12-Scam

by Parnell Hall

  I came out of the subway, headed for the nearest pay phone. It occurred to me things couldn’t be better. Ordinarily I would be faced with Wendy/Janet, and would have to suffer the anxiety over whether I could actually find my client, due to the uncertainty of whether the information she gave me would be true. But with Mary Mason on the job, that wasn’t a consideration. The information would be one hundred percent accurate and nothing could go wrong.

  Better still, unlike the Wendy/Janet situation, I’d know who I was talking to. A small satisfaction, but one’s own. I actually felt a sense of well-being as I punched in the number.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” Mary Mason said.

  “Hi, Mary,” I said. “It’s Stanley.”

  “Maggie,” she said.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “I changed my name to Maggie.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m using the name Maggie Mason now.”

  I don’t know how to describe it. It was as if the top of my head had been ripped off, and my brains were drifting away. I mean, there I was, teetering on the verge of insanity. Facing three murder counts. Not to mention an obstruction of justice. Not to mention a vindictive cop with a personal grudge who was out to get me.

  All of that somehow paled into insignificance compared to what I was facing now.

  Maggie Mason?

  I suddenly have to deal with Maggie Mason?

  The concept crowded everything out of my mind. All I could think of was why? Why? What earthly reason could cause an otherwise sensible, capable, intelligent woman to change her name from Mary to Maggie? Clearly, the only reason she had done it was to deprive me of what was left of my rapidly depleting wits.

  And, oh god, how it worked. The one constant, the one thing I had been able to cling to, as realities changed all around me, as Sandy’s lies were replaced by Sandy’s truths (if they were indeed true), as hitherto unknown boyfriends suddenly emerged from the woodwork, as fingerprints jumped from one crime scene to another, that one tiny corner of reality had just been ripped away. And in one fell swoop, the super-competent Mary Mason had transformed herself into Mary/Maggie, the moral equivalent of Wendy/Janet—good god, could I even trust her information anymore? Or was it, too, subject to change?

  I stood there on the corner of Broadway and 50th Street, holding the phone to my ear. It was midday, and the sidewalk was jammed with people on their way to lunch. I was surrounded by a mass of humanity.

  And I’d never felt more alone.

  50.

  “MAYBE HE’S RIGHT,” ALICE SAID.

  I didn’t want to hear it. I’d have rather been in the living room playing Nintendo with my son, Tommie. But it’s hard to brush off your wife when you’re facing a murder rap or two. With three, it’s practically impossible.

  “Right about what?” I said.

  There was a pause before Alice answered because she had switched on the Cuisinart. Alice was making pesto, and reggiano cheese, garlic, basil, and pignoli nuts were being ground to bits. She switched off the machine and, as if there had been no interruption, said, “About the bartender.”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe he’s right about the bartender.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. You said MacAullif thinks the bartender’s still not telling the truth. Well, what if he’s right?”

  “I gave you my opinion on that.”

  “Yeah. And now I’m giving you mine. What good would it be talking to me if all I did was parrot back your opinion?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “I’m just telling you you happen to have picked one that doesn’t thrill me.”

  “Of course not,” Alice said. “If it did, it would be your opinion. Which wouldn’t be worth talking about.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean. I mean if you already have that opinion, it’s no help to suggest it.”

  “Alice—”

  “You wanna hear my opinion, or you just wanna complain about the fact that I’m giving it?”

  I know better than to argue with Alice. At least, I always tell myself I know better than to argue with Alice. And I certainly try never to argue with Alice.

  “By all means,” I said. “What’s your opinion?”

  “Well, then,” Alice said, “what if MacAullif’s right and the bartender’s lying still? Take it another step further, and what if the bartender’s guilty?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “You want to hear this opinion or not?”

  I took a breath. “I most certainly do.”

  “Fine. Then here it is, for what it’s worth. Say the bartender’s guilty. Not that big a stretch. We already know he was in league with the girl, at least in terms of setting you up. So what if he was in league with her in terms of setting your client up? What if he was in league with her from the beginning? What if this scam—and you still don’t know what it was—but what if this scam was something the two of them were pulling on Cranston Pritchert? And by association were pulling on you? And what if something went wrong and he had to kill?”

  “Who?”

  “What?” Alice said.

  “Who did he have to kill? Cranston Pritchert? The girl? The talent agent? When the scam went wrong, who died first?”

  “How should I know?” Alice said.

  That’s the problem with Alice’s theories. The fact they’re not entirely thought out in no way diminishes her ability to argue them.

  “But that’s the whole point, you see,” I said. “If he’s pulling a scam and something goes wrong and he has to kill somebody, then he either has to kill his confederate or the person he’s scamming.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And it makes a big difference which.”

  “Maybe so. But since we don’t know the answer, why don’t we move on?”

  “To what?”

  “To what happens next.”

  “Which is?”

  I was not to know immediately, for olive oil had joined the cheese, basil, pignoli nuts, and garlic, and the Cuisinart was switched on again. When the mixture had been blended to perfection, Alice switched the Cuisinart off and said, “What happens next is, whoever he killed first, now he’s gotta kill two more. He does that and hangs on to the gun, which he later plants on you.”

  I blinked. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. That didn’t happen. The cop planted the gun on me.”

  “Yeah, but what if he didn’t? What if it was actually the bartender that did it?”

  I grimaced. Sighed. “Alice. I don’t want to hear the if-my-theories-were-your-theories bit again, but that particular theory is in contradiction of known facts. This cop Belcher happens to be framing me. I can’t get away from that.”

  Alice nodded. “That’s your problem. You take something as a given and you can’t get away from it. Well, fine. Take that as a fact. Now, set it aside and say, if it wasn’t true. Because that’s what I’m doing here. I’m playing what-if. Now say, if it wasn’t true that the cop was framing me, would it be possible that this bartender planted the gun?”

  “Are you serious?”

  Alice looked like the next thing to go in the Cuisinart might be my head. “How many times do I have to say it?” she said. “Play what-if. I thought that’s what detectives were supposed to do to begin with. Consider what-if. Well, the what-if I want you to consider is, if this bartender was the killer, could he have planted the gun?”

  “No. How could he?”

  “I don’t know. I’m asking you. I’m just curious how you’re so sure. It seems to me, from what I remember, this guy showed up practically every place you were.”

  I blinked. Considered.

  “I mean,” Alice went on, “weren’t you and he constantly going over resume pictures together? At the talent agent’s office and then at her home?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “Well, there you are. You tell me the police can’t pin down
the time of death, so no one’s sure who was killed first. But both those times—they were after your client was killed. So we could assume by then all three were dead. So either of those times—at the talent agent’s office or at the talent agent’s house—could the guy have planted the gun?”

  I took a breath. Blew it out loudly. “I’m not sure.”

  “There you are,” Alice said. “Not five minutes from your answer of an automatic no.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I grant the possibility. But it’s like if an elephant had fins would he be a fish?”

  Alice stared at me. “What?”

  “I know the cop’s framing me. So to say, if the cop wasn’t framing me does the theory make sense?—well, maybe so, but so what?”

  “That I got,” Alice said. “I just never heard the expression about the elephant and the fish.”

  “I may have just made it up.”

  “You may have?”

  “Alice, I’m stressed out. I don’t know where that came from. The point is, valid as that thought might be, it doesn’t help me. Frankly, right now it’s more input than I can handle.”

  “I know. Go play Nintendo.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hey. Don’t pretend. I know you wanna go play Nintendo with Tommie. Go on. Do you some good.”

  I’ll say that for Alice, she was pretty understanding. On the other hand, it occurred to me, she was awfully unconcerned about her husband being on the hook for three homicides. She had explained it away in almost the same terms as MacAullif—I was innocent, there was nothing to it, the whole thing was absurd and would eventually go away.

  I knew in voicing that opinion Alice was being a brick. She knew my own state of mental health was precarious, and was taking the pressure off in letting me know I didn’t have to worry about her. That was kind, considerate, and thoughtful.

  Still, it occurred to me she might have appeared just the least bit concerned.

  Anyway, I happily escaped to the living room, where Tommie was playing Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Super NES. That was something in itself. Link’s Awakening was a Game Boy game. But Nintendo’s latest wrinkle, the Super Game Boy adaptor, allowed you to play Game Boy games on your Super NES system.

  I couldn’t have been happier. The Zelda games were my favorite, and I could now play this one, which had been too small for my ancient eyes on the tiny Game Boy screen.

  I went into the living room to help Tommie, who was coping with Level Five.

  And also with a moral and ethical dilemma.

  One of the items Link uses is a bow. It’s an important item, because there are certain enemies that you can’t beat without it. In the original Zelda game, you find the bow in one of the levels. In this game, you have to buy it. And it cost 980 rupies.

  Believe me, that’s a lot. Even if you’re close to it by the time you get to Level Five, you’d hate to blow all the loot you spent the whole game saving up just on one item.

  Which is where the moral and ethical dilemma comes in. In addition to making games, Nintendo publishes its own magazine,Nintendo Power, which gives you tips on how to play the games. Tommie of course subscribes. And one of the tips they give you is called “Grabbing Goods.” It tells you how to get around paying for the bow. You go into the shop that sells it, you take it, and instead of paying the shopkeeper for it, you run with it out the door. If you do that, you will have the bow. But for the rest of the game, all the people you meet will point at you and yell, “Thief!”

  But that’s not the moral and ethical dilemma. That’s just the beginning. If you don’t want people to point at your and yell “Thief!” but yous till don't want to pay for the bow, in another Nintendo Power magazine there’s another tip called “Free Bow.” The catch here is, to get the free bow, you must have the 980 rupies. Here’s how it works. You go into the shop, pick up the bow, go to the shopkeeper, and when he asks if you want to buy it, say, “Yes.” Before he can take the rupies from you, you push A, B, Start, Select, and save your game. When you return to the game, you will have the bow and the rupies too.

  And no one will yell at you.

  Tommie accepted this cheerfully, but it totally blew my mind. What are we teaching the young of today? Well, we’re teaching them if you don’t have any money, you can get stuff by stealing. But if you do, you’ll be despised as a thief. On the other hand, if you have money, you can get stuff without paying for it. Which is a sort of corporate, white-collar crime that is not the same as stealing, and no one will say boo.

  As I watched Tommie run around with his new bow, my mind wandered.

  Something was bothering me. No real surprise there—with everything that had happened, something should be bothering me. But more than that. It was like there was something neglected. Something that I’d missed. I don’t know why, but in the back of my mind was the feeling there was something that I’d heard today that was important. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Which again was not surprising. It had been a long day. Filled with revelations. First there was Sandy and the resume photos at Actors’ Equity. Segue into the topless dancer’s boyfriend and his story of stealing the keys. Then wrap it all up and kick it around with MacAullif. Who, in his typical irritating manner, points out it might not be true. And hands me Marty Rothstein as one suspect, and the bartender as the other. Dangles them at me tantalizingly, as if saying, Here they are, pick one.

  And then there’s Alice, who does pick one. The bartender. My least-favorite suspect. And then compounds the insult by arguing something I know isn’t true—that the guy might have framed me with the gun. And then points out with annoying logic that the guy was at the talent agent’s office and at the talent agent’s house. Which would have allowed him to do it if he had done it, only the fact was, he hadn’t done it.

  Yeah: pretty long, exasperating day. Ironically, about the only bright spot was the sign-up Mary/Maggie Mason had given me. And even then I’d had the irritation of the changing name. But the sign-up itself had been a piece of cake. A nice seventy-five-cents-an-hour ride out to Far Rockaway to sign up a woman who had fallen down in Sloan’s. I’d even managed to slip into the offending supermarket and snap off a few location-of-accident photos when no one happened to be looking. The client, one Rosita Velez, had slipped on an icy floor. In a case like that, you don’t expect much, but, sure enough, in the seafood section they had a bunch of fish on ice, and a lot of the cubes had actually fallen on the floor. Of course, they weren’t the same ones that had tripped Rosita Velez, but an ice cube is an ice cube, and I shot ’em for all I was worth.

  I thought all that as I watched my little corporate crook running around slaying monsters with his free bow. And it occurred to me, maybe I was a white-collar criminal myself, photographing ice cubes that had nothing to do with anything.

  It also occurred to me that was one crime they would never convict me of, even though I’d done it. Whereas murder was a crime they might convict me of, even though I had never done it and never would.

  I pushed all such thoughts from my mind, tried to concentrate on Zelda. It was hard, because I still had the feeling I’d missed something.

  Come on. Concentrate. Level Five’s a tough level. We found the hookshot, yeah, the special grappling hook that let us cross chasms too wide to jump, but we still hadn’t found the Nightmare Key. And you can’t get to the big boss without the Nightmare Key.

  The Nightmare Key—was that it? Had someone drugged Cranston Pritchert to get the Nightmare Key? What would be the point? And who was the big boss?

  And what was it that I couldn’t remember that was driving me crazy?

  My mind did a backflip and suddenly I had it.

  Mary/Maggie Mason.

  51.

  “IT’S NOT A SNAKE.”

  MacAullif looked up from his desk, frowned. “What?”

  “I know who killed Cranston Pritchert. I know everything.”

  “Oh, you do?”

  “Yes, I do. I kno
w the whole thing, and I think I can prove it. I’m gonna need your help, but it shouldn’t be hard.”

  “Oh, is that so?”

  “Yes, it is. But that’s not important right now.”

  “Not important?”

  “No. The important thing is Belcher. I wanna nail that son of a bitch. Everything else is secondary.”

  MacAullif leaned back in his chair, cocked his head. “I’m not going to interrupt you and ask you to make sense. I’m gonna assume when you get good and ready you’re gonna tell me what this is all about. In the meantime, have your little fun.”

  “This isn’t fun. This has been one of the worst experiences of my life. If you think acting manic is a sign of having fun, I suggest you take a refresher course in psychology.”

  “Uh-huh,” MacAullif said. “You were saying you solved the crime, but the most important thing is to get Belcher?”

  “Right, and I think I know how to do it.”

  “Oh?”

  “My wife has a friend whose husband works for Channel 2. He’s an on-camera reporter, does AAA interviews.”

  “AAA?”

  “Ask any asshole. That’s how they pad the news reports. You got a two-minute time slot for a one-minute story, how do you fill the other minute? Turn on the camera, point the microphone, and ask any asshole in the street what he thinks of the story. That’s why local news is so bad. It’s all padded with AAA interviews.”

  “That’s really interesting,” MacAullif said. “How does this help us?”

  “He’ll help us nail Belcher. Whenever we’re set, whatever we need. I think the guy’s getting a kick out of it.”

  MacAullif exhaled loudly. Grimaced. “Now I am going to urge you to the point. This is coming out worse than I thought. You say you solved the crime?”

  “Yes, I did, and, believe it or not, you helped.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “But the real key was Mary/Maggie Mason.”

  “Who?”

  “Richard Rosenberg’s switchboard girl.”

  “You’ll pardon me if that doesn’t help.”

  “You know Richard Rosenberg’s regular switchboard girls are Wendy and Janet and I can’t tell ’em apart?”