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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.
     
    “This
is Mr. Sam,” Miss Marie said, and Hawes turned to see Carella
shaking hands with a rather elongated man. The man wasn’t particularly tall, he
was simply elongated. He gave the impression of being seen from the side seats
in a movie theater, stretched out of true proportion, curiously
two-dimensional. He wore a white smock, and there were three narrow combs in
the breast pocket. He carried a pair of scissors in one thin, sensitive-looking
hand.
     
    “How do
you do?” he said to Carella, and he executed a half-bow, European in origin,
American in execution. He turned to Hawes, took his hand, shook it, and again
said, “How do you do?”
     
    “They’re
from the police,” Miss Marie said briskly, releasing Mr. Sam from any
obligation to be polite, and then left the men alone.
     
    “A
woman named Claudia Davis was here on July seventh,” Carella said. “Apparently
she had her hair done by you. Can you tell us what you remember about her?”
     
    “Miss
Davis, Miss Davis,” Mr. Sam said, touching his high forehead in an attempt at
visual shorthand, trying to convey the concept of thought without having to do
the accompanying brainwork. “Let me see, Miss Davis, Miss Davis.”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “Yes,
Miss Davis. A very pretty blonde.”
     
    “No,”
Carella said. He shook his head. “A brunette. You’re thinking of the wrong
person.”
     
    “No, I’m
thinking of the right person,” Mr. Sam said. He tapped his temple with one
extended forefinger, another piece of visual abbreviation. “I remember. Claudia
Davis. A blonde.”
     
    “A
brunette,” Carella insisted, and he kept watching Mr. Sam.
     
    “When
she left. But when she came, a blonde.”
     
    “What?”
Hawes said.
     
    “She
was a blonde, a very pretty, natural blonde. It is rare. Natural blondness, I
mean. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to change the color.”
     
    “You
dyed her hair?” Hawes asked.
     
    “That
is correct.”
     
    “Did
she say why she wanted to be a brunette?”
     
    “No,
sir. I argued with her. I said, ‘You have beautiful hair, I can do marvelous
things with this hair of yours. You are a blonde, my dear, there are
drab women who come in here every day of the week and beg to be turned
into blondes.’ No. She would not listen. I dyed it for her.” Mr. Sam seemed to
be offended by the idea all over again. He looked at the detectives as if they
had been responsible for the stubbornness of Claudia Davis.
     
    “What
else did you do for her, Mr. Sam?” Carella asked.
     
    “The
dye, a cut, and a set. And I believe one of the girls gave her a facial and a manicure.”
     
    “What
do you mean by a cut? Was her hair long when she came here?”
     
    “Yes,
beautiful long blond hair. She wanted it cut. I cut it.” Mr. Sam shook his
head. “A pity. She looked terrible. I don’t usually say this about someone I
work on, but she walked out of here looking terrible. You would hardly
recognize her as the same pretty blonde who came in not three hours before.”
     
    “Maybe
that was the idea,” Carella said.
     
    “I beg
your pardon?”
     
    “Forget
it. Thank you, Mr. Sam. We know you’re busy.”
     
    In the
street outside Hawes said, “You knew before we went in there, didn’t you, Mr.
Steve?”
     
    “I
suspected, Mr. Cotton, I suspected. Come on, let’s get back to the squad.”
     
    * * * *

 
     
    14
     
     
    They kicked it around like a
bunch of advertising executives. They sat in Lieutenant Byrnes’ office and
tried to find out how the cookie crumbled and which way the Tootsie rolled.
They were just throwing out a life