“I’m all right,” she said. “Don’t make a big deal.”
Dino sat her down on a sofa. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I got out of a cab at the corner and was walking toward the building. When I was almost to the front door I saw this guy coming down the block in the opposite direction, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was coming at me. He was only a few steps away when I saw him take a knife out of his pocket—a big switchblade—and flick it open. I already had my hand in my purse.” She pointed at her pocketbook, lying on a chair opposite; there was a gaping hole in the bag. “I fired before he could get to me, and the shot spun him around. He could run, though, and he did.”
“Where did you hit him?”
“I didn’t have much chance to aim, but I was going for his head. I think I caught an ear.”
“Which ear?”
“Uh, the left. Yes, that’s right, the left ear. He had his hand on it as he ran, and I saw some blood.”
“You,” Dino said, pointing at one of the two uniforms in the room, “go downstairs and see if you can find some blood on the sidewalk. Don’t let anybody step in it; I want a sample taken.”
The cop left at a run.
“You,” Dino said, pointing at the other uniform, “get on the phone to the precinct and tell them I want a tech over here right now to collect a sample.”
The cop went to a phone and started dialing.
“Are you all right, now?” he said to his wife.
“Perfectly,” she said.
“All right enough to answer an important question?”
“Sure, I’m okay; what do you want to know?”
“What I want to know is, where the hell did you get a gun?” Dino demanded, his voice rising.
Mary Ann looked away petulantly. “Daddy gave it to me.”
“You took a gun from your father?”
Stone knew that Mary Ann’s father was an extremely well connected Italian gentleman of the old school with many business interests, licit and otherwise, and a wide acquaintance among people who owned guns.
“Yes, I did,” she said, rounding on him. “I knew you wouldn’t let me have one.”
“Oh, swell,” Dino said. “And, knowing your father, I don’t suppose he bothered with the permitting process.”
“As a matter of fact, he did bother,” Mary Ann replied. “The permit is in my purse, if you don’t believe me.”
“Jesus, you’re lucky you didn’t shoot yourself. You’ve got no business with a gun.”
“Listen, Dino, I go with Charlton Heston on this one, okay? And need I remind you that, if I hadn’t had the gun, I’d be lying down there in the street with a very big knife in me?”
“All right, all right,” Dino said, seeing that he was not going to win this one. “Can you describe the man?”
“Late thirties, early forties, small; I’d say five-seven. Wiry, and he had an Afro.”
“He was black?”
“No, but he had an Afro, kind of. Kind of a Jewish Afro.”
“He was Jewish? How do you know that?”
“No; I mean, that’s what we used to call it in high school, when a Jewish kid had that kind of kinky hair, you know?”