Эд Макбейн - Jigsaw

Without the missing eighth piece, nobody knew where nothing was.

You can sometimes solve a mystery by the simple process of elimination, which is admittedly undramatic, but where does it say that a cop has to get hit on the head every day of the week? Cops may be dumb, but not that dumb. When everything has already narrowed itself down into the skinny end of the funnel, when nearly everybody’s either dead or obviously innocent, then it merely becomes a matter of trying to figure out who is lying and why. There are lots of things cops don’t understand, but lies they understand very well.

They don’t understand, for example, why thieves will spend so much time and energy devising and executing a crime (with all its attendant risks) when that same amount of time and energy devoted to a legal pursuit would probably net much larger returns in the long run. It was the belief of every detective on the 87th Squad that the real motive behind half the crimes being committed in the city was enjoyment, plain and simple — the fun of playing Cops and Robbers. Forget gain or profit as motivation, forget passion, forget hostility or rebellion, it all came down to Cops and Robbers.

What had Carmine Bonamico been doing, if not playing Cops and Robbers? Took his little camera, dear boy, and went out to photograph the River Road from an airplane or something, and then drew his squiggly little lines across the print, and cut it apart, and handed out pieces to his gang, all hush-hush, top-secret, tip-toey, clever-crook stuff — Cops and Robbers. Why the hell hadn’t he just whispered the location to each of his hoods, and asked them to whisper it in turn to their friends and loved ones? Ah, but no. That would have taken from the crime one of its essential elements, known to gumshoes far and wide as The Game Aspect. Take the fun out of criminal activity, and all the prisons in the world would be empty. Who can figure crooks? Certainly not cops. They couldn’t even figure why Irving Krutch had had the audacity to come to them for assistance in locating the loot, unless this too was tied in with The Game Aspect, the sheer enjoyment of playing Cops and Robbers.

They did figure, however, that Krutch was not telling them the truth about his whereabouts on the nights Albert Weinberg and Geraldine Ferguson were murdered; when a man’s lying, it comes over like a supersonic missile streaking through the atmosphere, and you don’t have to be working for NASA to spot it. Krutch’s alibi, of course, was a broad he’d been laying since the year One, hardly the most reliable sort of witness to bring to your defense in a courtroom. But Suzanne Endicott’s credibility as a witness was academic unless they could get Krutch into a courtroom. Logical deduction aside, the fact remained that he claimed to have been in bed with Suzie while both murders were being committed, and Suzie backed his story, and it is quite a trick to be out killing people while you are home in your apartment making love to a sweet li’l ol’ Georgia peach. These days, it was getting more and more difficult to arrest a person even if you caught him with a hacksaw in his bloody hands, standing over a dissected corpse. How could you arrest a mustache-twirling villain who had an alibi as long as a peninsula?

How indeed?

It was Carella who first got the idea.

He discussed it with Hawes, and Hawes thought it was too risky. Carella insisted that it was a good idea, considering the fact that Suzie Endicott was from Georgia. Hawes said he thought Brown might take offense if they even suggested the idea to him, and Carella said he thought Brown would go along with the idea wholeheartedly. Hawes protested that the notion was pretty farout to begin with: Suzie had been living in the north for at least four years now, spending half that time in bed with Krutch (to hear her tell it), and had probably been pretty well assimilated into the culture; it was a bad idea. Carella informed Hawes that certain prejudices and stereotypes died very hard deaths, as witness Hawes’s own reluctance to even broach the idea to Brown. Hawes took offense at that, saying he was as tolerant a man as ever lived, in fact it was his very tolerance that caused his reluctance, he simply didn’t want to offend Brown by suggesting an idea that probably wouldn’t work anyway. Carella raised his voice and demanded to know how they could possibly crack Suzie’s story; he had tried to crack it, Hawes had tried to crack it, the only way they could get to her was to scare hell out of her. Hawes shouted that Brown’s feelings were more important to him and to the wellbeing of the squad than solving any goddamn murder case, and Carella shouted back that prejudice was certainly a marvelous thing when a white man couldn’t even explore an excellent idea with a Negro for fear of hurting his feelings.

“Okay, you ask him,” Hawes said.

“I will,” Carella answered.

They came out of the Interrogation Room together and walked to where Brown was sitting at his desk, studying the photograph for the 700th time.

“We’ve got an idea, Artie,” Carella said.

“He’s got an idea,” Hawes said. “It’s his idea, Artie.”

“What’s the idea?” Brown said.

“Well, you know,” Carella said, “we’re all pretty much agreed on this Krutch character, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, he wants that seven hundred and fifty G’s so bad, his hands are turning green. And you can’t tell me his career has anything to do with it.”

“Me neither,” Brown said.

“He wants that money, period. The minute he gets it, he’ll probably take Suzie and head straight for Brazil.”

“Okay, how do we get to him?” Brown asked.

“We go to Suzie.”

“We’ve been to Suzie,” Brown said. “You talked to her, Meyer talked to her, Cotton talked to her. She alibis Krutch right down the line.”

“Sure, but she’s been sleeping with the guy for four years,” Hawes said, still annoyed by the thought.

“Another three years, and they’re man and wife in the eyes of the law,” Carella said. “You expect her not to back his alibis?”

“Okay, let’s say she’s lying,” Brown said.

“Let’s say she’s lying. Let’s say Krutch did leave that apartment, once to kill Weinberg, and again to kill Gerry Ferguson.”

“Okay, let’s say it. How we going to prove it?”

“Well, let’s say that we drop in on Krutch sometime tonight and ask him a few more questions. Just to keep him busy, you understand? Just to make sure he doesn’t climb into the sack with li’l Suzie again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and let’s say about two o’clock in the morning, somebody knocks on li’l Suzie’s door and starts getting rough with her.”

“Come on, Steve, we can’t do that,” Brown said.

“I don’t mean we actually push her around,” Carella said.

“I told you he wouldn’t buy it,” Hawes said.

“I mean we just let her think we’re getting rough.”

“Well, why would she think that?” Brown asked. “If we’re not going to push her around...”

“She’s from Georgia,” Carella said.

The squadroom went silent. Hawes looked at his shoes.

“Who’s going to hit Krutch?” Brown asked.

“I thought Cotton and I might do that.”

“And who’ll go scare Suzie?”

The squadroom went silent again. The clock on the wall was ticking too loudly.

“Don’t tell me,” Brown said, and broke into a wide grin. “Man, I love it.”

Hawes glanced at Carella uncertainly.