The Last Dance (27 page)

“Where were you last night at eleven o'clock?” she asked Burton.

“Home watching television,” he said.

“Where's home?”

“637 South Third.”

“Anyone with you?”

“No, I live alone.”

“Sure you weren't up here on Talbot and Twenty-eighth?”

“Positive.”

“1271 Talbot?”

“No.”

“Apartment 3D?”

“Don't know it.”

“Watching television with a girl named Lorraine Riddock?”

“No, I wasn't. I was home alone.”

“You know Lorraine, don't you?”

“Yes, I do. But I wasn't with her last night.”

“Well, you were with her at the First Baptist Church, weren't you?”

“Yes, but not later. Not at eleven o'clock, which is what you asked me.”

“You were present at Gabriel Foster's press conference, weren't you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“The television tape substantiates that.”

“I know. I saw it.”

“Lorraine's standing right there next to you. On the tape.”

“I know.”

“Where'd you see it? The tape.”

“On the news that night. At home.”

“Didn't you drive Lorraine home after the press conference?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Didn't you go up to her apartment at a little before eleven last night?”

“No, I dropped her off downstairs.”

“Didn't you go up to her apartment to watch the eleven o'clock news?”

“No, I went home to watch it.”

“Didn't you sit drinking beer with her while you watched the news?”

“No, I went home to watch it.”

“Didn't drink beer with her?”

“No.”

“Didn't drop two tabs of rope in her beer?”

“I don't know what that is, rope.”

“Where'd you get the rope, Mr. Burton?”

“I don't know what rope is.”

“Mr. Burton, you know we're permitted to take your fingerprints, don't you?”

“Well, no, I don't think you are. If you plan to do that, I want to change my mind about having a lawyer here.”

“You can have a lawyer anytime you want, but it won't change the fact that we're allowed to take your fingerprints. If you want to call your lawyer …”

“Truth and Justice has its own lawyers.”

“Good, go call one of them. You want to make this a political issue, fine. All
I
want to do is charge you with first-degree rape.”

“Then I'd better call a lawyer right now.”

“Good, I'll get you a phone. And if it'll make you feel more comfortable, I won't take your prints till he gets here. What I'd like to do, you see …”

“You already told me. You'd like to charge me with first-degree rape.”

Yes, you rapist bastard, Annie thought.

“That's the plan,” she said. “But first I want to compare your prints against whatever we get from a pair of beer bottles in Lorraine Riddock's kitchen.”

Burton's face went pale.

“Forget something?” she asked.

Junius Craig was one of a staff of five black attorneys employed by Truth and Justice. Alone with Burton, he informed him that “engaging in sexual intercourse with a female incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless” constituted violation of Section 130.35 of the Penal Law, defined as Rape in the First Degree, a Class-B felony punishable by a minimum of three to six and a max of six to twenty-five. He suggested that if Burton for a moment believed his fingerprints might match the latents on the beer bottles in the victim's kitchen, or if he thought for a further moment that samples of his pubic hair might match anything they'd recovered from the girl's pubic area, or if—as yet another possibility—he felt DNA testing might come up with a positive match between his semen and anything they'd swabbed from the girl's vagina …

“And make no mistake,” he warned, “they
are
going to get those samples from you. My guess is they'll seek a court order …”

“Make them get a court order for my fingerprints, too,” Burton said.

“They won't need one. In fact, under Miranda they won't need one for the samples, either. But they'll play it safe because they snatched you from a line of civil rights marchers. So what do you say?”

“About what?”

“About any of these possibilities.”

Burton did not answer.

“Because if you think any of them
are
possibilities, I suggest we start shopping a deal right now. Twenty-five in a state pen is a long time.”

“She wanted it as much as I did,” Burton said.

“You're lucky you're white,” Craig said.

“Anyway, Walter Hopwell gave me the rope,” Burton said.

They had him so doped up he couldn't even remember his own name, but oh how sweet was the release. One swift kick of the needle and all the throbbing pain in his thigh disappeared, and all at once he was floating far far away on clouds of sweet contentment, floating. He tried to remember how long he'd been a cop, but he couldn't even remember how he'd got shot tonight. Last night? Two nights ago? What case had they been working? He tried to remember how
many
cases the Eight-Seven had worked over the years, but he couldn't even remember where the precinct was. He lay in his hospital bed smiling, trying to remember, conjuring victims and villains alike, cataloguing the cases by their key characteristics, then arranging them alphabetically to achieve some semblance of order, smiling as he worked it through, pleased with what a smart detective he was, even though he'd got himself shot—until he lost his place and had to start all over again. Well, okay, how many
had
there been? Ten, twenty? Who knows, he thought,
easy come, easy go. Forty maybe? Who's counting? Who remembers, who even cares, I got
shot!
I deserve a medal or something just for
being
here.
Two
medals if I die.

I remember Marilyn Hollis.

I remember loving Marilyn Hollis. I remember poison, I remember those sons of bitches shooting the love of my life, killing Marilyn Hollis. If I should die here in this place in this minute in this bed …

There must be fifty at least, don't you think?

At least.

Let's dance, Marilyn.

Marilyn?

Would you care to dance?

May I have this last dance with you?

Bryan Shanahan, the detective who'd caught the Martha Coleridge murder downtown, could find no indication that anything had been stolen from the old lady's apartment. So he had to assume someone had broken in there
looking
for something to steal and—when he hadn't found anything—had turned on the old lady in rage. That sometimes happened. Not all your burglars were gents. Matter of fact, in Shanahan's experience, not
any
burglars were gents.

He went back to the apartment that Wednesday afternoon without his partner, first of all because he didn't want the burden of answering a rookie detective's interminable questions, and second because he thought better when he was alone. This wasn't what he would categorize as a difficult case, some junkie burglar breaking in and messing up. At the same time, it wasn't a simple one because the killer—whoever he was—hadn't left anything for them to go with. No latents, no stray fibers or hairs—which in any case wouldn't have done them any good unless they caught somebody to run comparisons on.

Maybe he went back alone because it annoyed him that somebody
had killed a lady old enough to die without any outside help. Or maybe he went back alone because while he was reading Martha Coleridge's play he'd fallen half in love with the farm girl who'd migrated to America from England's East Midlands. Maybe her play had given him a little insight into age and aging, death and dying. Looking down at the fragile old lady with the broken neck, he'd never once considered that once, a long time ago, she might have been a spirited and beautiful nineteen-year-old who'd come to this city and discovered a world beyond her bedroom window. For a long time now, a corpse had been only a dead body to Bryan Shanahan. All at once, reading Martha's play, a corpse became a human being.

So he went through the apartment yet another time, alone this time, savoring his aloneness, searching for the young girl in the old lady's belongings, hunting for brown photographs or handkerchiefs lined with lace, mementos from Brighton or Battersea Park. On a shelf at the back of her closet, he found a satin-covered box that once might have contained sachets, the fabric faded and threadbare, the little knob on the lid dangerously loose to the touch. There were letters in the box, all tied with a faded red ribbon. He loosened the bow and began reading.

The letters had been written by someone named Louis Aronowitz. The ink had turned brown over the years, and the writing paper was brittle. Shanahan almost feared turning pages, lest they would snap as easily as had the old lady's neck. The letters had all been written in 1921, two years after Louis returned to New York from the war, a year after Martha sailed from Southampton to America. The letters chronicled a love affair that started in April of that year and ended in December, just before Christmas. It was Martha who'd ended it. Quoting her in a letter dated December 21, Aronowitz wrote, “How can you say you see no future in a relationship between a Christian girl and a Jew? I love you! That is the future, my darling!” His last letter was written on New Year's Eve. It told her that he was going back to Berlin, where his parents
had been born, and where “a Jew can call himself a Jew without fear of being judged different from any other man. I will love you always, my Martha. I will love you to my very death.”

Clearly, the letters formed the basis of the love story Martha used in her play the following year. But juxtaposed to her heart-wrenching tale of a doomed love was the contrapuntal story of a young girl finding a new life in a rich and vibrant city: the world beyond the windows in her room. Shanahan gently closed the lid on the brittle, fading box. There had been nothing in it that told him who might have killed the old lady.

But there was another letter.

He found it in a folder of paid bills. The letter was typewritten. Shanahan sat in an easy chair under a lamp with a fringed shade, and read it in the fading light of the afternoon.

My name is Martha Coleridge, author of a play titled
My Room,
which I wrote in 1922, and which was performed for one week only at the Little Theater Playhouse on Randall Square in September of that year. I am enclosing a copy of the program. I am also enclosing a copy of the play itself for your perusal. I do not know your separate personal addresses, so I am sending all of this to Mr. Norman Zimmer's office for forwarding.

I recently learned from an article in
Daily Variety,
the theatrical and motion picture journal, that a musical based on a play titled
Jenny's Room
is being readied for production next season. Your name was listed among the others involved in one way or another with the pending production.

I wish you to know that in 1923, when the play
Jenny's Room
opened to spectacular success, I wrote to its alleged author, a Miss Jessica Miles, and warned her that I would bring suit against her on charges of plagiarism unless I was substantially rewarded for the work from which her play had derived, namely
my
play, enclosed. She never replied to
my letter and I did not have the means at that time to pursue the matter further.

However, since reading the
Variety
piece, I have contacted several lawyers who seem interested in taking the case on a contingency basis, and I am writing to all of you now in the hope that together or separately you will wish to make appropriate compensation to the true creator of the work that will be engaging you all in the weeks and months to come. Otherwise, I shall be forced to initiate litigation.

I close in the spirit of artistic endeavor that embraces us all.

Cordially,

Martha Coleridge

Playwright

Martha Coleridge's letter had been written on November 26, the day after Thanksgiving. Stapled to it was a copying service bill dated November 27. There was another bill on that same date, from Mail Boxes, Etc. who had packed and mailed all the material to Norman Zimmer. A separate sheet of paper with his mailing address on it was stapled to a list of names and addresses to whom copies of the material were to be forwarded. The names on that list were:

Constance Lindstrom, Co-Producer

Cynthia Keating, Underlying Rights

Gerald Palmer, Book Rights

Felicia Carr, Lyrics Rights

Avrum Zarim, Music Rights

Clarence Hull, Bookwriter

Randy Flynn, Composer

Rowland Chapp, Director

Naomi Janus, Choreographer

When Norman Zimmer's secretary told him two detectives were here to see him, he expected Carella and Brown again. Instead, there was a big redheaded cop named Bryan Shanahan and his shorter curly-haired partner named Jefferson Long, both of whom worked out of the Two-Oh precinct downtown. Shanahan did all of the talking. He told Zimmer they were investigating the murder of a woman named Martha Coleridge, and then they showed him the letter she'd written and asked if he had received a copy of it. Zimmer looked at the letter and said, “A crank.”

“Did
you receive a copy of this letter?” Shanahan asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“When, sir?”

“I don't remember the exact date. It was after Thanksgiving sometime.”

“Did you respond to it?”

“No, I did not. I told you. The woman's a crank.”

“If you didn't contact her, how can you know that for sure, sir?” Shanahan asked.

Zimmer was beginning to get the measure of the man. One of those bulldog types who came in with a preconceived notion and would not let go of it. But he'd said they were investigating the woman's
homicide
. So attention had to be paid.