Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (26 page)

Somehow, Kling was beginning to feel that everyone in the theater lived in some kind of peculiarly egocentric wonderland.
He was beginning to believe, in fact, that
none
of the people involved in putting
Romance
on the stage could possibly have killed Michelle Cassidy. Each and every one of them seemed too thoroughly involved in himself
or herself alone, and such self-dedication excluded awareness of any other being in the universe. Kill
whom
?

Nonetheless—and doggedly, so to speak:

“Did either you or Mr. Kendall leave the apartment at any time that night?”

“I left at ten.”

“But before then?”

“No. Neither of us.”

“How about Mr. Delacruz?”

“I did not see him leaving at any time that night,” Haynes said, and then, in triumph,
“Good
boy, Francis! Oh, what a
good
little boy you are!”

Alone in bed together later that night, they whispered in the dark.

“I’m afraid.”

“No, don’t be.”

“I’ve always been afraid of cops.”

“No, no.”

Stroking, touching, comforting.

“Even when I was small. Cops always frightened me.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Afraid they’d catch me
doing
something.”

“No, no.”

“Something
wrong.“

“I’m here, don’t worry, darling.”

“They make me feel guilty. Cops. I don’t know why that should be.”

“There, there.”

Familiar flesh in the darkness, touching, stroking.

“They think we killed her.”

“They think
everyone
killed her.”

“Do you remember the Agatha Christie novel?”

“Which one?”

“Where everyone
does
kill her.”

“Oh, yes. The film, too.”

“Yes.”

“A marvelous film.”

“Yes.”

“On a train.”

“Yes, They all kill her.”

“Clouseau. He was the inspector.”

“No, that’s not his name.”

“What is it then?”

“Why did you have to say it?”

“I thought…”

“No, it isn’t Clouseau.”

“I realize that now.”

“Now I won’t be able to sleep all night.”

“I’m sorry, darling.”

“Between them and Clouseau, I won’t sleep a wink.”

“Just put it out of your mind.”

“Clouseau and the goddamn police.”

“I’m
so
sorry, really.”

“Thinking we killed her.”

“No, no, try to relax.”

“Closing in on us.”

“No, darling. Just relax.”

Silence.

“There.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that better?”

“Yes.”

More silence.

“What
is
his fucking name?”

“Just put it out of your mind.”

“The Belgian.”

“Yes, but relax…”

“The inspector.”

“Relax.”

“I’m trying.”

“Just let me…”

“I am.”

“…help you relax.”

“Yes.”

Kissing. Touching. Stroking the familiar flesh.

“Mmm.”

“Better, darling?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that better?”

“Yes.”

“Much better, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Now give it to me.”

“Yes.”

“Give me that hot juice.”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me,
give
it!”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Yes!”

“
Yes!
”

“Oh
yes
, my love.”

Silence. The ticking of a clock somewhere in the apartment. The sound of even breathing.

“Joey?”

“Mmm?”

“It was Maigret. The inspector.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Silence. On the street outside, the sound of a wailing police siren. Silence again.

“Ashley?”

“Mmmm?”

“It was Poirot”

Alone in bed together that night, she told him she’d been charged with assault. Her eyes blazed, her fingers flew, she was
still mad as hell. He watched her hands, troubled by the fact that she’d been given a summons here in their local precinct,
charged with a misdemeanor, no less.

“What did you
do
to this woman?” he asked, saying the words, signing them at the same time.

What did
I do to her? she signed.
Why don’t you ask what
she
did to
me? bobbing her head whenever she emphasized a word, underscoring it further with dark laser beams that flashed from her
darker brown eyes.

He could not resist smiling, and made the mistake of signing and simultaneously saying, “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,”
which Teddy didn’t find too terribly amusing at all.

Do you want to hear this,
she shouted with her hands,
or do you want to bring me chocolates in jail?

“I’m listening,” he said.

The way she told it, before a patrol car could respond to the frantic call April made from a phone booth not five feet from
where the irate woman was still screaming at Teddy, refusing to let go of the lapels of her suit jacket even though Teddy
kept kicking at her repeatedly…

I was wearing French heels,
she signed, I
had lunch downtown with Eileen…

“How is she?” Carella said.

First, I came straight home to pick up April, drove her over to her ballet class. French heels with a little pointed toe
, she signed.
Which is how she got the cut on her leg
.

Carella thought Uh-oh.

The woman, according to Teddy, was a behemoth weighing some two thousand pounds, shaking her till her teeth rattled, virtually
lifting her off the ground while Teddy kept trying to kick her again. The woman’s piercing shrieks finally attracted the attention
of a police officer patrolling the parking lot on foot…

The dunce of the One-Five-Three,
Teddy signed, naming their local Riverhead precinct, where six detectives had recently been arrested for stealing money and
dope from various dealers.

The officer told them to break it up, calm down, relax, words to that effect, and then listened to the fat woman’s account
of how Teddy had smashed into the rear of her Buick, a total lie which Officer Stupid listened to gravely and solemnly, wagging
his head in wonder and amazement. Little April kept trying to tell him that none of this was true, it was the
fat
lady who’d smashed into their car, which prompted Officer Fool to tell her to please let her mother speak for herself. April
then had to explain that their mother was both hearing- and speech-impaired and could not convey her thoughts except through
signing, which language perhaps Officer Incompetent comprehended. He admitted he did not. But he now looked at Teddy as if
wondering whether or not it was legal for a deaf-and-dumb person to be driving in the first place.

By now, the fat lady had lifted her skirt to show her tree-trunk legs, one of which was bleeding from a small cut undoubtedly
caused by Teddy’s first kick to the shin. There were no visible signs of abuse or assault on Teddy
herself,
however, since all the woman had done was shake her till all her internal organs were hopelessly entangled. Officer Idiot
was debating whether to just advise the ladies to exchange insurance information, and shake hands, and call it a day when
the fat woman began screaming about her attacker being a police detective’s wife, and all the cops in this city were the same,
and how could she expect any justice from a cop protecting his own, and I want your name and your badge number, and I intend
to take this to the Supreme Court, you hear? So Officer Imbecile, perhaps remembering the recent riot in Grover Park, and
not wishing any kind of trouble at all on his hitherto peaceful little beat outside a shopping mall, decided in his Solomon-like
street wisdom that it would be far easier to ask the dummy to come back to the precinct with him, where someone would write
out a Desk Appearance summons for her. His exact words were
Let the court work this out
, the coward!

Seething, Teddy showed Carella the summons now:

YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED TO APPEAR IN THE CRIMINAL COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF RIVERHEAD TO ANSWER A CRIMINAL CHARGE AGAINST YOU.

OFFENSE CHARGED:
Assault 3rd.

COURT
Riverhead Criminal ct

PART
: AR2

ADDRESS:
1142 Coolidge Boulevard, Riverhead

TIME:
9:30
AM

DATE
4/24

INSTRUCTIONS FOR DEFENDANT:

YOU MUST APPEAR AT THE TIME AND DATE INDICATED ABOVE AND PRESENT THIS FORM TO THE COURT CLERK.

Should you fail to appear for the offense charged above, in addition to a warrant being issued for your arrest, you may be
charged with an additional violation of the Penal Law which upon conviction may subject you to a fine, imprisonment, or both.
Additionally, if you fail to comply with the directions of this Desk Appearance ticket, any bail paid will be subject to forfeiture.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS

CODEFENDANTS                                                       IF YES, NAMES:

—Yes
NO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF DEFENDANT:

I, the undersigned, do hereby acknowledge receipt of the above DESK APPEARANCE TICKET, personally served upon me, and do agree
to appear as indicated.

SIGNATURE OF DEFENDANT: Theodora Franklin caulla

“I see you signed it,” Carella said.

Teddy nodded.

“What happened to the woman?”

She came to the police station with us. Stood with her hands on her hips, scowling, while a detective wrote the summons.

“You say she was screaming at you…”

Yes.

“Shaking you…”

Yes.

“Was
she
charged with anything?”

No
.

“Those jackasses just let her walk?”

Yes.

Carella looked at the detective’s name in the space on the summons. He did not recognize it.

“I see they fingerprinted you, too,” he said.

She nodded.

“Took your picture…”

She nodded again. All her anger was gone now. She merely looked terribly worried.

Shaking his head, he looked back to the due date on the summons. “This is returnable in two weeks,” he said. “Your attorney’ll
want to…”

My
attorney!

“Honey, this is a
misdemeanor
here,” he said, “you can go to jail for a year on it. We’ll get somebody terrific, go for outright dismissal, or dismissal
in the interests of justice, or even adjournment in
contemplation
of dismissal. If the D.A. pursues, we’ll file a cross-complaint against the woman, harassment for sure, maybe jazz it up
to attempted assault. Don’t worry, honey,” he said, “really,” and held her close, and kissed the top of her head.

She lay very still in his arms.

“This never should’ve got this far,” he said. “The beat officer should have settled it on the spot, a goddamn traffic incident.
They must be scared to death up there. All those detectives who got burned.”

She said nothing. He could feel her tenseness through her thin nightgown.

“Don’t worry about it.” he said. “Any reasonable D.A.’ll dismiss this in a minute.”

She nodded.

“This cop who took you in?” he said. “Was he white?”

Yes
.

“And the detective who wrote the summons? Endicott? Was he white, too?”

Yes
.

“How about the fat woman?”

Black.

Carella sighed heavily.

But I really don’t see what difference that makes,
Teddy signed.

“Well, it shouldn’t,” he said.

The bedside clock read a quarter past ten.

He reached over to turn off the lamp.

He brought her hand to his lips.

“Goodnight, honey,” he said against her fingers.

Exactly one hour and ten minutes later, a naked man came hurtling through the open window of an apartment at 355 North River
Street in downtown Isola, twisting and falling toward the sidewalk ten stories below.

His name was Chuck Madden.

M
ARVIN MORGENSTERN CALLED EARLY THE NEXT MORNING TO
tell Carella his stage manager had jumped out a window the night before.

This was the first Carella had heard of it.

The incident had occurred downtown, in the Two-One Precinct, and none of the detectives there had made any immediate connection
between the apparent suicide they’d caught, and the murder that had been all over everywhere for the past four days.

“How could they be so
dumb
?” Morgenstern asked on the phone, though in all fairness the detectives who’d caught the squeal downtown hadn’t learned that
the victim was stage-managing the same play the slain actress had been in until a thorough search of his apartment turned
up a loose-leaf binder he’d kept listing the names, addresses, telephone numbers and schedules of anyone connected with the
show. That was how they got Morgenstern’s number.