Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (33 page)

“Monday, Monday,” Rawles said out loud, strengthening the impression that this was all on the up-and-up. “August eighth, here we are. Nine o’clock,” he said, “that’s what time she left, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Crowell said.

“Okay, let’s see what was on at nine o’clock.”

“Tell us if you remember any of these will you?” Bloom said.

“Nine o’clock,” Rawles said, and looked at the eight o’clock listings for
Tuesday
night, August the
sixteenth
. “Here we go. Channel Three, ‘Nova.’ Channel Eight, ‘A-Team.’ Channel Ten, ‘Happy Days.’ Channel Thirteen—”

“‘Happy Days,’” Crowell said. “That’s what I was watching.”

“I like that show,” Rawles said, smiling. “That Fonz is hot stuff.”

“Yeah,” Crowell said, and smiled back. “I like it, too.”

“So that’s what you were watching,” Bloom said. “So that settles that.” He, too, had been through this number many times before, with Rawles and also with other detectives on the squad. He knew that Rawles had fed Crowell false data. He knew that Crowell had identified a show he couldn’t possibly have seen on the Monday night McKinney was killed. He had just blown his own alibi for the night of August eighth, and his alibi for
last
night was sitting right there in a striped shift, her legs crossed, jiggling one sandaled foot.

“I don’t suppose you watched any television last night,” Bloom said.

“No, we didn’t,” Crowell said, and looked at Lettie.

The detectives figured he was playing it safe. As dumb as he was, he was maybe beginning to think they’d somehow pulled a fast one, and he didn’t want to take any more chances on television. Better to say he hadn’t been watching it at
all
last night. Better to clue Lettie in with a look as obvious as a rivet.

“That right, Lettie?” Bloom said.

“We weren’t watching no television, that’s right,” she said.

“What
were
you doing?” Rawles asked. “You came here to take a shower, didn’t you? What time did you take your shower?”

“Soon’s I got here.”

“At six-thirty? Is that when you got here?”

“Around then.”

“And that’s when you took your shower.”

“That’s when I took it.”

“Did you take
another
shower later on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t have any clothes on when we got here. Did you take another shower
after
the first shower?”

“Look,” Lettie said, “you know what we were doing here, so let’s cut the shit about the shower, okay? Far as I know, it ain’t no crime, what we were doing.”

“Did you take
any
shower at all?” Bloom asked.

“I took a shower, yes. When I got here. I was all sweaty, so I took a shower.”

“And that was at six-thirty.”

“More or less.”

“Which was it? More or less?”

“A little after, I guess. Musta been about twenty to seven, right, Jackie?”

“That’s right,” Crowell said. “Around then.”

“Then it
wasn’t
six-thirty,” Rawles said.

“What difference does a few minutes make?” Lettie said. “We’re talking twenty to seven, a quarter to seven—”

“Oh, was it a
quarter
to seven?” Bloom said.

“It was sometime between six-thirty and a quarter to seven,” Lettie said.

“You’re sure about that? It couldn’t have been, say, seven o’clock? Or even eight o’clock?”

“No, it wasn’t seven o’clock, it was—”

“How about
eight
o’clock?”

“If it wasn’t
seven
o’clock, then it couldn’ta been
eight
o’clock, neither.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I got here at six-thirty, a quarter to seven.”

“Where were you before then?”

“My own place.”

“Where’s that?”

“Across the way.”

“You were there at six-thirty, huh?”

“That’s where I was.”

“How long did it take you to get here from there?”

“Just a few minutes. It’s only right across the way, you can see it from the window here if you look out.”

“How’d you know Jackie was home?” Rawles asked.

“I seen his car,” Lettie said.

“What time did you get home from work?” Bloom asked.

“Me?” Lettie said.

“No. You, Jackie.”

“Six o’clock, it must’ve been,” Crowell said.

“And you parked your car outside.”

“Right outside. They give these spaces, they assign—”

“Where Lettie could see it.”

“Well, I didn’t know whether she could see it or not. I just parked it where I’m
supposed
to park it.”

“And that’s where you saw it, right, Lettie?”

“That’s where I saw it.”

“At six-thirty.”

“Around then.”

“And neither one of you have been out of this apartment since six-thirty last night, right?”

“We both been here,” Crowell said, and gave Lettie his pointed look again.

“Both of us,” Lettie said.

They were getting nowhere. Bloom sighed. Rawles sighed too, and then touched his nose again, the signal to Bloom that he was about to tell another outrageous lie and he expected Bloom to pick up on it. Bloom didn’t know what the lie was going to be. But he was ready for it.

“This man outside,” Rawles said, and hesitated. “Sitting on the stoop outside. Black like you and me, Lettie, said he was sitting outside around eight o’clock sometime...”

“Little after eight, it must’ve been,” Bloom said.

“Said he saw you coming in the building, Jackie,” Rawles said.

Crowell looked at him.

“Said you seemed to be in a hurry, Jackie,” Bloom said.

“No,” Crowell said, shaking his head.

“No, you
weren’t
in a hurry?”

“I wasn’t—”

“He said—”

“I wasn’t coming in no
building
!”

“What
were
you doing?”

“I was here in the apartment with Lettie.”

“Then how’d this man see you outside? Walking in?” Rawles said.

“In a hurry,” Bloom said.

“He was mistaken.”

“Not too many white people living here,” Rawles said.

“Lettie told you I was here with her from six-thirty—”

“Hard for a black man not to know a white man when he sees one.”

“Said it was you.”

“Said he saw Jackie Crowell—”

“No, he didn’t,” Crowell said.

“Then it couldn’t have been you coming back from dumping Sunny in a swimming pool, right?” Rawles said.

“With two bullet holes in her head,” Bloom said.

“You told me—” Lettie said.

“Shut up!” Crowell said.

“You told me a
dope
bust!”

“I said shut up!”

“Shut up
shit
, man! A thousand bucks don’t buy no—”

What happened next happened very fast.

Lettie was standing near the dresser when Crowell threw open the top drawer and reached in for the gun. She tried to move away
the moment she saw the gun, but he pulled her in against him from behind, his left arm around her waist, the gun in his right hand, flailing the room. Both Rawles and Bloom had drawn their own guns the moment Crowell made his break for the dresser, but neither of them could trigger off a shot because Lettie had been in the line of fire. Now Lettie was being used as a shield, screaming and kicking as Crowell dragged her toward the door, the detectives wedged helplessly in a narrow space on the same side of the bed, each of them hoping Crowell wasn’t even dumber than they knew he was. As he backed toward the door, the gun wildly whipping the air, they hoped he wouldn’t start spraying the room with .38-caliber bullets, hoped he wouldn’t leave yet another dead girl behind him. He shoved her across the room instead, an instant before he reached for the doorknob with his left hand. Lettie collided with Rawles, who bulldozed her aside. She was still on the bed, flat on her back, cursing the entire universe, when the detectives ran out into the hallway after Crowell.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I
was the first obstacle Crowell encountered on the street outside.

I
was the one he shot, the dumb bastard.

My daughter told me she was a celebrity at school. She told me there was only one other kid in her class who had a father who’d been shot, and that was during the Korean War, which didn’t count. She wanted to know how it felt getting shot. I told her I wouldn’t recommend it. She kept wanting to know how it
felt
. I told her it felt better than getting stepped on by an elephant, but worse than anything else I could think of. We played a game for the next ten minutes, making up things that might be worse
than getting shot. We agreed that getting buried alive in the sand might be worse. We agreed that hanging by the thumbs in a Persian market might also be worse. Joanna suggested that getting shot was probably like breaking off with a boyfriend, all the pain and everything.

Clever daughter, mine.

I told her Dale had been the one who’d wanted to end it. I told her Dale had fallen in love with someone else and she planned to marry him. I told her the man’s name was Jim. Joanna said she hated the name Jim. She asked me what I was going to do now.

I didn’t know what I was going to do now.

Bloom came to see me again two days before I was to be released from the hospital. He had with him a transcript of the Crowell Q and A.

“I’m not supposed to let it out of my hands,” he said, “but who’s to say I didn’t forget it here while I went downstairs for a cup of coffee? Glance at it, okay? Pretend it fell off the back of a truck.”

“The coffee downstairs any good?” I asked.

“Better than the squad room, that’s for sure.” He tossed the transcript onto the bed. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so,” he said. “Enjoy yourself.”

Skye Bannister himself had handled the interrogation for the state’s attorney’s office. Present had been Captain Walter Hopper and Detectives Cooper Rawles and Morris Bloom. The transcript started with the usual recitation of place, date, and time—in this case the Calusa Public Safety Building at five o’clock on the morning of August 27. Bannister read Crowell his rights, and Crowell acknowledged that he understood them
and wished no attorney present during the question-and-answer session.

Q:  What is your full name, please?

A:  Jack Crowell.

Q:  No middle name?

A:  No.

Q:  Where do you live, Mr. Crowell?

A:  1134 Archer Street.

Q:  Here in Calusa?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Can you tell me how old you are?

A:  Eighteen.

Q:  Mr. Crowell, I want to ask you first about the night of August eighth. Can you recall that night?

A:  I can.

Q:  Where were you at nine o’clock that night?

A:  In the Shore Haven condominium on Stone Crab Key.

Q:  Why did you go there?

A:  To see Jack.

Q:  By Jack...

A:  Jack McKinney.

Q:  Tell me what you did when you got to the condominium. Step by step, please.

A:  I parked my car, took the elevator up to the third floor, and walked down the hall to Jack’s apartment. I rang the doorbell—

Q:  Would you remember the number of the apartment?

A:  It was apartment 307.

Q:  You rang the doorbell—

A:  Yeah, and Jack opened the door for me. We went in the living room and I told him why I was there.

Q:  What was it you told him, Mr. Crowell?

A:  I told him his sister had mentioned his plan to me, and I wanted $10,000.

Q:  What plan was that?

A:  To grow pot on that farm he was buying.

Q:  Why did you want $10,000?