04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  I also couldn’t confirm it. I couldn’t even think of any way to try. I left Alan’s place feeling like one hell of a private detective.

  I called Frank Burke from a pay phone on the corner, and this time he was in. He told me to come right over.

  Right over was—you guessed it—back up in Queens, so I got in the car and headed out.

  Frank Burke lived in an apartment over a storefront on Hillside Avenue in Jamaica. It was a fairly nice building, with a locked outer door and a buzzer system to call up, and I had a feeling if the assignments Frank Burke had gone out on had been to buildings as safe as his own, he’d have still been working for us.

  I buzzed up, and Frank buzzed me in.

  He was grinning in the doorway as I came up the stairs.

  “Well, well, the supersleuth,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Not too good,” I said, and stepped by him into his apartment.

  It was a modest but neatly furnished one-bedroom affair, with a living room and a kitchen alcove.

  “Sit down,” Frank said, trailing me into the room. “Can I get you a beer?”

  I noticed he was holding a half-finished bottle of Heiniken. “No thanks, nothing for me,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He flopped into an easy chair. “So what’s this all about?”

  I looked at him. Frank Burke was about twenty-three or twenty-four. He was about my height and weight, which is to say, about average, but he had a deceptively lean and wiry look. I figured he might be strong. Strong enough to have strangled someone.

  I paused while thinking all this, and the result was that I didn’t answer him immediately. And by doing so I inadvertently stumbled upon an interrogation technique, one that the police use deliberately and to good effect.

  Because he got nervous. He started fidgeting, and then he grinned in a manner that was obviously forced.

  I was fascinated. Was I getting something? I didn’t know, but having lucked into it, I decided to play it. I hadn’t told him anything on the phone, just that I wanted to see him, so he had no idea why I was there. So I kept quiet, to let him stew, and see if he’d crack.

  He did.

  “Now look,” he said. “I know why you’re here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. You want me to come back to work. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “Oh,” I said, utterly disappointed that that was what was worrying him.

  Of course, he misunderstood.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “You’re really overworked with just you and Sam, and him having auditions all the time, and you must be going nuts racing around trying to cover everything, but the thing is, I just can’t do it. See—”

  I cut him off. “No. You don’t understand. I don’t want you to come back to work.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. That’s not why I came out here. I just need to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “To begin with, when did you quit?”

  “So it is about that.”

  “No, it isn’t. I just want to know when.”

  “Well, last week, of course. But when? Let me see.” He thought a moment. “All right. The day the guy got killed. The day Richard was joking that you strangled him.”

  “You quit then?”

  He shook his head. “No. The next morning. I came in the next morning and turned in my kit.” He took a pull on the beer bottle. “I went home that night and I thought about it, and I decided I just didn’t want to do it, you know.” He took another sip. “The truth is, I had a bad signup that day. In Queens. You know, out toward the airport, and then get off the Van Wyck and take Linden Boulevard east for a while, and then some side street out in there. The client was this black guy who was very drunk and kept trying to borrow money off me to buy a bottle. It wasn’t that scary, really, you know, it just made me uncomfortable.” He took another swig. “And then it was something Sam said.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Remember, when he came in all excited about his audition? Well, after that I got talking to him and I told him about the signup, you know, and he laughed and said, yeah, they always gave the trainees the easy ones. And it was a joke, you know, but I realized it was true. And I got to thinking, Jesus, if these are the easy ones, what the hell are the hard ones like? So the next morning I turned in my kit.”

  “What time?”

  “What?”

  “What time did you come in?”

  “First thing. Nine o’clock.”

  “Did you talk to Richard?”

  He shook his head. “He wasn’t in yet. I talked to one of the girls. She said he didn’t usually come in till ten. I didn’t want to wait around until then, so I left the kit with her.”

  My mind was racing. The Gerald Finklestein case hadn’t come in until after ten. If he’d really left the office before ten he couldn’t have known about it, so he couldn’t have done it. Unless, of course, he’d raced out there, strangled Finklestein and made the call himself. But I’d presumably talked to Finklestein. And while I didn’t know if it was really Finklestein, I didn’t think it was Frank Burke. Not unless he had a talent for dialects that I wasn’t aware of. And not unless he had a strong enough stomach to strangle someone, and then wait there by the body until the phone rang so he could impersonate him. Which would be so bizarre there was no way I could see him doing it.

  I tried to come back to earth and zero in.

  “So you left your kit with one of the girls?”

  “Yeah. Is there a problem? Is the signup missing?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. Which girl did you leave it with?”

  “I can’t remember their names. The skinny one.”

  “Janet.”

  “If you say so. Why is it important?”

  I realized something that, of course, I should have realized before. If Frank Burke really had turned in his kit as he said, and hadn’t been back to Rosenberg and Stone since, then he knew nothing of the murders, aside from Winston Bishop. He didn’t know that Gerald Finklestein or Clarence White had been killed.

  Unless he killed them.

  And if he didn’t know, I wasn’t going to tell him.

  “It’s not really. I’m just wondering. Did you get paid?”

  “No. Rosenberg wasn’t in yet to sign the check, and I didn’t want to wait around. They said they’d mail it to me.”

  “You didn’t go back later and get it?”

  He shook his head. “No. I didn’t have that much coming, you know. I’d only been there a couple of days. And trainees only get half-time for training. What’s this all about?”

  I couldn’t put him off much longer. “Nothing. I’m just making small talk. What I really came to see you about was the guy who got killed. Winston Bishop.”

  His eyes got real round. “No shit!”

  “None. See, the cops are giving me a hard time about it, ’cause I found the body and everything, so I wanted to talk to everybody who was working that day to see if anybody knows anything that would back up my story. I wouldn’t put it past those clowns to decide I was the one who did it.”

  He was grinning like a zany. “You? That’s a laugh. You? And after everything Richard said that day about you strangling the guy. And we’re all laughing. And he’s talking about getting you off. And now the cops think so, too. Jesus.”

  Frank Burke’s laughter was quite genuine this time, and his relief was very apparent. I couldn’t tell if he was relieved to find out that that was all I wanted, or if he was relieved to find out the cops suspected me instead of him, but he sure was relieved.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t be laughing at your troubles. I know this can’t be any fun for you. But it’s just so absurd. And you know, I have to tell you, I’m so glad you’re not trying to talk me into coming back to work. Because I couldn’t do it. I got another job. A better job. Steady. Better money. I start tomorrow.”

  “Oh
?”

  “Yeah. I was lucky to get it. I wouldn’t have, but I knew someone, you know, and he got me in.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. See, so I wouldn’t come back to Rosenberg and Stone, no matter what. So I’m glad that wasn’t it.”

  I smiled, but inwardly I groaned. Jesus, everyone was doing better than me. All these young kids. First Sam Gravston with his auditions, and now Frank Burke with his better job. I wondered what it was that was better than Rosenberg and Stone that Frank had been so lucky to get.

  I shook my head. “No, that wasn’t it. So you got a better job, huh? Who’s it with?”

  He was grinning from ear to ear, he was so happy.

  “The Sanitation Department.”

  31.

  I’D SAVED THE BEST for last. The best, of course, being Sam Gravston. Sam was the best because he was my own pet project. My prime suspect. The man most likely.

  The way I saw it, Sam had the means. He was a big, strong guy, and could easily have strangled those people.

  And he had the opportunity, and opportunity was a biggie. Not many people would have had the opportunity. But Sam would have. He was offered the Winston Bishop and Gerald Finklestein cases before I was. And the Clarence White case wasn’t a real signup. The man had been strangled the night before. And then there’d been the bogus phone call, pretending the guy was calling in to make the appointment. Which Sam, with his acting talent, could very well have made.

  Yeah, Sam had the opportunity all right.

  That left motive.

  Small problem there.

  Why the hell should a young man with everything going for him go on a rampage and begin indiscriminately killing the very people he was supposed to be helping? Unless he was crazy But that was no answer—even a crazy man has some rationale for what he is doing. It may be totally bizarre and not make sense to a rational mind, but it would still make sense to him. And the thing was, I couldn’t even come up with an insane motive for Sam Gravston to kill those people.

  But that didn’t stop me from thinking it. Because I’m smart enough to realize that I’m not that smart, and that there might be a perfectly logical explanation, and the only problem was that I was too stupid to see it.

  So I was eager to talk to Sam.

  I didn’t reach him till late Sunday afternoon. I tried to call him Sunday morning, but as with Alan, all I got was his answering service. Sam called back about four o’clock, and I gave him the usual spiel. I can’t say he seemed particularly concerned. But then some murderers aren’t. At least in the books I’ve read. If they were to be believed, a lot of murderers were self-assured and cocky. At any rate, Sam didn’t seem alarmed, just slightly exasperated. He had a date that evening, and he’d just got back from playing tennis, and he had to shower and change and all that, but if it was really important and I came right over, we could talk while he was dressing.

  It was really important and I came right over. On the way I thought about Sam—the successful actor with the agent and the auditions. Sam—the carefree bachelor who played tennis all afternoon and then rushed back to his bachelor pad to prepare for his dinner date with a young lady. Sam —who could give me a few minutes if I rushed right over.

  Sam—the potential murderer.

  How could I trap him? The obvious things came to me: check times, alibis; drop hints, watch for reactions; get him to advance his theories of the case. That was a good one—I think Columbo used to do that a lot.

  I wondered if I could trick him into talking black jive for me. I realized it would be dangerous to try. That would be one thing he would be sure to be wary of. I could think of no way to bring it up without putting him on his guard. I was hoping something would come to me.

  It hadn’t by the time I got there.

  Sam Gravston’s address was a loft in SoHo. That figured. There was something glamorous about a loft in SoHo. It was entirely in keeping with Sam Gravston’s image as a rising young actor that he would have one. A loft in SoHo. An artist’s residence. To which he would bring back the attractive starlet after a night of dining and discotheques.

  As I pulled up in front of Sam Gravston’s address, I got a rude shock. I realized my knowledge of SoHo was rather limited. Apparently there are lofts and there are lofts. Sam Gravston’s building was a narrow, four-story affair squeezed in between two larger loft buildings. It was almost as if the other two buildings had joined forces and were attempting to squeeze it out. The other two buildings looked clean, new and in good repair. I realized they weren’t. That was just by comparison. Sam Gravston’s building looked as if the condemned sign must have just fallen off. Cracked, dirty windows, with rusting bars. A cellar grating caving in, with only half a sawhorse warning people not to tread. Horrid graffiti, as bad as I’d seen in the worst of projects. And the outer door flopping open on one hinge.

  I went in and up the narrow, unlit stairway to the second floor, where a hallway divided the thin building into two, thinner halves. Two metal doors faced me. Sam had said the one to the right. I banged on it. There was no answer. I banged louder. Then I heard footsteps, and then the sound of a deadbolt and then Sam Gravston, dripping wet and with a towel around him, opened the door.

  “Come on in. I’m in the shower. I’ll be right with you,” he said.

  He ushered me inside, slammed and locked the door and disappeared through a door in the back of the loft.

  Leaving me to look around.

  And feel, as usual, like a total asshole.

  So this was the life of luxury I had envisioned Sam Gravston living. I’d always thought of lofts as spacious expanses with floor-to-ceiling windows letting in copious quantities of light. Sam Gravston’s loft was no more than twelve feet wide and twenty-five feet long. It had two small, dirty windows overlooking the street, and that was it.

  The door through which Sam had disappeared in the back appeared to be to a small, stall shower/toilet enclosure. Along the back wall were a stove, refrigerator and bathtub, vintage 1950. There was also a kitchen sink without cabinet, a free-standing unit coming out of the wall, supported only by its pipes. A dilapidated card table next to it held the drainboard.

  The loft had not been painted in years. It appeared to be furnished largely with furniture gathered from off the street. A mattress on the floor served as the bed. I sincerely hoped Sam had at least bought that, not tugged it out of some junk heap somewhere, as he’d obviously done with the other stuff. There was a sofa with a cushion missing and a spring coming out; a coffee table with three legs and a hunk of two-by-four for the fourth; an old metal dresser that looked like a reject from some boarding school; next to it, a broomstick suspended on wires from the ceiling, serving as a clothes closet; and a bookcase with a shelf missing, crammed with cheap paperbacks.

  I walked over to it and looked. I smiled. Sam Gravston was a mystery buff, as was I. The books were mostly murder mysteries. I saw that his taste ran largely to British authors. I noted a large number of Simon Brett, Josephine Tey, Patricia Highsmith. And an entire shelf of well-read Agatha Christies.

  I was still looking at the titles when Sam Gravston emerged from the bathroom. He had dried himself and was dressed in jockey shorts. As he came he grabbed a shirt from the clothes rack and began to put it on.

  “So, what’s up?” he asked.

  I felt bad. What was up was I was about to question him to determine his involvement in the Rosenberg and Stone murders. Only now I didn’t feel like it. I’d do it, of course, but my heart wasn’t in it. Because half an hour ago Sam Gravston had been my prime suspect in the case.

  And now he wasn’t.

  And I realized that made no sense at all, but it was true.

  I knew intellectually that a man’s life-style should make no difference—that a poor man could kill just as easily as a rich one, and would probably even have more motive. But that didn’t matter. Before I had envisioned Sam Gravston as an arrogant, aggressive young man, clawing his way up the ladder to succes
s. And now I saw him as a poor schmuck like me, just scratching out a living. Rosenberg and Stone wasn’t just a lark for Sam. Despite his agent and his auditions and his lofty aspirations, Sam Gravston had nothing going for him but hopes and dreams and the profits from broken arms and legs.

  And somehow that made all the difference in the world.

  I gave Sam Gravston the prepared spiel, most of which I’d already been over with him on the phone. He continued dressing, and was up to his socks and shoes by the time I’d finished.

  “That’s all well and good,” he said, “but, frankly, I don’t see how it’s gonna help.”

  “I don’t either,” I said. “But Richard wants it done, so if you’d just bear with me.”

  “Oh, sure. Whaddya want to know?”

  “The Winston Bishop case. You were given it before me.”

  “Right. And then I got the audition.” He grinned. “Sorry about that.”

  “Not your fault,” I said. “But if I could jog your memory a little?”

  “No problem. I’ve already been over all this with the police.”

  “I know. It’s just that Richard wants it first hand, not what the police feel like giving out.”

  Sam shrugged. “OK.”

  “What time did you get the case?”

  “I got beeped around nine-thirty.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Out in Queens, shooting a photo assignment.”

  “By nine-thirty you were already out in Queens?”

  “Yeah. Why not? You gotta move the car at eight. No sense double parking and hanging around. I had a photo assignment in Astoria I wanted to knock off. There’s a restaurant there, right over the Triboro Bridge, with a parking lot—you know the one I mean? I drove over there, caught breakfast and was out shooting the sidewalk when the beep came in.”

  “And that was at nine-thirty?”

  “Near as I can make it.”

  “You called in right away?”

  “There was a pay phone on the corner. Astoria’s not that bad with pay phones. Most of them work. Not like BedStuy, you know? I called in right away.”