An Exquisite Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  They filed into the room, and Nita stationed herself unobtrusively in a dimly lit corner. The only light in the room came from a central overhead lamp above a bare rectangular table. The table was pulled slightly off center, so that the suspect’s chair was under the light, but not the interrogator’s. This shift put the suspect at a deliberate disadvantage—not unlike the tactic the shadowy On Leong boss had used on Yun Gee.

  They waited while the clerk took Solana’s fingerprints and set up his stenotype at one end of the table. Solana was escorted to the hot seat in the center, and Morales seated himself opposite, while Dillon pulled up a chair next to the clerk and settled down. He dictated the preamble, noting that Detective Morales would conduct the interview in Spanish and would translate the questions and answers into English.

  Solana had spoken not a word since they had collected him from the Coast Guard station on Staten Island. He had ridden the ferry to Manhattan in silence, staring wistfully at the North River piers lined with vessels that could have taken him far beyond the law’s reach. Ever since they pulled him off the Princesa, only six hours after she left Pier Fifty-Two, he had been trying to figure out how they had identified him so quickly. Surely no one in Joey’s organization had informed on him—they had a lucrative business deal. But it was the smuggling that got him caught. How could the authorities know?

  The only way was Matta, he decided. Matta must have turned me in. He knew all about the cocaine deal—shit, he arranged it! He didn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t kill Lam. So he fingered me for that, too.

  The fear, anger, and self-pity that had kept Solana silent all morning were masked by his blank expression.

  He had decided that his only option was to say as little as possible, to deny whatever they accused him of—as he had done at the Coast Guard station—and hope that whoever actually did kill Lam would turn up. He kept his downcast eyes focused on the tabletop as Morales studied him dispassionately.

  When the detective spoke, it was not in the harsh, intimidating voice Solana had expected. His tone was somehow reassuring, and the sailor glanced up for a moment before retreating into impassivity. Unlike some members of the force, Morales preferred to probe gently rather than badger, though he was not averse to scare tactics and misdirection when circumstances warranted.

  Dillon couldn’t understand the language, but he knew he was watching a master at work.

  Sixty-Five

  Loitering in the lobby, making small talk with the desk sergeant, was Fitz, who had been sidelined from the case. He had no cause to be resentful, he knew that, but nevertheless he wished he could be in on the questioning of the prime suspect. He was scheduled to go out on patrol at two p.m., so he probably wouldn’t be around when Nita came out, which bothered him even more than missing the interrogation. He was about to head for the squad room when a man entered, approached the desk, and asked to see Detective Dillon. He spoke with a Spanish accent.

  “He’s not available right now,” Ryan told him. “Can Officer Fitzgerald here help you?”

  “I’d rather wait for Dillon,” the man replied. “How long will it be, do you think?”

  “Could be quite a while,” said Fitz. “What’s the nature of your business?”

  “I have some information for him. A case he’s working on.”

  “Which case is that?”

  “I’ll wait to speak to Dillon.”

  Fitz decided to persist. “If you’ll tell me which case, I’ll get word to him. Find out when he can see you.”

  “The Lam killing.”

  He was not surprised to hear the man refer to Lam’s killing instead of his death. Word must be all over the Village by now. “What’s your name?” he inquired.

  “Roberto Matta. Dillon came to see me on Sunday. I’m a friend of Lam’s. Was, that is.”

  Fitz took this information down the hall to the interview room. He cracked the door and caught Dillon’s eye, avoiding Nita’s quizzical look. Quietly, the detective slipped outside and listened to what Fitz had to say.

  “Interesting,” he muttered. “I thought that bird knew more than he was letting on. Maybe I’d better see him now. I’m not doing any good in there.” He followed Fitz back to the lobby, where Matta waited on a hard bench opposite the desk. The artist rose and extended his hand.

  “Thanks for coming in, Mr. Matta,” said Dillon as they shook. “Let’s step into my office.” They left Fitz, excluded once again, in the lobby.

  Ten minutes later, the desk sergeant’s phone rang. “It’s Dillon. He wants you,” he told Fitz.

  Fitz knocked on the office door and entered. Dillon beckoned him to his desk and handed him several sheets of paper covered with his scrawled handwriting.

  “Have Mr. Matta’s statement typed up, Officer Fitzgerald. If the clerk is occupied”—which Dillon knew he was—“find someone who can take care of it. I want it for him to sign as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll see to it right away,” Fitz replied. He hurried down the hall and into the clerk’s office, where he busied himself at the typewriter. No way was he going to pass this along to anyone else, even if the best he could do was hunt and peck. He had actually learned typing in high school, and even though he was rusty, he managed more quickly than he had expected, especially given Dillon’s bad penmanship. Once that was deciphered, the complete statement filled only a single typed page.

  It began with the artist’s full name. He had spelled it out for Dillon at the top of the first page of handwritten notes: Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren. Fitz snickered. “Bet his mama don’t call him that, except when she’s really mad at him,” he said under his breath. “Like I hear Brian Francis Xavier Fitzgerald from my ma when she’s sending me to the doghouse.”

  He let out more snickers as he read and transcribed the notes. “So you don’t know what Carlos’s last name is? Well, we do. Or what he does for a living? We know that, too. Or where to find him? He’s right here in this station house, not thirty feet from where you’re sitting.”

  Matta had repeated the story he and Hare concocted after Hare’s conversation with Motherwell. They had refined it until it got so plausible that they almost believed it themselves. The fact that it was based on truths and half-truths made it that much easier to tell convincingly. The only real pitfall was the role they had played in the smuggling scheme, but he wasn’t about to let that slip. And Carlos wasn’t around to contradict him. Or so he believed.

  In less than fifteen minutes, Fitz was back in the detective’s office with the statement ready for Matta’s signature. Dillon took the paper from Fitz, glanced at it, and handed it to Matta. “Please read this over, Mr. Matta, and sign it if you approve. If you make any changes, please initial them.”

  The artist spent a few moments reviewing the typescript. He crossed out a word, initialed it, signed the paper, and handed it to Dillon.

  “I corrected myself, I hope you don’t mind. I said that Lam was very furious at Carlos, but I think just furious is better.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Matta. Just furious it is.” Dillon rose from his chair, Matta did likewise, and they shook hands again.

  “Thank you for coming in,” said Dillon amiably. “You’ve been very helpful, and we’ll get working on this information right away.” He gestured to Fitz, who kept his mouth shut as he escorted their snitch out to the lobby. It was nearly two p.m., time for him to hit the beat. He decided to give Matta a head start, then follow him. Just out of curiosity.

  Sixty-Six

  Tuesday afternoon

  After the prisoner was led away, Morales and Dillon conferred while the clerk packed up his stenotype machine and Nita continued to observe.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Morales,” said Dillon admiringly, “I thought he was going to clam up completely, but you managed to get more out of him than I think he realized.”

&n
bsp; “Mostly just a broken record, no, señor, no, señor, no, señor,” said Morales, “but having Matta’s statement certainly was helpful. It really gave me an advantage. Mind you, there are holes in it, big ones. The part about him not knowing anything about Carlos is obviously a crock. As soon as I mentioned his name, I got a rise out of Carlos. He knows Matta well enough to be afraid of him.”

  “How much of what Matta told me do you believe?” Dillon asked.

  Morales conjectured. “That Lam had a fight with Carlos, no. When I asked Carlos about that, he denied it, and I believe him. Nothing solid to go on. It’s just a hunch. That Carlos put the costume on the body, yes. He denied that, too, but I think he was lying. That Carlos is a criminal, yes, but a very small-time crook. All the merchant seamen do a little smuggling on the side. Who cares? Certainly not his buddy Lam. No, there had to be more to it than that.

  “Carlos needs time to think things over,” Morales continued. “If he admits to smuggling, without concrete evidence, the worst they can do to him is pull his ticket and deport him, but if he’s convicted of manslaughter, he’ll get prison time. If he claims self-defense, it won’t hold up. He’s not stupid. I think he’ll figure it out and decide to tell the whole story.”

  Morales stood up and stretched. “You can hold him on a forty-eight-hour warrant. A couple of days in the cooler should loosen his tongue. Meanwhile I have to try to get him a lawyer; he’s going to need one. Let’s go, Officer Diaz.”

  Nita, who had been silent since she parted from Fitz in the hall, waited until they were on their way to the subway before asking the question that was stuck in her craw.

  “How do you know he was telling the truth about not fighting with Lam? All he said was ‘no, señor.’ He said the same thing when you asked about the costume, but you didn’t believe him that time. Why not?”

  “Partly because of the way he said it each time,” Morales explained. “After you’ve questioned as many people as I have, you can hear the little nuances that give them away. You develop a kind of personal built-in lie detector. When he denied fighting, it came out straight, not real emphatic like he was trying to convince me, more matter-of-fact. He kept his eyes down but steady.

  “When he denied creating the costume, he was just a bit too insistent. And his eyes shifted just a little. You probably couldn’t see it from where you were standing. Maybe you saw his head move, very subtly.”

  “I didn’t notice that,” Nita admitted. “I was trying to take everything in, but I missed it.”

  “Most of the time he was as still as a statue, literally scared stiff but in control of himself,” said Morales. “I admire his stoicism. But I think he’ll soften up.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Nita was pleasantly surprised when Morales asked for her opinion.

  “There was something in Matta’s statement I didn’t understand,” he told her. “When I first read it, I thought he called Lam’s body an exquisite corpse. That shocked me. Then I realized he was talking about the costume, the disguise, whatever you want to call it. But why call it that?”

  “I’ve certainly never heard a dead body described that way,” she said. “At funerals, people will often say the corpse looks peaceful, maybe even beautiful, but exquisite? No, sir.”

  She thought a moment. “I’ll ask Fitz—Officer Fitzgerald, I mean.” Suddenly she looked sheepish, and Morales gave her an understanding smile.

  “Sweet on him, aren’t you?”

  “Hector, you’re too foxy for me.”

  Sixty-Seven

  It was only a few blocks from the Sixth Precinct station house to Matta’s Patchin Place apartment, which is where the artist headed after he left. New York was enjoying a mild, dry autumn. The hurricane that had delayed the Princesa had drifted east, missed the Atlantic coast, and petered out over New Brunswick. On the West Village streets, pushcarts displayed their produce in the afternoon sun, shop doors were propped open invitingly, and the sidewalks were busy with foot traffic. Fitz had no trouble keeping Matta in sight without being obvious. The surveillance was uneventful. A stop in the drugstore on Greenwich, then straight home.

  Inside the pharmacy, Matta used the pay phone to report to Hare on his visit to the police station.

  “I’m glad that’s over with,” he said. “I hope it will keep them busy for a while, and off our trail for good.”

  “Our story really did Carlos a favor,” said Hare. “While they’re trying to trace him, he can get away clean.”

  “Listen,” Matta continued, “I can’t talk anymore. Anne isn’t feeling well, and I have to get back.”

  “What’s wrong?” Hare asked.

  “Well, I don’t really know. She sort of collapsed this morning, just like that. She asked me who we were talking about yesterday—you know, the heart attack—and I told her about Lam. Not the whole story, of course, just that he and Carlos had a fight and I thought maybe Carlos killed him. It threw her for a loop. I put her to bed before I left, and she was just staring at the ceiling. I’m going to ask the druggist for something to bring her around.”

  After he hung up, Matta went to the counter and consulted the pharmacist.

  “You did the right thing,” he said. “Keep her warm, elevate her feet, and let her rest. Most likely she’ll be fine after she calms down. But if her heartbeat is rapid and her breathing is shallow, call a doctor—she may need oxygen.”

  Matta thanked him and went home.

  During the hour he’d been gone, Anne had indeed become calmer. Her initial shock had given way briefly to panic and then subsided into remorse.

  Three words were repeating in her head like a drumbeat: I killed him.

  Saturday midday, October 17

  Picking himself up off the studio floor, Lam groped for the chair he sat on to study his work in progress, a wooden ladder-back with a rush seat, and slumped down on it. His vision was blurry, and his head felt as heavy as a rock, except it was hollow and echoed with a pounding rhythm that he recognized as his heartbeat. He thought shaking it might clear it, but decided against that when the slight movement of raising it caused it to swim violently.

  He stood up slowly, steadying himself on the chair back, and reached for the mantelpiece. He almost missed it, but managed to grab hold of it while he got his balance and his nausea passed. I’d better lie down, he told himself. He still couldn’t focus, nor did he remember what had happened to make him so disoriented. The bedroom suddenly seemed very far away, so he sat down again. His mouth was dry. He wanted a drink of water, but the kitchen sink was also out of reach. Maybe just sitting very still was the best thing to do for now.

  Presently things began to seem clearer. The pain in his head was settling into a dull throbbing ache, and his vision was returning to normal. But he had no memory of what had transpired from the time he was pacing the room, waiting anxiously for Carlos to arrive, until he came to on the floor. I must have blacked out, he decided. No idea for how long. He was alarmed by the thought that he might have had some kind of seizure. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. He’d felt dizzy a few times when food was short, but this was a completely different feeling, much more painful and intense.

  Then Lam realized that the throbbing was coming from the back of his skull. He reached up, felt the bruised spot, and winced. The skin wasn’t broken, but the pain was worst there. Not a stroke after all. Someone must have hit him on the head. Carlos—who else? But why? He was still too dazed to figure it out, but if he could get some cold water on his head and into his parched throat, things might improve.

  Using the chair as a walker, he worked his way to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. There was a coffee cup on the drain board, and with a shaking hand, he filled it, but thought better of tipping his head to drink. He ran a little water into his cupped hand and managed to get some into his mouth. Gingerly, he moistened a dish to
wel and pressed it against the back of his neck. The cool compress was helpful, and soon he felt able to tackle a sip or two of water from the cup. He sat down again and rested his head in one hand while the other held the wet towel that soothed his pain and allowed him to consider what had happened.

  There could be only one explanation. Carlos had arrived, but instead of turning over the package, he had slugged Lam and left with the cocaine and the money. I thought he was my friend, the double-crossing bastard, Lam cursed to himself. What a fool, I thought I could trust him.

  He must have made a better deal with somebody uptown. He’s been there—he told me about the bar in Harlem where they have real Cuban beer. Why not just go up there and sell the stuff? Because he could get my money, too. All he had to do was knock me out, take the three hundred, and leave. Then get as much again, or more, from his uptown pals.

  All this reasoning made Lam’s head begin to throb again. A new wave of nausea hit him, and he had to stop thinking and rest. He hadn’t yet thought to check his back pocket, where the three-hundred-dollar payment remained unmolested. In fact, his mind was increasingly clouded by the blood that was flowing into the lining of his brain, where the pressure was building.

  Sixty-Eight

  Wednesday morning, October 20

  Raul had lain low for the past two days, waiting for the heat to blow over. Now he was back in Joey Ramirez’s office, trying to explain why Detective Morales had let it be known that the cops were no longer interested in him.

  Joey was not a happy man. He glared across his desk at the squirming Raul.

  “You worthless piece of shit,” he hissed, “you spilled your guts to Morales, didn’t you?”