The Big Bad City (26 page)

There was a good possibility that public misapprehension might escalate on this muggy Monday evening. The cars lined up at the drive-thru window, the crowd inside waiting on line to place orders or sitting at tables happily munching away, constituted what was known in the trade as “background.” In this city, the presence of background was one of the conditions that defined when a police officer might draw or fire his weapon. If Leslie Blyden, aka The Cookie Boy, was indeed inside this fast-food joint enjoying his usual evening repast, and if indeed he had killed two people, then it could not unreasonably be assumed that he was certainly dangerous and possibly armed. Two guideline conditions already satisfied. He was also a fugitive. Chalk off a third condition. Going in was another matter.

The presence of background severely limited their choice of engagement. This was not a matter of the English and French deciding like proper gentlemen to settle their ancient dispute on the level though muddy field of Agincourt. The guidelines clearly stated that if you anticipated shooting, then you made your arrest where there wasn’t no background, kiddies. The Gang of Four, as the media had immediately dubbed Meyer, Kling, Parker, and Willis, congregated on the sidewalk outside, working out a game plan.

They decided that two of them would go in to scout the joint, see if they could spot a guy with the pinkie
missing on his right hand. Even though Willis and Parker had caught the murder of the lady and her teenybopper lover boy, Meyer and Kling had caught the initial Cookie-Boy burglary. The cases were now irrevocably joined at the hip, but the doctrine of First Man Up prevailed, and Meyer and Kling caught the brass ring.

Parker was delighted. All that background in there made him very nervous. Suppose The Cookie Boy spotted fuzz on the premises and decided to shoot his way out? Guidelines applied only to law-enforcement officers. The rest of the population could fire at will. So Parker took up a position in the parking lot outside the side door, and Willis planted himself outside the front doors, and Meyer and Kling went in looking for a man some six feet tall, with black hair and blue eyes, weighing around two hundred pounds, and missing the pinkie finger on his right hand.

The air conditioning provided a welcome oasis of relief after the soggy atmosphere outside. Meyer and Kling fanned out, one heading for the service counter on the right, the other moving toward the seating area on the left. Each cop looked like any of the other customers in the place. Not many men here were wearing jackets, but Meyer and Kling were wearing them only to hide the hardware, and their clothing was wrinkled and limp from the weather outside. No one in the place gave them a second look.

Meyer got on the line closest to the door, scoping the crowd, alternately glancing at the menu on the wall above the counter and the customers waiting to place orders. Kling was doing the same thing on the other side of the room, peering around like a guy looking for
his wife and three little kids. First came height, weight, color of hair and eyes. They were easier to check at a glance. Searching for a missing pinkie demanded a scrutiny of hands. Nobody ever looked at another person’s hands unless he was some kind of pervert. The missing pinkie came only after all the other criteria were met.

Kling was the one who spotted him.

He was sitting silhouetted in a western window, drinking a cup of coffee, the sun dipping lower on the horizon behind him. He looked a lot like John Travolta, but what would John Travolta be doing in a McDonald’s in Calm’s Point? For a moment, Kling felt like going over to the table and asking him if he was John Travolta, but then he noticed the missing pinkie on the hand holding the coffee cup, and any thought of getting an autograph went straight out of his mind. He walked swiftly toward the utensil counter, turned sideways so he could keep an eye on Blyden while at the same time shielding the walkie-talkie that came out of his pocket and up to his mouth.

“Got him,” he said. “Third table on the western wall. Sitting alone, looks like he’s finished his meal and is ready to go.”

There was a silence.

Then Meyer’s voice said, “I see him.”

“What do we do?” Parker asked.

“Let him jump,” Kling said.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Meyer moving off the line and heading toward the dining room. In that same instant, Blyden put down his coffee cup, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, picked up his tray, and started for where Kling was standing. Kling moved
away at once. Blyden went to the trash container at the end of the counter, scraped his tray clean, stacked it, and again moved toward where Kling was now standing near the side exit door.

“Moving out,” Meyer said. “Side exit.”

“I’m here,” Parker said.

Willis, hearing this out front, began moving toward the parking lot.

Blyden walked past Kling without looking at him. He shoved open the exit door, walked past Parker without looking at him. Meyer and Kling came out immediately behind him. Parker fell in on Blyden’s left. Willis, spotting their approach, took up position ahead of him. The classic three points of a moving-target triangle. If he’d come here in a car, they’d have to close in before he entered it. Either that, or lose him. Plenty of background out here, too, but not as closely packed as it was inside. No one dared use a walkie-talkie again, not just yet. One false move and he’d bolt.

Somebody made that false move.

They would later debate who it might have been.

Maybe the entire setup was the false move, the short guy in a jacket moving some ten feet ahead of Blyden, the guy needing a shave and also wearing a jacket moving parallel to Blyden some twelve feet on his left, the two guys in jackets behind Blyden, maybe all at once there were too many guys in jackets on a hot summer night, and maybe all at once Blyden smelled cop.

Whatever it was, he suddenly darted to his right, the open side of the surveillance triangle, and began racing up the avenue. Willis was closest to him when he made the break. He started after him at once, and shouted the initial warning mandated by the guidelines
, “Police! Stop!” but Blyden kept running because he knew he was looking at a positive burglary and two possible felony murders. “Police! Stop!” The second warning. But a different voice this time. Parker’s voice. Coming up fast on Willis’s left, his legs longer than Willis’s, pounding past him and closing on Blyden, who would have thought it? Andy Parker?

None of the detectives dared open fire. There was simply too damn much background on this hot August night with everybody out for a walk, the sky purple now as Blyden fled westward into it. Moreover, they were literally gun shy, having been lambasted in the press and on television, having been severely chastised by a publicly defensive but privately furious Chief of Detectives. So they followed Blyden down the avenue into the setting sun, four of them in a Keystone Kops opera, echoing one after the other, “Police! Stop!,” the choruses overlapping, the crowds parting, but not one of them firing the weapon that would have decisively stopped Blyden in his tracks.

It was Parker …

Andy Parker?

… who finally took a headlong dive at Blyden, throwing himself in the air like a football hero, which he’d never been, grabbing for Blyden’s churning legs and pounding feet, making a tackle he’d never before made in his lifetime, and bringing Blyden and himself crashing to the sidewalk in a sprawling tangle of arms and legs. The other detectives came thundering up, nobody yelling “Stop” anymore because Parker …

Andy Parker?

… had finally stopped Blyden.

So all there was to say now was “Police.”

Which Meyer said.

And breathlessly added, “You’re under arrest.”

And began reciting the Miranda rigmarole.

“You have the right to remain silent, you have the right …”

And so on.

This was America.

Nellie Brand wondered why it was that every time she was on homicide call there was a murder in the Eighty-seventh Precinct. Her home phone rang at seven-thirty
P.M.
She and her husband were just about to leave the apartment. She was wearing a pretty white summer frock with a yoke neck and pale blue French-heeled pumps. Simple silver and turquoise pendant on a peach-colored silk cord. Sand-colored hair swept back and caught in a ponytail. Jeff Callard was the cop calling from the D.A.’s Office downtown.

“Hello, Jeff,” she said.

“Nellie,” he said, “they caught The Cookie Boy.”

Nellie didn’t know who The Cookie Boy was. She figured he was a sex offender who lured kiddies into his car. Callard told her who he was. She said she was all dressed up to go out to dinner with her husband. Callard said he was sorry, but this was August, and half the world was on vacation. She told him her husband would divorce her.

“That’s okay,” Callard said, “
I’ll
marry you.” She went into the bedroom to change her clothes.

When she got uptown at eight-fifteen, she was wearing simple tailored slacks, a tailored shirt, and a fawn-colored linen jacket. Her hair was still in a ponytail. She was expecting Carella, but the desk sergeant told
her he’d already gone home. He told her The Gang of Four had made the arrest here. She didn’t know who The Gang of Four was, either. Working for the District Attorney’s Office did not leave much time for watching television. She liked Carella, and was a little disappointed that he hadn’t been the arresting officer.

The Gang of Four was waiting upstairs. Meyer and Kling, she knew. Kling introduced her to the other two detectives, Willis and Parker, and then told her Blyden’s lawyer hadn’t yet arrived, so they had a little time to talk here. Blyden was The Cookie Boy. Full name was Leslie Talbot Blyden. Gulf War veteran, lost his pinkie in an accident overseas. Admitted to the burglary, but said he had nothing to do with killing two people.

“We’re looking at a Burg Two and two counts of felony murder,” Meyer said.

“He looks like John Travolta,” Parker said.

“Does anyone know Marilyn Monroe’s real name?” Kling asked.

“Is this a game show?” Nellie said.

“Who’s in charge here?” a voice asked. They turned to see a rather corpulent man in a pinstriped suit standing just outside the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the second-floor corridor. “Attorney Marvin Meltzman,” he said, “representing Leslie Blyden. Where’s my client?”

“Assistant District Attorney Nellie Brand,” Nellie said, and walked to the railing and extended her hand. Meltzman took it. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

“Just got here myself,” she said. “Where’s the suspect?” she asked Meyer.

“Interrogation Room down the hall,” he said, and then to Meltzman, “I’ll take you there, counselor.”

The two of them walked off.

“Who questioned him?” Nellie asked Kling.

“Me and Meyer.”

“And you say he admitted the burglary?”

“Said
maybe
he did the burglary, but not the murders.”

“Only maybe, huh?”

“Better than no.”

“Who’d he say did the murders?”

“The woman. Shot the kid and then herself. Accidentally.”

“Any prints on the weapon?”

“Only hers.”

“So maybe he’s telling the truth.”

“Maybe I’m Robert Redford.”

“You kind of look like him.”

“I know, it’s a curse. You kind of look like Meg Ryan.”

“Let’s go talk to Travolta. Maybe we can all make a movie together.”

They didn’t actually get started until a little past nine o’clock that night. That was when Blyden and Meltzman finished their private conversation. By that time, the detectives had also given Nellie everything they had on the crimes. The Q and A started in the Interrogation Room at 9:07
P.M.
Meyer and Kling were present, as were Willis and Parker, and Lieutenant Byrnes, and the D.A.’s Office technician who was videotaping the session. Nellie read Blyden his rights again, got his lawyer’s consent to proceed, elicited Blyden’s name, address, and pedigree, and then got down to brass tacks.

“Mr. Blyden,” she said, “I want you to tell me everything
you remember about the afternoon of August twenty-fifth.”

His resemblance to John Travolta was a little unnerving. He did not seem to possess Travolta’s cool, however. Instead, he seemed shy, almost timid, not unlikely traits for a burglar. Nellie suddenly wondered if she really did look like Meg Ryan. All at once, the video camera made her feel self-conscious, even though it was trained on Blyden.

Q:
Mr. Blyden?

A:
Yes, I’m thinking.

Q:
This would’ve been a Tuesday.

A:
Yes.

Q:
Do you remember where you were that afternoon? This would’ve been around three-thirty, four o’clock, can you recall?

Blyden seemed to be having a little difficulty here. He had already told the arresting detectives that maybe he’d committed the burglary, but not the murders. His lawyer had probably asked him—without advising him to lie, of course—to think about whether he hadn’t been someplace else
entirely
on the day of the burglary.

“Mr. Blyden?” she said. “Would you answer the question, please?”

“I was home baking cookies,” Blyden said.

Okay, he was opting to lie. Though in a singularly stupid way. If the cops thought you were The Cookie Boy, why admit to baking cookies? Listen, Nellie would take whatever she could get.

“Anyone with you, Mr. Blyden?”

“I was alone.”

“Anyone
see
you baking these cookies?”

“The window was open. Maybe somebody saw me.”

“But you can’t say for certain that anyone saw you.”

“No, I can’t.”

“What kind of cookies were you baking, Mr. Btyden?”

He hesitated. Admit to baking chocolate chip cookies and he was reaching out for The Cookie Boy’s hand.

“I forget,” he said. “I bake all kinds of cookies.”

“Like to bake, do you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Ever bake chocolate chip cookies?”

“Sometimes.”

“Were you baking chocolate chip cookies on August twenty-fifth?”