Ask the Right Question

by Michael Z. Lewin

  Gartland sighed. He waved to his uniformed associates. “Take him in,” he said, in a tone which sounded like, he was carrying out a threat when he really was giving in to me. Subtle guys, these captains.

  The ride from my office to cop center was less than two blocks, but they didn’t speak to me at all. I appreciated the silence. It gave me a little chance to reorient myself. Especially with respect to Leander Crystal. Either he had conned me a second time or even he hadn’t known everything that went on. I got a rudimentary notion of how I wanted to play it, and I was glad that Miller owed me for getting him back on the case.

  At headquarters Miller was not hard to locate. There is nobody more present than a man who has been taken off a big case but who thinks there might be the slightest hope of getting back on it. I was his hope. Very touching, and I could always get additional leverage by reporting him for stealing cars as a kid.

  Gartland was not gracious about turning me over to him. And he was even less gracious when he found out I wanted to talk to Miller alone. But finally we shooed the surplus uniforms away and had a friendly chat.

  “Where was it?” I asked him.

  “Your alien’s prints matched a body in New York.”

  I nodded as if I already knew. He picked up some paper.

  “A previously unidentified female body discovered in Central Park, New York, November 23, 1954. Caucasian. Aged twenty to thirty. 5 feet 3. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Dead a few days. Skull fracture and mutilations. She was probably knocked out, strangled and then cut to ribbons in the area between her waist and her knees.

  It chilled and shocked me. I rocked back and forth in my seat.

  “New York covered the match with a note. They say they never checked the corpse’s prints with the FBI—that’s where they file aliens’ prints—because they didn’t have any reason to believe she was foreign. In the park, in the condition she was in, they figured her for a whore cut up by some kind of maniac. When nobody came looking for her they closed it unsolved.”

  I nodded grimly. People get killed every minute somewhere in the world. It doesn’t bother you because you don’t know about it. This killing sixteen years ago bothered me terribly. I did know things about it, things other people didn’t know. Like why she was killed, who she had been, and why she had been killed in that particular way at that particular time.

  “Al, New York wants to know how we matched it with Annie Lombard. So does the Justice Department.”

  “So does everybody, if I judge the look in your eyes correctly.”

  “I can’t help it, Al. You know what this could mean to me. You know probably better than anyone.”

  I wished I could shut him up at that moment. I knew what it meant to him all right. But I wished that I could have been there in 1954 to stop it, because it can’t have been nice. I wished I could keep the billions of people who get pushed around every day from having to take it anymore. I wished I wasn’t unimportant to everybody except me, and I wished I wasn’t going to die someday.

  I said, “Yeah, I know. I’ve just been figuring out how to go about it. There are people I don’t want to have to hurt.”

  “That girl, Annie Lombard, she got hurt in the worst way, Al.”

  The platitude made me mad. Who the hell knew that better than I did? Who knew better about the pictures of the girl in the progessing stages of pregnancy, and who knew better about her daughter?

  “Don’t play the cop ploys with me, Jerry. Don’t do it. You are going to get credit for this, but it goes my way or not at all. It’s hung around for sixteen years, and, by God, if you don’t watch out it’s going to hang around for another sixteen.”

  When I said it I meant it, but it didn’t take long for me to remember all the records and files I had around, not to mention my notebook. Laid out like that even Gartland could figure out enough of it.

  Miller felt my passion, but he was evaluating his own situation. “It’s hard. You know that.”

  “Bull. I had to con you into getting the things for me in the first place and now you’re acting like it was all your idea. Just because I stumbled on it doesn’t mean that you’re any dumber than anybody else or any less fit to be a lieutenant.”

  We had communicated at last. It’s one of the facts of life that friends are not perfect. But you learn to patch up the breaches. A little booze. A few reminiscences.

  There was a knock on the door. Gartland stuck his face in. It seemed only seconds since we’d seen it last. If Miller had been in doubt about our understanding, Gartland’s frowning mug resolved it.

  “Get out,” Miller addressed his captain. “We’ll let you know.”

  The face withdrew and we got down to business. I gave it all to him, in essence as Leander had told it to me. In chronological order, not the way I’d found it.

  Then I told him that I wanted us to go and visit Leander Crystal.

  “But he lied to you till it was coming out of your ears,” he said.

  I shrugged. It’s not that I had any bigger master plan which would identify all the guilty and clear all the innocent. But I wanted to talk to Crystal again before we pulled the rug out. I had to have a chance to find out whether my gut reaction—to trust the man—had really been as far off base as it seemed it was. One of the things which distinguishes children from adults is the confidence to make and trust one’s own value judgments. When I decide to trust someone it’s disorienting to find out he’s not trustworthy.

  Miller thought we should just go pick them all up and then straighten everything out later.

  But he acceded to my wishes. That was the deal.

  We went out and told Gartland. If Miller didn’t like, it, Gartland hated it. But since he still didn’t know the details all he could do was rant about what would happen to Miller if something went wrong.

  Miller played cool. What else could he do but go along with me, he told Gartland. Little as they both liked it I was calling the shots. And in his opinion if they didn’t act fast they might lose the killer.

  It was all a subtle reminder that Gartland had opted to bring Miller back in, and that the consequences were ultimately still his.

  We requested and got four patrolmen and two cars.

  We left, Gartland hated it.

  40

  Miller and I rode together in the back of one unmarked car. The other followed us. We pulled up in tandem in front of the Crystal house. If Chivian was there, his car was not out front. It probably didn’t matter. Whatever Crystal had told him about our afternoon session, they couldn’t be expecting this.

  As we got out I waved the second car back along Jefferson Boulevard, to get it more out of sight. They were there in case someone left the house by car. The other two cops were to post outside, front and back. Only Miller would come in with me. I wanted to give Leander Crystal as much benefit of doubt as possible. But also to protect Miller in case Crystal didn’t deserve such benefits.

  “If anybody does come out,” I warned the two cops to be posted at front and back, “warn them, identify yourself, fire a warning shot, but do not, repeat, do not shoot them.”

  They looked at Miller. He nodded. “Unless they are threatening your life.” He checked the load in his gun. The patrolmen did the same. Then they walked to their positions.

  After giving them a little time Miller and I walked silently across the lawn to the front door.

  It was about eight thirty, dark. Lights shone upstairs and downstairs to our right. Muted lights showed elsewhere.

  I felt the kind of majesty that a big house can have, especially when you are walking across the lawn as if you owned it. The Crystal Palace.

  Leander Crystal answered the door. He stood for a moment taking in the fact that there were two of us. Then he functioned. “Come in.” He led us toward the living room. Just as well. It was the only place in the house with which I felt any familiarity, felt comfortable.

  The comfort did not last. Seated in the living room was Henry Chivian, MD. He go
t up as we came in. He grinned. He couldn’t have been there long or he wouldn’t have been grinning from what Leander told him I knew. Or would he?

  “Where is everybody?” I asked as we sat down. Us two facing them two. Leander said, “Fleur and Eloise are upstairs. What can I do for you? And who is this gentleman?”

  “This is Jerry Miller. He is a friend of mine and he is also a sergeant of police.”

  “Police!” He stood up. I forgave him that. Anyone would be nervous on a day his deceptions of sixteen years had been coming down around his ears. What I had to establish was just how nervous he was.

  “Sit down, Mr. Crystal.” I used my fatherly voice. He sat down. Thankfully, Chivian had ceased to smile. I wanted to jump over the table between us and pull off his wig.

  Leander did the talking for their side.

  “I don’t understand, Samson. This afternoon—” He stopped himself. “What does he know?”

  I talked for our side. I spoke quietly, concentrating on his face. “He knows everything that you told me this afternoon.”

  He just sat and shook his head. “I don’t understand. I thought we had an arrangement.” Chivian clearly didn’t know anything. He was relaxed, grinning again.

  “Things aren’t quite what they were this afternoon.” Still quietly. “I’ve found out about Annie.”

  He looked at me. “What about Annie?” Chivian’s grin fell like a bomb. He lurched forward to the edge of the couch.

  “I’ve found her body.”

  “Her body!” said Crystal. “Where? When? When was she …?”

  I’m not infallible, but it was good enough for me.

  “In New York,” I said. “Central Park.”

  “But when? I don’t understand what this has to do with …?” And then I believe a wave of understanding broke inside his head. It showed in his eyes. I helped it.

  I said, “Sixteen years ago. They found her November twenty-third.”

  “Oh, my God,” he said. His head was down. In his hands.

  It must have been then that I began to hear a high-pitched laugh begin. It was low in volume to begin with. I didn’t quite notice it at the time. It’s just on recollection that I have figured out when it began.

  “Oh, my God,” he repeated. “No!” I was concentrating on Crystal. I remember wondering if he was crying, or what. I sensed tension coming into his body. And it was then that I consciously realized the sound was a laugh.

  It was hideous and growing and high-pitched. I call it a laugh because my vocabulary isn’t all that good. But it wasn’t a scream. It was getting louder. For a few instants I couldn’t find the direction. I looked at Chivian but he was looking around, too. I guess I was convinced that it was coming from Crystal. But a second after I became conscious of the sound and of Crystal’s tensing, it all began to happen.

  His head came up and I had a moment to realize that his mouth was closed and his eyes were somehow not involved in a noise like that.

  It was rising and loud and there was a bursting sort of sound. Like through a door.

  Like behind me.

  I have a visual memory of Leander Crystal diving toward my right. Somehow stronger than diving. Hurling himself.

  Then all I remember is her being on me. Turning me or my turning in reaction to her. But somehow turning so I saw three or four flashes.

  They say that she got me six times and that must have been what the flashes were.

  They call knives cold and metallic but all I felt was a hot poker ripping into my right side. And ripping again. And again.

  I have a faint notion of a red moment, of red passing before my eyes, but I wouldn’t swear to it. It might have been my blood. They say there was a lot of it. Or her hair.

  I don’t know. All I know is that at that moment I decided to lie down and go to sleep.

  41

  How they got her off me I don’t know. They don’t know. Miller says that he thinks Crystal may have deflected her when he dived for her legs. Crystal doesn’t agree. He feels like he just rolled right off her, that’s how hard she was coming. They agree that somehow they did get her off, knock her off, or she decided to leave. She got up from my body and ran for the door from the living room to the front, out the house. There is disagreement about whether she was still making that sound, but there is no disagreement that it was just as she was going through the living room door that Miller shot her.

  He had had a lot of trouble, he says, now. Trouble getting the gun out of his holster. When he did shoot she was virtually through the door. He thought he had missed her. But the coroner says he didn’t. The bullet went through the door and into her back. Apparently there were wood splinters near the entry hole. It didn’t kill her immediately, but it was a mortal wound, they say, being near the backbone. I just wonder what kind of world it can be when “mortal” wounds are fatal.

  Nobody knows when Chivian got out, but he did, and true to his devious character he went through the back to the garage and his car. They picked him up about eight miles away—the patrol cops.

  I do know, from the cop posted out front, that Fleur came out the front door as if she were sprinting. He was amazed to find out later that she had a bullet in her, especially a police .38. But the door must have taken some of the sting out of it.

  The kid’s name is Fred Wilsky; he’s not a bad kid. He says that he heard the screaming and the shot and saw her coming out the front door all about the same time. He says he drew his gun, but that without appearing to have seen him she turned the other way and ran toward the street. He says he may have forgotten to identify himself as a policeman, but he doesn’t know. He says he fired a warning shot and she didn’t break stride. Then he says he didn’t know what else to do but run after her.

  That amazes me. If it had been me I would have had that gun up and shot her full of holes. I swear I would. So help me. But maybe I’m prejudiced. I don’t like punctured lungs and broken ribs and chopped liver. And blood, and being alive now only because she got the right side of my body and not my left side. I lack a certain degree of self-control. I would have made her into mincemeat.

  Fred was just following the orders he had been given. That I had given him.

  She was about halfway down the block and Fred was about twenty yards past the front door himself when Miller got there and screamed to him, “Get her, get her.” I guess in person it was a less ambiguous instruction than it reads.

  Fred got her. When I talked to him he was upset about having shot a woman, but the coroner says she was dead anyway, would have been in a few minutes.

  Inside the house Crystal was calling an ambulance and Miller says it was for me. Before it got there he went up and got Eloise.

  She says that she had thought it was Leander who was hurt, that she knew that her mother had done something, from her laugh, but that she thought it had been Leander for making her get artificially inseminated. Miller says that Eloise was pretty cool considering, and that she sat by me for a moment until the ambulance came.

  Oh, lots of people came to the hospital to tell me cheerful tales.

  But not everyone who visited me in the hospital came to tell me things. Captain Gartland, for one. He came two days after the fact and he was literally unwilling to tell me the time of day. I wasn’t all that interested; I inquired only because from the way I felt it had to be three in the morning.

  He said he had to have some answers and had to have them now. I told him to go away. Then I pretended to go to sleep. When he didn’t leave I took the plunge and rang for the nurse. I started coughing when she came in. She did the dirty work and shooed Gartland out. But it hurt, to cough.

  Everything hurt. I won’t give you a day-to-day hospital report, but don’t believe movies that have guys doing talking a few minutes before they die. That close you don’t feel like talking. It was bad enough that my mother closed Bud’s for a couple of days to come hold my hand.

  About a week later I saw Gartland and did talk to him. I h
ad to feel a little sympathy for him. He had everybody on his back. Like New York about Annie. And the city officials and press about the circumstances surrounding the death of the daughter of Estes Graham. And the IRS people about Leander’s tax situation. And later on, the Army was interested in looking into Joshua’s death, and someone from the city talked about digging up Estes.

  Miller says he thinks Chivian and Fleur killed Annie without Leander’s knowledge. That Fleur probably did the actual cutting, having seen the way she went for me.

  Chivian’s lawyer has told the press that Fleur must have killed Annie alone; that if she had any help it was from Leander; that his client was in no way involved; and that if Chivian was involved he was an unwitting accomplice.

  Gartland wanted me to help him show they were all in on it.

  The IRS wanted to get Crystal for avoiding taxes on the money he had stockpiled in Switzerland. Andrew Elmitt saw that in the paper and called me in the hospital. It was ridiculous, he said. According to his analysis Leander recorded the money and paid taxes on it. He got it simply by stealing it from Fleur. He prepared a letter to that effect which would show how Leander’s records proved it. He wanted to know whether if he sent it to me unsigned, I would forward it to IRS and keep his name out of it. I did.

  My time in the hospital was unreal. I kept thinking about strange things, once I got used to the fact that I was actually there. I remembered that Kevin Loughery played basketball for the Baltimore Bullets against the New York Knicks in the 1969 NBA play-offs while he was recovering from a collapsed lung and a broken rib. I still find that hard to conceive. I spent three months in the hospital and I didn’t even feel like watching basketball on TV.

  42

  My last day on the case was February 20, 1971. It was a big day. I had been feeding myself for three weeks—including buying the food and cooking it. I had been answering the phone and talking civilly. Joking with people sometimes. That morning I had actually walked to the library and back, all by myself. I took out a book, the whole bit. I felt pretty whole and moderately functional. Though I spent three hours resting after I got back. I felt pretty proud of myself.