The Last Dance

by Ed McBain

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “You still think …”

  She shook her head, fell silent.

  “You’re wrong,” she said.

  Maybe they were.

  “The one with the scar, yes,” the woman said.

  It came out “Dee wan wid dee scah, yes.”

  “You know him?” Ollie said, astonished. He’d been pounding leather for close to two hours now.

  “I seed him here dee projec,” the woman said. “But I doan know him cept for dat.”

  The woman was frying bananas at the kitchen stove, tilting the frying pan from one side to the other to spread the butter. A pot of greens in garlic and oil was simmering on another burner. Something succulent was roasting in the oven, too. The woman was barefoot, wearing a loose-fitting smock with a floral design, a matching pink kerchief on her head. The kitchen was small and tidy, the cooking smells overpowering. Ollie was suddenly very hungry.

  “What’s his name, would you know?”

  “Never heerd his name,” the woman said.

  “Where’d you see him?”

  “Aroun dee projec, like I say.”

  “What are those?” he asked. “Fried bananas?”

  “Yes, mon, fried bananas, wot you tink?”

  “How do they taste?”

  “Mon?”

  “Them fried bananas.”

  “You lak to taste one?”

  “They sure look good.”

  “They be done soon,” she said.

  Ollie watched the butter bubbling around them in the pan. His mouth was watering.

  “Any idea where in the project?” he asked.

  “Playin dee saxophone,” she said. “You want summa dis now?”

  She moved the pan to an unlighted burner, forked one of the bananas onto a dish and handed fork and dish to Ollie. He speared the banana, swallowed it almost whole. Hands on her hips, smiling in satisfaction, she watched him.

  “That’s really good,” he said.

  “Yah,” she said. “Still later, they be mo better. I serves em wid vanilla ice cream.”

  He was hoping she’d offer him another one, with or without ice cream, hot or cold, but she didn’t. He put the dish back on the counter, wiped the back of his hand across his lips, and said, “He’s a musician, huh?”

  “No, but he play dee saxophone,” the woman said, and laughed.

  “Where’d you hear him play?”

  “Dee rec room,” she said.

  Gerry Palmer was packing for London when they got to his hotel room at four that Thursday afternoon.

  “Not leaving till Sunday night,” he said, “but I like to be ready well in advance.”

  The room was on the tenth floor of The Piccadilly, far less fashionable than the hotels in the sidestreets off Jefferson Avenue, and not close enough to The Stem to be considered convenient to restaurants or shows. Carella had some dim recollection that the place used to be a riding academy in the not-too-distant past, before the new mayor started cracking down on hookers using hot-bed hotels for their swift transactions. The place still had a look of seedy weariness about it, the drapes and matching bedspread a trifle shabby, the arms on both easy chairs beginning to look a bit threadbare. Carella sat in one of those chairs, Brown in the other. Palmer stood on the far side of the bed, facing them, carrying clothes from the dresser and the closet to his open suitcase on the bed.

  A brown suit, a canary-colored shirt with a white collar, a fresh pair of Jockey shorts, brown socks, and a brown silk tie were laid out neatly on the bed. Palmer explained that he’d set them aside for when he went out to dinner and a play tonight. He named the play—which neither of the detectives had seen, or even heard of—and explained that Norman Zimmer had arranged for house seats at the Ferguson Theater, all of this in the Cockney accent that made him sound like a bad imitation of an Englishman.

  “So to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” he asked.

  “Know a woman named Martha Coleridge?” Brown said.

  “Know of her,” Palmer said, “but I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Did you receive a letter from her recently?”

  “Oh indeed I did.”

  “Accompanying a play called My Room, and a copy of the opening night program?”

  “Yes. All that. Indeed.”

  “What’d you think of it?” Carella asked.

  “Can’t say I read the play. But I thought the letter quite interesting.”

  “What’d you do about it?”

  Palmer was carrying some five or six folded shirts from the dresser to the bed. He stopped, looked across the bed at the detectives, and said, “Do about it? Was I supposed to do something about it?”

  “Didn’t the letter seem threatening to you?”

  “Well, no, actually. I simply took her for a barmy old lady,” Palmer said, and began arranging the shirts in the suitcase.

  “Didn’t find her at all threatening, huh?”

  “Was I supposed to find her threatening?” Palmer said, and managed to look surprised, and amused, and at the same time somehow challenging, like a kid making a cute face for grandma and grandpa, his blue eyes opening wide, his mouth curling into an impish little grin. Again, Carella had the feeling he was imitating someone, perhaps a comic he’d seen on a music hall stage, perhaps a silly comedian in a movie. Or perhaps he was merely stupid.

  “Did you call her or anything?” Brown asked.

  “Lord, no!” Palmer said.

  “Didn’t think it was worth a call, huh?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Did you talk to either Cynthia Keating or Felicia Carr about it?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Mention it to Mr. Zimmer? Or his partner?”

  “I may have, yes.”

  “When was that?”

  “That I mentioned it to them? At the party, I would imagine.”

  “Didn’t call either of them before the party, huh?”

  “No. Was I supposed to ring them?”

  “No, but how come you didn’t?”

  “Well, let me see. The material was forwarded to me from Mr. Zimmer’s office, you know. So I assumed he already knew what it was about. In which case, there was no need to call him, was there?”

  Again the impish, somewhat insulting raised eyebrows and grin that said, Now, really, this is all quite elementary stuff, isn’t it, chaps? So why are we getting all in a dither about it, eh? Brown felt like smacking him right in the eye.

  “Didn’t you feel this woman was endangering the show?”

  “Of course I did!”

  “And a possible future windfall?”

  “Of course!” Palmer said. “But she wanted a hundred thousand dollars from each of us! A hundred thousand! She could just as easily have asked for a hundred million. I shouldn’t have been able to give her either sum, don’t you see? Do you know how much I earn in the post room at Martins and Grenville? Seven thousand pounds a year. That’s a far shout from a hundred thousand dollars.”

  Again the raised eyebrows. The wide blue eyes. The lopsided grin. Brown was doing the arithmetic. He figured seven thousand pounds came to about ten-five a year in dollars.

  “So you just let it drop,” he said.

  “I just let it …” A shrug. “Drop, yes. As you put it.” A pursing of the lips. “I simply ignored it.”

  “And now she’s dead,” Brown said, and watched him.

  “I know,” Palmer said. “I saw the news in one of your tabloids.”

  No widening of the big blue eyes this time. No look of surprise. If anything, there was instead a somewhat exaggerated expression of sorrow. More and more, Carella felt the man was acting a part, pretending to be someone a lot smarter, a lot more sophisticated than the underpaid mailroom clerk he actually was.

  “How’d you feel when you read the story?” he asked.

  “Well, I shouldn’t have wanted the woman to die, certainly,” Palmer said. “But I must
admit we’re all much better off this way.” And raised his eyebrows again, and widened his eyes, no grin this time, just a look that said Well, don’t you agree? He closed the lid on his suitcase, jiggled the numbers on the combination lock, and dusted his hands in dismissal.

  “There,” he said.

  “What time do you leave on Sunday?” Brown asked.

  “The eight o’clock flight.”

  “Then there’s still time.”

  “Oh? For what?”

  To nail you, Brown thought.

  “Catch a matinee,” he said. “Lots of Saturday matinees here.”

  “London, too,” Palmer said almost wistfully.

  The person in charge of giving out the keys to the project’s recreation room was an old black man who introduced himself solely as Michael, no last name. People seemed to have no last names these days, Ollie noticed, not that he gave a damn. But it seemed to him a person should be proud of his last name, which was for Chrissake only his heritage. Instead, you got only first names from every jackass in every doctor’s office and bank. And now this keeper of the keys here, telling him his name was Michael, served him right he’d been born a shuffling old darkie.

  “I’m looking for a Jamaican got a knife scar down his face, a tattooed star on his pecker, that plays the saxophone,” Ollie said.

  The old man burst out laughing.

  “It ain’t funny,” Ollie said. “He maybe killed two people.”

  “That ain’t funny, all right,” Michael agreed, sobering.

  “See him around here? Some lady told me he played his saxophone in here.”

  “You mean the guy from London?” Michael asked.

  They were all sitting in the squadroom, around Carella’s desk, drinking the coffee Alf Miscolo had brewed in the Clerical Office. Ollie was the only one there who thought the coffee tasted vile. Over the years, the others had come to believe the coffee didn’t taste too bad at all, was in fact the sort of gourmet coffee one might find in little sidewalk cafes in Paris or Seattle. Ollie almost spit out his first sip.

  He was there to tell them what he had learned downtown at Rockfort. The four detectives listening to him were Carella, Brown, Meyer, and Kling, who’d been dogging various aspects of this case for what seemed forever but was in actuality only since October 29. Ollie felt somewhat like a guest on a talk show. Carella was the host, and the others were earlier guests who’d moved over to make room for Ollie when he’d come on to exuberant whistling and thunderous applause. Brown and Meyer were sitting on chairs they’d pulled over from their own desks. Kling was sitting on one corner of Carella’s desk.

  This was a nice cozy little talk show here, with the temperature outside hovering at somewhere between twenty and twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, which came to six or seven below zero Celsius, more or less, good to be inside on a night like tonight. The clock on the squadroom wall read a quarter past five, or 1715, depending on your point of view. Ollie had called from downtown right after he’d spoken to Mr. Michael and then again to the lady who’d offered him another banana, asking Carella to wait for him, he’d be right there. That had been at ten to four. The snow had delayed Ollie, what can you do, an act of God, he explained. It was still snowing, the flying flakes spattering against the squadroom windows like ghosts desperately seeking entrance.

  “The way I understood it,” Ollie said, “Bridges was there with his cousin for a week or so at the beginning of November. Rec room guy remembers him coming in to practice his saxophone. I figure this was after he done the Hale murder and before he flew back home.”

  “The rec room guy told you all this?”

  “Not about the murder, that’s my surmise. He didn’t know anything about that.”

  “Then what?”

  “The cousin, the sax, him flying back home.”

  “Did you talk to the cousin?”

  “Knocked on the door, no answer. But I figured this was important enough to get moving on it right away. Which is why I’m here.”

  “Who told you the sax player’s name was John Bridges?”

  “The rec room guy.”

  “And told you he’d flown back home to Houston?”

  “Yes and no,” Ollie said, and grinned.

  “Let us guess, okay?”

  “He did not fly home to Houston, Texas.”

  “Then where did he go?”

  “Euston, England. Sounds the same, ah yes, but it’s spelled different. E-U-S-T-O-N. That’s a locality, is what they call it in London. I went back to my lady who cooks fried bananas …”

  “Huh?” Carella said.

  “A lady in the project, her name is Sarah Crawford, she cooks great fried bananas.”

  Ollie felt he now had their complete attention.

  “She’s Jamaican, she told me all about Euston and also King’s Cross—which is a nearby ward, is what they call it in London—where there are lots of hookers, drug dealers, and train stations. She didn’t know Bridges personally, but his cousin told her he lived in Euston. So that’s it, ah yes,” Ollie said. “You know anybody else from London?”

  They were waiting outside the Ferguson Theater when Gerald Palmer showed up for the eight o’clock performance that night. He was wearing a dark blue overcoat over the brown suit, canary-colored, white-collared shirt, and brown silk tie they’d seen on his bed earlier that day. His hair and the shoulders of the coat were dusted with snow. He opened his blue eyes wide when he saw Carella and Brown standing there near the ticket taker, waiting for him. There was a blond woman on his arm. She looked puzzled when the detectives approached.

  “Mr. Palmer,” Carella said, “would you mind coming along with us?”

  “What for?” he asked.

  “Few questions we’d like to ask you.”

  As if trying to impress the blonde—or perhaps because he was merely stupid—Palmer assumed the same wide-eyed, smirky, defiant look they’d seen on his face earlier.

  “Awfully sorry,” he said. “I have other plans.”

  “So do we,” Brown said.

  The blonde accepted Palmer’s gracious offer to go see the play alone while he took care of this “silly business,” as he called it, still playing the Prime Minister dealing with a pair of cheeky reporters. All the way uptown, he kept complaining about the police in this city, telling them they had no right treating a foreigner this way, which of course they had every right in the world to do, the law applying equally to citizens and visitors alike unless they had diplomatic immunity. They read him his rights the moment he was in custody. These were vastly different from those mandated in the UK, but he had no familiarity with either, as he explained to them, never having been in trouble with the law in his life. In fact, he could not understand why he seemed to be in police custody now, which was the same old song they’d heard over the centuries from ax murderers and machine-gun Kellys alike.

  Out of deference to his foreign status, they sat him down in the lieutenant’s office, which was more comfortable than the interrogation room, and offered him some of Miscolo’s coffee, or a cup of tea, if that was his preference. In response, he affected his Eyes Wide Open, Eyebrows Raised, Lips Pursed in Indignation look again, and told them there was no need to presume stereotypical behavior, in that he rarely drank tea and in fact much preferred coffee as his beverage of preference, redundantly sounding exactly like the sort of Englishman he was trying not to sound like.

  “So tell us, Mr. Palmer,” Carella said. “Do you know anyone named John Bridges?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “We think he may have killed Andrew Hale.”

  “I’m sorry, am I supposed to know who Andrew Hale is?”

  “You’re supposed to know only what you know,” Carella said.

  “Ah, brilliant,” Palmer said.

  “He’s from Euston.”

  “Andrew Hale?”

  “John Bridges. Do you know where Euston is?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Know anyone
from Euston?”

  “No.”

  “Or King’s Cross?”

  “Those aren’t neighborhoods I ordinarily frequent,” Palmer said.

  “Know any Jamaicans in London?”

  “No.”

  “When did you first learn Andrew Hale was being difficult?”

  “I don’t know anyone named Andrew Hale.”

  “He’s Cynthia Keating’s father. Did you know he once owned the underlying rights to Jenny’s Room?”

  “I don’t know anything about him or any rights he may have owned.”

  “No one ever informed you of that?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “Then you’re learning it for the first time this very minute, is that right?”

  “Well … no. Not precisely this very minute.”

  “Then you knew it before now.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did. Come to think of it.”

  “When did you learn about it?”

  “I really can’t remember.”

  “Would it have been before October twenty-ninth?”

  “Who can remember such a long time ago?”

  “Do you remember how you learned about it?”

  “I probably read it in a newspaper.”

  “Which newspaper, do you recall?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “Do you remember when that might have been?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “Was it a British newspaper?”

  “Oh, I’m certain not.”

  “Then it was an American paper, is that right?”

  “I really don’t know what sort of paper it was. It might have been British, I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “But you said it wasn’t.”

  “Yes, but I really don’t remember.”

  “How well do you know Cynthia Keating?”

  “Hardly at all. We met for the first time a week ago.”

  “Where was that?”

  “At Connie’s party.”

  “The Meet ’N’ Greet?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Never talked to her before then?”

  “Never. Am I supposed to have spoken to her?”

  “We were just wondering.”

  “Oh? About what?”

  “About when you first spoke to her.”