Эд Макбейн - Ice

“All I know is she lives in the building,” he said. “Her name’s Sally Anderson, she lives in apartment 3-A.” He kept using the present tense when referring to her, as though her death had never happened, and even if it had was of small consequence to him — which was the truth.

“Did she live here alone?” Carella asked.

“Far as I know.”

“What does that mean?”

“These girls today, who knows who they live with? A guy, two guys, another girl, a cat, a dog, a goldfish — who knows, and who cares?”

“But as far as you know,” Meyer said patiently, “she was living here alone.”

“As far as I know,” the super said. He was a gaunt and graying man who had lived in this city all his life. There were burglaries day and night in this building and in all the other buildings he’d ever worked in over the years. He was no stranger to violence, and had little patience with the minor details of it.

“Mind if we take a look at the apartment?” Carella asked.

“Makes no matter to me,” the super said, and led them upstairs, and unlocked the door for them.

The apartment was small and furnished eclectically, modern pieces and antiques rubbing elbows side by side, throw pillows on the black leather sofa and the carpeted floor surrounding it, framed three-sheets from various shows, including the current hit Fatback, hanging on all the walls. There were several framed professional photographs of the girl in ballet tights, in various ballet positions, hanging on the wall outside the bathroom. There was a poster for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. There was a bottle of white wine on the kitchen counter. They found her appointment calendar near the telephone in her bedroom, on a night table alongside a king-sized bed covered with a patchwork quilt.

“Did you call the lab?” Meyer asked.

“They’re through here,” Carella said, nodding, and picked up the appointment calendar. It was one of those large, spiral-bound books that, when opened, showed each separate day at a glance. A large, orange-colored, plastic paper clip allowed the calendar to fall open easily to the twelfth of February. Meyer took out his notebook and began listing her daily appointments since the beginning of the month. He had come through Thursday, February 4, when the doorbell rang. Both detectives looked at each other. Carella went to the door, half expecting the super would be standing out there in the hall, asking for a search warrant or something.

The girl outside the door looked at Carella and said, “Oh.”

She looked at the numeral on the door as if somehow she’d made a mistake, and then she frowned. She was a tall, lissome Oriental girl, perhaps five nine or five ten, with midnight black hair and slanted eyes the color of loam. She was wearing a black ski parka over blue jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. A yellow watch cap was tilted saucily over one brow. A long yellow-and-black muffler hung loose over the front of the parka.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Carella said.

“Where’s Sally?” she asked, and peered past him into the apartment. Meyer had come out of the bedroom and stood in the living room now, within her frame of vision. Both men were still wearing overcoats. She glanced briefly at Meyer, and then looked back at Carella again.

“What is this?” she said. “What’s going on here?”

She backed away a pace, and then quickly glanced over her shoulder toward the elevator. Carella knew just what she was thinking. Two strangers in overcoats, no sign of her girlfriend Sally — she was interrupting a burglary in progress. Before she could panic, he said, “We’re policemen.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said skeptically, and glanced again toward the elevator.

A native, Carella thought, and almost smiled.

He took a small leather case from his pocket, and opened it to show his shield and his ID card. “Detective Carella,” he said, “87th Squad. This is my partner, Detective Meyer.”

The girl bent to look at the shield. She bent from the waist, her legs and her back stiff. A dancer, he thought. She straightened up again and looked him dead in the eye.

“What’s the matter?’ she said. “Where’s Sally?’

“Can you tell us who you are, please?” Carella asked.

“Tina Wong. Where’s Sally?”

Carella hesitated.

“What are you doing here, Miss Wong?” he said.

“Where’s Sally?” she said again, and moved past him into the apartment. She was obviously familiar with the place; she went first into the kitchen and then the bedroom and then came back into the living room, where the two detectives were waiting. “Where is she?” she said.

“Was she expecting you, Miss Wong?” Carella asked.

The girl did not answer him. Her eyes were beginning to reflect the knowledge that something was wrong. They darted nervously in her narrow face, moving from one detective to the other. Carella did not want to tell her, not yet, that Sally Anderson was dead. The story had not made the morning’s papers, but it was certain to be in the afternoon editions, on the newsstands by now. If she already knew Sally was dead, Carella wanted the information to come from her.

“Was she expecting you?” he said again.

The girl looked at her watch. “I’m five minutes early,” she said. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on here? Was she robbed or something?”

A native for sure, he thought. In this city, burglary was always confused with robbery — except by the police. The police only had trouble distinguishing one degree of burglary from another.

“What were your plans?” Carella asked.

“Plans?”

“With Miss Anderson.”

“Lunch and then the theater,” Tina said. “It’s a matinee day, half-hour is one-thirty.” She planted her feet firmly, put her hands on her hips, and said again, “Where is she?”

“Dead,” Carella said, and watched her eyes.

Only suspicion showed there. Not shock, not sudden grief, only suspicion. She hesitated a moment, and then said, “You’re putting me on.”

“I wish I were.”

“What do you mean, dead?” Tina said. “I saw her only last night. Dead?”

“Her body was found at twelve-thirty A.M.,” Carella said.

Something came into the eyes now. Belief. And then belated shock. And then something like fear.

“Who did it?” she asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“How? Where?”

“Outside the building here,” Carella said. “She was shot.”

“Shot?”

And suddenly she burst into tears. The detectives watched her. She fumbled in her shoulder bag for a tissue, wiped her eyes, began crying again, blew her nose, and continued crying. They watched her silently. They both felt huge and awkward in the presence of her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and blew her nose again, and looked for an ashtray into which she could drop the crumpled tissue. She took another tissue from her bag, and dabbed at her eyes again. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“How well did you know her?” Meyer asked gently.

“We’re very good...” She stopped, correcting herself, realizing she was talking about Sally Anderson as though she were still alive. “We were very good friends,” she said softly.

“How long had you known her?”

“Since Fatback.”

“Are you a dancer, too, Miss Wong?”

She nodded again.

“And you’d known her since the show opened?”

“Since we went into rehearsal. Even longer ago than that, in fact. From when we were auditioning. We met at the first audition.”

“When was that, Miss Wong?” Meyer asked.