Read Calypso for Free Online Page A

know."
        Carella looked at the book again. For tonight, Friday, September fifteenth, Chadderton had written "Graham Palmer Hall, 8:30, Ame pickup 7:30." For tomorrow, Saturday the sixteenth, he had written "C. J. at C. C. 12 Noon."
        "Who's C. J.?" Carella asked, looking up.
        "I don't know," Chloe said.
        "How about C. C.? Does that mean anything to you?"
        "No."
        "Would it be a person or a place?"
        "I have no idea."
        "But you did know most of his friends and business acquaintances?"
        "Yes, I did."
        "Were there any recent conversations or meetings with strangers?"
        "Strangers?"
        "People you didn't know. Like this C. J., for example. Were there people whose names you didn't recognize when they phoned? Or people you saw him with, who-"
        "No, there was nobody like that."
        "Did anyone named C. J. ever phone here?"
        "No."
        "Did your husband mention that he had a meeting with this C. J. tomorrow at noon?"
        "No."
        "Mind if I take this with me?" Carella asked. "Why do you need it?"
        "I want to study it more closely, prepare a list of names, see if you can identify any of them for me. Would that be all right?"
        "Yes, fine."
        "I'll give you a receipt for the book."
        "Fine."
        "Mrs. Chadderton, when I spoke to Ambrose Harding earlier tonight, he mentioned that your husband's songs- some of his songs-dealt with situations and perhaps personalities here in Diamondback. Is that true?"
        "George wrote about anything that bothered him."
        "Would he have been associating lately with any of the people he wrote about? To gather material, or to-"
        "You don't have to do research to know what's happening in Diamondback," Chloe said. "All you need is eyes in your head."
        "When you say he wrote these songs-"
        "He wrote the songs down before he sang them. I know that's not what calypso used to be, people used to make them up right on the spot. But George wrote them all down beforehand."
        "The words and the music?"
        "Just the words. In calypso, the melody's almost always the same. There're a dozen melody lines they use over and again. It's the words that count."
        "Where did he write these words?"
        "What do you mean where? Here in the apartment."
        "No, I meant…"
        "Oh. In a notebook. A spiral notebook."
        "Do you have that notebook?" ''Yes, it's in the bedroom, too."
        "Could I see it?"
        "I suppose so," she said, and rose wearily.
        "I wonder if I could look through his closet, too," Carella said.
        "What for?"
        "He was dressed distinctively tonight, the red pants and the yellow shirt. I was wondering…"
        "That was for the gig. He always dressed that way for a gig-"
        "Same outfit?"
        "No, different ones. But always colorful. He was singing calypso, he was trying to make people think of carnival time."
        "Could I see some of those other outfits?"
        "I still don't know why."
        "I'm trying to figure out whether anyone might have recognized him from the costume alone. It was raining very hard, you know, visibility…"
        "Well, nobody would've seen the costume. He was wearing a raincoat over it."
        "Even so. Would it be all right?"
        Chloe shrugged, and walked wordlessly out of the kitchen. The detectives followed her through the living room, and then into a bedroom furnished with a rumpled king-sized bed, a pair of night tables, a large mahogany dresser, and a standing floor lamp beside an easy chair. Chloe opened the top drawer of the dresser, rummaged among the handkerchiefs and socks there, and found a spiral notebook with a battered blue cover. She handed the book to Carella.
        "Thank you," he said, and immediately began leafing through the pages. There were penciled lyrics for