“No. I was out of line. You were right.”
There was a knock at the door. Wally pushed himself out of the steel captain’s chair and went to it and opened it.
A portly detective Matt recognized stood there.
“Mr. Atchison and his attorney, Mr. Sidney Margolis, are here,” he said formally, and then he recognized Matt. “Whaddayasay, Payne?”
Summers shrugged, a gesture Milham interpreted to mean Fuck you, too, and went out of the interview room.
“You know Summers?”
“The sonofabitch and another one named Kramer had me in here when I shot Stevens. The way they acted, I thought they were his big brothers.”
“When you did what? ‘Shot Stevens’?”
“Charles D. Stevens, a.k.a. Abu Ben Mohammed. He was one of the, quote, Arabs, unquote, on the Goldblatt Furniture job.”
“I remember that,” Wally said. “He tried to shoot his way out of an alley in North Philly when they went to pick him up?”
“Right.”
“And shot a cop, who then put three rounds in him? That was you?”
Matt nodded. “I took a ricochet off a wall.”
“I didn’t make the connection with you,” Wally said. And then, surprising himself, he added, “You hear about the plainclothes Narcotics guy getting shot?”
“Washington said something about it.”
“Summers had me in here earlier today. ‘What did you know about the death of Officer Jerome H. Kellog?’”
“I heard.”
“Kellog’s wife-they were separated-and I are pretty close. They had me in here. Sitting in that chair is a real bitch.”
“Yeah,” Matt agreed.
“And you took out the North Philly Serial Rapist, too, didn’t you?” Wally said, remembering.
Matt nodded.
Jesus, Wally thought, as long as I’ve been on the job, I’ve never once had to use my gun. And this kid has twice saved the City the price of a trial.
“If I give you Boy Scout’s Honor to keep my runaway mouth shut, could I hang around here?” Matt asked.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Washington said you’re a damned good investigator. I’d like to see you work.”
Washington said that about me? I’ll be damned!
“Sure. Be my guest.”
“Where has, quote, the victim, unquote, been up to now?”
“Probably in the Hahnemann Hospital parking lot being told what not to say by his lawyer. Or deciding if it would be smarter to take the Fifth.”
“Wouldn’t he be? I had the feeling Jason Washington didn’t believe what he had to say.”
“Oh, this guy did it,” Milham responded matter-of-factly. “Or had it done. There’s not much question about that. Proving it is not going to be easy. He’s smart, and tough, and he’s got a good lawyer. But I think I’ll nail the sonofabitch.”
“Is that intuition on your part? Or Jason’s? Or did I miss something?”
“I don’t know about Washington. He sees things, senses things, that the rest of us miss. But what I saw was first of all a guy who didn’t seem all that upset to be sitting around across a desk from his wife, who had just had her brains blown out. And there’s his business partner on the floor, with bullet holes in him, too. I didn’t hear one word about ‘poor whatsisname.’ Did you?”
“Marcuzzi, Anthony J.” Matt furnished, shaking his head, no.
“‘Poor Tony, he was more than a business partner. We were very close friends. I loved him,’” Milham said mockingly.
Matt chuckled.
“On the way to Hahnemann Hospital,” Milham went on, “I guess he thought about that: ‘Jesus, I should remember that I’m supposed to be sorry as hell about this!’ He started crying in the wagon. He wasn’t all that bad, either. I almost felt sorry for him.”
“Do you think he knows that you suspect him?”
“I don’t know,” Milham replied thoughtfully. “Probably about now, yeah, I think he’s realized we haven’t swallowed his bullshit. There’s always something you forget when you set up something like this. I don’t know what the hell he forgot, not yet, but he knows. I’d say right about now, he’s getting worried.”
“What I wondered about…” Matt said. “When I got hit, it hurt like hell. He didn’t seem to be hurting much.”
“I was not surprised when the bullet they took out of him at Hahnemann,” Wally said, and dug in his pocket and came out with a plastic bag, handed it to Matt, then continued, “turned out to be a. 32. Or that he had been shot only once. Whoever shot the wife and the partner made damned sure they were dead.”
Matt examined the bullet and handed the plastic envelope back.
“And I won’t be surprised, judging by the damage they caused, when we get the bullets in the bodies from the Medical Examiner, if they are not. 32s. At least. 38s, maybe even. 45s, which do more damage. If I were a suspicious person, which is what the City pays me to be, I would wonder about that. How come the survivor has one small wound in the leg, and…”
“Yeah,” Matt said thoughtfully.
“I think it’s about time we ask them to come in,” Wally said. “You want to stick around, stick around.”
Milham got out of the captain’s chair and went to the door and opened it.
“Would you please come in, Mr. Atchison?” he asked politely.
A moment later, Atchison, his arm around the shoulder of a short, portly, balding man, appeared in the interview-room door.
“Feeling a little better, Mr. Atchison?” Wally asked.
“How the fuck do you think I feel?” Atchison said.
Margolis looked coldly, but without much curiosity, at Matt.
“Howareya?” he said.
Matt noticed that despite the hour-it was reasonable to presume that when Milham called him, he had been in bed-Margolis was freshly shaven and his hair carefully arranged in a manner he apparently thought best concealed his deeply receded hairline. His trousers were mussed, however, and did not match his jacket, and his white shirt was not fresh. He was not wearing a tie.
Margolis led Atchison to the captain’s chair and eased him down into it.
Matt saw that Atchison was wearing a fresh shirt and other-if not fresh-trousers. There were no bloodstains on the ones he was wearing.
“I object to having my client have to sit in that goddamned chair like you think he’s guilty of something. He just suffered a gunshot wound, for Christ’s sake!” Margolis said.
“We really don’t have anything more comfortable, Mr. Atchison,” Wally said. “But I’ll ask Detective Payne to get another chair in here so you can rest your leg on it. Would that be satisfactory?”
“It wouldn’t hurt. Let’s get this over, for God’s sake,” Atchison said. “My leg is starting to throb.”
“We’ll get through this as quickly as we can,” Matt heard Wally say as he went in search of another chair. “We appreciate your coming in here, Mr. Atchison.”
Matt found a straight-back chair and carried it into the interview room. He arranged it in front of the captain’s chair, and with a groan, Atchison lifted his leg up and rested it on it.
Matt glanced at Atchison. Atchison was examining him carefully, and Matt remembered what Wally had just said about “I think he’s realized we haven’t swallowed his bullshit.”
When Matt looked at Milham, Milham, with a nod of his head, told him to stand against the wall, behind Atchison in the captain’s chair.
A slight, gray-haired woman, carrying a stenographer’s notebook in one hand and a metal folding chair in the other, came into the room.
“This is Mrs. Carnelli,” Milham said. “A police stenographer. She’ll record this interview. Unless, of course, Mr. Atchison, you have an objection to that?”
Atchison looked at Margolis.
“Let’s get on with it,” Margolis said.
“Thank you,” Milham said. He waited to see that Mrs. Carnelli was ready for him, and then spoke, slightly raising his voice. “This is an interview conducted in the Homicide Unit May 20, at 2:30 A.M. of Mr. Gerald N. Atchison, by Detective Wallace J. Milham, badge 626, concerning the willfully caused deaths of Mrs. Alicia Atchison and Mr. Anthony Marcuzzi. Present are Mr. Sidney Margolis, Mr. Atchison’s attorney, and Detective Payne…first name and badge number, Payne?”