Mischief

12.

AT FOUR O’CLOCK that Friday afternoon, just as Nellie Brand was trying to create some order out of the chaos on her desk so she could get out of the office by five, her beeper went off. She had tried desperately to get off the Chart today because it happened to be her wedding anniversary and she was supposed to go home and shower and make herself glamorous for a romantic candlelit evening out with her husband. The Chart was the homicide chart, and in this city any D.A. of quality or experience landed on it every six weeks or so, and was then on call for twenty-four hours. The number on the beeper readout was 377-8024. The Eight-Seven. She returned the call and spoke to Meyer Meyer, whom she knew, and who asked her could she get uptown right away, they had what looked like real meat on a possible Murder Two.

Nellie sighed and said, “Sure.”

Hoping this would be a quick one—though none of them ever really was—she phoned Gary to tell him what had come up, and then hailed a taxi outside her building downtown on High Street.

Walking familiarly into the station house, she nodded to the desk sergeant, and then took the iron-runged steps upstairs to the second floor of the building. She was wearing a tailored blue suit, a white blouse with a stock tie, and low-heeled navy pumps. After years of wearing her hair in a breezy flying wedge, she was letting it grow out; it fell now in a sand-colored cascade that reached almost to her jawline. Meyer and Hawes were waiting in the squadroom for her.

“Let’s try to make this a fast one,” she said.

Meyer filled her in.

“What do you think?” he said. “Have we got a Murder Two?”

“Let’s go talk to the man,” Nellie said.

Hamilton had asked for a lawyer the minute they told him they’d be trotting him around town to visit hospitals hither and yon. The attorney he’d called was a man who’d handled Hamilton’s daughter’s divorce for her; his name was Martin Campbell, and Meyer guessed he was in his early fifties. By now, a lot of identification had taken place, and Campbell was suggesting that his client call off any further questioning. But Hamilton seemed to be enjoying all this; maybe he still felt he could beat this one; maybe he was right.

They went through all the rights business yet another time, making certain that Hamilton was still willing to answer questions, this time with a video camera going. Campbell objected to the camera, but his client had already consented to it, and he knew he was whistling in the wind. Nellie shot him a look that said Come on, counselor, let’s not play games when I’ve got a heavy date, and Campbell harrumphed a bit about making sure the backup stenographer took down everything that was said, just in case anybody later on tried to tamper with the tape, as if anyone would.

“Mr. Hamilton,” Nellie said, “I just wanted to confirm for the record that notwithstanding your attorney’s advice, you are still willing to answer any questions I put to you.”

“I am.”

“Fine then. The police officers tell me that you’ve now been positively identified by three persons…”

“Twoof them incompetent,” Campbell said.

“Turn off that camera,” Nellie ordered at once. The operator looked at her, puzzled for a moment, and then hit the OFF switch.

“Counselor,” Nellie said, “this isn’t a court of law, nor am I taking a deposition. Your client has consented to my questioning, has further consented to the videotaping, and I’d like to continue this without any further interruptions from you, if that’s not too much of an imposition.”

“For the record,” Campbell said, “I merely want it noted…”

“This is not on the record,” Nellie said.

“I merely want it noted ,” Campbell repeated, “that one of the witnesses is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease…Rubin Hanks, is that his name?”

“Shanks,” Meyer supplied.

“Shanks, thank you, his wife has stated that he is an Alzheimer’s victim. And the other…”

“His wife has also identified your client as…”

“The other man also seems to be suffering from some sort of dementia,” Campbell said, “unable to tell us where he lives or who he is, other than Charlie. So if you’re counting on these two incompetent persons to make your case, I would strongly suggest that my client be released without being charged, and I would further suggest that you pray he doesn’t sue the police department for false arrest.”

“Gee whiz,” Nellie said. “I’ll bet these detectives haven’t been threatened with false arrest in a long time. I think you’ll agree, however, that Mrs. Shanks is a competent witness, and she has stated that she paid your client one thousand dollars to…

“You know,” Campbell said, “if hearsay is being permitted on the record…”

“The record is the videotape,” Nellie said, “all this is off the record. And I’d like to start the tape again, with your permission, and get on with the questioning. Or, if you think there are grounds to release your client, why don’t you ask for a writ of habeas corpus, hmmm?”

“Go ahead, ask your questions,” Campbell said, and waved her away with the flat of his hand.

Nellie nodded to the camera operator, who started the tape rolling again.

“Mr. Hamilton,” Nellie said, “didMrs. Shanks pay you a thousand…?”

“No,” Hamilton said.

“May I finish the question, please?”

“I never saw the woman in my life until this afternoon.”

Meyer looked at Hawes. Both men rolled their eyes.

“I hope the camera isn’t picking up the faces the detectives are making at my client,” Campbell said.

“Only person I’m on is the suspect,” the camera operator said.

“Hold it right there!” Campbell said. “Turn that thing off! Right this minute!”

The operator looked at Nellie. Nellie nodded. The room went dead silent.

“If you plan to use that tape as later evidence, then I resent my client being called a suspect on it, which carries a negative connotation. I’d like to start this all over again, Mrs. Brand. Rewind that tape, and then record right over what you’ve got. Conduct a proper Q and A here, or by God, if I have to drag my client out of here by his coat collar I will not permit him to answer another question.”

“i want to answer their questions,” Hamilton said. “They haven’t got a case here, and they know it.”

“Mrs. Brand? What do you say?”

“I say absolutely not . The record stands from the top, the tape will not be rewound or erased. Moreover, counselor, I understand your grand scheme…”

“I have no grand…”

“…is to destroy a Q and A to which your client has already consented ad infinitum . But I can tell you that if you continue to be disruptive, I’ll have the police throw you out of here. Is that clear? May I now continue?”

“Sure, sure, continue,” Campbell said.

Nellie nodded curtly.

“Start the tape,” she said.

Q: Mr. Colbert, is there any doubt in your mind that the words you’ve duplicated for us…how many times, Andy?

A: Twenty-three times, Bert.

Q: Twenty-three times now, in accordance with the court order, the same words over and over again, ‘I killed the three uptown,’ is there any doubt in your mind that the handwriting on the note found at the scene of the Henry Bright murder matches your handwriting exactly?

A: I’m not a handwriting expert.

Q: Thank you for that information, Mr. Colbert. But wouldn’t you agree that to a layman’s eye…

A: I wouldn’t care to speculate.

Q: Well, I can tell you that the D.A.’ll most likely bring in a handwriting expert, and he’s going to tell a jury just what anyone who isn’t blind can see, that the handwriting samples are a perfect match with the handwriting on the note the killer left.

A: Aren’t we being a bit premature? Talking about a jury when nobody from the D.A.’s Office has even been here yet?

Q: Let me end the suspense for you, Mr. Colbert. We’re going to call the D.A. just as soon as we finish here. And the D.A.’s gonna ask for the max on each count of Murder Two. You killed four people. You’re going to spend the rest of your life behind bars.

A: That’s for a jury to decide, isn’t it?

Q: Who’s being premature now? Let me tell you what the next step is, Mr. Colbert, now that we’ve got a positive handwriting match. The next step…

A: Please don’t treat me like a child.

Q: Excuse me, I’m sure you know what the next step is. The next step is we’re going to ask for a warrant to search your apartment for the murder weapon, which according to Ballistics was a Smith & Wesson .38. That’s the next step. The court order’ll be granted, Mr. Colbert, because now we’ve got three things linking you to the murders. If you want my opinion…

A: I don’t.

Q: Take it, anyway. Gratis, and for the record. If you didn’t get rid of that gun…if that gun, for example, is still in your apartment or your car, or wherever you’re keeping it…then you can kiss your chances goodbye. We’ve got a strong case even without the murder weapon, but it’ll be airtight once we recover the gun. And don’t tell us again to go for a court order. You know we will, and you know it’ll be granted, and you also know the gun’ll wrap it tighter than Dick’s hatband,if it’s still in your possession. You’re the only one who knows that, counselor. So what do you say?

A: What are you asking me?

Q: I’m asking you to tell us all about it.

A: Why should I?

Q: Make life easier for all of us.

A: How will it make my life easier? The way I see it, you’ve got a bunch of paint cans that don’t link me to anything, and you’ve got a note that may or may not link me to the murder downtown, but that’s all it does,if it does.

Q: It says in plain English you also killed the three uptown .

A: Is it signed perchance?

Q: It’s in your handwriting perchance.

A: It still isn’t signed.

Q: How about the gun, counselor?

Colbert didn’t answer.

“Arewe going to find that gun?” Kling asked.

“How would I know? Go get your search warrant. Meanwhile I suggest you take me to a judge fast . You’ve got twenty-four hours from the moment of arrest to have me arraigned—and the clock is ticking.”

“Let’s say we find the gun…”

“Let’s say you do.”

“We’ve got the bullets on the bookstore murder. If they match your gun…”

“Even if you find the gun, you’d have no way of proving it’s mine. And no way of proving I fired it. But this is all academic. Get your search warrant, go look for the gun. Then we’ll talk.”

“Maybe we better step outside a minute,” Parker suggested.

Kling looked at him, puzzled.

“Sure,” he said.

“HE KNOWS we won’t find that gun in his apartment, his car, wherever,” Parker said. “And he’s right. No gun, no case.”

“We’ve got the handwriting match,” Kling reminded him.

“Will that be enough to send him away on four counts of Murder Two?” Parker asked. “We get him in court, they’ll put on their own handwriting expert, he’ll testify I wrote the fuckin note.”

“Wait a minute,” Kling said. “If he’s not in possession of the gun, then who is ?”

“Some alligator down the sewer,” Parker said.

“No,” Kling said. “Where’d we find those paint cans?”

IN A ROOM down the hall, Assistant District Attorney Nellie Brand was having a similar conversation with Meyer and Hawes.

“Let’s say we get a court order to toss his car,” Nellie said.

“That’s exactly what we should do,” Meyer said. “Soon as possible.”

“I agree,” Nellie said. “And let’s say we find some hair or skin samples that match the old lady’s who died of a heart attack…”

“She’s been buried already,” Hawes said.

“We can get a court order to have the body disinterred,” Nellie said.

Meyer looked at her skeptically.

“Okay, maybe not. But let’s say we find fiber samples that match her robe or her nightgown or whatever. Together with the blanket, this would tie him to the old lady, and we’ve got either a potential A—skimpy but who knows?—or a positive C.”

“Skimpy how? The A?”

“Samples would put her in his car, but that’s all,” Nellie said. “It wouldn’t mean he was driving the car.”

“The other two identified him as the one driving the car, the one who dumped them.”

“The other two aren’t dead,” Nellie said.

“Not through lack of trying,” Meyer said dryly.

“But even alive, we’ve got him cold on two good D felonies. I’ll tell Campbell we’re going for Murder Two with the old lady and Reckless Endangerment One on the two gents. He’ll say we haven’t got a case with the woman, which as a matter of fact we don’t unless we come up with something from Hamilton’s car, or unless the party or parties who hired him come forward, which is what I call the Fat Chance Department. So unless we come up with something in the car, I’ll let Campbell talk me into dropping the old lady entirely and concentrating on the others, which he’ll try to bargain down to Reckless Two, your garden-variety Class-A mis. I’ll tell him No, if I forget the old lady, then it’s Reckless One or nothing at all, and he’ll say Okay, but his man pleads to just one count, and I’ll say Come on, we’ve got a perfect D here, depraved indifference, guy drops off these helpless old people with just a blanket wrapped around them, grave risk of death, all that, textbook definition. He’ll say Okay, he’ll advise his client to plea to both D’s only if I’ll agree to jail time,not prison time, a bullet on each count, concurrent. I’ll tell him Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve got a good hammer here for the seven-year max on one D and a consecutive on the second D, all in the state pen. He’ll say Okay, how about giving me one-to-three concurrent in a state pen, and I’ll tell him No, the least I’ll settle for is open D’s on both counts. That’ll leave the sentencing to the judge. Or, if he prefers—and if his client would rather try rolling the dice for a lifetime sentence—I’ll also go for Murder Two on the old lady. Campbell will settle for the open D’s. In court, he’ll go for probation or a non-prison term, I’ll go for two-and-a-third to seven consecutive in a state pen. My guess is he’ll end up doing one-and-two-thirds to five consec on each count.”

“What about the old lady?” Meyer said.

“Well, if we find anything in the car, I’m ready to shoot for Murder Two.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Some you win, some you lose,” Nellie said, and shrugged. “Let’s go do it. I’ve got to get out of here.”

COLBERT WAS still sitting at the long table in the interrogation room when Parker and Kling got back to him at six-twenty that evening. He looked up when they walked in, grinned at Kling, and said, “Okay to go home now?”

“Few more questions, counselor,” Kling said. “Then you can tell us everything you know about this.”

“Oh, really? This had better be good.”

“You’re pretty sure we won’t find that gun, aren’t you?”

“I told you. Go get your warrant.”

“That’s just what we plan to do. To search the premises at 1137 Albermarle Way.”

Colbert blinked.

And recovered immediately.

“Why would a judge grant such a request?”

“Oh, I think we can make a pretty strong case for tossing the Wilkins apartment,” Parker said. “That’s where the paint cans were. With your fingerprints all over them. Maybe the gun’s there, too.”

“It’s no crime to buy paint. You can’t link that paint to any crime.”

“Unless the murder weapon is in that apartment.”

“Buying paint isn’t a crime.”

“Murder is. Why’d you put that paint in your partner’s closet? To make sure everybody thought…?”

“I put it there because I didn’t have room for it in my own apartment. All I have is a studio downtown.”

“The day after your partner got killed…”

“Yes…”

“…while allegedly spraying a wall with graffiti …”

“That had nothing to do with…”

“You run out to buy twenty-twocans of spray paint, and you store them…”

“I needed that paint for…”

“Yeah, you needed it to prove Wilkins was really a graffiti artist instead of a big-shot downtown lawyer.”

“There was some furniture I wanted to…”

“Isthe gun in that apartment, Mr. Colbert?”

Colbert said nothing.

“Throw her to the lions,” Parker suggested.

Colbert was silent for several moments.

Then he said, “What’s in it for me?”

“You talk to us, maybe we’ll talk to the D.A.”

“No maybes.”

“We’ll ask for a federal prison instead of a state pen,” Parker said.

Colbert knew the code. It was as simple as black and white. And he was white.

“It was her idea,” he said.

Q: tell us how it started.

A: it started in bed. Where does anything start?

Q: bed where?

A: in a motel across the river. The next state.

Q: when?

A: before Christmas.

Q: you and Debra Wilkins in bed together. In a motel room.

A: yes.

Q: how long had that been going on?

A: since shortly after she married Peter.

Q: all right, what happened in that motel room?

A: she told me about his will.

Q: about her being sole beneficiary of the will?

A: yes. I hadn’t known that. She’d seen a draft copy, it hadn’t yet been witnessed. Actually, several people in our office witnessed it the very next day. But she told me she stood to inherit some money….

Q: how much money? Are we talking millions here, thou…

A: millions? No, of course not. Thousands, yes. Maybe a few hundred thousand, something like that. The money was a secondary consideration. She was planning to leave him, anyway, you see. But this meant she’d walk out of the marriage with a little something. This wasn’t money, you see. This was love.

Q: you loved each other, is that what you’re saying?

A: yes. That’s why we worked out the plan.

Q: which was?

A: to kill him.

Q: did you, in fact, kill Peter Wilkins?

A: it was her idea.

Q: but are you the one who actually shot him?

A: yes.

Q: and killed him.

A: he was the second one.

Q: who was the first one?

A: the Spanish kid. I forget his name. I read his name in the paper the next day. I didn’t know who he was when I shot him. I only learned his name later. Like with the others. Carrera? Was it Carerra?

Q: herrera.

A: whatever.

Q: when you say the others…?

A: the other graffiti writers. We wanted to make it look like someone was after graffiti writers. That was Debra’s idea. People hate graffiti writers, you know. It’s easy for people to believe that someone would go after graffiti writers. I was in Toulouse last summer, in France. And there was graffiti on the walls there, too. Not the political slogans you used to see in Europe, but the same kind we have here. The markers, the tags in spray paint. It’s disgusting. People hate it there, too. People hate it everywhere. Debra’s idea was a very good one. We even thought people might begin cheering whoever was doing it. Confuse the issue even more, you see.Really hide what we were doing.

Q: hide the fact that you were out to kill Peter Wilkins…

A: yes.

Q:…so his wife would inherit under his will.

A: no, no. So she’d be free to marry me . I told you, this wasn’t money. It was love.

Q: so her husband goes to the movies…

A: no, no, that was our story.

Q: he didn’t go to the movies?

A: no, he was home. I told him I was coming over, there was a case we were working on. I killed him in the house there, and then wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him down, and drove him over to Harlow Street. Found a good wall there…

Q: a good wall?

A: covered with graffiti. Dropped him in front of the wall. The idea was to make it look like someone was killing graffiti writers, you see. That’s why I bought that paint the next day. Because there was all this skepticism in the papers about a lawyer being a graffiti writer, remember? I bought the paint to nail it home. That Peter was a secret writer. That’s why I left the note when I did the one outside the bookstore. To nail the point home. To make it look like some crazy person was committing the murders.

“You succeeded,” Kling said.

IN THE CORRIDOR OUTSIDE, he said, “Even if the gun isn’t in there…”

“It’s in there, all right,” Parker said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have told us a fuckin thing.”

“But even if it isn’t ,” Kling insisted, “the apartment is where Wilkins caught it, there’ll be all kinds of forensic evidence. The minute we find the gun, the door’s wide open. We bust the wife as an accomplice and call it a day. Which’ll be nice for a change, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“That nobody walks,” Kling said, and grinned like a schoolboy.

THE GARBAGE TRUCKS were lined up in rows behind a cyclone fence topped with razor wire. Fifty, sixty trucks in there behind the fence. The trucks were white, the color favored by the city’s sanitation department, perhaps because it represented pristine cleanliness. Unfortunately, the city’s various graffiti writers had already got to the trucks, spraying them from top to bottom and creating instead an image of urban decay. At one o’clock in the morning, the lot was silent and dark.

The wire didn’t bother Carter. He had no intention of climbing the fence. He wasn’t going to cut a hole in it, either, because you can’t drive a garbage truck though a hole in a fence. To drive the garbage truck out, Carter had to roll back the sliding gate, which was fastened to a post with a thick chain and a heavy padlock.

Carter was going for the padlock.

A padlock is merely a flat lock, and a lock is a lock, and anybody who knows how to pick one lock knows how to pick any other lock. He worked in the dark with his set of picks, jiggling and juggling, working the lock like a woman, urging her to open for him. No security here. He guessed they figured they didn’t need anything but the razor wire and the big macho padlock to keep out any graffiti writers. He had the lock open in four minutes. He rolled back the gate, walked swiftly to the nearest truck all beautifully decorated with spray-paint shit, crossed the ignition wires under the hood, climbed into the cab, put the gears in reverse, made a huge turn, and then drove right on out through the gate.

He didn’t turn on the headlights until he was four blocks from the lot.

By then, he was home free.

FLORRY WAS WEARING hisALL ACCESS laminate in the sky-blue color of the day, but he had all the others in his jacket pocket just in case one of the security guards gave him any bullshit about the color having changed at midnight. This was now two in the morning, and the concert site was as still as a graveyard. He walked onto the site familiarly, not expecting to be stopped by the security guard at the entrance, nodding to him, in fact, but not explaining why he was there, never explain, never apologize, just march in.

Whistling softly to himself, he walked directly to the control tower some hundred and fifty feet back from the stage. This was where all the really expensive equipment was; he expected to get stopped here, and he was.

“What’s up?” the guard there said, even though he could plainly see the blue laminate pinned to Florry’s jacket.

“Sound,” Florry said, and held up the black bag in his hand.

Keep it simple, he thought.

“Want to open it for me?” the guard said.

“Sure,” Florry said pleasantly, and unzipped the bag.

The guard flashed his torch into it.

He was looking in at a black metal box some ten inches wide by fourteen inches long by two inches high.

He was looking in at tomorrow’s utter confusion.

“Fuck’s that?” he asked.

“Micro-amplifier,” Florry said.

Which it wasn’t.

“Little late, ain’t it?” the guard said.

“Musicians,” Florry said, and rolled his eyes.

“Okay, go on,” the guard said, and watched while Florry headed straight for the console. He kept watching as Florry poked around the board here and there like somebody who knew what he was doing, and then he got bored and strolled over to where another guard was standing near the sound stack on the right side of the stage.

That was when Florry really got to work.

It took him five minutes to locate the four matrix output cables going from the console to the processing rack. It took him another five minutes to unplug the outputs from the console and patch in his black box. A minute later, he had the box snugly tucked in among the other equipment in the electronic racks.

Whistling, he waved to the two guards near the stage, said good night to the guard at the entrance, and left the site.

From a telephone booth on the corner where he’d parked his car, he phoned the Deaf Man to tell him everything was set for tomorrow.

“Thank you,” the Deaf Man said.

CARELLA COULDN’T SLEEP.

Old songs kept running through his head, songs to which he didn’t know the words, or only knew some of the words, songs he couldn’t quite remember, snatches of melody blurred by time, an incessant concert he couldn’t completely hear, songs from very long ago, hissing and echoing from a static-ridden radio to blend together in what he recognized was a low-key nightmare, but a nightmare nonetheless.

He couldn’t believe that the concert tomorrow was the Deaf Man’s real target. If he knew the man at all, and he thought he knew him pretty well, then the concert—whatever he’d planned for the concert, a fire, whatever—would only be the diversion. This was a free concert, there wasn’t any box office the Deaf Man hoped to rob, his true target had to be somewhere else, the real thrust had to be elsewhere.

But where?

Big city, this one.

The songs running through his head.

Time running through his head.

The clock ticking relentlessly toward one o’clock tomorrow when the concert would start.

What else was happening at one tomorrow?

And where?

The songs kept hissing from the old radio, saxophones and trumpets, snare drum and bass, piano and trombone.

What? he wondered.

Where?