The Empty Hours (9 page)

“When
did she plan to leave?”

“September
first.”

“Well,
that explains the luggage and the clothes,” Carella said aloud.

“I’m
sorry,” Miss Feldelson said, and she smiled and raised her eyebrows.

“Nothings
nothing,” Carella said. “What was your impression of Miss Davis?”

“Oh,
that’s hard to say. She was only here once, you understand.” Miss Feldelson
thought for a moment, and then said, “I suppose she
could
have been a
pretty girl if she tried, but she wasn’t trying. Her hair was short and dark, and
she seemed rather
— well, withdrawn, I guess. She didn’t take her sunglasses off all
the while she was here. I suppose you would call her shy. Or frightened. I don’t
know.” Miss Feldelson smiled again. “Have I helped you any?”

“Well,
now we know she was going abroad,” Carella said.

“September
is a good time to go,” Miss Feldelson answered. “In September the tourists have
all gone home.” There was a wistful sound to her voice. Carella thanked her for
her time and left the small office with its travel folders on the cluttered
desk top.

* * * *

12

He was running out of checks
and running out of ideas. Everything seemed to point toward a girl in flight,
a girl in hiding, but what was there to hide, what was there to run from? Josie
Thompson had been in that boat alone. The coroner’s jury had labeled it
accidental drowning. The insurance company hadn’t contested Claudia’s claim,
and they’d given her a legitimate check that she could have cashed anywhere in
the world. And yet there
was
hiding, and there
was
flight
— and
he couldn’t understand why. He took the list of remaining checks from his
pocket. The girl’s shoemaker, the girl’s hairdresser, a florist, a candy shop.
None of them truly important. And the remaining check made out to an
individual, the check numbered 006 and dated July eleventh, and written to a
man named David Oblinsky in the amount of $45.75. Carella had his lunch at
two-thirty and
then went downtown. He found Oblinsky in a diner near the bus
terminal. Oblinsky was sitting on one of the counter stools, and he was
drinking a cup of coffee. He asked Carella to join him, and Carella did.

“You
traced me through that check, huh?” he said. “The phone company gave you my
number and my address, huh? I’m unlisted, you know. They ain’t suppose to give
out my number.”

“Well,
they made a special concession because it was police business.”

“Yeah,
well, suppose the cops called and asked for Marlon Brando’s number? You think
they’d give it out? Like hell they would. I don’t like that. No, sir, I don’t
like it one damn bit.”

“What
do you do, Mr. Oblinsky? Is there a reason for the unlisted number?”

“I
drive a cab is what I do. Sure there’s a reason. It’s classy to have an
unlisted number. Didn’t you know that?”

Carella
smiled. “No, I didn’t.”  

“Sure,
it is.”

“Why
did Claudia Davis give you this check?” Carella asked.

“Well,
I work for a cab company here in this city, you see. But usually on weekends or
on my day off I use my own car and I take people on long trips, you know what I
mean? Like to the country, or the mountains, or the beach, wherever they want
to go. I don’t care. I’ll take them wherever they want to go.”

“I see.”

“Sure.
So in June sometime, the beginning of June it was, I get a call from this guy
I know up at Triangle Lake, he tells me there’s a rich broad there who needs
somebody to drive her Caddy back to the city for her. He said it was worth
thirty bucks if I was willing to take the train up and the heap back. I told
him, no sir, I wanted forty-five or it was no deal. I knew I had him over a
barrel, you understand? He’d already told me he checked with the local hicks
and none of them felt like making the ride. So he said he would talk it over
with her and get back to me. Well, he called again . . . you know, it burns me
up about the phone company. They ain’t suppose to give out my number like that.
Suppose it was Marilyn Monroe? You think they’d give out her number? I’m gonna
raise a stink about this, believe me.”

“What
happened when he called you back.”

“Well,
he said she was willing to pay forty-five, but like could I wait until July sometime
when she would send me a check because she was a little short right at the
moment. So I figured what the hell, am I going to get stiffed by a dame who’s
driving a 1960 Caddy? I figured I could trust her until July. But I also told
him, if that was the case, then I also wanted her to pay the tolls on the way
back, which I don’t ordinarily ask my customers to do. That’s what the
seventy-five cents was for. The tolls.”

“So you
took the train up there and then drove Miss Davis and the Cadillac back to the
city, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“I
suppose she was pretty distraught on the trip home.”

“Huh?”

“You,
know. Not too coherent.”

“Huh?”

“Broken
up. Crying. Hysterical,” Carella said.

“No.
No, she was okay.”

“Well,
what I mean is . . .” Carella hesitated. “I assumed she wasn’t capable of
driving the car back herself.”

“Yeah,
that’s right. That’s why she hired me.”

“Well,
then . . .”

“But
not because she was broken up or anything.”

“Then
why?” Carella frowned. “Was there a lot of luggage? Did she need your help with
that?”

“Yeah,
sure. Both hers and her cousin’s. Her cousin drowned, you know.”

“Yes. I
know that.”

“But
anybody coulda helped her with her luggage,” Oblinsky said. “No, that wasn’t
why she hired me. She really
needed
me, mister.”

“Why?”

“Why?
Because she don’t know how to drive, that’s why.”

Carella
stared at him. “You’re wrong,” he said.

“Oh,
no,” Oblinsky said. “She can’t drive, believe me. While I was putting the
luggage in the trunk, I asked her to start the car, and she didn’t even know
how to do that. Hey, you think I ought to raise a fuss with the phone company?”

“I don’t
know,” Carella said, rising suddenly. All at once the check made out to
Claudia Davis’ hairdresser seemed terribly important to him. He had almost run
out of checks, but all at once he had an idea.

* * * *

13

The hairdresser’s salon was on
South Twenty-third, just off Jefferson Avenue. A green canopy covered the
sidewalk outside the salon. The words ARTURO MANFREDI, INC., were lettered
discreetly in white on the canopy. A glass plaque in the window repeated the
name of the establishment and added, for the benefit of those who did not read
either
Vogue
or
Harper’s Bazaar
that there were two branches of
the shop, one here in Isola and another in “Nassau, the Bahamas.” Beneath that,
in smaller, more modest letters, were the words “Internationally Renowned.”
Carella and Hawes went into the shop at four-thirty in the afternoon. Two
meticulously coifed and manicured women were sitting in the small reception
room, their expensively sleek legs crossed, apparently awaiting either their
chauffeurs, their husbands, or their lovers. They both looked up expectantly
when the detectives entered, expressed mild disappointment by only slightly
raising newly plucked eyebrows, and went back to reading their fashion
magazines. Carella and Hawes walked to the desk. The girl behind the desk was a
blonde with a brilliant shellacked look and an English finishing school voice.

“Yes?”
she said. “May I help you?”

She
lost a tiny trace of her poise when Carella flashed his buzzer. She read the
raised lettering on the shield, glanced at the photo on the plastic-encased
I.D. card, quickly regained her polished calm, and said coolly and
unemotionally, “Yes, what can I do for you?”

“We
wonder if you can tell us anything about the girl who wrote this check?”
Carella said. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a folded photostat of
the check, unfolded it, and put it on the desk before the blonde. The blonde
looked at it casually.

“What
is the name?” she asked. “I can’t make it out.”

“Claudia
Davis.”

“D-A-V-I-S.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t
recognize the name,” the blonde said. “She’s not one of our regular customers.”

“But
she did make out a check to your salon,” Carella said. “She wrote this on July
seventh. Would you please check your records and find out why she was here and
who took care of her?”

“I’m
sorry,” the blonde said.

“What?”

“I’m
sorry, but we close at five o’clock, and this is the busiest time of the day
for us. I’m sure you can understand that. If you’d care to come back a little
later . . .”

“No, we
wouldn’t care to come back a little later,” Carella said. “Because if we came
back a little later, it would be with a search warrant and possibly a warrant
for the seizure of your books, and sometimes that can cause a little commotion
among the gossip columnists, and that kind of commotion might add to your
international renown a little bit. We’ve had a long day, miss, and this is
important, so how about it?”

“Of
course. We’re always delighted to cooperate with the police,” the blonde said
frigidly. “Especially when they’re so well mannered.”

“Yes,
we’re all of that,” Carella answered.

“Yes.
July seventh, did you say?”

“July
seventh.”

The
blonde left the desk and went into the back of the salon. A brunette came out
front and said, “Has Miss Marie left for the evening?”

“Who’s
Miss Marie?” Hawes asked.

“The
blond girl.”

“No.
She’s getting something for us.”

“That
white streak is very attractive,” the brunette said. “I’m Miss Olga.”

“How do
you do.”

“Fine,
thank you,” Miss Olga said. “When she comes back, would you tell her there’s
something wrong with one of the dryers on the third floor?”

“Yes, I
will,” Hawes said.

Miss
Olga smiled, waved, and vanished into the rear of the salon again. Miss Marie
reappeared not a moment later. She looked at Carella and said, “A Miss Claudia
Davis was here on July seventh. Mr. Sam worked on her. Would you like to talk
to him?”

“Yes,
we would.”

“Then
follow me, please,” she said curtly.

They
followed her into the back of the salon past women who sat with crossed legs,
wearing smocks, their heads in hair dryers.

“Oh, by
the way,” Hawes said, “Miss Olga said to tell you there’s something wrong with
one of the third-floor dryers.”

“Thank
you,’ Miss Marie said.

Hawes
felt particularly clumsy in this world of women’s machines. There was an air of
delicate efficiency about the place, and Hawes
— six feet two inches
tall in his bare soles, weighing in at a hundred and ninety pounds — was
certain he would knock over a bottle of nail polish or a pail of hair rinse. As
they entered the second-floor salon, as he looked down that long line of
humming space helmets at women with crossed legs and what looked like barber’s
aprons covering their nylon slips, he became aware of a new phenomenon. The
women were slowly turning their heads inside the dryers to look at the white
streak over his left temple. He suddenly felt like a horse’s ass. For whereas
the streak was the legitimate result of a knifing — they had shaved his red
hair to get at the wound, and it had grown back this way — he realized all at
once that many of these women had shelled out hard-earned dollars to simulate
identical white streaks in their own hair, and he no longer felt like a cop
making a business call. Instead, he felt like a customer who had come to have
his goddamned streak touched up a little.