04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  “Now here’s the thing. Shirley Woll was not on Medicare. She had no medical insurance of any kind. And her injury was somewhat complicated. She had to have a pin put in her ankle. Two operations. Several weeks in the hospital. At any rate, her bills came to sixteen thousand, five hundred dollars. At the time of the settlement, those bills were unpaid.”

  Sergeant Clark held out his hands wide. “And there you are. Due to the assignment papers you had Shirley Woll sign, Harlem Hospital was able to take the entire amount out of her share of the settlement.”

  Richard Rosenberg was on his feet. “Now just a minute. You’re talking as if I’ve done something wrong here. As if I’ve slighted my client. I’ll have you know everything you’ve just said is entirely legal, ethical and standard practice for an attorney at law.”

  Sergeant Clark held up his hand. “Absolutely, Mr. Rosenberg. I never said it wasn’t. You do your job, you get your fee. The hospital is owed, and the hospital must be paid.”

  “Exactly. Shirley Woll wasn’t ripped off. Shirley Woll got her hospital bills paid, and a cash bonus to boot.”

  “I understand,” Clark said. “I have no problem with that. There is no question of any impropriety on your part. And as I understand it, Shirley Woll was perfectly satisfied.”

  Sergeant Clark held up his hand. “But,” he said, “Charles Banks wasn’t. Now, Charles Banks, from what we’ve been able to gather, is a crack addict. As such, he was desperate for money. So what happens? His girlfriend gets a call from her lawyer that she had gotten a settlement in her case. And how much is the settlement? Thirty thousand dollars.”

  Sergeant Clark smiled the thin smile. “Well, Charles Banks hears that and he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. Thirty thousand dollars. Maybe he even tells some crack dealers about it, gets them to advance him some merchandise on the strength of his windfall. After all, he’s about to be a wealthy man. Now, he knows the lawyer gets a third, but still, that leaves twenty thousand dollars he’s got coming.

  “Or so he thinks.

  “So what happens? He goes with his girlfriend down to the lawyer’s to sign the release form and pick up the check. And he waits outside in the outer office for her to come out. And when she does he looks at the check, and is it for twenty thousand dollars? No. It’s for twenty-five hundred dollars. And he’s furious. The lawyer ripped him off!”

  “No such thing,” Richard put in hotly.

  “Yes, yes, Mr. Rosenberg, no such thing.” Clark said, waving his hands. “I am getting a little weary of these self-serving interruptions. No such thing. I am referring to what this man thought.

  “Now, if I might resume. Charles Banks is furious. He’s been taken. He’s been ripped off.

  “On the other hand. Shirley Woll is perfectly happy. She’d gotten her hospital bills paid, and she’s got a little money besides. She’s quite content. Because she is, to all intents and purposes, a perfectly sound and reasonable person. Except, of course, in her choice of boyfriends.

  “So what happens? The ultimate irony. That weekend. Shirley Woll falls and breaks her ankle again. And, because she’s perfectly happy with the settlement that she got, she immediately calls Rosenberg and Stone.

  “When Charles Banks hear this he’s furious, he’s out of his mind. He tries to talk her out of it, but she won’t listen. He storms out of the place. He goes out and gets drunk.

  “And that would have been the end of it. Except for one thing. Who should he meet in the bar but a man with a broken arm who’s telling everyone how he’s gonna make a lot of money calling Rosenberg and Stone.

  “And Charles Banks snaps. Not if he can help it. He’ll beat Richard Rosenberg out of that fee, and give him a nice kick in the teeth, too.

  “So he follows the man home and finds out where he lives. And he knows what time the guy’s gonna call Rosenberg and Stone. So the next morning he goes there, right after the phone call, knocks on the guy’s door, says, ‘Rosenberg and Stone,’ walks in, verifies the fact that the guy did indeed make the call—if he hadn’t, Banks would have called for him—and then strangles him.”

  Sergeant Clark spread his hands. “A totally sick, pointless and ineffective type of revenge. But we have known from the first that we were not dealing with a sane man.

  “So, what happens next?” Clark pointed to me. “Mr. Hastings calls on Shirley Woll to sign up her newly fractured ankle. Charles Banks is there. He makes one last attempt to talk her out of it. He fails. He is consigned to the bedroom, where he broods.

  “Then Mr. Hastings gets beeped. He calls his office, and is given the Gerald Finklestein case.

  “Charles Banks listens in on the bedroom extension. He gets Gerald Finklestein’s name and address. Hastings is beeped again and directed to go see me. Banks listens in on that call, so he knows Mr. Hastings will be delayed in getting to Mr. Finklestein. So he dashes out to Queens and kills him.”

  Sergeant Clark paused, took a breath, blew it out again. “The thing about a serial killer is, the more they get away with it, the more of an obsession it becomes.

  “The next murder is simple. Charles Banks sees a man with a broken arm in the bar. The man has no intention of calling Rosenberg and Stone, but by now Banks has realized that this doesn’t matter. He follows the man home, strangles him, and the following day he calls Rosenberg and Stone, asking for an appointment.

  “All well and good. But now, we have to get inside the mind of the killer for a moment. So far, everything is going according to plan. Except for one thing. Publicity. There is a reference to Rosenberg and Stone after the first murder, but nothing after that. Charles Banks can’t understand it, but he doesn’t like it. He wants his crimes to be known. More important, he wants the name Rosenberg and Stone to be known. This isn’t happening. He wonders why.”

  It occurred to me that this might be a good time for Sergeant Clark to throw a nod in my direction that the withholding of publicity had been my idea, but he didn’t do so.

  “So,” Clark continued, “he figures maybe the people he killed weren’t prominent enough. Maybe he needs a more affluent victim.

  “And that’s when he remembers Marvin Gravston. The client with the strange name he had seen on the blank sheet of paper dated weeks in advance. Now, it’s probably too much to assume he remembers the exact address, but he might have noted it at the time. Noted that here was a man with a fashionable East Side address. So he looks it up in the phone book. Marvin Gravston is listed, and there is only one in the book. So now he has the address, and he remembers the date of the appointment, and he goes there that morning and kills him.

  “Well and good. The murder of Marvin Gravston rates a good deal of publicity, but once again, there is no mention of Rosenberg and Stone. Frustrating, no doubt.

  “But by now the killing is a compulsion. Charles Banks will strike again.

  “Which brings us to last night.”

  Sergeant Clark now favored me with a totally condescending look. “Mr. Hastings here, with his typical layman’s contempt for the abilities of the police, decides to take things into his own hands. He devises a trap.” Sergeant Clark paused, then continued with withering sarcasm. “A wholly original idea. Our decoy injured man sat in the bar, Duke’s Place, for four straight nights before we decided to abandon the idea and use him elsewhere. But, as it turned out, that idea had been right to begin with. It was just that, for whatever reasons he might have had, Charles Banks had been hanging out elsewhere.

  “However, Mr. Hastings employs his decoy, one Leroy Stanhope Williams, to sit in the bar. And two nights ago he begins.

  “Now, by this time, we, the bungling, inefficient police, have run down the appointment that was made in advance. We have checked on who was in the office the day the call came in, and come up with the one client, Shirley Woll. We know her boyfriend was with her, and we have traced him and ID’d him as Charles Banks, a known crack addict with a history of drug arrests. Through discrete inquiries of Shirley Woll, who could
not possibly have known what we were after, we have ascertained that Charles Banks was indeed present when Mr. Hastings called at her apartment, and thus could have overheard the telephone conversation and gotten Gerald Finklestein’s address.

  “So we have our murderer. The only thing is, we have no proof. But this is no real problem because we know that Charles Banks will strike again.

  “So, Detective Walker here is assigned to follow him. And what happens? He goes straight back to Duke’s place. That was two nights ago. Wednesday night. And who should be sitting in the bar but a black man with a cast on his arm, who just happens to be telling everybody that he’s calling Rosenberg and Stone. Now, Charles Banks may not be very bright, but Detective Walker is, and he immediately smells a big fat fish. But that’s all right because Charles Banks is too dumb to catch on, and what’s more, he seems to be taking some interest. So Detective Walker just sits back and watches the show.

  “Midnight comes, and the man with the broken arm leaves the bar. Surprise, surprise, Charles Banks seems to be leaving, too. Walker, of course, tags along. There is no real danger at this point, because the man with the cast has taken careful pains to tell everyone that his appointment if for Friday morning. Since it’s only Wednesday night, it’s too soon for Banks to strike.

  “Sure enough, Banks merely tails the man home to learn his address. After that, he goes home.

  “We also learn the address. And the next day we investigate. A check of the log at Rosenberg and Stone reveals that no such appointment exists. A check of the bonafides of the man listed as Duane Wilson at the address in question reveals that no such gentleman exists. As far as we are concerned, this confirms the fact that what we have stumbled on is an attempt at amateur detective work. While this doesn’t please us, we’re not proud. Since it’s working, we’ll ride along.

  “Which brings us to last night. Once again, the man with the cast is in the bar. Also in the bar are Charles Banks, Detective Walker and Detective Henderson, called in for backup. Once again, the man with the cast proclaims his intentions. Once again, he prepares to leave the bar at midnight.

  “This time, Charles Banks leaves first. He knows where the man’s going, so he’ll beat him home and lie in wait for him. So he leaves, with Henderson following. Banks goes to the address, and, as the front door is unlocked, he goes in. Henderson goes in after him.

  “Minutes later, the decoy with the cast comes down the street and enters the building, followed by Detective Walker.”

  Sergeant Clark paused and spread his arms. “The rest you know. Banks attempts to kill the decoy. Mr. Hastings here, who has been staking out the apartment, bumbles in just in time to witness the arrest. We have Charles Banks dead to rights on attempted murder. Right now the gentleman isn’t talking, but as soon as he gets an attorney, he’s going to find out we have enough circumstantial evidence to nail him on at least one or two of the other murders. At that point, he’s going to attempt to make a deal. And by that time. I doubt if the D.A. will be much inclined to listen.”

  Sergeant Clark clapped his hands together like a teacher finishing a lecture.

  “And that, gentlemen, is that.”

  43.

  IT WAS A TOUGH day.

  What made it tough was that after Sergeant Clark had finished his triumphant dissertation, I still had to go out and sign up my cases. My heart wasn’t in it. Neither was my mind. I can’t recall anyone I called on that afternoon, or any of their cases, or even where they lived. I did the job because I had to, but that was all. The best I can say was I got through it.

  Then I went home.

  Where Alice was delighted. She was delighted because the murders had been solved, and she was delighted because Sam Gravston wasn’t guilty.

  I was glad Sam wasn’t guilty, too. I really was. Even though it made me wrong. Even though it made Sergeant Clark right. I was happy for him.

  But I still felt like shit.

  Alice knew. She always knows. And she managed to temper her glee and be supportive and sympathetic.

  Which just made me feel worse. Why should I rain on her parade? Why couldn’t we just be happy it was over?

  Why indeed?

  I lay awake in bed for a long time that night, thinking about the case. I tried to think of other things, but nothing could crowd it from my mind.

  Damn.

  I have a digital clock on my bureau, and you can read the damn thing in the dark.

  As I lay there, it clicked over to two-thirty.

  And sleep would not come.

  Thoughts kept flitting through my head. Details. Flashes. Glimpses. Snippets of conversation.

  It seemed to me there was something very important in all of it, if I could just put my finger on it.

  But I couldn’t. Because I was a fool and an idiot who’d been tilting at windmills and fighting paper dragons. Agatha Christie, for Christ’s sake! Yeah, what a great deduction that was.

  But the thoughts kept coming. The conversations kept replaying in my head.

  Particularly the conversation from today—Sergeant Clark’s summation of the case in Richard’s office. Of course, that would be the one that stood out. Where every comment was like a whiplash. A whiplash aimed at me.

  I thought back to the first meeting with Sergeant Clark in Richard’s office. Way back in the beginning. After the Gerald Finklestein case. How different everything had seemed then.

  I tried to think back over the conversation. It seemed to me there was something significant there—something I should have picked up on. I tried to remember, but it was so hard. So much had happened that time. Wendy had been in there, and Janet, and there’d been the question of who took which phone call and the whole bit. Such confusion.

  No wonder I couldn’t remember whatever it was I couldn’t remember. If there was anything to remember to begin with. If it wasn’t just my sense of uselessness driving me to think that there was.

  Which had to be it. Because, what was the point? Sergeant Clark had the murderer. And the murderer had committed the crimes. All except Darryl Jackson—thank god Sergeant Clark wasn’t still pushing that.

  So what was the point?

  What did it matter?

  I didn’t know.

  But still I couldn’t sleep.

  I kept coming back to that first meeting with Sergeant Clark in Richard’s office. It was important. Somehow, it was important. Something that was done or said. And if I just thought long enough, I’d think of it.

  I didn’t.

  I fell asleep.

  44.

  MACAULLIF’S VOICE was drugged with sleep. “Hello.”

  “Hello. MacAullif?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Stanley Hastings.”

  “Who?”

  “Hastings. Stanley Hastings.”

  “Stanley?...”

  “Hastings.”

  “Stanley Hastings? Shit. What the hell time is it?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Six in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus. What the hell you calling me now for?”

  “The Rosenberg and Stone murders.”

  “What?”

  “The Rosenberg and Stone murders.”

  “What, are you nuts? The case is solved.”

  “No, it isn’t. Sergeant Clark fucked up.”

  “What?”

  “Sergeant Clark blew it. And he’s too pigheaded to admit it. But we’re going to set him straight.”

  “Oh, we are, are we?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Well, I’m glad you think so. I, for one, am going back to sleep.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re meeting me at the corner of Houston and Varick in one hour.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “That’s what I know. Listen. You owe me a favor, and I’m calling it in. Houston and Varick. Seven o’clock. You be there.”

  I slammed down the phone.

  4
5.

  MACAULLIF WAS THERE. He was tired, disheveled and pissed as hell, but he was there.

  He was even there ahead of me, remarkable, seeing as how he had to come from Bay Ridge. He was sitting on the hood of his car, holding a paper cup of coffee when I drove up. I parked my car, got out and walked over to him.

  “This better be good,” he said.

  “It is.”

  “So whaddya want?”

  “Let’s take a little ride,” I said.

  I walked around his car to the passenger door.

  MacAullif looked at me, totally exasperated. He slid down off the hood of his car, opened his door and got in. He leaned over and unlocked the door for me. I got in the front seat. MacAullif started the engine.

  “OK,” he said. “Where to?”

  I gave him the address.

  MacAullif didn’t pull out. He just sat there looking at me.

  “And why are we going there?”

  “Got your badge with you?” I asked.

  MacAullif looked ready to strangle me. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You’re going to make an arrest.”

  “Oh yeah? And just who am I going to arrest?”

  “Sam Gravston.”

  MacAullif blinked. “Sam Gravston. And why am I going to arrest Sam Gravston?”

  “For the murder of his uncle.”

  MacAullif just stared at me for a few seconds. Then he reached over and switched off the engine.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said impatiently.

  MacAullif shook his head. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Look. Just listen to me a minute. This whole thing’s been driving me crazy. I couldn’t sleep last night. Something was bothering me and I didn’t know what it was. You know how it is when you know you’ve heard something that’s important but you can’t put your finger on it?”