“The French are getting a big play lately, huh?” Kling said, smiling. “Here’s a place. This look okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” Carella pulled open the door of the luncheonette. “What do you mean, Bert?”
“With the francs.”
“What about them?”
“The exchange rate must be very good.”
“I don’t get you.”
“You know. All those francs kicking around.”
“Bert, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Weren’t you with me? Last Wednesday?”
“With you where?”
“The line-up. I thought you were with me.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Carella said tiredly.
“Oh, well, that’s why.”
“That’s why what? Bert, for the love of...”
“That’s why you don’t remember him.”
“Who?”
“The punk they brought in on that burglary pickup. They found five grand in French francs in his apartment.”
Carella felt as if he’d just been hit by a truck.
16
It had been crazy from the beginning. Some of them are like that. The girl had looked black, but she was really white. They thought she was Claudia Davis, but she was Josie Thompson. And they had been looking for a murderer when all there happened to be was a burglar.
They brought him up from his cell where he was awaiting trial for Burglary One. He came up in an elevator with a police escort. The police van had dropped him off at the side door of the Criminal Courts Building, and he had entered the corridor under guard and been marched down through the connecting tunnel and into the building that housed the district attorney’s office, and then taken into the elevator. The door of the elevator opened into a tiny room upstairs. The other door of the room was locked from the outside and a sign on it read No ADMITTANCE.
The patrolman who’d brought Ralph Reynolds up to the interrogation room stood with his back against the elevator door all the while the detectives talked to him, and his right hand was on the butt of his Police Special.
“I never heard of her,’ Reynolds said.
“Claudia Davis,” Carella said. “Or Josie Thompson. Take your choice.”
“I don’t know either one of them. What the hell is this? You got me on a burglary rap, now you try to pull in everything was done in this city?”
“Who said anything was done, Reynolds?”
“If nothing was done, why’d you drag me up here?”
“They found five thousand bucks in French francs in your pad, Reynolds. Where’d you get it?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Don’t get snotty, Reynolds! Where’d you get that money?”
“A guy owed it to me. He paid me in francs. He was a French guy.”
“What’s his name?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You’d better start trying.”
“Pierre something.”
“Pierre what?” Meyer said.
“Pierre La Salle, something like that. I didn’t know him too good.”
“But you lent him five grand, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“What were you doing on the night of August first?”
“Why? What happened on August first?”
“You tell us.”
“I don’t know what I was doing.”
“Were you working?”
“I’m unemployed.”
“You know what we mean!”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Were you breaking into apartments?”
“No.”
“Speak up! Yes or no?”
“I said no.”
“He’s lying, Steve,’ Meyer said.
“Sure he is.”
“Yeah, sure I am. Look, cop, you got nothing on me but Burglary One, if that. And that you gotta prove in court. So stop trying to hang anything else on me. You ain’t got a chance.”
“Not unless those prints check out,” Carella said quickly.
“What prints?”
“The prints we found on the dead girl’s throat,” Carella lied.
“I was wearing ... !”
The small room went as still as death.
Reynolds sighed heavily. He looked at the floor.
“You want to tell us?”
“No,’ he said. “Go to hell.”
He finally told them. After twelve hours of repeated questioning he finally broke down. He hadn’t meant to kill her, he said. He didn’t even know anybody was in the apartment. He had looked in the bedroom, and the bed was empty. He hadn’t seen her asleep in one of the chairs, fully dressed. He had found the French money in a big jar on one of the shelves over the sink. He had taken the money and then accidentally dropped the jar, and she woke up and came into the room and saw him and began screaming. So he grabbed her by the throat. He only meant to shut her up. But she kept struggling. She was very strong. He kept holding on, but only to shut her up. She kept struggling, so he had to hold on. She kept struggling as if ... as if he’s really been trying to kill her, as if she didn’t want to lose her life. But that was manslaughter, wasn’t it? He wasn’t trying to kill her. That wasn’t homicide, was it?
“I didn’t mean to kill her!” he shouted as they took him into the elevator. “She began screaming! I’m not a killer! Look at me! Do I look like a killer?” And then, as the elevator began dropping to the basement, he shouted, “I’m a burglar!” as if proud of his profession, as if stating that he was something more than a common thief, a trained workman, a skilled artisan. “I’m not a killer! I’m a burglar!” he screamed. “I’m not a killer! I’m not a killer!” And his voice echoed down the elevator shaft as the car dropped to the basement and the waiting van.
They sat in the small room for several moments after he was gone.
“Hot in here,” Meyer said.
“Yeah.” Carella nodded.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Meyer said. “Maybe he’s only a burglar.”
“He stopped being that the minute he stole a life, Meyer.”
“Josie Thompson stole a life, too.”
“No,” Carella said. He shook his head. “She only borrowed one. There’s a difference, Meyer.”
The room went silent.
“You feel like some coffee?” Meyer asked.
“Sure.”
They took the elevator down and then walked out into the brilliant August sunshine. The streets were teeming with life. They walked into the human swarm, but they were curiously silent.
At last Carella said, “I guess I think she shouldn’t be dead. I guess I think that someone who tried so hard to make a life shouldn’t have had it taken away from her.”
Meyer put his hand on Carella’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said earnestly. “It’s a job. It’s only a job.”
“Sure,” Carella said. “It’s only a job.”
“J”
1
It was the first of April, the day for fools.
It was also Saturday, and the day before Easter.
Death should not have come at all, but it had. And, having come, perhaps it was justified in its confusion. Today was the fool’s day, the day for practical jokes. Tomorrow was Easter, the day of the bonnet and egg, the day for the spring march of finery and frills. Oh, yes, it was rumored in some quarters of the city that Easter Sunday had something to do with a different sort of march at a place called Calvary, but it had been a long long time since death was vetoed and rendered null and void, and people have short memories, especially where holidays are concerned.
Today, Death was very much in evidence, and plainly confused. Striving as it was to reconcile the trappings of two holidays — or perhaps three — it succeeded in producing only a blended distortion.