“How’d you know?”
“Because nobody’s so dumb he’s gonna kill a person and then take the person’s business card to the police, no offense, sir. Not even somebody from Florida. But Crandall was figuring … well, it’s all in the transcript here, if I should absentmindedly leave it behind and if you should happen to read through it before I remember and come back for it in about ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” Michael said.
“I’ll ask around outside about Connie, case she’s wandering the hospital lookin’ for you. It’s a big hospital.”
“Thank you,” Michael said again.
“Oops, I’ll bet I’m gonna forget this fuckin’ Q and A,” Orso said, and tossed a blue binder onto the bed, and walked out of the room.
Michael reached for the binder.
His right wrist was bandaged. He wondered if there were stitches under the bandage. He wondered if he’d been stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. He wondered what his face looked like.
He wondered if Mama had got to his face.
If so, he wondered if Connie would think he looked okay. He hoped that she would.
He opened the blue binder.
There was a sheaf of photocopied typewritten pages inside it. Michael began reading. The Q and A had taken place earlier this morning, at precisely twelve minutes to six, in the office of someone named Lieutenant James Curran at the First Precinct. Present were the lieutenant, DetectivestSecond Grade Anthony Robert Orso, DetectivestThird Grade Mary Agnes O’Brien, and an Assistant District Attorney named Leila Moscowitz. The lieutenant advised Crandall of his rights under Miranda-Escobedo, and then turned the questioning over to the A.D.A.
Q: Mr. Crandall, I’d like to clarify some of these points you’ve already discussed with the two detectives who responded at the scene of the accident, namely … uh … Detectives … uh …
A: (from Detective Orso) Orso. Anthony Orso.
Q: Yes, and Ms. O’Brien.
A: (from Detective O’Brien) Mrs. O’Brien.
Q: Mrs. O’Brien, forgive me. May we proceed in that way, Mr. Crandall? Would that be all right with you?
A: Yes, certainly.
Q: Very well then. As I understand it, when Detectives Orso and O’Brien arrived at the scene, you were in possession of a Walther P-38, nine-millimeter Parabellum automatic pistol, is that correct?
A: Not in possession of it.
Q: In your hand, though, wasn’t it?
A: Well, yes. If you want to get technical.
Q: Is this the pistol you had in your hand?
A: Yes, it looks like the pistol.
Q: Is it your pistol?
A: It’s a pistol I had in my hand at the time of the accident.
Q: Do you have a license for this pistol?
A: No, I do not.
Q: How did you come by this pistol, Mr. Crandall?
A: I have no idea. I was getting hit on the head with a high-heeled shoe and there was a pistol in my hand.
Q: Are you saying you don’t know how it got in your hand?
A: Mr. Rodriguez must have put it there.
Q: Put the pistol in your hand.
A: Yes.
Q: By Mr. Rodriguez, do you mean Mr. Mario Mateo Rodriguez, alias Mama Rodriguez?
A: Well, I’m not sure he’d appreciate your using the word “alias.”
Q: But Mama is his alias, isn’t it?
A: A great many people choose names that they use for professional purposes, such as actors and writers and occasionally dentists. They do not call these names …
Q: Dentists?
A: Oh, yes.
Q: But Mr. Rodriguez isn’t an actor or a writer or a dentist, he’s a gangster.
A: Oh, I don’t know about that.
Q: He had a criminal record in his native Colombia, and he’s been arrested twice in the United States for trafficking in controlled substances.
A: I wouldn’t know about that, either.
Q: Well, when you hired him, didn’t you …”
A: Hired him? Ho ho ho, let’s slow down a bit, shall we? I hired Rodriguez?
Q: Isn’t that what you told Detectives Orso and O’Brien?
A: That was when I was still dizzy. That was just a few minutes after the accident.
Q: No, that was at a quarter past four this morning. Which was forty minutes after the accident.
A: That may be so, but …
Q: And it’s now ten minutes to six.
A: My how the time does fly.
Q: Mr. Crandall, I’m going to remind you that the conversation you had with Detectives Orso and O’Brien …
A: I might add, by the way, that I don’t think it’s seemly for a police officer to be questioning a person while she’s sitting in provocative underwear. I’d like to say that for the record, if you please.
Q: It is noted for the record. But I was saying that the conversation …
A: Especially an officer who could stand to lose a few pounds.
Q: I was saying that the conversation you had with them—and you were aware of this, Mr. Crandall, you gave them your permission—the conversation was being taped. Just as this conversation is now being taped. Again, with your permission.
A: My, how very state-of-the-art we are.
Q: And I have the typewritten transcript taken from that tape, Mr. Crandall, I am holding it right here in my hand. And on this transcript, you told the detectives that you had hired Mr. Rodriguez to requisition— that is your exact language, Mr. Crandall —to requisition a body for you. A dead body. A corpse. Isn’t that what you told them?
A: Well, yes.
Q: Then you did hire him.
A: No, Charlie hired him. Listen, if we’re going to get this technical here …
Q: Yes, we are.
A: Then maybe I ought to have a lawyer.
Q: If you’d like a lawyer …
A: Why do I need a lawyer? I can take care of myself just fine, thank you.
Q: If you want a lawyer, you’re entitled to one. Just say the …
A: Dickens was right, we should first kill all the lawyers.
Q: It was Shakespeare. And the exact quote was “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” And I’m a lawyer, Mr. Crandall.
A: I still don’t want one.
Q: Fine. May we continue, please?
A: Please.
Q: Did you or did you not hire Mama Rodriguez to …”
A: Charlie Nichols hired him.
Q: How did that come about, can you tell me?
A: It was all Charlie’s idea. We were talking about how it would be nice if the picture got some column space …
Q: By the picture …”
A: My new picture. Winter’s Chill.
Q: Yes?
A: Some column space to counteract what we were afraid might be adverse critical reaction when it opened—the similarity to Gaslight, you know, what the critics might perceive, in their abysmal ignorance, as a similarity to Gaslight.
Q: Yes?
A: And Charlie recalled an incident that had taken place several years back when this woman fell from a roof and she had a copy of Meyer Levin’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman in her …
Q: It was Ira Levin. And the novel was Kiss Me, Deadly.
A: (from Detective O’Brien) Excuse me, please, but I think it was A Kiss Before Dying and Carole Landis was in the movie.
A: (from Detective Orso) You’re thinking of Farewell, My Lovely, by Dashiell Hammond.
A: (from Lieutenant Curran) `It was easy.` That’s the last line of the book.
A: (from Detective O’Brien) Which book is that, Loot?
A: (from Lieutenant Curran) The one where he shoots the broad in the belly.
A: (from Mr. Crandall) You’ll forgive me, but neither the title nor the author has anything whatever to do with the point of my story.