Эд Макбейн - Ice

“As a matter of fact, why don’t you kill two birds with one stone?” Carter said.

“Sir?” Carella said.

“I mean, as long as you’ll be at the theater.”

The detectives looked at him, puzzled.

“I’ve guaranteed a pair for a friend of mine, but there was a message on my machine that he won’t be coming into the city tonight because of the weather.” Carter looked at their blank faces. “I’m talking about the show,” he said. “Do you think you might like to see it? There’s a pair of house seats guaranteed at the box office.”

“Oh,” Carella said.

“Oh,” Meyer said.

“What do you think?” Carter asked.

“Well, thank you,” Meyer said, “but my wife and I are meeting some friends for dinner tonight.”

“How about you?”

“Well...” Carella said.

“You’ll enjoy it, believe me.”

“Well...”

He was hesitating because he didn’t know what “house seats” were and he didn’t know what “guaranteed” meant, but it sounded to him as if these might be free tickets, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to accept a gift from a man who claimed to believe a five-foot-eight blonde murder victim was a “little redheaded thing.” Carella had learned early on in the game that if you wanted to survive as a cop, you either took nothing at all or you took everything that wasn’t nailed down. Accept a cup of coffee on the arm from the guy who ran the local diner? Fine. Then also take a bribe from the friendly neighborhood fence who was running a tag sale on stolen goods every Sunday morning. A slightly dishonest cop was the same thing as a slightly pregnant woman.

“How much do these tickets cost?” he asked.

“Forget it,” Carter said, and waved the question aside, and Carella knew the man had figured he was seeking the grease; he was, after all, a cop in this fair city, wasn’t he? And cops copped; anytime and anyplace they could.

“Are house seats free tickets?” Carella asked.

“No, no, we do have investors, you know, we can’t go giving away seats to a hit,” Carter said. “But these are taken care of, don’t worry about them.”

“Who’s taking care of them?” Carella asked.

“I personally guaranteed them,” Carter said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Carella said. “Guaranteed.”

“I personally agreed to pay for them. Even if they weren’t claimed.”

“Claimed?”

“By law, house seats have to be claimed forty-eight hours before any performance. By guaranteeing them, I was — in effect — claiming them.”

“But they haven’t been paid for yet.”

“No, they haven’t.”

“Then I’ll pay for them myself, sir,” Carella said.

“Well, really—”

“I’d like to see the show, sir, but I’d like to pay for the tickets myself.”

“Fine, whatever you say. They’re being held at the box office in my friend’s name. Robert Harrington. You can claim them anytime before the curtain goes up.”

“Thank you,” Carella said.

“I’ll call the stage door, meanwhile, tell them you’ll be stopping by for that list.”

“Thank you.”

“I still don’t understand what house seats are,” Meyer said.

“Choice seats set aside for each performance,” Carter said. “For the producer, director, choreographer, stars—”

“Set aside?”

“Reserved,” Carter said, nodding. “By contract. So many seats for each performance. The higher you are in the pecking order, the more seats you’re entitled to buy. If you don’t claim them, of course, they go right back on sale in the box office, on a first-come, first-served basis.”

“Live and learn,” Meyer said, and smiled.

“Yes,” Carter said, and glanced at his watch.

“Anything else?” Carella asked Meyer.

“Nothing I can think of,” Meyer said.

“Then thank you, sir,” Carella said. “And thanks for making those seats available to me.”

“My pleasure,” Carter said.

The detectives were silent in the elevator down to the street. The elevator operator, who had already informed them earlier that it was going to snow tomorrow, seemed to have nothing more to say. The sky was even more threatening when they stepped outside again. Darkness was coming on. It would be a moonless night.

“I just want to make sure I heard her right,” Meyer said.

“Tina Wong, do you mean?”

“Yeah. She did say, ‘Five blondes, two blacks, and a token Chink,’ didn’t she?”

“That’s what she said.”

“So how could Carter think Sally Anderson was a redhead?”

“Maybe one of the understudies is a redhead.”

“Maybe I’m a redhead, too,” Meyer said. “Didn’t Carter say that once they started run-throughs he was at every rehearsal?”

“That’s what he said.”

“So he knows that damn show. How could he possibly think there was a redhead up there?”

“Maybe he’s color-blind.”

“You did catch it, didn’t you?”

“Oh, I caught it, all right.”

“I was wondering why you didn’t jump on it.”

“I wanted to see how far he’d go with it.”

“He didn’t go anywhere with it. He let it lay there like a lox.”

“Maybe he was just trying it for size.”

“Backing up what he said about not knowing her from a hole in the wall. Just another one of the girls, another face in the crowd.”

“Which may be true, Meyer. There are thirty-eight people in the cast. You can’t expect a man to remember—”

“What’s thirty-eight people, a nation?” Meyer said. “We’ve got close to two hundred cops in the precinct, and I know each and every one of them. By sight, at least.”

“You’re a trained observer,” Carella said, smiling.

“How long does it take to get from Philadelphia by train?” Meyer asked.

“About an hour and a half.”

“Easy to get here and back again,” Meyer said. “Time enough to do anything that had to be done here. If a person had anything to do here.”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Jamie digs blondes, remember?” Meyer said. “Isn’t that what she told us? The choreographer digs blondes. So how come every-body in the world knows this but Carter? He was there when the whole mishpocheh was picking the dancers. Decision by committee, remember? So how come, all of a sudden, he has trouble remembering what color her hair is? A little redheaded thing, he calls her. All of a sudden, his choreographer — who likes them blonde — ends up with a redhead in his chorus line. Steve, that stinks. I’m telling you it stinks. Do you buy it?”

“No,” Carella said.

Buying the tickets came as something of a shock.

Carella had not seen a hit show in a long time, and he did not know what current prices were. When the woman in the box office shoved the little white envelope across the counter to him, he glanced at the yellow tickets peeking out, thought he saw the price on one of them, figured he must be wrong, and then had verbal confirmation when the woman said, “That’ll be eighty dollars, please.” Carella blinked. Eighty divided by two came to $40 a seat! “Will that be charge or cash?” the woman asked.

Carella did not carry a credit card; he did not know any cops who carried credit cards. He panicked for a moment. Did he have $80 in cash in his wallet? As it turned out, he was carrying $92, which meant he would have to call home and ask Teddy to bring some cash with her tonight. He parted with the money reluctantly. This had better be some show, he thought, and walked to the pay phone in the lobby. Fanny, the Carella housekeeper, answered on the fourth ring.