Fiddlers

by Ed McBain

  ‘There isn’t much time,’ he said.

  ‘Come on, there’s plenty of time! Would you like to go to Mexico?’

  ‘Mexico would be nice,’ he said.

  She nodded into his shoulder. She was silent for a while. He held her close.

  ‘So maybe we could go to Mexico,’ she said.

  ‘Wherever you like.’

  ‘Does it bother you I’m a hooker?’

  ‘You’re not a hooker, Reg.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Maybe I’m not,’ she said.

  There was some sort of commotion in the main room outside. They both sat up in bed just as six detectives in Kevlar vests burst into the bedroom, guns drawn. Some guy in tails and striped trousers stood behind them, a passkey in his hand, looking very frightened. Charles reached at once for the Glock on the bedside table.

  ‘Don’t touch it, Baldy!’ Meyer yelled.

  Talk about the pot calling the kettle.

  10.

  SEEMED LIKE OLD TIMES.

  The good old days, y’know?

  Back when strangers were killing strangers for no reason at all.

  In recent years, the murder rate in this city had dropped to less than two a day. That was progress. Last year by this time, 307 people had been killed; since January of this year, the total was only 273. But that didn’t count the eleven people - including Benjamin Bugliosi - who’d been killed last night in what the early editions of the tabloids were already calling MONDAY, BLOODY MONDAY!

  Since six thirty last night, when Bugliosi was shot and killed outside 753 North Hastings, there had been six killings in Calm’s Point, one in Majesta, and three in the Laurelwood section of Riverhead. One of the Riverhead victims had been stabbed in the chest while struggling to prevent the theft of a white-gold chain and cross he wore around his neck. The victim in Majesta had been shot in the stomach. His seventeen-year-old assailant had fled into a subway station, and, when pursued from there by police, had run into an alley off Dunready Street, where he’d shot himself in the head.

  Except for the arrest in the Bugliosi case, there’d been no others. But the DA’s Office was on high alert, and any one of half a dozen assistant DAs could have answered the Q&A call from the Eight-Seven. It was sheer luck of the draw that caused Nellie Brand to trot all the way uptown at four A.M. that Tuesday morning.

  * * * *

  ‘Thing is,’ Carella was telling her, ‘he doesn’t seem to give a damn. That we caught him.’

  ‘Has he admitted killing all six of them?’ Nellie asked.

  She’d been on rotation since midnight, but she looked fresh and alert in a beige linen suit and lime-colored blouse. Blonde hair trimmed close. Lipstick, no other makeup.

  ‘All six,’ Carella said. ‘But he says the last one was self-defense. Says he was defending his fiancée.’

  ‘His fiancée, huh? What about her?’ Nellie said.

  ‘We’re not looking for a 230 bust,’ Carella said. ‘We’re letting her go.’

  ‘So when do we talk to him?’

  ‘Soon as the video guy gets here.’

  It was now ten minutes past four.

  The Q&A started at 4:32 A.M.

  By that time, the technician had set up his video equipment and was ready to tape the proceedings. The technician had taped hundreds of these Q&As before, and was frankly bored to tears by most of them. Every now and then you got something juicy like a guy drooling to tell you how he’d enjoyed stabbing a woman fifteen times in her left breast and then drinking blood from her nipple afterward, which to tell the truth the video guy had found sort of exciting, too. But most of the time, you got mundane motives for murder, which was alliterative but not too terribly thrilling. The video guy could barely stifle a yawn as Charles Purcell was sworn in, was read his rights yet another time, and was then asked for the record to tell his name and current address, which he gave as 410 Graham Lane in Oatesville. Nellie stepped in.

  Q: Mr. Purcell, as I understand this, you have refused counsel, is that correct?

  A: I don’t need a lawyer.

  Q: You realize, do you not …?

  A: I don’t need a lawyer.

  Q: Will you please confirm for the record that you have been advised of your rights to counsel, and have refused it, and are now willing to answer my questions without presence of counsel?

  A: Yes. All of that. Let’s get on with it.

  Q: Mr. Purcell, where were you last night at about six thirty P.M.?

  A: I was picking up my fiancée. We were…

  Q: By your fiancée…

  A: Regina Marshall. She lives at 753 North Hastings. We were supposed to go to dinner together. She had gone home to change her clothes. She was waiting downstairs for me when she was attacked by the man I shot in self-defense.

  Q: Benjamin Bugliosi?

  A: I was later told his name, yes. I had no idea who he was when I shot him. All I knew was that he was hurting Reggie.

  Q: Does the name Michael Hopwell mean anything to you?

  A: Yes, he’s the priest I killed.

  Q: Christine Langston?

  A: Yes, I killed her, too.

  Q: Alicia Hendricks?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Max Sobolov?

  A: Yes, I killed him.

  Q: Helen Reilly? Did you kill her as well?

  A: I killed them all.

  Q: Why did you kill these people?

  A: They fiddled with my life.

  Q: I’m sorry, they… ?

  A: They fucked up my life.

  * * * *

  It was 4:39 A.M. when he started telling them. The sun was just coming up. A golden light splashed through the barred squadroom windows, but it did not reach the windowless interrogation room where Charles Purcell was telling them why he’d killed the five people he felt had ruined his life. His recitation did not end until 5:32 A.M., when he finished telling them he’d killed Max Sobolov because his wartime sergeant had been responsible for his OTH discharge from the Army.

  ‘I couldn’t go to college because of him,’ he said.

  The room went still except for the almost soundless whir of the camera.

  Nellie looked around the room at the gathered detectives.

  ‘Anyone?’ she said. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Can you go over them one more time?’ Ollie said. ‘In order this time?’

  * * * *

  He went through each and every murder yet another time, chronologically in present time, and then chronologically in past time as well. He was eight and called Carlie when his mother abandoned the family…

  I had my own key, I let myself into the apartment. My father was at work, my brother had basketball practice after school, but my mother should have been home. The house was so still. Sunlight coming through the windows. The clock ticking.

  I went to the fridge to get myself a glass of milk and some cookies. My mother always had a snack prepared for us when we got home from school.

  There was a note on the refrigerator door.

  Hand Lettered.

  Dear Andrew and Carlie …

  I couldn’t pronounce ‘Charlie’ back then, I was only eight.

  Dear Andrew and Carlie…

  Forgive me for this, but I must leave without you. He does not want your father’s children.

  One day you will understand.

  Mom

  I thought, Who does not want my father’s children?

  Who does not want Andy and me?

  I thought, Understand what?

  There wasn’t any milk or cookies in the fridge.

  ‘You killed your own fucking mother,’ Parker said.

  ‘She stopped being my mother when I was eight.’

  He was ten and still called Carlie when the priest molested him…

  It wasn’t like behind closed doors or anything, no covert nook in some secret cloister, no dark corner with vaulting arches and windows streaming fractured light, no solemn silent afternoon seduction.
/>   This was in broad daylight.

  On the front seat of a Chrysler convertible.

  The top down.

  Sunshine everywhere.

  Insects buzzing in the road in the fields on either side of the little dirt road.

  I was ten years old.

  ‘Now, isn’t this nice, Carlie? A ride in the country? Isn’t this lovely?’

  ‘Look, Carlie.’

  ‘No, here, Carlie.’

  ‘Look at my lap.’

  ‘Do you see, Carlie?’

  ‘No, don’t be afraid.’

  ‘Touch it, Carlie.’

  The insects buzzing.

  ‘Yes, Carlie. That’s a good boy, Carlie.’

  His hand on my head.

  Guiding me.

  Leading me.

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened if I still had a mother,’ he told them.

  He was fourteen-year-old Chuck when a thirteen-year-old beauty refused to dance with him…

  The church was this big yellow stucco building on the corner of Laurelwood and I forget which cross street. Dominated the corner. Looked moorish somehow, I don’t know why it should have, there was a big cross on top of one of the turrets.

  The recreation hall was very large. There was a stage up front, with a record player sitting on a folding card table. A young priest was in charge of picking the songs. There were two big speakers, one on either side of the stage. If ever there was a lecture or anything, they would set up these wooden folding chairs. But for the Friday night dances, the chairs were pushed back along the walls, so that when you weren’t dancing, you could sit. Mostly, it was the girls who sat, waiting for guys to come ask them to dance. The guys all stood around in small clusters, mustering courage to go ask the girls.

  I remember the song they were playing that night.

  This was forty-two years ago, but I still remember it. It was I Can’t Stop Loving You by Ray Charles, a big hit that year. It was all about this guy who can’t stop thinking of this girl he spent so many happy hours with. His heart is broken, you see. But he can’t stop dreaming of her.

  Girls don’t know how long and how scary a room can seem when you’re walking across it to ask someone to dance. Alicia was sitting with two of her girlfriends at the very farthest end of the room, her legs crossed, she was wearing a yellow dress, kind of ruffled, her legs crossed, jiggling her foot, she had such gorgeous legs, I loved her to death. The room was so long, Ray Charles singing about lonesome times, Alicia with her hair long and blonde, thirteen years old, Ray Charles singing about dreams of yesterday, Alicia laughing, looking beautiful, I stopped in front of her, the laughter stopped. I held out my hand to her.

  ‘Would you care to dance?’ I said.

  I can’t stop wanting you.

  Alicia looked up at me.

  ‘Get lost, faggot,’ she said.

  ‘Let me get this straight, okay?’ Carella said. ‘You killed Alicia Hendricks because she wouldn’t dance with you…”

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘… when you were fourteen?’

  ‘She called me a faggot!’

  He was still Chuck at eighteen when a high school teacher refused to give him the A that would have kept him out of the Army…

  ‘But you promised…’

  ‘Promises, promises,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t understand, Miss Langston…”

  ‘Oh, yes, I understand quite well.’

  On the field outside, the football team was running plays. I could hear the coach shouting. A whistle blew. I had turned eighteen in September. If I didn’t get into college…

  ‘If you give me a C, it’ll drag my average way down…’

  ‘Then ask one of your other teachers for an A.’

  ‘Please, Miss Langston, the college will turn me down!’

  ‘Apply to another college.’

  ‘You promised me an A. You said if I…”

  ‘Oh, please don’t be ridiculous, Chuck. I was joking and you know it.’

  ‘Miss Langston, please. Christine, pl…’

  ‘Don’t you dare call me Christine!’

  Her words snapping on the air like the cold November itself. Her eyes glinting pale blue in the bleak grayness of the afternoon.

  ‘They’ll send me to Vietnam,’ I said.

  ‘Pity,’ she said.

  In the Army, he was Charlie…

  ‘We called the enemy Charlie, too,’ he told them. ‘That was the name we had for them at the time. Charlie. That was my name, too, at the time. While I was in Nam…”

  The girl couldn’t have been more than nineteen.

  I don’t know why the sergeant thought she might be a spy.

  It was a very sunny day.

  I remember the sun was shining very brightly.

  I was twenty years old, and riding in an open Jeep on a bumpy road with an automatic rifle in my lap and a girl with a baby hanging on to the hood for dear life.

  You know… they teach you to kill.

  That’s the whole point of it.

  You are trained to kill.

  Even so…

  The sergeant ordered her to put up her hands. This wasn’t logical. He was grinning. Told her to put her hands up over her head. The Jeep was bouncing along, she was hanging on to the baby, hanging on to the hood, how could she put up her hands!

  ‘Put up your hands!’ he yelled.

  She couldn’t understand a word of English. She maybe didn’t even hear him, the wind, the sound of planes strafing the village, maybe she didn’t even hear him.

  ‘Get your hands up!’ he yelled.

  Grinning.

  He turned to me.

  ‘Blow her away,’ he said.

  They teach you to kill, you know.

  ‘Blow her off the fuckin hood!’ he yelled.

  * * * *

  By six fifteen, they felt they had everything they needed for a grand jury. But Andy Parker still wasn’t satisfied.

  ‘Why’d you wait all this time?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Why’d you wait till now to go after them?’

  ‘Time was running out.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘I couldn’t let them get away with what they’d done to me. I had to get them before it was too late.’

  ‘You mean before they died natural deaths?’ Parker asked, referring to the advanced ages of the vies, grinning when he asked the question.

  ‘No,’ Purcell said. ‘Before the cancer killed me.’

  ‘Pancreatic cancer.

  ‘Was what I had.

  ‘The chemotherapy was Gemzar and Taxotere. It was the Taxotere that caused me to lose my hair. It’s only supposed to do that in eighty percent of the cases, but look at me. They told me my hair would grow back in six months. When we stopped the chemotherapy. Taxotere’s a synthetic now, but it originally came from the leaves of the yew tree. That sounds medieval, doesn’t it? Like doctors using leeches and such? Well, cancer, they’re really just guessing. But the recipe, the cocktail, whatever you want to call it, the mix of poisons, seemed to be helping, the tumors in the pancreas seemed to be shrinking. Then…”

  He hesitated.

  The video camera was fall on his face.

  ‘Then in May, the middle of May it was, we got the results of the next CAT scan, and… it had spread everywhere. The cancer. Everywhere. The stomach, the liver, the lymph nodes, the lungs… just everywhere. The doctor told me I had potentially two months to live. That was the word he used. “Potentially.”

  ‘I decided to live it up in those next two months. Took out a home equity loan on my house, they gave me two hundred thousand dollars, let them take the house, who cares, I’ll be dead. I recently leased a car, I’ll be dead before the first payment is due, who cares? I’m making up for what I never achieved in my lifetime. Never accomplished. What I might have accomplished if only… if only people hadn’t fiddled with me. So I decided to make them pay for what they�
�d done. The people who’d messed up my life. All of them. Do you understand? I killed them because they fiddled with my life!’

  ‘You fiddled with theirs, too,’ Nellie said. ‘Big time.’

  ‘Good. They deserved it.’

  ‘Sure, good,’ Nellie said, and nodded. ‘You won’t think it’s so good when they inject that valium in your vein.’

  ‘That’ll never happen,’ Purcell said. ‘I’ll be dead before then. By my count, I’ve got no more than a week. So who cares?’

  ‘Your fiancée might care,’ Nellie said.

  Which was the only time any emotion crossed his face.

  * * * *

  It was 6:43 A.M. when the video guy wrapped up his equipment and told Nellie and the detectives he was on his way. By then, Charles Purcell was already on his way to the Men’s House of Detention downtown, for arraignment when the criminal courts opened. The video guy, who’d been interested in nothing more than the whodunit aspect of the case - this was, after all, merely a video, right? - could now pack up and go home.

  For that matter, so could everyone else.

  11.

  WHEN SHE OPENED the door at seven thirty that Tuesday morning, Paula Wellington was still in pajamas, her white hair loose around her face, no makeup. She looked fifty-one. She looked beautiful. She yawned, blinked out into the hallway at him.

  ‘Little early, isn’t it?’ she said.

  I’ve been up all night,’ Hawes said.

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  She closed the door behind him, locked it.

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘I thought I might just sleep on the couch or something.’

  ‘That’s what you thought, I see.’

  ‘You think that might be all right? My just sleeping here?’

  ‘I’m still asleep,’ she said. ‘But come,’ she said, and took his hand. ‘Then we’ll see,’ she said.

  If she was talking about the fragility of relationships, he knew all about those; he’d been there.

  If she was telling him that life itself was at best tenuous, he knew that, too; he was a cop.

  ‘Then we’ll see,’ he agreed.

  * * * *

  ‘What am I, some kind of criminal here?’ April asked.

  Just answer the question, Teddy signed.