Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

“Yes. I knew I wouldn’t be in the city today.”

“Right, you’re up there.”

“Yes.”

“Have you got a number up there where I can reach you? If I need you?”

“Sure,” David says, and reads the number from the little plate on the phone. Seven summers up here, still doesn’t know the number by heart.

“And that’s where?” Clancy asks.

“Menemsha. Martha’s Vineyard.”

“Might as well give me the address, too,” Clancy says. “While we’re at it.”

They are not properly dressed for sunshine and sand.

Detective Clancy is wearing a brown suit, a white shirt, a darker brown tie, and brown shoes and socks. The man walking beside him is wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, a red tie, and black shoes and socks. Like a mirage, they materialize out of glaring sunshine and ocean mist, and come trudging shimmeringly over the sand. It is the twenty-fourth day of August, a hot, sultry morning without a breeze stirring. Five days since Kate’s murder, three days since he spoke to Clancy on the phone. These men are dressed for business.

“Dr. Chapman,” Clancy says. “Nice seeing you again. This is my partner Detective D’Angelico, is this your little girl?”

“How do you do?” David says, and shakes hands first with D’Angelico and then with Clancy. “This is my daughter, Annie, yes.”

“Few questions we’d...”

Annie suddenly sticks out her hand, squinting up into the sun as she shakes hands with each of the men in turn. David wonders if they plan to question him in her presence. Annie is wearing a little green bikini. He is wearing blue trunks. All at once, he feels very vulnerable in swimming apparel, the two detectives standing there in business suits.

“Have you got anything yet?” he asks.

“Well, we’ve been trying to track down the wild prints on the envelopes.”

“But no luck so far,” D’Angelico says.

In contrast to the lean and wiry Clancy, he is short and rotund. Fat and Skinny, David thinks. Mutt and Jeff. Good Cop/Bad Cop. But Who will be playing Whom? Which one is which?

“We appreciate your sending the stuff, anyway,” Clancy says.

“Are you really detectives?” Annie asks.

“Yes, honey,” D’Angelico says.

“I want you to know,” Clancy says, “that you’re not a suspect in this case.”

“Who, me?” Annie asks.

“Well, I should hope not,” David says.

“Me, too,” Annie says, nodding vigorously.

D’Angelico smiles indulgently.

“Although during the course of our initial investigation,” Clancy says, “your name came up quite a few times.”

“As you might imagine,” D’Angelico says.

Bad Cop, David thinks.

“Why might I imagine anything of the sort?” he asks.

“Your knowing the dead girl and all,” D’Angelico says.

“I knew her only casually,” he says at once.

He does not want Annie to hear whatever he feels certain is coming next, but they are still at least a quarter of a mile from the house and he doesn’t want her walking back alone, either. It occurs to him that this is a cheap NYPD ploy, questioning him with his daughter standing not a foot away. He wants to say something to them about it, but he thinks they may suspect him, after all, no matter what Clancy just said, and he’s afraid he’ll get deeper in trouble if he starts any kind of fuss here.

“In any case, we’re not here to discuss your relationship with her,” Clancy says.

Good Cop.

“What are you guys talking about, anyway? ” Annie says, squinting up at them, her hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side.

“Whyn’t you run on up the beach?” D’Angelico says.

“I like it here,” Annie says.

“Whyn’t you send your daughter up the beach?” D’Angelico suggests.

“Go ahead, Annie,” David says. “Not too far ahead. Stay where I can see you. And don’t go in the water.”

“What do these guys want, anyway? ” she asks, looking up into David’s face now.

“Do you remember the girl whose bike got stolen?” David asks.

“Yeah?”

“Someone hurt her,” David says. “They want to ask me some questions about it.”

“Why?”

“Why, gentlemen?” David says, turning to Clancy.

“So your daddy can help us find who did it,” Clancy says.

“He saved her life once,” Annie says, nodding. “He’s a psychiatrist.”

“So run along now, okay, honey?” D’Angelico says.

“Okay,” Annie says, and goes skipping off up the beach ahead of them.

“Nice kid,” D’Angelico says unconvincingly. “She knows about the stolen bike, huh?”

“Yes, I told my family about it.”

“Brave thing you did,” D’Angelico says, again unconvincingly.

“Looks like an army handled those letters you sent us,” Clancy says conversationally.

“Including the kid from the bike shop,” D’Angelico says. “Who we talked to the minute the other girls in the show told us he was there with her one night.”

“Alibi a mile long for the morning she got killed, though,” Clancy says. “She ever mention anything to you about this guy?”

“I only knew her casually. I wouldn’t know anything about anyone in a bicycle shop.”

“Of course not. I meant the guy who was sending her the flowers and...”

“Or did you send the flowers?” D’Angelico asks.

“Me? Why would I...?”

“Then you didn’t, right?”

“Of course not. I hardly knew the girl.”

“So did she mention anything about this guy?”

“She must’ve said something about him,” D’Angelico says.

“As I told you in my letter...”

“Yeah, she contacted you quite unexpectedly, isn’t that it? So what’d she say when she contacted you quite unexpectedly?”

“Just what I wrote in my letter.”

“Nothing more.”

“Nothing more.”

“Guy’s sending her flowers...” Clancy says.

“You see, we’re trying to separate the fancy fucking from the killing here,” D’Angelico says.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t beg our pardon, Dr. Chapman. We get people begging our pardon every day of the week. If you’d stop covering your ass here for a minute...”

“Hey, come on, Ralph,” Clancy says.

“A guy’s sending her flowers, writing letters to her, she never says a word about him to her goddamn boyfriend? ”

“Her boyfriend? ” David says. “What are you...?”

“We know you were seeing her,” Clancy says. “I’m sorry, Dr. Chapman.”

“Well, you know nothing of the sort. How can you possibly...?”

“We do, I’m sorry.”

“I thought I wasn’t a suspect here.”

“You’re not,” Clancy says.

“Not anymore,” D’Angelico says.

“But put yourself in our shoes.”

“What shoes are those, Detective?”

“We had a lot of people placing you with her. Doormen here and there, the super at her building, other girls in the show, a lady in her elevator, the kid in the bike shop, and so on. We also have her phone bill with collect calls you made from up here. And the bike shop kid says your voice was on her machine the whole four days before she got killed. All of which seemed to add up to the fact that you would have known the girl pretty well for about seven weeks at the time of her murder, actually fifty-one days according to our calculations. So you’ll forgive us for thinking you were maybe fucking her, huh?”

“If you think I killed her...”

“No we don’t. Not anymore.”

David looks puzzled.

“The coroner’s report set the time of her death at around eight-thirty, nine o’clock in the morning,” Clancy explains.