The Big Bad City

by McBain, Ed

  “Does anyone know Marilyn Monroe’s real name?” Kling asked.

  “Is this a game show?” Nellie said.

  “Who’s in charge here?” a voice asked. They turned to see a rather corpulent man in a pinstriped suit standing just outside the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the second-floor corridor. “Attorney Marvin Meltzman,” he said, “representing Leslie Blyden. Where’s my client?”

  “Assistant District Attorney Nellie Brand,” Nellie said, and walked to the railing and extended her hand. Meltzman took it. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

  “Just got here myself,” she said. “Where’s the suspect?” she asked Meyer.

  “Interrogation Room down the hall,” he said, and then to Meltzman, “I’ll take you there, counselor.”

  The two of them walked off.

  “Who questioned him?” Nellie asked Kling.

  “Me and Meyer.”

  “And you say he admitted the burglary?”

  “Said maybe he did the burglary, but not the murders.”

  “Only maybe, huh?”

  “Better than no.”

  “Who’d he say did the murders?”

  “The woman. Shot the kid and then herself. Accidentally.”

  “Any prints on the weapon?”

  “Only hers.”

  “So maybe he’s telling the truth.”

  “Maybe I’m Robert Redford.”

  “You kind of look like him.”

  “I know, it’s a curse. You kind of look like Meg Ryan.”

  “Let’s go talk to Travolta. Maybe we can all make a movie together.”

  They didn’t actually get started until a little past nine o’clock that night. That was when Blyden and Meltzman finished their private conversation. By that time, the detectives had also given Nellie everything they had on the crimes. The Q and A started in the Interrogation Room at 9:07 P.M. Meyer and Kling were present, as were Willis and Parker, and Lieutenant Byrnes, and the D.A.’s Office technician who was videotaping the session. Nellie read Blyden his rights again, got his lawyer’s consent to proceed, elicited Blyden’s name, address, and pedigree, and then got down to brass tacks.

  “Mr. Blyden,” she said, “I want you to tell me everything you remember about the afternoon of August twenty-fifth.”

  His resemblance to John Travolta was a little unnerving. He did not seem to possess Travolta’s cool, however. Instead, he seemed shy, almost timid, not unlikely traits for a burglar. Nellie suddenly wondered if she really did look like Meg Ryan. All at once, the video camera made her feel self-conscious, even though it was trained on Blyden.

  Q: Mr. Blyden?

  A: Yes, I’m thinking.

  Q: This would’ve been a Tuesday.

  A: Yes.

  Q: Do you remember where you were that afternoon? This would’ve been around three-thirty, four o’clock, can you recall?

  Blyden seemed to be having a little difficulty here. He had already told the arresting detectives that maybe he’d committed the burglary, but not the murders. His lawyer had probably asked him—without advising him to lie, of course—to think about whether he hadn’t been someplace else entirely on the day of the burglary.

  “Mr. Blyden?” she said. “Would you answer the question, please?”

  “I was home baking cookies,” Blyden said.

  Okay, he was opting to lie. Though in a singularly stupid way. If the cops thought you were The Cookie Boy, why admit to baking cookies? Listen, Nellie would take whatever she could get.

  “Anyone with you, Mr. Blyden?”

  “I was alone.”

  “Anyone see you baking these cookies?”

  “The window was open. Maybe somebody saw me.”

  “But you can’t say for certain that anyone saw you.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “What kind of cookies were you baking, Mr. Btyden?”

  He hesitated. Admit to baking chocolate chip cookies and he was reaching out for The Cookie Boy’s hand.

  “I forget,” he said. “I bake all kinds of cookies.”

  “Like to bake, do you?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Ever bake chocolate chip cookies?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Were you baking chocolate chip cookies on August twenty-fifth?”

  A: I don’t remember.

  Q: Have you ever baked chocolate chip cookies?

  A: I don’t particularly care for them.

  Q: But have you ever …?

  A: Chocolate chip cookies.

  Q: I understand. But have you ever baked them?

  A: I don’t think so.

  Q: Never baked chocolate chip cookies in your life?

  A: I don’t think so.

  Q: Yes or no, Mr. Blyden?

  “He’s already answered the question,” Meltzman said.

  “Not to my satisfaction.”

  “You’ll be satisfied only when he says Yes, he has baked chocolate chip cookies.”

  “No, I’ll be satisfied when he gives me a straight yes or no answer.”

  Q: Mr. Blyden, have you ever baked chocolate chip cookies in your life?

  A: Yes. Maybe. Once or twice.

  It was not uncommon for a person being interrogated to reverse direction, especially when he wasn’t under oath. Blyden was probably thinking they knew somehow that he baked chocolate chip cookies. Maybe one of the neighbors could tell by the smell that they were chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe they’d entered his apartment since they’d arrested him, and found his recipe. Or maybe they could later confiscate his pots and pans, do tests on them, find out he’d baked chocolate chip cookies in them. So it was better to admit he’d baked them once or twice.

  Q: How about August twenty-fifth? Did you bake chocolate chip cookies that day?

  A: No.

  Q: What did you bake? What kind of cookies?

  A: I don’t remember.

  Q: Well, that was only six days ago. Don’t you remember what kind of cookies you baked six days ago?

  A: No, I don’t.

  Q: Then how do you know they weren’t chocolate chip cookies?

  A: I rarely bake chocolate chip cookies.

  “Excuse me, counselor,” Meltzman said. “Where’s this going?”

  “Excuse me, counselor,” Nellie said, “but this isn’t a courtroom, and I really must ask you to refrain from interjecting.”

  “I realize …”

  “This is a simple Q and A, Mr. Meltzman. No objections, no rules of evidence, nothing to constrain me from getting at the truth.”

  “Just which truth are you seeking?”

  “You do know that your client is thought to be a burglar the media has nicknamed The Cookie Boy, don’t you?”

  “That is the allegation, yes.”

  “You know, too, that The Cookie Boy leaves chocolate chip cookies at the scene of all his burglaries.”

  “A singular idiosyncrasy, to be sure. But, Miss Brand …”

  “Mrs. Brand.”

  “Forgive me. We’re dealing here, Mrs. Brand, with a specific burglary and a specific pair of murders committed during this burglary. My client has no prior criminal record of any kind, and he has just told you that he’s only baked chocolate chip cookies on one or two occasions in his lifetime. Why he was arrested at all is beyond my comprehension. Are you planning to charge him with these murders?”

  “We are.”

  “Then why don’t you do so?”

  “I’d like a few questions answered first,” Nellie said.

  “I think you’ve asked enough questions for now,” Meltzman said. “If you’re going to charge him, do it. If not, we’re out of here.”

  “Is that your client’s decision?”

  “Mr. Blyden?” Meltzman said, turning to him. “Do you wish to answer any further questions?”

  “I do not wish to answer any further questions,” Blyden said.

  “Can we put it any more plainly?”

  “Tha
t’s it then,” Nellie said, and signaled to the video guy. “Have a seat, counselor. I’d like to discuss this with the officers here.”

  “Five minutes,” Meltzman said, and looked at his watch.

  Together, she and the detectives went down the hall to Byrnes’s office.

  “This makes it tough,” she said. “We were weak going in. Now that he won’t tell us anything, what’ve we got? Nothing that’ll stick.”

  “We’ve got blood in the apartment,” Parker said.

  “If it’s his. We won’t know that without a DNA test. And we can’t take a sample without a court order.”

  “So let’s get one,” Byrnes said.

  “I’m sure we can. We’ve got probable cause coming out of our ears. But meanwhile, he’ll run to China.”

  “Not if we charge him with the burg,” Meyer said. “That’d give us six days to chase the murders.”

  “Get our court order and our blood sample in that time,” Willis said.

  “He just recanted the burglary,” Nellie said.

  “So what?” Kling said. “We’ve got cookie crumbs found at the scene. Chocolate chip.”

  “That only means someone in the apartment was eating chocolate chip cookies and left a mess. It didn’t have to be Blyden.”

  “The lab’s running tests right this minute,” Byrnes said. “If the crumbs match the other cookies he left behind…”

  “Then maybe we’ve got him in the apartment,” Nellie said, “but only maybe. Anyway, defense’ll bring in ten thousand different chocolate chip cookies that all tested basically the same.”

  “Tasted?”

  “Tested. Tasted, too, I’ll bet.”

  “We’ve also got his prints on the ladder going up,” Meyer said.

  “Places him behind the building, but not necessarily in the apartment. And not necessarily on the day of the murders. Have we got his prints in the apartment?”

  “No.”

  “What else have we got?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Have we got anything else?” she asked.

  They were all looking at her now.

  “It’s weak,” she said.

  “You’ve got no idea the flak on this one,” Byrnes said.

  “You’re saying hit him with the burg, anyway,” Nellie said, “take our chances. Okay, I’m saying there’s a huge risk of flight here. The judge sees a weak burg, he’s liable to order low bail or no bail, Blyden’s on his way.”

  For a moment, she wished this was a movie. Wished she really was Meg Ryan in a movie. In a movie, everything always worked out all right. In real life, killers sometimes walked.

  “So what do you want to do, Nell?” Byrnes asked, and sighed heavily.

  “What else can we do?” she said. “I’ll tell Meltzman we’re charging his man with Burg Two, and asking for a court order to draw blood for a DNA test. At tomorrow morning’s arraignment, it’s the judge’s call.”

  “Too bad chocolate chip cookies ain’t DNA,” Parker said.

  “Too bad,” Nellie agreed.

  · · ·

  “Don’t worry about any of this,” Meltzman said. “You’ll be out on bail tomorrow, I promise you. It’ll take weeks before they get the DNA results. But even if they get a match …”

  “They will,” Blyden said. “My blood was all over the place. I had a nosebleed.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Meltzman said.

  “But I am worried about it.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Because I didn’t kill them,” Blyden said.

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “I mean, really. I didn’t kill them. I really am innocent.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Meltzman said.

  Matthew Hope called Carella at home that Monday night, just as he was about to turn on the ten o’clock news. Carella’s routine was more or less fixed whenever he was working the day shift. He got home at around four-thirty, five o’clock, depending on traffic, spent some time relaxing and reading the paper, had dinner with Teddy and the kids around six-thirty, read again after dinner—his taste ran to nonfiction—watched the news on television, and was in bed by eleven for a six A.M. alarm-clock wakeup. He usually left the house by seven and drove down to the station house, getting there at seven-thirty, seven-forty, again depending on traffic. During the winter months, he allowed himself more time. Now, in August, with the city relatively quiet, he could even leave the house at seven-fifteen and still be in the squadroom by a quarter to eight.

  Matthew called at five to ten.

  “It’s not too late, is it?” he asked at once.

  “Not at all,” Carella said. “Let me take this in the other room.”

  The other room was a spare room they had fitted out as an office for whoever in the family chose to use it. The kids’ computer was in there, as was Teddy’s and Carella’s. There were bookshelves and a battered desk they had picked up in a consignment shop. Two lamps from the same shop. Their housekeeper, Fanny, called the room The Junk Shop. Maybe it was.

  “Still there?” Carella asked.

  “Still here. How are you?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Good. I’m enjoying this. Practicing law again instead of running around after bad guys.”

  “I’m still running around after bad guys,” Carella said.

  “So I see. I’ve got that information for you, if you’ve got a pencil. I can fax the newspaper stuff later if you like … have you got a fax there?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Good. But I also spoke to Morrie Bloom, and he sent me his report. He’s a detective on the Calusa P.D., he was the one who talked to the kids the day after the accident.”

  “Is that what they called it? An accident?”

  “Yeah. The police down there in Boyle’s Landing figured Custer was drunk when he fell in the water. Blood tests were inconclusive—the alligators did a good job—but the kids told Bloom he was drinking heavily before they went up to get paid.”

  “Was their word the only evidence the police had?”

  “That he was drunk? No, there were also half a dozen empty beer bottles in his office. So apparently he’d been drinking hard liquor with the kids, and then continued drinking beer after they were gone.”

  “That could do it.”

  “It could. Railing on the deck behind his office was about four feet high. Police figure he fell over into the river and the alligators got him right away. They’re fast Have you ever seen an alligator run? Man, watch out.”

  “Who went up to the office with him?”

  “To get paid? I don’t know. Let me take another look here.”

  Carella could hear Matthew turning pages on the other end. Either looking at a photocopy of the newspaper story or else a copy of Bloom’s D.D. report.

  “Newspaper says they were the last ones to see him alive.”

  “Who?”

  “Mentions all the band members by name.”

  “Which two went up to the office?”

  “How do you know it was two?” Matthew asked.

  Good question, Carella thought.

  “I’m getting conflicting stories up here,” he said.

  “I’m looking,” Matthew said.

  “What’s the date on Bloom’s report?” Carella asked.

  “Let me see.”

  Carella waited.

  “Here it is. September second. That would’ve been the Friday before Labor Day.”

  “And the newspaper story?”

  “Next day.”

  “Bloom give it to them?”

  “‘Reliable police sources,’ it says. There’s another story on Sunday, a review of the band.”

  “Good? Bad?”

  “‘Derivative rock,’ it says. But apparently the kids drew a big crowd on Saturday night. Because of all the publicity.”

  “Say anything about who went up for the money?”

  “I’m still looking. There’s nothing in the pa
per, I’m checking Bloom’s report. I’ll FedEx this to you, if you like. It’s too long to fax.”

  Carella waited.

  “Kid named Totobi Hollister was asleep while they packed the van,” Matthew said.

  “He tell this to Bloom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was packing the van?”

  “Nothing here about it.”

  “Who went up to the office?”

  Bloom had to have asked that question. Because the last persons to see Custer alive were the ones who’d gone up to get paid.

  “Here we go,” Matthew said. “Here’s the girl’s story.

  Q and A format, shall I read it to you?”

  “Please.”

  “The Q is Bloom, the A is Katherine Cochran.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Q: You understand, Miss Cochran, we’re following up on this as a courtesy to the Boyle’s Landing police.

  A: Yes, I do.

  Q: Because, from interviews they had with employees of the club, the band was still there when everyone else left. Which means the five of you were the last ones to see Mr. Custer alive.

  A: That’s true.

  Q: One of the waiters told the police he said goodnight to all of you when he left. He said Mr. Custer and the band were sitting near the bar drinking. Is that true?

  A: Not all of us. Tote had already gone to bed.

  Q: Tote?

  A: Tote Hollister. Totobi Hollister. Our bass guitarist. We woke him up later. After the van was packed and we were ready to go.

  Q: So the four of you … let me consult this a moment, please. That would’ve been you, and David Farnes, and Alan Figgs, and Salvatore Roselli, is that correct?

  A: Yes. The four of us.

  Q: Were sitting and drinking with Mr. Custer.

  A: Yes, that’s right.

  Q: How much did he drink?

  A: Charlie? I think he had two or three drinks.

  Q: Which? Would you remember?

  A: Three, I think.

  Q: Do you remember what he was drinking?

  A: Scotch, I believe. He had a bottle of beer later.

  Q: Later?

  A: In his office. He opened a bottle of beer and was drinking it when he went to the safe for our money.

  Q: So, in your presence, then, he drank three scotches and a bottle of beer.

  A: Yes, that’s right.

  Q: Did he go out onto the deck while you were up there in the office?

  A: No, sir, he didn’t. He paid us our money, said he enjoyed our being there, and hoped we’d come back real soon. We were a big hit, you know. People came from all over.