87th Precinct - The Last Dance Part 31

"I don't," Meyer said.

"Where was she lying?"

"She gets a letter threatening legal action, and she forgets the woman's name?"

"Well . . ."

"Says she never heard of her, quote, unquote. Then all at once, comes the dawn! Oh yes, now 1 recall," he said, doing a pretty fair imitation. "Martha Coleridge! She's the one who wrote a letter that can only deprive me of early retirement." He snapped the niobile phone from its cradle, held it out to Kling. "Call this s.h.i.+rley La.s.ser," he said, "tell her we're on the way. Six to five her pal's already been on the pipe, telling her they saw a Travolta movie together last Sunday night."

Kling began dialing.

"I wonder which one it was," he said.

Knowing that Jamaicans slept ten, twelve to a room, Fat Ollie Weeks did not consider it beyond the realm of possibility that a Jamaican visitor from Houston, Texas, might have crashed with friends or relatives now residing in this fair city, ah yes. Further knowing that the Jamaican in question had picked up Althea Cleary in a diner in the Eight-Eight, he took a run at the precinct's own Jamaican enclave, The Forbes Houses on Noonan and Crowe-and came up empty. Undaunted, but unwilling to do a door-to-door canva.s.s of the city's six other Jamaican neighborhoods, he headed for the largest of them, downtown in the Three-Two Precinct.

Here in the old city, narrow, twisting little streets with Florida-sounding names like Lime, Hibiscus, Pelican, Manatee, and Heron ran into similarly cramped little 240.

lanes and alleys called Goedkoop, Keulen, Sprenkels, and Visser, named by the Dutch when the city was new and masted sailing s.h.i.+ps lay in the harbor. Them days was gone forever, Gertie. Running eastward from the Straits of Napoli and Chinatown, Visser Street swerved to the north into what used to be an area of warehouses bordering the River Harb. Too far uptown to be considered Lower Platform, not far enough downtown to be a part of trendy Hopscotch, the newly erected projects here were officially called The Mapes Houses, after James Joseph Mapes, a revered former Governor of the state.

All of the city's projects were rated by the police department on a one-to-five scale ranging from "uncertain" to "chancy" to "risky" to "unsafe" to downright "hazardous." The Mapes Houses were cla.s.sified a middling three on the Safety Factor scale, although foot patrolmen a.s.signed to the area considered this a conservative ranking. The cops of the Three-Two dubbed the project "Rockfort," after a seventeenth-century moated fortress on the easternmost limits of Kingston, but perhaps that was only because eighty percent of the residents here were Jamaican.

On Fat Ollie Weeks's scale of personal safety, Rockfort ranked a dismal eight, which in his lexicon meant s.h.i.+tty, mon. He went in there alone early that Thursday afternoon, but only because it was broad daylight a few weeks before Christmas. Otherwise, he'd have requested backup and a SWAT team. Abandoning his usual swagger, which he felt might be a liability here among the Jamaican brethren, ah yes, his manner became almost obsequious as he went from door to door asking after a man some six foot, two or three inches tall, with a fawn-colored complexion, deep brown eyes, wide shoulders, a narrow waist, a lovely grin, and a melodic Jamaican lilt to his voice. He did not mention the blue star tattooed on the suspect's p.e.n.i.s because many of the people he spoke to 241.

Ed McBain were women, and many of the men considered themselves Christians.

He did not strike pay dirt until three that afternoon, by which time it was beginning to snow and the skies above were dark enough to cause him to consider going back uptown.

Cynthia Keating did not seem surprised to find Carella and Brown on her doorstep yet another time. She didn't even threaten calling her lawyer. She asked them to come in, told them they had ten minutes, and then sat opposite them, crossing her legs and folding her arms across her chest. It had begun snowing, and the window behind her was alive with wind-driven flakes.

Carella got directly to the point.

"A woman named Martha Coleridge," he said, "mailed some letters to Norman Zimmer's office, asking that they be forwarded. One of them was addressed to you, as owner of the underlying rights to Jenny's Room. With it was a photocopy of a play Miss Coleridge herself had written. Did you ever receive that play and the accompanying letter?"

"Yes, I did."

Progress, Carella thought.

"How'd you feel about it?"

"Concerned."

"Why?"

"Because it seemed to me there were similarities between her play and Jenny's Room."

"What kind of similarities?"

"Well, the premise, to begin with. An immigrant girl comes to America and falls in love with someone of another faith while at the same time she's falling in love with the city itself-which she finally chooses over the man. That's identical in both plays. And the conceit. We 242.

see her love affair with the city through the window of her room, which is really a window to her heart. That's the same, too. Reading it was . . . well . . . alarming."

"So what'd you do?"

"I called Todd. He . . ."

"Todd Alexander?"

"Yes. My lawyer. He advised me to forget about it."

"And is that what you did?"

She hesitated for the briefest tick of time. Carella caught the hesitation, and so did Brown. Their eyes revealed nothing, but they had caught it. Her fleeting inner debate apparently led to a decision to tell the truth.

"No, I did not forget about it," she said.

But the truth inevitably led to another question.

"What did you do instead?" Brown asked.

Again, the slight hesitation.

"I went to see her," Cynthia said.

The detectives did not know why she was telling the truth-if indeed this was the truth. The woman they were here to inquire about was dead, and anything that had transpired between her and Cynthia Keating could neither be confirmed nor contradicted. But the path of evident truth was the one Cynthia seemed to have chosen, and they thanked G.o.d for small favors and plunged ahead regardless.

"When was this?" Carella asked.

"The day after I received the play. I called her, and we arranged to meet."

"And when was that?"

"The Thursday before Connie's party."

"Where'd this meeting take place?" Brown asked.

"Her apartment. Downtown on Sinclair."

"What'd you talk about?"

"Her letter. The play. I wanted to find out exactly what she had in mind."

"How do you mean?"

243.

Ed McBain "Her letter said she was looking for 'appropriate compensation.' I wanted to know what she considered appropriate."

"You went there expecting to deal, is that it?"

"As I told you, I was concerned. Her play couldn't have been a fake, she'd sent us a program with the name of the theater on it, the date the play opened, how could she have faked all that? And if she wasn't faking, then her play was the model for Jenny's Room. There was no question in my mind about that."

"So you went there to deal?"

"To explore a deal."

"Even though your lawyer advised against it."

"Well, lawyers," she said, and dismissed the entire legal profession with a wave of her hand.

"What did she have in mind exactly?" Brown asked.

"A cash settlement of one million dollars."

"She asked you for a million dollars?"

"That was the total sum she wanted from all of us. The ten people she'd sent the letter to. A hundred thousand from each of us."

"What'd you tell her?"

"I told her I couldn't speak for the others, but that I'd give it some thought and get back to her. I had no intention of doing that. I thought her demand was absurd. Todd was right. I shouldn't have gone there in the first place."

"Did she seem serious about that price?"

"Non-negotiable, she told me. One million dollars."

"Did you talk to any of the others about this?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Norman Zimmer and Connie Lindstrom. They're our producers. I should have turned it over to them from the beginning."

"What'd they say?"

"Forget it. Same as Todd."

244.

"How about the others who received the letter? Did you talk to any of them?"

"No."

"None of the creative team?"

"No."

"The other rights holders?"

"Felicia and Gerry? No."

"Didn't mention it to them at the Meet 'N' Greet?"

"No."

"Even though you'd met with Miss Coleridge just a few days earlier?"

"I didn't see any need to."

"How come?" Brown asked.

"I told you. I'd been advised to forget about it. So I forgot about it." She shrugged airily. "Besides, it was a party. The h.e.l.l with her."

"What'd you expect would happen?"

"I had no idea. If she sued, she sued. But I wasn't about to hand her a hundred thousand dollars I didn't even have."

"Ever see her again after that Thursday?"

"No."

"Didn't go back to talk to her again?"

"No."

"Didn't call her?"

"No."

"Had no further contact with her, right?"

"Right."

"Do you know she's dead?"

Cynthia was either stunned into silence or else was hesitating again, debating whether or not to tell the truth.

"No," she said at last. "I didn't know that."

"It was in the papers," Brown said.

"I didn't see it."

"On television, too," he said.

"So that's why you're here," she said.

245.