just out of spite. You made an enemy instead of a friend out of someone who might have been able to help us. That means if I need any further information about Tinka’s professional life, I’ll have to beg it from a man who now has good reason to hate the police.’

‘He fit our description! Anyone would have asked—’

‘Why the hell couldn’t you ask in a civil manner? And then check on those friends he said he was with, and then get tough if you had something to work with? What did you accomplish your way? Not a goddamn thing. Okay, you asked me, so I’m telling you. I had work to do up there, and I couldn’t afford to waste more time while you threw mud at the walls. That’s why I sent you back here. Okay? Good. Did you check Cutler’s alibi?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he with those people?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did they leave the restaurant at ten and walk around for a while?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then Cutler couldn’t have been the man Cyclops took up in his elevator.’

‘Unless Cyclops got the time wrong.’

That’s a possibility, and I suggest we check it. But the checking should have been done before you started hurling accusations around.’

‘I didn’t accuse anybody of anything!’

‘Your entire approach did! Who the hell do you think you are, a Gestapo agent? You can’t go marching into a man’s office with nothing but an idea and start—’

‘I was doing my best!’ Kling said. ‘If that’s not good enough, you can go to hell.’

‘It’s not good enough,’ Carella said, ‘and I don’t plan to go to hell, either.’

‘I’m asking Pete to take me off this,’ Kling said.