John, I numbly think. Marino calls him John.
"Testing, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five," a voice sounds on the tape, and a cinder-block wall fills the screen. The camera begins to focus on a bare table and a chair. In the background a telephone rings.
"He wants to know if she has a good body, and Ms. Berger, I hope you'll excuse me for making reference to it." Marino oozes sarcasm, still furious with her for reasons I don't yet fully understand. "But I'm just repeating what the piece of
shit said. And so I tell him, 'Geez, it wouldn't be right for me
to comment, but like I said, the guys can't think straight when she's around. At least straight guys can't think straight.' " I know damn well this is not what Marino said. In fact, I doubt Chandonne asked about Berger's appearance at all. More likely, the suggestion of her sexy good looks came from Marino, to bait Chandonne into talking to her, and as I recall the crude comment Marino made about Berger when we were walking out to Lucy's car last night, I feel a rush of resentment, of anger. I am fed up with him and his machismo. I am sick of his male chauvinism and crudity.
"What the hell is this?" I feel like hosing him off with cold water. "Do female body parts have to enter every goddamn conversation? Do you think it's possible, Marino, that you might focus on this case without obsessing over how big a woman's breasts are?"
'Testing, one, two, three, four, five," the cameraman's voice sounds again on tape. The telephone stops ringing. Feet shuffle. Voices murmur. "We're gonna sit you at this table and chair right here." I recognize Marino's voice on tape, and in the background someone knocks on a door.
"The point is, Chandonne talked." Berger is looking at me, palpating me with her eyes again, finding my weaknesses, my inflamed spots. "He talked to me quite a lot."
"For whatever that's worth." Marino angrily stares at the TV screen. So that's it. Marino might have helped induce Chandonne into talking to Berger, but the truth is, Marino wanted Chandonne to talk to him.
The camera is fixed and I see only what is directly in its view. Marino's big gut comes into the picture as he pulls out a wooden chair, and someone in a dark blue suit and deep red tie helps Marino steer Jean-Baptiste Chandonne into the chair. Chandonne wears short-sleeved blue hospital scrubs and long pale hair hangs from his arms in tangles of wavy, soft fur the color of pale honey. Hair splays over his v-necked collar and climbs up his neck in repulsive, long swirls. He sits and his head enters the frame, swathed in gauze from mid-forehead to the tip of his nose. Directly around the bandages, the flesh has been shaven and is as white as milk, as if it has never seen the sun.
"Can I have my Pepsi, please?" Chandonne asks. He wears no restraints, not even handcuffs.
"You want it topped off?" Marino says to him.
No answer. Berger moves past the camera and I note that she is wearing a chocolate brown suit with padded shoulders. She sits across from Chandonne. I see only the back of her head and shoulders.
"You want a refill, John?" Marino asks the man who tried to murder me.
"In a minute. Can I smoke?" Chandonne says.
His voice is soft and heavily French. He is polite and calm. I stare at the television screen, my concentration flickering. I experience electrical disturbances again, post-traumatic stress, my nerves jump like water hitting hot grease, and I am getting another bad headache. The dark blue-sleeved arm with the white cuff reaches into the picture, setting a drink and a pack of Camel cigarettes in front of Chandonne, and I recognize the blue-and-white tall paper cup as coming from the hospital cafeteria. A chair scrapes back and the blue-sleeved arm lights a cigarette for Chandonne.
"Mr. Chandonne." Berger's voice sounds at ease and in charge, as if she talks to mutant serial killers every day. "I'm going to start with introducing myself. I'm Jaime Berger, a prosecutor with the New York County district attorney's office. In Manhattan."
Chandonne raises a hand to lightly touch his bandages. The backs of his fingers are covered with downy pale hair, almost albino, colorless hair. It is maybe half an inch long, as if until recently he shaved the backs of his hands. I have flashbacks of those hands coming after me. His fingernails are long and filthy and for the first time, I catch the contours of powerful muscles, not thick and bulging like men who obsessively work out in the gym, but ropey and hard, the physical habitat of one who, like a wild animal, uses his body to feed, to fight and flee, to survive. His strength seems to contradict our assumption that he has lived a rather sedentary and useless life, hiding inside his family's hotel particulier, as the elegant private houses on Ile Saint-Louis are called.
"You've already met Captain Marino," Berger says to Chandonne. "Also present is Officer Escudero from my office_he's the cameraman. And Special Agent Jay Talley with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."
I feel Berger's eyes touch me. I avoid looking. I refrain from interrupting to ask, Why? Why was Jay there? It streaks through my mind that she is exactly the sort of woman he would be attracted to_intensely. I slip a tissue out of a jacket pocket and blot cold sweat off my brow.
"You know this is being videotaped, don't you, and you have no objection to that," Berger is saying on tape.
"Yes." Chandonne takes a drag on the cigarette and picks a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue.
"Sir, I'm going to ask you some questions about the death of Susan Pless on December fifth, nineteen-ninety-seven."
Chandonne has no reaction. He reaches for his Pepsi, finding the straw with his pink, uneven lips as Berger goes on to give him the victim's address in New York's Upper East Side. She tells him that before they can go any further, she wants to advise him of his rights, even though he has already been advised of them God knows how many times. Chandonne listens. Maybe it is my imagination, but he seems to be enjoying himself. He does not seem in pain or the least bit intimidated. He is quiet and courteous, his hairy, awful hands resting on top of the table or touching his bandages, as if to remind us of what we_what I_did to him.
"Anything you say can be used against you in court," Berger goes on. "Do you understand? And it would be helpful if you would say yes or no instead of nodding."
"I understand." He cooperates almost sweetly.
"You have a right to consult a lawyer now before any questioning or to have a lawyer present during any questioning. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And if you don't have a lawyer or can't afford one, a lawyer will be provided to you free of charge. Do you understand?"
At this, Chandonne reaches for his Pepsi again. Berger relentlessly goes on making sure that he and all the world know this process is legal and fair and that Chandonne is completely informed and is talking to her of his own volition, freely, without any pressure of any sort. "Now that you have been advised of your rights," she concludes her forceful, self-assured opening, "are you going to tell the truth about what happened?"
"I always tell the truth," Chandonne replies softly.
"And you've been read these rights in front of Officer Es-cudero, Captain Marino and Special Agent Talley, and you understood these rights?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you just tell me in your own words what happened to Susan Pless?" Berger says.
"She was very nice," Chandonne replies, to my amazement. "I am still made sick by it."