'Testing, one, two, three, four, five," the cameraman's voice sounds again on tape. The telephone stops ringing. Feet shuffle. Voices murmur. "We're gonna sit you at this table and chair right here." I recognize Marino's voice on tape, and in the background someone knocks on a door.
"The point is, Chandonne talked." Berger is looking at me, palpating me with her eyes again, finding my weaknesses, my inflamed spots. "He talked to me quite a lot."
"For whatever that's worth." Marino angrily stares at the TV screen. So that's it. Marino might have helped induce Chandonne into talking to Berger, but the truth is, Marino wanted Chandonne to talk to him.
The camera is fixed and I see only what is directly in its view. Marino's big gut comes into the picture as he pulls out a wooden chair, and someone in a dark blue suit and deep red tie helps Marino steer Jean-Baptiste Chandonne into the chair. Chandonne wears short-sleeved blue hospital scrubs and long pale hair hangs from his arms in tangles of wavy, soft fur the color of pale honey. Hair splays over his v-necked collar and climbs up his neck in repulsive, long swirls. He sits and his head enters the frame, swathed in gauze from mid-forehead to the tip of his nose. Directly around the bandages, the flesh has been shaven and is as white as milk, as if it has never seen the sun.
"Can I have my Pepsi, please?" Chandonne asks. He wears no restraints, not even handcuffs.
"You want it topped off?" Marino says to him.
No answer. Berger moves past the camera and I note that she is wearing a chocolate brown suit with padded shoulders. She sits across from Chandonne. I see only the back of her head and shoulders.
"You want a refill, John?" Marino asks the man who tried to murder me.
"In a minute. Can I smoke?" Chandonne says.
His voice is soft and heavily French. He is polite and calm. I stare at the television screen, my concentration flickering. I experience electrical disturbances again, post-traumatic stress, my nerves jump like water hitting hot grease, and I am getting another bad headache. The dark blue-sleeved arm with the white cuff reaches into the picture, setting a drink and a pack of Camel cigarettes in front of Chandonne, and I recognize the blue-and-white tall paper cup as coming from the hospital cafeteria. A chair scrapes back and the blue-sleeved arm lights a cigarette for Chandonne.
"Mr. Chandonne." Berger's voice sounds at ease and in charge, as if she talks to mutant serial killers every day. "I'm going to start with introducing myself. I'm Jaime Berger, a prosecutor with the New York County district attorney's office. In Manhattan."
Chandonne raises a hand to lightly touch his bandages. The backs of his fingers are covered with downy pale hair, almost albino, colorless hair. It is maybe half an inch long, as if until recently he shaved the backs of his hands. I have flashbacks of those hands coming after me. His fingernails are long and filthy and for the first time, I catch the contours of powerful muscles, not thick and bulging like men who obsessively work out in the gym, but ropey and hard, the physical habitat of one who, like a wild animal, uses his body to feed, to fight and flee, to survive. His strength seems to contradict our assumption that he has lived a rather sedentary and useless life, hiding inside his family's hotel particulier, as the elegant private houses on Ile Saint-Louis are called.
"You've already met Captain Marino," Berger says to Chandonne. "Also present is Officer Escudero from my office_he's the cameraman. And Special Agent Jay Talley with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."
I feel Berger's eyes touch me. I avoid looking. I refrain from interrupting to ask, Why? Why was Jay there? It streaks through my mind that she is exactly the sort of woman he would be attracted to_intensely. I slip a tissue out of a jacket pocket and blot cold sweat off my brow.
"You know this is being videotaped, don't you, and you have no objection to that," Berger is saying on tape.
"Yes." Chandonne takes a drag on the cigarette and picks a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue.
"Sir, I'm going to ask you some questions about the death of Susan Pless on December fifth, nineteen-ninety-seven."
Chandonne has no reaction. He reaches for his Pepsi, finding the straw with his pink, uneven lips as Berger goes on to give him the victim's address in New York's Upper East Side. She tells him that before they can go any further, she wants to advise him of his rights, even though he has already been advised of them God knows how many times. Chandonne listens. Maybe it is my imagination, but he seems to be enjoying himself. He does not seem in pain or the least bit intimidated. He is quiet and courteous, his hairy, awful hands resting on top of the table or touching his bandages, as if to remind us of what we_what I_did to him.
"Anything you say can be used against you in court," Berger goes on. "Do you understand? And it would be helpful if you would say yes or no instead of nodding."
"I understand." He cooperates almost sweetly.
"You have a right to consult a lawyer now before any questioning or to have a lawyer present during any questioning. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And if you don't have a lawyer or can't afford one, a lawyer will be provided to you free of charge. Do you understand?"
At this, Chandonne reaches for his Pepsi again. Berger relentlessly goes on making sure that he and all the world know this process is legal and fair and that Chandonne is completely informed and is talking to her of his own volition, freely, without any pressure of any sort. "Now that you have been advised of your rights," she concludes her forceful, self-assured opening, "are you going to tell the truth about what happened?"
"I always tell the truth," Chandonne replies softly.
"And you've been read these rights in front of Officer Es-cudero, Captain Marino and Special Agent Talley, and you understood these rights?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you just tell me in your own words what happened to Susan Pless?" Berger says.
"She was very nice," Chandonne replies, to my amazement. "I am still made sick by it."
"Yeah, I just bet you are," Marino sardonically mutters inside my conference room.
Berger instantly hits the pause button. "Captain," she fires at him, "no editorializing. Please."
Marino's sullenness is like a poisonous vapor. Berger points the remote control and on tape she is asking Chandonne how he and Susan Pless met. He replies that they met in a restaurant called Lumi on 70th Street, between Third and Lexington.
"You were what? Eating there, working there?" Berger pushes ahead.
"Eating there by myself. She walked in, also by herself. I had a very nice bottle of Italian wine. A nineteen-ninety-three Massolino Barolo. She was very beautiful."
Barolo is my favorite Italian wine. The bottle he mentions is pricey. Chandonne goes on to tell his story. He was eating antipasto_"Crostini di polenta con funghi trifolati e olio tart-ufato" he says in perfect Italian_when he noticed a stunning African-American woman enter the restaurant alone. The maitre d' treated her as if she was important and a regular customer, and seated her at a corner table. "She was well-dressed," Chandonne says. "She obviously was not a prostitute." He asked the maitre d' to see if she would like to come to his table and join him, and she was very easy.
"What do you mean, very easy?' Berger inquires.
Chandonne gives a slight shrug and reaches for his Pepsi again. He takes his time sucking on the straw. "I think I would like another." He holds up the cup and the dark blue-sleeved arm_Jay Talley's arm_takes it from him. Chandonne blindly feels for the pack of cigarettes, his hairy hand groping over the top of the table.
"What do you mean when you say Susan was very easy?" Berger asks again.
"She needed no coaxing to join me. She came over to my table and sat. And we had a very nice conversation."
I don't recognize his voice.
"What did you talk about?" Berger asks him.
Chandonne touches his bandages again and I am imagining this hideous man with his long body hair, sitting in a public place, eating fine food and drinking fine wine and picking up women. It weirdly darts through my thoughts that Chandonne might have suspected Berger would show me this videotape. Is the Italian food and wine something he mentions for my benefit? Is he taunting me? What does he know about me? Nothing, I answer myself. There is no reason he would know anything about me. Now he is telling Berger that he and Susan Pless discussed politics and music over dinner. When Berger asks him if he was aware of what Pless did for a living, he answers that she told him she worked for a television station.