The Last Dance (24 page)

“'Ey, man …”

“Eat it!” Bop said.

“Man, what you…?”

Bop swung the muzzle sideways across Milagros's mouth. There was the sound of something snapping. There was a spray of blood. Teeth clicked loose and spilled onto the air.

“Jesus Chri …”

“Shhh,” Bingo said.

“Eat it,” Bop said again, and slid the barrel of the gun into Milagros's mouth.

“Quiet now,” Bingo said.

Milagros began to blubber. His eyes were wide. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth, around the barrel of the nine.

“Who sent you to kill him?”

Milagros shook his head.

“No, huh?” Bop said, and cocked the pistol. “Who?” he insisted.

Milagros shook his head again.

“You ought to go see your dentist again,” Bingo said, and nodded.

Bop swung the gun against Milagros's mouth.

He almost choked on his own teeth.

The jailer didn't see what had happened to Milagros until he made his rounds at midnight. Long before then, he had clicked open Milagros's
cell from his end of the corridor and had watched the two detectives approaching the steel door with its bulletproof viewing window, and had let them out into the small holding room, and then out of the complex itself. Now, as he came down the corridor, the old man in the cell next to Milagros's was sitting upright on his cot, his eyes wide, but saying nothing. The jailer knew right away something was very wrong.

Milagros was lying on the floor of his cell.

There was blood on the floor, and scattered teeth, and what looked and smelled like vomit. There was also another smell because Milagros had soiled himself while the two detectives were methodically knocking every tooth out of his mouth, but the jailer didn't yet know the full extent of what had happened here, he saw only the blood and a handful of teeth in the spill of light from the after-hours illumination in the corridor.

The jailer had read enough newspapers in the past few months.

He didn't even go into Milagros's cell. He went back down the corridor, past the cell of the old man with the wide accusative eyes, and he unlocked the steel door at the far end, and locked it again behind him, and walked directly to the wall phone by the officers' station, and called his immediate superior, the Security Division captain on duty.

The jailer's story was that two detectives had come into the lockup showing a piece of paper authorizing them to question Hector Milagros. He couldn't remember their names. He'd asked them to sign in, and he assumed they both had; he hadn't looked at the log book afterward. He told the captain they'd been in the prisoner's cell for about half an hour, and that he hadn't heard anything out of the ordinary during that time. Then again, there was a thick steel door at the end of the corridor. He said he couldn't remember having seen either of the detectives down here before, nor could he remember what either of them looked like, except that one had
a mustache. The duty captain figured the man was covering his own ass.

He
read newspapers, too.

Lest anyone later accuse him of having delayed while a story was being concocted, he called an ambulance at once, and had the prisoner expressed to nearby St. Mary's, the same hospital Sharyn Cooke had moved Willis from not four nights earlier. Then he telephoned the deputy warden of Security Division, who listened to the story from his bed at home, alternately expressing surprise and grave concern. The deputy warden in turn woke up the warden, who was commanding officer of the entire facility. The warden debated waking up the supervisor of the Department of Corrections, but finally called him at home. The Police Commissioner himself was awakened at close to three in the morning. It was he who informed the media at once, before anyone began thinking a cover-up was taking place here.

Gabriel Foster didn't hear the news until he turned on his television set the next morning.

That same morning, Carella first called Cynthia Keating's attorney to tell him he hoped he didn't have to yank her before a grand jury to get a few simple questions answered, and when Alexander started getting snotty on the phone, Carella said, “Counselor, I haven't got any more time to waste on this. Yes or no?”

“What questions?” Alexander asked.

“Questions pertaining to the rights she inherited from her father.”

“In my office,” Alexander said. “Ten o'clock.”

They got there at five minutes to.

Alexander was wearing chocolate-brown corduroy trousers, tan loafers, a beige button-down shirt, a green tie, and a brown tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He looked like a country gentleman
expecting the local pastor for tea. Cynthia was wearing a pastel-blue cashmere turtleneck over a short miniskirt, navy blue pantyhose, and high-heeled navy patent pumps. She looked long and leggy, her dark hair styled differently, her makeup more unrestrained. Altogether, she seemed to exude an air of self-confidence that hadn't been apparent that first morning in October, after she'd admittedly dragged her father from his perch on the closet door to his new resting place on the bed. Apparently, the prospects of a hit musical did wonders for the personality. Alexander, on the other hand, seemed his same brusque, blond, blustering self.

“What do you want from my client?” he said. “Twenty-five words or less.”

“Honesty,” Carella said.

“That's a
lot
less,” Meyer said.

Alexander shot him a look.

“She's always been honest with you,” he said.

“Good,” Carella said. “Then we won't have to work so hard, will we?”

“Tell me something. You don't
really
think she had anything to do with her father's murder, do you?”

Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer gave a faint shrug, a brief nod.

“She's a suspect, yes,” Carella said.

“Have you shared that thought with anyone else? Anyone outside the police department, for example? Because I'm sure I don't have to remind you, if Mrs. Keating is libeled …”

“The hell with this,” Carella said. “Let's go, Meyer.”

“Just a second, Detective.”

“I told you on the phone I won't waste any more time with you,” Carella said. “If I walk out of here empty, I go straight to the D.A.'s office. Yes, no, which? Say. Now.”

“I'll give you half an hour, no more,” Alexander said, and went behind his desk, and tented his hands and sat there scowling at the detectives.

“I'll make this brief,” Carella said. “At the time of your father's
death, you knew he'd left you the rights to Jessica Miles's play, isn't that so?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn't you tell us?”

“I'm sorry?”

“You told us about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar insurance policy …”

“Yes?”

“And your concern that it might contain a suicide clause …”

“That's right. But …”

“Why didn't you
also
mention you'd inherited the play?”

“I didn't think it was important.”

“You didn't …”

Carella turned away from her. He looked at Meyer, who said nothing. He went back to her. There was a tight, controlled look on his face. Meyer watched him.

“How much were you paid for the license to those rights?”

“That's none of your business,” Alexander said.

“Okay, so long,” Carella said. “Meyer? Let's go.”

“Three thousand dollars for a year's option,” Cynthia said at once. “And three thousand for a second year, if it hadn't been produced by then.”

“What kind of royalties are you getting?”

“Same as the others.”

“Which others?”

“The guy in London …”

“Gerald Palmer?”

“Yes. And the cab driver in Tel Aviv. And the girl from Los Angeles. The redhead in the long gown. Felicity Carr.”

“Felicia,” Meyer corrected.

“Felicia, yes. We'll be sharing six percent of the weekly gross.”

“Do you realize how much money …?”

“Cynthia, you can end this any time you want to,” Alexander said.

“And go before a grand jury?”

“I hardly think the gentlemen will convene a grand jury simply to …”

“Do you realize how much money that can come to?” Carella said. “Six percent of the
gross?
Split four
ways?
”

“I imagine quite a lot,” Cynthia said. “If the show's a hit.”

“Then how can you say …?”

He turned away from her again. Walked back. Let out his breath.

“Do you
want
us to arrest you?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

“Then how can you say you didn't think it was
important?
You tell us about a lousy little insurance policy …”

“Lower your voice, Detective. She's not in Canada.”

“… but you
don't
tell us about a play that can eventually earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for you? Because you don't think it's
important?
”

“I didn't kill him.”

“I think that's enough,” Alexander said.

“I'm not finished.”

“I said that's …”

“I
said I'm not finished.”

“I didn't kill him.”

“When did you sign over the rights to that play?”

“I did not kill my father.”

“When, Mrs. Keating?”

“I didn't
kill
him, damn it!”

“When?”

“Right after the will was probated.”

“And when was that?”

“Two weeks after his death,” she said.

NELLIE BRAND
came to the case with a cool assistant district attorney's eye, ten years of experience in the D.A.'s office, and the hood of a ski parka pulled up over her short blondish hair. That Tuesday morning, when she was about to leave for the office, her husband suggested that perhaps she ought to dress for work a bit more conservatively than blue jeans, a heavy sweater, the ski parka, and boots. She had informed him—somewhat curtly, he thought—that there was slush on every street corner, and she wasn't heading for the Governor's ball, but thanks a lot.

Now—somewhat curtly, Carella thought—she told Lieutenant Byrnes and the detectives gathered in his office that they were premature in looking for a Murder One charge against Cynthia Keating, when all they really had on her was
maybe
Obstructing and …

“… okay, I'll give you Tampering,” she said. “She's admitted she moved her father's body, and that's a two-fifteen-forty, if ever I saw one. But do you really want to send her to jail for four years max? Which her attorney'll bargain down to two, anyway, and
she'll be out in six, seven months? Less if she gets work release? Is it worth it?”

“We think she hired someone to kill the old man,” Carella said.

“Who?”

“Some Jamaican from Houston,” Meyer said.

“Has he got a name?”

“John Bridges. But the cops down there never heard of him.”

“Have you tried the telephone company?”

“They have no listing for him, either.”

“There's a second victim we think was maybe done by the same guy,” Brown said.

“Girl danced at a go-go joint called The Telephone Company,” Carella said.

“Where'd you get the name Bridges?”

“From a tulip works for Gabriel Foster,” Brown said.

“He's all over the papers this morning,” Nellie said. “Foster.”

“We saw.
That
one's related, too.”

“Which one?”

“The pizzeria shooting. Sort of.”

Nellie sighed.

“Nobody says they have to be easy,” Carella said.

“How is it related?”

“The informer who got killed was working for a Hightown dealer who sold cocaine and ‘a lot of designer drugs,' quote, unquote. The killer used Rohypnol in both murders.”

“Are you suggesting he got the rope from this Hightown dealer?”

“We don't know.”

“Maybe you ought to find out, hm? Be nice to know. Who are you quoting?”

“Betty Young.”

“It was our informer who led us to the gay guy, by the way.”

“You think that's why he got killed?”

“Not according to Betty Young.”

“That's twice.”

“Former girlfriend of one of the shooters.”

“Which one? The black guy they beat up Saturday night?”

“No, the other one,” Kling said. “Home in his own beddie-bye.”

“Betty Young, right, I saw her on television. Winner of this week's True-Blue Ex Award. What does
she
say happened?”

“She says Danny ran off with the boss's coke.”

“Who's Danny?”

“Our informer.”

“Bad move, stealing the boss's coke.”

“Stealing the boss's
anything
.”

“Now he knows,” Meyer said.

“In any case, they're
not
related,” Nellie said.

“Except for the rope, maybe.”

“Very slender chance that in this great big city …”

“Well, we think of them as
sort
of related.”

“You want me to bring ‘
sort
of' charges against Cynthia Keating?”

“Way you're sounding,” Brown said, “we can't bring
any
kind of charges.”

“You want an indictment or a pass, which?”

“We think there's enough to take to a grand jury.”

“They won't agree.”

“One,” Carella said, “she knew there was a twenty-five-thou-sand-dollar policy on the old man's …”

“Chicken feed.”

“Plus,”
Carella went on, undaunted, “the copyright to a play she
knew
was being turned into a musical.”