Ed McBain - Downtown (31 page)

"Oops, I'll bet I'm gonna forget this fuckin' QandA," Orso said, and tossed a blue binder onto the bed, and walked out of the room. Michael reached for the binder. His right wrist was bandaged. He wondered if there

were stitches under the bandage. He wondered

471 if he'd been stitched together like Frankenstein's monster. He wondered what his face looked like. He wondered if Mama had got to his face. If so, he wondered if Connie would think he looked okay. He hoped that she would. He opened the blue binder.

There was a sheaf of photocopied typewritten pages inside it. Michael began reading. The QandA had taken place earlier this morning, at precisely twelve minutes to six, in the office of someone named Lieutenant James Curran at the First Precinct. Present were the lieutenant, DetectivestSecond Grade Anthony Robert Orso, DetectivestThird Grade Mary Agnes O'Brien, and an Assistant District Attorney named Leila Moscowitz. The lieutenant advised Crandall of his rights under Miranda-Escobedo, and then turned the questioning over to the A.D.A. Q: Mr. Crandall, I'd like to clarify some of these points you've already discussed with the two

detectives who responded at the scene of the

accident, namely ... uh ... Detectives ... uh ... A: (from Detective Orso) Orso. Anthony Orso. Q: Yes, and Ms. O'Brien. A: (from Detective O'Brien) _Mrs. O'Brien. Q: Mrs. O'Brien, forgive me. May we

proceed in that way, Mr. Crandall? Would that be all right with you? A: Yes, certainly. Q: Very well then. As I understand it, when

Detectives Orso and O'Brien arrived

at the scene, you were in possession of a Walther

P-38, nine-millimeter Parabellum automatic pistol, is that correct? A: Not in possession of it. Q: In your hand, though, wasn't it? A: Well, yes. If you want to get technical. Q: Is this the pistol you had in your hand? A: Yes, it looks like the pistol. Q: Is it your pistol? A: It's a pistol I had in my hand at the time of the accident. Q: Do you have a license for this pistol?

A: No, I do not.

473 Q: How did you come by this pistol, Mr. Crandall? A: I have no idea. I was getting hit on the

head with a high-heeled shoe and there was a pistol in my hand. Q: Are you saying you don't know how it got in your hand? A: Mr. Rodriguez must have put it there. Q: Put the pistol in your hand. A: Yes. Q: By Mr. Rodriguez, do you mean Mr. Mario Mateo Rodriguez, alias Mama Rodriguez? A: Well, I'm not sure he'd appreciate your using the word "alias." Q: But Mama _is his alias, isn't it? A: A great many people choose names that they use for

professional purposes, such as actors and writers and occasionally dentists. They do not call these names ... Q: Dentists? A: Oh, yes. Q: But Mr. Rodriguez isn't an actor or a writer or a dentist, he's a gangster. A: Oh, I don't know about that. Q: He had a criminal record in his

native Colombia, and he's been arrested twice in the United States for trafficking in controlled substances. A: I wouldn't know about that, either. Q: Well, when you hired him, didn't you ..." A: _Hired him? Ho ho ho, let's slow down a bit, shall we? _I hired Rodriguez? Q: Isn't that what you told Detectives Orso and O'Brien? A: That was when I was still dizzy. That was just a few minutes after the accident. Q: No, that was at a quarter past four this morning. Which was forty minutes _after the accident. A: That may be so, but ... Q: And it's now ten minutes to six. A: My how the time does fly. Q: Mr. Crandall, I'm going to remind you that

the conversation you had with Detectives Orso and O'Brien ... A: I might add, by the way, that I don't

think it's seemly for a police

475 officer to be questioning a person while she's

sitting in provocative underwear. I'd like to say that for the record, if you please. Q: It is noted for the record. But I was saying that the conversation ... A: Especially an officer who could stand to lose a few pounds. Q: I was saying that the conversation you had with them--and

you were aware of this, Mr. Crandall, you gave

them your permission--the conversation was being taped. Just as _this conversation is now being taped. Again, with your permission. A: My, how very state-of-the-art we are. Q: And I have the typewritten transcript

taken from that tape, Mr. Crandall, I am holding it right here in my hand. And on this

transcript, you told the detectives that you had hired Mr. Rodriguez to requisition-- that is your exact language, Mr. Crandall --to requisition a body for you. A dead body. A corpse. Isn't that what you told them? A: Well, yes. Q: Then you _did hire him. A: No, Charlie hired him. Listen, if

we're going to get _this technical here ... Q: Yes, we are. A: Then maybe I _ought to have a lawyer. Q: If you'd like a lawyer ... A: Why do I need a lawyer? I can take care of myself just fine, thank you. Q: If you want a lawyer, you're entitled to one. Just say the ... A: Dickens was right, we should first kill all the lawyers. Q: It was Shakespeare. And the exact quote

was "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." And I'm a lawyer, Mr. Crandall. A: I _still don't want one. Q: Fine. May we continue, please? A: Please. Q: Did you or did you not hire Mama Rodriguez to ..." A: Charlie Nichols hired him. Q: How did that come about, can you tell me? A: It was all Charlie's idea. We were talking about how it would be nice if the picture got some column space ...

Q: By the picture ..."

477 A: My new picture. _Winter's _Chill. Q: Yes? A: Some column space to counteract what we were afraid might be adverse critical reaction when it opened--the similarity to _Gaslight, you know, what the critics might _perceive, in their abysmal ignorance, as a similarity to _Gaslight. Q: Yes? A: And Charlie recalled an incident that had taken place several years back when this

woman fell from a roof and she had a copy of Meyer Levin's novel __Kiss of the Spider _Woman in her ... Q: It was _Ira Levin. And the novel was _Kiss _Me, _Deadly. A: (from Detective O'Brien) Excuse

me, please, but I think it was __A Kiss Before _Dying and Carole Landis was in the movie. A: (from Detective Orso) You're thinking of

_Farewell, _My _Lovely, by Dashiell Hammond. A: (from Lieutenant Curran) `It was easy.` That's the last line of the book. A: (from Detective O'Brien) Which book is that, Loot? A: (from Lieutenant Curran) The one where he shoots the broad in the belly. A: (from Mr. Crandall) You'll forgive me, but neither the title _nor the author has anything whatever to do with the point of my story. Q: What _is the point of your story? A: The point is that in the novel the woman is

about to get pushed off the roof, and in real life a woman actually _fell off the roof with a copy of the novel in her hand and it made

headlines all over the country. So Charlie

said, "Wouldn't it be terrific if something like that

happened to _Winter's _Chill?" and I said, "No such luck," and Charlie said, "Why does it have to be _luck?" and that's how the whole thing came about. Q: What whole thing? A: Hiring Rodriguez. Who was Charlie's

crack dealer and who Charlie thought would know where to find a dead body. Q: And did he find one? A: Yes.

Q: Julian Rainey's body,

479 isn't that so? A: I have no idea whose body it was. Mama supplied the body. Q: And you supplied the identification to put on the body. A: Well, that was the whole idea. Q: Tell us what the whole idea was. A: To make it appear that someone had murdered me. And then for me to show up alive, contradicting the fact. And to have the mystery continue through the opening of the film on the second.

To generate publicity for the film, you see. Q: But, of course, Mr. Rodriguez didn't simply _find a corpse, did he? A: I have no idea where he ... Q: He _caused a corpse, didn't he? A: I don't know where you got that idea. Q: We got it from a woman named Alice

Chaffee whom we found in a red fox coat

tied up with the cord from a General Electric steam iron in a warehouse downtown. A: Oh. Q: Where there was something close to a million dollars' worth of crack in an open Mosler safe. A: Oh. Q: And something like five hundred thousand

dollars' worth of stolen goods elsewhere on the floor. A: I see. Q: She told us that Mr. Rodriguez hired her to kill Julian Rainey. A: Well, that's not what _I hired him to do. Q: I thought Charlie Nichols hired him. A: Well, yes. I meant indirectly. All _I asked him to do was _find a dead body. Q: Where? On the street? In the park ..." A: Wherever dead bodies _are. Q: In the trees? In a garbage can behind McDonald's? A: I'm glad you find this so amusing, Ms. Moscowitz. Q: _Mrs. Moscowitz. And I find it quite

serious. Whose idea was it to blame the murder on Michael Barnes? A: Mine. But there was no harm in that. It was just

a way to keep it going. To keep the headlines rolling. When he went to the police with his story

about having been robbed--and showed them my

481

_card, no less--there'd be headlines all over again. And then while he was being

investigated, there'd be more headlines. And when

he was cleared, there'd be headlines again. And meanwhile the picture would have opened and it

wouldn't matter _what the critics said about it. Q: So you chose Mr. Barnes as your fall guy ... A: Oh, it didn't have to be him. It could have

been _anyone. He simply presented himself. Q: Popped up, so to speak. A: Well, yes. Q: And refused to lie down again. A: Well. Q: Which is why Mr. Rodriguez ordered _his murder as well. A: I don't know anything about that. Q: Alice Chaffee _does. A: That's _her problem. _And Mama's, I would suppose. Q: _Your problem is that you ordered the _first

murder, Mr. Crandall. You're the one who set the whole thing in ... A: I did not order a _murder. I ordered

a _corpse! And anyway, it was Charlie's idea. He was the one who contacted Mama. I had nothing to do with it. Q: Alice Chaffee says Mama paid her four thousand dollars for the job. Who gave Mama that money? A: I have no idea. Q: Did Charlie Nichols give him that money? A: He must have. Q: Why? It was _your movie, why would Charlie ..." A: I don't know anything about any of this. Charlie came up with a good idea. And he

followed through on it. If someone got killed because of what Charlie did, I certainly am not re-- Q: All Charlie's idea, huh? A: Yes. I had nothing to do with anyone getting killed! I was trying to save my movie. If Charlie was alive, he'd-- Q: Yes? A: Nothing. Q: He'd what? A: Nothing.

Q: Is Charlie _dead, Mr.

483 Crandall? A: I don't know what Charlie is. Q: Well, as a matter of fact, he _is dead, Mr. Crandall. But how did you know that? A: I don't know anything at all about Charlie's condition, dead or alive. Q: Then you don't know he was killed with a P-38 Walther nine-millimeter Parabellum automatic pistol. A: I have nothing more to say. Q: Ballistics will have something more to say, I'm sure. A: It was all Charlie's idea. If Charlie's dead, that's too bad, but ... Q: I thought you had nothing more to say. A: All I have to say is that it was Charlie's idea. Q: Except for pinning the murder on Michael Barnes. _That was _your idea. A: Yes. Q: Why'd you change the script, Mr. Crandall? A: _Why? Q: Please tell us. A: Because I'm a _director! Q: Oh. A: Yes.

Michael sensed her presence before he looked up. Knew she'd be there. Standing in the doorway.

Her right wrist was bandaged where Mama had cut her. There was a smile on her face. She stepped into the room. Into a bar of sunshine lying in a crooked rectangle on the floor. The sunlight touched her hair, touched her face. "They have you listed as dead," she said. "But Detective Orso told me you weren't." "I'm glad I'm not," he said. "Me, too," she said, and came to the bed.

He would have to call his mother, let her know he was still alive. Tell her he'd met a wonderful Chinese girl he wanted to marry. Mom? Are you there, Mom? Please take your head out of the oven, Mom. "Let me see your cute little face," Connie said, and sat on the edge of the bed, and cupped his face between her hands, and turned it this way and that,

searching it. "I was so afraid he'd

485 cut your face," she said. "But you look beautiful. Could I kiss you?" "We'll have to ask the nurse," he said.

"No, I don't think we have to," she said.

Mom? he would say. I'm alive, Mom. I'm alive again.

THE END