Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 by Romance

told Carella she was the redhead who’d come to see him only three, three
     and a half
hours
ago, whenever the hell it was.
    “Told me somebody was threatening to stab her,” he said.
    The uniformed cop shrugged and said, “So now he did.“
    They decided it was more important to talk to the victim than to do the neighborhood canvass just now. They got to Morehouse
     at about seven-thirty and talked to the ER intern who’d admitted Michelle Cassidy. He told them that two inches lower and
     a bit to the right and Miss Cassidy would at this very moment be playing first harp in the celestial philharmonic. Instead,
     she was in room two thirty-seven, her vital signs normal, her condition stable. He understood she was an actress.
    “Is she someone famous?” he asked.
    “She played Annie,” Kling said.
    “Who’s Annie?” the doctor asked. His name was Raman-than Mehrota. It said so on the little plastic tag on his tunic. Carella
     guessed he was Indian. In this city, the odds on finding a doctor from Bombay in any hospital emergency room were extraordinarily
     good. Almost as good as finding a Pakistani cabdriver.
    “They’ve got TV cameras up there,” Mehrota said. “I thought she might be someone famous.”
    “She is now,” Carella said.
    The TV reporter was doing their job for them. All they had to do was stand at the back of the room and listen.
    “When did this happen, Miss Cassidy?”
    Carella recognized the woman as one of Channel 4’s roving reporters. Good-looking woman with curly black hair and dark brown
     eyes, reminded him of his wife, except for the curls; Teddy’s hair was straight, but just as black.
    “Everybody else had already gone to dinner,” she said, “but I had a costume fitting, so I was a little late leaving. I was
     just coming out of the theater when …”
    “What time was this?”
    “A little after seven. We’d been rehearsing all day long ...”
    “Rehearsing what, Miss Cassidy?”
    “A new play called
Romance.
”
    “What happened when you left the theater?”
    “A man stepped out of a doorway there in the alley. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ And then he stabbed inc.”
    The camera came in on the reporter.
    “Michelle Cassidy, stabbed tonight outside the Susan Granger Theater, where she is rehearsing—ironically—a play about a man
     who stabs an actress. This is Monica Mann, Channel 4 News, live at Morehouse General Hospital.”
    She stared into the camera for a moment until the operator gave her the signal that she was clear. She turned to the bed then,
     said, “Terrific, Miss Cassidy. Good luck with the show,” and then turned again to her crew and said, “We’re out of here.”
    The hot lights went out. The TV people cleared the room, and the nurse went outside to let in the newspaper people. The two
     city tabloids had each sent a reporter and a photographer. Carella could just see tomorrow’s head-lines:
    ANNIE

STAR
STABBED
    Or:
    ACTRESS
SURVIVES
STABBING
    The stately morning paper hadn’t deigned to send anyone to the hospital; maybe the editor didn’t realize a former child actress
     was the victim. Or maybe he simply didn’t care. Cheap stabbings were a dime a dozen in this town. Besides, there’d been a
     riot in Grover Park this past Saturday, and the paper was still running postmortem studies on the causes of racial conflict
     and the possible remedies for it.
    Again, all Carella and Kling had to do was listen. They realized at once that this was to be a more in-depth interview than
     television, with its limited time, had been able to grant.
    “Miss Cassidy, did you
see
the man who attacked you?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “What’d he look like?”
    “A tall slender man wearing a long black coat and a black hat pulled down over his head.”
    “What kind of hat?”
    “A fedora. Whatever you call them.”
    “A brimmed hat?”
    “Yes. Black.”
    “Wide-brimmed? Narrow-brimmed?”
    “Wide. He had it pulled down over his eyes.”
    “Was he