Ed McBain - Downtown

A: I wouldn’t know about that, either.

Q: Well, when you hired him, didn’t you...?

A: Hired him? Ho ho ho, let’s slow down a bit, shall we? I hired Rodriguez?

Q: Isn’t that what you told Detectives Orso and O’Brien?

A: That was when I was still dizzy. That was Just a few minutes after the accident.

Q: No, that was at a quarter past four this morning. Which was forty minutes after the accident.

A: That may be so, but...

Q: And it’s now ten minutes to six.

A: My how the time does fly.

Q: Mr. Crandall, I’m going to remind you that the conversation you had with Detectives Orso and O’Brien...

A: I might add, by the way, that I don’t think it’s seemly for a police officer to be questioning a person while she’s sitting in provocative underwear. I’d like to say that for the record, if you please.

Q: It Is noted for the record. But I was saying that the conversation...

A: Especially an officer who could stand to lose a few pounds.

Q: I was saying that the conversation you had with them — and you were aware of this, Mr. Crandall, you gave them your permission — the conversation was being taped. Just as this conversation Is now being taped. Again, with your permission.

A: My, how very state-of-the-art we are.

Q: And I have the typewritten transcript taken from that tape, Mr. Crandall, I am holding it right here in my hand. And on this transcript, you told the detectives that you had hired Mr. Rodriguez to requisition — that is your exact language, Mr. Crandall — to requisition a body for you. A dead body. A corpse. Isn’t that what you told them?

A: Well, yes.

Q: Then you did hire him.

A: No, Charlie hired him. Listen, if we’re going to get this technical here...

Q: Yes, we are.

A: Then maybe I ought to have a lawyer.

Q: If you’d like a lawyer...

A: Why do I need a lawyer? I can take care of myself Just fine, thank you.

Q: If you want a lawyer, you’re entitled to one. Just say the...

A: Dickens was right, we should first kill all the lawyers.

Q: It was Shakespeare. And the exact quote was “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” And I’m a lawyer, Mr. Crandall.

A: I still don’t want one.

Q: Fine. May we continue, please?

A: Please.

Q: Did you or did you not hire Mama Rodriguez to...?

A: Charlie Nichols hired him.

Q: How did that come about, can you tell me?

A: It was all Charlie’s idea. We were talking about how it would be nice if the picture got some column space...

Q: By the picture...?

A: My new picture. Winter’s Chill.

Q: Yes?

A: Some column space to counteract what we were afraid might be adverse critical reaction when it opened — the similarity to Gaslight, you know, what the critics might perceive, in their abysmal ignorance, as a similarity to Gaslight.

Q: Yes?

A: And Charlie recalled an incident that had taken place several years back when this woman fell from a roof and she had a copy of Meyer Levin’s novel Kiss of the Spider Women in her...

Q: It was Ira Levin. And the novel was Kiss Me, Deadly.

A: (from Detective O’Brien) Excuse me, please, but I think it was A Kiss Before Dying and Carole Landis was in the movie.

A: (from Detective Orso) You’re thinking of Farewell, My Lovely, by Dashlell Hammond.

A: (from Lieutenant Curran) ‘It was easy.’ That’s the last line of the book.

A: (from Detective O’Brien) Which book is that, Loot?

A: (from Lieutenant Curran) The one where he shoots the broad in the belly.

A: (from Mr. Crandall) You’ll forgive me, but neither the title nor the author has anything whatever to do with the point of my story.

Q: What is the point of your story?

A: The point is that In the novel the woman is about to get pushed off the roof, and in real life a woman actually fell off the roof with a copy of the novel in her hand and it made headlines all over the country. So Charlie said, “Wouldn’t it be terrific if something like that happened to Winter’s Chill?” and I said, “No such luck,” find Charlie said, “Why does it have to be luck?” and that’s how the whole thing came about.

Q: What whole thing?

A: Hiring Rodriguez. Who was Charlie’s crack dealer and who Charlie thought would know where to find a dead body.

Q: And did he find one?

A: Yes.

Q: Julian Rainey’s body, isn’t that so?

A: I have no idea whose body it was. Mama supplied the body.

Q: And you supplied the identification to put on the body.

A: Well, that was the whole idea.

Q: Tell us what the whole idea was.

A: To make it appear that someone had murdered me. And then for me to show up alive, contradicting the fact. And to have the mystery continue through the opening of the film on the second. To generate publicity for the film, you see.

Q: But, of course, Mr. Rodriguez didn’t simply find a corpse, did he?

A: I have no idea where he...

Q: He caused a corpse, didn’t he?

A: I don’t know where you got that idea.

Q: We got it from a woman named Alice Chaffee whom we found in a red fox coat tied up with the cord from a General Electric steam iron in a warehouse downtown.

A: Oh.

Q: Where there was something close to a million dollars’ worth of crack in an open Mosler safe.

A: Oh.

Q: And something like five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stolen goods elsewhere on the floor.

A: I see.

Q: She told us that Mr. Rodriguez hired her to kill Julian Rainey.

A: Well, that’s not what I hired him to do.

Q: I thought Charlie Nichols hired him.

A: Well, yes. I meant indirectly. All I asked him to do was find a dead body.

Q: Where? On the street? In the park...?

A: Wherever dead bodies are.

Q: In the trees? In a garbage can behind McDonald’s?

A: I’m glad you find this so amusing, Ms. Moscowitz.

Q: Mrs. Moscowitz. And I find it quite serious. Whose idea was it to blame the murder on Michael Barnes?

A: Mine. But there was no harm In that. It was Just a way to keep it going. To keep the headlines rolling. When he went to the police with his story about having been robbed — and showed them my card, no less — there’d be headlines all over again. And then while he was being investigated, there’d be more headlines. And when he was cleared, there’d be headlines again. And meanwhile the picture would have opened and it wouldn’t matter what the critics said about it.

Q: So you chose Mr. Barnes as your fall guy...

A: Oh, it didn’t have to be him. It could have been anyone. He simply presented himself.

Q: Popped up, so to speak.

A: Well, yes.

Q: And refused to lie down again.

A: Well.

Q: Which Is why Mr. Rodriguez ordered his murder as well.

A: I don’t know anything about that.

Q: Alice Chaffee does.

A: That’s her problem. And Mama’s, I would suppose.

Q: Your problem Is that you ordered the first murder, Mr. Crandall. You’re the one who set the whole thing in...

A: I did not order a murder. I ordered a corpse!. And anyway, it was Charlie’s idea. He was the one who contacted Mama. I had nothing to do with it.

Q: Alice Chaffee says Mama paid her four thousand dollars for the Job. Who gave Mama that money?

A: I have no idea.

Q: Did Charlie Nichols give him that money?

A: He must have.

Q: Why? It was your movie, why would Charlie...?

A: I don’t know anything about any of this. Charlie came up with a good idea. And he followed through on it. If someone got killed because of what Charlie did, I certainly am not re—