Stakeout (2013)

by Hall, Parnell

  “What second murder?”

  “So you don’t know. Let me bring you up to speed.” I gave her an abbreviated version of the Vinnie Carbone killing. “The guy who had the motel unit next to your husband’s was murdered. Vinnie worked for a mobster named Tony Gallo. Vinnie’s girlfriend may have been involved. She’s alleged to have been holding the fatal gun.”

  “Alleged? Why alleged?”

  “The cops haven’t been able to find it.”

  I figured that covered the situation.

  As with Jersey Girl, I could see the widow’s wheels turning.

  “What’s this got to do with me?”

  “If it’s related to the murder of your husband, it’s got a lot to do with you.”

  “But it isn’t related to the murder of my husband.”

  “No, because the private investigator you hired killed him on a whim.”

  She took a breath. “I don’t know what your motive was. I don’t know what you hoped to gain. I’m trying to forgive you. Well, maybe not forgive you, but I’m trying not to jump across the table and gouge your eyes out. Unless you’ve got something else you’d like to torture me with, could you have the decency to leave me alone?”

  “Just tell me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you hire me?”

  “You know why I hired you. To see if my husband was having an affair.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “What made you think he was having an affair?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. “I don’t have to answer your questions. I don’t have to justify myself to you. The police think you killed my husband. You’ve given me no reason to think differently. I think this interview is over.”

  It was frustrating. Unless the woman seriously thought I killed her husband, you’d have thought she’d have been more interested in who possibly did. The problem, of course, was that I’d damned myself with my own story. According to me, I was the only one who went into that room.

  I left the widow Marston’s feeling more depressed than ever. Alice had challenged me to find out why the widow hired me. After my conversation with her, I was not one whit closer to knowing.

  50

  I STAKED OUT HER APARTMENT, which wasn’t easy. In case you’re thinking of becoming a PI, staking out an apartment in Manhattan is whole different ballgame than staking out a motel in New Jersey. It’s not just peeing in a Gatorade bottle anymore. It’s what are you going to do with your car? You can’t sit in it because you can never get a parking spot close enough to the door. If you double park or sit by a fire plug, you’re screwed, because if your quarry leaves on foot you can’t leave your car.

  Parking in a garage is suicide, in case the person you’re tailing comes out the door and climbs into a car parked on the street. You can never get your car out of the garage in time, and you’re left hailing a cab, which is bad news, because if the person took a car instead of a cab, they’re probably leaving town, which means you either wind up with a 250-dollar cab ride, or with a cab driver who won’t go.

  The compromise I opted for was a meter on Madison. It had the disadvantage of having to be fed, and if I left the car and followed her on foot it would most likely run out. This particular spot had the advantage of being only two cars down from the corner. While I couldn’t sit in it, it was easier putting quarters in when my hour ran out. I could go to the corner of Madison, look back down the block toward the widow’s apartment building while I got my quarters ready. Then I could dash to the car, feed six quarters into the meter, and dash back, leaving the narrowest window of opportunity during which the widow might get away. Assuming she wasn’t running, which well-dressed widows leaving apartment buildings seldom were, in the few seconds I was at the meter it was unlikely she would be able to exit the building, reach the corner of Fifth Avenue, and disappear from sight before I could see her. Granted, I am no track star; still I felt I could hold my own in the twenty-yard, six-quarter, widow-beating dash. (I cannot imagine why this has not become an immensely popular Olympic event—if the ratings for curling can go through the roof, surely anything’s possible.)

  Anyway, there I was, with my car on the meter and my eye on the door. I was watching from the Fifth Avenue corner, because it kept my options open. The street was one-way east, so if she headed toward Fifth she was going on foot. Unless she hailed a cab on Fifth, in which case I’d have to hail one too, and put up with the ticket, if not the towing charge, along with Alice’s analysis of why I shouldn’t have gotten it.

  I had just fed my six quarters into the meter and sprinted back to the corner feeling mighty damn proud of myself, when a car came out of the underground garage. I had no idea what kind of car the good widow drove, so I didn’t know if it was her, but whoever it was, they were coming my way. I shrunk back into the shadow of the buildings, watched the car for a clue.

  I got one.

  The car was a cream-colored Lexus sedan, just the type a wealthy widow might drive.

  And the widow was driving it.

  I turned my back, walked to the corner, and sprinted down Madison. I hopped into my car, gunned the motor, pulled out, and drove to the corner.

  Damn.

  The light on Madison was green, but I couldn’t go through because I didn’t know which way she was going. I drove up to the light and stopped. The cab behind me gave me the horn, the universal Hey-asshole-they-got-any-colors-you-like? treatment. I ignored him, switched on my blinkers. The cab pulled out and went by. The driver gave me the finger and cursed me out in a language befitting his turban.

  I waited for the green light to change red. It did, letting the traffic on the side street go. The widow Marston was second car from the corner. I couldn’t tell if she had her direction signal on—the car in front of her was obscuring the left headlight. The first car pulled out, revealing the truth. The left turn signal was indeed blinking. The widow was turning up Madison.

  Only now I had a red light. Presumably, she’d get one at the next corner, unless she really gunned the motor and caught it just before it turned. The lights on Madison are staggered—the one on each block turns green slightly after the one on the previous block. Which meant they also turned red slightly after the one on the previous block. So, if you hung a left onto Madison the instant the light changed, and drove like a NASCAR driver, you could catch the light just as it was turning, not to mention every subsequent light.

  I didn’t think the widow was a NASCAR driver. On the other hand, I couldn’t take the chance. As soon as she made the turn I ran the light, sending a delivery boy jumping out of the way. I sped down the block, thanking my lucky stars I hadn’t gotten pulled over for a moving violation, and heaved a sigh of relief. The widow was waiting at the light.

  She drove up Madison to Ninety-seventh Street, hung a left, and went through Central Park. She got on the West Side Highway, heading north.

  It occurred to me that my surveillance would likely come to naught. On the other hand, where was she going? After all, she was recently widowed. Not that recently widowed people can’t drive. Still, priorities change. Driving from necessity might still play. But joyriding would probably slip down the list.

  I wondered if she was going upstate. Maybe she had a country house. I realized I knew nothing about the family. I should have looked her up. Though that didn’t seem to be an issue, what with her husband getting killed. Of course, once I was pegged for the killer, it wouldn’t have hurt to know a little more about them. But I hadn’t suspected the wife, not until Alice asked me why she hired me. And I couldn’t come up with a reason. Having a country house would indicate she had money. Money was always a motive for murder. Granted, not by an invisible assassin in a room full of mobsters, still if she had a country house in Mount Kisco, it would be nice to know.

  She didn’t.

  At 181st Street, instead of getting left for the Saw Mill River Parkway, she stayed right for
the Cross Bronx Expressway and the George Washington Bridge.

  And a monumental traffic jam.

  The West Side Highway north is always jammed at rush hour. And it’s not the bridge. It’s the damn Cross Bronx Expressway. Eastbound traffic is always backed up, and it impacts everything. Especially the northbound exit ramp from the West Side Highway. That’s because the two-lane exit feeds both east and westbound traffic. And it’s not like one lane goes to the expressway and the other to the bridge. The two lanes feed into four lanes, which would be all right, except the inner two lanes go to the expressway and the outer two go to the bridge. And since the expressway is always clogged, the two inner lanes back up into the two-lane approach ramp, which means the cars bound for New Jersey can’t reach the two lanes bound for the bridge.

  I sat in my car, waiting for the traffic to thin out and keeping my eye on the widow’s Lexus one car length ahead. The saving grace was she couldn’t go any faster than I could.

  I had just had that thought when the widow reached the point where the ramp widened out. She pulled into the left-hand lane and headed for the bridge.

  Good Lord.

  She was going to Jersey. She was going to Jersey, which meant I just hit pay dirt, only I hadn’t hit pay dirt, instead I’d blown the whole thing because I was a car length back, still in the bottleneck where I couldn’t get out of line, and there she went around the approach ramp to the bridge.

  The woman ahead of me was dawdling along. I gave her the horn, cruel and unusual I know, but I leaned on it hard.

  She reacted instantly.

  She slammed on the brakes.

  I nearly ploughed into her. Instead, I received a number of angry glares from nearby motorists, already pissed off at being in this colossal backup, and not pleased to have someone interrupt the conversation they were having with their husbands, wives, or whoever on their cell phones, a no-no which could get them pulled over, except no cops could get near enough and there was no over to pull.

  And there went the widow Marston, curling around the ramp and merging onto the George Washington Bridge, carrying with her all my hopes and fears, not to mention the solution to the case.

  I stifled the urge to put the car in low and floor it, pushing right through the back of the woman’s car. I contented myself with creeping up on her bumper and squeezing left, as if wishing could widen the gap. Miracle of miracles, her car moved.

  I squeezed through the narrowest of opening, and rocketed onto the bridge.

  51

  THIS WAS IT. THIS WAS pay dirt. Unexpected, but there had to be some connection. That had been the problem all along. What was the connection between a Manhattan Aflac salesman and a henchman from the mob? And there was the answer right in front of me all the time: Julie Marston. The guy’s wife. My client. Who set the whole thing in motion, and set the whole thing up. This was what Alice’s question had implied—and what a profound insight that was. Why did she hire you? She hired me to set me up. Or if not set me up, at least make me a witness. To be in a position to testify that no one went into that motel unit. Not that she expected to frame me for murder. That was serendipity on her part. She expected to be awakened by a call from the police telling her that her husband had been found dead in a New Jersey motel. Either that, or a call from me, telling her the police had just arrived and gone into her husband’s motel room. As the wife, she’d be in a position to report to the police that I’d been on the job. In fact, if I were the one calling in, she’d probably instruct me to go to the police, identify myself, and demand to know what was going on.

  In either case, there I would be, hung out to dry, telling a story that on the one hand made no sense, but on the other hand exonerated everyone, especially her, from the crime. Then I, like a dope, rush in and get caught with the gun. As far as the widow Marston is concerned, things couldn’t be better. It’s nice for her when I get arraigned, super annoying for her when I keep coming back.

  It was a nice solution. Far-fetched and hard to prove, but it answered the two burning questions: Why did the widow Marston hire me? And what was the connection between Philip Marston and Tony Gallo? The connection was Marston’s wife. Because Jersey Girl wasn’t having an affair with Tony Gallo. Jersey Girl was a beard, the one he wanted the cops and his wife and everyone in the world to believe he was having an affair with.

  I didn’t know how it worked. I didn’t know all the details. But as soon as it was confirmed, everything should fall nicely into place. All I needed was a connection. And here she was, driving over the George Washington Bridge. No way, no way did a recently widowed woman get dolled up, hop in her car, and drive through rush-hour traffic to New Jersey to go shopping at the mall. No, she was meeting Tony Gallo for dinner. Or to go to a motel. Surely not the same motel—the case was mind-blowing enough without that happening. Hell, with my luck they’d probably wind up in the same room, and what was left of my brains would come dribbling out my ears.

  No, that wasn’t going to happen. But she was meeting Tony Gallo, I was sure of it.

  While I was thinking all that, she got off in Ft. Lee, drove straight to the police station, parked the car and went in.

  52

  ALICE WAS INFURIATINGLY SUPPORTIVE.

  “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I thought it was the end of the world. Your revelation it’s not certainly cheers me up.”

  She smiled. “Don’t be cranky.”

  “Cranky? That’s what you call it? Cranky? I apologize if just missing being cleared of a murder charge makes me a little testy.”

  “You sound like you got convicted. Nothing happened. You’re just grousing because you didn’t get the case dismissed.”

  “Aren’t you upset? It was your theory. And it seemed so good.”

  “It wasn’t a theory. I just asked why she hired you. It’s a perfectly logical question. You’re making too much of it because you see it as an attack on your competency.”

  “Competence.”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t need a y. It’s already a noun.”

  “You are upset. That’s why you lash out with the grammar. Telling me I can’t put a y on it. Are you sure about that? I’ve heard of competency.”

  “Y makes it an adjective. Like competency hearing.”

  “Right. That’s how I get you declared incompetent and take all your money. Luckily, you don’t have any.”

  “Ah, the silver lining,” I said. “I know you’re just trying to kid me out of it, but it isn’t working. You may have to take your clothes off.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just saying take your clothes off.”

  “Not right now.”

  I hate that phrase. Seemingly innocuous, but the moral equivalent of the twelfth of never or when hell freezes over.

  “It’s really not that bad,” Alice persisted.

  “How is it not that bad? Look what I’ve done. I tried to drive her into the arms of her lover and wrap up the case. Instead, I’ve driven her to report me to the cops. Any minute our doorbell’s going to ring and they’ll arrest me again.”

  “Then I guess I can’t take off my clothes.”

  “Was that ever an option?”

  “You’re not concentrating. Look. You had a theory, you tested it, it didn’t work out.”

  “It was your theory.”

  “I’m not crushed. You seem to be, but, hey, that’s the thing about theories. They’re hypothetical until you test them. Some work out. Some don’t. If they don’t, you abandon them, or you devise another test.”

  “It’s a little bit more than not working out. She went to the cops.”

  Alice waved it away. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That blows your fine-spun theory about how she was having an affair with this mobster out of the water. And you wonder why that doesn’t upset me. It wasn’t my theory to begin with. All I said was the woman must have had a re
ason for hiring you. That didn’t have to be it. You took a button and sewed a vest on it.”

  “I always wondered about that expression. Are there people who sew buttons on vests?”

  Alice ignored the deflection, pushed on. “Basically, it has to do with you undervaluing yourself. You don’t trust your own opinion, so you put too much credence in other people’s. An idea isn’t necessarily right just because it’s mine.”

  “Can I quote you on that the next time we have an argument?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I knew what she meant. The problem was, she didn’t mean it. She didn’t think the idea was likely to be wrong just because it was hers. She thought it was likely to be wrong because of my interpretation of her idea. She still believed her idea was right. And would have been proven right, had I not carried the hypothesis through to its logical conclusion, but instead applied some circuitous logic no one in his right mind would have ever thought of, just to validate what she said. Which wasn’t really to venture an opinion anyway, just to ask the question. Which, should the answer turn out to be enlightening, would prove her astute. On the other hand, should it not prove to be enlightening, she never said it would.

  And yet, our marriage endures.

  53

  RICHARD WASN’T THRILLED WHEN I dropped by to see him the next morning.

  “You drove her to the cops?”

  “I didn’t drive her. She took her own car.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “I’m trying to stay sane. This case has my head coming off.”

  “Why in the world would you call on the widow?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Why? What could you possibly hope to gain?”

  “I thought it might clear me of a murder rap.”

  “You don’t trust me to get you off?”

  “Of course, I do. Still, I’d rather not be cleared on a technicality.”

  “No, you’d rather be convicted. Which is what will happen, if you keep doing what you’re doing.”