Part 50 (1/2)
”Maybe I've seen you in something. Broadway? Off Broadway?”
”No, probably not.”
”Movies?”
The 'no” was hesitant. Her eyes lowered to the ashtray. Hearn glanced around the room. The furniture was both modern and reasonably expensive, centered around a large comfortable sofa. The adjoining bedroom, which Hearn eyed when he asked if he could use the washroom, was dominated by an expensive waterbed. The apartment was designed, in its way, for comfort, for satisfaction, and as a den of voluntary seduction. Under further questioning Debbie Moran admitted that she just remembered what her last acting job had been.
”A series of TV commercials on the West coast she volunteered.
”It's not being shown no more Hearn reached to an inside jacket pocket and handed her a picture of Mark Ryder.
”Ever seen this man?” he asked.
She glanced at it.
”No ' He watched her for a moment, studying the facial features and expression.
She handed back the photograph.
”You're sure?” he asked.
”I'm sure.”
”That man was murdered in front of this building,” he said.
”How awful : ” ”He was visiting someone in this building.”
She shrugged.
”What we're interested in'” he said, ”is what time he left, not what he was doing here ”I live in the back of the building,” she said.
”I sleep soundly. I didn't see no one or hear no one. I go to bed early.”
And often, thought Hearn. All the way back to the precinct he cursed her.
Hearn found Sha.s.sad sitting at his cluttered desk on the cramped second floor. Behind Sha.s.sad was his bulletin board on which, in addition to items of more importance, there were two small posters.
One pictured a blue-uniformed police officer guarding a school crossing, set in an idealized suburban America of the mid-1950s.
The caption read,
”The Police Officer is your friend. Trust him ' The other, hand-lettered by an anonymous precinct-house philosopher, proclaimed simply,
”G.o.d loves Negroes. That's why there's so many of them.”
”I found the girl,” Hearn said.
”Apartment Three-C?”
Hearn nodded.