The Heckler

“Won’t take a second to buzz her,” Pitt said. He went to the switchboard and plugged in one of the rubber snakes there. Holding the earpiece to his right ear, he waited a moment and then said, “Lotte? This is Roger downstairs. There’s a feller here asking questions about Johnny. Yes, that’s right,your Johnny. Well I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind talking to him. Well, he’s from the police, Lotte. Now, Lotte, there’s no need to go getting upset. No, he seems to be a very nice young feller. Okay, I’ll tell him.”

Pitt put down the headset, pulled out the plug, and said, “She’ll be right down. She got a little upset when she heard you was a cop.”

“Everybody gets upset when they hear that,” Carella said, smiling.

He leaned against the counter and waited for the arrival of Miss Lotte Constantine. If there was one thing he disliked, he supposed it was interrogating old people. Actually, there were a great many things he disliked, and a great many people who would testify to the fact that Steve Carella was, on occasion, a goddammed crab. So it was an understatement to say, “If there wasone thing he disliked.” But, among his other dislikes, interrogating oldsters took high priority, and interrogating oldwomen particularly annoyed him. He had no idea why he disliked old women unless it had something to do with the fact that they were no longer young. In any case, he found talking to them trying to his patience, and he was not now looking forward to meeting Miss Lotte Constantine, the girl friend of a man who had been in his sixties.

He watched a luscious redhead in a very tight skirt as she navigated her way down the carpet-covered steps from the first floor. Because the skirt was so tight, the girl had lifted it above her knees, and she walked downstairs with her head slightly bent, watching the steps, a hank of red hair falling over one eye.

“Here she is now,” Pitt said, and Carella turned to look into the lobby, saw no one there, and then looked up the steps beyond the redhead, still seeing no one, and then the redhead was swiveling over to the desk with a lubricated hip and thigh movement that made him seasick, and she extended a hand tipped with scarlet claws and she said in the sexiest voice since Mae West was a girl, “Hello, I’m Lotte Constantine.”

Carella swallowed hard and said, “You? Are? Miss Constantine?”

The girl smiled. Her lips moved back from her teeth like tinted clouds pulling aside to let the sunshine through. A dimple appeared in either cheek. Her green eyes flashed. “Yes,” she said. “And you are…?”

“Detective Carella,” he said, struggling to regain some of his composure. He had expected a woman in her late fifties and when he’d been confronted with azaftig redhead who’d seemed at a distance, to be in her early thirties, he’d been flabbergasted, to say the least. At close range, however, he realized this girl was no older than twenty-three, bursting all over the place with youth and vitality and abundant flesh that threatened every stitch of clothing she wore. So he automatically thought of the old man who had been Johnny Something-or-other, and then he automatically thought ofMiddle of the Night, and Oh my, he thought, oh my, oh my.

“Could we sit down and talk a little, Miss Constantine?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she said. She smiled shyly, as if she were unused to sitting with strange men. Her lashes fluttered. She sucked in a deep breath and Carella turned away, pretending to look for a chair.

“We can sit over there,” Lotte said, and she began leading the way. Carella walked behind her. Married man and all, he had to admit this girl had the plumpest, most inviting bottom he had seen in a dog’s age. He was tempted to pinch her, but he restrained himself. I’m much too young for her, he thought, and he grinned.

“Why are you smiling?” the girl asked, sitting and crossing her legs.

“I was only thinking you’re a lot younger than I imagined you would be.”

“What did you imagine?”

“Truthfully?”

“Of course,” Lotte said.

“A woman in her fifties.”

“Why?”

“Well…” Carella shrugged. He took the picture from his pocket again. “Know this man?”

She glanced at the picture and nodded immediately. “Yes,” she said. “What’s happened to him?” She did not blench or gasp or wince or blush or grimace. She simply said, “Yes,” and then, matter-of-factly and just as quickly, said, “What’s happened to him?”

“He’s dead,” Carella said.

She nodded. She said nothing. Then she gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, and then she nodded again.

“Who was he?” Carella asked.

“Johnny.”

“Johnny who?”

“Smith.”

Carella stared at her.

“Yes, Smith,” she said. “John Smith.”

“And who are you? Pocahontas?”

“I don’t think that’s funny. He told me his name was John Smith. Why shouldn’t I believe him?”

“Why shouldn’t you indeed? How long had you known him, Miss Constantine?”

“Since January.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Last month sometime.”

“Can you remember when last month?”

“The end of the month.”

“Were you and he very serious?”