Downtown

17

A lot of people got hurt in that limousine. Including the driver. Who’d been nowhere near that slashing knife. A couple of people got hurt outside the limousine, too. What happened was that he had her up against this brick wall in this sort of little alleyway between two buildings on Houston Street and he had his hand up under her skirt and they were both breathing very hard and all of a sudden there was a screeching sound and lights flashing and he thought at first that perhaps he’d had an orgasm since he was only thirteen years old or perhaps she’d had one since she was only twelve or perhaps both of them’d had one together because that was when the earth was supposed to move.

But instead it was only a big mother of a black Cadillac jumping the curb and coming up onto the sidewalk and almost into the mouth of the alley, forcing him to fall down on top of her with his hand still up under her skirt, causing him to break his wrist and causing her to lose her virginity, for which dire injuries their separate attorneys said they could collect big money for damages.

This was what Tony the Bear Orso told Michael in his room at St. Vincent’s Hospital. It was still Boxing Day. Eight o’clock in the morning. From the window of his room, Michael could see a rooftop Christmas tree, its branches tossing wildly in the fierce wind.

“It was a terrible accident, sir,” Orso said. “The driver told me everybody was screaming and kicking in the backseat and yelling in Spanish and Chinese and grabbing for guns and knives and kicking at the window separating them from where he was sitting, so naturally he lost control, just like you and me would’ve.”

“Naturally,” Michael said.

“When a person is wielding a sharp instrument,” Orso said, “the backseat of a limousine can become a very small place.”

The instrument had indeed been sharp.

In the Operating Room, when Michael came out of the anesthesia, the doctor told him he’d been slashed and stabbed eighteen times. He said it was a miracle that Michael was still alive, since one of the slash wounds was dangerously close to the jugular and another had almost severed his windpipe. “Is Connie all right?” Michael asked him. The doctor did not know who Connie was. He thought Michael was hallucinating, and asked the nurse to give him a sedative.

“Is Connie all right?” Michael asked Orso.

“Yes, she is a brave Chinese person,” Orso said. “When she saw Mama carving you up like a Christmas turkey, she right away jumped on him. She got cut herself, too, on the hand, but she’s okay.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know where she is now, sir. I talked to her in the Emergency Room.”

“Does she know where I am?”

“I don’t know if she knows where you are or not. The last she saw of you was when they were wheeling you upstairs to the O.R. She herself was bleeding, and they were bandaging Crandall’s head, and the blonde was still yelling at him. There was a good deal of confusion, sir.”

“Yes,” Michael said.

“Yes. But everybody’s okay now, including Mama. Who, if you’d have killed him, sir, the city would have given you a ticker-tape parade on Fifth Avenue. Which, as you may know, sir, is up-town.”

“Where is he now?”

“Mama? Down the hall, with a police officer outside his door. Not that he is going anyplace. He went through the window.”

“What window?”

“That separated the back of the limo from the driver. Crashed through it headfirst when the car jumped the curb and almost hit them two kids in the alley. You should see him, sir. He looks like the Invisible Man all bandaged up.”

“Good,” Michael said.

“Yeah, fuck him,” Orso agreed.

On the rooftop, the Christmas tree danced in the wind.

“Why were they bandaging Crandall’s head?” Michael asked.

“Because the blonde hit him with one of her sparkly red shoes.”

“She’s good at that,” Michael said.

“Yes, very good. She put two holes in his head like she was wielding a ball peen hammer instead of a high-heeled shoe.”

“Did she say why?”

“Because she suddenly realized,” Orso said.

“Realized what?”

“That something was fishy, but she didn’t know what. All she knew was Crandall had a gun in his hand and Mama was cutting you to ribbons and blood was flying all over the car and the Chinese girl was throwing herself on Mama and yelling what sounded like orders to the kitchen, so she figured she might as well take off her shoe and hit Crandall on the head with it. She ain’t very bright, you know.”

Michael nodded.

“What I got here,” Orso said, “which I will probably forget and leave on your bed and have to come back for later, is a transcript of the Q and A we done with Crandall after they bandaged his head and we got him up the squadroom. That little cockroach Mama wouldn’t tell us nothing, he’s a pro, the son of a bitch, he knows his rights. In fact, he threatened to sue us for false arrest, the little bastard. But Crandall spilled his guts. Without a lawyer present, no less. He thought he was being slick as baby shit, but he gave us enough to hang him. I was thinking that if I should leave this here on your bed, sir, because I’m so absentminded, and if you should happen to glance through it, I know you won’t mention it to Crandall because then his lawyers’ll say his rights were violated. Every lawyer in this city is lookin’ for a rights loophole. You get a guy he shot his grandmother, his grandfather, his twin sisters, his mother, his uncle, and his pet goldfish, the lawyer looks for a rights loophole. Which, by the way, sir, Charlie Bonano sends his regards.”

“Where is he now?”

“Out on bail, of course. He read all about you killing Crandall in the newspaper, and he called me up to say if we caught you I should tell you never mind the ten bucks. He also said you couldn’ta done it, which I already knew.”

“How’d you know?”

“Because nobody’s so dumb he’s gonna kill a person and then take the person’s business card to the police, no offense, sir. Not even somebody from Florida. But Crandall was figuring … well, it’s all in the transcript here, if I should absentmindedly leave it behind and if you should happen to read through it before I remember and come back for it in about ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you,” Michael said.

“I’ll ask around outside about Connie, case she’s wandering the hospital lookin’ for you. It’s a big hospital.”

“Thank you,” Michael said again.

“Oops, I’ll bet I’m gonna forget this fuckin’ Q and A,” Orso said, and tossed a blue binder onto the bed, and walked out of the room.

Michael reached for the binder.

His right wrist was bandaged. He wondered if there were stitches under the bandage. He wondered if he’d been stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. He wondered what his face looked like.

He wondered if Mama had got to his face.

If so, he wondered if Connie would think he looked okay. He hoped that she would.

He opened the blue binder.

There was a sheaf of photocopied typewritten pages inside it. Michael began reading. The Q and A had taken place earlier this morning, at precisely twelve minutes to six, in the office of someone named Lieutenant James Curran at the First Precinct. Present were the lieutenant, DetectivestSecond Grade Anthony Robert Orso, DetectivestThird Grade Mary Agnes O’Brien, and an Assistant District Attorney named Leila Moscowitz. The lieutenant advised Crandall of his rights under Miranda-Escobedo, and then turned the questioning over to the A.D.A.

Q: Mr. Crandall, I’d like to clarify some of these points you’ve already discussed with the two detectives who responded at the scene of the accident, namely … uh … Detectives … uh …

A: (from Detective Orso) Orso. Anthony Orso.

Q: Yes, and Ms. O’Brien.

A: (from Detective O’Brien) Mrs. O’Brien.

Q: Mrs. O’Brien, forgive me. May we proceed in that way, Mr. Crandall? Would that be all right with you?

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: Very well then. As I understand it, when Detectives Orso and O’Brien arrived at the scene, you were in possession of a Walther P-38, nine-millimeter Parabellum automatic pistol, is that correct?

A: Not in possession of it.

Q: In your hand, though, wasn’t it?

A: Well, yes. If you want to get technical.

Q: Is this the pistol you had in your hand?

A: Yes, it looks like the pistol.

Q: Is it your pistol?

A: It’s a pistol I had in my hand at the time of the accident.

Q: Do you have a license for this pistol?

A: No, I do not.

Q: How did you come by this pistol, Mr. Crandall?

A: I have no idea. I was getting hit on the head with a high-heeled shoe and there was a pistol in my hand.

Q: Are you saying you don’t know how it got in your hand?

A: Mr. Rodriguez must have put it there.

Q: Put the pistol in your hand.

A: Yes.

Q: By Mr. Rodriguez, do you mean Mr. Mario Mateo Rodriguez, alias Mama Rodriguez?

A: Well, I’m not sure he’d appreciate your using the word “alias.”

Q: But Mama is his alias, isn’t it?

A: A great many people choose names that they use for professional purposes, such as actors and writers and occasionally dentists. They do not call these names …

Q: Dentists?

A: Oh, yes.

Q: But Mr. Rodriguez isn’t an actor or a writer or a dentist, he’s a gangster.

A: Oh, I don’t know about that.

Q: He had a criminal record in his native Colombia, and he’s been arrested twice in the United States for trafficking in controlled substances.

A: I wouldn’t know about that, either.

Q: Well, when you hired him, didn’t you …”

A: Hired him? Ho ho ho, let’s slow down a bit, shall we? I hired Rodriguez?

Q: Isn’t that what you told Detectives Orso and O’Brien?

A: That was when I was still dizzy. That was just a few minutes after the accident.

Q: No, that was at a quarter past four this morning. Which was forty minutes after the accident.

A: That may be so, but …

Q: And it’s now ten minutes to six.

A: My how the time does fly.

Q: Mr. Crandall, I’m going to remind you that the conversation you had with Detectives Orso and O’Brien …

A: I might add, by the way, that I don’t think it’s seemly for a police officer to be questioning a person while she’s sitting in provocative underwear. I’d like to say that for the record, if you please.

Q: It is noted for the record. But I was saying that the conversation …

A: Especially an officer who could stand to lose a few pounds.

Q: I was saying that the conversation you had with them—and you were aware of this, Mr. Crandall, you gave them your permission—the conversation was being taped. Just as this conversation is now being taped. Again, with your permission.

A: My, how very state-of-the-art we are.

Q: And I have the typewritten transcript taken from that tape, Mr. Crandall, I am holding it right here in my hand. And on this transcript, you told the detectives that you had hired Mr. Rodriguez to requisition— that is your exact language, Mr. Crandall —to requisition a body for you. A dead body. A corpse. Isn’t that what you told them?

A: Well, yes.

Q: Then you did hire him.

A: No, Charlie hired him. Listen, if we’re going to get this technical here …

Q: Yes, we are.

A: Then maybe I ought to have a lawyer.

Q: If you’d like a lawyer …

A: Why do I need a lawyer? I can take care of myself just fine, thank you.

Q: If you want a lawyer, you’re entitled to one. Just say the …

A: Dickens was right, we should first kill all the lawyers.

Q: It was Shakespeare. And the exact quote was “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” And I’m a lawyer, Mr. Crandall.

A: I still don’t want one.

Q: Fine. May we continue, please?

A: Please.

Q: Did you or did you not hire Mama Rodriguez to …”

A: Charlie Nichols hired him.

Q: How did that come about, can you tell me?

A: It was all Charlie’s idea. We were talking about how it would be nice if the picture got some column space …

Q: By the picture …”

A: My new picture. Winter’s Chill.

Q: Yes?

A: Some column space to counteract what we were afraid might be adverse critical reaction when it opened—the similarity to Gaslight, you know, what the critics might perceive, in their abysmal ignorance, as a similarity to Gaslight.

Q: Yes?

A: And Charlie recalled an incident that had taken place several years back when this woman fell from a roof and she had a copy of Meyer Levin’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman in her …

Q: It was Ira Levin. And the novel was Kiss Me, Deadly.

A: (from Detective O’Brien) Excuse me, please, but I think it was A Kiss Before Dying and Carole Landis was in the movie.

A: (from Detective Orso) You’re thinking of Farewell, My Lovely, by Dashiell Hammond.

A: (from Lieutenant Curran) `It was easy.` That’s the last line of the book.

A: (from Detective O’Brien) Which book is that, Loot?

A: (from Lieutenant Curran) The one where he shoots the broad in the belly.

A: (from Mr. Crandall) You’ll forgive me, but neither the title nor the author has anything whatever to do with the point of my story.

Q: What is the point of your story?

A: The point is that in the novel the woman is about to get pushed off the roof, and in real life a woman actually fell off the roof with a copy of the novel in her hand and it made headlines all over the country. So Charlie said, “Wouldn’t it be terrific if something like that happened to Winter’s Chill?” and I said, “No such luck,” and Charlie said, “Why does it have to be luck?” and that’s how the whole thing came about.

Q: What whole thing?

A: Hiring Rodriguez. Who was Charlie’s crack dealer and who Charlie thought would know where to find a dead body.

Q: And did he find one?

A: Yes.

Q: Julian Rainey’s body, isn’t that so?

A: I have no idea whose body it was. Mama supplied the body.

Q: And you supplied the identification to put on the body.

A: Well, that was the whole idea.

Q: Tell us what the whole idea was.

A: To make it appear that someone had murdered me. And then for me to show up alive, contradicting the fact. And to have the mystery continue through the opening of the film on the second. To generate publicity for the film, you see.

Q: But, of course, Mr. Rodriguez didn’t simply find a corpse, did he?

A: I have no idea where he …

Q: He caused a corpse, didn’t he?

A: I don’t know where you got that idea.

Q: We got it from a woman named Alice Chaffee whom we found in a red fox coat tied up with the cord from a General Electric steam iron in a warehouse downtown.

A: Oh.

Q: Where there was something close to a million dollars’ worth of crack in an open Mosler safe.

A: Oh.

Q: And something like five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stolen goods elsewhere on the floor.

A: I see.

Q: She told us that Mr. Rodriguez hired her to kill Julian Rainey.

A: Well, that’s not what I hired him to do.

Q: I thought Charlie Nichols hired him.

A: Well, yes. I meant indirectly. All I asked him to do was find a dead body.

Q: Where? On the street? In the park …”

A: Wherever dead bodies are.

Q: In the trees? In a garbage can behind McDonald’s?

A: I’m glad you find this so amusing, Ms. Moscowitz.

Q: Mrs. Moscowitz. And I find it quite serious. Whose idea was it to blame the murder on Michael Barnes?

A: Mine. But there was no harm in that. It was just a way to keep it going. To keep the headlines rolling. When he went to the police with his story about having been robbed—and showed them my card, no less—there’d be headlines all over again. And then while he was being investigated, there’d be more headlines. And when he was cleared, there’d be headlines again. And meanwhile the picture would have opened and it wouldn’t matter what the critics said about it.

Q: So you chose Mr. Barnes as your fall guy …

A: Oh, it didn’t have to be him. It could have been anyone. He simply presented himself.

Q: Popped up, so to speak.

A: Well, yes.

Q: And refused to lie down again.

A: Well.

Q: Which is why Mr. Rodriguez ordered his murder as well.

A: I don’t know anything about that.

Q: Alice Chaffee does.

A: That’s her problem. And Mama’s, I would suppose.

Q: Your problem is that you ordered the first murder, Mr. Crandall. You’re the one who set the whole thing in …

A: I did not order a murder. I ordered a corpse! And anyway, it was Charlie’s idea. He was the one who contacted Mama. I had nothing to do with it.

Q: Alice Chaffee says Mama paid her four thousand dollars for the job. Who gave Mama that money?

A: I have no idea.

Q: Did Charlie Nichols give him that money?

A: He must have.

Q: Why? It was your movie, why would Charlie …”

A: I don’t know anything about any of this. Charlie came up with a good idea. And he followed through on it. If someone got killed because of what Charlie did, I certainly am not re—

Q: All Charlie’s idea, huh?

A: Yes. I had nothing to do with anyone getting killed! I was trying to save my movie. If Charlie was alive, he’d—

Q: Yes?

A: Nothing.

Q: He’d what?

A: Nothing. Q: Is Charlie dead, Mr. Crandall?

A: I don’t know what Charlie is.

Q: Well, as a matter of fact, he is dead, Mr. Crandall. But how did you know that?

A: I don’t know anything at all about Charlie’s condition, dead or alive.

Q: Then you don’t know he was killed with a P-38 Walther nine-millimeter Parabellum automatic pistol.

A: I have nothing more to say.

Q: Ballistics will have something more to say, I’m sure.

A: It was all Charlie’s idea. If Charlie’s dead, that’s too bad, but …

Q: I thought you had nothing more to say.

A: All I have to say is that it was Charlie’s idea.

Q: Except for pinning the murder on Michael Barnes. That was your idea.

A: Yes.

Q: Why’d you change the script, Mr. Crandall?

A: Why?

Q: Please tell us.

A: Because I’m a director!

Q: Oh.

A: Yes.

Michael sensed her presence before he looked up.

Knew she’d be there.

Standing in the doorway.

Her right wrist was bandaged where Mama had cut her. There was a smile on her face. She stepped into the room. Into a bar of sunshine lying in a crooked rectangle on the floor. The sunlight touched her hair, touched her face.

“They have you listed as dead,” she said. “But Detective Orso told me you weren’t.”

“I’m glad I’m not,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said, and came to the bed.

He would have to call his mother, let her know he was still alive. Tell her he’d met a wonderful Chinese girl he wanted to marry. Mom? Are you there, Mom? Please take your head out of the oven, Mom.

“Let me see your cute little face,” Connie said, and sat on the edge of the bed, and cupped his face between her hands, and turned it this way and that, searching it. “I was so afraid he’d cut your face,” she said. “But you look beautiful. Could I kiss you?”

“We’ll have to ask the nurse,” he said.

“No, I don’t think we have to,” she said.

Mom? he would say. I’m alive, Mom. I’m alive again.

THE END