“Don’t even think of answering that one!” Jerry shouts.
I pause and then say anyway, “Well, she thought I was the boyfriend, but I told her I wasn’t.”
“Do you even want me here?” Jerry asks me. “I could be back at the office, doing something productive.”
“I don’t have anything to hide, Jerry. I’m not the boyfriend.”
“Henry, Henry,” Jerry says, pulling at his hair. “Don’t you see? They think you are.”
“Okay,” Sirken says. Let’s go back to Sherry on the night of April 30. Isn’t it true that you waited till the morning before you called 911?”
“I was sleeping. I only discovered that Sherry was hurt when I woke up.”
“Wasn’t Sherry a smart feisty woman?”
“Still is.”
“Of course. But don’t you suppose that during this terrible scene, she would have cried out to you, fought back, made some noise?”
“Yeah, I would….”
“How could you have slept through such a commotion?”
“I don’t know. I feel terrible.”
Jerry interrupts here with, “It’s not your fault, Henry. It’s not your job to catch the criminal. It’s the job of the NYPD. The Detective’s just trying to shift the blame. They haven’t come up with anyone so they’re trying to blame it on you.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Well, Henry,” Sirken says. “If there truly were an invader who attacked Sherry that night, why did you wait to call the police till the following night?”
“I...I forgot.”
“You forgot,” Sirken says, smiling.
“All I could think of was Sherry and getting her to the hospital.”
“Exactly,” Jerry says.
“Or was it that you didn’t want anyone to investigate the crime scene until you could clean everything up? The officer on the scene said he caught you with a bottle of Lysol.”
Jerry turns to me. “Henry, is that true?”
“No! Yes! I was cleaning up the rug I puked on.”
“Let’s put our cards on the table, Henry, now that Sherry has recovered so well,” Sirken says. “Wasn’t it you who hit Sherry?”
Suddenly, Jerry stands up. “My client isn’t answering any more questions.”
They let me go back to my cell, but they don’t let me sleep. Every time I begin to doze off, someone comes in and wakes me up. In the morning they start again.
This time I don’t say a thing till Jerry comes into the room, bleary-eyed himself.
“Okay, let’s talk about the drugs we found in your apartment.”
Jerry looks very upset. He leans over and starts whispering to me, “What fucking drugs?” I never heard him talk like that before.
“Fifteen cases of Somnolux,” the detective says.
Jerry sits down again. “Oh, prescription drugs.”
“Yeah,” Sirken says. “Fifteen cases with the same serial numbers that were stolen last month out of the Duane Reade you work for, Henry.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yes, really. How’d they get there?”
“Not a clue,” I say. Jerry beams at me.
“Where’s the sixteenth?” Sirken asks.
“I used it up,” I answer. Jerry claps his hand over my mouth a second too late.
“I see. And where’s the Oxycontin? Did you get a good price for it?”
I push Jerry’s hand away. “I never took that stuff. I never saw any Oxycontin. It wasn’t me.”
“But you took the Somnolux.”
“No, it just kind of materialized in my medicine cabinet.”
“Materialized?” Sirken laughs.
“If my client says he didn’t take it, he didn’t take it,” Jerry says.
Sirken ignores him. “Why did you use the Somnolux?”
“I can’t sleep. It’s the only thing that helps me sleep,” I yawn.
Jerry gets up at this point. “You’ve got to let my client sleep. Keeping him up constitutes torture.”
“Fine,” Sirken says, standing up. “We’ll continue this later.”
They let me go back to my cell, but again they don’t let me sleep. Every time I begin to doze off, someone comes in and wakes me up. Late afternoon, they start again. Jerry’s late.
“This is the last time you know. You’ve got another twelve hours. If you don’t charge him, my client walks,” Jerry announces as he comes in.
We all sit down again. All of a sudden, the door opens; a young Hispanic cop comes in and whispers something into Sirken’s ear. Sirken gives a loud hoot of laughter. “Go back and ask him about the Somnolux,” she tells him, still chuckling, and the cop goes out. We just sit there waiting to start the interrogation.
“You’ll both be interested in this,” Sirken says. “I just got word that the Oxycontin finally hit the streets.”
“You hear that, Henry? You’re off the hook,” Jerry says.
“Not quite. But we caught this guy in the act of trying to sell two cases of Oxycontin to an undercover police officer.”
“Who was it?” I ask, on the edge of my seat.
Sirken’s smiling as she answers, “Oh, not your typical drug dealer. White guy, about 6'2', heavy-set, mid-forties, hair like Michael Jackson.”
“Carl! OhmyGod, it wasn’t me after all...it was Carl!” I start to laugh, too.
“Who’s Carl?” Jerry asks.
“My ex-boss,” I tell him, laughing. Why I’m laughing, I don’t know. Here I am in jail, still under suspicion of stealing sixteen cases of Somnolux and attempting to murder my girlfriend. Just then the same young cop comes back in, and stands there at attention until Sirken acknowledges him.
“What’d he say?” Sirken finally asks.
“You should see this guy. The poor schmuck’s falling all over himself, apologizing. ‘It’s my first time, Officer. I’ve never committed a crime before. I didn’t mean it.’ You know. I asked him about the rest of the haul, and he told me everything. He’s been sitting on it all, trying to find a contact. The Oxycontin is the first he tried to move. He’s got all the rest except the Somnolux, which he admits to planting in Henry Jackman’s bathroom cabinet.”
“But why?” I shout. “He told me to stop using it!”
The cop turns to me, apparently confused over whether he should tell one suspect about another one’s crimes. “Go ahead,” Sirken says. “This is Henry Jackman.”
“Ah,” he says. “Mullins says he knew you’d think you had taken it yourself. He was hoping you might confess to the whole thing, and he’d be off the hook.”
“And you were working for this gonif?” Jerry says to me.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “Carl was my buddy.”
“With buddies like that, no wonder you can’t sleep,” Jerry says.
“Good job, Phil,” Sirken says. The cop goes out.
“So,” Sirken says, without missing a beat. “How long have you been taking Somnolux, anyway, Henry?”
I look over at Jerry, but he doesn’t seem to have any objection to my answering this question. “Better part of a year,” I say. “On and off.”
“You have memory lapses of what happens after you take it?”
“Um,” I say. “I’m sleeping. What am I supposed to remember?”
“Well, I’ve been reading about parasomnias...Sleepwalking, sleep-eating, sleep-driving. You experience any of these?”
“No,” I say, yawning.
“Did you sleepwalk as a child?”
“Um.” I look at Jerry who’s just looking confused. “Yeah, sometimes.”
“Do you still?”
“No.”
Sirken looks down at the table. “You ever take Somnolux with alcohol?” she asks, examining her fingers.
“Um. Yeah,” I yawn again. “Couple of times.”
Jerry leans over to me. “Did they let you sleep?”
“Not really,” I whisper back, my head on the table.
“Okay,” J
erry says, standing up. “I’m not letting my client answer any more questions until he gets some shuteye.”
I stand up too, swaying. Sirken sits there. “Just one moment,” she says, looking at me. “I agree to let you sleep. On one condition. That you take some Somnolux first.”
Jerry looks undecided. “You don’t sleepwalk anymore?”
“Nah,” I say.
“You okay with this?”
“Somnolux? Sure. Though I don’t need it.” I yawn, “I could fall asleep on a dime.”
“Fine,” Sirken, says to the guards outside. “Escort him back to his cell. Give him twenty mg of Somnolux.”
“I only need ten,” I say, stumbling out the door, the same burly guy at my back.
“See you in the morning, Henry,” Jerry calls to me. “I’ll be here to take you home.”
“Thanks, Jerr,” I call.
Burly guy escorts me to my cell, where I drop down on the bed. He’s got two 10 mg tablets which he drops into my palm. I throw them both in my mouth and swallow some water from a glass he hands me. Hello, oblivion.
* * *
The next thing I know, the burly guard is back, shaking me.
“Hey,” I tell him, yawning. “I just lay down. You’re supposed to let me sleep.”
Burly points to the little barred window. The sun’s coming up: I must have slept eight hours at least. I catch a glimpse of Jerry hanging around the open cell door.
“Hey, Jerr,” I say. “You come to spring me?”
“They say they have new evidence,” Jerry tells me, looking worried. “Don’t say anything. Let me handle this.” The three of us walk down the corridor, Burly at my back, all heading toward the same interrogation room
“Okay by me,” I say. What could they have come up with in eight hours?
Burly opens the door, pushes me in. Jerry sits down. I go over to the mirror and make faces. Sirken comes in, smiling. This time it looks real.
Jerry points over to a DVD player and TV I hadn’t noticed. “What’s that for?”
“Evidence,” Sirken says. She shuts off the lights, turns on the TV and presses play. The screen shows a timestamp: last night, 2:00 a.m.
The video shows the door to this very room opening, and there I am, coming in. This is all very bizarre. I have absolutely no memory of this. Absolute black-out.
“Inadmissable evidence, since I wasn’t here,” Jerry declares to the detective. Then, to me, “Why didn’t you call me? Don’t tell me you waived your right to have a lawyer present.”
I have this irresistible urge to say I wasn’t there, but it seems I was. I stare hard at the screen, trying to figure out what’s wrong with this picture. Something about my body language, the expression on my face. Can’t a thing like this be faked?
Henry-onscreen walks with a swagger. On my face is this smug smile. I pull the chair out for myself, stepping over the seat with one leg as if it were a horse, John Wayne style. Sirken’s already seated on the other side of the table. Her face is a study in shock.
Sirken stops the video for a minute. “As you see, you’re fully conscious.”
Jerry is sitting straight up in his chair now, looking at me. “Shit, Henry. What is going on?”
“I promise you, Jerr...” I say, but he waves me off.
“You let them take you into this room and videotape you without me? What did you do, confess?”
“Okay,” Sirken says. “Let’s continue.” Before we can say anything we regret, she pushes play.
Henry-onscreen is sitting there looking at Detective Sirken with this sexy, bedroom eyes look. “Hey, there, Babe,” I say.
“Babe?” Sirken says, looking like someone hit her in the head.
“You’re not so bad looking, Detective. You just should take better care of yourself. Get a good haircut. Something a little more feminine. And from what I can see you’ve got some bodacious boobs. Show ‘em off a little.” He’s, I mean, I’m, leering at her.
“Henry?” she says.
“Edward. You mean you can’t tell the fucking difference?” There’s that smug smile again. “Henry’s a fucking dweeb.”
“Edward,” she says, pausing for half a minute at least. “Edward Jackman?”
“Fucking right.”
“So you’re not just sleepwalking.”
Henry-onscreen gives this low, virile chuckle. Sirken’s pupils are dilating, just looking at him. “Is that what you thought would happen?” he says. “Henry would get up, walk in here like a zombie and fucking confess to everything?”
“I...I hadn’t gotten that far. I had read about Somnolux and parasomnias. I thought you were sleepwalking when you committed the crimes.”
“Uh, huh. Don’t say I committed crimes. That’s slander. You don’t have any fucking proof.”
Sirken seems to be recovering her wits. “We have plenty of circumstantial evidence. And an eye witness.”
“Eye witness my ass. She identified me as being there that night. So was Ryan. Why don’t you arrest him?”
Sirken leans over the table. “So who are you, Edward Jackman?”
He, I mean I, is staring at her chest. He makes a grab for one of the buttons on her uniform. “Yeah, I was right about those boobs. What they lack in perkiness they make up for in size. You shouldn’t hide them away like that.”
Sirken leans back suddenly, making sure her top button is closed. “You only come out when Henry takes Somnolux?” she asks.
“Plus something. Alcohol, usually. Tonight you got the poor slob so exhausted, I practically fell out.” At this point, He, I mean I, get up and start walking around the room. I stop right in front at the two-way mirror, and the camera gets a good shot of me cleaning my teeth.
“Is Henry conscious of you?” Sirken asks.
“Are you kidding? That doofus? He doesn’t have a fucking clue what’s going on. I’m the one in charge.”
“You mean you’re conscious when he’s awake?”
“Yeah,” I say, coming back and slinging my leg back over the chair to sit down. “I know every fucking thing that happens.”
Sirken gives her second smile of the evening, like she’s gotten over the shock of whatever this is. You can tell by her body language that she’s ready to play. “Then, I guess you’re the guy I want to question, Edward.”
“Knock yourself out,” Henry-onscreen says. “But my attorney’s not here, so I probably won’t answer.”
Sirken goes into her act. “How did you know Jessica?”
What he tells her surprises me, because it sounds like the truth. “I was hanging around Ryan’s house, spying on him to see what Sherry was fucking up to. I buzzed Jessica’s button to get in. I gave her some story; I don’t remember what. Anyway, one thing led to another. She was a pretty good fuck.”
“Did you kill her?”
“You think I’m stupid enough to say yes to that? I wasn’t even there that night.”
“Arlene says you were.”
“Arlene only has half a fucking brain.”
“Did you have sexual intercourse with Arlene?”
That low, virile laugh. Sirken’s chest heaves a little. “What do you think?” he says.
“I think yes.”
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t worth the fucking trouble.”
“So where were you on the night of July 6?
“Home nursing a cold.”
This goes on forever. Henry-onscreen admits to nothing. I’m almost ready to fall asleep.
Then, suddenly, “Is Alicia’s baby yours?”
Jerry and I both perk up.
“Yeah, probably. So what?”
“Is that what Diego thought?”
“Do I care?”
“You knew Diego?”
“In passing. I didn’t fucking kill him.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Henry already told you that.”
This goes on awhile. She doesn’t get anything worthwhile out of him. Sirken is beginning to look fr
ustrated and exhausted. Somehow, Henry-onscreen looks great. Better than me. I don’t know what it is about him. Same face, same body, but somehow the whole package is differently arranged: sort of intense and laid-back at the same time, radiating sex and heat and arrogance. You can see it getting to Sirken. She’s tired, but her eyes shine. She smiles at him when she shouldn’t. I never knew I had it in me.
“How about a fucking coke?” he tells her. He doesn’t ask; he commands. And, would you believe it? Sirken gets up and goes out the door, coming back a couple of minutes later with a iced coke, slice of lemon on top. I mean she never did that for me. Whatever me means. I don’t know. I was just beginning to accept that I was doing shit in my sleep, and now I find that someone else was using my body. It’s just too much for me to figure out. I’m tired again, probably because I wasn’t sleeping those eight hours I thought I was sleeping. I’m feeling foggy and out-of-it. I’m watching my own image with someone else’s mojo. Jerry, on the other hand, is watching the screen like it was Gladiator or something. He’s totally engrossed. Every once in awhile, he looks over at me and says something like, “That was a good one.” I think he needs sleep more than I do. He’s not objecting to anything.
Sirken looks like she’s almost down for the count. The eyelids are stuck halfway between open and closed. Her shoulders are hunched in defeat. Henry-onscreen is leaning back in his chair, grinning.
“Let’s go back to Sherry. Why were you trying to kill her?”
“I wasn’t.”
“We caught you in the act of smothering her with a pillow.”
“That’s your interpretation,” he says.
“What’s yours?”
“I was trying to wake her up.”
“You think a jury will believe that?”
“What would I want to kill her for?” Henry-onscreen laughs. “She’s half dead already.”
“She told you she knew who attacked her. You had to make sure she didn’t tell anybody it was you.”
“Sherry didn’t remember shit. You told her to say that.”
“Maybe,” Sirken says. “But you couldn’t take the chance, could you? Why else were you there?”
“I wanted to see her.”
“In the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, well that’s when I come out,” Henry-onscreen fires back. “How the hell would I see her during the day?”
Come Out Tonight Page 23