Jigsaw

12

You can sometimes solve a mystery by the simple process of elimination, which is admittedly undramatic, but where does it say that a cop has to get hit on the head every day of the week? Cops may be dumb, but not that dumb. When everything has already narrowed itself down into the skinny end of the funnel, when nearly everybody’s either dead or obviously innocent, then it merely becomes a matter of trying to figure out who is lying and why. There are lots of things cops don’t understand, but lies they understand very well.

They don’t understand, for example, why thieves will spend so much time and energy devising and executing a crime (with all its attendant risks) when that same amount of time and energy devoted to a legal pursuit would probably net much larger returns in the long run. It was the belief of every detective on the 87th Squad that the real motive behind half the crimes being committed in the city was enjoyment, plain and simple — the fun of playing Cops and Robbers. Forget gain or profit as motivation, forget passion, forget hostility or rebellion, it all came down to Cops and Robbers.

What had Carmine Bonamico been doing, if not playing Cops and Robbers? Took his little camera, dear boy, and went out to photograph the River Road from an airplane or something, and then drew his squiggly little lines across the print, and cut it apart, and handed out pieces to his gang, all hush-hush, top-secret, tip-toey, clever-crook stuff — Cops and Robbers. Why the hell hadn’t he just whispered the location to each of his hoods, and asked them to whisper it in turn to their friends and loved ones? Ah, but no. That would have taken from the crime one of its essential elements, known to gumshoes far and wide as The Game Aspect. Take the fun out of criminal activity, and all the prisons in the world would be empty. Who can figure crooks? Certainly not cops. They couldn’t even figure why Irving Krutch had had the audacity to come to them for assistance in locating the loot, unless this too was tied in with The Game Aspect, the sheer enjoyment of playing Cops and Robbers.

They did figure, however, that Krutch was not telling them the truth about his whereabouts on the nights Albert Weinberg and Geraldine Ferguson were murdered; when a man’s lying, it comes over like a supersonic missile streaking through the atmosphere, and you don’t have to be working for NASA to spot it. Krutch’s alibi, of course, was a broad he’d been laying since the year One, hardly the most reliable sort of witness to bring to your defense in a courtroom. But Suzanne Endicott’s credibility as a witness was academic unless they could get Krutch into a courtroom. Logical deduction aside, the fact remained that he claimed to have been in bed with Suzie while both murders were being committed, and Suzie backed his story, and it is quite a trick to be out killing people while you are home in your apartment making love to a sweet li’l ol’ Georgia peach. These days, it was getting more and more difficult to arrest a person even if you caught him with a hacksaw in his bloody hands, standing over a dissected corpse. How could you arrest a mustache-twirling villain who had an alibi as long as a peninsula?

How indeed?

It was Carella who first got the idea.

He discussed it with Hawes, and Hawes thought it was too risky. Carella insisted that it was a good idea, considering the fact that Suzie Endicott was from Georgia. Hawes said he thought Brown might take offense if they even suggested the idea to him, and Carella said he thought Brown would go along with the idea wholeheartedly. Hawes protested that the notion was pretty farout to begin with: Suzie had been living in the north for at least four years now, spending half that time in bed with Krutch (to hear her tell it), and had probably been pretty well assimilated into the culture; it was a bad idea. Carella informed Hawes that certain prejudices and stereotypes died very hard deaths, as witness Hawes’s own reluctance to even broach the idea to Brown. Hawes took offense at that, saying he was as tolerant a man as ever lived, in fact it was his very tolerance that caused his reluctance, he simply didn’t want to offend Brown by suggesting an idea that probably wouldn’t work anyway. Carella raised his voice and demanded to know how they could possibly crack Suzie’s story; he had tried to crack it, Hawes had tried to crack it, the only way they could get to her was to scare hell out of her. Hawes shouted that Brown’s feelings were more important to him and to the wellbeing of the squad than solving any goddamn murder case, and Carella shouted back that prejudice was certainly a marvelous thing when a white man couldn’t even explore an excellent idea with a Negro for fear of hurting his feelings.

“Okay, you ask him,” Hawes said.

“I will,” Carella answered.

They came out of the Interrogation Room together and walked to where Brown was sitting at his desk, studying the photograph for the 700th time.

“We’ve got an idea, Artie,” Carella said.

“He’s got an idea,” Hawes said. “It’s his idea, Artie.”

“What’s the idea?” Brown said.

“Well, you know,” Carella said, “we’re all pretty much agreed on this Krutch character, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, he wants that seven hundred and fifty G’s so bad, his hands are turning green. And you can’t tell me his career has anything to do with it.”

“Me neither,” Brown said.

“He wants that money, period. The minute he gets it, he’ll probably take Suzie and head straight for Brazil.”

“Okay, how do we get to him?” Brown asked.

“We go to Suzie.”

“We’ve been to Suzie,” Brown said. “You talked to her, Meyer talked to her, Cotton talked to her. She alibis Krutch right down the line.”

“Sure, but she’s been sleeping with the guy for four years,” Hawes said, still annoyed by the thought.

“Another three years, and they’re man and wife in the eyes of the law,” Carella said. “You expect her not to back his alibis?”

“Okay, let’s say she’s lying,” Brown said.

“Let’s say she’s lying. Let’s say Krutch did leave that apartment, once to kill Weinberg, and again to kill Gerry Ferguson.”

“Okay, let’s say it. How we going to prove it?”

“Well, let’s say that we drop in on Krutch sometime tonight and ask him a few more questions. Just to keep him busy, you understand? Just to make sure he doesn’t climb into the sack with li’l Suzie again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and let’s say about two o’clock in the morning, somebody knocks on li’l Suzie’s door and starts getting rough with her.”

“Come on, Steve, we can’t do that,” Brown said.

“I don’t mean we actually push her around,” Carella said.

“I told you he wouldn’t buy it,” Hawes said.

“I mean we just let her think we’re getting rough.”

“Well, why would she think that?” Brown asked. “If we’re not going to push her around...”

“She’s from Georgia,” Carella said.

The squadroom went silent. Hawes looked at his shoes.

“Who’s going to hit Krutch?” Brown asked.

“I thought Cotton and I might do that.”

“And who’ll go scare Suzie?”

The squadroom went silent again. The clock on the wall was ticking too loudly.

“Don’t tell me,” Brown said, and broke into a wide grin. “Man, I love it.”

Hawes glanced at Carella uncertainly.

“You’ll do it?” Carella said.

“Oh, man, I love it,” Brown said, and fell into a deliberately broad dialect. “We goan send a big black nigger man to scare our Georgia peach out’n her skin! Oh, man, it’s delicious!”

Prejudice is a wonderful thing.

Stereotypes are marvelous.

At 2:00 in the morning, Suzie Endicott opened her door to find that the most terrifying of her Southern fantasies had materialized in the gloom, a Nigra come to rape her in the night, just as her mother had warned her time and again. She started to close the door, but her rapist suddenly shouted, “You jes’ hole it right there, Missy. This here’s the law! Detective Arthur Brown of d’87th Squad. I got some questions to ast you.”

“Wh... wh... it’s... the middle of the night,” Suzie said.

Brown flashed his shield. “This hunk o’ tin here doan respec’ no time o’ day nor night,” he said, and grinned. “You goan let me in, Missy, or does I start causin’ a ruckus here?” Suzie hesitated. Brown suddenly wondered if he were playing it too broadly, and then decided he was doing just fine. Without waiting for an answer, he shoved past her into the apartment, threw his fedora onto the hall table, looked around appreciatively, whistled, and said, “Man, this’s some nice place you got here. Ain’t never been inside no fancy place like this one.”

“Wh... wh... what did you want to ask me?” Suzie said. She was wearing a robe over her nightgown, and her right hand was clutched tightly into the collar of the robe.

“Well now, ain’ no hurry, is there?” Brown asked.

“I... I have to go to work in the mor... morning,” Suzie said. “I... I... I... have to get some sleep,” she said, and realized instantly she had made a mistake by even mentioning anything even remotely suggesting bed. “I mean...”

“Oh, I knows whut you mean,” Brown said, and grinned lewdly. “Sit down, Missy.”

“Wh... what did you want to ask?”

“I said sit down! You jes’ do whut I tells you to do, okay, an’ we goan get along fine. Otherwise...”

Suzie sat instantly, tucking the flaps of her robe around her.

“Those’re nice legs,” Brown said. He narrowed his eyes. “Mighty fine white legs, I can tell you that, honey.”

Suzie wet her lips and then swallowed. Brown was suddenly afraid she might pass out cold before he got to the finale of his act. He decided to push on regardless.

“We busted yo’ li’l playmate half an hour ago,” he said. “So if you’re thinkin’ he goan help you, you can jes’ f ‘get it.”

“Who? What? What did you say?”

“Irving Krutch, yo’ lover boy,” Brown said. “You shunt’a lied to us, Missy. That ain’t goan sit too well with the DA.”

“I didn’t lie to... to... anybody,” Suzie said.

“ ‘Bout bein’ in bed there all the time? ‘Bout making love there when two people was being murdered. Tsk, tsk, Missy, them was outright lies. I’m really sprised at you.”

“We did, we were, we did do that, we...” Suzie started, and realized they were talking about making love, and suddenly looked into Brown’s eyes, and saw the fixed, drooling stare of a sex-crazed maniac and wondered how she would ever get out of this alive. She should have listened to her mother who had warned her never to wear a tight skirt walking past any of these people because it was so easy to arouse animal lust in them.

“You in serious trouble,” Brown said.

“I didn’t...”

“Real serious trouble.”

“...lie to anybody, I swear.”

“Only one way to get out of that trouble now,” Brown said.

“But I didn’t...”

“Only one way, Missy.”

“...really. I didn’t lie, really. Really, officer,” she heard herself saying to this black man, “officer, I really didn’t, I swear. I don’t know what Irving told you, but I honestly did not lie to anyone, if anyone was lying, it was him. I had no idea of anything, of it, of anything. I mean that, officer, you can check that out if you want to. I certainly wouldn’t lie to the police, not to those nice policemen who...”

“Only one way to save yo’ sweet ass now,” Brown said, and saw her face go pale.

“Wh... what’s that?” Suzie said. “What way? What?”

“You can tell d’troof,” Brown said, and rose out of his chair to his full monstrous height, muscles bulging, eyes glaring, shoulders heaving, rose like a huge black gorilla, and hulked toward her with his arms dangling at his sides, hands curled like an ape’s, towered over her where she sat small and white and trembling on the edge of her chair, and repeated in his most menacing nigger-in-the alley voice, “You can tell d’troof now, Missy, unless you cares to work it out some other way!”

“Oh my good Lord Jesus,” Suzie shouted, “he left the apartment, he left both times, I don’t know where he went, I don’t know anything else, if he killed those people, I had nothing to do with it!”

“Thank you, Miss Endicott,” Brown said. “Would you put on some clothes now, I’d like you to accompany me to the squadroom.”

She stared at him in disbelief. Where had the rapist gone? Who was this polite nuclear physicist standing in his place? And then his charade dawned upon her, and her eyes narrowed, and her lips drew back over her teeth, and she said, “Boy, you say please when you ask me to go any place.”

“Go to hell,” Brown said. “Please.”

“The rotten bitch,” Krutch said.

He could have been talking about Suzie Endicott, but he wasn’t. He was railing, instead, against the late Alice Bonamico. The departed gang leader’s departed wife, it seemed, had cheated Krutch. In his investigation of the robbery, he had learned from Carmine’s widow that she was in possession of “certain documents and photographic segments” purporting to show the hiding place of the NSLA loot. He had bargained with her for months, and they had finally agreed on a purchase price. She had turned over to him the half of the list in her possession as well as the piece of the photo he had originally shown the police.

“But I didn’t know she had yet another piece,” Krutch said. “I didn’t learn that until I read about her will, and contacted her sister. That’s when I got this piece. The eighth piece of the puzzle. The important one. The one that bitch held out on me.”

“Which, naturally, you didn’t give to us,” Brown said.

“Naturally. It shows the exact location of the loot. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Why’d you come to us in the first place?”

“I told you why. Krutch needed help. Krutch couldn’t handle it alone any more. Krutch figured what better way to get help on an investigation than by calling in experts?”

“You got more than you bargained for,” Brown said.

“Except from Alice Bonamico, that bitch. I paid her ten thousand dollars for half of the list and a meaningless piece of the picture. Ten thousand bucks! It was every penny I had.”

“But, of course, you were going for very big money.”

“It was an investment,” Krutch said. “Krutch looked upon it as an investment.”

“Well,” Brown said, “now Krutch can look upon it as a capital loss. Why’d you kill Weinberg?”

“Because you told me he had another piece, and I wanted it. Look, I was running a race with you guys. I knew I was ahead of you because I had the piece with the X on it, but suppose you got cute somewhere along the line and refused to show me anything else? I’m in the insurance business, you know. Getting Weinberg’s piece was insurance, plain and simple.”

“And Gerry Ferguson’s?”

“Same thing. Insurance. I went in there looking for it because you’d already told me it wasn’t in the safe. So where else could it be? Had to be in her apartment, right? I wasn’t going to kill her, but she started screaming the minute I came in. I was too close then to let anybody stop me. You don’t know how close I came to putting this whole thing together. You guys were helping me more than you realized. I almost had it made.”

“You’ve got balls, all right,” Brown said, shaking his head. “You come to the police for help in locating the proceeds from a bank robbery. That takes real balls.”

“Real brains,” Krutch corrected.

“Oh, yes,” Brown said.

“It wasn’t easy to think this up.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to do a lot more thinking,” Brown said.

“What do you mean?”

“You figure it out.”

“In prison, do you mean?” Krutch asked.

“Now you’ve got the picture,” Brown said.

This time, the helicopter ride was a joyous one. For whereas there were thirty-four side streets entering the River Road, only one of those side streets was opposite a twin cluster of offshore rocks. Coincidentally, the rocks were just west of the Calm’s Point Bridge, from which vantage point Bonamico must have snapped the picture, standing on the bridge’s walkway some fifty feet above the surface of the water. They landed the chopper close to where Donald Duck’s eye must have been before the city’s Highway Maintenance Department had repaired it, and then they walked toward the rocks and looked down into the filthy waters of the River Dix and saw nothing. Carmine Bonamico’s “X” undoubtedly marked the spot, but water pollution triumphed over the naked eye, and there was nary a treasure to be seen. They did not uncover the loot until they dredged the river close to the bank, and found an old leather suitcase, green with slime, water-logged, badly deteriorated. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in good American currency was ensconced in that bag, slightly damp to be sure, but nonetheless negotiable.

It was a good day’s pay.

Arthur Brown got home in time for dinner.

His wife met him at the door and said, “Connie’s got a fever. I had the doctor here a half-hour ago.”

“What’d he say?”

“He thinks it’s just the flu. But she’s so uncomfortable, Artie.”

“Did he give her anything?”

“I’m waiting for it now. The drug store said they’d deliver.”

“She awake?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go talk to her. How’re you?” he said, and kissed her.

“Forgot what you looked like,” Caroline answered.

“Well, here’s what I look like,” he said, and smiled.

“Same old handsome devil,” Caroline said.

“That’s me,” he said, and went into the bedroom.

Connie was propped against the pillows, her eyes wet, her nose running. “Hello, Daddy,” she said in her most miserable-sounding voice.

“I thought you were sick,” he said.

“I am,” she answered.

“You can’t be sick,” he said, “you look too beautiful.” He went to the bed and kissed her on the forehead.

“Oh, Daddy, please be careful,” Caroline said, “you’ll catch the bug.”

“I’ll catch him and stomp him right under my foot,” Brown said, and grinned.

Connie giggled.

“How would you like me to read you a story?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

“What would you like to hear?”

“A good mystery,” Connie said. “One of the Nancy Drews.”

“One of the Nancy Drews it is,” Brown said, and went to the bookcase. He was crouched over, searching the shelves for Connie’s favorite, when he heard the urgent shriek of a police siren on the street outside.

“Do you like mysteries, Daddy?” Connie asked.

Brown hesitated a moment before answering. The siren faded into the distant city. He went back to the bed and gently touched his daughter’s hair, and wondered again, oddly, if Geraldine Ferguson had ever roller-skated on a city sidewalk. Then he said, “No, honey, I don’t care for mysteries too much,” and sat on the edge of the bed, and opened the book, and began reading aloud.