04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  I closed the apartment door again. I figured I’d give Barry a little shock. It would be kind of amusing somehow. I do look a little younger than my years, and Barry would probably take me for a rival. That might get a rise out of him, and I might find out something.

  I heard footsteps and then a knock on the door. I opened it.

  It was a shock for both of us. Barry was about 6'4", 220 pounds. He and the diminutive Janet must have made quite a couple. He was about her age, with a good-looking, goofy face, and sandy hair. He gawked at me.

  “You must be Barry,” I said. “Come on in. I’m Stanley. Janet will be right out. She’s getting dressed.”

  Barry followed me into the living room. I must say he was regarding me peculiarly.

  “Sit down,” I said. “She’ll be right out.”

  Barry sat on the couch. I sat in the chair across from him. We looked at each other.

  “So,” I said. “You been dating Janet long?”

  It was none of my business, of course, and he could have told me to go to hell, but he just gulped, and said, “Yeah. About a year.”

  I looked at him, and suddenly I realized the question I should have asked Janet before, when I’d gone up on my lines. And I realized I could ask him, too.

  “You work in Manhattan?” I said.

  “Yes I do.”

  “Oh yeah? What do you do?”

  “I’m a shipping clerk. Down on Hudson.”

  “You like it?”

  He looked at me. “It’s not bad.”

  “You got a phone in your office?”

  “Office?”

  “The room you work out of,” I said. “You got a phone there? They let you make calls?”

  “Yeah, I can make calls,” he said.

  “And get calls?”

  He was looking at me very funny. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Janet ever call you there?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about this Tuesday?” I said. “She call you there this Tuesday?”

  His eyes were wide open now. “Why you wanna know that?”

  “I was just wondering,” I said. “You work on Tuesday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All day?”

  “Yeah. All day.”

  “When is that? From when to when?”

  “Eight-thirty in the morning to five-thirty at night.”

  “You worked all day? You never took a break?”

  “I took off lunch,” he said.

  “Did Janet call you that morning?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “How could I remember that morning?”

  “You couldn’t,” I told him. “Listen. Tell me. Which of Janet’s old friends do you know? Frank Burke? Sam Gravston? Winston Bishop?”

  His eyes never flickered.

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know any of them,” he said.

  I believed him. He couldn’t have been that cool. If the name Winston Bishop meant anything to him, I’d have known it. So even if Janet had called him at work that day —which, of course, was the question I should have asked her—she hadn’t told him about Winston Bishop. Or if she had, it had made no impression on him. At any rate, in my humble opinion, Barry hadn’t strangled him.

  I figured I’d nail it down, though, seeing as how Barry and I were getting on so good. Seeing as how he’d taken me as an old friend of Janet’s, perhaps someone from her past.

  “So,” I said. “You’re sure you never left work all day Tuesday?”

  He blinked twice. Then looked at the bedroom door. Then looked back at me. Then he leaned in, screwed up his face, and asked, almost in awe, “Are you her father?”

  28.

  THE ADDRESS RICHARD had given me for Wendy Millington was in Chelsea. West 22nd Street. As with Janet, I didn’t phone first. I didn’t want people anticipating my arrival, thinking about what they were going to say to me, making up stories. Just drop in out of the blue, catch ’em off their guard, that was my plan.

  So the thing was, having not called first, when I got there and found a four-story brownstone with apartments in it, I didn’t know where Wendy Millington was. The address Richard had given me was just the street address with no apartment number.

  I went up the front steps into the foyer and checked the mailboxes. Sure enough, there was a W. Millington. Underneath the mailbox it said apartment 3.

  Only there was no bell. There were no bells for any of the apartments. This was one of those buildings where the only way you could get in to see someone was if they came downstairs and opened the door. But there was no bell to tell ’em to come downstairs. So if you were calling on someone, you either had to stand out in the street and shout up at her window, or go to the comer and call from a pay phone.

  The prospect of going out in the street and shouting Wendy Millington’s name was more than I could bear. I opted for the phone.

  Before I went, I pushed on the foyer door, just on the off chance it wasn’t locked.

  It wasn’t. It swung open easily.

  And then I saw why. The lock had been broken off it. There was no way it could be kept closed.

  The thing was, I couldn’t tell when that lock had been broken. It could have been like that for weeks.

  But, as I said, sometimes I get premonitions. And I got one now. I guess I just read too many mystery stories. But the thing is, in the murder mysteries, when the detective’s going around chasing down clues, just before he calls on someone who has a vital piece of information which could have cracked the case, that witness is silenced.

  And when I saw that smashed lock, that’s the premonition that hit me.

  The premonition that Wendy Millington was dead.

  I pushed the door open, started up the stairs.

  There was only one apartment to a floor, which made finding it easy. At the top of the first flight was a single door marked apartment 2. At the top of the next flight was a single door marked apartment 3.

  Wendy Millington’s apartment.

  As I reached the landing, I saw to my horror that the door was slightly ajar.

  This was more than just a premonition. This had become frightfully, agonizingly real.

  Jesus Christ, no.

  Wendy Millington was a stupid, infuriating twit of a girl. I had never liked her. But still, I didn’t wish her dead.

  I could be wrong. Please let me be wrong. Some doors are really locked and just look ajar.

  I pushed against it.

  It swung open. Silently. Ominously.

  I crept in. Slowly. Carefully. Dreading what I would find.

  And then I heard it.

  The sound of a scream. Not the long, drawn-out scream of someone in horror. No, a short, high-pitched, immediately muffled scream.

  The scream of someone being strangled!

  Jesus Christ! Now! He’s in there! It’s happening now!

  It was a situation I had never encountered before. Confronting a killer in the act of killing. Preventing a murder from being done.

  I was scared. Jesus, was I scared. And I was angry at myself, too. I mean, Jesus Christ, here was a murder being committed, and I could stop it, and yet here I stood petrified. But I couldn’t help it. The man had killed three times already and here he was going for four, and this was the man I had to stop.

  My eyes darted quickly around the room. Looking for a weapon. A blunt object. Something to hit him with.

  No object caught my eye.

  All right.

  With my bare hands.

  Jesus.

  My bare hands?

  I stood there like an asshole, vacillating.

  Another muffled scream from the bedroom tipped the scale.

  I crossed the room in a flash with quick, quiet strides. I reached the door to the inner room, turned, raised my fist and—

  Stopped dead in my tracks, gaping.

  Facing me was Wendy Millington. She was not being strangled. Nor did she appear to be in any immediate danger. She
was on the bed. She was also stark naked. A young man was lying on the bed. Wendy Millington was straddling him. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed in ecstasy, her surprisingly large breasts were flopping to and fro, and her ass was pumping up and down like some crazed jockey straining for the finish line, as she impaled herself on the young gentleman’s cock.

  29.

  IF WENDY MILLINGTON’S young gentleman had stayed the whole night I might have strangled him. I know I said I was going to stop using that expression, but in this case I make an exception. ’Cause if he’d stayed the night, I would have had to stay the night, too, because, of course, I had to find out who he was. Fortunately, he left shortly after eleven, so I was able to tail him back to his apartment on West 74th Street and peg him as David Cooper.

  He never saw me. And thank god, neither did Wendy Millington. I’d never have been able to live that one down. I’m not sure Wendy would have either. But fortunately, I’d managed to back out of the bedroom and slip out the apartment door without anyone being the wiser. After that I’d staked out the front door of her apartment, hoping I’d be able to recognize the gentleman in question when he came out of the building. Which wasn’t a sure thing, seeing as how I’d only seen his face from the point of view of looking sideways across the profile from somewhere near the top of his head. Plus, when I’d seen him his face had not been his most recognizable feature.

  However, the gentleman coming out the door at five after eleven had to be him, even though it was the first time I got a really good look at his face. He wasn’t that bad looking, and I couldn’t help wondering what attraction Wendy Millington held for him. I mean, everybody loves somebody sometime and all that, but everybody doesn’t love Wendy Millington. But somebody did.

  And if the nameplate on his apartment door was to believed, that somebody was David Cooper.

  I wondered about David Cooper. I wondered if David Cooper was using Wendy Millington as a source of inside information to Rosenberg and Stone. I realized it was an absurd thought. The only thing that made it seem less absurd was that that would explain his involvement with Wendy Millington. Yeah, I was gonna have to check David Cooper out.

  But it sure wasn’t gonna be that night. By the time we got back to his apartment on West 74th Street it was close to midnight. And the thing was, he’d gone home on the subway. And I’d had to follow him on the subway. Which meant there I was on 74th Street with my car still down in Chelsea. By the time I took the subway back downtown, got my car and drove back uptown, it was close to one o’clock.

  Alice was still up when I got home. I was surprised—one o’clock was late for her. But she knew I was working on the case. And she couldn’t wait to hear what I’d found out. The inside dope on Rosenberg and Stone. Did I have anything to report?

  Did I ever.

  I must say, the Wendy Millington adventure was the chief topic of conversation. Which, I suppose, was only natural. I don’t know about you, but it is not every day that I see people copulating. It is not a daily occurrence for Alice, either. She was understandably interested.

  “She was doing what?” Alice asked.

  I described the scene in Wendy Millington’s bedroom to the best of my ability.

  “Why don’t you show me?” Alice said.

  I must say, in this particularly draggy case, it was not the worst time I’d had.

  30.

  I SPENT SATURDAY chasing down the two paralegals, Jack and Alan, and also Frank Burke. I say chasing down because that’s what it entailed. It was a day fraught largely with frustration. I’d abandoned my drop-in-and-surprise-’em routine, partly through expediency, and partly due to the Wendy Millington fiasco. So the frustration was largely due to unanswered phones.

  I started calling at ten in the morning. None of the three was home. Frank Burke and Jack didn’t answer, and Alan’s answering machine said he was out.

  I left a message for Alan to call me, and took Tommie down to Riverside Park to play baseball. He beat me fourteen to nothing, which was par for the course.

  By the time we got back home it was eleven-thirty. I made my phone calls again. Alan was still an answering machine, and Frank Burke wasn’t home, but Jack was. I told him Richard wanted me to talk to him and I’d be right over.

  He sounded shocked as hell, and for a while I thought I was on to something. I was excited when I hung up the phone. A guilty reaction. Could this be it?

  Then I realized that the way I’d phrased it, the poor guy probably thought he was being fired.

  Jack’s last name was Winthorp, and he lived in the College Point section of Queens. I took my beeper, so Alice could beep me in case Alan called in in response to the message I’d left on his answering machine, and drove out there.

  On the way, I wondered what the hell I was going to do when I got there. I realized my knowledge of Jack and Alan was less than encyclopedic. In fact, my conversation with Jack on the phone was the first time I’d ever talked to either of them. This was not because I was a big investigator and they were just puny file clerks, but simply because they were so new, and in the normal course of my business I only get into the office once every other week. Jack’s voice, high-pitched and nasal, confirmed my impression of him as a somewhat nerdy type of guy.

  I was in for a bit of a shock. When I got there I discovered my knowledge of Jack and Alan was even worse than I thought. Jack wasn’t Jack. Well, he was, of course, but what I mean is he wasn’t the nerdy one. He was the one who looked like a football player. He just happened to have a nerdy type of voice.

  He also lived with his parents. I suppose that shouldn’t have surprised me so much—after all the guy wasn’t much older than twenty—but it did. That’s because I have a habit of being blinded by my own preconceptions. And I hadn’t ever thought of Jack even having parents, let alone living with them. That, coupled with finding out Jack wasn’t Jack, so to speak, really threw me. Jack had parents, a mousy, thin mother, and a bull of a father, both of whom seemed deeply concerned with their son’s welfare. Jack introduced me to them with all the appearance of a dog who expects to be whipped. We all sat down in the living room and I began my spiel.

  The relief on Jack’s face when he found out what I was there for cleared him in my mind, even though none of the rest of the conversation did. The conversation, such as it was, went on for a good forty-five minutes, and I would feel safe in saying it shed no light what so ever on the situation.

  A random sample went something like this:

  ME: “We’re just trying to help the police clear up this matter.”

  MOM: “The police! What do the police want with my boy?”

  JACK: “Nothing, Mom.”

  MOM: “But you said there were police in the office.”

  ME: “Yes, but they’re just going over the files.”

  DAD: “Files? The files you worked on, boy?”

  JACK: “Yes, Dad, but—”

  DAD: “You done something to them files, boy?”

  JACK: “No, Dad, I—”

  DAD: “He mess up them files?”

  ME: “No, sir, you see—”

  JACK: “No, Dad, honest—”

  DAD: “Shut up, boy! Don’t you interrupt the man.”

  MOM: “Hank!”

  DAD: “Well, he shouldn’t interrupt. You’d think we never taught him anything.”

  JACK: “Aw, heck, Dad—”

  DAD: “Again? You’re doing it again?”

  JACK: “No, Dad, I—”

  MOM: “You’re picking on him again.”

  DAD: “Picking on him? Who’s picking on him? I just want him to be quiet.”

  MOM: “Yes, but—”

  DAD: “And you be quiet, too.”

  JACK: “Dad!”

  MOM: “Now, Jack, he didn’t mean anything.”

  DAD: “No. That’s right. I don’t mean nothing. All I mean is I want everyone to be quiet so I can hear what the man has to say. Now then, what were you saying?”

/>   I had no idea. And by the end of the conversation I had even less idea. By the time I got out of there braindrops were dribbling out my ears, and I was happy just to be on my way.

  My beeper went off before I got to my car, which is usually a blessing, only in this case, there wasn’t a phone to be found, and I had to get in and drive around anyway. Eventually I found one and called Alice, and as I had suspected, she had beeped me to tell me Alan had just called in. I called Alan and he told me to come right over.

  Right over was Park Slope in Brooklyn, so it took me a little time to get there, even with fairly good traffic. When I did, I discovered Alan’s address was a brownstone in the process of renovation. Alan didn’t own the brownstone; he had rented a room in it, and the renovation was going on around him. How he lived in all that chaos was beyond me, but then I guess if you can work in Richard Rosenberg’s office, you can get used to anything. At any rate, Alan didn’t seem to mind the clutter.

  Nor did he mind my questions. He took no offense and seemed to take nothing personally. He was respectful and cooperative. He was also more intelligent than I had given him credit for. I must confess, I found that a rather suspicious circumstance, and it alone elevated him on my suspects list.

  Nothing else did, however. Alan stated that he had been at Rosenberg and Stone all day on the days in question, those being, of course, the days on which Winston Bishop and Gerald Finklestein had been killed. He also vouched for Jack, whom he said had not left the office either. I wished Jack could have vouched for him, but poor Jack, at the mercy of his parents, had been lucky to get a word in edgewise.

  There was, of course, the possibility that Alan could have gotten the information and phoned it to an accomplice, and this was a possibility that I could not rule out. He was certainly smart enough to have done it. Why he would have done it was beyond me, but then I didn’t understand anything in this case, so why should I understand that? At any rate, as I say, I couldn’t rule out the possibility.