2 Murder

by Parnell Hall

  “They won’t,” Richard said.

  “Why not?”

  Richard shrugged. Everyone seemed to be shrugging at me today. He reached into his jacket pocket and casually pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  “Because I have it right here.”

  12.

  I’D ALWAYS KNOWN Richard was a good lawyer. He was only 30 years old, and in the short time he had been practicing, he had already built up a reputation among insurance adjusters as a demon negotiator. His record of exorbitantly high settlements was simply remarkable. Even more remarkable was the fact that, despite this, insurance adjusters were still willing to settle with him, rather than go to court. This was because, high as the settlements were, they were nothing compared to the judgments juries were awarding Richard’s clients. As the word got around, the percentage of Richard’s cases settled out of court was going steadily up. “Rosenberg? —Settle!” was a typical insurance company reaction. For, as good as Richard was at negotiation, he was better in court.

  So far in the course of my business, I’d never been called upon to testify in court in any of Richard’s cases, so I’d never really seen him in action. So I’d never known what the secret to his courtroom success really was. I learned it now. I learned it from the manner in which he produced the paper—casually, matter-of-factly, but beautifully set up and perfectly timed. It was nothing more than an elaborate grandstand—a bit of business of the type that would dazzle a jury, preformed in this case to an audience of one. Because, I now realized, though no one would have ever suspected it, this apparently unprepossessing man was, to all intents and purposes, a showman.

  And, as cheap and theatrical as the production of the paper was, it was certainly effective.

  I gawked at the paper, fascinated, just as a jury would have been. I was so startled, I could think of nothing to say, but Richard hadn’t expected me to say anything. He went on calmly, matter-of-factly, “When the police examined the appointment log and discovered the address was wrong, I realized the significance of it before they did. Of course, I’m more familiar with the workings of my office. While the police were examining the log, I looked on Wendy’s desk to see if the scratch paper was there. It was lying right on top. I saw at once that the address on it was also incorrect, and, of course, I realized the implications. So while the police were busy with the log I slipped the paper off the desk and folded it up and put it in my pocket. Then, when the police questioned me about the inconsistency in the address, I immediately advanced the theory of the piece of scratch paper from which the address had been transferred to the log. The police, of course, wanted the paper. When it was not discovered on either Wendy or Cheryl’s desk, and the police began to broaden their search, I complained of the disruption to my office, and raised the question of the warrant. Naturally, the police didn’t have one. When I saw they were determined to get one, I retired to my office, locked the door, opened the window, took the paper, folded it into a paper airplane, and sailed it across the alley onto the roof of the building next door. The police then arrived with a warrant and instituted a painstakingly thorough search—as Wendy and Cheryl can attest—which eventually proved fruitless.”

  I sat staring at him, openmouthed. Under the circumstances, that was probably the wisest thing to do anyway.

  “After the police had departed, I left the office, entered the building next door, obtained access to the roof, and retrieved the paper in question. On my way back I noted the presence of several policemen who, even now, are searching the alley to no avail.”

  He stopped and looked at me. I must say he looked pleased with himself, and I can’t say I blamed him. Good lord.

  It was several seconds before I was able to speak. When I could, only one word came to mind.

  “Why?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “Why what?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Why? The police were harassing you over an incident that occurred while you were in my employ. That makes you, for all intents and purposes, my client. And as an attorney, it is my duty to do everything I can to protect my client’s interests. What kind of an attorney would I be if I let evidence of that kind fall into the hands of the police?”

  I looked at him. That was an answer, but like the answers I’d given Daniels about the door, it was an answer that didn’t explain. I still had no idea why he’d done it.

  “Yes, but ...”

  “But what?”

  “Well, look. I can understand your protecting my rights as a client and all that, but taking that paper is something else. Isn’t that suppressing evidence?”

  “Evidence? Evidence of what? Evidence that Wendy is incompetent, I suppose. But as far as the murder investigation is concerned, I fail to see how it could be considered evidence.”

  “A minute ago you said it was evidence.”

  Richard smiled. “You should have been an attorney. Should you become one, try to remember that facts are open to many interpretations, and you should always choose the one that gives you and your client the least amount of problems.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now then. Let’s look at the alleged evidence. The police don’t have the benefit of knowing what’s on this piece of paper. I do. The address is wrong. Now then, would you like to explain to me how that happened?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you do it anyway? After all, I’m your attorney. You can tell me anything.”

  “I’m aware of the law regarding attorney/client privilege.”

  “Good. Then why don’t you explain? It might be good practice for you, in case the police raise the point.”

  I’d been thinking like the devil and fighting for time. I’d just about used up my allotment. It was time to take a shot. “All right,” I said. “You want a theory? How about this. Wendy took the call. She wrote down the address wrong. Then she beeped me and gave me the address. But she had heard the address right. So subconsciously she knew it. So when she read it off the paper she transposed it in her mind again and gave me the correct address. Later, when she transferred it into the log, she copied exactly what was on the paper.”

  “That’s your explanation?”

  “It’s an explanation.”

  “It’s a poor one.”

  “I can’t help that. Got a better one?”

  “No. So let’s examine the case for a minute.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “I think so. Seeing as how I’ve put myself in the position of being an accessory after the fact, I think you owe me that much.”

  I sighed. “All right. Shoot.”

  “After Wendy gave you the address, did you call up Darryl Jackson to verify it, and get no answer?”

  I hesitated. Richard grinned. “Hadn’t thought of that one, had you?”

  “What do you mean, I hadn’t thought of it? No one asked me it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And what’s the answer?”

  “The answer is no, I didn’t. I was nearby, and I went right over there.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Richard went back and sat down. He swiveled his chair around and put his feet up on his desk. “You see,” he said. “It doesn’t hold up.”

  “What?”

  “Your story doesn’t hold up. Even if the address were right, the story wouldn’t hold up.”

  “Why not?”

  Richard smiled. “You’ve been after me to fire Wendy and Cheryl for at least a month. Every time you come in here to drop off your cases you tell me how incompetent they are, how they can’t get anything right, how every address they give you is wrong. Now the police may buy your story, but I don’t. I just cannot believe, knowing how you feel about Wendy and Cheryl, that you would have gone over there without calling first to verify the address.”

  “But I did.”

  “I know. Therefore it becomes necessary to ask you a few more questions.�
��

  I shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  I smiled. Shook my head. “No. I did not.”

  “Then why did you go there?”

  “You know why. Wendy beeped me—”

  “Yes. Yes,” he said impatiently. “Wendy beeped you and all the rest of it. I mean why did you really go?”

  “I told you.”

  “Very well.” Richard laced his fingers together, and pushed them out in front of him until the knuckles cracked. I think I winced. He brought his hands back up to his face, and rested his chin on his thumbs. “Despite the fact you say you didn’t kill him,” he said judiciously, “you may still be charged with the crime. Even without that piece of paper the police may feel they have sufficient evidence to build up a case. That depends, of course, on what your real relationship with Darryl Jackson actually was and whether the police are able to uncover it.”

  “I never met the man in my life.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You could still be charged with the crime.”

  “So?”

  “I could get you off.”

  “What?”

  “If you killed him, I could get you off. Even if you didn’t kill him, I could get you off. It would be harder, but I could still do it.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean, if I didn’t kill him it would be harder?”

  “If you killed him, we’d know exactly what the facts were, and we could explain ’em away. It’d be a snap. If you didn’t kill him, we’re liable to run into a few surprises.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Too bad.”

  Richard picked up a pen and began doodling on a legal notepad. “Nonetheless, this might be a good time to tell me all about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  He stopped doodling, put down the pen. “Very well. We’ll see. Circumstances may alter. You might change your mind.”

  There was genuine regret in Richard’s voice, and suddenly I understood the situation. Richard’s actions, his attitude, his stealing the paper, the whole thing. He was treating me nicely because he was treating me as a client rather than an employee. But more than that, he was treating me as a prospective client. He was wooing me as a client. He’d been attempting to impress me with his ability, to show me how wise I’d be to let him represent me in this matter. And having realized this, I also realized why.

  We all have our daydreams. Mine is making my acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, hypocritically thanking all the little people, people who, if the truth be known, were too stupid to recognize my talent and had thrown roadblocks in my path all the way, and whom I had actually triumphed in spite of.

  And this was Richard’s. Standing in front of the jury in a packed courthouse in a sensational murder trial, and conducting brilliant cross-examinations, and getting his client off.

  I never would have thought it of him. As long as I’d known Richard, his only motivation had always been money. But then why shouldn’t he have daydreams like anybody else?

  And I had to ruin his.

  “I doubt it, Richard. I’m really not involved.”

  “Very well,” Richard said. He swung his feet down from the desk. His manner changed, and he became, once again, the boss.

  But with a slight difference. It was barely perceptible, but it was there. Richard was just a touch more formal and rigid than usual, which gave him the air of a rejected suitor.

  He opened the desk drawer and pulled out a folded paper. “In that case, you won’t mind the work,” he said somewhat stiffly. “This subpoena has to be served in Brooklyn tonight.” He shoved it across the desk. “Just drop it off on your way home.”

  13.

  ONCE AGAIN, Pamela Berringer sat on my living room couch.

  It was 8:10 that evening. After leaving Richard’s, I’d gone to a pay phone, called my wife, and told her to get Pamela Berringer over to our apartment on any pretext whatsoever and keep her there until I arrived. I hadn’t told her why.

  Then I’d rushed out to Bedford Stuyvesant and served the subpoena. I’d been lucky in finding the party home, and luckier still in that he was an old man who didn’t want to push my face in when he found out why I was there.

  I’d hurried home to discover that my wife had, indeed, succeeded in snaring Pamela Berringer. The pretext she’d given Ronnie had been that Tommie needed a playdate, so she had brought Joshua along with her. He and Tommie were happily playing Voltron in the other room.

  So now, here we were again. Pamela seated on the couch, my wife seated next to her, and me across from them, just as we’d been before. It was hard to believe it had only been this morning. So much had happened since then.

  I wondered how much of it Pamela knew.

  “I went to see Darryl Jackson,” I said.

  My wife and Pamela both looked at me. There was a pause.

  “Yes?” Pamela said.

  “Yes.” I said.

  I waited. I didn’t know what the situation was, but I wasn’t giving anything away. I was watching Pamela carefully, to try to read her reactions. It wasn’t easy. She seemed nervous, but, under the circumstances, she would be nervous, whether she knew about the murder or not.

  “Well, what did he say?” she asked.

  “He didn’t say anything. He was dead.”

  Pamela and Alice gasped. They gawked at me open-mouthed. I knew it was genuine on my wife’s part, but on Pamela’s I wasn’t sure.

  I went on, “He was lying there on the floor with a large carving knife in his back. He was dead.”

  My wife recovered first. “My god! Stanley. Dead? Who killed him?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The police seem to be inclined to think I did.”

  “What?!”

  “I’m kidding, of course. The thing is, I found the body, which puts me at the scene of the crime. So right now I’m their only suspect.”

  “You found the body!” Alice said. “Jesus Christ, you mean you walked in there and found the body? What the hell were you doing, walking into that apartment? What the hell did you think you were doing? And the police think you’re a suspect! My god, I can’t believe it. I—”

  I hadn’t taken my eyes off Pamela. “Shut up,” I said.

  Alice gasped. I didn’t talk to her that way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but we haven’t got much time. Pamela’s gotta get home. She can’t keep Joshua up much longer without old Ronnie getting suspicious. But before she goes, I gotta get the facts. Now, what happened this morning after I left here?”

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked.

  “What time did you leave here, Pamela?”

  “I don’t know. It was around 11:30, quarter to twelve.”

  I turned to Alice. “Is that right?”

  Pamela started. “Hey, what are you doing, checking up on me?”

  “You’re damn right I’m checking up on you. This is a murder case, and I gotta be sure of my facts. Now is that when she left?”

  “I think so. It was around then.”

  “Fine. Where did you go?”

  Pamela bristled. “You can’t question me like some common criminal.”

  She was acting indignant, probably because it was the easiest thing for her to act. But I could see through it. And what I saw was fear.

  Unfortunately, I was in no position to be sympathetic.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Well, the police can. And if I don’t get some answers right fast you’re going to be talking to them. This is a murder case, and if the police can’t find anybody else to pick on, they’re going to pick on me. So I want some answers.”

  Her eyes darted around the room. I could see her mind going. “All right,” she said. “I went shopping.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, alone.”

  “What’d you buy?”

  “I didn’t buy anything. I was just looking.”

  “Then you can’t prove it.”

>   “What?”

  “What stores did you go to? Any of the clerks remember you?”

  “Hey, what is this?”

  “What do you think it is? It’s a murder interrogation. Now what stores did you go to?”

  “Stores on Broadway. I don’t remember which ones.”

  “Great. I don’t suppose you happened to call on Darryl Jackson in the course of your travels?”

  She looked at me. “Why would I do that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not an illogical move. We’d just had a long conversation about that tape. I didn’t impress you very much. You thought my chances of recovering it were slim. So you thought you’d give it one last shot.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “All right. Ever been to his apartment?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know. You obviously have, since you gave me his address.”

  “All right, so I’ve been there. So what?”

  “Then your fingerprints will be there. That, coupled with the videotape, would be enough to make you suspect number one.”

  She kept quiet, thinking that over.

  “Well,” I said. “Don’t you want to ask me any questions?”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean? You’ve been asking me questions.”

  “Right, but we got a break in the action here. And I would think normal curiosity might lead one to ask, was I alone when I found the body? Did I look around any? Had the apartment been searched? You know. Stuff like that.”

  “Well,” Pamela said. “Had it?”

  “It had not only been searched, it had been ransacked. Apparently someone was looking for that tape.”

  “Did they find it?”

  “It would appear not. The place was totally trashed.”

  “I see.”

  “So, that’s the situation. Darryl Jackson was your pimp. He was also blackmailing you. Now he’s dead. Your fingerprints are all over that apartment. Under the circumstances, while you may not think so, it seems to me it would be a hell of a good idea for you to figure out just where the hell you were this afternoon.”

  She looked at me. Bit her lip. Said nothing.

  It was around 8:30 when Pamela Berringer finally left. I figured that was the outside limit to which we could stretch Ronnie’s credulity about keeping two 5-year-old kids up on a school night.