Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (25 page)

“When you wonder aloud then … would that be a fair statement? When you
wonder
if Coop and I caught a cab uptown, broke down Michelle’s door, and brutally ...

“Murdered her.” Carella supplied.

Kendall looked at him.

“That isn’t a cheap little mystery,” Carella said. “That is a woman getting murdered.”

“The difference eludes me.”

“The difference is she’s really dead.”

“Oh, I see.”

“And someone caused her to be that way.”

“Then it’s a good thing Coop and I have such an airtight alibi, isn’t it?” Kendall said.

“If
Mr. Delacruz can vouch for it.”

“He can
swear
to it, I promise you.”

“Then you’ve got nothing at all to worry about. ” “Nothing,” Kendall said.

Carella knew that both Cooper Haynes and Jose Delacruz had to be talked to because they were Kendall’s alibis, and all alibis
had to be checked. Even then, the killer always turned out to be the good-looking, well-mannered, honor-student kid next door
who always had a kind word for the neighbors and who wouldn’t have touched a fly, unless it was open. So who the hell knew?

But whereas he would have adored talking to yet some more doubtlessly delightful theater personalities, his son Mark had to
be driven to an away softball game at four that afternoon. He had already explained to Lieutenant Byrnes that he would appreciate
leaving the office an hour earlier today because their housekeeper was on vacation and this was his daughter April’s first
day at ballet class and Teddy had to drive her there, which meant he had to drive Mark and four of his teammates to the Julian
Pace Elementary School three miles from his own school.

Which was how, at six that evening, Carella was at the school’s ball field patiently waiting for the game to end, and Kling
was outside the apartment building at 827 Grover Park North, waiting for Jose Delacruz to get home, and Teddy was coming down
the steps of the Priscilla Hawkins School of Ballet, April’s sweaty little hand in her own, when she witnessed a red Buick
station wagon backing into the grille of her own little red Geo.

The moment the doorman nodded that this was the person Kling was waiting for, he followed Delacruz into the building and caught
up with him at the elevators.

“Mr. Delacruz?” he said.

Delacruz turned, startled. He was perhaps five feet four inches tall, thin and delicately honed, wearing a teal long-sleeved
silk shirt buttoned at the cuffs, black pipestem trousers, and white Nike running shoes. His eyebrows were thick and black,
matching exactly the straight black hair combed back from a pronounced widow’s peak. He had intensely brown eyes, androgynous
Mick Jagger lips, and a thin, slightly tip-tilted nose that looked as if he’d bought it from a plastic surgeon. Except for
the Nikes, he resembled a matador more than he did a set designer. On the other hand, Kling had never met anyone in either
of those exotic professions.

“Mr. Delacruz?” he repeated.

_“Yes
?”

Faint Spanish accent detectable even in that single word. “Detective Kling, Eighty-seventh Squad,” Kling
said,
and showed him his shield.

“Are you a cop?” the woman screamed.

Teddy was having trouble reading her lips. Ten-year-old April, who could have heard the woman from a block away, so loud were
the decibels, looked up at her mother and signed She wants
to know i f you’re
a cop.

They had run over to the Gen just as the woman got out of the Buick to examine its rear end. Teddy couldn’t imagine why the
woman was looking for damage to her car when she was the one who’d just hacked into
Teddy’s
car.

No, I am not a cop, she signed.

“No, she is not a cop,” April said.

“Then what’s this?” the woman shouted, wildly flapping her hands at the DEA sticker plastered to the windshield on the passenger
side. In this case, DEA stood not fur
Drug Enforcement
Agency but rather for
Detectives Endowment Association.
If Carella had been Irish, there would have been an
Emerald Society
sticker
on the
windshield as well. And if he didn’t devoutly believe that anyone born in America was simply an American and not an Italian-American
or an
Any
thing-American, there might have been a
Columbia Society
sticker there, too. As it was, the DEA sticker was on the windshield to indicate to any interested police officer that the
car belonged either to a cop or a member of a cop’s family.

April started to sign She wants ro knotty, but Teddy had already caught the gist. She signed to her daughter to tell the woman
that her daddy was a cop, yes, a detective, in fact, but what did that have to do with the fact that the woman had just backed
into her car, smashing the headlight ..

“Slow down, Mom,” April said.

…
and the grille and crumpling the hood?

“My father’s a detective,” April said calmly. “You smashed our headlight and grille and you wrinkled the hood, so what difference
does it
make what he is?“

Teddy was watching her daughter’s lips. She nodded emphatically and began reaching into her handbag for her wallet with her
driver’s license in it. It occurred to her that her registration and insurance card were locked inside the car, in the glove
compartment. She was unlocking the door on the passenger side when the woman yelled,“Where the hell do you think
you’re
going?”

Teddy didn’t hear her.

The woman grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, almost knocking her over.

“You hear nee?” the woman shouted.

This time Teddy was reading her lips. She was also reading the spittle that spewed from the woman’s angry mouth in a fine
spray reeking of onions.

“You think you can get away with murder just cause your husband’s a cop?”

The woman had both Teddy’s shoulders now, and was shaking her violently.

“Is that what you think? Well, you got another think ...”

Teddy kicked her in the left shin.

April ran to a phone booth.

Kling thought the apartment looked like a stage set for a play about a French king. But Joey Delacruz promptly informed him
that he himself had designed and decorated the apartment “in an eclectic mix of Queen Anne, Regency, Windsor, and William
and Mary,” none of which sounded even remotely French to Kling, so much for that. Delacruz went on to say that he hoped his
creation-the apartment, Kling guessed-would outlive his relationship with Kendall, which he sometimes felt was somewhat tenuous.
Carella hadn’t mentioned that Delacruz was gay.
Nor
Kendall, for that matter. Perhaps he hadn’t felt it was important. Kling didn’t think it was too terribly important now,
either, unless one or the other
of
them—or both of them—had murdered Michelle Cassidy.

“Tell me about the night of April seventh,” he said. “Oh, my, but we do sound like a television cop, don’t we?”

Kling didn’t think he sounded like
a
television cop. He found the comparison annoying.

“Where were you that night, for example?” he asked. “Right here,” Delacruz said. “Excuse me, hut am I sup-posed to know what
this is all about?”

“Have you spoken to Ashley Kendall recently?”

“Not since this morning, when he kissed me goodbye and left for work.”

Kling wondered if Delacruz meant that to be annoying, too. The image of a man kissing another man goodbye when he left
for
work. He thought about it for a second or two and decided it was less annoying than being told he sounded like a television
cop.

Trying not to sound like anyone on
Hill Street Blues,
he
said, “Do you
remember where
you were on the
night Michelle Cassidy was murdered?”

“Am I supposed to know this woman?”

“Your friend says no.”

“Ashley?”

“Mr. Kendall, yes.”

“Does it bother you that we’re gay?”

“Mr. Delacruz, I don’t care what you are, or what you do, so long as you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”

“Bravo! Queen Victoria
⁺
”

“You’re supposed to know other, however.”

“Queen Victoria?”

“Sure. Queen Victoria.”

“I never met Michelle Cassidy, but I do know what happened to her, yes. I would have to he deaf, dumb and blind not to know.
”

“Good. So where were you on the night she got kilted?” “Right here.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Are you corroborating something Ashley told you?” “You said you hadn’t spoken to him since ...” “That’s right.”

“Then what makes you think I’m trying to corroborate anything he said?”

“Oh, just a hunch, Detective Kling. Just a hunch.” “Where were you all day?”

“Today?”

“Yes. I’ve been waiting downstairs since …”

“Why didn’t you simply ask
Ashley where
I was? He’d have told you in a …”

“I didn’t talk to him.”

“Well,
someone
must have . .”

“Yes, my partner did.”

“Couldn’t he have asked? Or did you want to make sure Ashley wouldn’t call ahead to warn me?”

“Warn you about what?”

“About what to say. In case you asked where l was on the night Michelle got killed.”

“You’ve already told me you were here. And you’ve already told me you haven’t spoken to Kendall since early this morning.”

“How do you know it was early?”

“Because rehearsal started at nine.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

“So what do you think, Mr. Delacruz?”

“Did Ashley tell your partner he was here with me on the night Michelle got killed?”

“Why don’t you just tell me where he was?”

“He was here.”

“All night long?”

“All night long.”

“Anyone who can confirm that?”

“Oh dear,” Delacruz said.

Kling waited.

“Don’t you think I already
know
you know, Detective Kling?”

“Know what?”

“That Ashley had a meeting here with the man playing the Director in that idiotic play he’s directing.”

“From what time to what time?”

“Cooper Haynes got here at seven and left at ten,” Delacruz said. “I know because that’s way past my usual bed-time.”

“Either of them leave the apartment at any time that night?”

“Not until ten o’clock. Mr. Haynes left at ten. Ashley stayed. Ashley does live here, you know.”

“Did you happen to leave the apartment?”

“I was here all the while Mr. Haynes was here,” Delacruz said, and smiled. “I know Ashley quite well, you see.”

The doorman at Cooper Haynes’s upper south side building told Kling that Mr. Haynes had left the building some ten minutes
ago, to walk his dog. Kling caught up with him a good seven blocks uptown, following a leash to which a furry little dog was
attached. The dog immediately began barking at Kling, the way all little dogs do in an attempt to convince people they’re
really fierce German shepherds or Great Danes in disguise. Haynes kept saying, “No, no, Francis,” over and over again, but
little Francis kept snap-ping at Kling, trying to bite him on the ankles. Kling wanted to step on the goddamn mutt, squash
him flat into the pavement, dog lovers of the world, unite!

Haynes finally got Francis under control and they proceeded together up the avenue, the dog sniffing at each and every scrawny
city tree they passed, occasionally peering up at Kling scornfully, as if it were
his
fault that none of the trees were compatible with his toilet habits. Haynes, dutiful citizen that he was, was wearing on
his right hand a little plastic bag turned inside out. Once little Francis relieved himself, as they say, Haynes would pick
up the leavings as required by law, and turn the plastic bag back upon itself so that nothing vile would have been touched
by human hands.

Little Francis seemed particularly unwilling to oblige this evening. Haynes, like the patient master and good citizen he was,
coaxed and cajoled but nothing seemed forthcoming. The dog merely kept turning up his nose in disdain at each and every spindly
tree or stout fire hydrant they passed.

The dog’s reluctance, coupled with Haynes’s celebrity, caused a great many passersby to oooh and ahhh in amusement and appreciation.
The recognition factor had nothing to do with the fact that Haynes was playing a director—in fact,
the
Director—in an awful little play uptown. Instead, it was due to his appearance five days a week on a soap opera called
The Catherine Wheel,
in which he portrayed a kind and friendly country physician named Dr. Jeremy Phipps. As they strolled up the avenue, incessantly
stopping for the dog to sniff and dismiss, people greeted Haynes with a wave and a grin and a familiar, “Hey, Doc, how’s it
going?” or, “Hey, Doc, where’s Annabelle?” which was the name of the duck who was the doctor’s pet on the serial, and who
had been recently kidnapped by a band of illegal Chinese aliens who were stealing waterfowl of that ilk and selling them to
restaurants specializing in Peking cuisine. What with all the attention the dog gave to potential elimination sites, and all
the attention Haynes gave to wheedling an offering out of little Francis,
plus
the further attention each and every citizen of this city, it seemed, lavished upon the good Dr. Phipps, Kling found it difficult
to ask his questions with any sense of continuity or gathering force. But ask them he did.

“Were you, in fact, at the Kendall-Delacruz apartment on the night of April seventh between seven and ten P.M.?”

“Yes, I was,” Haynes said. “I was looking for a mindset, you see. Ordinary people think that all an actor does is jump into
a role, the way children do when they’re making believe. But, oh my, it isn’t that simple, I wish it were. There’s a great
deal of craft involved,
and
skill,
and
research. Never mind talent, that goes without saying,” he said modestly. “It’s everything
else
that goes into a performance. I must say that Ashley gave me some valuable insights. I feel my interpretation of this enormously
difficult role has improved a hundredfold since our discussion.”