Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (34 page)

“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.”