Poison

CHAPTER 14

"Then what?" Willis asked.

"A happy ending," she said. "I was with Hidalgo for a little more than a year. He called me in one day, handed me my passport, and told me I was free to go whenever I wanted to."

"How come?"

Marilyn shrugged. "Maybe I'd already earned what he'd paid to get me out of prison, I don't know. Or maybe he really was a humanitarian."

"I've never met a humanitarian pimp," Willis said.

"In any case, I went out on my own, stayed in B.A. for another four years, saved every nickel, and came here with a nice bundle."

"Two million bucks, you told me."

"More or less."

"Divide that by four years, that's five hundred thousand a year."

"Lots of big spenders in B.A. I was averaging three hundred a trick. You multiply that by four, five tricks a night, that comes to a lot of money."

Willis nodded. If she'd earned five hundred grand a year, at an average three hundred bucks a trick, then she'd been to bed with close to seventeen hundred men a year. Something like thirty, thirty-five men a week. Say five tricks each and every night of the week. For a full four years.

"Talk about damaged goods, huh?" she said, as if reading his mind.

Willis said nothing.

"Listen, that's what the girl in From Here to Eternity did, isn't it? The book? The girl in Hawaii?"

"I didn't read that book," Willis said.

"Didn't you see the movie?"

"No."

"Well…" She shrugged and lowered her eyes. "That's what she did."

He was thinking seventeen hundred men a year. Times four years is six thousand eight hundred men. Add the year she'd been working for Hidalgo, you could figure maybe eight, nine thousand. Marilyn Hollis had been to bed with what could be considered the entire male population of a fair-sized town, if all of them were men. Had there been a few hundred women in the total? Half a dozen police dogs? An Arabian stallion? Christ!

He shook his head.

"So now you walk," she said.

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, "None of them knew this, huh?"

"If you mean…"

"I mean McKennon, Hollander and Riley."

"None of them knew it," she said softly.

"How about Endicott? Did you tell him?"

"You're the only one I've ever told."

"Lucky me," he said.

The room went silent.

She kept looking at him.

"What are you going to tell your partner?" she asked at last.

"Not this, that's for sure."

"I meant… about my handling that bottle."

"I'll tell him what you told me."

"Do you believe what I told you?"

He hesitated for what seemed a long time.

Then he said, "Yes," and took her in his arms.

The handcuffed man sitting with Meyer and Hawes in the Interrogation Room was perhaps fifty years old, a dignified-looking gentleman wearing a brown sports jacket and tan trousers, a cream-colored sports shirt, brown socks and brown loafers. His hair was greying at the temples. His mustache was greying, too. The gun on the desk was a .38 Smith & Wesson.

"I've read you your rights," Meyer said, "and I've informed you that you may have an attorney present if you request one, and I've also informed you that you may refuse entirely to answer any questions, and may at any time during the questioning refuse to answer any further…"

"I don't want an attorney," the man said. "I'll answer any questions you ask me."

"And you know that this is a tape-recorder here on the table, and that whatever you say will be recorded and…"

"Yes, I understand that."

"And are you now willing to answer any questions Detective Hawes or I may put to you?"

"I told you yes."

"You do understand that you're entitled to an attorney if you…"

"I understand. I do not want an attorney."

Meyer looked at Hawes. Hawes nodded.

"May I have your full name, please?" Meyer asked.

"Peter Jannings."

"Would you spell the last name, please?"

"Jannings. J-A-N-N-I-N-G-S."

"Peter Jannings, is that correct? No middle name?"

"No middle name."

"And your address, Mr. Jannings?"

"5318 South Knowlton Drive."

"Any apartment number?"

"3-C."

"How old are you, Mr. Jannings?"

"Fifty-nine."

"You look younger," Meyer said, and smiled.

Jannings nodded. Meyer figured he'd been told this many times before.

"Is this your gun?" Meyer asked. "I'm indicating a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, Model 32, commonly known as a Terrier Double Action."

"It's my gun."

"Do you have a permit for it?"

"I do."

"Carry or Premises?"

"Carry. I'm in the diamond business."

"Were you in possession of this gun… I refer again to the Smith & Wesson, Model 32… were you in possession of this gun when the officers arrested you?"

"I was."

"Was that at three forty-five this afternoon?"

"I didn't look at my watch."

"The time given on the arresting officers' report…"

"If they say it was three forty-five, then I'm sure that's what it was."

"And were you arrested, sir, in a motion-picture theater complex called Twin Plaza…"

"Yes."

"At 3748 Knightsbridge Road?"

"I don't know the address."

"Where there are two theaters, sir. Twin Plaza One, and Twin Plaza Two. Am I correctly identifying the theater complex where you were arrested?"

"Yes."

"And you were in the theater called Twin Plaza One, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Were you holding this Smith & Wesson, Model 32, in your hand when you were arrested?"

"I was."

"Had you recently fired the pistol?"

"Yes."

"How many times did you fire the pistol?"

"Four."

"Did you fire the pistol at a person?"

"I did."

"At whom did you fire the pistol?"

"A woman."

"Do you know her name?"

"I do not."

"Are you aware, Mr. Jannings, that a woman sitting in the seat directly behind yours… behind the seat you were occupying when the officers arrested you… was shot four times in the chest and head…"

"Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm the one who shot her."

"You shot the woman sitting behind you, is that correct?"

"I did."

"Do you know that the woman died on the way to the hospital?''

"I didn't know that, but I'm glad," Jannings said.

Meyer looked at Hawes again. On the tabletop, the tape kept unreeling relentlessly.

"Mr. Jannings," Hawes said, "can you tell us why you shot her?"

"She was talking," Jannings said.

"Sir?"

"All through the movie."

"Talking?"

"Talking."

"Sir?"

"She was talking behind me all during the movie. Identifying the characters. Oh, look, there's the husband! Oh, look, here comes the boyfriend! Uh-oh, there's a lion! Uh-oh, two of them! Explaining the locale. That's her farm. Now they're in the jungle. That's a doctor's office. He's the doctor. Second-guessing the plot. I'll bet she goes to bed with him. I'll bet the husband finds out. At one point, when the doctor says, 'You have syphilis,' the woman behind me said, 'She has what?' I turned to her and said, 'She has syphilis, madam!' She said, 'Mind your own business, I was talking to my husband.' I went back to watching the movie, trying to watch it. The woman said, 'Whatever it is, I think she caught it from the husband.' I controlled myself all through the movie, all through the incessant chatter behind me. Then, toward the end of the film, I couldn't bear it any longer. There was a long graveside speech, Meryl Streep reads this lovely poem, and then she walks off toward the edge of the cemetery and looks out into the distance and we know everything she's feeling in that moment, and the woman behind me said, 'That girl with the husband is the rich one he married.' I turned around and said, 'Madam, if you want to talk, why don't you stay home and watch television?' She said, 'I thought I told you to mind your own business.' I said, 'This is my business. I paid for this seat.' She said, 'Then sit in it and shut up.' That was when I shot her."

Hawes looked at Meyer.

"My only regret is that I waited too long," Jannings said. "I should have shot her sooner. Then I could have enjoyed the movie."

Meyer wondered if he could get off with a plea of justifiable homicide.

Captain Samuel Isaac Grossman was hunched over a microscope when Carella got to the Police Laboratory at a little before five that Saturday afternoon. The days were getting longer. The sky beyond the huge windows fronting High Street was only now beginning to show the first faint pinkish tint of dusk, the windows in the surrounding buildings glaring sun-reflected light. Grossman was totally absorbed. A tall, rangy man who would have seemed more at home on a New England farm than in the sterile orderliness of a laboratory, he sat on a high stool, adjusted a knob, peered again into the microscope's eyepiece. Carella waited.

"I know you're there, whoever you are," Grossman said, and turned on the stool, and lowered his glasses from their perch on his forehead back to the bridge of his nose. "Well, well," he said, "long time no see," and got off the stool and walked toward Carella, his hand extended. The men shook hands.

"Did you hear the one about the man who goes to see his urologist?" Grossman asked.

"Tell me," Carella said, already smiling.

"The urologist says, 'What seems to be the trouble?' The man says, 'I can't pee.' The urologist says, 'How old are you?' The man says, 'Ninety-two.' The urologist says, 'So you peed enough already.' "

Carella burst out laughing.

"Another man goes to see the same urologist," Grossman said. "The urologist says, 'What seems to be the trouble?' The man says, "I lost my penis in an automobile accident.' The urologist says, 'No problem, we'll give you a penis transplant.' The man says, 'I didn't know you could do that.' The urologist says, 'Sure, I'll show you some samples.' He brings out a sample penis, shows it to the man. The man says, 'It's too short.' The urologist brings out another penis. The man looks at it and says, 'I was really hoping for something with more authority.' The urologist brings out this magnificent penis. The man looks at it. 'Now that's more like it,' he says. 'Does it come in white?' "

Laughing, Carella said, "I'll have to tell that one to Artie."

"I love urologist jokes," Grossman said. "What brings you here?"

"I called you yesterday," Carella said.

"I never got the message. What about?"

"How do I get pure nicotine from cigarette butts?"

Grossman blinked.

"I'm working a nicotine poisoning," Carella said. "Maybe two of them."

"That's rare nowadays," Grossman said, "nicotine poisoning."

"That's why I want to know how to make the poison from scratch. I'm assuming my man wouldn't know how to refine it from an insecticide."

"So you want to know how to make it from cigarette butts. You want to know how to distill it."

"Cigar butts, pipe tobacco, whatever."

"Mmm," Grossman said.

"Can it be done?"

"Sure," Grossman said.

"So how do I do it?"

"Do you know how to make whiskey?"

"No. My father makes wine."

"Fermentation. Close but no cigar. We're talking about distillation."

"Which is?"

"You got an hour?"

"That complicated, huh?"

"For me, it's easy. For you…" Grossman shrugged.

"What do I need?"

"Are you assuming your man has access to laboratory equipment? Well, I guess not. Otherwise titration would be an option."

"That's right."

"Then what you need is a relative in Georgia who knows how to make moonshine booze."

"Lacking such connections…"

"You'd have to make your own still."

"How do I do that?"

"You don't know anything at all about distillation, huh?"

"Nothing."

"Terrific. They sent me the class dunce. Okay. Distillation is transferring a liquid or a solid in its gaseous state to another place where it is again liquified or solidified."

"Why?"

"To purify it."

"What do you mean by another place? New Jersey? Kansas?"

"Ha-ha," Grossman said mirthlessly. "They did send me the class dunce. Pay attention."

"I am paying attention," Carella said.

"Booze is made by distilling a fermented mash of grain—rye, barley, wheat, corn, you pays your money and you takes your choice. You heat up the mash, carry off the vapor—the steam, if you will—and then condense it. When vapor condenses, you get liquid. Voilá! Booze!"

"How about poison?"

"Same animal. Let's say you use tobacco in whatever form. You make a mash from, let's say, a dozen cigars. Your average cigar has a nicotine content of somewhere between fifteen and forty milligrams. This doesn't mean that if you smoke a cigar, you're going to keel over dead, even though the fatal dose of nicotine is considered to be around forty milligrams. If you chewed it up and ate it, though, you'd get pretty damn sick. And if you distilled the alkaloid from that cigar…"

"Here we go again," Carella said.

"Okay, step by step. Step one: you make a mash of a dozen cigars, two dozen, a hundred, however many. Step two: you heat up the mash. At atmospheric pressure, nicotine'll boil without decomposition at two hundred and forty degrees."

"Is that important?"

"Merely a scientific observation. Step three: you carry off the steam in a tube. You've seen pictures of bootlegger's stills, haven't you? All those tubes and coils? The tubes are to carry off the steam, the coils are to condense it. That's step four, the condensation."

"How does that work?"

"A natural process. It cools, it condenses. So now you've got a colorless liquid that's your alkaloid, more or less, the toxic nicotine you're going for."

"What do you mean, more or less."

"More or less pure. Step five: you take this liquid and distill it again. Step six: you distill it yet another time. And then you keep distilling it until you get your pure alkaloid. Whammo. You drop it in somebody's drink and he drops dead."

"I thought you said it was complicated," Carella said, grinning. "Do me a favor, will you?"

"Name it."

"Make me a sketch of a still."

Early Monday morning, Carella went downtown again, not to the lab on High Street, but to the courthouse several doors down, where he presented to a superior court magistrate two written requests for search warrants. The first request looked like this:

I am a detective of the Police Department assigned to the 87th Squad.

I have information based upon autopsy reports from the Medical Examiner's Office that nicotine was used as a poison in two homicides I am investigating.

I have further information based upon a conversation with Captain Samuel Grossman of the Police Laboratory that toxic nicotine can be distilled from ordinary cigarette, cigar or pipe tobacco.

I have further information based upon my personal knowledge and belief that such distilling apparatus, commonly known as "a still" (drawing attached), may be on the premises of Miss Marilyn Hollis, who resides at 1211 Harborside Lane in Isola.

Based upon the foregoing reliable information and upon my personal knowledge and belief, there is probable cause to believe that a still in possession of Marilyn Hollis would constitute evidence in the crime of murder.

Wherefore, I respectfully request that the court issue a warrant in the form annexed hereto, authorizing a search of the premises at 1211 Harborside Lane.

No previous application in this matter has been made in this or any other court or to any other judge, justice or magistrate.

The second request was identical in every way except for the name and address. For Marilyn Hollis, Carella had written in Charles Endicott, Jr. For 1211 Harborside Lane, he had written in 493 Burton Street. Each request was accompanied by a photocopy of Grossman's sketch of a still:

The magistrate carefully read the first request, started reading the second one, and then looked up and said, "These are identical, aren't they?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Carella said. "Except for the names and addresses."

"And there have been two nicotine poisonings, is that correct?"

"Yes, Your Honor. In addition to a fatal stabbing that is not relevant to the search-warrant requests."

"Where's your reasonable cause, Detective Carella?"

"Your Honor, two people were poisoned by…"

"Yes, yes, where's your cause?"

"The three victims were all close friends of Miss Hollis. Mr. Endicott is also a close friend of…"

"I'm looking for a reason to allow you to walk into a private citizen's home and conduct a search."

"I recognize, Your Honor, that I may be short on cause…"

"I'm happy you recognize that."

"But if someone manufactured that poison…"

"That's exactly the point. Someone may have. But why should you believe the someone was either Miss Hollis or Mr. Endicott?"

"Your Honor, Miss Hollis was intimately linked with all three of the victims."

"And Mr. Endicott?"

"With him as well."

"Did he know the victims?"

"No, Your Honor. Not according to…"

"Then what are you suggesting? That they acted in concert?"

"I have no evidence to support such a theory."

"Do you have evidence for an arrest?"

"No, Your Honor."

"What evidence do you have that would lead you to believe a still may be on either of these premises?"

"None, Your Honor. Except that distillation is a means of…"

"This is not Russia, Detective Carella."

"No, sir, it's America. And three people have been killed. If I can find a still…"

"I'm denying both requests," the magistrate said.

That was the way Monday morning started.

It was also raining.

Carella was soaking wet when he got to the squad-room. A soggy manila envelope was sitting on his desk. Seal of the Medical Examiner's Office in the lefthand corner. Carella glanced at it cursorily and then went to the sink in the corner of the room, yanked some paper towels from the rack there and tried to dry his hair. Andy Parker was sitting at his own desk, reading through a sheaf of D.D. reports on a burglary.

"I heard a good joke the other day," Carella said.

"Yeah?" Parker said.

Carella told him Grossman's joke about the black penis.

"I don't get it," Parker said. "M.E.'s office delivered an envelope for you."

"I saw it," Carella said, and went to his desk and ripped open the flap on the envelope. The envelope contained Blaney's typewritten report on the McKennon murder.

Carella looked at the calendar on his desk.

April 14.

McKennon had been murdered on the twenty-fourth of March.

Three weeks to get the paperwork, not bad for this city. He leafed through the pages. Most of the report detailed what Blaney had already told him on the phone. There was a dental chart, though, and he looked at that now:

He read Blaney's notes on what the markings for the variously numbered teeth meant—

1. Tooth missing.

3. % crown, gold.

7. Composite filling.

9. Root canal, porcelain jacket crown.

12. Full crown, porcelain fused to metal.

14. Silver fillings, cavity.

12. Tooth missing.

14. Silver filling, cavity.

16. Silver filling.

17. Silver filling.

20. Full crown, porcelain fused to metal.

21. Full crown, porcelain fused to metal.

28. Root canal, temporary crown, cavity.

29. Silver filling.

30. Silver filling.

—leafed through the rest of the report, put it back into the envelope and then carried it to the M-Z filing cabinet, where he put it into the manila folder marked McKENNON. He looked up at the clock. Twenty minutes past nine.

"The lieutenant in yet?" he asked Brown.

"Got here at nine."

"Willis is due in, isn't he?"

"Should be."

Carella debated calling him at the Hollis house.

He looked at his own watch.

Twenty-one minutes past nine.

He went to the lieutenant's door, and knocked on it.

"Come!" Byrnes shouted.

The lieutenant was sitting in a shaft of sunlight that streamed through his open windows. He looked like a religious miracle.

"How'd you make out?" he asked.

"Denied."

"I knew it."

"So did I. But it was worth a shot."

"What now?"

"I want round-the-clocks on Hollis and Endicott."

"Protection?"

"No. Surveillance."

Byrnes nodded. "Granted," he said.

There was something about Marilyn's story that bothered Willis.

He had immediately asked "How come?" when she told him that Hidalgo had cut her loose after a bit more than a year. He still wondered how come. He didn't know what it had cost Hidalgo to spring her from that Mexican prison but from what he understood about Mexican justice, la mordida came high. In that meeting in the warden's office, Hidalgo had told her he was a businessman. Oh, yes, a humanitarian as well, but first a businessman. It seemed odd to Willis that any businessman—especially if he happened to be a pimp—would be willing to give up an asset for which he had laid out cold cash. Even assuming she'd more than earned her keep in the year or so she'd worked for him, why would he have turned over her passport and given her her walking papers? Pimps didn't operate that way, not any pimps Willis knew. Pimps were on the gravy train. Pimps were users and takers. Hidalgo's act of generosity simply didn't ring true. Willis wanted to believe her, but he didn't.

He was not in the squadroom that morning because he was busy doing some detective work outside the squad-room. She had left the house at ten-thirty, heading downtown for an appointment with her hairdresser. It was now a quarter to eleven, and Willis was in the wing of the house that served as a storeroom, rummaging through the cartons of junk Marilyn had saved. He was looking for something that would shed some light on those years she had spent in Buenos Aires. A year and a bit more with Hidalgo, another four years on her own.

He found no letters.

Well, that was understandable. She'd lost touch with her friends in Los Angeles and Houston and her mother's whereabouts were unknown at the time. Besides, she'd been busy fucking her brains out, and that didn't leave much time for letter-writing.

He found no bankbooks or bank statements, either, no receipts, no copies of paid bills, odd for a woman who'd been on her own for four years, "an independent," as she'd put it, a woman amassing two million bucks. Where'd she keep all that money? Under her mattress?

Well, maybe she was the kind of person who threw out a bankbook when an account was closed, a bill as soon as it was paid, a bank statement the moment next month's statement arrived. There were people like that; the clutter of paperwork simply overwhelmed them. But then why had she saved these mountains of clippings? A saver saves, a pack rat is a pack rat. Why not a scrap from those years in Argentina?

He began going through the clippings.

The collection was encyclopedic, she seemed to have saved anything and everything that captured her momentary fancy There was an article on something called labonotation which was a system for recording ballet positions, another article on cha-no-yu, the Japanese tea ceremony originated in China and later practiced by Zen priests in Japan. There were articles on Mane Curie and Ancient Egyptian furniture and massage techniques and Robert Burns and data processing. There were articles on English art and architecture, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Punic Wars, motorcycles, color photography, and Gerommo the Indian. And then, lying on top of a stack of articles in one of the cartons, Willis found