Ed McBain: Driving Lessons

‘But he couldn’t even give the police his name, isn’t that right?’

‘Well, he could hardly talk at all. Just... you know... his speech was slurred, you could hardly understand him.’

‘Was this the case while you were driving? During the lesson?’

‘No.’

‘He spoke clearly during the lesson?’

‘Well, as I said, he didn’t make very many comments. I think there were one or two times he asked me what I saw, and then he was quiet for the most part.’

‘Was this unusual?’

‘Well, no, actually. He never commented unless I was doing something wrong. Then he’d say, “What do you see?” Or sometimes, to test me, he’d let me go through a stop sign, for example, and then tell me about it afterward.’

‘But this afternoon, there weren’t many comments?’

‘No.’

‘He just sat there.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Before the woman stepped off the curb, did he ask you what you saw?’

‘No.’

‘Did he hit the brake on his side of the car?’

‘No.’

Andrew Newell didn’t come out of it until eight forty-five that night.

Detective Second Grade Carl Williams sat on the edge of a desk in the lieutenant’s office, and watched the man trying to shake the cobwebs loose from his head. Blinking into the room. Seeing Carl, blinking again. No doubt wondering where he was and who this big black dude was sitting on the edge of the desk.

‘Mr Newell?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Andrew Newell?’

‘Mmm.’

‘What are you on, Mr Newell?’

‘What?’

‘What’d you take, sir, knocked you on your ass that way?’

Newell blinked again.

Go ahead, say it, Carl thought.

‘Where am I?’ Newell asked.

Bingo.

‘Raleigh Station, River Close PD,’ Carl said. ‘What kind of controlled substance did you take, man?’

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Carl Williams, Detective Second, pleased to meet you. Tell me what kind of drug you took, knocked you out that way.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Good-looking white man sitting in the lieutenant’s black leather chair, blondish going gray, pale eyes bloodshot after whatever it was he’d taken. Coming out of it almost completely now, looking around the room, realizing he was in some kind of police facility, the lieutenant’s various trophies on his bookshelves, the framed headlines from the River Close Herald when Raleigh Station broke the big drug-smuggling case three years ago. Blinking again. Still wondering what this was all about. Tell him, Carl thought.

He told him.

‘According to what we’ve got, you were giving Rebecca Patton a driving lesson this afternoon when she ran into a woman. We don’t yet know her name. She’s in critical condition at Gardner General. Car was equipped with dual brakes. You were the licensed driver in the vehicle, but you didn’t hit the brake on your side of the car because you were too stoned either to see the woman stepping off the curb or to react in time to avoid the accident. Now I have to tell you seriously here, Mr Newell, that if the girl didn’t know you were under the influence, if she had put her trust in you as her instructor and, in effect, you broke this trust, and this accident occurred, then most likely — and I’m not speaking for the State Attorney here — but most likely you would be the person considered culpable under the law. So it might be a good idea for you to tell me just when you took this drug, whatever it was, and why you knowingly got into a vehicle while under—’

‘I didn’t take any damn drug,’ Newell said. ‘I want a lawyer right this goddamn minute.’

Working in the dark on Grove Avenue, playing his flashlight over the leaves on the lawn and in the gutter, Joseph Bisogno kept searching for the red handbag he’d seen the woman carrying just before the car hit her. The police had given up finding it about a half-hour ago, but Joseph knew it was important to them, otherwise they wouldn’t have been turning over every leaf in the neighborhood looking for it.

Joseph was sixty-eight years old, a retired steel worker from the days when River Close was still operating the mills and polluting the atmosphere. These days the mills were gone and the town’s woman mayor had campaigned on a slogan of ‘Clean Air, Clean Streets’. She was about Joseph’s age. He admired her a great deal because she was doing something with her life. Joseph had the idea that if he found the handbag, he might become a key figure in this big case the police were working. Newspaper headlines. ‘Retired Steelworker Key to Accident.’ Television interviews. ‘Tell us, Mr Bisogno, did you notice the woman before the car struck her?’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you the truth, it all happened so fast...’

But, no, it hadn’t happened that fast at all.

He’d been out front raking leaves when he saw the woman coming out of the church across the street, Our Lady of Sorrows, the church he himself attended every now and then when he was feeling particularly pious and holy, which was rarely. He enjoyed exercising out of doors, made him feel healthier than when he worked out on the bedroom treadmill. Mowing the lawn, picking weeds, raking leaves the way he’d been doing today, this kind of activity made him feel not like sixty-eight but forty-seven, which was anyway the age he thought of himself as being. Think of yourself as forty, then you’ll feel like forty, his wife used to say. But that was before she got cancer.

He was willing to bet a thousand dollars that Mayor Rothstein thought of herself as forty-seven. Good-looking woman, too. Jewish woman. He liked Jewish women — had dated a Jewish girl named Hedda Gold when he was seventeen; she certainly knew how to kiss. Mayor Rothstein had hair as black as Tessie’s hair had been before she passed away seven years ago. Maybe if he found the handbag, the mayor would ask him to head up a committee, give him something to do with his life other than mourning Tessie all the time — poor, dear Tessie.

The woman had come down the church steps, red coat flapping open in a mild autumn breeze, red handbag to match, blue skirt and white blouse under it, blue jacket, head bent as if she had serious thoughts on her mind. Leaves falling everywhere around her. Coins from heaven, Tessie used to say. He wondered if Mayor Rothstein believed in heaven; he certainly didn’t. Next door, his neighbor had already started a small fire of leaves at the curb. Woman coming up the path from the church now, turning left where the path joined the sidewalk, coming toward where Joseph, on the other side of the street, was raking his leaves.

He thought...

For a moment, he thought the car was slowing down because the driver had seen the woman approaching the curb. A blue Ford, coming into the street slowly, cautiously. But then he realized this was a beginning driver, big yellow and black plate on the front bumper, STUDENT DRIVER, the woman stepping off the curb unheedingly, head still bent, the car speeding up as if the driver hadn’t seen her after all. And then, oh God, he almost yelled to the woman, almost shouted, Watch it! The car, the woman, they... he did shout this time; yelled ‘Lady!’ at the top of his lungs, but it was too late. The car hit her with a terrible wrenching thud, metal against flesh, and the woman went up into the air, legs flying, arms flying, the collision throwing her onto his neighbor’s leaf fire at the curb, the shrieking of brakes, the driver leaning on her horn too late, too late, all of it too late.

The girl driving the car did not get out.

Neither did the man sitting beside her.

The girl put her head on the steering wheel, not looking at Joseph as he dragged the woman off the fire and rolled her onto the lawn. Joseph went inside to call the police. When he came out again, the girl still had her head on the wheel. The woman’s red coat was charred where the flames had got to it.