Mitchell Smith (59 page)

On her belly down there, kicking, writhing in smears of blood, Rebecca provided a lively pony as Ellie rode her, wrestling to get her wrists together behind her back, to get the cuffs on and locked. A number of shoppers had gathered around to watch.

Heavy footsteps, and people pushed away. A hand as big as a baseball glove came down and gathered Rebecea’s wrists, suddenly frail, into its thick fingers so the cuffs could snap.

“How ya doin’?” Samuelson said. “-Talk about making’ a mess, here. . .

.”

Watson and two other men in maroon blazers came trotting down the mezzanine stairs, Watson upset. “-I thought you were going’ to stay on the fuckin’ fourth floor! -Jesus. You people need a doctor here!”

“Max,” she said, as he helped her up off Rebecca.

`-Would you call for a car to take her over to New York Hospital, let the emergency people look at her. She got hurt. I arrested her and I read her her rights suspicion of accessory to murder. And resisting . .

“That resisting thing should stick, anyway,” Samuelson said.

“Have you seen that mezzanine up there?” Watson said to him.

“I got Your shoes,” the blond young security man said, and held them out to her. The heel was broken on the left one.

“Throw them away,” Ellie said. “-I don’t want the damn things.”

Rebecca lay at their feet, saying something softly through ruined lips, her pretty dark-green dress destroyed, her black hair, wrenched from its silver clasp, spilled like black water across her face.

“Mr. Watson-I’d like you to come with me back up to the fourth floor,”

Ellie said.

“You don’t have any more suspects up there, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, thank God for that. —Come on.”

“You O.K,?” Samuelson said to her.

“I’m fine. She cut me a little.”

“Looks like a lot to me. Come here toned her blouse’s soaked left sleeve, pushed the material up to expose the cut-which licked her arm with a bright red tongue of blood-took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket (dark gray wrinkled polyester in size fifty-two), tied it around Ellie’s forearm and knotted it. ,-You hurry up what you have to do. You’re going’ to New York, like she is.”

“Goddamnit,” Watson said to his men, “-will you get these people movin’

an’ shoppin’ here-and get Royceman, tell him we got a fuckin’ humongous cleanup. He better get on it.”

“You’re bleedin’ on the carpet,” Watson said. They’d taken the elevator to four, were walking through a maze of slacks on racks. Ellie looked at her arm. “-Not the arm. Your feet. You must have stepped in some of that glass. . . .” Ellie looked back and saw a set of odd smudged footprints, brick-red on a sky-blue carpet. Her He unbut feet felt numb, but better than they had in her brown shoes. She supposed her panty hose were ruined.

“Goddamnit,” Watson said, stooped a little, and picked Ellie up in his arms. He carried her out of the maze of slacks, and past three elderly women, each with her shopping bag, who stepped aside and stared.

“Took sick,” Watson said to them.

At the carousel, he set her down, “I don’t think the sucker turns off,”

he said, “-until the main lights go.”

Elbe, soon surrounded by a casual drifting crowd, climbed up carefully onto the delicate, turning thing, eased her way between two of the small horses-their lovely riders staring past her-to the central steel post supporting it, and found a foothold on a short cross-strut. She reached up, stretching, to pull away the cornucopia’s decorations, crumpled paper leaves, glass jewelry, the little pumpkins (they were plastic), some ears of Indian corn, fifty or more of the large wooden gold-painted coins. The big, curled horn was papier-mAchd, painted amber-brown, Ellie stretched higher and got her hand into it, tugged out a wad of paper leaves, some folded cardboard . . .

reached deeper, and felt something smoother . . . got a grip on it, and pulled out a package the size of a hardcover book, wrapped in butcher’s paper and strapping tape.

She climbed down, wriggled back between the horses getting dizzy from watching the fourth floor slowly revolve around her-then stepped off and tried to tear the package open. The strapping tape was very tough, and Mr. Watson had to take out a small pocket knife and cut it.

Then the butcher’s paper folded out, and stacks of mild green money lay fat in Ellie’s hands.

Samuelson drove differently from Tommy. He drove with dash, rather than inexorably, his huge hands dancing around the wheel, sending the car darting here and there, challenging every car around him, looking for spaces, for cowards who might brake and let him through—driving as if making up for his ponderous pace afoot.

Ellie sat beside him in new sheepskin slippers-gifts from a Mr. Binder, of the store’s management, and fitted over gauze bandages from the security people’s first-aid kit. She wasn’t feeling well. Her arm ached; her feet hurt too, now. “-I don’t feel good, Max.”

He looked over at her. “Hang on. Be there in a minute.”

Ellie leaned forward and put her head in her hands.

“I’m grown up. Now, I’m all grown up,” she said. Her hands were tingling. “-I’m not going to make it,” she said, and felt the car swerve right and suddenly slow.

Samuelson stopped the car, got out to a fanfare of horn blowing, ran around the back to Ellie’s side, opened her door, reached in and lifted her out. She tried to get to a big steel-wire trash can, failed, and began to vomit on the sidewalk as Samuelson held her. She vomited Walsh’s cinnamon rolls, her hot-dog brunch, and tried to vomit more. She retched until her stomach ached.

“-Thank God for New York . . .” she tried to say, and stepped along lightly in her new slippers, Samuelson supporting her weight, to the trash can. She clutched its rim and found her balance. “-Nobody watches in the streets.”

And it was true that this cool and sunny day at least, very few people walking by-after a measuring glance at the two of them, at the obstructing car and angry Third Avenue-bothered to stay and see more.

Ellie clung to the trash can and retched again, trying to bring up something more. -Then, after she got her breath, slowly began to feel better. “She scared me to death,” she said. “-I was so frightened.

When Ellie was able to straighten up, Samuelson let her go. She’d gotten a spatter of vomit on the front of her skirt. She limped back to the car, opened the passengerside door, and searched in her purse for Kleenex.

“You O.K.?”

“O.K.”

Samuelson looked at her for a moment, then walked around to the other side of the car, and got in.

Little butterfly bandages for the feet . . . and a slight surgical repair under local, then butterflies for the arm.

Two shots-the tetanus painful.

“You’re lucky,” the doctor said. She was ChineseAmerican, fat, roundfaced, and very young. “You’re lucky,” she said, while she was working. It was a very New York thing to say, and meant that Ellie wasn’t dying. “-Your friend is very jolly,” the doctor said, and Ellie didn’t know what she was talking about. Later, Samuelson told her Rebecca had been in fine spirits three emergency rooms down, entertaining staff people with the tale of her arrest-using gestures when necessary while they sewed her lip, and when a dentist examined her broken teeth.

“I think she’s insane.”

“Could be,” Samuelson said, “-but don’t say it in court, or she’ll be on release in a couple years, come an’ look you up.”

Leahy and Serrano had walked into emergency-Leahy sweating slightly in his tight blue trench coat, Serrano trotting along behind-and stuck their heads through the stiff white curtain while the doctor was doing the last butterflies on Ellie’s arm.

“Hey–you finished?” Leahy said to the doctor, and bulked on in, rustling blue, to bend and kiss El ie on t e cheek. “-Only cop I can kiss,” he said.

“How ya doin’?” Serrano, still behind the curtain, peeping in.

“I’m still treating,” the doctor said.

“Great job, too,” said Leahy, sat down on a tiny white metal stool, and said, “Kleinie-tell me about it.”

A half hour later, Samuelson drove her home so Ellie could wash and change her clothes-waited outside, then drove her downtown (first to Central Booking, where Ellie made her statement, filed an arrest form, and had a short talk with a D.A.“s man named Carberry) and then to Headquarters.

“Sorry,” Leahy had said, “-but you got A.R.“s to write; you got lots of stuff to fill out. D.A.“s people are going’ to want to talk to YOU More than just at Bookin’, maybe tomorrow, if you feel O. K. But take it from me, a major case, the sooner you get that paperwork in, the better.

Save us trouble all around. -And, by the way next time you approach a serious suspect for an arrest, you have another officer right there. You understand me? Samuelson was walkin’ around on Lexington waitin’ for you, while you were getting’ chopped. -The store security jerk didn’t make him for a cop for ten minutes.”

“O.K.,” Ellie said.

‘-I know you didn’t have a partner. But never again.”

“O. K.

She and Samuelson—come from Central Booking-had then, at Headquarters, walked into an empty squad room, Ellie still in her Bloomingdale’s slippers, but with clean white socks on. She’d changed to dark blue slacks, and a white shirt and white pullover sweater. There was a faint, high buzzing sound in her ears—some medication she’d been given (small, round pink pills, each marked across its center for dividing).

Except for the buzzing sound, though, she was quite pleased. She felt fine, very calm.

Her arm hardly hurt at all. The ache from the cuts on the soles of her feet didn’t disturb her.

“Whatever that was she gave me,” Ellie’d told Samuelson on their way downtown, —it really works. I feel great.” He had turned to look at her for a moment, then back to the road-they were running down the East River Drive in heavy late-afternoon traffic. Samuelson didn’t talk as much as Tommy had. Didn’t talk much at all. -Ellie had the feeling she amused him.

“Ambrosio,” he said, as he turned off the drive, west. -He just got back from Pennsylvania-hunting’ with some guys. I asked some people knew him a long time.

Their opinion-guy’s an asshole, but he’d never kill a cop.

“You think he’s out of it.”

“I think he’s out of it.”

They walked into an empty squad room, then down to the office to see if Leahy was back yet, opened the door-and found everyone in ambush. This small, jammed crowd cheered before expanding, relieved, out into the squad room, very pleased that Major Crimes had got one in the eye from a shit squad-and LaPlace then opened two bottles of Cold Duck sparkling wine, purchased out of Squad petty cash.

Anderson came down to have some wine and relay the appreciation of the brass, pleased by this headquarters contingent. “The Chief says, ‘Good work,’ ” Anderson said.

Ellie, sitting on her desk, enthroned, her tender feet in fancy slippers propped on her chair seat, raised her paper cup and said, “To Tommy. .

which all repeated as they drank, Serrano crossing himself before he swallowed.

While they finished the wine-and shared some potato chips Murray had provided-her colleagues asked Ellie questions as direct as those they might have asked poor Susan or fierce Rebecca, Graham asking the cleverest of these … asking about Sonia, about what yarn end Ellie had found, or Nardone had found to commence the unraveling. There was general humor about Audrey Birnbaum.

“O.K.,” Leahy said, after a while. “-We had our fun.

Let’s get back to work.”

“Congratulations,” Anderson said, before he left to go upstairs. ‘-I understand, from Lieutenant Leahy, that the victim wrote a couple of letters……

“Yes,” Ellie said, “-but no hard evidence for this case … just a hint in there. And there were some things that don’t need to be read in court.”

“Just the same,” the Captain said, and started to say something more, but changed his mind, smiled at her, and walked away.

“Klein … ?” Leahy called her from his office door.

“-You got some work in here.”

“I need to go down to Personnel for a minute.

“Well … hurry it up.”

When Ellie returned from asking Gloria Murillo, secretary to Captain Cahill of Personnel, for the home address of a certain officer and detective in good standing, Leahy had laid out seven several-page forms for Ellie on his desk.

“Close the door an’ sit down,” he said, “-an’ let me run you through these. You’re going’ to find out a nice juicy homicide case is real different from these Departmental trial things you’re used to down here.

A homicide case is . a royal pain in the ass. Everybody’s got a stake right? The Department don’t want to lose it; the D.A. don’t want to lose it-and, above all, the defendants don’t want to lose it. So—one mistake, one little booboo, and we’re up shit creek. -Because this one, the lawyers really go to work. Understand me?”

“Yes.”

“All right. First thing is, you’re going’ to the arraignment-you already filled out your arrest form with the D.A.“s guy at Central Booking, right?”

“Yes-but how come I have to go to the arraignment?

Why can’t the officers over there handle it from my statement?”

“Ask the D.A.—don’t ask me. Maybe they want to talk to you some more…. That’s the first thing.—Second thing is, if you feel good enough’ we’re going’ through every form we got here. We’re reviewin’

arrest procedure; we’re settin’ up witness evaluations, reviewin’

witness testimony. The whole thing. -You feel all right for this?”

“I’m fine.”

“O.K. Because you don’t have any team with you-an’ now, you don’t even have a partner knowledgeable on the case. -As it is, I’m going’ to have to send a couple people back to the store to get depositions an’

everything. -That security guy saw you find that cash? He saw you?”

“He saw me—I think he’s an ex-cop.”

“What’s his name?”

“Watson.

“Watson … I never heard of him. -But it doesn’t make any difference; we’re going’ to get a deposition from him, too. -Suppose he gets hit by a cab? Then, where’s your case? And that wrappin’ an’ everything is down at Evaluation, right?”