"All of a sudden certain things were clear. I couldn't stay married anymore, and for the first time I realized I didn't have to. I could leave my wife and Danny. I had thought that would be a horrible thing to do, but here I'd been planning on killing her, and now I'd actually killed somebody and I knew how much more horrible that was than anything else I could possibly do to her, like leaving."
I led him through it again, went over a few points. He finished his beer but didn't get another. I wanted a drink, but I didn't want beer and I didn't want to drink with him. I didn't hate him. I don't know exactly what I felt for him. But I didn't want to drink with him.
HE broke a silence to say, "Nobody can prove any of this. It doesn't matter what I told you. There are no witnesses and there's no evidence."
"People could have seen you in the neighborhood."
"And still remember nine years later? And remember what day it was?"
He was right, of course. I couldn't imagine a District Attorney who'd even try for an indictment. There was nothing to make a case out of.
I said, "Why don't you put a coat on, Burt."
"What for?"
"We'll go down to the Eighteenth Precinct and talk to a cop named Fitzroy. You can tell him what you told me."
"That'd be pretty stupid, wouldn't it?"
"Why?"
"All I have to do is keep on the way I've been. All I have to do is keep my mouth shut. Nobody can prove anything. They couldn't even try to prove anything."
"That's probably true."
"And you want me to confess."
"That's right."
His expression was childlike. "Why?"
To tie off the ends, I thought. To make it neat. To show Frank Fitzroy that he was right when he said I just might solve the case.
What I said was, "You'll feel better."
"That's a laugh."
"How do you feel now, Burt?"
"How do I feel?" He considered the question. Then, as if surprised by his answer, "I feel okay."
"Better than when I got here?"
"Yeah."
"Better than you've felt since Sunday?"
"I suppose so."
"You never told anybody, did you?"
"Of course not."
"Not a single person in nine years. You probably didn't think about it much, but there were times when you couldn't help thinking about it, and you never told anybody."
"So?"
"That's a long time to carry it."
"God."
"I don't know what they'll do with you, Burt. You may not do any time. Once I talked a murderer into killing himself, and he did it, and I wouldn't do that again. And another time I talked a murderer into confessing because I convinced him he would probably kill himself if he didn't confess first. I don't think you'd do that I think you've lived with this for nine years and maybe you could go on living with it. But do you really want to? Wouldn't you rather let go of it?"
"God," he said. He put his head in his hands. "I'm all mixed up," he said.
"You'll be all right."
"They'll put my picture in the papers. It'll be on the news. What's that going to make it like for Danny?"
"You've got to worry about yourself first."
"I'll lose my job," he said. "What'll happen to me?"
I didn't answer that one. I didn't have an answer.
"Okay," he said suddenly.
"Ready to go?"
"I guess."
On the way downtown he said, "I think I knew Sunday. I knew you'd keep poking at it until you found out I did it. I had an urge to tell you right then."
"I got lucky. A couple of coincidences put me on St. Marks Place and I thought of you and had nothing better to do than see the house where you used to live. But the numbers stopped at One-three-two."
"If it wasn't that coincidence there would have been another one. It was all set from the minute you walked into my apartment. Maybe earlier than that. Maybe it was a sure thing from the minute I killed her.
Some people get away with murder but I guess I'm not one of them."
"Nobody gets away with it. Some people just don't get caught."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"You didn't get caught for nine years, Burt. What were you getting away with?"
"Oh," he said. "I get it."
AND just before we got to the One-Eight I said, "There's something I don't understand. Why did you think it would be easier to kill your wife than to leave her? You said several times that it would be such a terrible thing to leave a woman like her, that it would be a contemptible act, but men and women leave each other all the time. You couldn't have been worried about what your parents would think because you didn't have any family left. What made it such a big deal?"
"Oh," he said. "You don't know."
"Don't know what?"
"You haven't met her. You didn't go out there this afternoon, did you?"
"No."
("I never see him … I never see my former husband … I don't see my husband and I don't see the check. Do you see? Do you?")
"The Potowski woman, with her eyes staring up through the blood.
When I saw her like that it just hit me so hard I couldn't deal with it. But you wouldn't understand that because you don't know about her."
("Perhaps he has a phone and perhaps it's in the book. You could look it up. I know you'll excuse me if I don't offer to look it up for you.") The answer was floating out there. I could very nearly reach out and touch it. But my mind wouldn't fasten onto it.
He said, "My wife is blind."
Chapter 17
It turned out to be a long night, although the trip to Twentieth Street was the least of it. I shared a cab down with Burton Havermeyer.
We must have talked about something en route but I can't remember what. I paid for the cab, took Havermeyer to the squad room and introduced him to Frank Fitzroy, and that was pretty much the extent of my contribution. I, after all, was not the arresting officer. I had no official connection with the case and had performed no official function.
I didn't have to be around while a stenographer took down Havermeyer's statement, nor was I called upon to make a statement of my own.
Fitzroy slipped away long enough to walk me down to the corner and buy me a drink at P. J. Reynolds.
I didn't much want to accept his invitation. I wanted a drink, but I wasn't much more inclined to drink with him than with Havermeyer. I felt closed off from everyone, locked up tight within myself where dead women and blind women couldn't get at me.
The drinks came and we drank them, and he said, "Nice piece of work, Matt."
"I got lucky."
"You don't get that kind of luck. You make it. Something got you onto Havermeyer in the first place."
"More luck. The other two cops from the Six-One were dead. He was odd man in."
"You could have talked to him on the phone. Something made you go see him."
"Lack of anything better to do."
"And then you asked him enough questions so that he told a couple lies that could catch him up further down the line."
"And I was in the right place at the right time, and the right shop sign caught my eye when the right pair of cops walked in front of me."
"Oh, shit," he said, and signaled the bartender. "Put yourself down if you want."
"I just don't think I did anything to earn a field promotion to Chief of Detectives. That's all."
The bartender came around. Fitzroy pointed to our glasses and the bartender filled them up again. I let him pay for this round, as he had paid for the first one.
He said, "You won't get any official recognition out of this, Matt.
You know that, don't you?"
"I'd prefer it that way."
"What we'll tell the press is the reopening of the case with the arrest of Pinell made him conscience-stricken, and he turned himself in.
He talked it over with you, another ex-cop like himself, and decided to confess. How does that sound?"
"It sounds like the truth."
"Just a few things left out is all. What I was saying, you won't get anything official out of it, but people around the department are gonna know better. You follow me?"