SHE CALLED HER LAWYER AGAIN FROM THE SQUADROOM, TO let him know she was now in a police station, and he promised to get there immediately. It was now almost ten P.m. and he still wasn’t there. They asked Andrea if she’d like a cup of coffee or something, and she told them to go to hell. They had already recited Miranda to her and presumably she now understood her rights, which is why she refused to say anything but “Go to hell” until her lawyer got here. She’d already told them his name was Hollis Foley, and that he’d be bringing with him a criminal lawyer whose name she didn’t know, so they should be expecting two attorneys to show up at any moment.
“Meanwhile, just leave me the hell alone,” she said, which was a rough equivalent of “Go to hell” again.
Kling went to his desk to call Sharyn. He was still on the phone when Andrea’s attorneys arrived at ten twenty-five, both of them brusque and businesslike, her personal attorney immediately asking Andrea if she was all right. The criminal lawyer introduced himself to the detectives—his name was Felix Bertinotti—and then asked why his client had been arrested. Carella explained that they planned to charge Miss Packer with second-degree murder, and the lawyer at once advised Andrea not to answer any questions. Andrea wanted to know if that wouldn’t look bad for her, and Bertinotti counseled that her silence could in no way be considered prejudicial if or when this specious case ever came to trial. He was already spouting “Innocent Client” talk even though there wasn’t a television camera in sight. Andrea insisted that she hadn’t done anything and therefore had nothing to fear from the police, so why couldn’t she answer whatever questions they had? The cops stood by, saying nothing. The decision was for Andrea and her attorney to make. As Carella had mentioned earlier, this was America, after all.
“May we please talk to Miss Packer privately?” Bertinotti asked, at which point Carella and Kling and Lieutenant Byrnes—who had come in when he’d learned of the arrest—debated whether or not they should get the D.A.’s Office in on this right now, or wait until they were sure they had real meat here. They decided to wait. Andrea and her lawyers did not finish deliberating till a quarter past eleven.
“Miss Packer has decided to answer your questions,” Bertinotti announced, which came as a surprise to Carella. He could never understand why it was always the hardened criminals who took full advantage of Miranda and refused to give you even the right time, whereas the amateurs always figured they could beat you at your own game. Or maybe Andrea figured this was the role of a lifetime and was now relishing the opportunity to give an Academy Award performance that would prove she was something more than just another pretty face. Besides, she had two attorneys here with her to call off all bets if the going got rough, so maybe she figured she had nothing to lose. Though her personal attorney clearly knew nothing about criminal law and would be as useful to her as an onstage telephone that didn’t ring when it was supposed to.
They read Andrea her rights yet another time and ascertained that she understood them and was willing to answer their questions. She was still in the clothes she had worn to rehearsal, blue jeans, loafers, and a lemon-colored T-shirt. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was wearing no makeup. Carella wondered if they should offer her a lollipop.
“Miss Packer,” he said, “I wonder if you can tell us where you were last night at about this time?”
The clock on the wall of the interrogation room now read eleven-eighteen P.M. Andrea sat at the head of the long narrow table, her attorneys flanking her right and left. A police stenographer was sitting alongside Bertinotti, taking notes. Kling was sitting beside him and across the table from Byrnes. Carella was standing. He worked best on his feet.
“I was home,” Andrea said.
“Home is where?” Carella asked.
“Home is where you barged in earlier tonight,” she said angrily, and snapped a look first at him and then at Kling.
“There was a search warrant,” Carella told Bertinotti, and smiled. “No doors broken down, Counselor.”
Bertinotti did not return the smile. Instead, he shrugged as if he didn’t believe Carella. He was wearing a dark blue suit, as was Andrea’s other attorney, and it looked as if he had freshly shaved before coming over here. Carella guessed he was expecting TV cameras outside, though at two hundred pounds and some five feet eight inches, one would have thought he’d try to avoid such exposure.
“What I was asking for was your address,” Carella said pleasantly. “For the record.”
“You have my address.”
“Would it be … ?”
He picked up the arrest form.
“… 714 South Hedley Avenue, apartment 4C?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. And you were there last night between what time and what time?”
“I got home from rehearsal at eight. I didn’t go out again after that.”
“Was Charles Madden at that rehearsal?”
“He was. He’s our stage manager.”
“Was your stage manager,” Carella corrected, just to keep this thing in perspective.
“Yes.”
“Did he go home with you from the theater?”
“No.”
“But you were living together, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How long had he been living in your apartment, Miss Packer?”
“Since the beginning of March.”
“Since the first of March?”
“No, the sixth, the seventh, around then.”
“Where did he live before then?”
“He had an apartment on River Street. Still had it until … well.”
“Until the time of his death?”
Again, to keep it all in perspective.
“Yes,” Andrea said.
“Which was last night at eleven-thirty.”
“That’s when I understand it happened,” Andrea said, and looked down at her hands in her lap.
This was something actresses did, Carella noticed. Lowered their eyes like nuns when they wished to appear virtuous or innocent. It was highly effective. He would have to watch movies more closely from now on, see whether the good actresses ever did it.
“You didn’t happen to be in his apartment at that time, did you?” he asked.
“No, I …”
“Really, Detective,” Bertinotti said. “She just told you …”
“Yes, but I was wondering if she might be able to clear up something that’s puzzling me.”
“What’s that?” Andrea asked.
“Miss Packer,” Bertinotti said, “you’re not required to help Detective Carella with his befuddlement.”
Andrea’s other lawyer, apparently excited by all this cops-and-robbers shit, actually chuckled at his colleague’s remark. Bertinotti seemed pleased. Andrea seemed pleased, too. All three of them were very pleased all at once, as if they’d already been to trial and won an acquittal.
“Well, I hate to see him puzzled, really,” Andrea said, smiling. “What is it you’d like to know, Mr. Carella?”
“Do you use the prescription drug Dalmane?” Carella asked.
“You know I do,” she said, still smiling. “You found a bottle of it in my medicine chest.”
“Did Mr. Madden ever use Dalmane?”
“I have no idea.”
“Because, you see, we found Dalmane in his bloodstream.”
This was clearly news to Andrea. Maybe she didn’t know you could take blood samples from a blob on the sidewalk, or maybe she didn’t think the police would have bothered testing a man’s blood when he’d obviously fallen to his death.
“Who’s we?” she asked.
“Toxicology Department at the lab.”
Andrea gave a slight shrug as if to indicate she didn’t know how this information was in any way pertinent to why she was here in a police station.
“I’m assuming,” Bertinotti said, “that you have this …”
“Yes, Counselor, we have the report.”
“May I see it?”
“Sure,” Carella said, and gave his own little shrug as if to indicate that surely the learned attorney didn’t think he was inventing a goddamn toxicology report. Handing him the sheet of paper, he turned to Andrea and casually asked, “Did Mr. Madden ever use any of your Dalmanc?”
“Yes, I think he may have,” Andrea said, recovering quickly. She now knew they had Dalmane in Madden’s blood and Dalmane in her medicine chest. Carclla figured the trick she had to perform in midair was getting the Dalmane out of her bathroom and into Madden’s blood without making it seem she’d put it there.
“When you say you think he may have …”
“I seem to remember him asking me … I don’t even remember when this was … but I think he once asked me if I had anything that could help him sleep.”
“But you don’t remember when?”
“No, I don’t. I’m telling you the God’s honest truth,” she said.
Sure, Carella thought.
“Do you think he may have helped himself to some Dalmane last night?” he asked. “To take to his apartment?”
“He may have, I can’t say for sure. He knew I had Dalmane, you see …”
“Then again, you say he didn’t go back to your apartment from the theater.”
“That’s right, he didn’t.”
“So if he did take any from the bottle in your bathroom, he must have done that before he left the apartment for the day.”
“I would guess so. I really don’t know what he did.”
“Because we didn’t find any Dalmane in his apartment, you see. Or any empty bottles that might have contained Dalmane. Which is odd, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know if it’s odd or not. I don’t know what he took or didn’t take last night. Or anytime yesterday, for that matter.”
“Well, he took Dalmane, that’s for sure. It showed in his blood work this morning.”
“I don’t know anything about blood work.”
“Neither do I, actually,” Carella lied. “What I’m wondering—out loud really—is how that Dalmane could possibly have …”
“If you’ve got anything to ask my client,” Bertinotti said, “please ask it. No wondering, please. Wonder is for sliced bread. Stick to the questions.”
“Certainly, Counselor. Question, Miss Packer. Did you go to Mr. Madden’s apartment at any time last night?”
“No, I did not.”
“You didn’t go there with him directly from the theater, did you?”
“No.”
“Or at any time later?”
“I didn’t go there at all. I was home last night. All night.”
“Did you know where Mr. Madden was?”
“Of course I did. He told me he was going to the apartment to work on his play.”
“Told you that when?”
“When we were leaving the theater.”
“After rehearsal.”
“Yes.”
“At which time you went home, and he went to the apartment on River Street.”
“Yes. He used it as a sort of office.”
“I see.”
“After he moved in with me. He would go there periodically to work on the play. He was writing a play with Jerry Greenbaum.”
“So I understand.”
“The Wench Is Dead.”
“Christopher Marlowe,” Carella said.
Andrea looked surprised.
“Do you think Mr. Greenbaum was there with him last night?” Carella asked.
“You would have to ask Mr. Greenbaum.”
“We already have.”
“Was he?”
“No.”
“Then he couldn’t have pushed Chuck out that window, could he?” Andrea said, and smiled.
“I guess not,” Carella said. “But someone did. Because a sleeping man can’t drag himself out of the bedroom and into the next room, you see.”
“He could if he was only half asleep,” Andrea said. “Maybe he took a Dalmane, as you say …”
“Which he may have got from your medicine chest that morning …”
“Well, I don’t know whether he did or not …”
“But if he did.”
“I only said he might have. I didn’t follow him around to see if he was snitching sleeping pills from the medicine chest.”
“Of course not.”
“Miss Packer, I feel I should warn you,” Bertinotti said.
“I’m only saying if he did,” Andrea said, “as you seem to think he did.”
“Well, it was in his blood,” Carella said. “I was simply repeating what’s in the toxicology report. But what you’re suggesting is he may have been wandering around in this drugged state, and just accidentally …“
“Exactly.”
“That’s something I hadn’t thought of,” Carella said. “He could have taken the Dalmane… ”
“Sure.”
“… and then was … well … walking around the apartment before he went to bed, and all of a sudden he got drowsy and just fell out the window.”
“As an actress, I can see that happening,” Andrea said.
“Pardon?” Carella said.
“A scene like that.”
“Oh.”
“It would play.”
“Him falling out the window in a half-stupor, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Packer,” Bertinotti said, trying to warn her again that this smart-ass detective was closing in and she’d better watch her onions, “I think ...”
“We know there was a woman in that apartment with him last night,” Carella said.
“It wasn’t me,” Andrea said. “Anyway, how do you … ?”
“Miss Packer,” Bertinotti said again, more sharply this time. “I think we …”
“We have vaginal stains,” Carella said. “From the sheets on the bed.”
Andrea looked at him.
“What I’d like to do,” he said, “even though I’m certain we can do this under Miranda without a court order …”
“Do what?” Bertinotti asked at once.
“Have a vaginal smear taken, Counselor.”
“You’d damn well better get a court order before you invade her privacy that way!”
“I intend to do that, sir.”
“Good, go do it. Meanwhile, the questions are finished.”
“Counselor,” Carella said, “if Miss Packer wasn’t in that bed with Mr. Madden last night, she’s got nothing to worry about. But if we come up with a DNA match, then we’ve got her there with him before he went out that window. You might want to discuss this with her in private.”
Bertinotti looked at her.
“Give us fifteen minutes alone,” he said.
He was back in ten.
“Is there a D. A. on this case?” he asked.
Nellie Brand got uptown at two minutes past midnight. Officially it was Palm Sunday, but she wasn’t dressed for church. They had caught her at a dinner party, and she was wearing her basic black and pearls with high-heeled black patent pumps. She apologized for her improbable appearance, talked to Carella to find out what they had, and then went in to talk to Andrea’s lawyers.
Foley just sat there with his finger up his ass.
Bertinotti did all the bargaining for their client.
Nellie knew her evidence wasn’t overwhelming, but she wasn’t ready to let Bertinotti plead her down to a stroll in the park. The very fact that he was willing to bargain at all told her that Packer had been in Madden’s apartment on the night he’d taken the plunge. But she knew she had nothing that really tied Packer to the Cassidy murder. Even so, she told Bertinotti she was going for Murder Two on both cases, under the theory that Packer had acted in concert with Madden on the Cassidy murder. Murder Two was an A felony that carried a lifetime sentence. Bertinotti knew she was being ridiculous, otherwise why were they here talking?
He told her he’d agree to Man One on the Madden case, if she forgot the Cassidy case entirely. She told him that was out of the question, the two cases were irrevocably linked, and if she couldn’t wrap both, she wasn’t going to deal at all. He reminded her that she already had somebody in jail for the Cassidy murder …
“Please, Counselor,” she said. “You’re not suggesting I send an innocent man to prison, are you?”
“Perish the thought,” Bertinotti said.
Foley, the jackass, actually chuckled.
“I was merely positing the notion that perhaps the voracious appetite of the public for mystery, intrigue and revenge would be sated if you dropped the A felony on the earlier murder …”
“No way.”
“… and substituted for it a B felony, to wit Conspiracy to Commit.”
“Eight and a third to twenty-five on each,” Nellie said.
“I was thinking two to six on the conspiracy.”
“No way. The max on both.”
“Concurrently.”
“Consecutively,” Nellie said.
“I can’t accept that.”
“Then get your client ready for the stirrups.”
“Mrs. Brand, she’s twenty-one years old …”
“Right. She killed two people and you want her out when she’s twenty-nine? Forget it. Let’s roll the dice, and let a jury decide. Maybe you’ll win. Maybe she won’t have to spend the rest of her life in hell on a pair of A felony convictions. But take my deal, and she’ll be out before she’s forty.”
Bertinotti thought about this for a moment.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll take the Bs. Eight and a third to twenty-five on each. Consecutively.”
“We’ve got a deal.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“Then it’s my turn,” Nellie said.
The idea came to me right after Michelle got stabbed in the alley that night. First I thought it was too bad someone hadn’t done the job properly because then the leading role in Romance would have been open, and who better to fill it than the second lead, right? Who better than me? Chuck and I were joking about it in bed that night, how unfortunate it had been, you know, that the stabber hadn’t actually killed that bitch.
We’d been living together, Chuck and I …
Well, gee, it must’ve been more than a month by then. Was it that long? I think so, yes. Since before we even started rehearsals. We fell in love the minute we laid eyes on each other. I met him when I read for the part, stage managers do that all the time, read opposite whoever’s trying out. It was so romantic. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I went to bed with him that same night, it was that kind of thing, a real coup de foudre, amazing. So romantic and sexy and immediate, do you know?
This was even before they called to say I had the part. I thought at first they meant the leading role, the starring role, because that’s what I’d read for, but instead it was the second lead, what Freddie calls the Understudy in his play. Listen, I was happy to get anything at all, believe me, I would have taken one of the bit parts, moving furniture, whatever, playing a waitress or a reporter, one of the bit parts. It galled that someone like Michelle got the part, of course, but listen, that’s the way it goes, sometimes a not very good actress gets lucky, she wasn’t a terribly good actress, you know, I mean anyone can tell you that. Even Josie is better than she was. Josie Beales, I mean, who finally …
Boy, that was amazing, I have to tell you.
I never expected that.
I think it started out as just kidding around, Chuck and me. In bed. We’d just made love, I think, it was the night she’d got stabbed, we already knew she was all right and would be back at rehearsal the next day. Chuck was telling me how much better I was … as an actress, that is. He’d never been to bed with her, I’d have killed him, that’s not what I’m saying, he wasn’t comparing us as lovers or anything. Solely as actresses. He told me, in fact, that there’d been some kind of debate about who they should offer the part to, the leading role, the Actress, the three of them had talked it over, Morgenstern and Freddie and Ashley. And they decided to offer the part to Michelle, “Probably because she had bigger tits,” Chuck said, and I said, “Oh yeah, you mean you noticed?” and we were clowning around like that when he said, “The part should really have gone to you, Andy,” and we sort of got quiet for a while, and then he said, “It would’ve gone to you if that guy had succeeded tonight.”
Well we talked about that for a while.
About whether I’d really have gotten the part if Michelle had actually got killed that night.
We decided I would have.
We decided I would have been the logical choice.
Decided, in fact, that I would still be the logical choice if anything happened to Michelle. If, for example, whoever had tried to kill her tonight came back and really did the job. We had no idea who’d stabbed her, we didn’t care who’d stabbed her, we were just saying suppose he came back and stabbed her again, only this time it took.
Then I would get her part.
We were convinced I would get her part.
Which, of course, would make me a star.
Because of all the publicity already surrounding the play, you see. And all the publicity that would come if she actually got killed.
So…
We decided to do it.
And …
Well …
He went over there and did it.
Stabbed her.
Went over there with a knife under his jacket, and threw the knife down a sewer afterward. Nowhere near her building. She lived up in Diamondback, can you believe it? I’d be scared to death going home up there at night after rehearsal. I don’t know where the knife is now. Where do sewers go? I know they don’t empty into the river because that would be polluting the water, wouldn’t it? But where do they go? Wherever they go, that’s where the knife is. It was a knife from my kitchen. A bread knife. He wrapped it in a towel and carried it under his jacket, this brown leather jacket he has. Stabbed her when she opened the door.
P.S., I didn’t get the part.
They gave the part to Josie instead.
Listen, she’s a very capable actress, I’m the first to admit that. But that’s like comparing apples and oranges, isn’t it? Josie hasn’t had the training I had, she doesn’t have the experience I have, she simply isn’t in my league.
How the hell can you figure something like that?
Chuck said maybe she was sleeping with Morgenstern.
Otherwise, why would they have passed me over …
And remember, they were considering giving the part to me in the first place, when they decided on Michelle instead …
Pass me over and give the part to her fucking understudy?
This was a B movie, am I right?
Giving the part to someone as inexperienced as Josie?
I still can’t believe it.
Well...
I started worrying about a few things. And I started thinking about a few things, too. I probably wouldn’t have done anything further … I mean, what the hell, a part is a part, you lose out on one part, there’s always another part. So, honestly, I don’t think I’d have done anything further, in spite of worrying about Chuck maybe cracking, maybe feeling remorse for what he’d done, maybe going to the police and confessing, who the hell knew what he might do? I mean, he kept telling me he loved me, would he have killed Michelle if he didn’t love me? But romance is one thing and guilt is another, and I could tell this was beginning to eat at him, especially since it hadn’t had the desired effect, we’d killed one bitch only to have another one take her place. So I was worried about him, yes, worried about whether he’d have the strength to see this thing through. Men can be so weak sometimes, even the strongest of them, physically strong, I mean, he was so big.
And I started thinking maybe we should go after Josie next, do to her what we’d done to Michelle because then they’d have to give me the part, wouldn’t they? If Josie was out of the way? Wouldn’t they have to give it to me? Who else could they give it to? The fucking cleaning lady at the theater?
And then I found the earring.
Josie’s earring.
Do you believe in fate?
I absolutely believe in fate.
I found it on the sink counter in the ladies’ room. At the theater. I almost gave it back to her. I knew it was hers, of course, I’d seen her wearing them before. Almost gave it back. Almost missed the clear signal that earring was sending me. That earring was telling me what I had to do next, you see. It was telling me how to get the part I should have had to begin with, and it was also telling me how I could quit worrying about Chuck maybe cracking and involving me in a murder that was his idea, after all, he was the one who first suggested it, you can believe that or not, I don’t care.
I figured if I could …
If I could make it look like someone had committed suicide, you see …
Well, make it look as if Chuck had committed suicide, actually …
Leave a suicide note and all.
Type up a suicide note.
Make it seem as if he was remorseful for having killed Michelle, but then …
And this was the good part.
Make it look as if the suicide had been faked, the suicide was really a murder, do you see? Someone had killed him and tried to make it look like a suicide, I’m sure you see a lot of that, I’ve been in a dozen plays where that happened. In fact, I was counting on your looking for something like that, a fake suicide. I was counting on you finding the earring I left under the bed, Josie’s earring. I was counting on you figuring she was the one who’d been there, she was the one who’d made love to him.
We made such good love that night.
I surprised him there.
Knocked on the door. Hi, Chuck.
He looked so handsome.
We made such good love.
I’d like a drink, I told him afterwards. No, don’t get up, I’ll make them. I mixed them in the kitchen, dropped two Dalmanes into his. Here’s to us, darling, here’s to our future. He was out like a light ten minutes later. I rolled him off the bed and dragged him to the bedroom window, but the damn thing was sealed shut around the air conditioner, so I had to drag him all the way into the living room, he was so big, so heavy. I left him on the floor under the window while I did what I had to do. I was still naked. I left the glasses where they were. A woman there, right? Put away the bottle of Scotch. Typed up the note. Still naked. Tried not to make it too specific because I wanted you to figure out some things for yourself. If it looked too phony, you’d begin to think it was supposed to look phony, that someone was trying to make it look phony. I wiped off everything I’d touched, even the earring. I was going to leave the earring in plain sight, but then I thought that might seem too obvious, too, so I put it under the bed. Not too far under it. I wanted it to be found. I wanted you to think she’d dropped it on the floor, Josie, and it had just rolled under the bed, and there it was. While I was getting dressed, I couldn’t find my panties, he’d tossed them across the room someplace. I almost panicked. I found them hanging on one of the dresser knobs. I’d been searching all over the floor, and there they were hanging on this knob. Can you imagine the hundred to-one shot that was? Chuck throwing them across the room and them landing on a knob? The things that happen.
Getting him out the window was the hard part.
He was so heavy. Such a big man.
I propped him up and sort of draped his arms over the sill, and then I tried hoisting him up over it. I was already dressed and beginning to sweat, struggling to lift him. I wanted to leave the apartment the minute I got him out the window, run down the back stairs, get away from the building in what I hoped would be a lot of confusion outside. But I was beginning to panic again because I wasn’t sure I could manage it, it was taking all my strength just to get his chest up onto the sill. And then all at once I … I don’t know what it was … I suddenly seemed so much stronger, maybe it was an adrenaline rush or something, I don’t know, but all at once I was lifting him and … and he was suddenly weightless … falling away from my hands … out and … and gone. Just gone.
All the way home, I kept praying you’d find the earring and think Josie was the one who’d killed him.
Because then you’d go get her.
And I’d get the part.
You didn’t see any palm trees growing in this city except in the tropical-bird buildings of the Grover Park and Riverhead zoos, and in several of the indoor buildings at the Calm’s Point Botanical Gardens. This city was no garden spot. But on Palm Sunday, you’d think the plant was indigenous to the area.
Half the Christians who carried leaves of the stuff to church that Sunday didn’t know that the day celebrated Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. All they knew was that the priest would bless the frond and then they would carry it home and fashion it into a little cross which could be pinned to a lapel or a collar. Some of the palm crosses were quite elegant with fancy little serrated tips on the post and transverse pieces.
Mark Carella wanted to know why his father hadn’t made a little cross for him, the way all the other kids’ fathers had made for their sons. Carella explained that he was no longer a practicing Catholic. April, overhearing the conversation Carella was having with her twin brother, announced that she wanted to become a rabbi when she grew up. Carella said that was fine with him.
Mark wanted to know why they had to go to Grandma’s house two weeks in a row. They were going there next Sunday for Easter, so why’d they have to go today, too?
“Grandma’s always so gloomy nowadays,” he said.
This was a true observation.
Carella took him aside and told him he had to be a little more patient with Grandma until she was able to adjust to Grandpa being dead. Mark wanted to know when that would be. Mark was ten years old. How did you explain to a ten-year-old that it took time for a woman to adjust to the traumatic death of her husband?
“I miss the way Grandma used to be,” Mark said.
Which was another true observation.
Carella suddenly wondered if the man who’d shot and killed his father realized that he’d effectively killed his mother, too.
“Why don’t you tell her?” he said. “That you miss her?”
“She’ll cry,” Mark said.
“Maybe not.”
“She always cries now.”
“I cry, too, honey,” Carella said.
Mark looked at him.
“I do,” Carella said.
“Why’d that son of a bitch have to kill him?” Mark said.
When Rosa Lee Cooke was coming along in Alabama, there weren’t any white restaurants colored folk could go eat in. The restaurant Sharyn took her to today was thronged with white people. Crane her neck hard as she could, Rosa Lee could see only one other black family there. Black man and his lighter-colored wife, three children all dressed in their Palm Sunday best. Rosa Lee herself was wearing a tailored suit the color of her own walnut complexion; Sharyn had taken her shopping for it as a birthday gift. She was also wearing a bonnet she’d bought for herself, trimmed with tiny yellow flowers. Wouldn’t be Easter till next Sunday, but she couldn’t resist previewing it today.
She wasn’t a drinking woman, a little sip of sweet wine every now and again. But today was the day Jesus had marched into Jerusalem with his head held high, and she felt a little drink in celebration might not be remiss. So when Sharyn asked if she’d like a cocktail before lunch, she said she wouldn’t mind a Bloody Mary.
Rosa Lee had been thirteen when Sharyn was born, and now—at the age of fifty-three—the women truly looked more like sisters than they did mother and daughter, a compliment both had heard so often they were now sick to death of it. Same color eyes, same color skin, same smooth complexion, but Sharyn’s hair was trimmed close to her head whereas her mother’s was shiny with tight little curls springing from below the brim of her fancy hat.
They clinked glasses and drank.
A white man at a nearby table was openly admiring them. Rosa Lee noticed this, and turned her eyes away, just like she’d done in the South when she was a little girl. No sense inviting rape, she’d been taught back then, and it had stuck with her all her life. Wasn’t a white man on earth could be trusted. Black man sees Rodney King getting beat by white cops on television, the black man says, “So what’s new? This’s been going on all along, only difference is we finally got pictures of it.” White man sees Rodney King getting beat on television, he says, “Oh, how terrible, those cops are beating that poor black man,” as if this was something didn’t happen every day of the week in every city in America, white cops beating on a black man. Or messing with a black woman. Putting their hands inside a black woman’s blouse. Doing even worse things to a black woman, touching her where they had no right touching, just because she was in their custody.
“I called last night, y’know,” she said. “Wanted to make sure you said ten o’clock for church.”
“Yes, I got the message,” Sharyn said.
“So why didn’t you call back?”
“I got in late. I called this morning, soon as I …”
“Where were you?”
“Out.”
“Who with?”
“You don’t know him.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Dinner.”
“Where?”
“In the Quarter.”
“Dangerous down there. You shouldn’t be going down there at night.”
“The Quarter? It’s mostly gay, Mom.”
“Not all of it’s gay. There’re places in the Quarter a person could get hurt.”
“Well, not where we were.”
“Where were you?”
“A restaurant called Petruccio’s.”
“Italian?”
“Yes.”
“Too much garlic in Italian food,” Rosa Lee said.
“Why’d you pick an Italian place?”
“He picked it.”
“Who’s he?”
“Man named Jamie Hudson.”
“I don’t know him. Do I know him?”
“No, Mom.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“At the hospital.”
“He a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. You staying home tonight?”
“Actually, I’ve got another date.”
“Tomorrow’s a workday, you should stay home tonight, get your rest. How you gonna help sick people, you runnin aroun all the time?”
“It’ll be an early night,” Sharyn said.
“Where you going?”
“For Chinese food.”
“I like Chinese,” her mother said. “Who with? This doctor again?”
“No, another man.”
“What’s his name?”
Sharyn hesitated.
“Bert Kling,” she said.
“Bert what?“
“Kling.”
“What kind of name is that?” her mother said.
“It’s just a name,” Sharyn said.
“That’s some kind of name, all right. How do you spell that name?”
“With a K.”
“K-L-1-N-G?”
“Yes.”
“That’s some kind of name.”
“Good afternoon, ladies,” the waiter said, materializing suddenly at their table. “May I bring you some menus?”
“Yes, thank you, please,” Rosa Lee said. “I’m so hungry all at once, aren’t you, Shaar?”
Shaar.
She had the sudden impulse to tell her mother that Bert Kling was a white man.
She squashed it like a bug.
Thieves knew all about coincidence.
They knew that if they were holding up a mom-and-pop grocery store at the same time a blue-and-white rolled by, that was coincidence and they were looking at twenty in the slammer.
Cops knew about coincidence, too.
They knew the dictionary definitions of coincidence by heart: “To occupy the same position simultaneously.”
Or: “To happen at the same time or during the same period.”
Cops knew that ninety-four percent of the people who got killed in this fair nation of ours got killed because they happened to be occupying the same position simultaneously as a person with a gun or a knife or a baseball bat. To put it yet another way, they happened to be at the same time or during the same period where something terrible was about to occur, like having their brains bashed out or their livers surgically removed.
Cops believed that every encounter on the face of the earth was coincidental.
Take it or leave it.
Bert Kling happened to be sitting in a booth with two beautiful black women in a restaurant called Pagoda Palace at nine-fifteen that night, coincidentally alone with them because Arthur Brown had excused himself not a minute earlier to go to the men’s room.
It was coincidental that two white men were sitting in the booth opposite theirs.
It was further coincidental that two black men walked into the restaurant at that moment in time and began following the headwaiter to a booth just beyond theirs.
All coincidence.
Then again, Kling wouldn’t have been sitting here with Sharyn Cooke if a hostage cop named Georgia Mowbry hadn’t got shot in the eye on the twenty-ninth of March, an event that had caused him and Sharyn to meet coincidentally the very next morning. Georgia getting shot had been a coincidence in itself; she’d just been standing there in the hallway, talking to the assigned hostage cop, when the door to the apartment opened and the guy inside started shooting.
Cops didn’t want to hear from coincidence.
Cops knew that shit happened.
Nothing happened for a minute or so.
The headwaiter seated the two black men, and asked if they’d care for something to drink, and the two men respectively ordered a Scotch on the rocks and a Corona and lime, and the headwaiter padded away. The man facing the front door—and coincidentally the table at which Kling sat across from two black women—glanced in their direction, and then said something to his friend, and then stood up immediately and walked to where Kling was sitting with his elbows on the table, smiling, in the middle of a sentence.
What he was saying was that he’d had the feeling all through the Packer Q&A that the actress thought she was playing a role on television.
“I had the feeling …”
“This dude bothering you?” the man said.
Last Saturday’s race riots were still on everyone’s mind. Lots of people had died in Grover Park last Saturday. Blacks and whites. The memory of this was part of the equation. The memory was part of this coincidental happening that was about to evolve at a frighteningly fast pace.
“Everything’s cool, man,” Caroline said.
She’d been married to Arthur Brown for a good long time now, and she was used to his size and his authority, used to feeling protected when he was around, not only because he was a cop but also because he was a loving, caring husband. But she didn’t for a moment feel threatened in any way when the black man appeared at their table. In fact, she figured the man thought he was being a Good Samaritan, two black women sitting alone here at a table, hankie sits down across from them, intruding on their space, the brother was making sure everything was all right.
But he wasn’t going away.
“It’s cool, really,” she said, and smiled in dismissal.
“Ain’t enough white women in here for you?” the man asked Kling.
“These are friends of mine,” Kling said.
“You hear whut I ast you?” the man said,
“It’s okay, we’re …”
“Hey!” one of the white men in the booth across from them yelled. “He told you he knows them. Fuck off.”
The black man turned. His friend was already coming out of the booth up the aisle. It was starting.
Kling didn’t know who threw the first punch. It didn’t really matter. He knew only that suddenly the two white guys and the two black guys were tangling, and he saw a gun in somebody’s hand—too damn many guns in this city, in this country, in this world—and he shouted “Police! Drop the gun!” and that was when he spotted Brown coming out of the men’s room at the far end of the restaurant and breaking into a run the moment he realized what was happening.
Sharyn was a cop, and she knew what to do when cops were in a situation where there was a wild gun on the scene, two wild guns as she now saw, one in the hand of a black man, the other in the hand of a white man, this was going to be last Saturday all over again! She scrambled over the low green-lacquered wall that divided their booth from the one adjoining it, long legs flashing, over and into the other booth where a white couple was digging into a steaming bowl of moo goo gai pan, “Sorry,” she mumbled, “sorry,” and ran right over them and through them, her high heels digging into the green Naugahyde seat, and dropped into the aisle on the other side, and sprinted to the front of the restaurant and called in a 10-13 from a phone hanging on the wall alongside the cigarette machine.
When Brown reached the booth, he saw Caroline standing there with one of her high-heeled shoes in her hand, holding it like a hammer, ready to hit anyone who came anywhere near her, white or black. Brown had drawn his pistol even before he saw the pair of wild guns on the scene, but that was because he’d seen Kling’s gun already in his hand, and he knew he wouldn’t have unholstered it without first considering the guidelines. Both detectives were mindful of the fact that the place was packed and that an exchange of gunfire was inadvisable, but the white man and the black man facing off with guns bigger than they were didn’t have any guidelines to worry about, and they sure as hell looked as if they were intent on shooting to kill at any moment now. Brown was bigger than Kling or any of the other men, and he could yell louder than anybody in this city. He shouted at the top of his lungs that he was a police officer and that if everybody didn’t drop all those goddamn guns in the next ten seconds he was going to break some mighty hard heads here.
It was over as soon as it started.
Everybody had calmed down and everything was under control by the time the six radio cars squealed into the curb outside in response to Sharyn’s call.
Coincidentally, the white man who’d told the brother to fuck off was wanted for armed robbery in the state of Arizona.
In bed that night, he asked her what she’d thought of the evening.
“The food or the floor show?” she asked.
“The company,” he said.
“I’ve always liked Bert,” she said. “And I liked her a lot, too.
“You think it’ll work?” Brown asked.
“I hope so,” Caroline said.
They undressed each other in the dark.
They could have been white and white, or black and black, or anything and anything for that matter, because they could not see each other in the dark. Kissing in the dark, standing inches apart from each other, they undid buttons and lowered zippers until at last they were naked in the dark, pressed against each other in the dark, hard against her, soft against him, touching, feeling, blind in the dark. In the dark, her skin was silken smooth, it felt like polished alabaster. In the dark, his skin was silken smooth, it felt like polished ebony in the dark.
They moved to the bed at last, and lay side by side in the dark together, kissing, touching, exploring in the dark, lips against lips, flesh against flesh, their ardor heightened by what had happened earlier tonight, their desire fueled by a desperate need to demonstrate that it could be otherwise, it did not have to be that way, it could he this way, hearts beating together in the dark.
He entered her in the dark and felt her enfolding him and enclosing him, murmuring softly against his lips as he thrust more deeply into her, gently in the dark, withdrawing again and moving into her again, hips rising to meet each thrust, wet and warm in the dark, his measured steady rhythm drawing from her a measured steady response until together they learned a wilder heat, found together a greater freedom, discovered together a riff that joined them in the dark, and rushed them thunderously toward a farther shore where they shattered against each other in the dark and clung to each other like children.
Later, in the light, they looked at each other.
He was still white.
She was still black.
“Let’s give it an honest shot,” she said.
“Let’s,” he said.