Cold Caller

by Jason Starr

  “Do you have any idea who could have done this to him?” the detective asked.

  “No,” I said. “I mean I don’t know who did it to him.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you knew, I asked you if you had any idea.”

  “I guess everyone in the office has the same hunch.”

  “Greg Brown?”

  I nodded.

  “I hope it wasn’t Greg,” I said. “I mean I always liked him a lot and I never thought he was a really bad guy. But I guess sometimes you don’t really know people.”

  Detective Figula flipped to another page on the clipboard.

  “I have the report here from the incident that occurred on July twenty-seventh. It says that you came to Ed O’Brien’s defense when Mr. Brown attacked him.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Do you recall what the fight was about?”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly, but I think Ed was going to fire him. They were doing some restructuring at the company and Ed had to let some people go. When he broke the news to Greg, I guess Greg flipped.”

  “I was told that as he was leaving he threatened to come back and kill Mr. O’Brien.”

  “He was very angry,” I said. “And he never liked Ed very much anyway.”

  “Tell me more about this,” the detective said. “Did Mr. Brown say things to you about Mr. O’Brien?”

  I paused, like I needed to think about it.

  “Let’s put it this way,” I finally said. “Greg is black and Ed is white and they both weren’t exactly the most racially tolerant people in the world. Greg made some comments about white people sometimes, Ed included, but I never really thought Greg meant any of it. I just thought he was joking around.”

  Detective Figula had a sarcastic expression, as if he’d already made up his mind that Greg was the killer and there was nothing I could do to change it.

  “I spoke to Ms. Marie Stipaldi a few minutes ago,” he said. “She told me that a couple of days before Mr. Brown attacked Mr. O’Brien, she, Mr. Brown, and yourself had a conversation and that Mr. Brown said, and I quote, that ‘if Ed was in a fire, I’d let his ass burn.’ Do you recall this?”

  I looked at my lap again.

  “This is really difficult for me, detective,” I said. “I mean Greg and I weren’t friends or anything and I don’t want to make things worse for him than they already are, but it’s true – he did say that. At the time I didn’t take him seriously, and I don’t think Marie did either. Oh, God. I wonder if I could have done something to stop him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the detective said. “You did everything you could do to help your boss.”

  I nodded. Detective Figula started looking at the list of log-out times on his clipboard.

  “This list isn’t complete, I take it.”

  “It’s as complete as possible,” I said. “If someone logged on to a file they were working on today and saved over it, the new time would be saved over it. But if you’re trying to figure out when people left the office last night, I don’t think that’ll be very accurate. Someone could have logged out at five o’clock and stayed at the office much longer.”

  “I understand that,” the detective said. “But unfortunately there are no security cameras in this building so we can’t play back a videotape and watch people enter and leave the building.”

  “That is unfortunate,” I said.

  “For the record, when did you leave work last night?

  “Last night?” I said, thinking. “About five o’clock. No, closer to five-thirty because I didn’t get home till around six-thirty.”

  “And you stayed home all night?”

  “Yes,” I said, “actually we did – my fiancée and I. We ate dinner at home.”

  “Well, I think I’ve gotten all the information from you that I need,” Detective Figula said. He stood up, putting the clipboard under his arm. “Because of the investigation we’re asking everyone to take the rest of the day off today. Is that a problem for you?”

  “No,” I said. “I understand.”

  “Also, we’re asking everyone to give Officer Donnels, the blond gentleman outside, their phone number and address before they leave, just in case there’s anything else that comes up. In any event, tomorrow you can come back to work as usual. That is as usual as work can be under the circumstances.”

  When Detective Figula was gone, the ambulance workers passed my office, carrying Ed’s body on a stretcher. It was covered with a white sheet, but I remembered what his body looked like, how it had felt when I’d carried it into the bathroom.

  I gave the officer my home address and phone number then headed down the hallway toward the elevators. There seemed to be more police officers than before and now the reception area was also filled with television and radio news crews. As I waited for the elevator, several reporters asked me questions at once and a cop tried to keep them away from me. I couldn’t hear all of the questions, but most of the reporters wanted to know what my name was and whether I knew anything about the murder. A few feet away a reporter who I recognized from the Channel Four News was doing a live broadcast. Behind the camera, men were pointing bright spotlights at the reporter.

  I heard the reporter saying, “...and the police have a suspect in the case. He’s a former employee at the company who attacked the victim once before. Apparently this suspect, Gregory Brown, tried to get into the office yester­day afternoon to see Mr. O’Brien and left acting irritated and disturbed. Police aren’t releasing any more details in the case as of this moment, but they are saying the motive for the killing could have been racial. Gregory Brown is black and the victim, Edward O’Brien, was white.”

  The elevator doors opened. I got on.

  12

  I watched the story unfold on television. The media was billing the murder as the latest racial murder in New York, and the police and other city officials feared that the incident might lead to city-wide race riots.

  A few weeks earlier, some white kids on Staten Island had beaten to death a black kid who was riding through their neighborhood on a dirt bike. I hadn’t paid much attention to the story, but I knew that black leaders had held demonstrations in front of City Hall, and I remembered Greg once saying something about it, that he thought the white kids were going to get off because black people never get any justice in this country, or something like that. He must have said the same thing to other people and someone must have told the police about it because the media was making it out like Greg had killed Ed as revenge for the Staten Island murder. Now whites in Staten Island and in Ed’s town in Hicksville, Long Island, were protesting, demanding justice. Meanwhile, extremist black leaders were defending Greg’s actions, including one man representing the Nation of Islam who said that “Greg had revenged white America’s latest act in the attempted genocide of the black race.” He called Greg a “hero” and asked that all Americans, black and white, pray for his soul.

  There had already been one retaliation for the murder – an old black man was attacked and beaten by two white teenagers on a subway in Sheepshead Bay less than an hour after Ed’s murder was first reported. The Mayor came on the television afterwards and gave a long speech, warning people to stay calm and not to take justice into their own hands. Although the Mayor spoke in a slow, calm voice, I could tell that he was extremely nervous. The weathermen were predicting another heat wave and the police feared that the hot weather would shorten people’s tempers, make them even more likely to riot. The Police Commissioner had ordered the police to work overtime all over the city, and some people were planning to leave town for a week, hoping things settled down.

  Greg was arrested at about five o’clock. According to the reports, the police had found a witness, someone who worked in another office in the building, who had seen Greg getting out of the elevator at the A.C.A. office at about six o’clock last night. The police had been unable to determine an exact time of death, but were speculating that Ed was ki
lled some time between six and six-thirty. They were about a half hour off, I realized, because I had actually killed Ed at about seven. I wondered if Greg had actually been seen by the witness or whether the person had made a mistake. It didn’t make any sense that the police would make an arrest if they didn’t have any real evidence to go on. The police may have been under pressure to arrest someone, anyone, for the murder, or they may have taken Greg into custody because they feared for his safety.

  I watched Greg being taken into the precinct. He was bending over, covering his face so he couldn’t be recognized. In a way, I felt like I had murdered him too.

  At first it frightened me how much publicity the murder was getting. I supposed that if the police had thought that a white man had committed the crime instead of a black man, the case might have gotten a small mention in the local newscasts, if it was mentioned at all. Instead, the case was being treated as if it was the biggest news story of the year. Afraid to consider the negative consequences, I convinced myself that maybe all the attention was a good thing. The police and media seemed so convinced that the murder was racially motivated that Ms. Daniels, the Personnel Director at Smythe & O’Greeley, probably wouldn’t come forward to report her conversation with Ed. Also, if the janitor had seen me, he might not mention it to the police because he’d think that it was an inconsequential detail.

  On the six o’clock news, more details of the case were revealed. The most shocking information as far as I was concerned was that the witness who claimed she had seen Greg exit the elevator had picked him out of a police line-up. I wondered whether the woman had been coerced into picking out Greg or whether she honestly believed that Greg had been the person she saw. Was it possible that Greg had actually been at the office at six last night? Eileen claimed that he had been at the office earlier and that he said he planned to come to the office again, so maybe it was him who had gotten off the elevator. Since Eileen goes home at five o’clock and the office doors are locked, then Greg would have had to ring the bell for someone to let him in. Then I remembered that there had been someone ringing the doorbell yesterday evening at about six-fifteen. I’d assumed it was a delivery person and I hadn’t felt like getting up to answer it, but it could very well have been Greg. If it was Greg, I knew that the police would be able to put together a very convincing case against him.

  The newscast gave more information on the case. The police had already concluded that the bruises on Ed’s face and a broken finger on his left hand were injuries suffered after he was dead, and they were investigating the possibility that Greg had beaten Ed after the murder to make it look like there had been an attempted robbery. This explained why Ed’s wallet was missing, since the police believed that Greg had stolen the wallet to make his story seem more legitimate. The wallet hadn’t been recovered yet. The police also believed that Ed wasn’t killed in the bathroom, but somewhere else, perhaps in his own office. Although there was nothing disturbed in his office to indicate that a struggle might have taken place there, police were investigating the possibility that Greg had cleaned up afterwards. Special police teams were searching the entire A.C.A. office for hair and blood samples.

  “I’m so glad you weren’t there last night,” Julie said to me when the report was over. She was sitting next to me on the couch, hugging me close. “That crazy son of a bitch might have tried to kill you too.”

  “Why would he kill me?” I said. “He had nothing against me.”

  “But to strangle somebody like that. He must’ve been out of his mind.”

  I wanted to say something in Greg’s defense, but I didn’t want to make it sound like I was on his side. So I said:

  “I just can’t believe any of this happened. It feels so surreal now, watching it all on T.V.”

  Julie leaned her head on my shoulder. It felt good, having her so close to me. Her body was warm and soft.

  “Are you going to the funeral?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “If people from work are invited. Sure.”

  “I’m so sorry you have to go through this. It must be so hard for you. Maybe you should take some time off from work, try to forget about it.”

  “You kidding? I’ve only been working at my job a couple of weeks and things are just getting rolling. Besides, with Ed gone, there’s going to be twice as much work for me to do.”

  “Are you going to be in charge of the department now?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t even thought about it. I just know that things won’t be the same around the office, that’s for sure.”

  I was quiet for a while. Julie probably thought I was feeling sad, mourning Ed’s death, but I was really imagining how great things were going to be without him. The truth was I’d been thinking all day about being promoted. Nelson had told me himself that he thought I was doing a great job and that I had better ideas than Ed. It made sense that he would promote me, rather than go outside the company to bring a new person in. Everything was going to turn out like I’d hoped it would turn out before the murder, except that things were going to happen ahead of schedule. After six months of running the department, I could start interviewing for ad jobs again, and by next year I’d be back at a high-level marketing job. And this time I’d be careful. I wouldn’t say or do anything that could possibly lead to any misunderstandings, and before long I’d be living my dream life again.

  It must have been about five minutes later – although I’d been so deep in my fantasy that I’d lost track of the exact time – when Julie said, “Come on, let’s get up and go somewhere. Lying around here feeling sorry for Ed isn’t going to make you feel any better about things.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “How about a movie? We haven’t seen a movie in a long time.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve had such a hard day.”

  “Come on, it’ll do you good. You have to escape from all of this craziness.”

  Not wanting to disappoint her, I agreed to go. We went to the multiplex on Eighty-sixth Street. I found the movie, a love story, boring, so I daydreamed, thinking mostly about the future and how great everything was going to turn out. I imagined myself working on a big account for a top agency and travelling around the world with a staff and a big expense budget. Julie seemed to like the movie. She was crying a lot, especially when the couple got back together in the end.

  When we got home I was so tired I fell right asleep. In the morning, I woke up worrying. I remembered that the news had said that the police were searching for hair and blood samples and I feared they’d find something they could trace back to me. It wasn’t my office I was worried about. I knew that the janitor had vacuumed there the night of the murder and even if the police found a piece of hair there, I didn’t see how that in itself could be used as evidence against me. But I was worried about the bathroom. What if I’d left a hair sample on Ed’s body? In the shower, these fears intensified when I noticed a clump of my hair in the drain. My hair was falling out constantly and it seemed likely that a single piece of hair could have fallen out when I’d lifted Ed onto the toilet.

  On the way to work, I passed a newsstand. All the local papers had front page headlines about the case. One of them read, “RACE WAR”; another, “RACE RIOT”; another, “RIOT”. I bought a copy of one of the papers. An article gave a bio­graphy of Greg. It told about his mother who died when he was a baby and how his father had raised him and his sister. There was a picture of Greg to the right of the story that looked like it was taken in high school. It was a dark, grainy photo that made Greg look much angrier and unkempt than he really was.

  I skimmed the other articles. Another witness had come forward who claimed he had seen Greg getting off the elevator on the seventh floor around six o’clock. Also, the police had found a pair of leather gloves in Greg’s apartment that they thought he may have worn at the murder scene. Members of Ed’s family were furious with the judge who had released Greg after he’d assaulted Ed. Black groups were pl
anning more marches and demonstrations at different sites around the city. Black parents and white parents were afraid to send their children to school, and some parents were thinking about sending their children to private schools. And there was a small article where Greg’s court-appointed lawyer claimed that his client was innocent and that Greg was willing to take a lie detector test.

  I arrived at work at the usual time, about eight-fifteen. There was a note on my desk from Nelson that he wanted to see me as soon as I came in. When I got there, he was sitting still, staring vacantly at the papers on his desk.

  “Oh, Bill, good, I’m glad you’re here. Please, take a seat, sit down, sit down.”

  I sat across from him, crossing my legs.

  “How are you?” I said. “Holding up all right?”

  “The best I can under the circumstances,” he said. “I was going to play hooky today, but I knew Ed wouldn’t want us to sit around here feeling sorry for him. You know Ed and his works ethics. He’d have to die to miss a day of work.”

  I laughed, holding back a little, the way people do when they don’t want to disrespect the dead.

  “How about you?” Nelson asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Guess so,” I said. “Still a little shocked by the whole thing. I keep forgetting that Ed’s gone, that I’m never going to see him again, then when the truth hits me it feels like I’m hearing it for the first time. It seems so unbelievable to me.”

  Nelson was nodding his head.

  “I know what you mean, I know exactly what you mean. But at least the police caught the son of a bitch and he’ll never kill anybody again. Did you hear the latest?”

  “The latest?”

  “The police found Ed’s wallet.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I heard about it on the radio this morning. They found it all the way on the East Side. Greg was trying to make it look like a robbery attempt and he went really out of his way to do it. Either that or they think someone found the wallet and dumped it on the East Side. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”