by Parnell Hall
“So why is this case different? Two reasons. One is you. Your being on the scene. I recognized you the moment I saw you, of course. But I didn’t let on. I kept it to myself ’cause I wanted to do some checking first. But right then and there, the minute I saw you, I made up my mind this was one we wouldn’t just write off. You know what I mean?”
I did, but I didn’t want to. What I wouldn’t have given for MacAullif to put the case in the Unsolved Crimes File.
“I’m honored,” I told him. “What’s the other reason?”
“The witness.”
“The witness?”
“Oh yeah, there’s a witness.” MacAullif seemed pleased. “You didn’t know there was a witness? Good. I’m glad the police are keeping ahead of you in some areas. Yeah, there’s a witness. Which means I can justify keeping the investigation open. Without even using you as the reason.”
“Who’s the witness?”
“The witness is a young woman by the name of Celia Brown. She lives on the second floor of Darryl Jackson’s building. Yesterday afternoon, from about 12:00 on, she was seated on the front steps of her building, waiting for a friend to arrive.”
“That makes her a witness?”
“As to who entered the building, yes. Now, the times I’m going to give you are approximate, because she didn’t really know. But we patched them together pretty well, and I would think they were fairly accurate.”
MacAullif pulled another paper from the file. “About 12:10 a young woman arrived. White, 20’s, dark hair, pretty. Best description we can get.”
I realized MacAullif was watching me for a reaction. I didn’t want to give him one, which was hard, seeing as how I knew someone that description would fit.
“Not much to go on,” I said, casually.
“No, but it’s a start. Now, here’s where we get into the area of approximations. This Celia Brown had a walkman on. She was listening to music, or what passes for music these days.”
“So.”
“So it gives us a bit of a time frame. Celia figures the woman was up there for about three or four songs before she saw her come down again. So we figure three to four minutes a song, plus commercials, and we’re talking fifteen to twenty minutes the woman was up there. So we figure she was downstairs 12:25, 12:30.”
I shook my head. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know, it’s not accurate, but it’s something. Particularly with what happened next.”
“What’s that.”
“As soon as the woman left, a man came in. Not like they crossed on the stairs, or anything, but right after. Or, the way Celia Brown puts it, the same song was playing when the woman left as when the man came in.” MacAullif raised his index finger. “It was still playing when the man came down. He went up, came right back down. That’s significant. Now again, the description leaves a lot to be desired. He was white. She thinks he was young, and she thinks he was well-dressed. I say thinks because she couldn’t really tell. See, the guy was wearing a full-length gray down parka with a hood. The hood was up and shielded most of his face. Celia Brown thinks there was something furtive about him. That’s not the way she expressed it, but that’s the general idea. I think she got the idea from the hood on the parka. She couldn’t see his face, and she had the feeling he was trying to keep her from seeing his face, if you know what I mean. At any rate, he was right up and down.”
MacAullif studied my face for a moment, then glanced at the sheet. “About two songs later someone else showed up. Another man. Also white. Older. Distinguished. Gray hair. Suit. He was up there a long time. We don’t know when he left, but he was still there when Celia Brown’s friend showed up about ten of one.
“So there’s your time table. Young woman, in at 12:10, out at 12:25, 12:30. Young man, immediately thereafter, right up and down. Distinguished gentleman, up at 12:35, still there at ten of one.” He looked at me. “What do you make of that?”
“Well,” I said. “It’s rather extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“That a disinterested witness should come forward and give you that detailed and specific information.”
MacAullif nodded. “It most certainly is. You have put your finger right on it. I mean with the word, ‘disinterested.’ For your information, Celia Brown happens to be a junkie. The friend she was waiting for so impatiently happens to have been her connection. This, of course, is not the way she tells the story, but it’s something we can infer. It also happens that Celia Brown has two counts of possession of narcotics pending.”
“I see.”
“She approached the public defender, who approached us, offering to plea-bargain the info for dropping the two counts of possession.”
“Did you?”
“We certainly did. This is a murder case. We need all the help we can get. Besides, if we really want to get Celia Brown on possession of narcotics, we can pick her up again next week, it’s no big deal.”
“Won’t all that rather impair her testimony if she happens to identify one of those people?”
“Her testimony ain’t worth a damn. But we weren’t buying testimony, we were buying information. However, if the fingerprints of the person she identifies happen to be on the knife, that’s a different case altogether.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I mention the fingerprints?”
“No, you did not.”
“Ah, well, we got fingerprints from the knife.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. We got ’em. Most of ’em are too smudged to do any good, but at least two of ’em are clear enough to I.D. Now it will probably turn out that the murderer wore gloves, and those fingerprints are from a couple of weeks before when someone was carving a roast, but there you are. On the other hand, if those fingerprints should independently match up with someone Celia Brown happens to I.D., Bingo!
“Anyway, let’s get back to Celia Brown’s schedule. The Skirt, the Parka, the Gray Hair.
“Scenario number one: the Skirt goes in there, talks to him for twenty minutes, has an argument, kills him and gets out; Parka goes in, knocks on the door, gets no answer and leaves, or finds him dead and leaves; Gray Hair arrives, finds him dead, and ransacks the apartment.
“Scenario number two: Skirt goes in, talks to him twenty minutes, leaves; Parka goes in, angry that Skirt’s been there, kills him, and leaves; Gray Hair arrives and ransacks apartment.
“Scenario number three: Skirt arrives, talks, leaves; Parka arrives, goes to door, gets cold feet, turns around, leaves; Gray Hair arrives, kills gentleman, ransacks apartment.”
He looked at me. “What do you think?”
“They all sound good to me,” I said.
“Scenario number four: Skirt arrives, talks, leaves: Parka arrives, gets cold feet, leaves; Gray Hair arrives, talks, leaves; douche-bag private investigator arrives, kills him, trashes apartment, arranges elaborate coverup.”
“That sounds a little farfetched to me.”
“Perhaps. I could introduce you to five or six guys on the force to whom it doesn’t.”
“Great. So where does that leave us?”
“That leaves us with a nice, unsolved murder. Which happens to be my least favorite kind.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We solve it.” MacAullif pulled another paper from the file. “Let’s take the victim, Darryl Jackson. Twenty-nine years of age. Eleven priors dating back about eight years. Mostly procurement—pimping to you. One aggravated assault—he beat up one of his hookers. One possession of grass. Nuisance busts, mostly. Not much to go on. But it does paint a picture of a not-too affluent pimp running a bunch of street hookers and taking the usual amount of heat for it.”
MacAullif raised his finger. “Now, here’s the interesting thing. These busts were all prior to about two years ago. Up till then he was getting knocked down pretty regular. But after that nothing.”
I looked at him. �
��Are you telling me there was a payoff?”
He winced. “No, for Christ’s sake. Jesus, why is it, you fucking civilians, every chance you get you yell police corruption? No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, Darryl Jackson obviously moved on to something else.”
“Such as?”
“I thought you were smart. What the hell would a pimp running a bunch of hookers naturally fall into?”
“Blackmail?”
“Good. But you get no points ’cause I had to give you a hint.”
“You have evidence?”
“No. I don’t have a thing. It’s just what I think. It’s logical. It’s what would happen. The guy pimps around for years, and then one day he recognizes some john who’s prominent enough he can’t let his name get involved with a hooker. And there you are. Darryl Jackson retires, so to speak. He bleeds the guy white, and sets himself up in a slightly elevated business.”
“What business?”
“Call girls. That may sound like the same thing, but it’s not. There’s a big difference between a street hooker and a high-priced call girl. And, of course, the opportunities for blackmail would naturally increase.”
I couldn’t help thinking about the video tapes. I tried to keep my face from showing it. “I see,” I said.
“Now,” MacAullif went on, “we’ve been trying to get a line on Darryl Jackson, and guess what? Nobody knows nothin’. Zip. We pulled in every street hooker used to work for him, and every one said the same thing—hadn’t seen him in years. Now, they’d say that anyway, whether they knew it was a murder or not, but the thing is, I talked to them myself, and I believe ’em. I can tell the difference, you know. I can tell when somebody’s telling the truth. Just like I can tell that you’re not. But let that go, I said we weren’t going to talk about that. Where was I? Oh yeah. Anyway, we can’t get a line on the guy for the last two years. It’s a blank. The hookers don’t know, the people in his building don’t know. No one knows. So whatever he was doing, he probably wasn’t doing it in his building. So the way I figure it, he probably had a high-price call girl operation somewhere downtown. How do you figure it?”
The way I figured it, MacAullif was dangerous as bloody fucking hell. “You’re the expert,” I told him. “I hadn’t really given it that much thought.”
“I’ll bet you hadn’t,” MacAullif said.
My beeper went off. With the direction the conversation had been going in, it was actually a welcome interruption.
MacAullif passed the phone over his desk. “Dial 9,” he said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
I dialed 9 and got an outside line. I called the office and got Wendy/Cheryl, who had a case for me to sign up that afternoon out in Queens. While I was writing it down my beeper went off again. This time, instead of “beep, beep, beep” it made a steady tone. That was my wife beeping me to call home.
I finished with Wendy/Cheryl, apologized to MacAullif, dialed 9 again, and called my wife.
She had beeped me to remind me it was my turn to pick up the kids after school for the car pool in case I’d forgotten. I certainly had. I checked my watch. It was going to be close.
“I’m sorry,” I told MacAullif, as I hung up. “I gotta run. I gotta pick up my kid at school.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “And what was the other call?”
“Then I gotta run out and see a client in Queens.”
He shrugged. “O.K. You can go. We were about finished here anyway.”
“Good,” I said. I started for the door.
“Just one thing,” he said.
I stopped. “Yeah.”
“You mind if I give you a piece of advice?”
I did mind, but I wasn’t going to say so. “No.”
He shrugged. “It’s none of my business,” he said, “but before you go out to Queens—if I were you, I’d sure as hell check the address.”
18.
IT WAS THE NEXT MORNING before I got to look at the tapes. It killed me to wait that long, particularly after what MacAullif had told me, but that’s just the way things worked out.
After I left MacAullif’s, I caught the subway uptown, picked up my car, and beat it over to East 84th Street just in time to pick up the kids. Pamela looked a bit strained when I dropped Joshua off, but then, I would have expected her to. I couldn’t say anything to her in front of the kids, but I wasn’t sure there was anything I wanted to tell her anyway. So I just dropped Joshua off and split.
Alice looked just as strained when I dropped Tommie off. I wasn’t really looking forward to talking to her either, so I was kind of glad I had an assignment to go to. On the other hand, if I hadn’t, I’d have pretended I had so I could go watch the tapes. So I guess the assignment wasn’t that much of a blessing, after all.
On my way out to Queens they beeped me again, right off the fucking Grand Central, and by the time I wasted a half hour finding a phone, I was late for my appointment. I was also late for my appointment out in West Hempstead, which was what they’d beeped me to give me.
At any rate, by the time I finished both assignments, it was too late to go to the office to look at the tapes. Or at least, there was no way of doing it without tipping Alice off to the fact I had them, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
There was another reason I didn’t want to go to the office: MacAullif. MacAullif was smart. Too smart. And I realized I couldn’t trust him. Now maybe everything he told me was true. And maybe the reason he gave me for telling me was true.
But maybe not. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe he gave me all that information, because he thought some of it might mean something to me, and he wanted to find out what. Maybe he told me all that because he wanted to see what it would make me do.
Maybe he was having me watched.
That was the thought that haunted me all the way out to Queens and West Hempstead and back. And that was the thought that kept me from my office. Because it wouldn’t be normal for me to go to my office at that time of night, and if MacAullif were having me watched, and I did anything out of the ordinary, it just might give him ideas.
I’ve never been followed, so I don’t know the approved routine for spotting a shadow, but I tried. And I couldn’t spot a thing. By the time I got back from West Hempstead, I was convinced of one of two things: either I wasn’t being followed, or whoever was doing it was damn good.
At any rate, I didn’t go to the office till the next morning, which was what I would have normally done in the course of my business, so there was no way it could possibly tip off anyone to anything.
I thanked my lucky stars I’d already rented the video player and bought the TV, ’cause that would have been a dead giveaway in case anyone was watching.
I closed the office door behind me and double-locked it. I picked up the mail, saw it was mostly bills, and threw it on the desk. I checked the answering machine for messages—there were none. Good.
I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the bag of video tapes. I took the video tapes out of the bag, set aside the one with Pamela’s stellar performance on it, and surveyed the other five. They were identical. Nothing to choose from. Pick a tape, any tape. I did, and loaded it into the machine.
I turned the volume of the TV off, just in case anyone happened to be lurking outside in the hall. I suppose that was excessively paranoid, but I didn’t really need sound anyway. I mean, when you’ve heard one grunt of passion, you’ve heard ’em all.
I put the machine on play. There was a burst of static, and then the tape flickered into view.
I could tell at once that this tape was different. This time production values were poor. The picture was dim, indicating the tape had been shot with existing light. And the camera appeared to be fixed, stationary.
The view was of a hotel room, and, more particularly, a hotel room bed. The camera seemed to be positioned above the head of the bed and slightly to one side, so that it was shooting diagonally down across the bed.
At the end
of the bed, a girl was undressing. The girl was not Pamela. She was a white girl with blond hair, probably somewhere in her late twenties. A few seconds of watching her undress confirmed the fact that the tape had been shot with a stationary camera. It was only when she bent down to remove an article of clothing that I could see her face. Every time she straightened up, her head went out of frame. No cameraman alive would have ever shot it that way.
The girl finished undressing and got onto the bed. She was joined immediately by a gentleman who had obviously been undressing at the same time slightly out of frame. He appeared to be about thirty-five or forty. He also appeared to be somewhat of a nerd. He seemed to be pretty embarrassed about what he was doing. He also didn’t seem to be particularly good at it. And even with the bad angle and the lousy lighting, I could tell that the girl was thoroughly bored with him.
I stopped the tape.
All right, now what have I got? I’ve got a picture of another hooker and a picture of a john. The fact that there was no lighting and the camera was fixed indicated that this was a setup, and the john knew nothing about it. Obviously, this was part of Darryl Jackson’s blackmail setup. So the nerd could be one of his victims.
But so what? What did it do for me?
The answer was nothing. I didn’t know who this guy was, and I had no way of finding out. On the other hand, unless he was the Parka, which seemed unlikely, I didn’t care who he was.
I sped through the rest of the nerd’s less than scintillating performance. Finally the picture dissolved the way it does when you turn the recorder off and then start recording again.
The picture cleared up, and Act II of my drama unfolded. Same set. Different cast. Definitely the same theme.
I sped through the rest of the tape, slowing down only long enough to identify the supporting players. There wasn’t much to identify. I counted half a dozen girls, one of whom was Pamela, who appeared in two of the segments. I wondered if she was aware she was being filmed. She didn’t appear to be, and I thought not. There’d be no reason for a blackmailing pimp to let the hookers in on his racket.
