04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  I hopped out and called the office.

  Wendy/Janet answered the phone.

  “Rosenberg and Stone.”

  I was in no mood for the Wendy/Janet bit. For once, I wanted to know who I was talking to.

  “This is Stanley,” I said. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Wendy, of course,” she said. She sounded offended. “Don’t you know my voice by now?”

  I didn’t want to go into that.

  “Is this a new case?” I said.

  “That’s right. Just came in.”

  “O.K. Let me have it.”

  She did. The client’s name was Jake Odell. He’d fallen on the sidewalk and broken his leg. He lived on 126th Street between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell. He wanted an investigator to come right over.

  “What’s his phone number?” I asked.

  “Client has no phone,” Wendy said.

  “Then how’d he call in?” I demanded.

  “What?” Wendy said incredulously.

  It was a stupid question. Many of our clients had no phone. They’d call from a pay phone on the corner, or they’d have some friend call in, or whatever. It made no difference, and I’d never thought about it before. But I was sure thinking about it now.

  “You said he’s home now, waiting for me, and you also said he has no phone. So did he call in, or did a friend call for him?”

  “He did.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me so,” she cried in exasperation.

  I realized Wendy thought I was an idiot. I also realized how right Walker was about on what flimsy grounds I had been basing my theories.

  “Well, let’s double check the address,” I said.

  We did, and this time Wendy had gotten it right. At least, she’d given it to me right. Whether she’d gotten it right from Jake Odell, or whoever the hell had called in, was another matter.

  I slammed the phone down, hopped in the car and pulled out.

  “What’s the hurry?” Walker asked.

  “A new case,” I told him. “Jake Odell. 126th, between Lenox and Adam Clayton Powell.”

  “So?”

  “That’s Harlem.”

  Walker looked at me. “I thought your theory was that Harlem was a coincidence and had nothing to do with it.”

  “It is. It is,” I said. “I just don’t like it. After what you just told me, any new case makes me nervous.”

  “Case just come in?” Walker asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Client have a phone?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Why? You’d stop and call him?”

  “No. But if the gentleman’s murdered, and the client had a phone, it would be interesting to find out if the call to Rosenberg and Stone came from that phone or from somewhere else.”

  I looked at him. “You’re tracing the calls?”

  “Of course we’re tracing the calls.”

  “And tapping the phones?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you are, aren’t you?”

  “It would be nice to have a voiceprint of the murderer, don’t you think?”

  “It certainly would.”

  “Well,” Walker said, “if Odell is dead, we probably will.”

  It occurred to me, if it came to that, having a voiceprint of the murderer probably wouldn’t mean that much to Jake Odell. I didn’t know Jake Odell, but I must say I felt rather anxious about his safety.

  I went back over the 155th Street Bridge and worked my way down into Harlem.

  The address was a project. As I’ve said, projects make me nervous. This probably marked the first time I’d gone into one when I wasn’t concerned with my own safety. For one thing, I had Walker with me. For another thing, I was preoccupied with my concern for the safety of Jake Odell.

  The apartment number was 8H. The project had odd/even elevators, the designer of which has to get the Dumb-Shit-of-the-Year award. Those elevators are so slow and infuriating that, no matter what floor people are going to, when an elevator arrives, everyone piles in. As a result, the elevator has to stop at floors people aren’t even going to, and thus makes almost as many stops as if it had gone to every floor in the first place. The added bonus is that people have to use the dimly lit stairwells to get where they are going, and sometimes they fall in them, and then I have to come and see them in their nice projects so these people can sue the city for building them in the first place.

  In this instance, as so often happens, one elevator was broken, and as it was the even one, Walker and I rumbled up to the ninth floor in the odd, then walked down to the eighth floor.

  Where we played find the apartment. Walker found D and I found A and we took our bearings from that and counted along till we got to H.

  I banged on the door with no result. No answer. No sound of footsteps. Nothing.

  I had a terrible sense of déjà vu. I also had a terrible sense of dread.

  Jesus Christ. Not again.

  I tried the doorknob. It turned easily and clicked open.

  I looked at Walker.

  He looked at me.

  We bolted through the door.

  It was a large apartment, and we did it fast. Kitchen. Dining room. Living room. No results, but none expected. It wouldn’t be there.

  The hallway to the bedrooms. As we went down it I noticed Walker had his gun out. I hadn’t seen him pull it, but it was there, and frankly, I was glad.

  I let him lead, but I was right behind. Like glue.

  First bedroom. Empty.

  Second bedroom. Empty.

  One more to go.

  Walker slithered in, gun first, flat against the wall. I came in behind him low and flattened against the wall too. I was scared as hell, but I wasn’t going to miss it.

  No sign. The closet checked out. Even under the bed.

  That left only one place. The hall bathroom.

  I had a premonition. It was like in the movies. They kill them, then prop them on the john. We’d find a large black man with a cast on his leg, strangled and sitting on the toilet.

  The door was shut. Walker approached it from the side, flattened against the wall. He turned the knob, jerked it open. He came around fast, with me right behind.

  He was sitting there, just as I’d envisioned. A large black man with a cast on his leg.

  Only he hadn’t been strangled, his pants were around his ankles and he looked up at the two men in suits, one of whom was holding a gun on him, and said, understandably enough, “Who the fuck are you?”

  17.

  I COUNT IT TO my credit as a seasoned, professional ambulance chaser that after all that Jake Odell still signed the retainer. It occurred to me to ask Richard for a bonus on the case. After all, signing a client at gunpoint ought to be considered something special. But then it occurred to me I hadn’t gotten a bonus when I’d served the divorce papers on the guy who was holding a gun on me, so I didn’t bother to bring it up.

  I stopped by Richard’s office at the end of the day’s work. That wasn’t normal procedure—I usually stop in biweekly to turn in my cases—but I didn’t care. I wanted to see what was going on. Besides, we’d never worked out where I was gonna drop off Detective Walker, and Richard’s office seemed as good a place as any. Particularly since there were two cops there already, the ones going over Richard’s books.

  The atmosphere in Richard’s office was somewhat less than jovial and somewhat brighter than funereal. Wendy favored me with a cold look, my punishment for not having recognized her voice. I felt that was being a little hard on a person who even has trouble recognizing people’s faces, but I let it go.

  Janet was just as cold. I hadn’t insulted her that I knew of, though maybe she felt my not recognizing Wendy reflected on her as well, which, indeed, it did.

  Jack and Alan worked in somber silence. They were working
on the files, and the cops were working on the files, and I think somehow they had put two and two together and figured out that meant they had done something wrong. Either that, or they had finally figured out just how little they were getting paid. At any rate, they were glum.

  Even the irrepressible Sam Gravston did not look happy. He was seated at a desk in the back of the office, and I wondered what he was doing there. Then I saw he was ID-ing photos, and realized this was his day to turn in assignments. Which meant my day was next week.

  I left Walker jawing with the other two officers and went over to talk to Sam.

  “How’s it going?” I said.

  He seemed preoccupied. He almost didn’t hear me. Then he looked up.

  “Oh, hi,” he said.

  “How did your audition go?” I asked him.

  I had a feeling it hadn’t gone well, and perhaps there was a bit of malice in my asking. If so, it vanished when I saw his reaction. He frowned and rubbed his forehead.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said. He looked up at me. “I don’t know if they like me. I just don’t know. I’m so afraid I won’t get it, you know?”

  I knew. I knew damn well. I felt compassion for him then. I realized it was a horrible way to feel—lose the part and I’ll like you.

  “Look,” Sam said. “I’m sorry this is all happening at once. The auditions, I mean. You’re really getting loaded up with the shit, huh?”

  “Not that bad,” I said.

  “What came in today?”

  “Five signups.”

  His jaw dropped. “Five? And Frank’s gone, right?”

  “Since yesterday,” I told him.

  “You did five signups by yourself?”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “No, I had a cop helping me.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “Yeah, I did five,” I said. “It’s all right. I need the money.”

  “Don’t we all,” Sam said.

  “Did they tell you anything? At the audition, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said flatly. “We’ll call you.”

  The kiss of death.

  “Maybe they will,” I said.

  Sam smiled ironically. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Well, tell you one thing. I’ll be out with you tomorrow. I need the bucks, too.”

  The door to the inner office opened, and Richard Rosenberg appeared in it.

  “Stanley,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  I rolled my eyes for Sam’s benefit. “Catch you later,” I told him.

  I went into Richard’s office. He closed the door behind me, then wheeled on me as if the whole thing were all my fault.

  “This has got to stop,” he snapped.

  “What?” I said.

  Richard pointed to the door. “This! This!” he said. I could feel the energy level rising. “I have cops in my office. I have cops going through my files. I have cops following me to work. I have a cop riding around with one of my investigators. I have cops coming out my ears. I am sick to death of cops.” He lowered his voice slightly. “I don’t like cops. This has got to stop.”

  “Richard—”

  “Don’t Richard me. I am in a very bad mood.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. “You think it’s funny? You know what those cops are doing? Those cops going through my files? They’re looking for failure. They’re looking for cases I blew.” Richard shook his head and exhaled noisily. “It’s humiliating. And it’s unfair. You know what my success ratio is? It’s incredible. It’s over ninety-nine percent of the cases I take. Because I can judge ’em and pick ’em and choose ’em and weed ’em out. Ninety-nine percent. There’s no lawyer in the city that can touch that.” Richard jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “But those fucking cops in there are busting their humps to find one failure. Just one. And then they’re gonna grab it, and hold it up, and point to it and say, ‘Look. Rosenberg failed. We did it. We cracked the case.’ And then they’ll plaster it all over the papers and suddenly I won’t be the lawyer with the ninety-nine percent success rate, I’ll be the lawyer who fucked up and blew a case!”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” Richard demanded. “Why’s that?”

  “Because the cops aren’t going to let out any publicity until they catch the murderer.”

  “Assuming they catch him.”

  “True. But until they do, they’re not.”

  “But when they do, they’ll fry me.”

  “No they won’t. That’s just because Sergeant Clark thinks the murderer is a disgruntled client. Personally, I think that’s bullshit.”

  “Of course it’s bullshit.”

  “Right. So when they catch the murderer, assuming they do, he won’t be a disgruntled client. So there won’t be any publicity about any case you blew. The cops aren’t going to publicize the fact they had a bum theory that didn’t pan out.”

  Richard thought that over. “That’s right,” he said eventually.

  I couldn’t believe I was the one calming Richard down. After all, I was the one who’d found the dead bodies. I was the one riding around with the cop. I was the one being pushed out front like a sacrificial lamb, the one blundering into the buildings just waiting for another grisly corpse to jump out at me.

  “So you’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said.

  Richard bit his lip. “Yeah. Maybe. But business is going to suffer.”

  Jesus. What a prick. But then, if I had a business, I’d worry about it too.

  “It hasn’t so far,” I told him. “I had five new cases today.”

  “You did?” Richard perked up a little. I realized he’d been so worked up about the cops in his office he hadn’t even thought about the day’s cases. Somehow that made me like him a little better.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So we’re doing OK.”

  Richard considered that. He nodded.

  “Could be worse,” he said.

  It was.

  18.

  WALKER MET ME at Tommie’s school again the next morning. Alice and I used to have a car pool with another couple from the neighborhood, but they’d moved away, and now we had to go it alone. Either that or fork over eleven hundred dollars for the bus. Not on my salary. I drove Tommie every morning, and Alice picked him up every afternoon.

  “Morning,” Walker said. “What’s on for today?”

  “More of the same,” I told him. “Only it shouldn’t be as bad as yesterday.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Five signups is a little much. Particularly spread out like that.” (Besides the one in Harlem, we’d had two in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx, and one in Queens.)

  “Today should be slow.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, for one thing, Sam Gravston’s working today. He’ll handle half the load. For another, they’ll group the assignments. If a new case comes in, they’ll give it to the investigator in the area. So we won’t be chasing around all over.”

  “OK. So what’s first?”

  “How about coffee and doughnuts?” I said.

  Walker grinned. “Sounds good.”

  “My turn to buy,” I said.

  We got coffee and doughnuts, then, as no new cases had come in yet, headed out to the Bronx to shoot some photo assignments. It being the second day and all, Walker and I were old pals by now, and we were sipping coffee and eating doughnuts and having a grand old time.

  “How old’s your kid?” Walker asked.

  “Six,” I told him.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Tommie.”

  Walker grinned. “Same as me. Thomas.”

  “Detective Thomas Walker,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You got any kids?”

  Walker grinned and held up three fingers. “Two boys and a girl. Six, four and two.”

  “That’s planning,” I said.

  �
��You could set your watch by it,” Walker said.

  “Does that mean another one’s due?”

  “Not on my salary,” Walker said. “Maybe later on.”

  I caught the note in his voice. “You lookin’ to make sergeant?”

  “I’m lookin’ to make lieutenant or captain.”

  He was grinning, but I could tell he really meant it. I had a feeling he had a pretty good shot, too.

  We drove on up to the Bronx so I could shoot the steps of the subway station at Brook Avenue and East 138th Street. There was a parking spot right there, so I invited Walker to come with me, and he did. It was nice having a cop with me, ’cause the station was dark and deserted, and I hate whipping out my camera under those circumstances. Walker watched while I shot the northeast-corner stair.

  “You’ll pardon my asking,” he said, “but what’s wrong with these stairs?”

  “Take a look at the garbage on ’em,” I said.

  “Yeah, but the client fell two months ago. This garbage wasn’t there then. That’s yesterday’s newspaper, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I know,” I said. “But the general conditions apply. Plus the lights are out. The bulbs are smashed.”

  “It doesn’t mean they were out two months ago.”

  “Again, the general conditions apply. These steps are not being properly maintained.”

  Walker grunted.

  “You don’t think much of this job, do you?” I said.

  Walker shrugged. “Well, I suppose someone has to do it.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I told him. “But I certainly do.”

  The beeper went off while we were still in the station, which was nice, because there was a pay phone there. I called in and spoke to Wendy/Janet. She had a signup in Queens. A Phillip Lester, of Astoria, had fallen down at a roller skating rink and broken his leg. That made him one of my less favorite clients. In my opinion—which, of course, counts for nothing—people who go roller skating should expect to fall down and should not blame the rink when they do.

  Still, I didn’t know Phillip Lester, and I certainly wished him no ill.