The Last Dance

by Ed McBain

  My Room

  by Martha Coleridge

  What was inside the binder looked like some kind of play or something. They tossed it on the bed with all the other crap.

  The first thing that attracted the Reverend Gabriel Foster to the case was the fact that the white suspect had been released on bail whereas his black counterpart had been denied bail and remanded to the Men’s House of Detention. Same crime, same judge, two shooters, one white, one black, different disposition.

  That was the first thing, but it wasn’t enough to send him running through the streets, because what he was sensing here was a change in the public mood. Whereas Maxwell Corey Blaine and Hector Milagros had at first been treated like national heroes for disposing of that vilest of human beings, the informer, they were now being pilloried as monsters or worse because a second informer—who was now a media darling and something of an instant heroine—had for a substantial reward turned in the white man, who had at once copped a plea and given up his partner, the black man who’d been denied bail. The world was full of no-good dirty rats these days, but Foster wasn’t about to take up the banner for a pair of universally reviled murderers.

  Until a pair of ambitious detectives made life easier for him.

  The partners were named Archie Bingman and Robert Tracey, familiarly called Bingo and Bop by the people who lived in Hightown, where Enrique Ramirez ran his pool hall and his drug operation. They had been dogging El Jefe’s tracks for the past year and a half now. Under the federal Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, murders committed in the furtherance of criminal enterprise were punishable by lifetime sentences. The Colombian cartel was most definitely a racketeer-influenced and corrupt organization. If they could tie the Guido’s Pizzeria murder to El Jefe’s drug operation, he’d be sitting on his ass in Kansas for the rest of his life, Toto.

  Bingo and Bop felt certain that the two shooters hadn’t revealed anything that might incriminate Ramirez. The indicted pair knew well enough that the long arm of the cartel could reach into the loneliest of prison cells, and they did not long for an icepick in the eye one dark and stormy night. Better to ride the road upstate alone, do the time, and breathe easy. Besides, if the pair had traded Ramirez for some kind of Chinese deal, the grand jury would have already indicted him. Bingo and Bop knew of no such paper handed down.

  It galled them to know that one of Ramirez’s hit men was sitting downtown in custody, where any police officer with a bit of ingenuity could gain access to him and perhaps learn something about who had sent whom to shoot the hapless little stoolie neither of the detectives had ever met or used. They already knew who had sent Milagros to that pizzeria because it was common knowledge up here in the Eight-Nine that Milagros and his partner Blaine were two of El Jefe’s cleanup men. In the American criminal justice system, however, knowing something wasn’t enough. You also had to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, worse luck.

  That Monday night, the sixth of December, while two detectives in Hopscotch filed their DD-5 on the little old lady who’d had her neck broken, and the reverend Foster pored over that day’s newspapers trying to figure out a way to turn the arrest of Hector Milagros to his advantage, Bingo and Bop drove downtown to the Men’s House of Detention in its new quarters on Blanchard Street, and told the jailer on duty they were there to see the Guido’s Pizzeria shooter. The jailer wanted to know on whose authority.

  “We’re investigating a related drug matter,” Bingo said.

  “You got to go through his lawyer,” the jailer said.

  “We already talked to him,” Bop said. “He told us it’s okay.”

  “I need it in writing,” the jailer said.

  “Come on, don’t break ’em, willya?” Bingo said. “Where the fuck we gonna find his lawyer, this hour?”

  “Find him tomorrow,” the jailer said. “Come back tomorrow.”

  “We got something hot can’t wait till tomorrow,” Bingo said.

  “You ever hear of hot pursuit?” Bop said.

  “I never heard of hot pursuit leadin to a jail cell.”

  “Come on, we want to nail this cocksucker sellin dope to your kids.”

  “My kids are grown up and livin in Seattle,” the jailer said.

  “Ten minutes, okay?”

  “The door was open, and you walked in,” the jailer said.

  Milagros was in his cell reading his Bible. One other cell in the hall was occupied by an old man mumbling in his sleep. Milagros had never seen these guys in his life, and he wondered how they’d got in here. His lawyer hadn’t mentioned anything about anybody coming to see him. Far as Milagros knew, he’d be sitting on his ass here in The Catacombs till his case came to trial. The way his lawyer had explained it, you couldn’t convict somebody solely on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. Anyway, who was gonna believe a guy who tried to kill five cops and succeeded in hurting one of them pretty bad? Nobody, that’s who. Just sit tight and you walk, his lawyer had said, which was fine with Milagros. So who were these two guys, and what did they want here, this hour of the night?

  The door clicked open electrically. Bingo and Bop entered the cell, and closed the door behind them. From the far end of the corridor, the jailer threw the switch that locked it again.

  Bingo smiled.

  Milagros had learned a long time ago all about guys who came at you smiling.

  The other one was smiling, too.

  “So tell us who sent you to the pizzeria,” Bingo said.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Milagros asked.

  “Nice talk,” Bop said.

  “We’re two fellas gonna send your boss away,” Bingo said.

  “What boss you talkin abou’, man?”

  “Enrique Ramirez.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “Oh dear,” Bingo said.

  “Get the fuck outta here, I call d’key.”

  “The key is down the hall takin a leak,” Bop said.

  “I wake up dee whole fuckin jail you don’ ged outta here,” Milagros said.

  “Oh dear,” Bingo said again.

  “Someone I’d like you to meet,” Bop said, and yanked a nine from a shoulder holster. “Mr. Glock,” he said, “meet Mr. Milagros.”

  Milagros looked at the semi.

  “Come on, whass dis?” he said.

  “Dis,” Bop said, mimicking him, “is a pistol. Una pistola, maricón. Comprende?”

  “Come on, whass dee matter wi’ you?”

  “Who sent you to kill that fuckin pussy-clot?”

  “Nobody. He owe us money, we go on our own.”

  “El Jefe sent you, didn’t he?”

  “You know who El Jefe is?” Milagros said, and tried a smile. “My mama is El Jefe. Thass wha’ me an’ my brudders call her. Jefita.”

  “Gee, is that what you call your mama?” Bingo said.

  “Is that what you call your whore mama?” Bop said.

  “’Ey, man, watch your mou’, okay?”

  “You watch your mouth,” Bop said, and rammed the barrel of the nine against Milagros’s lips.

  “’Ey, man …”

  “Eat it!” Bop said.

  “Man, what you…?”

  Bop swung the muzzle sideways across Milagros’s mouth. There was the sound of something snapping. There was a spray of blood. Teeth clicked loose and spilled onto the air.

  “Jesus Chri …”

  “Shhh,” Bingo said.

  “Eat it,” Bop said again, and slid the barrel of the gun into Milagros’s mouth.

  “Quiet now,” Bingo said.

  Milagros began to blubber. His eyes were wide. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth, around the barrel of the nine.

  “Who sent you to kill him?”

  Milagros shook his head.

  “No, huh?” Bop said, and cocked the pistol. “Who?” he insisted.

  Milagros shook his head again.

  “You ought to go see your dentist again,” Bingo
said, and nodded.

  Bop swung the gun against Milagros’s mouth.

  He almost choked on his own teeth.

  The jailer didn’t see what had happened to Milagros until he made his rounds at midnight. Long before then, he had clicked open Milagros’s cell from his end of the corridor and had watched the two detectives approaching the steel door with its bulletproof viewing window, and had let them out into the small holding room, and then out of the complex itself. Now, as he came down the corridor, the old man in the cell next to Milagros’s was sitting upright on his cot, his eyes wide, but saying nothing. The jailer knew right away something was very wrong.

  Milagros was lying on the floor of his cell.

  There was blood on the floor, and scattered teeth, and what looked and smelled like vomit. There was also another smell because Milagros had soiled himself while the two detectives were methodically knocking every tooth out of his mouth, but the jailer didn’t yet know the full extent of what had happened here, he saw only the blood and a handful of teeth in the spill of light from the after-hours illumination in the corridor.

  The jailer had read enough newspapers in the past few months.

  He didn’t even go into Milagros’s cell. He went back down the corridor, past the cell of the old man with the wide accusative eyes, and he unlocked the steel door at the far end, and locked it again behind him, and walked directly to the wall phone by the officers’ station, and called his immediate superior, the Security Division captain on duty.

  The jailer’s story was that two detectives had come into the lockup showing a piece of paper authorizing them to question Hector Milagros. He couldn’t remember their names. He’d asked them to sign in, and he assumed they both had; he hadn’t looked at the log book afterward. He told the captain they’d been in the prisoner’s cell for about half an hour, and that he hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary during that time. Then again, there was a thick steel door at the end of the corridor. He said he couldn’t remember having seen either of the detectives down here before, nor could he remember what either of them looked like, except that one had a mustache. The duty captain figured the man was covering his own ass.

  He read newspapers, too.

  Lest anyone later accuse him of having delayed while a story was being concocted, he called an ambulance at once, and had the prisoner expressed to nearby St. Mary’s, the same hospital Sharyn Cooke had moved Willis from not four nights earlier. Then he telephoned the deputy warden of Security Division, who listened to the story from his bed at home, alternately expressing surprise and grave concern. The deputy warden in turn woke up the warden, who was commanding officer of the entire facility. The warden debated waking up the supervisor of the Department of Corrections, but finally called him at home. The Police Commissioner himself was awakened at close to three in the morning. It was he who informed the media at once, before anyone began thinking a cover-up was taking place here.

  Gabriel Foster didn’t hear the news until he turned on his television set the next morning.

  That same morning, Carella first called Cynthia Keating’s attorney to tell him he hoped he didn’t have to yank her before a grand jury to get a few simple questions answered, and when Alexander started getting snotty on the phone, Carella said, “Counselor, I haven’t got any more time to waste on this. Yes or no?”

  “What questions?” Alexander asked.

  “Questions pertaining to the rights she inherited from her father.”

  “In my office,” Alexander said. “Ten o’clock.”

  They got there at five minutes to.

  Alexander was wearing chocolate-brown corduroy trousers, tan loafers, a beige button-down shirt, a green tie, and a brown tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He looked like a country gentleman expecting the local pastor for tea. Cynthia was wearing a pastel-blue cashmere turtleneck over a short miniskirt, navy blue pantyhose, and high-heeled navy patent pumps. She looked long and leggy, her dark hair styled differently, her makeup more unrestrained. Altogether, she seemed to exude an air of self-confidence that hadn’t been apparent that first morning in October, after she’d admittedly dragged her father from his perch on the closet door to his new resting place on the bed. Apparently, the prospects of a hit musical did wonders for the personality. Alexander, on the other hand, seemed his same brusque, blond, blustering self.

  “What do you want from my client?” he said. “Twenty-five words or less.”

  “Honesty,” Carella said.

  “That’s a lot less,” Meyer said.

  Alexander shot him a look.

  “She’s always been honest with you,” he said.

  “Good,” Carella said. “Then we won’t have to work so hard, will we?”

  “Tell me something. You don’t really think she had anything to do with her father’s murder, do you?”

  Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer gave a faint shrug, a brief nod.

  “She’s a suspect, yes,” Carella said.

  “Have you shared that thought with anyone else? Anyone outside the police department, for example? Because I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, if Mrs. Keating is libeled …”

  “The hell with this,” Carella said. “Let’s go, Meyer.”

  “Just a second, Detective.”

  “I told you on the phone I won’t waste any more time with you,” Carella said. “If I walk out of here empty, I go straight to the D.A.’s office. Yes, no, which? Say. Now.”

  “I’ll give you half an hour, no more,” Alexander said, and went behind his desk, and tented his hands and sat there scowling at the detectives.

  “I’ll make this brief,” Carella said. “At the time of your father’s death, you knew he’d left you the rights to Jessica Miles’s play, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You told us about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar insurance policy …”

  “Yes?”

  “And your concern that it might contain a suicide clause …”

  “That’s right. But …”

  “Why didn’t you also mention you’d inherited the play?”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “You didn’t …”

  Carella turned away from her. He looked at Meyer, who said nothing. He went back to her. There was a tight, controlled look on his face. Meyer watched him.

  “How much were you paid for the license to those rights?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Alexander said.

  “Okay, so long,” Carella said. “Meyer? Let’s go.”

  “Three thousand dollars for a year’s option,” Cynthia said at once. “And three thousand for a second year, if it hadn’t been produced by then.”

  “What kind of royalties are you getting?”

  “Same as the others.”

  “Which others?”

  “The guy in London …”

  “Gerald Palmer?”

  “Yes. And the cab driver in Tel Aviv. And the girl from Los Angeles. The redhead in the long gown. Felicity Carr.”

  “Felicia,” Meyer corrected.

  “Felicia, yes. We’ll be sharing six percent of the weekly gross.”

  “Do you realize how much money …?”

  “Cynthia, you can end this any time you want to,” Alexander said.

  “And go before a grand jury?”

  “I hardly think the gentlemen will convene a grand jury simply to …”

  “Do you realize how much money that can come to?” Carella said. “Six percent of the gross? Split four ways?”

  “I imagine quite a lot,” Cynthia said. “If the show’s a hit.”

  “Then how can you say …?”

  He turned away from her again. Walked back. Let out his breath.

  “Do you want us to arrest you?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how can you say you didn’t think it was i
mportant? You tell us about a lousy little insurance policy …”

  “Lower your voice, Detective. She’s not in Canada.”

  “… but you don’t tell us about a play that can eventually earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for you? Because you don’t think it’s important?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “I think that’s enough,” Alexander said.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “I said that’s …”

  “I said I’m not finished.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “When did you sign over the rights to that play?”

  “I did not kill my father.”

  “When, Mrs. Keating?”

  “I didn’t kill him, damn it!”

  “When?”

  “Right after the will was probated.”

  “And when was that?”

  “Two weeks after his death,” she said.

  8

  NELLIE BRAND came to the case with a cool assistant district attorney’s eye, ten years of experience in the D.A.’s office, and the hood of a ski parka pulled up over her short blondish hair. That Tuesday morning, when she was about to leave for the office, her husband suggested that perhaps she ought to dress for work a bit more conservatively than blue jeans, a heavy sweater, the ski parka, and boots. She had informed him—somewhat curtly, he thought—that there was slush on every street corner, and she wasn’t heading for the Governor’s ball, but thanks a lot.

  Now—somewhat curtly, Carella thought—she told Lieutenant Byrnes and the detectives gathered in his office that they were premature in looking for a Murder One charge against Cynthia Keating, when all they really had on her was maybe Obstructing and …