A: Well, I’m not sure he’d appreciate your using the word “alias.”
Q: But Mama is his alias, isn’t it?
A: A great many people choose names that they use for professional purposes, such as actors and writers and occasionally dentists. They do not call these names …
Q: Dentists?
A: Oh, yes.
Q: But Mr. Rodriguez isn’t an actor or a writer or a dentist, he’s a gangster.
A: Oh, I don’t know about that.
Q: He had a criminal record in his native Colombia, and he’s been arrested twice in the United States for trafficking in controlled substances.
A: I wouldn’t know about that, either.
Q: Well, when you hired him, didn’t you …”
A: Hired him? Ho ho ho, let’s slow down a bit, shall we? I hired Rodriguez?
Q: Isn’t that what you told Detectives Orso and O’Brien?
A: That was when I was still dizzy. That was just a few minutes after the accident.
Q: No, that was at a quarter past four this morning. Which was forty minutes after the accident.
A: That may be so, but …
Q: And it’s now ten minutes to six.
A: My how the time does fly.
Q: Mr. Crandall, I’m going to remind you that the conversation you had with Detectives Orso and O’Brien …
A: I might add, by the way, that I don’t think it’s seemly for a police officer to be questioning a person while she’s sitting in provocative underwear. I’d like to say that for the record, if you please.
Q: It is noted for the record. But I was saying that the conversation …
A: Especially an officer who could stand to lose a few pounds.
Q: I was saying that the conversation you had with them—and you were aware of this, Mr. Crandall, you gave them your permission—the conversation was being taped. Just as this conversation is now being taped. Again, with your permission.
A: My, how very state-of-the-art we are.
Q: And I have the typewritten transcript taken from that tape, Mr. Crandall, I am holding it right here in my hand. And on this transcript, you told the detectives that you had hired Mr. Rodriguez to requisition— that is your exact language, Mr. Crandall —to requisition a body for you. A dead body. A corpse. Isn’t that what you told them?
A: Well, yes.
Q: Then you did hire him.
A: No, Charlie hired him. Listen, if we’re going to get this technical here …
Q: Yes, we are.
A: Then maybe I ought to have a lawyer.
Q: If you’d like a lawyer …
A: Why do I need a lawyer? I can take care of myself just fine, thank you.
Q: If you want a lawyer, you’re entitled to one. Just say the …
A: Dickens was right, we should first kill all the lawyers.
Q: It was Shakespeare. And the exact quote was “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” And I’m a lawyer, Mr. Crandall.
A: I still don’t want one.
Q: Fine. May we continue, please?
A: Please.
Q: Did you or did you not hire Mama Rodriguez to …”
A: Charlie Nichols hired him.
Q: How did that come about, can you tell me?
A: It was all Charlie’s idea. We were talking about how it would be nice if the picture got some column space …
Q: By the picture …”
A: My new picture. Winter’s Chill.
Q: Yes?
A: Some column space to counteract what we were afraid might be adverse critical reaction when it opened—the similarity to Gaslight, you know, what the critics might perceive, in their abysmal ignorance, as a similarity to Gaslight.
Q: Yes?
A: And Charlie recalled an incident that had taken place several years back when this woman fell from a roof and she had a copy of Meyer Levin’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman in her …
Q: It was Ira Levin. And the novel was Kiss Me, Deadly.
A: (from Detective O’Brien) Excuse me, please, but I think it was A Kiss Before Dying and Carole Landis was in the movie.
A: (from Detective Orso) You’re thinking of Farewell, My Lovely, by Dashiell Hammond.
A: (from Lieutenant Curran) `It was easy.` That’s the last line of the book.
A: (from Detective O’Brien) Which book is that, Loot?
A: (from Lieutenant Curran) The one where he shoots the broad in the belly.
A: (from Mr. Crandall) You’ll forgive me, but neither the title nor the author has anything whatever to do with the point of my story.
Q: What is the point of your story?
A: The point is that in the novel the woman is about to get pushed off the roof, and in real life a woman actually fell off the roof with a copy of the novel in her hand and it made headlines all over the country. So Charlie said, “Wouldn’t it be terrific if something like that happened to Winter’s Chill?” and I said, “No such luck,” and Charlie said, “Why does it have to be luck?” and that’s how the whole thing came about.
Q: What whole thing?
A: Hiring Rodriguez. Who was Charlie’s crack dealer and who Charlie thought would know where to find a dead body.
Q: And did he find one?
A: Yes.
Q: Julian Rainey’s body, isn’t that so?
A: I have no idea whose body it was. Mama supplied the body.
Q: And you supplied the identification to put on the body.
A: Well, that was the whole idea.
Q: Tell us what the whole idea was.