Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (31 page)

“As I understand this,” he said impatiently, “Nellie Brand’s already
arraigned
Milton for the murder…”

“That’s right,” Byrnes said.

“…and she’s got to shit or get off the pot by Tuesday.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Carella said.

“In
another
manner of speaking,” Byrnes said, “if we don’t prove her wrong by Tuesday, she’ll indict him.”

“What do you mean
we
, Kemo Sabe?” Parker asked, and looked to the others for approval.

As usual, he looked like a bum. That was because he told himself he was on a perpetual stakeout where it was essential that
he look like a bum. He had already detected that no one but Carella and Kling appreciated this fucked-up situation. He was
right. None of the others wanted more heat from upstairs descending on the squad again. The case was solved, so let it rest.
But their personal feelings for Carella and Kling outweighed such considerations.

“Does the Chief of Detectives know you’re still working this thing?” Hawes asked.

He was leaning against Byrnes’s bookcases, threatening to capsize them by sheer size and bulk, his wild red hair catching
the afternoon sun, the wilder white streak in his left temple highlighted by the rays.

“Yes,” Carella said. “The way Nellie spelled it out, if she indicts on Tuesday, Weeks gets credit for the kill. If we come
up with anyone else, it’s our collar.”

“Weeks and the M&Ms went to see him this morning,” Byrnes said.

“Who?” Meyer asked.

“Chief Fremont.”

“What for?”

“To yell about FMU,” Byrnes said. “From what he told me, he’d already agreed that our public face should be we’ve got the
killer, but privately we’re still looking cause nobody wants to prosecute an innocent man. So this morning, Weeks runs to
him and says you’re screwing up the case by looking under rocks for somebody doesn’t exist. The M&Ms had their own axe to
grind. They caught a whiff of headlines and they wanted I Homicide to be handed the case on a platter.”

“What’d the Chief tell them?”

“To cool it till Tuesday.”

“So they’re out of our hair for now.”

“All of them.”

“You want
my
private opinion,” Parker said, “I think the agent’s guilty.”

“How about that note in the typewriter?” Carella asked.

“How about that earring under the bed?” Kling asked.

“Slow down,” Brown said, “you’re losing me.”

“You’re losing
all
of us,” Parker said.

“Here’s the note,” Carella said, and placed it on Byrnes’s desk. This time, it was a Xerox copy of the one the lab had already
tested. All four of the other detectives leaned over the desk to look at it:

DEAR GOD, PLEASE FORGIVE ME

FOR WHAT I DID TO MICHELLE

“No signature,” Parker observed.

“They don’t always sign them.” Meyer said.

“If we’re about to step in shit here, we better at least have a signed note,” Parker said.

“The girl’s earring was under the bed,” Kling said.

“What girl?”

“The actress who took over the dead girl’s part.”

“We call them
women
these days,” Parker said.

They all turned to look at him.

“Girls
are five years old and younger,” he said.

“Were they lovers or what?” Hawes asked. “The actress and the vie.”

“Not according to her.”

“Then how’d her earring get under his bed?”

“That’s what I’d like to ask her,” Carella said. “That’s why I’d like to bring her in.”

“Did you talk to Nellie about this?”

“Not yet.”

“About arresting her, I mean.”

“No.”

“Cause if we bring her in here…”

“I know.”

“She’ll be in custody…”

“We’re already into Miranda,” Parker said.

“We may even be jeopardizing the case Nellie already has.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how. Ask Nellie.”

“Have we got an autopsy report yet?” Brown asked.

“Verbal,” Carella said.

“Who examined him?” Hawes asked.

“Doctor named Ralph Dwyer.”

“Parkside?”

“Yeah.”

“Good man.”

“What’d he say?”

“Said Madden did a great job on himself. All four extremities fractured, bones of the cranium and face comminuted, brain enucleated.
He must’ve hit the sidewalk on his right side because that’s where the ribs and pelvis were most severely broken. The fall
also shattered his spine and burst his heart, a fine job all around.”

“Did he think…?”

“Did he say Madden was already…?”

“No. He found fat embolism, inhaled blood, and hemorrhages around the injuries, all signs that they were intravital. The injuries.”

“Meaning?” Parker asked.

“Meaning he was still alive when he hit the sidewalk.”

“Blood work show anything?” Byrnes asked.

“Traces of Dalmane.”

“Dalmane?”

“Enough for Dwyer to believe Madden was asleep when he went out that window.”

“How do you jump out a window if you’re asleep?”

“Somebody helps you,” Carella said.

“She won’t answer anything else unless we bring her in,” Kling said.

“She’s already got a lawyer,” Carella said.

“Our guess is she’s running scared.”

“We get her in here, she may bleat.”

“I doubt it,” Parker said. “Her lawyer’ll tell us to fuck off. He’ll ask us to void the arrest.”

“We’ve
got plenty to charge her with. Conspiracy to murder…”

“Accessory before…”

“On what? A fuckin
earring?
”

“And
a suicide note.”

“The note doesn’t implicate her.”

“Have we got any latents?”

“Nothing wild. Almost everything in the apartment was wiped clean. The typewriter, the earring, the Scotch bottle, the club
soda bottle…”

“Two glasses by the bed, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Must’ve been how he got the Dalmane in him, huh?”

“Must’ve been. yeah.”

“You think she was wearing gloves?”

“While they fucked?”

“No, when she was cleaning up.”

“Had to’ve done it before she tossed him out the window. Otherwise, there wouldn’t’ve been time.”

“Did she wipe the windowsill?”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t’ve done
that
before.”

“No, that had to be after.”

“How about the sash
^?
”

“Clean.”

“The handles?”

“What handles?”

“The things you raise the window with, whatever the hell they’re called. The little things you grab with your hands to pull
the window up.”

“Clean.”

“Fuckin
cleaning
woman.”

“The more I hear, the less I like it,” Byrnes said. “I don’t want to bring her in till we’ve got something better than this.
We don’t need a pointless exercise here.”

“What if there’s Dalmane in her medicine chest?”

“You know any judge who’ll grant you a search warrant on the strength of an earring under a bed?”

“You’d never get a court order on such flimsy shit,” Parker said.

“If we arrest her, we could…”

“How the hell can we arrest her, Steve?” Byrnes asked irritably. “All you’ve got is an
earring
at the scene. She could’ve left it there last
year,
for all we know. She told you she
lost
the damn thing…”

“She also told us she doesn’t know where he lives,” Carella said.

“Never been to his apartment,” Kling said.

“So how’d the earring get there?”

“There’s too much bothering me about this,” Byrnes said.

“Me, too,” Parker said.

“Let’s say, just for the sake of argument,” Meyer said, “she put him up to doing the Cassidy girl…”

“Woman,” Parker corrected.

They all looked at him.

“It’s what they’re
called,”
he said apologetically.

“But let’s say she did that, okay?”

“Which would be conspiracy.”

“Sure. And let’s say her motive was she wanted the other gir…the other woman’s part in the play. So she gets this jackass
to kill her, and she
does
get the part, it works
just
the way she planned it. Then why…?”

“Right,” Parker said. “Why the hell…?”

“…would she
kill
him?” Byrnes said.

“Cause he was the only link,” Carella said.

“The only one who tied her to it,” Kling said.

“They why’d she leave a phony suicide note?” Brown asked.

“To make it
look
like a suicide.”

“Why?” Hawes asked.

“So we wouldn’t carry it back to her.”

“But we
are
carrying it back to her.”

“Only because we found the
earring!”
Carella said, exasperated.

“You think she took off the earring, is that it?” Byrnes asked. “Before she shoved him out the window?”

“I think she took it off before they started making love.”

“And forgot to put it on again?”

“Yes. If
you’d
just killed someone…”

“Come on, Steve,” Hawes said. “She drugs the guy…”

“Yes.”

“Drops Dalmane into the Scotch they’re drinking…”

“Exactly.”

“And then takes off her earrings before they make love? Didn’t she have
other
things on her mind?”

“Like throwing him out the fuckin window?” Parker said.

“Wait a minute,” Brown said, “I think Steve’s right.”

“No, he’s not,” Meyer said.

“Lots of women take off their earrings before they climb into bed,” Brown said.

“Their watches, too,” Kling said.

“Sometimes even their rings,” Brown said. “So that’s not unusual.”

“Both
earrings, right?” Hawes said. “She took off
both
earrings.”

“Well…yeah.”

“And then put on just
one
of them afterward?”

“Without noticing the other one was gone?”

“Without looking for the other one?”

“She’s just thrown a guy out the window, and she realizes she’s lost her earring, and she doesn’t go
looking
for it?”

“When did
you
notice the earring was gone?” Byrnes asked.

“What?” Carella said.

“Your report says she was wearing only one earring…”

“That was Thursday, Steve,” Kling said.

“When you noticed?”

“Yes.”

“And she told you she’d lost it?”

“Right.”

“This is two days after Michelle got murdered…”

“Yes.”

“…and Josie’s running around with just the one earring in her ear. Who do you think killed Michelle, Steve?”

“Madden.”

“You think Josie put him up to it, is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you must also think they were lovers.”

“I do.”

“And you think that by the ninth, when you noticed the missing earring, she already had a plan in place to murder him.”

“I think that’s entirely possible, yes.”

“Possible, possible,” Hawes said, shaking his head.

“You’re saying she put Madden up to killing Michelle…”

“Yes.”

“…and then started planning
his
murder.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why she told you she’d lost her lucky earring?”

Carella looked at him.

“Steve?”

“Well…”

“Was she
planning
to leave that earring under Madden’s bed?”

“Well…”

“Was she
planning
to implicate herself in his murder?”

The room went silent.

“She didn’t do it, Steve,” Byrnes said gently.

“You know who
did?”
Parker asked suddenly, grinning in his day-old whiskers. “Whoever
didn’t
get the part.”

It was now five-thirty P.M. that Saturday, the eleventh day of April. This was the day before Palm Sunday, and everyone was
already thinking about Easter and Passover, which this year happened to fall on the same day, so much for religious diversity.
But at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, Nellie Brand would go to the grand jury.

Everybody, especially Parker, wanted to go home. However, they were the ones who’d been lucky enough to stumble upon a possible
approach to this thing, so Byrnes insisted that they follow through on it, rather than dumping it on the night shift.

They broke up into three teams.

Carella and Kling, of course.

Meyer and Hawes.

Parker and Brown, lucky him.

They were looking for probable cause to go into Andrea Packer’s apartment.

Since she knew Carella and Kling by sight, and since they didn’t want her dumping evidence before they even had a court order
to look for it, it was thought provident to send two of the other detectives to her building.

The doorman at 714 South Hedley had been working at the building for twenty-five years, and he was due to retire in June.
His plan was to move back to the house he’d owned in Puerto Rico for the past ten years now. Do some fishing. Walk the beach.
Smell the tropical flowers. He did not want trouble here. That was the first thing he told Parker and Brown. He didn’t want
trouble two months before he was supposed to retire.

Parker felt real sorry for this little spic here who could hardly speak English, going back where coconuts would fall on his
head while he sipped
pi˜a coladas
. Twenty-five years standing in a doorway with his finger up his ass, now he was afraid of getting involved, didn’t want trouble
on his watch.

“This is a homicide we’re investigating here,” Parker said.

The magic word.

Homicide.

Supposed to cause them to wet their pants.

The little spic just blinked at him.

“You know a tenant named Andrea Parker?” Brown asked.

“I juss worr here,” the doorman said.

“Cómo se llama
?” Parker asked, showing off the Spanish he’d been picking up from this girl named Catalina Herrera he’d been seeing. Called
herself Cathy. listen, who cared
what
she called herself? She wanted to think she was really American, that was fine with him, even if she did speak with a Spanish
accent you could cut with a machete, but on her it sounded cute.