"Is that what you meant, it fits?"

"Doesn't it?"

"I can't see Pete in that scene. I just can't. He was half-priest, for G.o.d's sake."

"And the other half?"

She shrugged. "Artist. Yeah, artist."

"I'm a square cop, Julie, but I don't think there's any reason to make those things except for money. Not if the guy's honest about it, and I know you're going to tell me he was honest."

"Pete did need money once, a lot of it. When Laura Gibson was dying, he took care of her. He paid her bills, doctors, hospital..." She stopped: Mrs. Ryan had put Mack into the hospital scene.

"Once." Russo picked up the word. "Don't hit me for this, but does anybody ever need money just once?"

"Yeah. Pete."

"Okay, if you say so." The detective sped up the tape and when it was run through he removed, boxed, and labeled it. "Donleavy's going to love this. You should've heard him this morning-'Dig! G.o.dd.a.m.n it, dig!' Family history, the works. Have you been in touch with Mallory's sister?"

"No," Julie said, "but I will call her. What about Pete's body?"

"It'll go home soon."

"And the lab report?"

"That doesn't have anything to do with it."

"Is it in?" Julie persisted.

He nodded. "Inconclusive."

"Come on, Detective Russo. What does that mean?"

"There was s.e.m.e.n, but that doesn't prove of itself he had s.e.x. The discharge could have happened during death trauma."

"Okay." She had asked for it.

"We just don't know what went on there. Everything's screwy-the business of no key, the place as neat as a pin, except for the one area. One set of fingerprints, Mack's, with all the Johns coming and going? That's crazy. Mack paid the rent there, even before she moved in. That was two months ago. Mallory lived in the building for five years. Who owns the building? I wouldn't be surprised now if it was the Romano syndicate. But what was going on between your friend and the little prost.i.tute-I wish I knew."

"If anything," Julie said.

"She's traveling light, wherever she is. She gave most of her clothes to a thrift shop after first trying to sell them there; she made up a c.o.c.k-and-bull story about getting married to a third-world diplomat, whatever the h.e.l.l that is..."

"No kidding," Julie said. She asked the name of the thrift shop. Haven House.

"I'll tell you one thing, Julie. I'm glad my job is collecting hard, cold evidence. I don't go in for the psycho bit."

Julie wondered what had brought that on.

Then: "Donleavy trying to figure out what it could mean, a wh.o.r.e buying a teddy bear. She wanted a present for her kid brother, right?"

"Right."

He shook his head. "It sure makes you wonder."

"What?"

"What the bra.s.s looks for when they go over the promotions list."

Julie did not much like that recurring confidence. And Donleavy was more her style, by the sound of it. She made no comment.

Russo returned to business. "What I thought we'd do this morning, Julie, I'd like you to try that phone number from here where we can put it on tape. Identify yourself and see what comes across. The phone is listed to a May Weems on Fifty-second Street. Mack's her pimp. Or was at the time of her last arrest. Don't tell her you know her name, of course."

Julie did not especially want to make the call, but she saw no reason not to. "What am I to say to her?"

"Just what you'd say to anybody who left a message for you to call them. Who are you? What do you want? But keep her talking."

"Okay."

Russo got the line he wanted and dialed. He handed the phone to Julie before the first ring. She a.s.sumed the recording device was operating.

The third ring brought an answer. "'Lo?" Sweet and low.

"This is Julie Hayes. I have a message to call this number."

"Friend Julie?"

Julie and Russo exchanged glances. "That's me."

"I was hoping you could help me get in touch with my friend Rita," the woman said, clearing her throat and then speaking with a certain hesitation that might be natural to her or might indicate that there was someone with her.

"I was hoping you could tell me," Julie said.

Russo made a sign to go easy.

The woman gave a surprised "Huh?" Then: "Don't you know where she is? She said like you'd sent her to this place. And I was thinking, why couldn't I go there too."

"Sorry, I can't help you," Julie said.

Russo made a winding sign: keep talking.

"Rita didn't mention having a friend," she tried.

"We was real close, Rita and me."

"How close? I mean were you in-laws or something?"

"Wife-in-laws. Know what that means?"

"Sure."

"Only now I want to split too, divorce like."

"Can't help you," Julie said.

Russo shook his head. This was not the way he wanted it played. Julie had the feeling that May might just know more than she did herself. If she did, Julie wanted to find out, but not on police tape, in case it involved Doctor Callahan.

"All I want is the name of the halfway house," May said before Julie could head her off.

"I don't have any such," Julie said and hung up the phone. A halfway house: that had to be Doctor Callahan's idea, and if there was a particular one, that too was Doctor's recommendation. She faced a detective who was both surprised and angry. "I'm sorry, Detective Russo, but I don't like to be used by anybody, including the police."

"What did she say? It's on the tape if you don't want to tell me."

"Nothing, really. I advised Rita when she came to see me," Julie lied, "to find herself a place to stop off part-way home, some place where she could get used to the idea that she wasn't a prost.i.tute anymore. She must have told this May person. May wanted to know where it was." Much too much explaining.

"And is there a place?"

"It was only a figure of speech," Julie said, and realizing that he would listen to the exact words anyway, she repeated them, hoping thereby to make them seem less specific, "a halfway house. That's what they call drug rehabilitation centers, isn't it?"

"Is it? Julie, it was you gave me the number of Miss Weems, if you don't want to play square with the police, don't volunteer to play at all. Now I've got work to do. Thanks for coming in."

"Don't mention it." There was no use trying to fix things. Unless she was prepared to mention Doctor Callahan. She wasn't.

He walked her down the stairs in silence. Then, as she was leaving: "You'd better count on it: Miss Weems is fronting for Mack. He's the one who's looking for the halfway house with Rita in it. It may turn out he wants Rita worse than we do."

20.

"THANKS FOR COMING IN," Julie thought, pounding her heels on the sidewalk of Ninth Avenue. Belatedly, she was furious with Russo. Thanks for coming in. She had brought him a direct link among Romano, Pete, and Mack, something it might have taken him a week to turn up without her help. She wasn't even sure he was glad to have the information. Maybe he didn't want the Romano connection: big in real estate. Rita was more his speed. Julie was swinging in all directions and it did not take her long to realize that Russo was not the actual object of her anger: she was. She had herself to blame now if Doctor became involved, playing police lady, first a.s.sistant to a detective third grade. Whoops. Another twist to the umbilical of truth: with his "psycho" crack, Detective Russo had alienated Friend Julie.

She had to turn back to look for Haven House. Rita's fantasy of being married to a third-world diplomat was wild; her notion of the third world could not be much deeper than Julie's own and the first thing that came to mind with the phrase was the prevalence of black people. Which, on the surface, made it hard to reconcile the fantasy marriage with Rita's remark-concerning Goldie-that she didn't think she could fall in love with a black man. Julie wondered if, asking questions in the thrift shop, she should try to pa.s.s as a police investigator. She was about to go public for the first time.

The woman in charge of the shop-run for the benefit of a school for the severely r.e.t.a.r.ded-looked as though she were an alumna of Miss Page's School. "Can I help you, dear?"

All right.

"Well, yes," Julie said, and tuned her own accent to the prevailing key. "Detective Russo said you might be kind enough to repeat for me the story Rita Morgan told you. He wants my psychological evaluation of it."

"Rita Morgan. Ah, yes. The unfortunate." Undoubtedly a Miss Page graduate. With a straight "A" in Compa.s.sion.

The one customer in the shop, a teen-aged girl, slipped out the door with a surrept.i.tious glance over her shoulder, "What did she steal?" Julie said.

"I'm afraid you're right. Probably a bit of costume jewelry. I follow them sometimes and ask them to pay a token price-I'll ask for anywhere between a nickel and a quarter."

"Killjoy."

"You are joking?"

"You bet... Try to remember from the first time Rita Morgan came in the store."

"She only came once."

"But she tried first to sell you certain items of apparel?"

"Yes... some exquisite lingerie which had never been worn. She said she was going to be married and it was part of her trousseau, but her husband-to-be wouldn't understand such finery. He was a third-world diplomat, she said. But it was rather curious, Miss... Mrs. I don't even know your name."

"Mrs. Julie Hayes. Please don't stop about Rita. It was curious, you say."

"Curious... yes. When I asked if he was with the U.N. she didn't seem to understand. I know now of course that it was a complete fabrication."

"That doesn't matter," Julie said. "It's the fabrication that interests me. I think we reveal more of ourselves in the lies we tell than we do when we try to tell the truth."

"For me it's quite the opposite. I don't find it all that difficult to tell the truth, and I can't lie worth a darn."

Julie smiled and prompted gently, "A third-world diplomat."

"She said that in his country only women of the street wore fancy underclothes and she wanted to do everything proper when he took her home. I explained that we have no purchasing budget, and when I think now of what she said, well... she said, 'I don't mind donating-if they're going to bring a good price to somebody.' I said I'd save them for the summer auction and that seemed to please her. And, of course, I offered to send her the usual tax-deductible receipt. You can imagine how foolish I felt telling that to Detective Russo when I found out what her real occupation was."

"What did she say?"

"That please, I wasn't to send any receipt. She didn't want to have to explain it to her fiance. She also left a box which included two lame dresses, a gold one and a silver. She was gone by the time I got around to opening the box. I did wonder, such a child for clothes like that."

Julie nodded. "Any more conversation?"

"She wanted to know what severely r.e.t.a.r.ded meant as against just plain r.e.t.a.r.ded, and I explained it meant people for whom there was no hope that they would ever be able to help themselves. 'But they don't know there isn't any hope, do they?' she said. And I told her what I believe is so: If they knew, they wouldn't be severely r.e.t.a.r.ded and there'd be hope. It sounds like semantics, and maybe it is, but to me it's worth saying because it sounds cheerful. She smiled when I said that, I do believe gratefully. She said, 'My brother is r.e.t.a.r.ded.'"

Julie held back any show of surprise.

"And that too," the woman added, "could be something she made up."

"It could, couldn't it?"

Julie went along to Forty-fourth Street and wrote down Rita's account of herself as given to the thrift shop woman. Why that story? Why any story? And the r.e.t.a.r.ded brother for whom she bought a teddy bear the next day, and then got as far at least as the Port Authority Building... a couple of hours before Pete Mallory was murdered in her apartment. She wanted to do everything proper when the third-world diplomat took her home. Psychological evaluation. Yeah.

The morning papers carried Sergeant Greenberg's sketch of Rita. That was going to be a great help when it came to doing everything proper. The third world. Suppose Rita meant The Life as one world, the straight world as number two, and a kind of limbo as number three, a halfway house... Hey! Then who was the diplomat? Pete?

Julie locked the shop door so that she would not be disturbed and phoned the Illinois area code for Libertytown Information. She got the number of Helen Mallory and dialed it before she could change her mind. Waiting, listening to the bleeps and buzzings in the few seconds before the connection was completed, she thought of Russo's picture: the lone woman groping her way through the house to answer the phone in the middle of the night. Did she look like Pete? Younger? Older? The phone was ringing. The voice that answered was strong and resonant. Somehow Julie had expected a mouse.

"Miss Mallory?"

"Yes."