“Hold it right there, Mr. Cohen!” Meyer said sharply.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“How do you know what kind of girl she is, Mr. Cohen? When did you see her last?”
“I haven’t seen anybody connected with that show since I got out of college.”
“Then how do you know what she looks like now?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why’d you say she’s the same now as she was then?”
“I just assumed she’d be. She was a wild one then, and the wild ones don’t change.”
“How about the other girls?”
“They…were just nice kids. They got drunk, that’s all.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, we…it was Randy’s idea, I guess. He was older, you know, and with Helen, and naturally…well, we all split up…there were a lot of bedrooms in the house…and well…that’s what happened.”
“What happened?” Meyer insisted.
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Cohen shouted.
“Why?”
“Because I’m ashamed of it, that’s why. Okay?”
“Tell us about being a sniper, Mr. Cohen,” Carella said.
“That was a long time ago.”
“So was the party. Tell us about it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What theater of operations?”
“The Pacific.”
“Where?”
“Guam.”
“What’d you use?”
“A BAR with a telescopic sight.”
“Smokeless powder?”
“Yes.”
“How many men did you kill?”
“Forty-seven,” Cohen said without hesitation.
“How’d you feel about it?”
“I hated every minute of it.”
“Then why didn’t you get out?”
“I asked for a transfer, but they said no. I was a good sniper.”
“These were Japanese you killed?”
“Yeah, Japanese.”
“How much did you drink at that party?”
“A lot.”
“How much?”
“I don’t remember. We really began drinking after Richardson left. There was a lot of booze. Tony was in charge of tickets…”
“Tony?”
“Forrest. Tony Forrest. He was in charge of tickets for the show, and I think he took some money from the till to pay for the party. It wasn’t illegal or anything, I mean everybody in the group knew he was doing it. It was for the party. But there was a lot of booze.” Cohen paused. “Also, there was a climate of…well, the war had already started in Europe, and I guess most students at the time knew America would get into it sooner or later. So it was a kind of kiss-me-my-sweet attitude. We didn’t care what the hell happened.”
“Did you shoot from a tree or what?” Kling asked suddenly.
“What?”
“When you were on Guam.”
“Oh. Usually. Yeah.”
“What happened afterward?” Carella asked.
“It depended on the operation. Usually, I was supposed to pin down…”
“After Helen and Randy started the ball rolling, I mean.”
“We all got involved.”
“And after that?”
“We wound up in one room.”
“Which room?”
“Randy’s mother’s room. The bedroom. The big one.”
“Where were you on Friday, May fourth?” Meyer asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Try to remember.”
“When was that?”
“It was Friday, May fourth. This is Wednesday, May ninth. Where were you, Cohen?”
“I think I was out of town.”
“Where?”
“Upstate. That’s right. I left Friday morning. Just to take a long weekend, you know?”
“You wouldn’t have been in Minneapolis on May fourth, would you?”
“Minneapolis? No. Why should I go there? I’ve never been there in my life.”
“Do you remember a man named Peter Kelby?”
“Yeah, he was in the play.”
“Did he come to the party?”
“He came to the party.”
“Where’d you stay last weekend? On your trip upstate?”
“I went fishing.”
“We didn’t ask you what you did, we asked you where you stayed.”
“I camped out.”
“Where?”
“In the reservation. Up near Cattawan.”
“In a tent?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else on the campsite?”
“No.”
“Stop for gas anywhere along the way?”
“Yes.”
“Use a credit card?”
“No.”
“You paid cash?”
“Yes.”
“The same in any restaurants you might have stopped at?”
“Yes.”
“In other words, Mr. Cohen, we have only your word that you were up in Cattawan and not in Minneapolis, Minnesota, killing a man named Peter Kelby.”
“Whaaat!”
“Yes, Mr. Cohen.”
“Look, I…”
“Yes, Mr. Cohen?”
“Look…why would I…How the hell would I even know where Peter Kelby was? I mean…”
“Somebody knew where he was, Mr. Cohen, because somebody put a bullet in his head. We rather suspect it was the same somebody who killed six people right here in this city.”
“I haven’t seen Peter Kelby since we were in school together!” Cohen protested. “I had no idea he was in Minneapolis.”
“Ah, but, Mr. Cohen, somebody found out he was there. In fact, Mr. Cohen, it couldn’t have been too difficult, because even a nice lady named Agnes Moriarty at Ramsey University was able to find out where Kelby lived—and she wasn’t even interested in murdering him.”
“Neither was I!” Cohen shouted.
“But that party still bugs you, huh, Cohen?”
“Why does it bug you?”
“Too much sex there?”
“You enjoy firing a rifle?”
“How does it feel to kill a man?”
“Which girl were you with, Cohen?”
“What else did you do that night?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Cohen shouted.
The squadroom was very silent. Into the silence Carella said, “What’s your analyst’s name, Cohen?”
“Why?”
“We want to ask him some questions.”
“Go to hell,” Cohen said.
“Maybe you don’t realize how tight your position is, Cohen.”
“I realize, all right. But whatever is said between me and my analyst is my business, and not yours. I had nothing to do with any of these goddamn murders. You can go around opening whatever closets you want to, but some of my closets are going to stay closed, you hear me? Because they’ve got nothing to do with you or your case, they’ve only got to do with me. You hear that? Me, David Arthur Cohen, a crummy gag writer who doesn’t know how to laugh, all right? I don’t know how to laugh, all right, that’s why I’m going to an analyst, okay? And maybe I didn’t know how to laugh even back in 1940 when I was eighteen years old and at a wild party that should have knocked me out, but that doesn’t mean I’m going around killing people. I killed enough people. I killed forty-seven people in my life, and they were all Japanese, and I cry every night for every goddamn one of them.”
The detectives stared at him for several moments, and then Meyer nodded his head at the other men, and they walked to one corner of the room and stood shoulder to shoulder in a tight huddle.
“What do you think?” Meyer asked.
“I think this is real meat,” Carella said.