The Interrogation

by Thomas H. Cook

“I got to go,” he said.

  “Sure, Ralph,” Dunlap agreed. “We’ll figure it out, you know?” He took another small step. “You don’t have to worry about me.” He smiled crookedly. “I mean, we’re family, right? Cousins, right? Stitt? Fuck him, you know what I mean? Imagine, a kid. Jesus Christ. So, like who’s going to miss the lowlife, right?” Another short step, he thought, then touch the barrel. Don’t grab. Just touch it with one outstretched finger and nudge it very gently to the side. “So, Ralph, what do you think, we get this all cleaned up, then we can—”

  The second blast struck Dunlap as infinitely loud, the small piece of lead that tore into his chest infinitely large, the fall of his body to the floor infinitely swift, and the silence that followed infinitely long and dark and cold.

  5:41 A.M., Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Emergency Room

  He could feel the entire fabric unraveling life’s tiniest and most elemental threads, his pulse vibrating on this string of particles that only briefly united, as if drawn together on a breath, then released again, each time holding more tenuously, the lineaments more frayed, the light, when it shone, more distantly reflected until it died entirely, and the beginning and the end were the same.

  5:44 A.M., Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Waiting Room

  “You brought in Mr. Pierce?” the doctor asked.

  “Detective Pierce,” Yearwood said. There was blood on his jacket and he kept fingering it.

  “I’m sorry. Detective Pierce died at five forty-one. I’m sorry we couldn’t save him.”

  Yearwood reached for the dusty canvas bag that rested in the chair beside him. “So am I.”

  Outside, the traffic had begun to build with shift workers on their way to the steel and rubber factories that huddled north of Harbortown. Yearwood took a right on Banks, and then a left on Marigold. The look of the city grew dingier amid the pawnshops and bail bondsmen. He knew that Police Headquarters lay somewhere to the east, but the name of the street eluded him.

  At Cordelia he saw an old gray Studebaker beside the curb, its visor pulled down, a pasteboard sign attached: POLICE VEHICLE, OFFICIAL BUSINESS.

  The man behind the wheel did not look up as Yearwood approached.

  “Sir?”

  The man startled violently and reached for the briefcase that rested beside him in the front seat. “Whuh?”

  “I noticed the sign on the visor,” Yearwood told him. “I figured you’d be able to tell me where Police Headquarters is.”

  The man nodded heavily, a half-dazed look in his eyes so that for a moment Yearwood took him to be drunk.

  “Police Headquarters,” Yearwood repeated politely.

  The man looked at his pudgy fingers resting on the brown briefcase, then back up at Yearwood. “Straight down to Trevor,” he said gloomily. “Turn right.”

  “Thanks,” Yearwood said, and proceeded on until he reached the corner of Trevor Street. Before turning, he glanced back down the street, intending to wave a thank-you to the man who’d given him directions, but the car was gone.

  5:59 A.M., Interrogation Room 3

  I have no more questions, Cohen thought helplessly. There is nothing more I can do.

  He watched the second hand make its final sweep of the five o’clock hour. He could not imagine why Pierce had not called in. Even if he’d found nothing that could be used in the interrogation, he had the duty to report that failure. Cohen studied the clock, considered the few seconds that remained, and summoned one more question. “Where are you going when you leave here, Jay?”

  “Nowhere,” Smalls said without hesitation.

  “Back to the park?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Okay,” Cohen said. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. “Remember this, Jay. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  Smalls’ spidery white hand crawled to his throat, then fluttered back into his lap.

  Cohen walked to the door, jerked it open, then glared back into the room. “Someday I’ll get you, Jay.” His voice was firm and confident, but it was an act, and he knew it. Nothing would ever deliver Albert Smalls into his hands. The great engine ground on indifferently, reducing the child and the killer of that child to the same white dust, giving no sign that it cared for anything. He heard his father’s words again. God is not subject to interrogation, Norman.

  In the elevator, Cohen thought of Pierce, trying to find some reason why the night had passed without word. Then his attention turned to his own activity during the last twelve hours. What, he wondered, what could I have done differently and changed the course of things?

  The doors opened on the ground floor, and he saw an old man in a black hat, clutching a soiled bag to his chest. “I’m looking for someone named Cohen,” the old man said.

  “You found him.”

  “Detective Jack Pierce wanted you to have this.” The old man handed Cohen the bag.

  Cohen pulled a dusty drawing pad from the bag. The cover was soiled, the edges frayed. He flipped the cover and looked at the first drawing, a girl in a dark swimsuit, the designation Betty, Seaview written beneath the portrait. He turned the page. Another drawing of a young girl, this one in jeans and a blouse with puffed sleeves. The caption read Carla, Titus.

  “Pierce found the bag in a storage shed the man you’re interrogating lived in for a while,” Yearwood said breathlessly.

  “Just pictures,” Cohen said as he turned to the next page, then the next page, then the next, moving ever more quickly through the dozens of drawings, all of young girls, their names tidily inscribed beneath their portraits, along with the towns, Cohen assumed, in which the drawings had been made.

  “This won’t help us,” Cohen said as he turned the last page, started to close the pad. Then he stopped, his eyes drawn to the dark-haired child of Smalls’ final portrait. She stood in a wooded area, dressed in dark shorts and a white blouse, her bare arms dangling at her sides, smiling brightly, with nothing to suggest anything but a happy youth save the metal brace clamped around her right leg. Cohen’s eyes bore into the identification Smalls had written beneath the drawing. Debra, Englishtown.

  Cohen instantly recalled the awesome guilt he’d seen in Smalls’ eyes, his terror of something that would inevitably be found out. “Debra,” he whispered. “Debra Pierce.”

  6:05 A.M., West Ramp, City Bridge

  Blunt pulled over, turned off the engine, and once again considered his options. What would happen to his wife, his daughter? He’d lose his pension if anybody ever found out that he’d stolen a briefcase of phony money from two lowlife crooks, then murdered the fucking bastards.

  But whose fault was that? The bastards’, that’s who. Why couldn’t Dunlap have done the whole thing himself? And the other one. The one with the big mouth. Why didn’t he just keep that big mouth shut?

  He hadn’t meant to do it, that was the bottom line. But who’d believe that? Oh, no, they’d say, Blunt had it in mind all along. He intended all along to get the money, then come back and kill them two bastards. They’d say this was the plan from the beginning, and so his wife and daughter didn’t deserve a damn bit of his fucking pension because he was a lowlife just like the scum he killed, and who’d give their wives and kids a fucking pension, huh? Nobody, that’s who.

  So back to square one. The options.

  Each time he revisited them, a few dropped away. Like go to Mexico. Shit! How had that one ever gotten on the list anyway? Throw away the money. Well, sure, but that didn’t do a thing about them two dead bastards. And he’d been seen. Jesus Christ. His fucking car sitting there right in front of the junk shop, with the visor down, Police Vehicle, Official Business, while in the meantime he’s inside blowing two bastards away. And the street a bus route on top of it, with every nosy bus driver who passed while he was inside noticing how there was this big old gray Studebaker parked out front of Dunlap’s Collectibles with the goddamn visor down and a cardboard sign, Police Vehicle. Christ, he might as well have put a sign in the window
that said “Blunt’s inside killing two worthless bastards.”

  He shook his head. What’s the point, he asked himself, what’s the point of thinking about it? He was fucked no matter what. So really, for all the thinking, he had no options at all. Except one. Just go to the bridge and heave the briefcase off it. Then do the rest quick and clean. He reached for his pistol, and for just a moment, as it rested affectionately in his grip, warm and silent, it was as close as he had ever known to the handshake of a friend.

  He placed the barrel against the side of his head, felt his hand begin to shake, and decided, no, just a second, just one goddamn second. He had to get rid of the money.

  He grabbed the briefcase, got out of the car, and walked to the side of the bridge. Far below, the brackish water moved turgidly, glutted with the vomit and swill of the factories to the north. He leaned over, and with no further thought tossed the briefcase over the side. He watched as it plummeted away from him, falling and falling with a strange silent grace. Not a bad way to go, he thought. Better than the big mess he’d make with that fucking gun. Okay, then, he decided, okay. He tucked the pistol in his belt and with a heavy grunt hauled himself up onto the concrete side rail. For a moment he felt like a statue on a pedestal, a figure of stone, towering and dignified. Then the truth hit him. He was not like that. He was Blunt. And Blunt was nothing. He leaned forward, thrust out one leg, then another, and stepped into the waiting air, falling hard and unexpectedly fast, thinking only, in his last instant, that Stevie Weinberg, the fucking kike, would never have gotten his ass in a fix like this.

  6:07 A.M., Interrogation Room 3

  Cohen burst through the door of the interrogation room. Smalls’ chair was pushed back from the table, but there was no other sign that he’d ever been there. Cohen looked around, half expecting to find him curled in a corner. But the room was empty, and so he dashed back into the corridor, then down it to the detectives’ bull pen. Empty. Then the lounge, the other two interrogation rooms, the Criminal Files Room. Nothing.

  Only the bathroom at the end of the corridor remained. Cohen felt a bony finger rake his spine. In there, he decided. He has to be in there.

  He moved toward the door like a man toward the entrance to the dreaded cavern where he knows it waits for him, that part of life that is indifferent to his hopes, sneers at his plans, lies forever beyond his control. At the door, he reached for his pistol, then let it go, and grasped the cold brass knob instead.

  The door opened like a door in a nightmare, without being pushed. It glided across the stained tile floor, revealing first a metal can bristling with mops and brooms, then the urinals, the dark green stalls, a line of stained sinks, the last one gurgling softly, steam rising toward the cracked mirror that hung above it, a shard of glass removed, the door still moving in its ghostly trance until it finally came to rest against a bare, blood-spattered hand.

  What do we know for sure?

  9:45 A.M., Bickford’s Restaurant, 1284 De Paul Street

  Anna Lake stood on the sidewalk, wearing her white waitress uniform. Her features had grown increasingly taut as Cohen told her the details.

  “So what Pierce found in Titus,” she said. “It was proof.” “Yes,” Cohen answered. “I mean, there’s no way to prove that Smalls murdered the little girl he’d drawn. But she was murdered. And Cathy … well, for one man to be in the same place where two little girls were murdered, that’s evidence of a kind. Maybe not enough in a trial, but Smalls is dead, so there won’t be a trial.”

  He didn’t tell her that the murdered child was Debra Pierce, that regardless of how right Pierce had been about Smalls’ guilt, he had been wrong about Nicolas Costa, that it was Smalls who’d tightened the wire around Debra’s neck, stripped off the red velvet bracelet with its winking purple glass adornment, left her broken in the matted grass.

  “Pierce promised me that Smalls wouldn’t get away,” Anna said.

  “And he didn’t,” Cohen told her.

  He recalled the details of Yearwood’s account, the way Pierce had found him in the Driftwood Bar, found Cindy Eagar and Avery Garrett, how he’d paused before entering the storage shed, looked out over the fields, and “gone somewhere deep within himself,” as Yearwood said. After that, the single shot, Pierce’s body curled around the canvas bag, the fleeing car Yearwood could not identify, nor the man behind its wheel.

  “Well, thank you for coming here,” Anna said. She offered her hand.

  Cohen took it. “Jack cared about you.”

  She smiled mutely, then went back inside the restaurant, leaving Cohen alone on the street.

  The drive to his apartment carried him back along the downtown streets, past Police Headquarters, and toward the west ramp of the bridge, where the Department’s other tragedy had occurred. Well, not really a tragedy, he thought as he swept by the ramp, Blunt’s old Studebaker now hauled onto the back of a police tow truck. Not like Pierce.

  Suddenly Pierce’s death fell upon him with annihilating force. He had shouldered the shock of his partner’s murder resolutely until then, played the hardheaded detective, taken the news stoically. But now he felt something die as he recalled the look of Pierce’s body at the hospital, inert beneath the sheet, eyes closed, the terrible stillness of his limbs, so different from the stirring care that had made him such a good cop. So what is death, then, Cohen wondered, but a profound indifference?

  He thought of Smalls’ body on the tiled floor, blood pooled beneath his pale white throat. The Invisible Man. Still invisible. Beyond knowing, and now beyond any further probing. Thus had it ended, the interrogation.

  He reached his apartment six minutes later. Going up the stairs, he passed Ruth Green’s door and paused, hoping to hear something rustle beyond it, then realizing that she was no doubt already at work, teaching, surrounded by little girls and boys. So once again there’d be no one waiting for him, no one to sit and listen. No one to hear about Pierce’s murder, or Smalls’ suicide, or of the long, desperate night he’d journeyed through.

  He turned back toward the stairs, and as he did so, her door opened and she stood before him, dark and beautiful, peering at him strangely, as if instantly comprehending what the night’s ordeal had etched into his face.

  “Not at work?” he asked with a quick, sad smile.

  “It’s Sunday,” she answered quietly.

  “Oh,” Cohen said.

  “Are you just coming in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Long night, then?”

  “Long night.”

  She studied him, then drew back the door. “Would you like to come in?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I would like to come in.” From the night and the cold, he thought, and the uncaring void.

  9:54 A.M., Office of the Chief of Detectives

  The Commissioner sat in the leather chair in front of Burke’s desk. “What will be the final report, then?” he asked, tapping his fingers together.

  “That we don’t know,” Burke said. “The fact is, Smalls may have left some drawings in that shed, but we still don’t have any actual evidence that he murdered Cathy Lake.”

  The Commissioner scowled. “That won’t do, Tom. We can’t tell the papers or the Mayor that we don’t know if this fellow killed that child. There’ll be lots of questions about all of this.”

  “But there won’t be many answers,” Burke told him flatly.

  O’Hearn waved his hand. “All right. Let’s drop the matter of this fellow for now. What about Blunt?”

  “He’s your man, not mine.”

  “His wife’s illness, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “His wife’s illness,” the Commissioner said decisively. “The man was distraught about his wife. That’s the reason we’ll give. And Pierce. He’ll be the hero of the day. We’ll do it up right. The funeral, I mean.” He got to his feet. “I believe we’re done.”

  Burke nodded firmly. “Yes, I believe we are,” he said quietly.

 
O’Hearn walked to the door, opened it. Then he turned back to Burke. “I haven’t asked you about Scottie.”

  “He died.”

  “Dear God, Tommy, I had no idea,” the Commissioner said. He started to say more, but Burke raised his hand to stop him, and so the Commissioner only nodded, then eased himself out the door.

  For a time, Burke remained behind his desk, thinking of Scottie, the dreadful possibility that Smalls had gotten it right, had actually seen a man in the rain, digging in the earth. But he could not be sure of that, and besides, even if the man Smalls had seen there were Scottie, it didn’t mean that Scottie had strangled Cathy Lake. There was no evidence to suggest that. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d been found with Cathy’s locket in his clothes.

  Burke rose and turned toward the window, peering down at the city’s busy streets, standing as he had hours before, his arms behind his back. At the corner of Trevor and Madison, he watched the Commissioner’s car come to a stop and imagined his old friend in its plush backseat, working to compose what he would tell Blunt’s wife about her husband’s death. Lies, he hoped, lots of lies. For in the end, faced with life’s cold truths, what else warmed our self-deceiving hearts?

  10:07 A.M., 7305 Phoenix Avenue

  Eddie Lambrusco started to rise, then felt his daughter’s small, pale fist curl tightly around his little finger. “Papa.”

  “I’m here, princess.” He forced a smile. “I’ve been right here for hours.”

  “You should have waked me up.”

  “No, no,” Eddie said. “I love to watch you sleep.”

  He thought of the child who’d died in the park nearly two weeks before, the picture he’d seen in the paper. Just eight years old. How lucky he was that Laurie was still with him. That she was getting better, that she would recover, that she was alive, alive to hold his finger in her small hand. What other warning did we need, what other guide and caution than how easy, how very, very easy it is to lose the one thing you love? “I can stay home with you all day today,” he said.