Garth Hallberg - City on Fire

The older man continued to beam. “Some of my younger colleagues, Mr. Goodman, such as Detective McFadden here, make do with that add-water-and-stir stuff.”

“I don’t see what you’ve got against Nescafé,” McFadden said. “I’m feeling frankly a little what do you call it. Devalued.”

“But dinosaurs like me, we’re set in our ways.”

Pulaski was a detective, too, then, and this must have been part of their patter, their routine. But there was something rusty in it. As the grizzled veteran, Pulaski had too light a touch. And he made McFadden, with his hypnotically Polynesian shirt, seem suddenly less convincing, too. It was as if they’d passed through a wardrobe room on the way here, grabbing whatever was to hand. “So you’re the good cop?”

McFadden turned to his partner. “Mr. Goodman here has decided to play smart.”

“Am I entitled to a lawyer?”

“You see what I mean, Inspector?” To Mercer, he said, “You’re not under arrest, smart guy. No arrest, no lawyer.”

“I’m free to go, then?”

Pulaski’s smile floated above the table like a croupier’s. “I was hoping that with some honest-to-God java we might do this less adversarially, Mr. Goodman. Go ahead, get some kind of statement down, and then get you on your way. I’ve got one light and sweet, one just milk, and one black.” He touched the lid of each of the cups as he named it. “I’m flexible, so I can go either way. Preference, Detective?”

McFadden shrugged. “So long as it’s hot.”

“So we’re flexible, you see. The choice is yours, Mr. Goodman.”

If Pop had been here, he would have warned about Pulaski. Men like this had hovered over Mercer’s ancestors in cane-fields and cotton plantations; shtick was just stick with an accent. But you haven’t smelled coffee until you’ve smelled hot, sweet deli coffee at let’s say four thirty in the morning on the night you’ve seen your first murder. Or attempted murder? “I’ll take the one with milk,” he said.

The coffees having been distributed, Pulaski pulled out the chair where McFadden’s foot had been resting. He kept his jacket on, as if he might be leaving at any moment, but unclipped the crutch from his forearm and leaned it against the table. McFadden slid the notebook toward him. “We were just coming to the end of preliminaries, Inspector. I’m going to continue now. That all right with you?”

There was an edge to it, but Pulaski raised his hand without looking up from the pad, as if to indicate that he, Pulaski, was not worth considering. “Please.” So to the extent that he actually was that mythical creature, the good cop, he was going to be completely ineffectual in defending the witness against his hulk of a junior colleague, who now leaned forward on his elbows. Mercer took a long sip of coffee, just to place some object between himself and his interrogator.

“So what you were telling me in the park, you leave a party on Seventy-Second, you go to the bus stop to wait. You weren’t wearing just that monkey-suit, were you? I mean, it’s cold out.”

“It’s a tuxedo, Detective. And no, I had an overcoat.”

“Right, you seem like a guy who knows from menswear. This would have been, what, a nice shearling overcoat? From somewhere on Fifth Avenue?”

“Bloomingdale’s. You must have found it covering the …”

“The victim. That’s right.”

The missing coat, it occurred to him, was another thing it was going to be hard to explain to William. “It probably, I don’t know, went into the ambulance or something, or is still there in the park. I don’t see how it matters.”

“Oh, piece of evidence like that, we wouldn’t have left it in the park, I can guarantee you that.” McFadden was warming to this, performing, but Pulaski winced, as if having to swallow, for the sake of etiquette, an hors d’oeuvre that wasn’t to his taste.

“I think we might dispose of some of these details, get Mr. Goodman home quicker.”

“It’s funny, though,” McFadden said. “Wearing a nice coat like that, but waiting for a bus instead of taking a cab?”

“It’s my roommate’s, if you must know.”

“Ah. Here we are again. The mysterious roommate. William Wilson.”

Pulaski looked up. “This reminds me of a person we both know, Detective, when you do this with the details.”

“Fine. Let’s back up. This party, this very high-toned party you’ve stated you were at. Were there any controlled substances being consumed at this party, to your knowledge?”

Mercer was doomed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you talking about champagne?”

“I’m talking about — you know what I’m talking about, Mr. Goodman. Have you been under the influence of narcotics at any point this evening?”

But again, Pulaski winced, and this time, it was accompanied by a tiny cough.

McFadden looked nearly as frustrated as Mercer. “The thing is, Pulaski, I don’t like this story.”

“I called you,” Mercer said. “ I called you. I could have just left her there, pretended I didn’t see anything. I waited around for y’all to show.”

“Something doesn’t add up. What’s your job, Mr. Goodman? Your source of income?”

Mercer could feel his cheeks burning. “I work at the Wenceslas-Mockingbird School. That’s a very prestigious school, down on Fourth Avenue.”

“Well, do you like answer phones, or mop the floors, or what?”

“Why don’t you call them and see?”

“It’s four in the morning on a federal holiday, so that’s convenient for you. But you can bet I’ll be calling as soon as they’re open.”

McFadden’s jaw rippled as Pulaski’s hand rose again. “Detective, if I may. Mr. Goodman did call us, and I can see you’ve got a very thorough set of notes here. If you wanted to go type up the preliminaries, Mr. Goodman and I might be able to clear up some of the remaining confusion.”

A look passed between the men, which Mercer was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to see. Two hands gripping the same ineffable baton. To his surprise, Pulaski won.

The minute McFadden left, the bristle of danger dropped right out of the room. What Mercer felt for Pulaski then was akin to gratitude. The little man, who hunched over even when he sat, took an inordinate amount of time wriggling out of his sportcoat and folding it over the back of the chair. “Polio as a kid,” he said sotto voce, as if he’d noticed Mercer staring but didn’t want to embarrass him. “More common”—wriggle wriggle—“than you’d think. Don’t worry. I’m not in any pain.” He was slightly out of breath as he sat back down. He adjusted his crutch so that it intersected the table’s edge at a right angle. He drew his own notebook from a breast pocket, which seemed to be where they kept them, and aligned it orthogonally in front of him. He patted his pants—“Now where did I put that pen?”—and then, with the sly flourish of a magician, brought out a silver one, like a Waterman Mercer had once had. “I have a weakness, my wife says. But my motto has always been, modest needs, lavishly met.” When the pen was perfectly parallel to the notebook, Mercer thought he heard a purr of contentment. “I must explain to you, Mr. Goodman …”

“You can call me Mercer.”

“Mercer, thank you. Detective McF, rough around the edges though he be, is good police. He believes, and it’s not been disproven, that people are basically animals, and in order to get them to do anything, you’ve got to show your whip-hand. Now I”—slight adjustment to the position of the notepad—“I have my own somewhat esoteric idea, evolved over more years than I’d care to count, which is, provided a spirit of mutual cooperation exists, why make things difficult?”