“I’m not guilty, you piece of shit! I’m not going down for this, you hear? You’re gonna tell me what happened. Tell me!”
Then there was a powerful arm around my neck. I was being choked, dragged back. I lost my grip on Herd and he toppled to the floor again. I strained against the force that held me. I pulled free. Spun around.
It was Sam Scar.
“Ho! Ho!” he said. “Cool down. You’ll kill him!”
He stood poised, waiting to fend me off. He was wearing nothing but trunks, and the black wounds stood out on his muscular arms.
“I got about sixty seconds before the cops get here, Sam. He’s gonna talk if I have to rip the words out with my hand.”
“Talk what, tell what?”
“He helped Celia Cooper move Mikki Snow’s body. He helped her make it look like an overdose.”
Herd screamed up at me, the spit flying from his lips. “You stupid shit.”
“Leave him alone, Wells,” said Celia Cooper. “He had nothing to do with it.”
I turned and saw her in the doorway.
She was standing with her arms crossed over her chest, her hands rubbing nervously at her shoulders. In rumpled pants and a billowing sweatshirt, her small thin body looked even more fragile than usual. The weary face looked wearier still. All the same, that aura she gave off, the aura of command—that remained with her. The minute she spoke, Herd, Scar, and I stopped and looked at her and waited for her to speak again.
“Baumgarten called me,” she said. “I figured you’d have it worked out by now.” She looked down at the floor and shook her head. “Why couldn’t you just … leave it alone?”
“Because I didn’t murder anyone,” I said. “And you did.”
Her shoulders lifted as she gave a tired laugh. “I wish I had your … simplicity. I wish things were as simple as you think. I never murdered anyone.”
“You killed Mikki Snow.”
Her eyes flashed up at me. “That was an accident … that was …” She couldn’t hold my stare. “A necessity,” she said.
“Because she wouldn’t leave it alone either.”
“That’s right. That’s right. And because she was simple, too. Because she thought I was good and that good people do good things and that everything works out for the best and … God knows what else.” She let out a long sigh. “And it’s not that way, Wells. It’s not that way.”
“No.” I moved to the window. Leaned against the sill. Took out a cigarette. “No, it isn’t.”
Herd was shifting on the floor now. Massaging the back of his head, trying to bring himself around. Scar moved wearily to the bed. He sank down onto it as if pressed by a great weight. He rubbed his eyes with one large hand.
I lit my cigarette. Celia Cooper and I gazed at each other through the smoke.
“It’s all tangled, Wells,” she said. “It’s all … Ah, I don’t know.”
“Mikki wanted you to stop, was that it? She wanted you to shut down Baumgarten’s money laundry.”
She nodded. “And turn him in, too. Not to mention myself in the process. She wanted me to ‘clean the corruption out of Cooper House,’ she said. ‘Make it what it should be.’ I tried to explain to her, I tried to tell her: Nothing is what it should be. There would be no Cooper House after that. Life isn’t just a choice between one thing and another, I told her, we have to take … what we can. She wouldn’t listen. She yelled at me, called me … names.” She paused, and then repeated it. “She called me names. We were standing in her office, at the top of the stairs. The door was open. I’d just come up from the trunk room and she was there, waiting for me and … the door was open.” Still hugging herself, she leaned against the doorframe. She stared into the smoky space between us. “She said she was going to make sure that justice was done. She said she’d written a letter, explaining everything, telling everything. To make sure that justice was done, and she … called me names. I slapped her. I slapped her, and she fell. Down the stairs. To the concrete. Her head … she cracked her head.”
Herd moaned from the floor, maybe in pain, maybe in sorrow, I couldn’t tell. He rested his elbow on a raised knee, covered his face with his hand. Scar, his arms dangling between his legs, stared at the floor and said nothing.
“How did you know she wrote the letter to me?” I asked.
“In her …” She had to clear her throat before she could go on. She kept rubbing her shoulders, as if she were cold. “In her purse. I found your address. I guess she got your name from that old story you’d written about us. We had it tacked up somewhere, on one of the boards. I don’t know why she used your home address, maybe she thought she was being discreet. I don’t …” She shook her head.
“So you got Thad to help you.”
She made a vague gesture with her hand. “I didn’t know what to do. I was ready to turn myself in, but he said … he said he could hide her. He loved … We loved each other.”
“And he’d have done anything to save you.”
Her nod was barely perceptible. “He helped me hide Mikki’s body in the dumpster. He said he’d find a place to bury her.”
“And then he came to get her letter back from me.”
Her hands clenched into fists at her shoulders. Her face twisted too as she stared in front of her. “He wasn’t supposed to fight with you, he wasn’t supposed to do anything like that. He was just supposed to … get it back.”
“He found it open,” I said. There was an ashtray on the desk behind me. I crushed my cigarette in it. “I’d been about to read my mail the night before, when I got called out on a story. I’d already opened Snow’s letter before the phone rang, and I guess I left it lying there. Reich must’ve just assumed I’d read it and knew everything. He attacked me to protect you.”
Her fists sank to her sides. She frowned deeply, as if she might cry. She didn’t cry. “And you killed him,” she whispered.
“Like you said: there is such a thing as justice.”
She came away from the door, stepped into the center of the room. Scar and Herd both lifted their faces to see her. Angry, her mouth tight, her eyes haughty and hot, she was an impressive sight.
“Justice,” she said. “That’s what you call justice. I’ve given my life to … to helping people, to making things better in this city.” She swung a hand at Herd and Scar. “I made their lives better. Thad Reich’s. Mikki Snow’s. I gave her her life—I gave it back to her.” She leaned toward me, staring hard. “There are more than a hundred and fifty people housed in this building tonight, Wells. Fed and warm. People who would be on the streets otherwise, or dead. What was Mikki Snow compared to that?” She pulled herself erect. “And what are you?”
Slowly, I came away from the window. I stepped toward her, close to her. We looked at each other, into each other’s eyes.
“Not guilty,” I said. “I am not guilty.”
“Oh!” She leaned back, clapped her hands together so loudly it startled me. “And just what does that mean, what is that supposed to do for you?”
“It gives me the right to be left the fuck alone.”
“A small desire for a small man.”
“It’s funny,” I said, “but I don’t remember asking your opinion.”
I started to move around her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To meet the cops. You think a rigged O.D. is gonna hold up once the M.E. knows what to look for?”
I started toward the door.
“Use your head,” she snapped. “I never could have fooled the M.E. in the first place.”
I was about to step out into the hall—and stopped. Slowly, I turned. She bit her lip, sorry she’d spoken. But there was no show of weakness, no sign that she would waver. She still knew what she had to do.
“Watts,” I said.
She didn’t answer. I understood.
“And now you’ve called him. You were down there with the guard when I came in, and you called for Watts.”
/> I looked back at the door to the hall. I could feel the night out there beyond it, the city beyond it, a city of shadows.
“Just give yourself to them,” said Celia Cooper. “He’ll kill you if you try to run. You know that.”
“He’ll kill me anyway,” I said. “Today or tomorrow. The minute he can.” I glanced back at her. “And you know that.”
Celia Cooper crossed her arms again, rubbed her shoulders. For a moment, I thought I saw something in those firm eyes of hers, some measure of doubt. But it was gone almost at once.
“It’s not just you,” she said. “It’s not just you and me. Or Mikki Snow or even Thad. I have to think about the greater good, a higher justice.”
“Maybe,” I told her. “Maybe you do.” I headed toward the door again. “But I’ll take it one goddamned case at a time.”
29
There had been no sirens, but they were out there, all right. I knew it as I moved to the stairs. They were waiting for me to step outside, into the dark. Honest cops, most of them, but with enough of Watts’s ringers thrown in to make getting arrested a fatal affair.
I thought of stopping. I thought of grabbing a phone, calling the paper, calling a lawyer, calling Lieutenant Gottlieb to take charge. But I knew if I pulled up, Celia Cooper would start screaming for help. Watts wanted to do it in the dark, but he’d take me wherever he could. I had to get out. I had to get back to the Star.
I reached the top of the stairs. Looked down. The old security guard was standing in the hall under the darkened chandelier. He was looking up at me with his hangdog face. He looked sad. He looked sorry for me. I started down toward him.
All around, the house was quiet. I could feel that quiet pressing in on me. I could feel it rolling away from me, too, rolling off into the surrounding night.
I went down the stairs one at a time, my hand on the banister. I looked past the guard to the closed doors, those big wooden doors crisscrossed with iron. I felt my feet touch down on the tiled floor. I felt my heart beating hard, and the sweat gathering on my forehead. I walked across the hall to the door.
I swallowed as my hand wrapped itself around the metal handle. It was cold to the touch. Cold and very real. I pressed the latch, pulled the door. It swung back. The quiet rushed in with the night. The street lay still.
I stepped outside.
I could not see them. Trees lined the sidewalk, blocking the glow of the streetlamps, covering the pavement with shadows. The shadows swayed and shuddered as the trees rustled in the wind. The doorways—to the restaurant’s kitchen, to the River City apartments—were completely black. I looked down toward the avenue, then up the hill into the complex. There was nothing moving, nothing at all. I heard the Cooper House door swing shut behind me.
Lansing’s car was parked just across the way. The avenue was only a few paces down the hill. If they had left any opening, it would be to my right, up the slope. Maybe they wouldn’t be expecting me to go that way.
So I ran. Swiveling to my right without warning. Pushing off with a jump. Pumping my arms, heading for the darkness above me.
“Freeze!”
A cop car, flashers spinning, shot out to block the street ahead.
“Freeze!”
Four silhouetted men stepped out of the shadows to block the sidewalk.
I spun.
“Freeze!”
“Freeze!”
Two more cars, flashing, blocked the road below. More cops poured from the surrounding dark, poured from every direction, closing in on me.
“Freeze!”
“Freeze!”
“Freeze!”
I froze.
“Put your goddamned …”
“Put your hands …”
“Raise your fucking hands over your …”
“Freeze!”
“Put your hands up.”
“Don’t move, motherfucker.”
Slowly, I put my hands over my head, my shaking hands. There was nothing but shouting and my heartbeat and the world gone into the slow motions of absolute fear.
In those slow motions, they kept closing in. They came from behind the trunks of trees, from behind parked cars, from the darkened doorways. They stepped out into the streetlamps’ glow, their revolvers glinting in the dim light. Some were in uniforms, one or two were in plainclothes. Their mouths were tight with excitement, their eyes were big with suspense. They held their guns steady. They trained them on me.
And, as the cordon tightened, Lieutenant Tom Watts stepped through it, directly before me. He had his detective special drawn. He held it close to his hip. He pointed it at my middle. Even in the dark, I could see into the endless depths of its black bore.
I looked up into his face. He met my gaze, his green eyes empty of everything but a wild, triumphant gladness.
Then, suddenly, too quickly for me to react, he shouted: “Watch out! He’s got a gun!”
He raised his revolver, aimed it at my chest.
There was a white flash. It seemed to burn away everything.
30
“Press!” Lansing shouted. “Press! Press!”
I turned to see her running toward us up the hill, ducking under the low branches. She had her hand in the air. She had her wallet in her hand. She was waving her I.D. card.
“Press!” she yelled. “Press!”
Running just behind her was Gershon, holding his camera up over his head. The strobe waved above it like a periscope. He pressed the shutter release and the strobe sent out that white flash again, burning away the night.
I threw my open hands higher. “I give up!” I screamed. “I’m unarmed! I surrender!”
Watts hesitated—but the moment was past. The strobe kept flashing. Lansing kept running, kept screaming wildly, “Press! Press!” kept waving her card.
Slowly, Watts drew his gun in close to his side. He spat on the ground.
“Get that bitch,” he barked. “Grab that camera.”
Lansing came to a stop, just outside the circle of police. She leaned forward, panting. Gershon was snapping off pictures even as the cops moved in on him.
“You can take the camera, Watts,” Lansing gasped. “But the front page belongs to me.”
“You’re under arrest,” Watts said out of the corner of his mouth. “Interfering with a law officer. Read her her rights.”
He was looking only at me, glaring, his gun hand trembling at his side.
Now, though, a patrolman, a kid in his twenties, rushed torward me out of the circle. He grabbed my arm, slapped a handcuff around the wrist. I turned to him and saw a young face alight with hysteria.
“I’m cuffing him!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “He’s cuffed! He’s unarmed!” He drew my arms behind my back, linked one to the other. As he did, he whispered, “Hang tough, guy. This mother’s nuts.”
Watts kept glaring. Even in the half-light, I saw his face darken with the rush of anger.
Below, on the avenue, a new car had pulled up, unmarked, a flasher going behind its windshield. I heard its doors open and shut. I heard another voice coming up the hill, breathless.
“Wait! Wait! I can’t run, my heart, there’ll be a snap, I’ll be gone.”
I cast my eyes to a benevolent heaven. “About fucking time,” I muttered.
Lieutenant Fred Gottlieb hiked his way out from under the shadows. His round, gristly face was red. There were dark sweat stains on his green paisley shirt and his brown polyester leisure jacket billowed around him.
He slowed down as he edged between the two uniforms who’d closed on Lansing.
“Leave her alone,” he said. “She’s a nice person, get away from her.”
He went past them, huffing up the slope until he stood before Watts. The two lieutenants confronted each other. Watts’s lip curled. His finger stroked the trigger of his gun. Gottlieb lowered his head like a bull.
“Fuck off,” said Watts. “I’m making a collar.”
“Good. You collar,” Gottlieb
told him. “I’ll watch.”
They locked eyes another moment. It was Watts who looked away. His mouth was twitching. His triumph and his gladness were all gone.
He managed a nod. More uniforms moved toward me. Two of them grabbed me under the arms.
I spoke up. “Fred.”
“Don’t start,” said Gottlieb.
“There was a body here until this afternoon. A woman named Mikki Snow. Down in the cellar, in a dumpster.”
Gottlieb held his hand up. “Wait, wait.” The officers relaxed their grips on my arms. “Do you know where it is, this body?”
“Listen, Gottlieb, this is my case …” Watts started. Gottlieb spun around on him, without speaking. Watts clamped his shaking lips together.
“This body,” Gottlieb asked again. “You know where it is?”
“I think it’s still …”
“Thinking is not good. Knowing is good.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s at the morgue, Fred. A woman. They haven’t had time to move her. Watts rigged an autopsy with one of the M.E.’s people. Said she was an overdose. But she died of a fall down the cellar stairs right here. At Cooper House.”
“This is my collar, Gottlieb,” Watts broke in. “If you don’t …”
Again, Gottlieb faced him. The silence stretched out between them a long way. Gottlieb’s back was to me, but I heard the tightness, the disgust in his voice.
“Cops make collars,” he said.
Half of Watts’s mouth curled down, his eyes went ugly. Breathing hard, he pulled his overcoat open, baring the holster on his belt. He shoved his gun into the pocket and, with a last glance at Gottlieb—and another at me—he turned on his heel. Back straight, he marched down the hill, vanished into the shadows.
Gottlieb watched him go. His shoulders rose and fell. He glanced at the young cop who’d cuffed me.
“Let him go,” he said.