The Interrogation (20 page)

Blunt blinked dully.

“So what I’m saying, Ralph, is how do I get that fucking money this guy wants, you know, today? ’Cause the guy’s coming for it like I said, and this guy, he ain’t to be fucked with. So what do I do, huh, to get this money?”

“You just grab your balls and go get it,” Blunt answered.

“Oh, yeah, and suppose while I’m there the cops pull up?” Dunlap howled. “You got a picture of what happens to me then, Ralph?” He jabbed the air with two fingers. “Three times, Ralph. A three-time loser, that’s me. They’ll throw the fucking key away, you know? Plus, I got the problem I lied to the bastards, told them I didn’t even know the son-of-a-bitch they’re grilling. They don’t like that, Ralph. Not in a murder case. And it a little kid too. You know how they get when it’s a kid. They’ll fuck me up, you know they will.”

Blunt scratched the side of his face thoughtfully. “So, okay, what?”

“Well, the thing is, it ain’t come out yet, right? I mean, you ain’t heard nothing about no shed.”

Blunt shook his head.

“So, okay, then, where are they at with Smalls? Are they gonna pin that kid’s murder on him?”

Blunt shrugged. “There ain’t enough evidence. That’s what I hear. There ain’t enough evidence to keep him locked up.”

“So, they gonna let him go, then?”

“There ain’t enough evidence,” Blunt repeated. “So they got to get it out of him. They’re working him over right now. They been doing it six, seven hours now.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Dunlap breathed. “What if he says
something about that goddamn shed? Seven fucking hours. Oh, Jesus.” He swabbed his brow with a soiled handkerchief. “I’m cooked. I’m fucking cooked, Ralph.”

Blunt shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “You got a spring poking through here.”

“I got worse problems than that,” Dunlap said glumly. “Seven fucking hours.” He considered the situation for a moment, then said, “Listen, Ralph, can you help me out here?”

“Like how?”

“Like maybe go get the money,” Dunlap said. “I mean, I’d go get it myself, but, like I said, suppose they see me? What could I say, that I was over at Titus for the clams?”

“Titus?” Blunt asked.

“That’s where the shed is. Where you’d have to go. It ain’t that far from here, Ralph.”

Dimly Blunt figured the time, the distance, what might go wrong. “Well, suppose you’re right, and the cops are there, what do I say to ’em?”

“That you was sent.”

“Sent? By who?”

“By fucking God,” Dunlap shrieked. “Jesus, Ralph, how do I know? Somebody downtown. The Chief. I’m in deep shit here.” He lowered his voice. “You got to help me, Ralph. You don’t, I’m fucked. So, please, we’re family, you know? Can you do this for me, Ralph? Can you go get that shit for me?”

Blunt stared at Dunlap mutely, his lips parted slightly as if airing out his brain. “What do I get out of it?”

“Twenty percent of what the guy give me for stashing it.”

Blunt laughed.

“Thirty.”

Blunt waved his meaty hand.

“Okay, five hundred dollars,” Dunlap said. “An even split. Five hundred apiece. That’s a lot of money for a little trip to Titus.”

Blunt raked his fingers down his jaw. “When you need this done?”

“When?” Dunlap yelped. “Fucking now, man.”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I got to meet somebody.”

“Who?”

“What do you care? It’s important.”

“Important? What could be more important than making five hundred bucks for a little drive in the country?”

Blunt’s face took on a bullish aggressiveness. “I ain’t even said I’d do it yet.”

The two men faced each other morosely, then Dunlap said, “So, what’s the story, Ralph? You gonna do this thing?”

Blunt pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll think about it.”

“Please, Ralph. Do me this one favor and—”

“I said I’d think about it,” Blunt repeated.

And as he made his way down the aisle, kicking unseen clutter from his path, Blunt did just that, the rusty cogs of his brain grinding forward, forcing the thinking part of his mind to come drowsily awake.

What’s your secret?

1:51
A.M.
, Criminal Files Room

Burke returned the initial interview of Albert Jay Smalls to the file, then drew out the transcripts of the interrogations that had been done since Smalls’ arrest eleven days earlier. As he reread the September fourth transcript, he was not surprised that Pierce and Cohen had begun their questioning with the salient facts they’d gathered during the previous two days of their investigation. By then they’d found two witnesses who’d seen Smalls standing at the gate of the park. A vendor had identified him, along with a man who worked at a nearby newspaper stand. The vendor had also seen Cathy Lake, though only briefly, a little girl in a red dress rushing across the street just as a rainsquall hit the city. Neither of the men had seen Smalls follow Cathy
as she darted by, and no one in the park had seen him behind her once she entered it. Both Pierce and Cohen were convinced that Smalls had done exactly that, however, and they were determined to make Smalls admit it.

I watch all the children.

Burke considered the statement. Was it possible that Smalls thought of himself as a guardian of the children in the playground and the park? Someone who watched over them? But if so, why murder one of the very children he had set himself to protect?

He returned to the transcript.

Burke could feel the two detectives’ frustration growing each time Smalls denied having anything to do with the murder. Already, he thought, Pierce and Cohen had begun to sense that in Albert Jay Smalls they had hit a wall they might not ultimately be able to penetrate. And so they’d shifted their approach, Cohen now beginning to take on the Good Cop role, his tone growing friendlier and less accusatory.

Burke focused his mind on Cohen’s final three questions. Smalls had answered each haltingly, as if confused or holding back. As if he’d not known how to answer, his final response merely something he’d seized upon in desperation, since the fact that he’d been in the park at the time of Cathy Lake’s murder was something he already knew Cohen had “found out” days before. So why had Smalls faltered? Why had he been caught off-guard? The
answer seemed clear. Smalls had momentarily believed that Cohen already knew something that Cohen did not know. Was that what he’d missed, Burke asked himself, that Smalls had something to hide, something he felt accused of and had to conceal, but that his crime was not the murder of Cathy Lake?

2:17
A.M.
, Seaview, Boardwalk

Pierce looked right and left down the deserted boardwalk. “We could be here all night,” he said edgily.

Yearwood drummed his fingers along the curve of his cane. “Avery keeps strange hours,” he said calmly. “You’ll just have to wait for him to show up.”

“I don’t have that kind of time.” Pierce glanced again at his watch. Less than four hours. “Where is this guy?”

A thin mist lay over the sandy beach. Pierce could make out only the jagged lines of surf that tumbled ashore a few yards away. After a moment, he wheeled and faced the weathered facade of the Boardwalk Motel, its rusty metal sign creaking in the ocean breeze. Twenty minutes before, he’d roused the motel’s sleeping owner only to discover that Avery Garrett was not in his room. As to when he might return to it, the owner had had no idea, since Garrett had no set pattern for his comings and goings.

“Avery used to live under the boardwalk,” Yearwood said. “But the cops were always harassing him, so I guess he finally moved indoors.”

“How does he pay for his room?”

“Sells things. Scrap metal. Whatever junk he can find.”

Pierce’s restless gaze cut to the left, where, in the distance, the boardwalk came to an abrupt end. “Smalls
had a box full of crap in that tunnel where he was living. We looked all through it, but we couldn’t find anything that tied him to the murder.” He paced restlessly along the rail, then back again. “This could take all night.”