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again the impish, somewhat insulting raised eyebrows and grin that said, now, really, this is all quite elementary stuff, isn't it, chaps? so why are we getting all in a dither about it, eh? brown felt like smacking him right in the eye.
"didn't you feel this woman was endangering the show?"
"of course i did!"
"and a possible future windfall?"
"of coursel" palmer said. "but she wanted a hundred thousand dollars from each of us! a hundred thousand! she could just as easily have asked for a hundred million. i shouldn't have been able to give her either sum, don't you see? do you know how much i earn in the post room at martins and grenville? seven thousand pounds a year. that's a far shout from a hundred thousand dollars."
again the raised eyebrows. the wide blue eyes. the lopsided grin. brown was doing the arithmetic. he figured seven thousand pounds came to about ten-five a year in dollars.
"so you just let it drop," he said.
"i just let it..." a shrug. "drop, yes. as you put it." a pursing of the lips. "i simply ignored it."
"and now she's dead," brown said, and watched him.
"i know," palmer said. "i saw the news in one of your tabloids."
no widening of the big blue eyes this time. no look of surprise. if anything, there was instead a somewhat exaggerated expression of sorrow. more and more, carella felt the man was acting a part, pretending to be someone a lot smarter, a lot more sophisticated than the underpaid mailroom clerk he actually was.
"how'd you feel when you read the story?" he asked.
"well, i shouldn't have wanted the woman to die, certainly," palmer said. "but i must admit we're all much better off this way." and raised his eyebrows again, and widened his eyes, no grin this time, just a look that said well, don't you agree? he closed the lid on his suitcase, jiggled the numbers on the combination lock, and dusted his hands in dismissal.
"there," he said.
"what time do you leave on sunday?" brown asked.
"the eight o'clock flight." "then there's still time." "oh? for what?" to nail you, brown thought.
"catch a matinee," he said. "lots of saturday matinees here."
"london, too," palmer said, almost wistfully.
the person in charge of giving out the keys to the project's recreation room was an old black man who introduced himself solely as michael, no last name. people seemed to have no last names these days, ollie noticed, not that he gave a damn. but it seemed to him a person should be proud of his last name, which was for chrissake only his heritage. instead, you got only first names from every jackass in every doctor's office and bank. and now this keeper of the keys here, telling him his name was michael, served him right he'd been born a shuffling old darkie.
"i'm looking for a jamaican got a knife scar down his face, a tattooed star on his pecker, that plays the saxophone," ollie said.
the old man burst out laughing.
"it ain't funny," ollie said. "he maybe killed two people."
"that ain't funny, all right," michael agreed, sobering.
"see him around here? some lady told me he played his saxophone in here."
"you mean the guy from london?" michael asked.
they were all sitting in the squadroom, around carella's desk, drinking the coffee alf miscolo had brewed in the clerical office. ollie was the only one there who thought the coffee tasted vile. over the years, the others had come
"and a possible future windfall?"
"of coursel" palmer said. "but she wanted a hundred thousand dollars from each of us! a hundred thousand! she could just as easily have asked for a hundred million. i shouldn't have been able to give her either sum, don't you see? do you know how much i earn in the post room at martins and grenville? seven thousand pounds a year. that's a far shout from a hundred thousand dollars."
again the raised eyebrows. the wide blue eyes. the lopsided grin. brown was doing the arithmetic. he figured seven thousand pounds came to about ten-five a year in dollars.
"so you just let it drop," he said.
"i just let it..." a shrug. "drop, yes. as you put it." a pursing of the lips. "i simply ignored it."
"and now she's dead," brown said, and watched him.
"i know," palmer said. "i saw the news in one of your tabloids."
no widening of the big blue eyes this time. no look of surprise. if anything, there was instead a somewhat exaggerated expression of sorrow. more and more, carella felt the man was acting a part, pretending to be someone a lot smarter, a lot more sophisticated than the underpaid mailroom clerk he actually was.
"how'd you feel when you read the story?" he asked.
"well, i shouldn't have wanted the woman to die, certainly," palmer said. "but i must admit we're all much better off this way." and raised his eyebrows again, and widened his eyes, no grin this time, just a look that said well, don't you agree? he closed the lid on his suitcase, jiggled the numbers on the combination lock, and dusted his hands in dismissal.
"there," he said.
"what time do you leave on sunday?" brown asked.
"the eight o'clock flight." "then there's still time." "oh? for what?" to nail you, brown thought. "catch a matinee," he said. "lots of saturday matinees here."
"london, too," palmer said, almost wistfully.
the person in charge of giving out the keys to the project's recreation room was an old black man who introduced himself solely as michael, no last name. people seemed to have no last names these days, ollie noticed, not that he gave a damn. but it seemed to him a person should be proud of his last name, which was for chrissake only his heritage. instead, you got only first names from every jackass in every doctor's office and bank. and now this keeper of the keys here, telling him his name was michael, served him right he'd been born a shuffling old darkie.
"i'm looking for a jamaican got a knife scar down his face, a tattooed star on his pecker, that plays the saxophone," ollie said.
the old man burst out laughing.
"it ain't funny," ollie said. "he maybe killed two people."
"that ain't funny, all right," michael agreed, sobering.
"see him around here? some lady told me he played his saxophone in here."
"you mean the guy from london?" michael asked.
they were all sitting in the squadroom, around carella' s desk, drinking the coffee alf miscolo had brewed in the clerical office. ollie was the only one there who thought the coffee tasted vile. over the years, the others had come to believe the coffee didn't taste too bad at all, was in fact the sort of gourmet coffee one might find in little sidewalk cafes in paris or seattle. ollie almost spit out his first sip.
he was there to tell them what he had learned downtown at rockfort. the four detectives listening to him were carella, brown, meyer, and kling, who'd been dogging various aspects of this case for what seemed forever but was in actuality only since october 29. ollie felt somewhat like a guest on a talk show. carella was the host, and the others were earlier guests who'd moved over to make room for ollie when he'd come on to exuberant whistling and thunderous applause. brown and meyer were sitting on chairs they'd pulled over from their own desks. kling was sitting on one corner of carella's desk.
this was a nice cozy little talk show here, with the temperature outside hovering at somewhere between twenty and twenty-two degrees fahrenheit, which came to six or seven below zero celsius, more or less, good to be inside on a night like tonight. the clock on the squadroom wall read a quarter past five, or 1715, depending on your point of view. ollie had called from downtown right after he'd spoken to mr michael and then again to the lady who'd offered him another banana, asking carella to wait for him, he'd be right there. that had been at ten to four. the snow had delayed ollie, what can you do, an act of god, he explained. it was still snowing, the flying flakes spattering against the squadroom windows like ghosts desperately seeking entrance.
"the way i understood it," ollie said, "bridges was there with his cousin for a week or so at the beginning of november. rec room guy remembers him coming in to practice his saxophone. i figure this was after he done the hale murder and before he flew back home."
"the rec room guy told you all this?"
"not about the murder, that's my surmise. he didn't know anything about that."
"then what?"
"the cousin, the sax, him flying back home."
"did you talk to the cousin?"
"knocked on the door, no answer. but i figured this was important enough to get moving on it right away. which is why i'm here."
"who told you the sax player's name was john bridges?"
"the rec room guy."
"and told you he'd flown back home to houston?"
"yes and no," ollie said, and grinned.
"let us guess, okay?"
"he did not fly home to houston, texas."
"then where did he go?"
"euston, england. sounds the same, ah yes, but it's spelled different. e-u-s-t-o-n. that's a locality, is what they call it in london. i went back to my lady who cooks fried bananas . . ."
"huh?" carella said.
"a lady in the project, her name is sarah crawford, she cooks great fried bananas."
ollie felt he now had their complete attention.
"she's jamaican, she told me all about euston and also king's cross - which is a nearby ward, is what they call it in london - where there are lots of hookers, drug dealers, and train stations. she didn't know bridges personally, but his cousin told her he lived in euston. so that's it, ah yes," ollie said. "you know anybody else from london?"
they were waiting outside the ferguson theater when gerald palmer showed up for the eight o'clock performance that night. he was wearing a dark blue overcoat over the brown suit, canary-colored, white-collared shirt, and brown silk tie they'd seen on his bed earlier that day. his hair and the shoulders of the coat were dusted with snow. he opened his blue eyes wide when he saw carella and brown standing there near the ticket taker, waiting for him. there was a blond woman on his arm. she looked puzzled when the detectives approached.
"mr palmer," carella said, "would you mind coming along with us?"
"what for?" he asked.
"few questions we'd like to ask you."
as if trying to impress the blonde - or perhaps because he was merely stupid - palmer assumed the same wide-eyed, smirky, defiant look they'd seen on his face earlier.
"awfully sorry," he said. "i have other plans."
"so do we," brown said.
the blonde accepted palmer's gracious offer to go see the play alone while he took care of this "silly business," as he called it, still playing the prime minister dealing with a pair of cheeky reporters. all the way uptown, he kept complaining about the police in this city, telling them they had no right treating a foreigner this way, which of course they had every right in the world to do, the law applying equally to citizens and visitors alike unless they had diplomatic immunity. they read him his rights the moment he was in custody. these were vastly different from those mandated in the uk, but he had no familiarity with either, as he explained to them, never having been in trouble with the law in his life. in fact, he could not understand why he seemed to be in police custody now, which was the same old song they'd heard over the centuries from ax murderers and machine-gun kellys alike.
out of deference to his foreign status, they sat him down in the lieutenant's office, which was more comfortable than the interrogation room, and offered him some of miscolo's coffee, or a cup of tea, if that was his preference. in response, he affected his eyes wide open, eyebrows raised, lips pursed in indignation look again, and told them there was no need to presume stereotypical behavior, in that he rarely drank tea and in fact much preferred coffee as his beverage of preference, redundantly sounding exactly like the sort of englishman he was trying not to sound like.
"so tell us, mr palmer," carella said. "do you know anyone named john bridges?"
"no. who is he?"
"we think he may have killed andrew hale."
"i'm sorry, am i supposed to know who andrew hale is?"
"you're supposed to know only what you know," carella said.
"ah, brilliant," palmer said.
"he's from euston."
"andrew hale?"
"john bridges. do you know where euston is?"
"of course i do."
"know anyone from euston?"
"no."
"or king's cross?"
"those aren't neighborhoods i ordinarily frequent," palmer said.
"know any jamaicans in london?"
"no."
"when did you first learn andrew hale was being difficult?"
"i don't know anyone named andrew hale."
"he's cynthia keating's father. did you know he once owned the underlying rights to jenny's room."
"i don't know anything about him or any rights he may have owned."
"no one ever informed you of that?"
"not a soul."
"then you're learning it for the first time this very minute, is that right?"
"well ... no. not precisely this very minute."
"then you knew it before now."
"yes, i suppose i did. come to think of it."
"when did you learn about it?"
"i really can't remember."
"would it have been before october twenty-ninth?"
"who can remember such a long time ago?"
"do you remember how you learned about it?"
"i probably read it in a newspaper."
"which newspaper, do you recall?"
"i'm sorry, i don't."
"do you remember when that might have been?"
"i'm sorry, no."
"was it a british newspaper?"
"oh, i'm certain not."
"then it was an american paper, is that right?"
"i really don't know what sort of paper it was. it might have been british, i'm sure i don't know."
"but you said it wasn't."
"yes, but i really don't remember."
"how well do you know cynthia keating?"
"hardly at all. we met for the first time a week ago."
"where was that?"
"at connie's party."
"the meet 'n' greet?"
"why, yes."
"never talked to her before then?"
"never. am i supposed to have spoken to her?"
"we were just wondering."
"oh? about what?"
"about when you first spoke to her."
"i told you . . ."
"you see, after we learned mr bridges was from london . . ."
"big city, you realize."
"yes, we know that."
"if you're suggesting he and i might have known each other, that is."
"but you said you didn't."
"that's right. i'm saying the population is even larger than it is here. so if you're suggesting i might have known a jamaican, no less, from euston or king's cross . . ."
"but you don't."
"that's right."
"and you never met cynthia keating, either . . ."
"well, not until . . ."
"the party at connie lindstrom's, right."
"that's correct."
"never even spoke to her before then."
"never."
"which is what made us wonder. when we were going over our notes. after we learned mr bridges . . ."
"oh, you take notes, do you? how clever."
"mr palmer," carella said, "it might go better for you if you stopped being such a wise ass."
"i didn't realize it was going badly" palmer said, and raised his eyebrows and opened his eyes wide and smiled impishly. "i was merely trying to point out that scads of people are from london, that's all."
"yes, but not all of them are linked to cynthia keating's father."
"i never met andrew hale in my life. and i'm certainly not linked to him, as you're suggesting."
"mr palmer," carella said, "how did you know martha coleridge wanted a hundred thousand dollars from each of you?"
the blue eyes went wide again. the eyebrows arched. the lips pursed.
"well ... let me think," he said.
they waited.
"mr palmer?" carella said.
"someone must have told me."
"yes, who?"
"i can't remember."
"you didn't talk to miss coleridge herself, did you?"
"of course not. i never even met the woman!"
"then who told you?"
"i have no idea."
"was it cynthia keating?"
palmer did not answer.
"mr palmer? it was cynthia keating, wasn't it?"
he still said nothing.
"did she also tell you her father owned the underlying rights to the play?"
palmer folded his arms across his chest.
"and was refusing to part with them?"
palmer's look said his carriage had just run over an urchin in the cobbled streets and he was ordering his coachman to move on regardless.
"i guess that's it, huh?" carella said.
palmer took an enameled snuff box from the pocket of his brocaded waistcoat, disdainfully opened the box, and sniffed a pinch of snuff into each nostril.
or so it seemed to the assembled flatfoots.
they called nellie brand and spelled out what they thought they had. at the very least, they figured they were cool with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. nellie advised them to pick up cynthia keating and bring her in. she herself got there in half an hour. it was seven thirty-five on the face of the squadroom clock, and it was still snowing outside.
they brought cynthia in ten minutes later. todd alexander came to the party at ten past eight. he promptly informed them that his client would not answer any questions and he warned them that unless they charged her with something at once she was marching right out of there.
it now remained to see who would blink first.
"i wouldn't be so hasty, todd," nellie said. "you stand to make a lot of money here."
"oh? how do you figure that?"
"i plan to consolidate the two murders. this'll be a very long trial. i hope your client has a gazillion dollars."
"which two murders are you talking about?" alexander asked.
"first off, the murder for hire of mrs keating's father . . ."
"oh, i see, murder for hire." he turned to cynthia and said, "murder for hire is first-degree murder."
"tell her what she's looking at, todd."
"why waste my breath? is that what you're charging her with? murder one? if so, do it."
"what's your hurry? don't you want to hear me out? i can save your life," nellie said, turning to cynthia. "i can also save you a lot of money."
"thanks," cynthia said, "but my life's not in danger ..."
"don't kid your . . ."
". . . and i'll be rich once jenny's . . ."
"the penalty for murder one is lethal injection," nellie said. "i'm offering you a real bargain discount."
"what exactly do you think you have?" alexander asked.
"i've got an old man standing in the way of what your client perceives as a fortune. i've got a bird brain in london who looks at it the same way. the two conspire to . . ."
"mrs keating and somebody in london, are you saying?"
"a specific somebody named gerald palmer. who also stands to make a fortune if this show is a hit."
"and they conspired to kill mrs keating' s father, are you saying?"
"that's our surmise, todd."
"a wild one."
"the brits have been known," nellie said.
"sure, richard the second."
"even more recently."
"you're saying . . ."
"i'm saying the pair of them found a jamaican hit man named john bridges, brought him here to america . . ."
"oh, please, nellie."
"the metropolitan police are checking his pedigree this very minute. once they get back to us . . ."
"ah, sherlock holmes now."
"no, just a detective named frank beaton."
"this is all nonsense," cynthia said.
"fine, take your chances," nellie said.
"what do you want from her?"
"her partner and the hit man."
"that's everybody."
"no, that's only two people."
"what do you give her in return?"
"is this me you're talking about?" cynthia asked.
"just a second, cyn," alexander said.
"never mind just a second. if she had anything, she wouldn't be trying to strike a deal here."
"you think so, huh?" nellie said.
"what can you give us?" alexander asked.
"she rats them out, i drop the charge to murder two. twenty to life as opposed to the valium cocktail."
"go to fifteen," alexander said.
"twenty. with a recommendation for parole."
"come on, at least give me the minimum."
"fifteen can come and go without parole," nellie said. "and then twenty, and thirty, and forty, and still no parole. before you know it, your lady's in there for the rest of her life. take my advice. twenty with a recommendation."
"she'd be sixty when she got out!"
"fifty-seven," cynthia corrected.
but she was thinking.
"on the other hand, you can always roll the dice. just remember, you're looking at the death penalty. you'll sit on death row for five, six years while you exhaust all your appeals - and that'll be it."
"recommend parole after fifteen," alexander said.
"i can't do that."
"twenty just isn't sweet enough."
"how sweet is the cocktail?" nellie asked.