by McBain, Ed
“But he turned her down,” Brown said.
“Okay, so she goes to the park empty,” Byrnes said. “What then?”
“He kills her.”
“Why?”
The office went silent again.
“Find something,” Byrnes said.
It was almost four-thirty when they came out of Byrnes’s office. Andy Parker had already left for the day. As always, he’d been in a hurry to get out of there. Maybe this was why he’d neglected to leave a note about Sonny Cole and the green Honda. Or maybe he simply didn’t think it was important.
In the Chevy sedan, on their way home, Carella and Brown tried to dope out their next move. They concluded it would be fruitless to ask for a search warrant for the letter stolen from Katie’s apartment—if indeed a letter had been stolen and if, further, the letter had been stolen by the person who’d murdered her. Byrnes was right. If the letter was that important, it would have been burned a minute after the thief left her apartment.
They couldn’t search Roselli’s house for a murder weapon, either, because the weapon had been the killer’s hands. Nor could they go to a judge and say they wanted to look through the house for cocaine because they couldn’t for the life of them see how they could show probable cause and they knew a judge would tell them to go home and be nice boys.
They could arrest Roselli and put him in the box, of course, in the hope that he’d fall all to pieces without a fix and tell them all about how it was he himself who’d shoved Custer over that railing and not little Katie Cochran. But that was for the movies. If Roselli had, in fact, killed Katie he’d simply refuse to answer any questions. Only this time there wasn’t a handy burglary they could charge him with. Earlier today, the judge at Leslie Blyden’s arraignment had set a very low bail of one thousand dollars, which The Cookie Boy had easily met. Whether he now left town was entirely up to him. They didn’t want a repeat performance from Roselli.
It was a little past six P.M. Brown was driving Carella home first, and they had almost reached his house in Riverhead.
“I keep wondering if she’d still be alive,” Brown said.
“How do you mean?”
“If the brother had only lent her some of that money he inherited.”
The car went silent.
And then, both detectives started speaking at the same time.
“Didn’t Roselli say …?”
“How’d he know …?”
And all of a sudden, everything fell into place.
· · ·
On the phone, Roselli’s wife told them he’d already left for a job in the city.
“Where in the city?” Carella asked.
“What is this?” she said. “You’re beginning to upset me and the children, bothering us all the time.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Roselli,” Carella said. “We just have a few more questions.”
“He’s playing in the bandshell at the Seventh Street Seaport. I wish you’d leave us alone. Really,” she said, and hung up.
The seaport was a reconstructed area on the River Dix. Two blocks of souvenir shops and food stands lined a boardwalk that ran into an oval-shaped dance floor with a bandshell behind it. Pennants flapped on a hasty river wind. Music wafted on the soft evening summer air. Roselli was part of a four-piece rock group playing all the golden oldies Carella knew by heart. Hearing the music that had been so vital to him when he was growing up, seeing all the pretty young girls in the arms of handsome young boys, he remembered again that he would soon be forty. On the river, a cruise boat drifted past. Carella could hear the guide over the loudspeaker, telling the passengers they were passing the Seventh Street Seaport. Everything suddenly seemed so poignant to him, as if it were in imminent danger of becoming lost forever. It was seven-forty P.M. and the sky was already melting into the river.
“There he is,” Brown said.
The tune ended. The teenagers on the floor applauded. The band played a little signature riff, and came down off the platform. Carella could not shake the feeling of impending loss.
“Hey,” Roselli said, “what are you guys doing here?”
“Mr. Roselli,” Brown said, “how’d you know Katie’s parents were dead?”
“She told me,” he said.
“When?”
“While we were on tour. She was very upset about it.”
“Told you they’d been in a car accident?”
“Yes.”
“Told you this four years ago?”
“Sometime on the tour, I don’t know if it was exactly four years ago.”
“Explained that her rich brother who’d inherited all that money didn’t want to have anything to do with her, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Did she happen to mention when the car accident took place?”
“No.”
“Last July, Sal.”
“Not four years ago, Sal.”
“The Fourth of July, Sal. Last year.”
He looked at them. He wasn’t doing any arithmetic because he knew it was too late for arithmetic. He knew exactly what they knew. He knew Katie couldn’t have told him about her parents unless he’d seen her since last July. He knew he’d made a mistake, and the mistake was a bad one, and he couldn’t see any way of correcting it. Across the river, lights were beginning to show in apartment buildings. When night came in this city, it came with heart-stopping suddenness.
He put his head in his hands and began weeping.
· · ·
“I can’t tell you what a great job I think you kids did,” Charlie says. He’s been drinking too much and his speech is slurred. A bottle of beer in one hand, he staggers as he walks to the safe, catches his balance, says, “Oops,” gives a gurgly little giggle and then grins in broad apology and winks at Katie. He raises the bottle in a belated toast. “Here’s to next time,” he says, and tilts the bottle to his mouth and drinks again. Sal is hoping he won’t pass out before he opens the safe and pays them. He himself has been smoking pot all night long, and is a bit dazzled, so to speak. He certainly hopes Katie isn’t too tired to count the money.
Charlie is wearing a wrinkled white linen suit, he looks as if he’s auditioning for the role of Big Daddy in Cat. Chomping on a cigar, belching around it, he takes it out of his mouth only to swig more beer. Finally, he sets the bottle down on top of the safe. This is a big old Mosler that sits on the floor, he has some difficulty kneeling down in front of it, first because he’s so fat, and next because he’s so drunk. Sal is really beginning to worry now that they’ll have to wait till morning to get paid. How’s Charlie even going to remember the combination, much less see the numbers on the dial? And how is he himself, Salvatore Roselli, going to know the difference between a single and a hundred-dollar bill, so absolutely wonderfully stoned is he.
It is unbearably hot here in die office. The window air conditioner is functioning, but only minimally, and Charlie has thrown open the French doors to the deck, hoping to catch a stray breeze. Outside, there is the sound of insects and wilder things, the cries of animals in the deep dark. Only the alligators are silent.
Sal is slumped in one of the big black leather chairs, T-shirt all sweaty, legs stretched out, beginning to doze. Charlie is kneeling in front of the safe, having difficulty with his balance, reciting the combination out loud as if there’s no one in the room with him, three to the right, stop on twenty. Two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four—but the safe won’t open. So he goes through the same routine once again, and then another time after that until he finally hits the right numbers, and boldly yanks down the handle, and flamboyantly flings open the safe door. All grand movements. Everything big and baroque. Like drunken Charlie himself.
The night’s proceeds are in there. Charlie’s crowd is composed largely of teenagers, and they pay in cash. He starts counting out the bills, has to count them three times, too, before he gets it right. He puts the rest of the money back in the safe, h
urls the door shut, gives the dial a dramatic twist. He’s now holding a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his left hand. With his right hand, he braces himself against the safe and pushes himself to his feet.
He turns to Sal where he’s sprawled half-asleep in the black leather chair.
“Hey, Piano Boy,” he says, and staggers over to him. “You want this money?”
Sal opens his eyes.
“Would you like to get paid?” he says.
“That’s why we’re here, boss,” Katie says.
“You want this money?” Charlie asks again, and shakes the bills in Sal’s face.
“Stop doing that,” Sal says, and flaps his hands on the air in front of him, trying to wave the money away.
“Sweet Buns, you want this money, here’s what you got to do,” he says, and shoves the wad of bills into the right-hand pocket of the jacket. They bulge there like a sudden tumor. He unzips his fly. And all at once he’s holding himself in his hand.
“Come on, Charlie, put that away,” Katie says.
“Whut you want me to put away, girl?” Charlie says. “The money or my pecker?”
“Come on, Charlie.”
“You want me to put this money back in the safe? Or you want me to put my pecker in little Sally’s mouth here?”
“Come on, Charlie.”
“Which?” Charlie says. “Cause that’s the way it’s gonna be, Katie. Either the boy here sucks my dick, or you don’t get paid.”
Sal doesn’t know how to deal with this. He’s a city boy unused to the ways of wildland crackers. He thinks for a moment he’ll run outside and get the others, all for one and one for all, and all that. But Charlie has grabbed Sal’s chin in his hand now, and he is squeezing hard and moving in on him with a drunk’s bullheaded determination, waving his bulging purple cock at him the way he waved the wad of money only minutes ago. City-boy coward that he is, Sal sits frozen in Charlie’s grip, incapable of movement.
It is Katie who says, yet another time, “Come on, Charlie,” and hits him from behind with the beer bottle he left on the safe. Beer flies in a fine spray as she swings the bottle at his head. The man staggers, but he is not essentially wounded, Katie’s blow is ineffectual at best. But Sal is instantly on his feet, shoving out at Charlie’s chest, pushing the fat drunken fool through the open French doors and out onto the deck, and then lunging at him one last time, his fingers widespread on Charlie’s chest, a hiss escaping his lips as he pushes him over the railing. There is a splash when he hits the water, and then, instantly, a terrible thrashing that tells them the alligators are getting to him even before he surfaces.
Sal is breathing very hard. He has just killed a man.
“The money,” he says.
“You killed him,” Katie says.
“The money. It was in his pocket.”
“Never mind the money.”
“Do you remember the combination?”
“Sweet mother of God, you killed him!”
“The combination. Do you remember it?”
On the river below, there is an appalling stillness.
Three to the right, stop on twenty, two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four.
Katie recites the numbers aloud to him as he slowly turns the dial to the right, and to the left, and then to the right again. He opens the door. From the wad of money in the safe, he peels off the money due them, and returns the rest to the safe, and closes the door, and twists the dial to lock it again. Katie watches as he wipes the dial and the handle clean. She is moving from foot to foot, like a little girl who has to pee. He wipes the beer bottle, too, and puts it back on the safe top where Charlie had earlier left it. He looks around one last time, and then they leave the office.
In the van, he says, “Got the bread, let’s go,” and Katie pulls her T-shirt away from her body, encouraging the cool flow from the air conditioner.
· · ·
They were afraid he might spook. They had read him his rights and taken him back to the precinct, and now they were fearful he might not say another word. He was still in tears. They didn’t want him to collapse entirely, so they decided to let Carella handle it alone, less threatening that way. They were in the Interrogation Room now. The other detectives were behind the one-way mirror in the room next door, watching, listening, scarcely daring to breathe. Carella turned on the video camera, and read Roselli his rights again.
Sometimes they spooked when they heard the Miranda recitation for the second time. It made everything seem irrevocable beyond that point. Made them think Hey, maybe I should ask for a lawyer. With professionals, there was never any question. They always asked for a lawyer first thing. With the amateurs, like Roselli, they either figured they could outsmart the police, or else they were so guilt-ridden they wanted to spill it all. Carella waited. Roselli nodded. Yes, he understood his rights and was willing to answer questions without a lawyer present. Carella needed it in words.
“Okay to go on then, Mr. Roselli?”
“Yes.”
No more Sal. Now they were equals. Mr. Roselli and Mr. Carella, two old friends sipping cappuccino and discussing politics at a round outdoor table in the sunshine. But the light was fluorescent, and the table was long and cigarette-scarred, and the coffee was made down the hall in the Clerical Office and served in cardboard containers, and the subject was murder.
“Want to tell me what happened, Mr. Roselli?”
Roselli sat there, looking at his hands.
“Mr. Roselli?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“Yes.”
Carella waited.
“I spotted her by accident.”
“Katie?”
“Yes.”
“Katie Cochran?”
“Yes. I hadn’t seen her in four years, she’d changed a lot.”
He fell silent, remembering.
“She used to look like a teenager,” he said. “Now she looked … I don’t know. Mature?”
Carella waited.
“She seemed so …serious,” Roselli said. “I didn’t know she was a nun, of course. Not just then. Not when I first saw her.”
He began weeping again.
Carella moved a box of tissues closer to where Roselli was sitting. The tears kept streaming down his face. Carella waited. The room was still except for the sound of Roselli’s sobbing and the faint whirring of the video camera. Carella wondered if he should risk a prod. He waited another moment.
“Where’d you run into her?” he asked.
Gently. Softly. Casually. Two gents sipping their coffees. Sunshine gleaming on white linen.
“Mr. Roselli?”
“At St. Margaret’s.”
He took another tissue from the box, blew his nose. Dried his eyes.
“The hospital,” he said, and blew his nose again. He sighed heavily. Carella was hoping he wasn’t about to quit. Call it off. That’s it. No more questions. He kept waiting.
“I thought a friend of mine had OD’d, I rushed him to the emergency room,” Roselli said. “It turned out he was okay, but Jesus, his face had turned blue! Katie just walked through, I couldn’t believe it. I was busy with my friend, I thought he was going to die. I see this woman who looks like Katie, but doesn’t look like Katie. I mean, you had to know Katie back then. When she was singing? A million kilowatts, I swear. This woman looked so … I don’t know … serene? Walking into the emergency room. Straight out of the past. Composed. She stopped to say a few words to one of the nurses, and then whoosh, she was out the door and gone. I asked the nurse who she was. She said That’s Sister Mary Vincent. I said What? Sister Mary Vincent, she said again. She’s a nun. Works upstairs in Extensive Care. Sister Mary Vincent? I thought. A nun? I figured I’d made a mistake.”
He shook his head, remembering, remembering.
Carella glanced up at the video camera. The red light was still on. The tape was still rolling. Don’t quit on me now, he
thought. Keep talking, Sal.
“I went back. I had to make sure this wasn’t Katie. Because if it was her, I wanted to ask her about that night four years ago. The way you want to ask your mother things about when you were a kid, do you know? I wanted to ask Katie about what had happened that night. Wanted to make sure that night had really happened. That night with Charlie Custer. When we killed him.”
It occurred to Carella that the only one who’d killed Custer was Roselli himself. He was the one who’d pushed him over that railing to his death. Yes, technically, they’d acted in concert, Katie hitting him with the bottle, Roselli shoving him over to the alligators. And technically, yes, a prosecutor could make a case against both of them. Katie’s intent hadn’t been to kill, though, and Roselli had been acting in self-defense. A defense attorney could make a case for that as well. There were times when Carella was grateful he was merely a cop.
“I waited outside the emergency room door,” Roselli said, “in the parking lot there, where the ambulances come in. This was two or three days later. Nurses were walking in and out. It was Katie, no question about it. I didn’t approach her because I wasn’t sure what she might do. She’d quit the band and disappeared. She’d become a nun and taken a new name. Had she run because she was afraid of the law? Or afraid of me? Had she become a nun because she was hiding? From the law? Or from me?”
He nodded again, remembering. Kept nodding. Trying to understand. Hands folded on the tabletop. Fingers working. Kneading his hands on the tabletop.
“I looked her up in all the phone books, but there were no listings for anyone named Mary Vincent. So I followed her home one day,” he said. “She lived in a walk-up on Yarrow. I checked the mailboxes and found one for Mary Vincent. So now I knew how to reach her if I wanted to. But why would I want to?”
And now Roselli seemed to drift, his voice lowering almost to a whisper, confiding to Carella as if indeed the two of them were basking alone in the sun somewhere. Unaware of the camera now, he turned his gaze inward, and words spilled from his heart like shattered glass.
Carella listened, pained.
I knew a nun wouldn’t have a pot to piss in, but she came from a well-to-do family, you know. In Pennsylvania someplace. On the road, she was always talking about them. Her father was a university professor, her mother was a psychiatrist. That was money there. What would a couple of thousand mean to a family like that? I didn’t know her parents were dead, of course. I learned that later. That night in the park. I didn’t know her brother had inherited all their goddamn money. I just thought … you know … if I asked her for a little money, just to tide me over, just until I could square myself with the man, get a steady gig someplace, then maybe she could get it from her parents, you know? I know if one of my daughters was a nun, I’d give her the world. The world. I love those little girls. I’d give them the world. So maybe Katie’s parents would help her out. Was what I thought.
