Matt found a straight-back chair and carried it into the interview room. He arranged it in front of the captain’s chair, and with a groan, Atchison lifted his leg up and rested it on it.
Matt glanced at Atchison. Atchison was examining him carefully, and Matt remembered what Wally had just said about “I think he’s realized we haven’t swallowed his bullshit.”
When Matt looked at Milham, Milham, with a nod of his head, told him to stand against the wall, behind Atchison in the captain’s chair.
A slight, gray-haired woman, carrying a stenographer’s notebook in one hand and a metal folding chair in the other, came into the room.
“This is Mrs. Carnelli,” Milham said. “A police stenographer. She’ll record this interview. Unless, of course, Mr. Atchison, you have an objection to that?”
Atchison looked at Margolis.
“Let’s get on with it,” Margolis said.
“Thank you,” Milham said. He waited to see that Mrs. Carnelli was ready for him, and then spoke, slightly raising his voice. “This is an interview conducted in the Homicide Unit May 20, at 2:30 A.M. of Mr. Gerald N. Atchison, by Detective Wallace J. Milham, badge 626, concerning the willfully caused deaths of Mrs. Alicia Atchison and Mr. Anthony Marcuzzi. Present are Mr. Sidney Margolis, Mr. Atchison’s attorney, and Detective Payne…first name and badge number, Payne?”
“Matthew M. Payne, badge number 701,” Matt furnished.
“Mr. Atchison, I am Detective Milham of the Homicide Unit,” Milham began. “We are questioning you concerning the willful deaths of Mrs. Alicia Atchison and Mr. Anthony Marcuzzi.”
SEVEN
Mrs. Martha Washington was not surprised, when she woke up, that her husband was not in bed beside her. They had been married for more than a quarter century and she was as accustomed to finding herself alone in bed-even after a romantic interlude-as she was to the witticisms regarding her married name. She didn’t like either worth a damn, but since there was nothing she could do about it, there was no sense in feeling sorry for herself.
She was surprised, when she looked at her bedside clock, to see how early it was: twenty minutes past seven. She rarely woke that early. And then she had the explanation: the sound of a typewriter clattering in the living room. Her typewriter, an IBM Electric, brought home from the Washington Galleries, Inc., when IBM wouldn’t give her a decent trade-in when she’d bought new Selectrics.
“Damn him!” she said.
She pushed herself out of bed and, with a languorous, unintentionally somewhat erotic movement, pulled her nightgown over her head and tossed it onto the bed. Naked, showing a trim, firm figure that gave her, at forty-seven, nothing whatever to be unhappy about, she walked into the marble-walled bathroom and turned on the faucets in the glass-walled shower.
When she came out of the shower, she toweled her short hair vigorously in front of the partially steamed-over mirror. She had large dark eyes, a sharp, somewhat hooked nose, and smooth, light brown skin. After Matt had made the crack that she looked like the women in the Egyptian bas-reliefs in the collection of the Philadelphia Art Museum, she had begun to consider that there might actually be something to it, if the blood of an Egyptian queen-or at least an Egyptian courtesan; some of the women in those bas-reliefs looked as though they knew the way to a man’s heart wasn’t really through his stomach-might really flow in her veins.
She wrapped herself in a silk robe and went through the bedroom into the living room. Her red IBM Electric and a tiny tape recorder were on the plate-glass coffee table before the couch. Her husband, a thin earplug cord dangling from his ear, was sitting-somewhat uncomfortably, she thought-on the edge of the leather couch before it, his face showing deep concentration.
She went to the ceiling-to-floor windows overlooking the Art Museum, the Schuylkill River, and the Parkway and threw a switch. With a muted hum, electric motors opened the curtains.
“How many times have I asked you not to put things on the coffee table? Heavy things?”
“How many times have I told you that I called and asked how much weight this will safely support?” her husband replied, completely unabashed.
He was nearly dressed to go to work. All he would have to do to be prepared to face the world would be to put on his shoulder holster (on the coffee table beside the IBM Selectric) and his jacket (on the couch).
“Am I allowed to ask what you’re doing?”
“Ask? Yes. Am I going to tell you? No.”
“You can make your own coffee.”
“I already have, and if you are a good girl, you may have a cup.”
“You wouldn’t like me if I was a good girl.”
“That would depend on what you were good at,” he said. “And there are some things, my dear, at which you are very good indeed.”
The typewriter continued to clatter during the exchange. She was fascinated with his ability to do two things, several things, at once. He was, she realized, listening to whatever was on the tapes, selecting what he wanted to type out, and talking to her, all at the same time.
“I really hate to see you put the typewriter there,” Martha said.
“Then don’t look,” he said, and leaving one hand to tap steadily at the keyboard, removed the earplug, took the telephone receiver from its cradle, and dialed a number from memory with the other. “Stay in bed.”
She went into the kitchen and poured coffee.
“Good morning, Inspector,” she heard him say. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
The Inspector, Martha felt, was probably Peter Wohl. Whatever Wohl replied, it caused her husband to chuckle, which came out a deep rumble.
“I have something I think you ought to see and hear, and as soon as possible,” she heard her husband say. “What would be most convenient for you?”
I wonder what that’s all about? What wouldn’t wait until he saw Wohl in his office?
“This won’t take long, Peter,” Washington said.
And then Martha intuited what this was all about. She walked to the kitchen door and looked at him.
“I’ll be outside waiting for you,” Jason said. Then he dropped the telephone in its cradle.
He looked up at her.
“Did you tape-record that pathetic woman last night?”
Jason didn’t reply.
“You did,” Martha said, shock and disgust in her voice. “Jason, she came to you in confidence.”
“She came to me looking for help. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“That’s not only illegal-and you’re an officer of the law-it’s disgusting! She wouldn’t have told you what she did if she knew you were recording it!”
He looked at her a long moment.
“I wanted to make sure I really understood what she said,” he said. “Watch!”
He pushed the Erase button on the machine.
“No tape, Martha,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I had it all.”
He stood up and started to put on his shoulder holster.
She turned angrily and went back to the stove.
He appeared in the kitchen door, now fully dressed. She recognized his jacket as a new one, a woolen tweed from Uruguay, of all places.
“You ever hear about the ancient custom of killing the messenger who bears the bad news?” Jason replied. “Be kind to me, Martha.”
“Don’t try to be clever. Whatever it is, Peter Wohl won’t blame you.”
“I’m talking about the Mayor.”
She met his eyes for a moment, turned away from him, and then back again, this time offering a mug of coffee.
“Do you have time for this?” she asked. “Or is the drawing and quartering scheduled in the next five minutes?”
“It’s not a hearty meal, but the condemned man is grateful nonetheless.”
He took the coffee, took a sip, and then set it down.
“What’s all this about?” Martha asked. “What that woman said last night? Dirty cops in Narcotics?”