Fat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct

by Ed McBain

  “When did she get back, would you know?”

  “Let me think a minute.”

  “Take your time.”

  The guard thought it over.

  “I was having a cup of coffee.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Must’ve been around eleven, eleven-fifteen.”

  “Yellow cab again?”

  “Yeah, but a different one. The first guy was black. This guy was wearing a turban.”

  “Sikh, huh?”

  “No, he looked pretty healthy to me. Big guy with a turban. Probably a terrorist, don’t you think?” the guard said, and grinned.

  “Probably,” Kling said. “Did you notice what she was wearing this time?”

  “Well, yeah. Cause I looked in the cab to make sure it was somebody who lived here. When I saw it was Mrs. Henderson, I waved her on in.”

  “So what was she wearing?”

  “She was dressed casual. Jeans, some kind of jacket, a baseball cap.”

  “Any letters on the cap?”

  “It looked like the school cap to me. The school here? The ones the kids wear? It looked like that. Hell of a thing, ain’t it?” the guard said. “I’ll bet she went out to meet her husband. He’d been away, you know. She prob’ly went out to meet him, don’t you think?”

  “I think so, yes,” Carella said.

  “I THOUGHT YOU MIGHTfind this interesting,” Patricia was telling Ollie. He was eating, of course. She somewhat enjoyed watching him eat. Such gusto, she thought, and wondered if the word “gusto” had Spanish roots. “I got it from the manager at King Memorial. It’s the architect’s schematic sketch of the building. Shows what’s what and where’s where.” She spread it out on her side of the table. Without missing a beat, hands and mouth working, Ollie leaned over the table to study the drawing:

  “Auditorium is here on the right of the building,” she said, “offices on the left. You’ll see that these two men’s rooms, one left, one right, have windows opening on an airshaft. Little narrow passageway runs along the back of the building. The windows were wide open when I checked them out. I figured…”

  “You checked them out?”

  “Yeah. Earlier today.”

  “That was very enterprising of you, Patricia.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I figured it was funny, the windows wide open in rest rooms? What I did, you see, was walk the passageway from one side of the building to the other. I climbed out one window and in the other.”

  He visualized her climbing out the rest room window on the left here, and walking across the back of the building and then climbing through the other rest room window on the right. And then…

  “I get it,” he said. “You think that’s what our killer did. He got into this rest room…”

  “The men’s room here on the left of the drawing, yes.”

  “…went out the window, and ran across the back of the building to the other rest room…”

  “The other men’s room, yes.”

  “And then out the exit doors here, and into the alleyway.”

  “Where he ditched the gun down the sewer,” Patricia said, and shrugged. “That’s what I figure happened, anyway.”

  “I think you’re right,” Ollie said. “Listen, is that all you’re going to eat?”

  “I’m not very hungry, really.”

  “You’re not?” Ollie said, surprised. “I’m hungry all the time.”

  “Maybe…” she started, and then shook her head.

  “No, what?” Ollie asked.

  “Maybe it gives you something to do,” she suggested, and shrugged.

  “I got plenty to do,” Ollie said.

  “I mean, something to…well…take your mind off whatever…problems you might have.”

  “I don’t have any problems.”

  “Because eating is pleasurable, you know.”

  “Oh, that I know,” he said.

  “Instead of fighting City Hall,” she said.

  “Che si puoi fare?”he said.

  “I found out how to say that in Serbian, by the way.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, the janitor at King Memorial taught me.”

  “So how do you say it?”

  “Shta-MO-goo,”she said.

  “Shta-MO-goo,”he repeated.

  “I also know how to say ‘Nothing.’ Ask me ‘What can you do?’ in Serbian.”

  “Shta-MO-goo?”he said.

  “Neeshta,”she answered.

  “What makes you think I got problems?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You said I eat cause I got problems.”

  “No, you eat cause it’s pleasurable is what I said.”

  “You said that, too, but you also said I got problems.”

  “Well, I was wrong.”

  He looked at her. His cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, hit the SEND button.

  “Weeks,” he said. “Hey, Steve.” He listened. “When? Okay. See you.” He pressed the END button, and hung the phone on his belt again. “I gotta go up the Eight-Seven,” he said. “Carella and Kling think they’re onto something. Do you like to dance?”

  “Yes, I love to dance,” Patricia said, surprised.

  “You want to go dancing with me sometime?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m a good dancer. I won a salsa contest one time.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “I really am.”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  “So when would you like to go?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the man. You say when.”

  “How about this weekend?”

  “Okay.”

  “Saturday night?”

  “Okay.”

  “Put on a nice dress.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll wear my blue suit.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said.

  “Shta-MO-goo?”he said.

  “Neeshta,”she answered.

  “OKAY, SO TELL USwhat you’ve got,” Byrnes said.

  This was almost five o’clock already, and all of the detectives gathered in his office should have gone home an hour ago. But Carella and Kling thought they had real meat here.

  “First,” Carella said, “she knew her husband was having an affair.”

  “Everybody’shusband is having an affair,” Parker said. “That don’t mean you run out and shoot them.”

  “Besides, why would she turn the bimbo’s letters over to you?” Hawes asked.

  “Throw us off the scent,” Kling said.

  “Throw us off the scent?” Parker said. “What is this, Sherlock Holmes? Throw us off thescent? ”

  “Let us think she was trying to help the investigation,” Kling explained. “It’s done all the time.”

  “Okay, so we’ve got motive,” Willis said.

  The men were sitting or standing or leaning everywhere in the lieutenant’s corner office. Most of them were bone-weary after a long day. Ollie looked fresh and energetic. He was the only one eating the donuts and drinking the coffee the Loot had set out.

  “We’ve also got opportunity,” Carella said. “We have her leaving the compound at nine-fifteen…”

  “Plenty of time to get there and do the job,” Brown said.

  “Get back, too,” Kling said. “We’ve got her coming home at eleven, eleven-fifteen.”

  “How about means?” Meyer asked.

  “Only smeared prints on the gun. We can’t tie her to that.”

  “So where’s your probable cause?” Parker asked. “Lady goes out to do some shopping…”

  “No, her housekeeper was out doing that.”

  “No alibi, huh?” Byrnes said.

  “None.”

  “You’ve still got no reason to arrest her,” Parker said.

  “We’ve got a description from an eye witness. Same clothes the Smoke Rise guard saw her wearing.”

  “We can get a search warrant for the hat
,” Kling said.

  “What hat?” Byrnes asked.

  “The baseball cap she was wearing.”

  “She’s a baseball player?” Willis asked.

  “Her son is.”

  “Maybehe’s the killer,” Meyer said.

  “He’s only eleven.”

  “I’ve seen eleven-year-old killers,” Brown said philosophically.

  “Not this kid. He comes up to my belly-button,” Carella said. “Our witness saw somebody five-seven, five-eight. Which is about her height.”

  “You still got nothing that warrants an arrest,” Parker said.

  “I agree,” Byrnes said. “Absent fingerprints on the gun…”

  “How about we dust them window sills?” Ollie said, and bit into a chocolate-covered donut.

  “What window sills?”

  “In the toilets,” Ollie said. “Where maybe the shooter went in and out after plugging Henderson.”

  Byrnes didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

  Neither did any of the others.

  “My girlfriend went to the toilet,” Ollie explained.

  NELLIE BRANDgot to the precinct at sevenP .M. that Monday night. She was wearing a tan linen suit that complemented her short blondish hair, a darker brown silk blouse, sheer pantyhose, and dark brown, French-heeled pumps. It was raining again, and she was carrying an umbrella which she deposited in a stand just inside the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. The day shift had been relieved three hours ago. A Chinese translator was sitting at Bob O’Brien’s desk, talking to a man who’d been arrested two hours earlier. O’Brien sat looking bored as the two exchanged sing-song dialogue. The guy had killed both his wives; that was good enough for O’Brien, never mind the Mandarin or the Cantonese.

  “Hello, Bob,” Nellie said, “where are they?”

  “The Loot’s office,” O’Brien said, and the translator turned to him and said, “What?” and he said, “I’m talking to the DA,” and the translator said, “Oh, solly,” was what O’Brien actually heard her say, “solly.”

  Nellie walked across the familiar squadroom to Lieutenant Byrnes’s office, knocked on the frosted glass panel in the upper half of the door, heard Byrnes’s voice yelling, “Come!” and opened the door and went in. She recognized Carella, of course…

  “Hey, Steve.”

  “Nellie.”

  …and Ollie Weeks from the Eight-Eight.

  “Hello, Ollie.”

  “Hi, Nellie.”

  She had been briefed on the phone, and knew that the two precincts were sharing the bust; Lieutenant Hirsch had already given permission for the Q and A to take place here at the Eight-Seven, since this was where Mrs. Henderson had been apprehended. A police stenographer was seated at a small table across the room, near the windows that fronted the street, closed now against the rain and the noise of the traffic below.

  Pamela Henderson was sitting in a straight-backed chair alongside her attorney, a man named Alex Wilkerson, with whom Nelliehad crossed swords on many a previous occasion. Pamela was wearing a dark blue suit, a white blouse, blue pantyhose, and blue high-heeled pumps. Despite the expensive designer suit, she appeared somehow shabby, perhaps because the rain had dampened her hair and her clothes on her walk from the car to the front steps of the building. Nellie’s first impression was one of shoulder length hair that could only be described as mousy, matching eyes that were a trifle too large for the woman’s narrow face, a thin-lipped mouth devoid of lipstick.

  “Hello, Alex,” she said.

  “Nice to see you, Nellie.”

  A man in his late forties, Wilkerson affected the long, lanky, languorous style of a young Abraham Lincoln, favoring dark suits and bow ties, a shock of black hair hanging boyishly over his forehead. He was smoking a pipe now, even though a sign on Byrnes’s desk readCANCER -FREE ZONE. Byrnes was frowning. He was thinking, Smoke your brains out, Counselor, we’re gonna fry your client.

  Nellie introduced herself, explained that she was here from the District Attorney’s Office at the request of the arresting officers, and then asked if Mrs. Henderson knew she’d been charged with second-degree murder…

  “My client has been so informed,” Wilkerson said.

  “Has she been informed of her rights?”

  “She has.”

  “Does she understand she can stop the questioning at any time…?”

  “I’ve advised her not to answer any questions at all,” Wilkerson said.

  “Then we’ve got nothing further to say here,” Nellie said. “Let’s get her printed, boys, and take her downtown for arraignment.”

  “I’d like to add,” Wilkerson said, “that you have no probable cause for arrest. Anything that’s brought out from this moment on—including any fingerprints you take—will be fruit of the Poisoned Tree.”

  “We’ll take that risk, Counselor.”

  “Be so advised.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’d like to say something,” Pamela said.

  “Mrs. Henderson, I strongly suggest…”

  “I’d like to know why I’ve been arrested.”

  “Well,” Nellie said, “the detectives here seem to think you shot and killed your husband, ma’am. If you’d like to convince us otherwise…”

  “She’s not going to answer any questions, Counselor, so please don’t get fancy with us.”

  “Well, fine, then let’s get on with it. Boys? You want to…?”

  “I have nothing to hide here,” Pamela said.

  Nellie was happy to hear this. The ones who had nothing to hide already had one foot on the path to life imprisonment.

  “They’ve placed you under arrest,” Wilkerson said. “Answering their questions will onlyhelp …”

  “My answers will be on the record, won’t they?” Pamela asked.

  “Yes, but you have the right to remain silent,” Wilkerson said. “And if youchoose to remain silent…”

  “I don’twant to remain silent!” Pamela said.

  “I’m trying to say that your choice won’t be held against you in court. They cannot compel…”

  “I’ll say it in court, too.”

  “You may not wish to testify in…”

  “I didn’t kill him!”

  The room went silent.

  “So what’ll it be?” Nellie asked. “Questions, no questions? It’s your call, Counselor.”

  “I fear it’s my client’s call,” Wilkerson said.

  “Mrs. Henderson?”

  “Ask your questions. I didn’t kill him.”

  “Counselor. That okay with you?”

  Wilkerson spread his hands and sighed.

  “Thank you,” Nellie said.

  She took Pamela’s oath, elicited her name, address, and occupation, reaffirmed once again that she had been informed of and understood her rights, and then began questioning her.

  “Mrs. Henderson, can you tell me where you were at ten-thirty on the morning of April twenty-second?”

  “I was home.”

  “Where was that?”

  “26 Prospect Lane. In Smoke Rise. I gave you the address two minutes ago.”

  The stenographer’s fingers were flying over her machine.

  Q: Can you tell me what you were wearing?

  A: A simple skirt and sweater.

  Q: Do you remember what color they were? The skirt? The sweater?

  A: It was a matching set. An olive green sweater and skirt. I have them at home. I can show them to you, if you like.

  “Excuse me, Counselor, but where’s this going?” Wilkerson asked, and looked to Byrnes for sympathy and encouragement. Byrnes sat dead-panned behind his desk. “Why is my client’s wardrobe on the morning of her husband’s death of such importance to you?”

  “Maybe because we have a witness who saw her wearing something entirely different that morning,” Nellie said.

  “Oh, and who might…?”

  “Alex, do you want me
to swearyou in? Or may I continue questioning your client instead?”

  “Mrs. Henderson?” he asked, turning to her.

  “I have nothing to hide,” she said again.

  Q: Mrs. Henderson, do you own a pair of blue jeans?

  A: I do.

  Q: Do you own a blue ski parka?

  A: I do.

  Q: Do you own white sneakers?

  A: No.

  Q: White running shoes then?

  A: Yes.

  Q: How about a black baseball cap?

  A: No. I don’t own a black baseball cap.

  Q: A cap with the letters SRA on it?

  A: No.

  Q: Weren’t you wearing such a cap on the morning of April twenty-second?

  A: No. I was wearing a green sweater and skirt set.

  Q: No hat.

  A: No hat.

  Q: Any idea what those letters might stand for?

  A: The detectives have already told me what they think those letters stand for.

  Q: And what’s that.

  A: Smoke Rise Academy.

  Q: Where your son goes to school, does he not?

  A: That’s where he goes to school.

  Q: Does your son own such a cap?

  A: You will have to ask my son.

  “Excuse me, Counselor, but what does her son’sschool have to do with any of this? I must again ask where you’re going. Mrs. Henderson has already told you…”

  Nellie sighed heavily.

  “No theatrics, please,” Wilkerson said. “We’re not in court yet.”

  “Counselor, your client said she wants to answer my questions. If she’s changed her mind, fine. But if she still…”

  “I just don’t know where you’re going,” Wilkerson said plaintively, and again turned to Byrnes for sympathy. Byrnes sat stone-faced.

  “I don’t know where you’re going, either,” Pamela said.

  “I’m going to King Memorial on the morning your husband was killed,” Nellie said. “I’m going to an alleyway on the western end of the building, where the murder weapon was recovered from a sewer there. I’m going to a man named Clarence Weaver who almost got knocked over by someone running out of that alley. The person he saw was wearing what I questioned you about a moment ago. Blue jeans, a ski parka, white sneakers…or maybe running shoes, hm?…and a black baseball cap with the initials SRA on it. I’m suggesting that the initials on that cap stand for Smoke Rise Academy, where your son goes to school, and I’m further suggesting that you were wearing your son’s hat on the morning of the murder when you ran out of that alley on St. Sebastian’s…”