by Parnell Hall
I frowned. “Yeah, that tells me why you lied. But. . .”
“But what?”
“It still doesn’t explain.”
“Explain what?”
“What happened. I don’t care if it was a half-gram or a quarter-ounce. I saw what happened. You were really pissed. It still don’t add up, even if you were bringing her more. ’Cause the bottom line is, she only owed you for half a gram. If she didn’t have the money, you didn’t have to give her the stuff, so what was the difference how much you brought?”
He shook his head. “Yeah. I know. It wasn’t the money.”
“Well, what was it?”
“It’s hard to explain. I don’t think you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
“Well, it was just the way she was. Like I said, never taking you seriously, always kidding you out of it. Well, she was real pretty. And I never got anywhere with her. And I doubt if I ever would. But she knew she was pretty, you know what I mean? And she used it. Like wheedling me for half a gram.
“Only this time it was a quarter-ounce. She told me she’d have the money, and she didn’t.”
He stopped, took a breath. “This is what you won’t understand. It wasn’t the money. It was the idea of the thing. I come there, I got the quarter-ounce on me, and she tells me she doesn’t have the money. Screw the money. It was the whole idea of the thing.
“She expected me to give it to her. She’d just have to smile and giggle and say something cute and I’d give it to her. She could get away with shit like that because she was pretty. ’Cause she knew it and knew how to use it. That was the thing. Not the money. The idea that I was a sucker, and she was a cute young girl and I’d just give her anything she wanted.”
He ran his hand over his head again. “Yeah, I overreacted. I was pissed at her, and I was pissed at myself for the way I felt about her. It wasn’t the money, and it wasn’t the coke or any damn thing like that. I grabbed her wrists just ’cause I was pissed at her for bein’ who she was.”
He looked up at me. “I suppose you couldn’t understand that.”
I sighed. “Yeah,” I said. I nodded. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I could.”
32.
MACAULLIF WASN’T IMPRESSED. “So?”
“So, you were right. He changed his story.”
MacAullif shrugged. “So what?”
“So what? You told me he was lyin’. I went and checked it out, it turned out he was lyin’.”
“So what does that get you?”
I stared at him. “Are you kidding? Now I know what the real story is.”
MacAullif shrugged. “Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“The guy was lyin’ before, how do you know he’s not lyin’ again?”
I shook my head. “Aw, shit.”
We were in MacAullif’s office. After a dreary morning of the Silver Fox reading yet another bunch of depositions into the record, Judge Davis had mercifully broken for lunch early at twelve-thirty. I’d taken advantage of the extra half-hour to zip over to MacAullif’s office to fill him in on what I’d found out the night before.
He was, once again, less than encouraging. And if there was any doubt as to whether or not I was doing well, MacAullif dispelled it by unwrapping a cigar to play with.
“The trouble with you,” MacAullif said, “is no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to think like a cop. You think the guy’s lyin’, you go confront him, he changes his story, you think, whoopie, you got it made. It never occurs to you just ’cause he changed his story what he’s telling you now doesn’t have to be the truth.”
“Maybe, but I think it is.”
“Oh yeah? On what basis?”
I took a breath. “On a hunch. What’s the matter with that? Don’t you cops ever go on a hunch?”
“Oh, absolutely,” MacAullif said. “If you didn’t go on hunches, you’d never get anywhere.” MacAullif held up the cigar like a teacher holding up a blackboard pointer. “The thing is, you have to remember a hunch is a hunch, and not start treating it as fact.”
“All right,” I said. “Granted. But I talked to him, and in my humble opinion, the guy’s telling the truth. So if he is, what have we got?”
MacAullif shook his head. “Not much. She was buyin’ coke, now she’s buyin’ more.”
“Yeah, but that’s interesting. ’Cause she didn’t have any money. She either came into some money, or she was buying it for someone else.”
“Right,” MacAullif said. “And who would that be?”
“I have no idea.”
“Of course you don’t,” MacAullif said. “’Cause you’re goin’ at this thing ass backwards. You come in here yesterday, you run down your list of possibles, and you got two main suspects, this dope dealer and the boyfriend. Who do I tell you is the best bet? The boyfriend. Do you check him out? No. You put in your time with the dope dealer. Now, you got some information that may or may not be true. If it’s true, it’s interesting. But that’s all. Meanwhile, the boyfriend’s runnin’ around free, the only time you talked to him he was corked to the gills, you couldn’t really get his story, and you still haven’t followed up on him.”
“I couldn’t follow up on him. I happen to be serving jury duty on the dullest case in history and I haven’t got much time.”
“You had time for the dope dealer.”
“Give me a break, willya? I’m not particularly enjoying this. I’m doing the best I can.”
MacAullif looked at me. “What’s the matter, I hurt your feelings? So you got the dope dealer to change his story, whaddya want, a pat on the back? I’m not a cheerleader, I’m trying to help you here.”
MacAullif waved the cigar. “Now, it’s free advice, and you don’t have to take it. I just throw it out for all it’s worth.”
“I appreciate it,” I said. I had a feeling the fact I said it through clenched teeth was not apt to impress MacAullif with my sincerity. I took a breath. “While you’re dolin’ out free advice, you got any more? Aside from the boyfriend, I mean.” I held up my hand. “I promise, I’ll check him out, but frankly I think he’s a dead end. Aside from him, what the hell can I do?”
MacAullif leaned back in his chair, rolled the cigar around in his fingers. He chuckled. “Remember those books you had me read once? You know, the Agatha Christies, with the detective with the weird name?”
“Hercule Poirot.”
“Right. Him. You know, in one of them the young hero’s running around gettin’ information, and he comes to him, just like you, askin’ what he should do next. You remember what the detective says?”
Jesus Christ. MacAullif was throwing Agatha Christie back at me. “No. What?”
MacAullif pointed with his cigar. “It was in that book with all the clocks in it. In fact, that was the name of it. The Clocks. The guy asks him what to do and he says, ‘Talk to the neighbors.’ That’s what he said. Talk to the neighbors, ’cause in a murder case someone always knows something.”
I stared at MacAullif. “The neighbors?”
“Yeah, the neighbors. Sherry Fontaine’s neighbors. Did you talk to them?”
“No.”
“Well, why not? You wanna know about the girl—what her habits were, who her friends were—the mystery man who was giving her money for cocaine.” MacAullif shrugged. “What better source of information than the neighbors?”
I ran my hand over my head. “Maybe, but. . .”
“But what?”
“Well, won’t Thurman have already done that?”
“Sure, but Thurman’s a moron and he won’t know what to ask.” MacAullif shrugged. “Hey, it’s free advice, and no one likes free advice. But you asked for it, so there it is.”
“And that’s it?”
“Hey, whaddya want for nothin’? This ain’t my case, I’m not investigating it, I don’t have all the facts. You want suggestions, I’ll make suggestions. But this is really up to you.”
“I
don’t see how talking to the neighbors is gonna help.”
“Maybe not. Couldn’t hurt.”
I felt my spirits sinking fast. “MacAullif.”
“What?”
“All right, I’ll do all this, you know, but. . . I don’t know. I just have a horrible feeling this case is never gonna be solved.”
MacAullif nodded. “Entirely possible. A large percentage of these things aren’t.”
“So what if it isn’t?”
MacAullif shrugged. “Either it lapses, Thurman drops it and it goes in the Unsolved Crimes file, or Thurman picks on you.”
“What if he picks on me?”
“Then you get that Rosenberg character to come down bite him in the leg till he lets go.”
MacAullif set his cigar down, leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his head. “Look,” he said. “You’re getting all worked up over this. Which is stupid, ’cause you’ve really only just begun. You ask me what to do and I don’t know ’cause I got no information. And you don’t know, ’cause you got no information. Of course it looks hopeless. So you go out, you dig around, you see what you can find. That gives you an idea which way to go. Maybe it’s hopeless, but maybe it ain’t. Right now it’s too soon to tell.”
“So what do I do?”
“I told you. Talk to the boyfriend, talk to the neighbors. You come up empty, we think of something else. You get something, we don’t gotta think so hard. That’s good. Thinking’s a bitch. No one want’s to think too hard.”
He looked at me, cocked his head. “A guy like you should avoid it at all costs.”
33.
I WAS PISSED AS HELL when I got off court that night. I was pissed because the afternoon session had been as boring as the morning one, with the Silver Fox calling a succession of former employees to testify that they’d been there the day after the fire and seen a number of burned and damaged goods. Having already seen the photos, I found this redundant and unilluminating. But it sure was time-consuming, what with Peter, Paul and Mary getting a crack at them too. By five o’clock I thought my head was going to come off, and if Judge Davis hadn’t adjourned court I was about to start screaming for mercy. So I was pissed about that.
I was also pissed at MacAullif. Jesus Christ, what right did he have to be so cocky and so smug? All right, he was a cop and he knew his job, and I was an amateur and I didn’t.
But still. Considering how little he had to offer, considering what small contributions he had to make, what right did he have to be so high and mighty? After all, it was my ass on the line. I was the one gonna get strung out for this thing. And there he was, sitting back, smugly dispensing advice, as if he were the all-knowing detective and I were the hapless boob. I mean, hell, he’d even compared himself to Hercule Poirot, hadn’t he? Given me the same advice.
And what great advice. Talk to the boyfriend. Talk to the neighbors. Having met Dexter Manyon, I knew damn well talking to him wasn’t going to do any good. But I was going to do it. And what irritated me, was I knew damn well the only reason I was gonna do it was so the next time I saw MacAullif, he couldn’t ride me for not doing it. That and the satisfaction of being able to tell him it had been a waste of time. But that would be a hollow satisfaction, since MacAullif had admitted it would probably be a waste of time in the first place.
So as far as I was concerned, talking to Dexter Manyon was bad news all around, and I was in a foul mood as I dropped a quarter in the pay phone and punched in the number.
He wasn’t home. Shit. I didn’t know whether to be pissed or glad. But there I was, five o’clock at night without my car at 111 Centre Street, and Dexter Manyon wasn’t at home and what the hell did I do now? Give up on him and talk to the neighbors?
Somehow that seemed an even less rewarding exercise. I didn’t really expect anyone to tell me anything. They wouldn’t know Sherry well. They wouldn’t have their doors open, observe who went in and out. It would be yet another futile endeavor suggested by MacAullif.
I was getting really pissed.
I figured no matter what I did, I was gonna have to head uptown, so I walked across Franklyn Street to catch the Broadway IRT. After two days of riding the subway after abandoning my car, I had worked out the fact that Chambers Street was actually one stop below where I needed to go. Franklyn is actually the cross street with 111 Centre Street, and there was a Franklyn Street stop on the Broadway line. So I walked crosstown to the station.
When I got there I tried Dexter Manyon again. He still wasn’t home. Damn. I bought a token, waited for the train. It came, and I got on and headed uptown.
And immediately had a choice to make. Did I give up on Dexter Manyon and try the neighbors? Or hang out near his place to see if he came home? He lived on West Eighth Street, so if it was gonna be the latter, I’d get off at Sheridan Square. So which was it gonna be? Faced with two unpleasant alternatives, I had trouble trying to decide.
Sheridan Square stop came up. Fuck it. I got off.
There was a pay phone in the station. I dropped a quarter, made the call. No answer. Great. So what did I do now?
I was still on the platform, so if I wanted, I could wait and take the next train. Or I could go out, walk over to his apartment building and hang out there. A wholly unappetizing proposition. But should I do it?
I stood there trying to make up my mind, and what finally decided me was coming to the realization that the only reason I was thinking of hanging outside Dexter Manyon’s apartment was that I found the idea of talking to Sherry Fontaine’s neighbors an even less attractive proposition. It was unattractive not because there was anything to fear, or even that I might learn something that I didn’t want to know. It was unattractive only because doing it was going to make me feel like a fool.
When I realized this, I felt like a fool, and knew I had to do it. So I stood there on the platform, dropping quarters in the pay phone and punching in Dexter Manyon’s number, and by the time the next uptown train arrived he still hadn’t answered, so I got on.
I got off at 86th and Broadway and walked over to West End. I walked up West End Avenue, feeling like a fool, but knowing I had to do it. I was a good little boy, who knew the medicine was going to taste awful, but was still gonna get it down. So I walked up West End Avenue, engulfed in a feeling of gloom.
Since I had come from Broadway and hadn’t crossed West End, I was walking up the east side of the street, walking uptown with the traffic, the same way I’d come when I’d dropped Sherry Fontaine off on the way home from court. So her building was across from me, on the west side of the street.
Which is why I almost missed it. That and the fact I was so preoccupied with my thoughts and wasn’t really paying attention.
I was on the corner a block away, just getting ready to cross the street when I saw him.
I blinked.
I couldn’t believe it.
Good lord. The one person in this whole affair that I had never even suspected. Who wasn’t even on my list of suspects. Not even on my list of improbable suspects. A person I’d never even thought of.
But it was him, all right.
As I averted my head and turned away so he wouldn’t see me, I knew damn well the man I’d just seen on the other side of the street walking away from Sherry Fontaine’s apartment building was none other than my nemesis, my conscience, the one person I had hoped with all my heart I would never see again.
My old buddy from jury duty.
34.
“I THINK YOU’VE LOST YOUR MARBLES.”
“You don’t understand.”
MacAullif shook his head. “I do understand. It’s absolutely clear. You’ve cracked up. The thing’s too much for you. You can’t take being a suspect and getting nowhere in the case, and now you’ve gone off the deep end.”
“I saw what I saw.”
“You saw what? An old man walking down the street.”
“Away from her building.”
“Big deal. Maybe he lives in t
he neighborhood.”
“He lives on 33rd Street. I followed him home.”
“So? He’s got friends in the neighborhood.”
“Then it’s just a coincidence?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in coincidence.”
“There’s coincidence and there’s coincidence. Some exist. What I meant was, when you start getting similarities in murder cases it usually ain’t a coincidence.”
“This is a similarity in a murder case.”
“This is a guy you knew one place showing up in another place.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“You don’t see anything. You’ve lost your marbles.”
“MacAullif—”
“No. Hang on. You’ve gone off the deep end. You gotta relax, take a deep breath, get yourself together. You’re at the point now where you’re all upset by this, you can’t think straight and you’re suspecting everyone indiscriminately.”
“It’s not indiscriminately. Damn it, it makes sense.”
“Yeah, sure,” MacAullif said. He ran his hand over his head, then said with heavy irony, “Let me make sure I understand your new theory of the case. You are now convinced some old man bumped off Sherry Fontaine because he was pissed off at you for getting him kicked off a jury in a civil case?”
“It’s not just that.”
“Oh?”
“Well, it is just that. But it adds up.”
“How does it add up?”
“For one thing, you didn’t see it happen. But I understand the personality involved. Here’s this guy, this old man. He’s retired, he’s got nothing going in his life. He’s a sour, opinionated old cuss. And he confides in me. His secret plan. He’s gonna beat the system. He’s not gonna serve his two weeks. He’s gonna get on a simple civil case, serve two days and get out of there.
