Rumpelstiltskin

11

Most people don’t realize that police work is a twenty-four-hour business, and that police stations take the abuse of round-the-clock habitation. It’s amazing that all police stations do not deteriorate down to the ground within three years after they’re built; even the relatively new Calusa facility was beginning to show the strains of wear and tear. As the hour hand of the wall clock visibly lurched onto the twelve, joining the minute hand so that both hands stood straight up for only an instant, midnight might just as well have been twelve noon here at the police station. A battery of detectives and uniformed cops were sitting at desks all around the room, making telephone calls; at one of the desks, a man hunted and pecked at the typewriter before him, studying the keyboard as though it were lettered in Sanskrit. At yet another desk, an exceedingly drunken man was being questioned by a detective with his sleeves rolled up and a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. In one corner of the room a woman in a blood-smeared white blouse was talking to a uniformed cop. Sadowsky sat at one of the desks with Bloom; I had already repeated to Bloom my conversation with Marshall on the day of the funeral — and now he was getting down to work.

“Now I know it was a long time ago when you heard his name,” he said to Sadowsky, “but you told me a little while ago it was something like Marciano, or Mariani, or Mastroianni, or Marielli, something like that, you couldn’t remember.”

“I still can’t remember,” Sadowsky said.

“Right, so what I’m going to do, I’m going to try and prod your memory, okay?”

“Sure, whatever you say,” Sadowsky said, and sighed.

I suddenly realized what all those cops on the telephones were doing. They were calling every damn hotel and motel in the city of Calusa, and probably in the adjoining towns of Manakawa and Hesterville as well.

“Calusa Police,” one of the detectives said, “I wonder if you can tell me, ma’am, whether you’ve got a guest by the name of Edward Marshall registered there?”

“That’d be Marshall,” another detective said, “M-A-R-S-H-A-L–L, yes, sir.”

“Well, do you have an Eddie Marshall?”

“Or any kind of Marshall at all? Any guests with the first name Edward?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll wait.”

“This is a long shot, you understand,” Bloom said, “and I’m sorry to be putting you to this trouble, but the possibility exists he may have used a name he was familiar with, the name he was born with, in fact, instead of cooking up a phony one. Most people registering under an alias will anyway use their own initials for the phony name, I guess you know that. There’s nothing mysterious about it, it’s just that lots of men and women have monogrammed items like shirts or handkerchiefs or luggage, and it’d be very strange for a guy named Eddie Marshall with his initials on his shirt to register as John Smith, do you follow me?”

“Yes,” Sadowsky said, and sighed again.

“Good,” Bloom said, “very good,” and suddenly grinned. There was about him tonight an air of gaiety I had not previously detected, as if even the possibility of a good suspect had — in addition to energizing the entire staff — given Bloom a badly needed jolt.

“What I’d like to do,” he said, “if you don’t mind, Mr. Sadowsky, I’d like to go right down the Calusa telephone directory with you, all the M’s in the directory, one by one, not because Marshall lived here, which he didn’t, and even if he did it would be listed under his legal name and not a name he dropped however many years ago, when he was still living in California — Pete,” he called suddenly, “did you get through to the L.A.P.D.?”

“Yeah,” Kenyon said, “they’ll call us back in the morning, when the courts open.”

“How about Frisco and San Diego?”

“I’ve got Reynolds and Di Luca working on it.”

“Is he back from vacation?” I said.

“Is who back from vacation?” Bloom asked, turning to me.

“Di Luca.”

“I didn’t even know he was away,” Bloom said, and laughed.

“He’s back,” Kenyon said. “Got back yesterday. You know him?”

“Better try Sacramento, too,” Bloom said. “Get them working on it first thing in the morning. If a guy changes his name, there’s got to be a court record of it someplace.”

“Right,” Kenyon said, and went out of the room.

“So here’s the phone book,” Bloom said to Sadowsky, “and what I’m going to do, I’m going to skip over all the names that couldn’t possibly be Italian names, like Mason or Moore or Moriarty or like that. But when I come across anything with a lot of vowels in it — well, for example, here’s the first one I see, right here, Macalerro, does that sound like the name?”

“No. Well, I really don’t know.”

“Just think about it for a minute. Macalerro. Ring a bell?”

“No, not really.”

“How about this one right after it? Macarro.”

“No. It was longer than that.”

“Okay, let’s keep going right down the page. Macchia. That’s M-A-C–C-H-I-A. How do you pronounce that, Gregorio?” he said, turning to one of the detectives.

“Spell it again,” Gregorio said.

“M-A-C–C-H-I-A.”

“With a hard K,” Gregorio said. “Mah-kee-yah.”

“Okay, Mah-kee-yah, does that sound like it, Mr. Sadowsky?”

“No,” Sadowsky said.

“How about Machinista?”

“No.”

“Maegli?”

“No.”

“Maestro?”

“No.”

“Maffeto?”

“No.”

“Mafrisiano?”

“No.”

“Magaletto?”

“No.”

“If the guy changed his name,” Gregorio said, “he probably just translated it.”

“What do you mean?” Bloom asked.

“From the Italian. Friend of mine changed his name to Frank Lamb, you know what his name used to be in Italian?”

“What?”

“Francesco Agnello. That’s lamb in Italian, agnello.”

Bloom was looking at him. We were all looking at him.

“What’s Marshall in Italian?” Bloom asked.

“Who knows?” Gregorio said. “Get a dictionary.”

It took Bloom close to an hour and a half to get an Italian-English/English-Italian dictionary because all the book stores in town were closed, and none of the owners had their home phone numbers listed in the directory. He finally found someone in the building who was able to tell him the name of the man who was in charge of Calusa’s library system, and he located the name in the telephone directory and called the man at home at a quarter to one in the morning and asked him if he could get someone down to the Henley Library to open it for him because he needed an Italian dictionary right away. The man, whose name was Roger Mahler and whose job as an appointed official submitted him to all sorts of abuse, but none quite like this before, patiently asked Bloom if this couldn’t wait till morning. Bloom informed him that this was morning already, and it was also a double homicide he was investigating, and he would sincerely appreciate it if someone could get down there with a set of keys right away. It was Mahler himself who finally agreed to go down there, where he was met by Detective Kenyon, who came back to the office at a little before two a.m. and placed the dictionary on Bloom’s desk.

“I already peeked,” he said.

Bloom was leafing through the pages in the English-Italian section. “Margin,” he said aloud, “marigold, marine...” and then let his finger skip down the page and said aloud again, “Marriage, married, marrow...” and then zeroed in on “Marsh, marshmallow, marshal, here it is, marshal,” he said, and looked up at Sadowsky. “Maresciallo,” he said. “Is that the way you pronounce it, Gregorio?”

“Is it C-H-I?”

“No. C–I.”

“Then it’s a ‘sh’ sound, like you said it.”

“Maresciallo,” Bloom said again. “Does that sound like the name, Mr. Sadowsky?”

“That sounds like the name,” Sadowsky said.

The cop who finally located the motel was sitting at the desk closest to Bloom’s. “Maresciallo,” he said into the phone, and spelled the name. His eyes opened wide. He nodded, and then frantically waggled the fingers of his free hand to catch Bloom’s attention. “That’s right, what’s the first name you’ve got? Terrific!” he said. “When did he check in? When?” He was writing on a pad in front of him now, his left elbow pinning the pad to the desk, his right hand moving swiftly. Bloom had got up from his own desk and was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder as he wrote. “Hold on a second,” he said, and covered the mouthpiece. “The Marjo Motel on the South Trail. He checked in on the eleventh, that’s the Friday before she was killed.”

“Is he still there?” Bloom asked.

“Is he still there?” the cop said into the phone, and listened, and then covered the mouthpiece again. “Checked out tonight,” he said.

“Okay, ask that guy...”

“It’s a woman.”

“Ask her what time he checked out.”

“What time did he check out?” the cop said into the phone, and then nodded and said, “Ten-thirty.”

“Ask her... never mind, give me the phone,” Bloom said, and took the receiver. “Ma’am,” he said, “when this man registered, did you get a year and make on the car he was driving, as required by law? Good, let me have it.” He began writing. “How about the license plate? Good, very good. Georgia, yes, I’ve got it, what was the number? Thank you, ma’am. Where are you located on the Trail, ma’am? Uh-huh. When he checked out, did he turn north or south? Well, thank you, anyway, ma’am, good night.” He put the receiver back on the cradle and said, “A blue Oldsmobile station wagon, Georgia plate, here’s the number. She didn’t see which way he went, she was watching television in the office. He’s got a four-hour head start. If he was headed for Georgia, where the hell would he be by now? Figure two hours to Tampa, and another two beyond that at fifty-five an hour — we’ve got to figure he’s observing the speed limit, am I right? So where would that put him? What’s Tampa plus a hundred and ten?”

“Somewhere between Ocala and Gainesville,” Kenyon said.

“Marion County, right?”

“Or Alachua. Unless he headed south. I sure as hell wouldn’t head back home if I’d killed two people.”

“Think we can get a warrant?” Bloom asked.

“We’ve got no probable cause,” Kenyon said. “Just because the man was lying about when he got here doesn’t mean he committed two murders.”

“He recognized Matthew’s car,” Bloom said. “I know the son of a bitch did it, I can feel it in my bones.”

“Go tell a judge you want an arrest warrant on the basis of what you feel in your bones,” Kenyon said. “Also, you don’t even know where the man is. Even if you got your warrant, which you won’t without probable cause...”

“Or even reasonable suspicion,” Gregorio said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bloom said.

“Even if you did get your warrant, where in hell would you find the guy? Let’s say he headed across the state and then south, toward the Keys, where he was supposed to’ve been last weekend. He could’ve got on a boat anyplace down there, he might be on the water already, in fact, heading for the Bahamas or someplace.”

“All I want to do is drag him in here,” Bloom said, “ask him some questions. A guy doesn’t lie about when he got someplace if he doesn’t have a damn good reason for it.”

“Tell it to the judge,” Kenyon said.

“We know his name, we know what he’s driving, we think he maybe killed two people, but we can’t arrest the bastard,” one of the other detectives said.

I did not know who he was. He was bigger than Bloom, with a huge barrel chest, and wide shoulders, and massive hands. He was drinking coffee from a cardboard container.

“Maybe he’ll go through a stoplight someplace,” Kenyon said. “Officer’ll bust him on that, we’ll get him up here and...”

“A bullshit traffic violation,” the other detective said, shrugging it aside.

“I’d settle for a misdemeanor, though,” Bloom said.

“How much dope constitutes a felony?” I asked.

The big detective, who knew who I was but not why I had any right to be there, looked at me as if I’d just asked the stupidest question he’d heard in a long career of police work. Bloom looked at me, too, washed his hand over his face, and then fielded the question to Kenyon.

“Pete? What is it now? Twenty grams?”

“Twenty grams,” Kenyon said, and nodded.

“Used to be only six,” the other detective said. “Fuckin law’s all in favor of the bad guys these days.”

“So how many joints would that be?” I asked. “In twenty grams?”

Bloom looked at me again and sighed. It was a little past three in the morning, and we’d all been up half the night, and he must have been thinking I was making idle chatter here while he was trying to figure out a way of arresting and detaining Marshall. “Pete?” he said wearily. “How many joints in twenty grams?”

“I don’t know,” Kenyon said. “Fifteen, sixteen? Who gives a shit?”

“Marshall told me he had a dozen in the car,” I said.

Bloom looked at me again. This time he didn’t sigh.

“He offered me a joint at the funeral, and said he had a dozen more in the wagon.”

“That would do it,” Bloom said, and turned to Kenyon. “Pete? Wouldn’t that justify an arrest warrant?”

“When was this?” Kenyon asked.

“Last Wednesday.”

“Too big a time span in there,” Kenyon said, shaking his head.

“We can try it,” Bloom said.

“A judge’ll want to know why we’re running all over the state for a lousy twelve sticks of grass some guy talked about last Wednesday, for Christ’s sake!” the other detective said.

“I’ll tell him why,” Bloom said. “I’ll tell him the dope warrant is petty bullshit, we’re really after the big one.”

“He might play,” Kenyon said, and shrugged.

“Yeah, he just might,” the other detective said.

The Florida Highway Patrolmen stopped the blue Oldsmobile station wagon just this side of Goulds on Florida’s Turnpike, not far from the cutoff to Route 1 and the Keys. The BOLO — a Be-On-The-Lookout-For — had been fed into the computer at nine-thirty that morning, shortly after Bloom presented his sworn affidavit to a judge and requested an arrest warrant for violation of F.S. 893.13, which defined as unlawful the sale, manufacture, delivery, or possession with intent to sell, of any controlled substance defined in Chapter 893. In his affidavit Bloom had sworn there was reasonable cause to believe that close to twenty grams of cannabis were in the glove compartment of an Oldsmobile station wagon presently owned and operated by one Edward Richard Marshall, which vehicle was believed to be somewhere in the State of Florida. The judge, as anticipated, wanted to know how come all the fuss over a few joints. Bloom filled him in. The judge pondered his decision for perhaps thirty seconds and signed the warrant.

When the state troopers pulled Marshall to the side of the road and asked for his automobile registration and driver’s license, he asked them what this was all about. The trooper studying the name on both the license and registration asked, “Are you Edward Richard Marshall?” and when Marshall admitted he was, the trooper told him he was wanted on a warrant from the Calusa P.D., and then promptly searched the car and found not a dozen but eight sticks of marijuana in the glove compartment.

The BOLO had carried as a wagging tail the information that Marshall was also wanted for questioning in two murders, and the judge who set bail in Dade County was aware of this. He also knew that the Dade County cops who’d booked Marshall on the dope charge had phoned the Calusa police, who’d requested that an exceptionally high bail be set for what was unquestionably a misdemeanor. The judge realized that the Calusa cops were begging for time to question this guy on the murders, and whereas five hundred dollars would have been the normal bail for a narcotics misdemeanor, and the posting of fifty dollars with a bondsman would have set Marshall temporarily free, the judge went along with the request and set a twenty-thousand-dollar bail for a crime punishable by not more than a year’s imprisonment. Kenyon and the big detective whose name I still didn’t know had flown to Miami and driven from there to the courthouse. They were waiting to put the cuffs on Marshall the moment the judge set a bail he couldn’t possibly meet on the spur of the moment. Bloom was waiting for him back in Calusa when the detectives led him into the office at a little past two that afternoon.

I was not present during the brief Q and A. I was, instead, in Abe Pollock’s office, going over the liquor-store inventory figures his client had finally provided. I went to the police station shortly before the end of the working day. The Q and A had been typed by then; it consisted of four double-spaced pages held together by a staple. I sat in the silence of one of the empty offices and read it through, from Bloom’s opening recitation of rights to the point where Marshall abruptly called off the questioning:

Q: Are you certain, then, that you’re willing to answer my questions without an attorney present?

A: Let’s just get it over with, okay?

Q: Mr. Marshall, is it true that your real name is Edward Maresciallo?

A: My real name? What do you mean by my real name?

Q: The name you were born with.

A: Then why didn’t you say the name I was born with? My legal name is Edward Marshall, that’s my real name.

Q: Is it true nonetheless that you changed your name from Edward Maresciallo to—

A: Why? Is it a crime to change your name? In this country, if a man changes his name he’s automatically a desperado, huh?

Q: Mr. Marshall, I’d appreciate it if you answered the question.

A: Yes, I changed my name from Edward Maresciallo, all right?

Q: Mr. Marshall, when did you arrive here in Calusa?

A: Last Wednesday. What’s that got to do with what you claim you found in my car?

Q: By last Wednesday do you mean January sixteenth?

A: Whatever the date was.

Q: Wednesday was January sixteenth.

A: Then yes.

Q: And you left Valdosta when?

A: It was a week this past Friday.

Q: That would have made it Friday the eleventh.

A: If you say so.

Q: Well, I have a calendar here, and a week ago Friday would have been—

A: I’ll take your word for it.

Q: Then you left Valdosta, Georgia, on Friday, January eleventh.

A: Yes.

Q: And did not get here till Wednesday, January sixteenth.

A: That’s right.

Q: Where were you between those two dates?

A: I spent some time at Disneyworld in Orlando, and then I was out on a boat off the Keys.

Q: From when to when?

A: The boat, do you mean?

Q: Yes.

A: From Sunday to Tuesday, whatever those dates were.

Q: That would’ve been from January thirteenth to January fifteenth.

A: If you say so, you’re the one with the calendar.

Q: Well, would you like to check the calendar for those dates?

A: I don’t need to, I’ll assume those are the dates.

Q: And you say you came to Calusa on Wednesday.

A: That’s right.

Q: Drove up from the Keys, did you?

A: Yes.

Q: Where in the Keys?

A: Islamorada.

Q: This boat you were on. Where’d you get it?

A: I borrowed it.

Q: Who from?

A: A friend.

Q: In Islamorada?

A: Yes.

Q: What’s this friend’s name?

A: Jerry Cooper.

Q: We haven’t been able to locate anyone named Jerry Cooper in Islamorada.

A: That’s your job, not mine.

Q: Uh-huh. Mr. Marshall, does the name Marjo mean anything to you?

A: No.

Q: Where were you staying here in Calusa, Mr. Marshall?

A: I don’t remember the name of the place.

Q: Well, do you remember whether it was a hotel or a motel?

A: A motel.

Q: Would you remember its location?

A: On the Trail someplace.

Q: Would it have been the Marjo Motel?

A: I don’t want to answer any more questions.

That was it. I slipped the stapled pages back into the manila folder, picked up my briefcase, and went out into the reception area again. The woman typing behind the desk near the letter-elevator told me that Bloom had someone with him just then and she didn’t know how long he’d be. I asked her to please buzz him and tell him I was waiting. She gave me a look that told me it was already five-thirty, and she was still here typing, and she really didn’t have time for interruptions — but she buzzed him anyway. “He’ll be right out,” she said, and put up the phone, and went back to her typing. Bloom came out of his office not a moment later.

“I got problems,” he said. “There’s this lady in my office, she runs the Marjo Motel, her name is Mary Gibson. Her husband’s name was Joseph Gibson, that’s how they named the place, but he’s dead now. I want to ask her some questions about Marshall, but the cop who drove her down here mentioned this is a homicide we’re investigating, and she’s clammed up on me. You want to talk to her? Tell her what the law is, tell her there’s nothing to worry about?”

“Sure,” I said.

Mary Gibson was a short, squat woman with iron-gray hair, deep blue eyes, and a determined look of resistance on her square face. She sat in a leather chair opposite Bloom’s desk, her hands gripping the top of the pocketbook in her lap. She turned toward the door as we came into the room, and then studied me as though I were the Grand Inquisitor flown in especially to put her in thumbscrews.

“This is Mr. Hope,” Bloom said, “he’s an attorney. Matthew, this is Mrs. Gibson, she owns and operates the Marjo Motel.”

“How do you do?” I said.

“What kind of attorney?” she asked at once. “From the State Attorney’s office?”

“No, ma’am, I’m in private practice,” I said.

“I don’t need an attorney,” she said, “I didn’t have nothing to do with any murder.”

“No one’s suggesting you did, Mrs. Gibson.”

“Then why do I need an attorney?”

“Mr. Bloom thought I might explain the law to you.”

“I don’t need the law explained to me. When the police asked me to come down here, I didn’t know there was a murder investigation going on. I don’t want to get involved, plain and simple.”

“Mrs. Gibson, you’re not a suspect, you don’t have to...”

“No, then what am I?”

“You’re a witness who may have information vital to the investigation. As such, you’re obliged to answer any questions the police might put to you.”

“No, I’m not obliged to do anything I don’t want to do.”

“Mrs. Gibson, if you refuse to answer Mr. Bloom’s questions, it would be within his power to subpoena for deposition.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’d be ordered to answer. By the court. And if you still refused to answer...”

“Yes, then what?”

“You could be cited for contempt. I’m sure you don’t want that to happen.”

“I won’t answer any questions unless my lawyer’s here.”

“Mrs. Gibson, a witness doesn’t have the right to counsel. You’re not being accused of anything, Mr. Bloom simply...”

“Let her call her lawyer,” Bloom said, “that’s okay with me.”

“I don’t have a lawyer,” she said.

“Well, Mr. Hope here is a lawyer, will you settle for him?”

“What school did you go to?” she asked.

“What?” I said.

“Tell her what school you went to, Matthew.”

“Northwestern.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Evanston, Illinois.”

“You didn’t go to Harvard?”

“No.”

“Or Columbia?”

“No.”

“Well,” she said dubiously, “I guess you’ll be all right anyway. But if he asks me anything I shouldn’t answer...”

“I’ll object, ma’am.”

“Just see that you do,” she said, and turned to Bloom. “What is it you want to know?”

He talked to her for only five minutes.

That was all the time he needed.