04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  I had stage fright.

  Which was ridiculous, but true. A cop, a homicide detective, was about to observe me in my role as a private detective, or ambulance chaser, or what you will, and I felt foolish as hell.

  What saved me, after that flash of paranoia, was realizing what was really going on. What was really going on—aside from the fact a bizarre string of murders had occurred, of which I was prime suspect, but in which I was not involved and would soon be cleared—was I was a working stiff with a wife and kid to feed, who hadn’t been making any money lately, what with taking time out finding dead bodies, and who needed hours on the clock.

  I popped open my briefcase and pulled out my assignment sheets. The three photo assignments I’d had to postpone were still pending.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go to the Bronx.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s grab some coffee and doughnuts on the way.”

  “Great,” I said.

  I headed up Madison Avenue, pulled in at a coffee shop and Walker hopped out and went in.

  It was nice.

  I have to explain. Ordinarily, I couldn’t have stopped for coffee and doughnuts. Not that I don’t have the time—as I said, I make my own schedule. I simply couldn’t have parked. Because, while parking on the West Side of Manhattan is hard, parking on the East Side is impossible. At least as far down as the Eighties, anyway. You just don’t do it. There’s no legal place to park, the meter maids are quick as greased lightning, the tow trucks materialize from nowhere and if you blink your car is gone. It’s so bad, when I get beeped near Tommie’s school, I drive out of the neighborhood before I risk pulling into a pay phone and calling the office.

  But I had Walker. And I could sit in my car while he ran in. What a luxury. See, the thing about ambulance chasing is, it’s a lonely business. You drive around by yourself all day, and the only people you see are the occasional clients. Now that’s great for someone like me who is supposed to be thinking about what he wants to write while he’s driving, but the thing is, I rarely do, and I’m often bored.

  But now I had a partner. And his stopping for coffee and doughnuts was so stereotypical it reminded me who he was. A cop. I was partnered with a cop, and my partner was grabbing the doughnuts, and then we were gonna cruise on up to the Bronx and kick some ass. Son of a bitch. Here we were, the Hill Street Blues. Hill and Renko. But no, they’re uniformed cops, and Walker was plain-clothes. All right, we’re Larue and Washington. And as soon as Washington gets back with the coffee I got this scheme to lay on him about how we can make a bundle on the side, backin’ this friend of my brother-in-law’s who’s startin’ a CD plant, not to mention a terrific practical joke to play on Belker.

  Walker got back in the car, and pulled out the coffee and doughnuts. I wondered if he’d had to pay for them, with all you keep reading about policeman’s perks. I figured the thought was uncharitable, and accepted my coffee with good grace. It wasn’t half bad.

  I pulled out and headed for the Bronx.

  The address I wanted was on Plimpton, which is in that no-man’s land up near the bridge where the number you’re looking for can be on either side of the Cross Bronx Expressway, and getting from one side to the other’s a bitch. I could recall getting dorked by one-way streets that didn’t go through. And with Walker, who undoubtedly knew the city like the back of his hand, sitting next to me, I didn’t want that to happen.

  I got lucky. The street was one-way the right way. The number I wanted was on the near side of the Cross Bronx. I pulled up in front of the dilapidated brownstone with a feeling of relief.

  I left Walker sitting in the car, hopped out and shot a roll of film of the front steps, of which the second step from the top was badly cracked.

  I hopped back in the car, feeling pretty good.

  “What was that all about?” Walker asked, as I whipped out my paysheet and made notation of the time and mileage.

  “A guy fell on those steps,” I said. “I’m taking the accident pictures. See the cracked step?”

  Walker pointed to the fact sheet for the assignment.

  “According to this,” he said, “the guy fell last February on those steps due to ice and snow.”

  “That’s true,” I said, “but the cracked step is a contributing factor. Had the step not been cracked, the ice and snow might not have built up on it, and the crack itself may have contributed to the injury.”

  Walker merely grunted.

  I could feel my self-esteem oozing away. I realized my initial fear was justified. It was going to be no fun chasing ambulances in front of a homicide cop.

  My next assignment was on Barnes Avenue. I pulled out the Hagstrom map. I figured having to consult the map probably dropped me a few notches in Walker’s estimation, too, but there was no help for it. I found the address, started the car and pulled out.

  And immediately got beeped.

  Well, no problem with a cop in the car. I didn’t even need a parking space. I spotted a pay phone on the corner and pulled in next to a fire plug.

  “Gotta call the office,” I said.

  “You don’t have a car phone?” Walker said.

  I realized any resemblance between me and a Hill Street Blues detective was entirely coincidental, and not to be inferred.

  “No,” I said, and got out.

  I called the office. Wendy/Janet answered.

  “That was quick,” she said.

  “I believe in service,” I told her. “What’s up?”

  “I have a new case for you,” she said. “It just came in.”

  “Whereabouts?” I asked.

  “West 150th street. Manhattan.”

  Jesus. Not again.

  “What about Sam?” I said.

  “Sam’s taking the morning off. He got a callback for that TV series, and ...”

  I gave up. I took down the info and got back in the car.

  And panicked again.

  I have to explain. See, the West 150s in Manhattan are an iffy proposition. For instance, on West 150th Street I could give you two street numbers that would appear to be next door to each other. They’re not. They’re actually miles apart. The reason is, Manhattan at that point has an upper and lower level, and the only way to get from one to the other is to go way out around by the 155th Street Bridge.

  I yanked out the Hagstrom map. The number I wanted was right on the borderline. A toss-up. If I got it wrong I’d be fucked, and I’d be driving around for an hour, trying to find the address, and Walker would think I was a total moron.

  “What’s the problem?” Walker said.

  “I gotta go to West 150th Street, and I’m not sure whether the number’s up or down.”

  I expected some scathing retort, but Walker just said, “Oh yeah, I can never figure that out myself.”

  I realized the guy was a human being. I also realized he’d been pretty nice when he’d taken my statement that day.

  “What are we going there for?” Walker asked.

  I consulted my notebook. “A new case came in,” I said. “A Diane Johnson fell on a city bus and broke her arm.”

  “Fine,” Walker said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  I blinked. And I felt once again, as I often do, like a total asshole.

  Yes, that was what Walker was here for. And that was what we were doing. And I’d been so self-conscious and so uptight about the fact that he was observing me in the performance of my job, that I’d completely lost sight of it.

  Two people had been murdered. This was not a case of observe Stanley Hastings and make value judgments on his life and work. This was a murder case. And bizarre as the whole thing might be, it was very, very real.

  I stopped thinking about myself for a moment and started thinking about someone else.

  I thought about Diane Johnson.

  I wondered whether Diane Johnson had been strangled.

  15.

  SHE HADN’T.

  Diane Johnson was alive and kick
ing when we got there. In fact, very much so. Diane Johnson turned out to be a feisty black woman of about twenty-five who was righteously indignant at the bus driver, who had failed to get close enough to the curb on Eighth Avenue for her to have descended safely from the steps.

  Detective Walker, whom I had introduced as my assistant, interrupted her tirade long enough to inquire if he could use the phone. I felt a chill when I realized his purpose was to report in that Diane Johnson was, in fact, still alive.

  By the time he’d returned from the kitchen, where the phone was located, I had taken down all the pertinent facts about the bus mishap, and had moved up to the top of the form to take down Diane Johnson’s personal data.

  “Married or single?” I asked.

  “Single,” she said.

  Which made me hate to ask the next question. Which was, of course, “Do you have any children?” It was a relevant question. You have to know who a client’s dependents and next of kin are, in case the client should die before the action is settled. And a mother with dependent children can get extra compensation for child care. In point of fact, at least half of Richard’s single clients had children. So there was nothing unusual about asking.

  But with Walker sitting there, being black, and the client being black, I somehow felt that asking the question would brand me as a hard-line racist who immediately assumed that any unmarried black woman would be likely to have a few children.

  But I had to ask, so I did.

  Walker never blinked. And it turned out Diane Johnson did indeed have two children, ages five and seven. I took their names, birth dates and Social Security numbers.

  I finished up the fact sheet. Then I had Diane Johnson sign the hospital release forms to get her medical records; an assignment to the hospital, assuring them that if we got a settlement, they would be paid, so that they would give us the records without us having to subpoena them; and a Request for Aided Accident form, to get the police report of the accident.

  Then I hit her with the biggie: the retainer. It empowered Richard Rosenberg to act in her behalf, and in the event he got a settlement, to retain one third of it, after first recouping his expenses.

  She signed it without reading it, which was not unusual. Most of my clients do. I always give them the retainer last, so by the time they get to it they’ve already signed half a dozen papers, and it’s just another form. That’s not to say they shouldn’t sign it, or that they’re getting rooked, or anything of the sort. The retainer is a standard form that all attorneys use, the percentage is always the same, they can’t do better elsewhere and if they want to get any money, they have to sign.

  But still, I always feel a pang of guilt when they sign it without reading it. It’s as if I’ve sold them something, which, in a way, I have.

  I gathered up the forms, took pictures of her broken arm and Walker and I got out of there.

  I was glad to have Walker with me. Diane Johnson lived in a fifth-floor walk-up in a particularly undesirable building. It was nice having a cop along.

  As if he read my mind, Walker said, “That’s one thing I like about police work. I would sure hate going into some of these places alone.”

  God, the guy was human. It occurred to me he was wearing a gun, too.

  We left the building and got in the car.

  “Nice lady,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And alive, too.”

  I grinned at that, pulled out and headed back toward the Bronx.

  By now I had calmed down enough to start thinking like a human being instead of an uptight schmuck. And I found it was only natural to start discussing what any normal person would have been discussing to begin with.

  “Well,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “What do you mean?” Walker said.

  “About the murders. You think it’s gonna happen again?”

  “Sergeant Clark seems to think so,” Walker said.

  That sounded like an opening to me. I went for it. “I’m not entirely sure that Sergeant Clark knows what he’s doing,” I said.

  That certainly gave Walker all the opening he needed. But he merely pursed his lips and said, “Clark’s a good man.”

  Frankly, I was getting pretty sick of hearing that. First MacAullif, then my wife, and now Walker. In Walker’s case, I wondered if he was really sincere. It occurred to me, it would not be politic for a detective to speak ill of his sergeant. Particularly to a murder suspect.

  “Is that right?” I said. “Well, I have a few problems with his theories.”

  Walker seemed perfectly willing to talk theory. “Oh yeah,” he said. “And what’s that?”

  “Well, his theory is the killer is some disgruntled client who’s got it in for Richard.”

  “Yeah?” Walker said.

  “It doesn’t hold water,” I said. “It seems like it’s entirely off on the wrong track.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s illogical.”

  “What’s illogical about it?”

  “It’s farfetched.”

  “That I’ll grant. But the whole thing’s farfetched, so that argument’s no good.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “If someone had a grudge against Richard, they wouldn’t kill his clients, they’d kill him.”

  “That’s a thought,” Walker conceded. “And it’s one that might well occur to the murderer. However, with cops in his office going over his books, it would be difficult. And we’re having him escorted to and from work.”

  I looked at him. “Then you’ve thought of that?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We have to cover all possibilities. It’s entirely possible that if someone really does have a grudge against Richard Rosenberg, the only reason they haven’t killed him is because he’s inaccessible, whereas his clients are not.” Walker shook his head. “Personally, I don’t hold much with that theory. I think Rosenberg’s safe. I think whoever’s killing clients is killing clients not because he can’t get to Rosenberg but because he wants to kill Rosenberg’s clients. Which would indicate that the next victim would be, not Mr. Rosenberg, but a client.”

  “So you’re saying you think there’ll be another killing too?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Just because Sergeant Clark says so?”

  “No,” Walker said. “Clark and I have our own opinions. They don’t always coincide. But in this case, they do.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “So, go on,” Walker said. “Tell me why you think this theory’s absurd.”

  “Well,” I said. “I can give you one simple reason. It couldn’t be done. It’s physically impossible. It couldn’t have happened that way.”

  “Oh? What couldn’t have happened that way?”

  “Someone with a grudge against Richard Rosenberg could not be going around killing off clients as soon as they call in for appointments.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, how would he know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That they were calling in,” I said. “Now look, taking the bull by the horns here, much as I hate to say it, it makes much more sense that I killed those people than a disgruntled client did. Because I have the opportunity. That’s what you look for, right? Motive, method and opportunity. Well opportunity is the big stumbling block here. I could have done it, because I got the calls giving me those people’s names and addresses and telling me they called in. This phantom serial killer we’re envisioning—this enraged former client, or whatever—how would he have known? There was no way he could have found out that these people had just called Rosenberg and Stone. Those murders happened right after the calls.

  “This is your theory, yours and Sergeant Clark’s. So you tell me. How could the murderer have possibly done it?”

  “Simple,” Walker said.

  I gawked at him. He smiled.

  “See,” he said, “your problem is you’re not a cop, so you don’t think like a cop. Some
body tells you something and you believe it. You take note of it and base your theories on it.

  “Now Clark and I are cops. Someone tells us something, the first thing we do is discount half of it. Then look at the other half with extreme skepticism.”

  I was getting tired of being lectured to. “And what the hell does that mean?”

  “In this case, you say, ‘How could the murderer have known that those people were going to call Rosenberg and Stone? He couldn’t have, therefore he couldn’t have killed ’em.’ Right?”

  “Right.”

  “In saying that, you’re going on the unsubstantiated word of what people have told you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just told me both of the murdered clients called Rosenberg and Stone. How do you know that? You know that because two ditsy secretaries, whose accuracy is very much in question on almost any subject, told you so. But you buy it as fact. Mr. Bishop and Mr. Finklestein called for appointments. You’re taking those girls’ word for that. And what do they know? At best, they know that a voice on the telephone told them such and such a person wanted an appointment. Is this identifying Mr. Bishop and Mr. Finklestein? Those girls never met them before in their lives, and never heard their voices.”

  I looked at him. “You mean?...”

  “Of course I do,” Walker said. “You ask me how the killer could have done it. Very simple. All he had to do was go out, find someone with a broken arm or leg, follow them home, kill them and call Rosenberg and Stone and ask for an appointment.”

  Jesus Christ. It was simple. So simple. And I hadn’t even thought of it. And what made it worse was, in the Darryl Jackson case, I’d used a bogus phone call in just that way. And I still hadn’t thought of it.

  But Walker was right. It could happen. It had happened.

  I felt a sudden chill as I realized that meant it could happen again.

  My beeper went off.

  16.

  THIS TIME I WAS nervous calling in.

  I’d been in the middle of the 155th Street Bridge when the beeper went off. I was cruising along, talking to Walker about the case and then, bam! Suddenly I wanted to get there. If I’d have had a siren, I’d have used it. I gave it the gas, bobbed and weaved, aced out a taxi, sped off the bridge and pulled up by a bank of pay phones under the train trestle by Yankee Stadium.