Эд Макбейн - Ice

“Does she live here in the city?”

“No, she lives in San Francisco.”

“Did Miss Anderson have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“Then essentially—”

“Yes, I suppose you could say I was closest... to her.”

“I’m assuming you confided things to each other.”

“Yes.”

“Did she ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”

“No.”

“Anyone following her?”

“No.”

“Or lurking about the building?”

“No.”

“Did she owe money to anyone?”

“No.”

“Did anyone owe her money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was she involved with drugs?”

“No.”

“Or any other illegal activity?”

“No.”

“Had she recently received any gifts from strangers?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“At the theater,” Carella said. “Flowers... or candy? From unknown admirers?”

“She never mentioned anything like that.”

“Did she ever have any trouble at the stage door?”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Someone waiting for her, trying to talk to her, or touch her—”

“You don’t mean autograph hounds?”

“Well, anyone who might have got overly aggressive.”

“No.”

“Or who was rejected by her—”

“No.”

“Nothing you saw or that she later mentioned to you.”

“Nothing.”

“Mr. Moore,” Carella said, “we’ve gone through Miss Anderson’s appointment calendar and had a schedule typed up for every day this month. We’ve just now received her address book from Midtown East, and we’ll be cross-checking that against the names on the calendar. But you might save us some time if you could identify—”

“I’ll be happy to,” Moore said.

Carella opened the top drawer of his desk and took out several photocopies of the sheet Miscolo had typed from their handwritten notes. He handed one of the copies to Moore and another to Meyer.

“Kaplan’s her shrink,” Moore said. “She saw him at four o’clock every Monday, Thursday, and Friday.”

“Would you know his first name?”

“Maurice, I think.”

“Know where his office is?”

“Yes, on Jefferson. I picked her up there once.”

“Who’s this Herbie she had lunch with?”

“Herb Gotlieb, her agent.”

“Know where his office is?”

“Midtown someplace. Near the theater.”

“That’s when she was due at the theater,” Moore said. “The curtain goes up at eight each night, two o’clock for the matinees. Half hour is one-thirty for the matinees, seven-thirty for the evening performances. That means the company gets to the theater a half hour before curtain.”

“What’s this audition at two o’clock?” Carella asked. “Do they audition for other parts when they’re already working in a hit?”

“Oh, yes, all the time,” Moore said.

“We’ve got her clocked for two calls a week to ‘Mother M,’ ” Meyer said. “Would that be her mother in San Francisco?”

“No,” Moore said. “That’s my mother. In Miami.”

“She called your mother twice a week?”

“Every week. Sally didn’t get along too well with her own mother. She left home at an early age, went to London to study ballet. Things were never the same afterward.”

“So your mother was... sort of a substitute, huh?”

“A surrogate, if you will.”

“Mother M. Does that stand for—?”

“Mother Moore, yes.”

“That’s what she called her, huh?”

“Yes. We used to joke about it. Made my mother sound like a nun or something.” He paused. “Has anyone contacted Mrs. Anderson? I’m sure she’d want to know. I guess.”

“Would you know her first name?” Carella asked.

“Yes, it’s Phyllis. Her number’s probably in Sally’s book. You did say Mr. Levine had sent you—”

“Yes, we have it here with some of her other stuff. The stuff the lab’s finished with.”

“What’s the lab looking for?” Moore asked.

“Who knows what they look for?” Carella said, and smiled. He knew damn well what they looked for. They looked for anything that might shed a little light on either the killer or the victim. The killer because he was still loose out there and the longer he stayed loose the harder it would be to get him. And the victim because very often the more you knew about what a person had been, the easier it became to learn why anyone would want that person to cease being.

“But surely,” Moore said, “nothing in Sally’s personal effects could possibly tell you anything about the lunatic who attacked her.”

Again, neither of the detectives mentioned that the same “lunatic” had attacked and killed a young cocaine dealer named Paco Lopez three nights before he’d killed Sally. Instead, both of them looked at the schedules in their hands. Taking his cue, Moore also looked at his schedule.

“Two performances every Wednesday and Saturday,” Moore said.

“Who’s Antoine?” Carella asked.

“Her hairdresser,” Moore said. “He’s on South Arundel, six blocks from her apartment.”

“There’s Herbie again,” Meyer said.

“Yes, she saw him often,” Moore said. “Well, an agent is very important to an actress’s career, you know.”

The listings for the remaining nine days between Wednesday, February 3 and Friday, February 12 — the last full day before she was murdered — followed much the same pattern. Dance class on Monday through Friday at 10:00 in the morning. Kaplan at 4:00 P.M. three times a week. Calls to Moore’s mother in Miami twice a week. Meetings with her agent Herbie at least twice a week, and sometimes more often. The page for Sunday, February 7, listed only the word “Del” without a time before it, and then the words “8:00 P.M. Party. Lonnie’s.”

“She’s one of the black dancers in the show,” Moore said. “Lonnie Cooper. That’s the party Sally wanted me to go to last week.”

“And who’s Del?” Carella asked.

“Del?”

“Right there on the sheet,” Carella said. “Del. No time, no place. Just Del.”

“Del? Oh,” Moore said. “Of course.”

“Who is he? Or she?”

“Neither,” Moore said, and smiled. “That stands for delicatessen.”

“Delicatessen?” Meyer said.

“Cohen’s Deli,” Moore said. “On the Stem and North Rogers. Sally went up there every Sunday. To pick up bagels and lox, cream cheese, the works.”

“And she put that on her calendar, huh?”

“Well, yes, she put everything on her calendar.”

“Went up there every Sunday.”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“It varied.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said, and looked at the sheet again.

On Thursday, February 11, Sally had gone to her hairdresser again, and then later in the day to a meeting with a man named Samuel Lang at Twentieth Century-Fox. On the day before she was killed, she had taken her cat to the vet’s at 1:00 in the afternoon. The listed calendar appointments naturally spilled over into the weeks beyond her death; even in this city, no one ever expected a gun exploding out of the night. She had, for example, meticulously noted “Dance” for every February weekday at 10:00 A.M. and had similarly noted her appointments with Kaplan, her twice-weekly calls to Moore’s mother, and the times she was due at the theater. For Monday, February 15, she had noted that the cat had to be picked up at 3:00 P.M.