I didn't like the big cocky son of a bitch. But that didn't get in the way. As a matter of fact, I generally prefer to work for men I neither like nor respect. It pains me less to give them poor value.
So it didn't matter that I didn't likeBroadfield . Or that I didn't believe that more than 20 percent of what he had told me was the truth.
And I wasn't even sure which 20 percent to believe.
That last may have been what made my decision for me. Because I evidently wanted to find out what was true and what was false about JeromeBroadfield . And why he had wound up in bed withAbnerPrejanian , and just where Portia Carr fit into the picture, and who was setting him up, and how and why. I don't know why I wanted to know all this, but evidently I did.
'Okay,' I said.
'You'll take a shot at it?'
I nodded.
'You'll want some money.'
I nodded again.
'How much?'
I never know how to set a fee. It didn't sound as though it would take too much time- I'd either find a way to help him or I wouldn't, and either way I'd know soon enough. But I didn't want to price myself cheap.Because I didn't like him. Because he was slick and he wore expensive clothes and he lit his cigarettes with a gold Dunhill.
'Five hundred dollars.'
He thought it seemed pretty steep. I told him he could find somebody else if he wanted. He was quick to assure me he hadn't meant anything of the sort, and he took a wallet from his inside breast pocket and counted out twenties and fifties. There was still a lot left in the wallet after he'd piled five hundred dollars on the table in front of him.
'Hope you don't mind cash,' he said.
I told him cash was fine.
'Not too many people mind,' he said, and he gave me the grin again. I just sat there for a minute or two looking at him. Then I leaned over and picked up the money.
Chapter 4
Its official name is the Manhattan House of Detention for Men, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone call it that. Everybody calls it the Tombs. I don't know why. But the name somehow fits the washed-out, bottomed-out, burned-out feeling of the structure and its inhabitants.
It's onWhite Street at Centre, conveniently located near Police Headquarters and the Criminal Courts Building. Every once in a while it gets into the papers and the television news because there's a riot there.
Then the citizenry is treated to a report on the appalling conditions, and a lot of good people sign petitions, and someone appoints an investigative commission, and a lot of politicians call press conferences, and the guards ask for a pay increase, and after a few weeks it all blows over.
I don't suppose it's much worse than most urban jails. The suicide rate is high, but that's in part a result of the propensity of Puerto Rican males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to hang themselves in their cells for no particular reason- unless you call being Puerto Rican and in a cell adequate reason to kill yourself. Blacks and whites in that age group and those circumstances also kill themselves, but thePRs have a much higher rate, andNew York has more of them than most cities.
Another thing that boosts the rate is that the guards at the Tombs wouldn't lose any sleep if every Puerto Rican inAmerica wound up swinging from the light fixtures.
I got to the Tombs around ten-thirty after spending a few hours not getting back to sleep and not coming entirely awake either. I'd grabbed some breakfast and read the Times and the News without learning anything very exciting aboutBroadfield or the girl he was supposed to have killed. The News at least had the story, and of course they'd given it the headline and a big splash on page three. Portia Carr had not been strangled if I was to believe the newspaper; instead someone had brained her with something heavy and then stuck her in the heart with something sharp.
Broadfieldhad said on the phone that he thought she'd been strangled.Which meant he might have been being cute, or he might have had the story wrong, or the News was full of crap.
That was about all the News had, right or wrong. The rest was background. Even so, they were ahead of the Times- the late city edition didn't have a line of type on the murder.
THEY let me see him in his cell. He was wearing a windowpane-check suit, light blue on navy, over another custom shirt.
You get to keep your own clothing if you're being held for trial. If you're serving a sentence in the Tombs you wear standard prison issue.
InBroadfield's case this wouldn't happen because if he was convicted he would be sent upstate to SingSing orDannemora orAttica . You don't do murder time in the Tombs.
A guard opened his door and locked me in with him. We looked each other over without saying anything until the guard was presumably out of earshot. Then he said, 'Jesus, you came.'
'I said I would.'
'Yeah, but I didn't know whether to believe you or not. When you take a look around and realize you're locked up in a jail cell, that you're aprisoner, that something you never believed could happen to you is actually happening,
