I got out my notebook and copied what she’d written word for word. I used a Kleenex to remove what prints I’d left on it, then put it back where I’d found it and anchored it again with the cologne bottle.

I said, “Tell me again what you did last night.”

“Just what I already told you. I called her and I got a feeling, I don’t know why, and I came here.”

“What time?”

“After two. I didn’t notice the exact time.”

“You came right upstairs?”

“That’s right.”

“The doorman see you?”

“We sort of nodded at each other. He knows me, thinks I live here.”

“Will he remember you?”

“Man, I don’t know what he remembers and what he forgets.”

“He just work weekends or was he on Friday as well?”

“I don’t know. What’s the difference?”

“If he’s been on every night he might remember he saw you but not remember when. If he just works Saturdays—”

“I get you.”

In the small kitchen a bottle of Georgi vodka stood on the sink board with an inch’s depth of liquor left in it. Beside it was an empty cardboard quart of orange juice. A glass in the sink held a residue of what looked like a mixture of the two, and there’d been a faint trace of orange in the reek of her vomit. You didn’t need to be much of a detective to put those pieces together. Pills, washed down with a batch of strong screwdrivers, their sedative effect boosted by the alcohol.

I hope I took enough this time.

I had to fight the impulse to pour the last of the vodka down the drain.

“How long were you here, Chance?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t pay attention to the time.”

“Talk to the doorman on the way out?”

He shook his head. “I went down to the basement and out through the garage.”

“So he wouldn’t have seen you.”

“Nobody saw me.”

“And while you were here—”

“Like I said. I looked in the drawers and closets. I didn’t touch many things and I didn’t move anything.”

“You read the note?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t pick it up to do it.”

“Make any phone calls?”

“My service, to check in. And I called you. But you weren’t there.”

No, I hadn’t been there. I’d been breaking a boy’s legs in an alley three miles to the north.

I said, “No long-distance calls.”

“Just those two calls, man. That ain’t a long distance. You can just about throw a rock from here to your hotel.”