Ed McBain - Downtown

The instrument had indeed been sharp.

In the Operating Room, when Michael came out of the anesthesia, the doctor told him he’d been slashed and stabbed eighteen times. He said it was a miracle that Michael was still alive, since one of the slash wounds was dangerously close to the jugular and another had almost severed his windpipe.

“Is Connie all right?” Michael asked him.

The doctor did not know who Connie was. He thought Michael was hallucinating, and asked the nurse to give him a sedative.

“Is Connie all right?” Michael asked Orso.

“Yes, she is a brave Chinese person,” Orso said. “When she saw Mama carving you up like a Christmas turkey, she right away jumped on him. She got cut herself, too, on the hand, but she’s okay.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know where she is now, sir. I talked to her in the Emergency Room.”

“Does she know where I am?”

“I don’t know if she knows where you are or not. The last she saw of you was when they were wheeling you upstairs to the O.R. She herself was bleeding, and they were bandaging Crandall’s head, and the blonde was still yelling at him. There was a good deal of confusion, sir.”

“Yes,” Michael said.

“Yes. But everybody’s okay now, including Mama. Who, if you’d have killed him, sir, the city would have given you a ticker-tape parade on Fifth Avenue. Which, as you may know, sir, is uptown.”

“Where is he now?”

“Mama? Down the hall, with a police officer outside his door. Not that he is going anyplace. He went through the window.”

“What window?”

“That separated the back of the limo from the driver. Crashed through it headfirst when the car jumped the curb and almost hit them two kids in the alley. You should see him, sir. He looks like the Invisible Man all bandaged up.”

“Good,” Michael said.

“Yeah, fuck him,” Orso agreed.

On the rooftop, the Christmas tree danced in the wind.

“Why were they bandaging Crandall’s head?” Michael asked.

“Because the blonde hit him with one of her sparkly red shoes.”

“She’s good at that,” Michael said.

“Yes, very good. She put two holes in his head like she was wielding a ball peen hammer instead of a high-heeled shoe.”

“Did she say why?”

“Because she suddenly realized,” Orso said.

“Realized what?”

“That something was fishy, but she didn’t know what. All she knew was Crandall had a gun in his hand and Mama was cutting you to ribbons and blood was flying all over the car and the Chinese girl was throwing herself on Mama and yelling what sounded like orders to the kitchen, so she figured she might as well take off her shoe and hit Crandall on the head with it. She ain’t very bright, you know.”

Michael nodded.

“What I got here,” Orso said, “which I will probably forget and leave on your bed and have to come back for later, is a transcript of the Q and A we done with Crandall after they bandaged his head and we got him up the squadroom. That little cockroach Mama wouldn’t tell us nothing, he’s a pro, the son of a bitch, he knows his rights. In fact, he threatened to sue us for false arrest, the little bastard. But Crandall spilled his guts. Without a lawyer present, no less. He thought he was being slick as baby shit, but he gave us enough to hang him. I was thinking that if I should leave this here on your bed, sir, because I’m so absentminded, and if you should happen to glance through it, I know you won’t mention it to Crandall because then his lawyers’ll say his rights were violated. Every lawyer in this city is lookin’ for a rights loophole. You get a guy he shot his grandmother, his grandfather, his twin sisters, his mother, his uncle, and his pet goldfish, the lawyer looks for a rights loophole. Which, by the way, sir, Charlie Bonano sends his regards.”

“Where is he now?”

“Out on bail, of course. He read all about you killing Crandall in the newspaper, and he called me up to say if we caught you I should tell you never mind the ten bucks. He also said you couldn’ta done it, which I already knew.”

“How’d you know?”

“Because nobody’s so dumb he’s gonna kill a person and then take the person’s business card to the police, no offense, sir. Not even somebody from Florida. But Crandall was figuring... well, it’s all in the transcript here, if I should absentmindedly leave it behind and if you should happen to read through it before I remember and come back for it in about ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you,” Michael said.

“I’ll ask around outside about Connie, case she’s wandering the hospital lookin’ for you. It’s a big hospital.”

“Thank you,” Michael said again.

“Oops, I’ll bet I’m gonna forget this fuckin’ Q and A,” Orso said, and tossed a blue binder onto the bed. and walked out of the room.

Michael reached for the binder.

His right wrist was bandaged. He wondered if there were stitches under the bandage. He wondered if he’d been stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. He wondered what his face looked like. He wondered if Mama had got to his face. If so, he wondered if Connie would think he looked okay. He hoped that she would.

He opened the blue binder.

There was a sheaf of photocopied typewritten pages inside it. Michael began reading. The Q & A had taken place earlier this morning, at precisely twelve minutes to six, in the office of someone named Lieutenant James Curran at the First Precinct. Present were the lieutenant, Detective/Second Grade Anthony Robert Orso, Detective/Third Grade Mary Agnes O’Brien, and an Assistant District Attorney named Leila Moscowitz. The lieutenant advised Crandall of his rights under Miranda-Escobedo, and then turned the questioning over to the A.D.A.

Q: Mr. Crandall, I’d like to clarify some of these points you’ve already discussed with the two detectives who responded at the scene of the accident, namely... uh... Detectives... uh...

A: (from Detective Orso) Orso. Anthony Orso.

Q: Yes, and Ms. O’Brien.

A: (from Detective O’Brien) Mrs. O’Brien.

Q: Mrs. O’Brien, forgive me. May we proceed in that way, Mr. Crandall? Would that be all right with you?

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: Very well then. As I understand it, when Detectives Orso and O’Brien arrived at the scene, you were in possession of a Walther P-38, nine-mlllimeter Parabellum automatic pistol, is that correct?

A: Not in possession of it.

Q: In your hand, though, wasn’t it?

A: Well, yes. If you want to get technical.

Q: Is this the pistol you had in your hand?

A: Yes, it looks like the pistol.

Q: Is it your pistol?

A: It’s a pistol I had in my hand at the time of the accident.

Q: Do you have a license for this pistol?

A: No, I do not.

Q: How did you come by this pistol, Mr. Crandall?

A: I have no idea. I was getting hit on the head with a high-heeled shoe and there was a pistol in my hand.

Q: Are you saying you don’t know how it got in your hand?

A: Mr. Rodriguez must have put it there.

Q: Put the pistol in your hand.

A: Yes.

Q: By Mr. Rodriguez, do you mean Mr. Mario Mateo Rodriguez, alias Mama Rodriguez?

A: Well, I’m not sure he’d appreciate your using the word “alias.”

Q: But Mama is his alias, isn’t it?

A: A great many people choose names that they use for professional purposes, such as actors and writers and occasionally dentists. They do not call these names...

Q: Dentists?

A: Oh, yes.

Q: But Mr. Rodriguez isn’t an suitor or a writer or a dentist, he’s a gangster.

A: Oh, I don’t know about that.

Q: He had a criminal record in his native Colombia, and he’s been arrested twice in the United States for trafficking in controlled substances.