The Big Bad City

by McBain, Ed

  “It’s the connotation that bothers me,” Paine said, and nodded curtly, and sipped at his drink again, and then put the glass down rather too emphatically. “We were working colleagues and good friends. Taking her to dinner was not taking her out.”

  “How’d you first happen to take her to dinner then?” Brown asked.

  Paine looked at him.

  “Sir?” Brown said.

  “One of her patients, a woman with a stomach CA, was dying and in pain. Mary was having a personal problem with it. We went across the street to the deli, to talk it over.”

  “And this became a regular thing, is that right?” Carella said. “Having dinner together?”

  “Yes. As I said, once or twice a month. Mary was good company. I enjoyed being with her.”

  “Did you ever talk about other things? Aside from your work?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “On the fifteenth, for example, did she happen to mention … was that the last time you saw her, doctor?”

  “Socially, yes. I saw her at the hospital, of course, whenever I was there.”

  “Did you see her on the day she was killed?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “When was this?”

  “The twenty-first, wasn’t it? When she was killed?”

  “Yes. But I meant, did you see her at any specific time?”

  “Well, several times during the day. Doctors and nurses cross paths all the time.”

  “When’s the very last time you saw her?” Brown asked.

  “Just before the shift ended. She said she was going out for a cup of coffee with Helen, asked if I’d like to join them.”

  “Helen Daniels, would that be?”

  “Yes. One of the nurses at St. Margaret’s.”

  “Did she mention where she might be heading after that?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Doctor, if we could, I’d like to get back to that night of the fifteenth. Did Mary say anything about …?”

  “You know,” Paine said, “I hate to ask this … but am I a suspect in this thing?”

  “No, sir, you’re not,” Carella said.

  “Then why all these questions?”

  “Well,” Carella said, “either Mary went for a walk in the park and was a random victim of someone who stole her handbag, or else she deliberately went to that park to meet the person who killed her. Several people we talked to said she seemed very concerned about …”

  “What’s any of this got to do with me?”

  “Nothing, sir. We’re only trying …”

  “I mean, why all these questions?”

  They didn’t know why he was so suddenly agitated. They’d probably questioned ten thousand two-hundred and eighty-eight people in their joint careers as police officers, and they were used to all sorts of guarded responses, but why had Dr. Paine become so defensive all at once? Both detectives were suddenly alert. Bells didn’t go off, whistles didn’t shrill over the noise of the shrieking kids in the pool. But though neither of them revealed any change in attitude—if anything, they were more solicitous than they had been a moment ago—they nonetheless looked at the man differently now.

  “We thought you might be able to expand on what we’d heard from other friends of Mary,” Carella said.

  “Well, there it is again,” Paine said.

  Yes, there it is again, Carella thought.

  “Sir?” he said.

  “The emphasis on the word ‘friends.’ Is it impossible to believe that a man actually might be friends with a woman who’s taken vows of chastity?”

  “We think that’s entirely possible, sir.”

  “I mean, does it have to be turned into some kind of dirty joke?”

  “Sir, no one …”

  “Is this still the 1830s?”

  “We’re only trying …”

  “Are nuns still the butt of bad pornography?”

  “Sir, we …”

  “Mary was an attractive woman, there’s no denying it. But to suggest … I mean … look, forget it.”

  The noise from the pool seemed overwhelming in the sudden silence under the bright yellow umbrella.

  “We’ve been told she was concerned about money,” Carella said, changing his approach. He caught a small, almost imperceptible nod of approval from Brown. “Did she mention that to you?”

  “No,” Paine said.

  He had drained the glass of gin, and now he was toying with the lime wedge in it, poking it with the plastic straw, his eyes averted.

  “Where’d you go after dinner that night?” Brown asked.

  “Back to her place.”

  “Did she mention anything about money problems while you were there?” Carella said.

  “No.”

  “Or anytime that night?” Brown said.

  “No.”

  “Mention a letter she may have received?”

  “No.”

  “What time did you leave her, Doctor?”

  “Around ten.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Straight home.”

  “Dr. Paine, could we go back to that first time you had dinner together? You said it was at the deli across the street. Could you tell us a little more about that, please?”

  Paine sighed heavily.

  “I was at the hospital late one night,” he said, “and so was Mary. I ran into her coming out of the nurses’ lounge, in tears. I asked her if something was wrong, and she said, ‘No, nothing,’ but she kept crying so hard I thought she might be hysterical. It was plain to me that whatever it was, she didn’t want to discuss it there in the hospital, so I suggested we go across the street for a cup of coffee. She readily accepted. Actually, she seemed relieved that she could talk it over with someone. What it was …”

  … there was this elderly woman on the ward, Mrs. Rosenberg, Ruth Rosenberg, I believe it was. She was very seriously ill, a cancer patient, as I told you, who had perhaps two or three weeks to live, it was that bad. She wasn’t a very nice person. I didn’t know her before she got sick, of course, she may have been an angel, who knows? But she was definitely unpleasant now, moaning every minute of the day, snapping at doctors and nurses alike, a totally obnoxious human being.

  You’d stop in her room just to be pleasant, ask how she was doing, for example, and she’d yell “How do you think I’m doing? Look at me! Does it look like I’m doing fine?” It was hard to have sympathy for a person like that, even though her situation was grave. Or a nurse would bring in her pain med, and she’d yell “It’s about time! Where the hell have you been?” A most difficult, woman.

  I wasn’t the physician who’d prescribed her medication, I’m not quite sure what it was now, probably some sort of morphine derivative, most likely MS Contin every six hours. That would have been usual in such a case, one of the morphine sulfates. When Mary told me about the woman, she said she couldn’t stand her shrieks of pain any longer, her moaning all day long, the woman was a human being and one of God’s creatures, we should be able to do something to ease her suffering. Yes, I remember now. She was on a Duragesic patch as well, absorbing Fentanyl all day long, probably fifty, sixty micrograms an hour, plus the morphine, of course.

  Mary thought Mrs. Rosenberg should be getting the morphine dose every four hours instead of the prescribed six. She discussed this with the woman’s doctor, told him she was in no danger of becoming an addict, she was going to die in a few weeks, anyway, couldn’t they please, in the name of God, increase the regularity?

  The doctor told Mary he thought Mrs. Rosenberg was going for secondary gain. Wanted them to feel sorry for her. Wanted more attention from them. Mary said, “So why not? What’s wrong with a little attention? Her family’s abandoned her, nobody comes to see her, she just lies in bed all day, moaning in pain, begging for medication. What on earth is wrong with giving her what she so desperately needs?” Well, the doctor told Mary he might be willing to prescribe an additional milligram in the regular six-hou
r dose, which of course was minimal, a token gesture. But he flatly refused to medicate the woman every four hours. Mary was furious.

  “She told all this to me over hamburgers and coffee in the deli. I promised I’d talk to the doctor in the morning, see what I could do.”

  Paine sighed again.

  “But by morning, Mrs. Rosenberg was dead.”

  “Who was the doctor?” Brown asked.

  “I’ve deliberately avoided using his name,” Paine said.

  “If Mary harbored any ill feelings …”

  “I’m sure she didn’t, she wasn’t that sort of person. In fact, I did finally talk to him about denying medication, which I consider stupid, by the way, and he saw the error of his ways.”

  “In any case …”

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  The waitress who’d brought their beverages was standing by the table again, a leather folder in her hand.

  “Whenever you’re ready, sir,” she said. “And sir?”

  “Yes, Betsy?”

  “Your wife just called. Said not to forget her racket that was restrung.”

  “Thank you, Betsy,” Paine said, and signed the check.

  The detectives said nothing until he’d handed the leather folder back to her and she’d walked away.

  Then Brown said, “The doctor’s name, sir?”

  “Winston Hall,” Paine said.

  “So on the one hand,” Brown said, “we got the man heading the ward rhapsodizing about Mary, sweetest woman in the world, oh dear, how I will miss her, spreading light and joy everywhere she walked, singing to all the patients, but he forgets to mention she’s breaking his balls about medication! She probably hated his guts for letting Mrs. Rosenberg die in pain.”

  He was behind the wheel. Whenever he got agitated, he drove somewhat recklessly. Carella hoped he wouldn’t run over any old ladies.

  “And on the other hand, we got another doctor who’s seeing a woman not his wife sometimes twice a month,” Brown said. “Makes no nevermind to me she’s a nun. Far as I’m concerned, he’s married and seeing another woman. On a Saturday night, the last time! A married man!”

  “Red light ahead,” Carella said.

  “I see it. Another thing, he knew he went too far,” Brown said. “That’s why he clammed up all at once.”

  “It wasn’t the place to pursue it, anyway,” Carella said.

  “I know that. Otherwise I’d’ve jumped in. Do I look shy?”

  “Oh, yes. Timid, in fact. We may have to put him in the box later. Meanwhile, all we’ve got is a man who found a nun attractive and won’t admit it to himself.”

  “Or to his wife, either, I’ll bet,” Brown said.

  “You’re beginning to sound like my mother,” Carella said.

  “And what’s the matter with that Hall jackass, anyway? How’s it any skin off his nose he gives the old lady an extra dose? She’s gonna die, anyway, am I right?”

  “Watch the road, Artie!”

  “Letting an old lady die in pain that way.”

  “Artie …”

  “I see it. Never once mentioned he and Mary had a little contre temps back then, did he? Way he tells it, everything was sweetness and light on the ward, Mary flitting around like Sally Field, never mind she could blow her stack when she wanted to, am I right?”

  “Artie, that was a baby carriage.”

  “That’s okay, I didn’t hit it, did I?”

  “You came damn close.”

  “We oughta talk to that man again. We also oughta run down to Philly, talk to Mary’s brother too damn busy to bury her.”

  “Philly’s closed on Wednesdays,” Carella said, making reference to one of the countless Philadelphia jokes in the repertoire, something the stand-up comic Vincent Cochran might have appreciated, provided he wasn’t still asleep at twelve-fifteen in the afternoon.

  It was nine-fifteen A.M. in California.

  Carella wondered what time Sister Carmelita Diaz had gut home from Rome yesterday.

  “Lady named Anna Hawley waiting upstairs for you,” Sergeant Murchison said.

  Carella didn’t know anybody named Anna Hawley.

  “Me?” he said.

  “You,” Murchison said.

  The muster room of the Eight-Seven was unusually quiet that Wednesday afternoon. Murchison sat behind the high mahogany muster desk like a priest behind an altar, reading the morning paper, bored to tears because the phone hadn’t rung in ten minutes. Across the room, a man from Maintenance and Repair—one of the two who’d been here last Friday, when the guy went ape shit in the cage upstairs—was checking out the walkie-talkies on the wall rack because they weren’t recharging properly. The air conditioner he and his partner had fixed was now functioning, but barely. Murchison was sweating profusely in his short-sleeved uniform shirt.

  “She say about what?” Carella asked.

  “The dead nun,” Murchison said, and went back to his paper.

  It was even hotter upstairs than it had been in the muster room, perhaps because the window units here were older than the ones below. Anna Hawley was a woman in her early twenties, Carella guessed, sitting in a chair alongside his desk in a blue cotton skirt and white blouse, her handbag resting near the In-Out basket. Across the room, Meyer and Kling, in shirtsleeves, were working the phones, contacting pawnshops again now that their burglar might have been a double murderer. The squadroom seemed quieter than usual, too. Carella wondered where the hell everybody was.

  “Miss Hawley?” he said.

  The woman turned. Short blonde hair, green eyes, apprehensive look. Lipstick a light shade of red. Foot jiggling as if she had to pee.

  “Detective Carella,” he said. “My partner, Detective Brown.”

  Carella sat in his own chair behind the desk. Brown pulled one up. They both kept their jackets on, in deference to their visitor. At the windows, the air conditioners clanked noisily.

  “I understand you wanted to see us about Mary Vincent,” Carella said.

  “Well, Kate Cochran, yes,” she said.

  Soft voice, slight quaver to it. The detectives waited. Her nervousness was apparent, but police stations often did that to people. And yet, she was here voluntarily. Carella gave it a moment longer, and then he said, “Was there something you wanted to tell us about her murder?”

  “Well, no, not her murder.”

  “Then what, Miss Hawley?”

  “I wanted to make sure Vincent didn’t leave you with the wrong impression.”

  “Are you talking about Vincent Cochran?” Carella asked.

  The stand-up comic in Philadelphia, the brother who no longer cared to see his sister, dead or alive, thanks.

  “Mary Vincent’s brother?”

  “Yes,” Anna said. “Well, Kate’s brother.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, I know you spoke to him a few days ago …”

  The twenty-second, according to Carella’s notebook.

  “… and I’m afraid you might have got the wrong idea about him. You see, everybody was against it.”

  “Against what?” Brown asked.

  “Her becoming a nun. It wasn’t just Vincent. All of us told her it was a stupid idea. All the family, all her friends.”

  “And what are you, Miss Hawley? Family or friend?”

  “I’m a friend.”

  “Kate’s friend? Or her brother’s?”

  “Vincent’s my boy friend,” she said.

  “But you knew Kate as well, is that it?”

  “Yes. We grew up together.”

  “In Philadelphia?”

  “Yes. She went to San Diego only after she joined the order. That was another thing. Her having to go all the way out to California. No one liked that very much, I can tell you.”

  “Why would we get the wrong idea about Mr. Cochran?” Brown asked.

  “What he said to you.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “About letting the church bury her.”


  “He reported that to you, did he?”

  “Yes. Well, he was worried you might think … well … you might think he didn’t love her or something.”

  “Did he ask you to come here?”

  “No. Absolutely not. I come into the city regularly, anyway. I’m a freelance copy editor. I deliver work whenever I’m finished with it.”

  “So when did Mr. Cochran tell you about our conversation with him?”

  “Last Saturday night. At the club. He said you’d called that afternoon. Woke him up, in fact. Which was why he sounded so irritated.”

  “When you say the club …”

  “Comedy Riot,” Anna said.

  “Is that where Mr. Cochran does stand-up?”

  “Yes. But it was my idea to come here. I didn’t want you to think he was still holding a grudge or anything.”

  “What kind of grudge, Miss Hawley?”

  “Well … everything. You know.”

  “Everything?”

  “All of it. From the beginning. From when Kate first told the family she wanted to be a nun. Her parents were still alive then, this was right after she graduated from college. I was there the afternoon she told them. Vincent and I were high school sweethearts, you see. This was in January. More than six years ago. I remember it was a very cold day. There was a fire blazing in the living room fireplace. We were all drinking coffee after dinner, sitting around the fireplace, when Kate dropped her bombshell …”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” her father shouts.

  It is interesting that he has used the word “hell” when his daughter has just told them she wishes to become a nun in the Roman Catholic Church. To Ronald Cochran, who has been a renegade Catholic since the age of thirteen and who considers entering a convent the equivalent of joining a cult like the Hare Krishnas, the words his daughter has just hurled into the glowing warmth of the living room are tantamount to patricide. Ronald Cochran teaches political science at Temple University. His wife is a psychiatrist with a thriving practice. And now … this? His daughter wants to become a goddamn nun?

  “You don’t mean this,” Vincent says.

  He is four years his sister’s junior, seventeen years old and a high school senior in that cold January more than six years ago. His sister has just told the family and his girlfriend Anna that she wishes to enter the Order of the Sisters of Christ’s Mercy as soon as certain formalities have been consummated, the exact word she uses. She expects to begin her novitiate this coming summer, she tells them now. At the mother house in San Luis Elizario, she tells them. Just outside San Diego, she tells them.