he asked.
“I love ’em,” the chief of detectives said. “But I’m asking you.”
“I like ’em fine,” Hunter said.
“This girl you planned the trip with—a special friend?”
“A doll,” Hunter said, his face blank.
“But a friend?”
“A doll,” he repeated, and the chief of detectives knew that was all he’d get from Hunter. The tall, handsome blond man waited.
Kling watched him, never once connecting him with the blond man who had allegedly led Mary Louise Proschek into Charlie Chen’s tattoo parlor. Kling had read Carella’s report, but his mind simply did not make any connection.
“Next case,” the chief of detectives said, and Hunter walked across the stage.
When he reached the steps on the other side, he turned and shouted, “The city hasn’t heard the end of that goddamn pukey prison!” and then he went down the steps.
“Riverhead, two,” the chief of detectives said. “Donaldson, Chris, thirty-five. Tried to pick a man’s pocket in the subway. Transit cop made the pinch. Donaldson stated it was a mistake. How about it, Chris?”
Chris Donaldson could have been a double for Curt Hunter. As he walked across the stage, in fact, the chief of detectives murmured, “What is this? A twin act?” Donaldson was tall and blond and handsome. If there were any detectives in the audience with inferiority complexes, the combination of Hunter and Donaldson should have been enough to shove them over the thin line to psychosis. It was doubtful that the lineup had ever had such a combined display of masculine splendor since its inception. Donaldson seemed as unruffled as Hunter had been. He walked to the microphone. His head crossed the six-foot-three marker on the white wall behind him.
“There’s been a mistake,” Donaldson said.
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said calmly. “I didn’t pick anybody’s pocket, nor did I attempt to. I’m a gainfully employed citizen. The man whose pocket was picked simply accused the wrong person.”
“Then how come we found his wallet in your jacket pocket?”
“I have no idea,” Donaldson said. “Unless the real pickpocket dropped it there when he felt he was about to be discovered.”
“Tell us what happened,” the chief of detectives said, and then in an aside to the assembled bulls, he added, “This man has no record.”
“I was riding the subway home from work,” Donaldson said. “I work in Isola, live in Riverhead. I was reading my newspaper. The man standing in front of me suddenly wheeled around and said, ‘Where’s my wallet? Somebody took my wallet!’”
“Then what?”
“The car was packed. A man standing alongside us said he was a transit cop, and before you knew it, another man and I were grabbed and held. The cop searched us and found the wallet in my pocket.”
“Where’d the other man go?”
“I have no idea. When the transit cop found the wallet on me, he lost all interest in the other man.”
“And your story is that the other man was the pickpocket.”
“I don’t know who the pickpocket was. I only know that he wasn’t me. As I told you, I work for a living.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m an accountant.”
“For whom?”
“Binks and Lederle. It’s one of the oldest accounting firms in the city. I’ve worked there for a good many years.”
“Well, Chris,” the chief of detectives said, “it sounds good. It’s up to the judge, though.”
“There are people, you know,” Donaldson said, “who sue the city for false arrest.”
“We don’t know if it’s false arrest yet, do we?”
“I’m quite sure of it,” Donaldson said. “I’ve led an honest life, and I have no desire to get involved with the police.”
“Nobody does,” the chief of detectives said. “Next case.”
Donaldson walked off the stage. Kling watched him, wondering if his story were true, again making no connection between Mary Louise Proschek’s blond escort and the man who’d claimed he’d been falsely accused of pickpocketing.
“Diamondback, one,” the chief of detectives said. “Pereira, Genevieve, forty-seven. Slashed her husband with a bread knife. No statement. What happened, Jenny?”
Genevieve Pereira was a short woman with shrewd blue eyes. She stood with her lips pursed and her hands clasped. She was dressed neatly and quietly, the only garish thing about her being a smear of blood across the front of her dress.
“I detect an error in your notations, sir,” she said.
“Do you?”
“You’ve misrepresented me chronologically by two years. My age is only forty-five.”
“Forgive me, Jenny,” the chief of detectives said.
“I feel, too, that your familiarity is somewhat uncalled-for. Only my closest acquaintances call me Jenny. The appellation, for your exclusive benefit, is Genevieve.”
“Thank you,” the chief of detectives said, a smile in