Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (35 page)

Well we talked about that for a while.

About whether I’d
really
have gotten the part if Michelle had actually got killed that night.

We decided I would have.

We decided I would have been the logical choice.

Decided, in fact, that I would
still
be the logical choice if anything happened to Michelle. If, for example, whoever had tried to kill her tonight came back
and
really
did the job. We had no idea who’d stabbed her, we didn’t
care
who’d stabbed her, we were just saying suppose he came back and stabbed her again, only this time it took.

Then I would get her part.

We were convinced I would get her part.

Which, of course, would make me a star.

Because of all the publicity already surrounding the play, you see. And all the publicity that would come if she actually
got
killed.

So…

We decided to do it.

And …

Well …

He went over there and did it.

Stabbed her.

Went over there with a knife under his jacket, and threw the knife down a sewer afterward. Nowhere near her building. She
lived up in Diamondback, can you believe it? I’d be scared to death going home up there at night after rehearsal. I don’t
know where the knife is now. Where do sewers go? I know they don’t empty into the river because that would be polluting the
water, wouldn’t it? But where
do
they go? Wherever they go, that’s where the knife is. It was a knife from my kitchen. A bread knife. He wrapped it in a towel
and carried it under his jacket, this brown leather jacket he has. Stabbed her when she opened the door.

P.S., I didn’t get the part.

They gave the part to Josie instead.

Listen, she’s a very capable actress, I’m the first to admit that. But that’s like comparing apples and oranges, isn’t it?
Josie hasn’t had the
training
I had, she doesn’t have the
experience
I have, she simply isn’t in my
league.

How the hell can you
figure
something like that?

Chuck said maybe she was sleeping with Morgenstern.

Otherwise, why would they have passed
me
over …

And remember, they were considering giving the part to me in the first place, when they decided on Michelle instead …

Pass
me
over and give the part to her fucking
understudy
?

This was a B movie, am I right?

Giving the part to someone as inexperienced as Josie?

I
still
can’t believe it.

Well...

I started worrying about a few things. And I started thinking about a few things, too. I probably wouldn’t have
done
anything further … I mean, what the hell, a part is a part, you lose out on one part, there’s always another part. So, honestly,
I don’t think I’d have done anything further, in
spite
of worrying about Chuck maybe cracking, maybe feeling remorse for what he’d done, maybe going to the police and confessing,
who the hell knew
what
he might do? I mean, he kept telling me he loved me, would he have killed Michelle if he
didn’t
love me? But romance is one thing and guilt is another, and I could tell this was beginning to eat at him, especially since
it hadn’t had the desired
effect,
we’d killed
one
bitch only to have
another
one take her place. So I was worried about him, yes, worried about whether he’d have the strength to see this thing through.
Men can be so weak sometimes, even the strongest of them, physically strong, I mean, he was so big.

And I started thinking maybe we should go after
Josie
next, do to her what we’d done to Michelle because then they’d
have
to give me the part, wouldn’t they? If Josie was out of the way? Wouldn’t they
have
to give it to me? Who
else
could they give it to? The fucking cleaning lady at the theater?

And then I found the earring.

Josie’s earring.

Do you believe in fate?

I absolutely believe in fate.

I found it on the sink counter in the ladies’ room. At the theater. I almost gave it back to her. I knew it was hers, of course,
I’d seen her wearing them before. Almost gave it back. Almost missed the clear
signal
that earring was sending me. That earring was telling me what I had to do next, you see. It was telling me how to get the
part I should have had to begin with, and it was
also
telling me how I could quit worrying about Chuck maybe cracking and involving me in a murder that was his idea, after all,
he was the one who first suggested it, you can believe that or not, I don’t care.

I figured if I could …

If I could make it look like someone had committed suicide, you see …

Well, make it look as if
Chuck
had committed suicide, actually …

Leave a suicide note and all.

Type up a suicide note.

Make it seem as if he was remorseful for having killed Michelle, but then …

And this was the good part.

Make it look as if the suicide had been
faked,
the suicide was really
a murder,
do you see? Someone had
killed
him and tried to make it
look
like a suicide, I’m sure you see a lot of that, I’ve been in a dozen plays where that happened. In fact, I was
counting
on your looking for something like that, a fake suicide. I was
counting
on you finding the earring I left under the bed,
Josie’s
earring. I was
counting
on you figuring she was the one who’d been there, she was the one who’d made love to him.

We made such good love that night.

I surprised him there.

Knocked on the door. Hi, Chuck.

He looked so handsome.

We made such good love.

I’d like a drink, I told him afterwards. No, don’t get up, I’ll make them. I mixed them
in
the kitchen, dropped two Dalmanes into his. Here’s to us, darling, here’s to our future. He was out like a light ten minutes
later. I rolled him off the bed and dragged him to the bedroom window, but the damn thing was sealed shut around the air conditioner,
so I had to drag him all the way into the living room, he was so big, so heavy. I left him on the floor under the window while
I did what I had to do. I was still naked. I left the glasses where they were. A woman there, right? Put away the bottle of
Scotch. Typed up the note. Still naked. Tried not to make it too
specific
because I wanted you to figure out some things for yourself. If it looked
too
phony, you’d begin to think it was
supposed
to look phony, that someone was trying to
make
it look phony. I wiped off everything I’d touched, even the earring. I was going to leave the earring in plain sight, but
then I thought
that
might seem too obvious, too, so I put it under the bed. Not too
far
under it. I wanted it to be found. I wanted you to think she’d dropped it on the floor, Josie, and it had just rolled under
the bed, and there it was. While I was getting dressed, I couldn’t find my panties, he’d tossed them across the room someplace.
I almost panicked. I found them hanging on one of the dresser knobs. I’d been searching all over the floor, and there they
were hanging on this knob. Can you imagine the hundred to-one shot that was? Chuck throwing them across the room and them
landing on a knob? The things that happen.

Getting him out the window was the hard part.

He was so heavy. Such a big man.

I propped him up and sort of draped his arms over the sill, and then I tried hoisting him up over it. I was already dressed
and beginning to sweat, struggling to lift him. I wanted to leave the apartment the minute I got him out the window, run down
the back stairs, get away from the building in what I hoped would be a lot of confusion outside. But I was beginning to panic
again because I wasn’t sure I could manage it, it was taking all my strength just to get his
chest
up onto the sill. And then all at once I … I don’t know what it was … I suddenly seemed so much stronger, maybe it was an
adrenaline rush or something, I don’t know, but all at once I was lifting him and … and he was suddenly weightless … falling
away from my hands … out and … and gone. Just gone.

All the way home, I kept praying you’d find the earring and think Josie was the one who’d killed him.

Because then you’d go get her.

And I’d get the part.

You didn’t see any palm trees growing in this city except in the tropical-bird buildings of the Grover Park and Riverhead
zoos, and in several of the indoor buildings at the Calm’s Point Botanical Gardens. This city was no garden spot. But on Palm
Sunday, you’d think the plant was indigenous to the area.

Half the Christians who carried leaves of the stuff to church that Sunday didn’t know that the day celebrated Jesus’ triumphal
entry into Jerusalem. All they knew was that the priest would bless the frond and then they would carry it home and fashion
it into a little cross which could be pinned to a lapel or a collar. Some of the palm crosses were quite elegant with fancy
little serrated tips on the post and transverse pieces.

Mark Carella wanted to know why his father hadn’t made a little cross for
him,
the way all the other kids’ fathers had made for
their
sons. Carella explained that he was no longer a practicing Catholic. April, overhearing the conversation Carella was having
with her twin brother, announced that she wanted to become a rabbi when she grew up. Carella said that was fine with him.

Mark wanted to know why they had to go to Grandma’s house two weeks in a row. They were going there next Sunday for Easter,
so why’d they have to go today, too?

“Grandma’s always so gloomy nowadays,” he said.

This was a true observation.

Carella took him aside and told him he had to be a little more patient with Grandma until she was able to adjust to Grandpa
being dead. Mark wanted to know when that would be. Mark was ten years old. How did you explain to a ten-year-old that it
took time for a woman to adjust to the traumatic death of her husband?

“I miss the way Grandma used to be,” Mark said.

Which was another true observation.

Carella suddenly wondered if the man who’d shot and killed his father realized that he’d effectively killed his mother, too.

“Why don’t you tell her?” he said. “That you miss her?”

“She’ll cry,” Mark said.

“Maybe not.”

“She always cries now.”

“I cry, too, honey,” Carella said.

Mark looked at him.

“I do,” Carella said.

“Why’d that son of a bitch have to kill him?” Mark said.

When Rosa Lee Cooke was coming along in Alabama, there weren’t any white restaurants colored folk could go eat in. The restaurant
Sharyn took her to today was thronged with white people. Crane her neck hard as she could, Rosa Lee could see only one other
black family there. Black man and his lighter-colored wife, three children all dressed in their Palm Sunday best. Rosa Lee
herself was wearing a tailored suit the color of her own walnut complexion; Sharyn had taken her shopping for it as a birthday
gift. She was also wearing a bonnet she’d bought for herself, trimmed with tiny yellow flowers. Wouldn’t be Easter till
next
Sunday, but she couldn’t resist previewing it today.

She wasn’t a drinking woman, a little sip of sweet wine every now and again. But today was the day Jesus had marched into
Jerusalem with his head held high, and she felt a little drink in celebration might not be remiss. So when Sharyn asked if
she’d like a cocktail before lunch, she said she wouldn’t mind a Bloody Mary.

Rosa Lee had been thirteen when Sharyn was born, and now—at the age of fifty-three—the women truly looked more like sisters
than they did mother and daughter, a compliment both had heard so often they were now sick to death of it. Same color eyes,
same color skin, same smooth complexion, but Sharyn’s hair was trimmed close to her head whereas her mother’s was shiny with
tight little curls springing from below the brim of her fancy hat.

They clinked glasses and drank.

A white man at a nearby table was openly admiring them. Rosa Lee noticed this, and turned her eyes away, just like she’d done
in the South when she was a little girl. No sense inviting rape, she’d been taught back then, and
it
had stuck with her all her life. Wasn’t a white man on earth could be trusted. Black man sees Rodney King getting beat by
white cops on television, the black man says, “So what’s new? This’s been going on all along, only difference is we finally
got
pictures
of it.”
White
man sees Rodney King getting beat on television, he says, “Oh, how terrible, those cops are
beating
that poor black man,” as if this was something didn’t happen every day of the week in every city in America, white cops beating
on a black man. Or messing with a black woman. Putting their hands inside a black woman’s blouse. Doing even worse things
to a black woman, touching her where they had no right touching, just because she was in their custody.

“I called last night, y’know,” she said. “Wanted to make sure you said ten o’clock for church.”

“Yes, I got the message,” Sharyn said.

“So why didn’t you call back?”

“I got in late. I called this morning, soon as I …”

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“Who with?”

“You don’t know him.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Dinner.”

“Where?”

“In the Quarter.”

“Dangerous down there. You shouldn’t be going down there at night.”

“The
Quarter?
It’s mostly gay, Mom.”

“Not all of it’s gay. There’re places in
the
Quarter a person could get hurt.”

“Well, not where we were.”