“I told you. I’m not familiar with…”
“Cause that’s where the woman turned up,” Meyer said. “Early on the morning of March twenty-fourth.”
“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
“And Charlie turned up two days later, on the twenty-sixth,” Hawes said. “a Thursday morning. Your day off.”
“Charlie who? I told you, I know hundreds of Charlies.”
“Would you like to meet this particular Charlie?” Meyer asked.
“Nope.”
“How about Rubin Shanks?”
“Told you. I don’t know him.”
“Maybe they’ll know you,” Hawes said.
BECAUSE THE interrogation room was busy, they talked to Jeffry Colbert in the relative quiet of the clerical office, the squadroom at the moment being occupied by an assortment of teenagers who’d had the bad manners and worse timing to shoot one of their classmates just as school was letting out and just as David Two was cruising past the schoolyard. They were variously screaming for their mamas or their lawyers while claiming it was really the two police officers in the David car who had shot the kid in the schoolyard, not to mention the head. Their cries of innocence floated down the second-floor corridor and almost but not quite managed to batter down the door to the clerical office, where Parker and Kling now confronted Colbert with evidence even a lawyer might understand.
The moment Miriam Hartman positively identified him, they had probable cause to charge him with four counts of Murder Two, officially place him in custody, and send his fingerprints downtown. Now, at a quarter to four, they had in their possession a report from the fingerprint section, which had compared Colbert’s prints against the ones the lab had lifted from the various cans delivered yesterday, after the reluctant handyman at the Wilkins building had finally turned them over to Parker and Kling when they’d threatened him with court orders and such. They asked Colbert now if he would like an attorney present while they asked him some questions, and he told them he was an attorney, in case they’d forgotten it. They hadn’t forgotten it; they were, in fact, banking on it. But because Colbert was being such a smart-ass attorney, and because they were both such smart-ass detectives, they asked him for a waiver in writing, which Colbert—supremely confident of his own lawyerly prowess—was happy to sign.
That out of the way, Kling said, “Mr. Colbert, there are a few things we’d like to show you, and then we’d like to ask you to do something for us, and then we’re going to call the District Attorney’s Office, and get them to send someone here to do a Q and A. First, we want to show you this report that was just faxed to us from the fingerprint section, which positively identifies your fingerprints with the ones we lifted from the paint cans we recovered in your partner’s closet, would you like to read this, please?”
Colbert read the fax.
Silently, he handed it back.
“Next, we would like you to read this signed statement from a girl, a woman, named Miriam Hartman, positively identifying you as the man who purchased those cans of paint on the afternoon of March twenty-fifth, would you care to look at this, too, please, sir?”
Colbert looked at the signed statement.
He handed it back.
“Next, sir, what we’d like you to do for us, if you will…”
“What we want you to do ,” Parker said impatiently, “is write something on a piece of paper for us, the identical words we’re going to give you, that’s what we’d like you to do.Sir ,” he added, and shot a glance at Kling.
“I don’t want to answer any further questions,” Colbert said.
“Well, we haven’t really asked you any questions yet, sir,” Kling said, “even though you waived your rights to an attorney other than yourself and said you’d be happy to answer whatever questions we may have. But this isn’t a question , sir, this is a request. It’s the same as if we asked you to put on your hat or touch your finger to your nose or appear in a lineup or let us take your fingerprints…”
“Which we already did , by the way,” Parker said.
Without a fuckin peep from you, he thought.
“It’s what you might call the difference between testimonial and non testimonial responses,” Kling said helpfully.
“What do you want me to write?” Colbert asked.
“Five words,” Kling said, and eased a piece of paper and a pen across the desk to him.
Colbert picked up the pen.
“What are the words?” he asked.
“‘I killed the…’”
“No, I won’t…”
“‘…three up…’”
“…write that,” Colbert said, and put down the pen as if it had caught fire.
“I guess you know that we can get a court order forcing you to write those words for us,” Kling said.
“Then get it,” Colbert said.
“You want to play hardball, huh?” Parker said.
“I don’t like being charged with murder. Does that surprise you?”
“Who does?” Parker agreed. “You want us to ask for a court order or not? I get on the phone, I make an oral application, a judge’ll…”
“No judge in his right mind’ll grant…”
“Wanna bet?”
“You can’t force me to write a confession.”
“Come on, Mr. Colbert,” Kling said. “You know this isn’t a confession. We’re looking for a…”
“No? You want me to put in writing that I killed three…”
“All we’re looking for is a handwriting sample, and you know it.”
“Oh, that’s all , huh?”
“We’re wasting time here,” Kling said. “Do we make application, or don’t we? Five’ll get you ten a judge signs the order in three seconds flat.”
“While we’re at it,” Parker said, “let’s ask for a warrant to toss his apartment. Find the fuckin murder weapon.”
“Let’s not press our luck,” Kling said. “How about it, Mr. Colbert? Do we apply for a court order? Or do you write what we’re asking you to write, without all the fuss and bother?”
“Get your court order,” Colbert said.
Kling sighed.
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.