“I don’t think Wally Milham’s involved.”
“And the Widow Kellog?”
Quaire shrugged. “I don’t know her.”
“Would it be all right with you if I went with D’Amata when he interviews her?”
“What if I said no, Mike?” Quaire asked, smiling.
“Then I would go anyway, and you could go back to calling me ‘Inspector,’” Weisbach said, smiling back. “Can I presume that you have finally figured out that I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to?”
“Sometimes I’m a little slow. It made me mad. My guys would throw the Pope in Central Lockup if they thought he was a doer, and Lowenstein knows it, and he still sends you in here to look over our shoulder.”
“That came from the Mayor.”
“The Mayor knows that my people are straight arrows.”
“I think he’s trying to make sure the Ledger has no grounds to use the word ‘cover-up.’”
“That means he thinks it’s possible that we would.”
“I don’t think so, Henry. I think he’s just covering his behind.”
Quaire shrugged.
“I know you didn’t ask for the job,” he said.
Weisbach guessed the Widow Kellog was twenty-eight, twenty-nine, something like that, which would make her three years younger than the late Officer Kellog. She was a slender, not-unattractive woman with very pale skin—her lipstick was a red slash across her face, and her rouge did little to simulate the healthy blush of nature.She was wearing a black suit with a white blouse, silk stockings, high heels, a hat with a veil, and sunglasses. No gloves, which gave Weisbach the opportunity to notice that she was wearing both a wedding and an engagement ring. They had obviously gotten here, to her apartment, just in time. She was on her way out.
“Mrs. Kellog,” Joe D’Amata said, showing her his badge, “I’m Detective D’Amata and this is Inspector Weisbach.”
She looked at both of them but didn’t reply.
“We’re very sorry about what happened to your husband,” D’Amata said. “And we hate to intrude at a time like this, but I’m sure you understand that the sooner we find out who did this to Jerry, the better.”
“Did you know him?” she asked.
“Not well,” D’Amata said. “Let me ask the hard question. Do you have any idea who might have done this to him?”
“No.”
“Not even a suspicion?”
“It had something to do with drugs, I’m pretty sure of that.”
“When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
“You didn’t see him at all yesterday?”
“No.”
“Just for the record, would you mind telling me where you were last night? Say, from six o’clock last night.”
“I was with a friend.”
“All that time? I mean, all night?”