Cold Caller

by Jason Starr

  I started walking. I felt disoriented and dizzy, my mouth tasted like shoe polish. Although I didn’t know exactly where I was, I guessed I was on the West Side, near the Hudson River. There weren’t many other abandoned areas in midtown and I knew we hadn’t travelled in the van very far.

  I walked straight ahead to Eleventh Avenue. The cross street was Forty-sixth. I was proud of myself for figuring out where I was, but I wasn’t about to start celebrating. My pains were getting worse by the second and I knew that this time I couldn’t be stubborn – I had to get to an emergency room.

  I was happy to discover that I still had my wallet and all my money was still inside it. I tried desperately, but I couldn’t get a cab to stop for me. At first I was baffled, then I realized how awful I must look with my face all covered with blood and dirt. I waved a fifty-dollar bill at a cab that had stopped at a traffic light. I had to bang on the back door before he let me inside.

  “New York Hospital,” I said. “Fast.”

  The ride crosstown seemed endless. When we finally got there, a half hour later, I dropped the fifty onto the driver’s side of the car, not bothering to wait for change. At the emergency room reception desk, a nurse tried to calm me down, kept telling me that everything was going to be all right. I screamed at her, demanding to see a doctor. The nurse explained that since my injuries weren’t life threatening I had to wait my turn like everyone else. She also said that since my left hand wasn’t injured and because I was left-handed, I had to fill out some admission and insurance forms before the doctor could see me.

  I started filling out the forms, but I couldn’t concentrate. I begged the nurse to let a doctor see me. It must have worked because a doctor came a couple of minutes later. I followed him into a small office where he told me to sit on the examination table.

  “Jesus,” he said. “How did this happen?”

  “A car door closed on it,” I said.

  He looked at me like he thought I was lying.

  “And your nose?”

  “That happened afterwards. I was running down the street, trying to get a cab, and I fell face first on the street. Isn’t there something you can do? The pain is killing me.”

  He injected an anesthetic into my hand and gave me a cold pack to hold on my nose. Then he told me to follow him into an x-ray room at the end of the corridor. I had to wait about ten minutes, then a pretty, red-haired woman arrived and x-rayed my nose and hand. While we were waiting for the results, I went to a phone booth and called Julie. She’d been expecting me to be home from work by six-thirty and it was already past eight.

  “Where are you?” she asked anxiously.

  I retold the story about the car door closing on my hand and falling on the sidewalk. To make it more convincing, I added more details. An old woman had asked me to help her put some bags into her car. After I put the last bag inside, the little boy who was with her had slammed the car door on my fingers. Then I slipped on some wet newspaper and fell on my face.

  “Poor thing,” Julie said. “You must be so scared.”

  I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted on coming to the hospital to meet me.

  The x-ray technician returned and said that my nose was only badly bruised, but that my four fingers had been fractured near the bottom knuckles and that my entire right hand would need to be set in a cast. She wrapped my hand in a bandage and told me to wait in the waiting room until another doctor could see me.

  A little while later, Julie arrived. She made me explain what had happened again. I told the same story I’d told her over the phone, but somehow in person she didn’t seem quite so convinced by it. I would have told her the truth, but that would have meant telling her about the prostitute and I didn’t want to get into that.

  “Wet newspaper?” she said.

  “Crazy, huh?” I said. “It rained before and there was some soaking newspaper on the sidewalk. It was in front of an abandoned building otherwise I’d think about a law suit.”

  “But the newspaper was on the street,” she said. “Isn’t that what you told me over the phone?”

  “It was on the street and the sidewalk, like on the curb I think,” I said. “Anyway, I was in a lot of pain so I took a cab to the hospital.”

  “You did the right thing,” she said, still sounding skeptical.

  I told her about the x-ray results and that they would have to put my hand in a cast. I still had a feeling that something was wrong, that Julie was angry at me.

  “I’m really glad you came here,” I said.

  “You are?” she said flatly. “You didn’t sound like you wanted me here on the phone.”

  “I just didn’t want to scare you,” I said. “Besides, I was a little embarrassed about the whole thing. I mean slipping on a piece of newspaper isn’t exactly like getting a war injury.”

  Looking angry, she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “I thought you were lying to me.”

  “Lying? What do you mean? Why would I ever lie to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t believe you’d think that. I’d never lie to you. I’m very glad you came. It was scary being in the emergency room alone. Just being here made me think about how much I missed you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “About what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Come on, Julie. If you have something to say I want to hear it.”

  “Look. I don’t know if this is the right time to bring this up or anything, but I found out something today, something that you did, and it’s very upsetting.”

  My pulse quickened. All I could think about was Ed’s murder.

  “It’s hard for me to talk about,” she said. “I mean I just can’t believe you’d do something like this. I just can’t.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure there’s some misunderstanding,” I said anxiously. “Just don’t jump to any conclusions, okay?”

  “I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” she said. “I’m positive about this. I know what I heard.” She paused, collecting herself. “It happened this afternoon. I took part of the day off work to go shopping for a wedding dress. I went to a couple of places in midtown, then I wound up at this cute little boutique in the East Eighties. Anyway, I tried a couple of dresses on and I was getting ready to leave when who walks in but Claire Goldman and her husband Harold.”

  Julie saw my confused expression and pounced on me.

  “See, I was right. You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Are they relatives of yours or some­thing?”

  “I can’t believe this. Harold Goldman. Dr. Harold Goldman, Bill. Now do you remember?”

  Suddenly, it hit me. He was the plastic surgeon who I was supposed to go to for the cut on my forehead.

  “Is that what this is all about?” I said, relieved it had nothing to do with the murder. “I thought it was something important.”

  “It is important. You lied to me, Bill. I don’t understand how you could lie to me.”

  Julie was speaking loudly. A few people in the room were looking over.

  “I can explain everything,” I said quietly. “Just give me a chance.”

  “Is that how you could afford to buy me those earrings?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I knew it was weird that they would suddenly give you an advance at work. I can’t believe you’d treat me this way. And now you call me with this ridiculous story of how a car door closed on your hand and you slipped on newspaper? What’s going on with you, Bill? Why are you keeping these secrets from me?”

  “What are you talking about? What secrets?”

  “I don’t know. I just know you’re up to something, you’re living some kind of secret life. I guess I didn’t notice it the past couple of weeks because I was so busy thinking about the wedding. But you’ve been acting strang
e for a long time now and I’m afraid something’s going on, something that you’re not telling me.”

  “Will you stop it? I’m not keeping any big secrets from you. About the plastic surgeon, I admit that was my fault. I should’ve gone to him, but I was such a jerk I didn’t think it was necessary. But I learned my lesson. I’m here now, aren’t I? And I have your three hundred dollars too. I was planning to give it to you last week and tell you I didn’t keep the appointment, but I got so busy with my job.”

  Julie looked distracted, as if she hadn’t been listening to me.

  “There’s something else, Bill. I found this in the top drawer of your dresser today.”

  From her purse, she took out the napkin on which I had written Lisa’s phone number.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You think I’m cheating on you, right?”

  “Well?”

  “Julie,” I said irritably. “That’s Lisa Collins. She’s a Sales Representative at a software company I deal with. Ed mentioned her name to me at lunch one day and I wrote her number down on that napkin. If you don’t believe me, you can call the number.”

  From her expression, I could tell that she hadn’t called the number yet and had no intention of calling it.

  “What did you expect me to think, Bill? The way you’ve been acting lately, with all this craziness, I just got afraid. I thought everything was going to change between us.”

  “I understand,” I said, touching her hand. “We’ve both been under a lot of stress lately. Getting engaged is stressful, plus with me changing jobs and now with what happened to Ed. Any two people would be likely to get paranoid and nervous in our situation. But you don’t have to worry, nothing is going to change between us.”

  Starting to cry, Julie said, “So this Lisa is really someone from a software company?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I feel like such an idiot, Bill. I’m so sorry. I saw the napkin and I just freaked. I knew I was being ridiculous. I realize it now.”

  After that, she changed the subject and we started talking about my injuries. It was as if our other conversation had never happened. I had no way of knowing whether she’d call the number and find out that Lisa Collins didn’t exist, but at the time I was certain that I could get away with anything.

  The doctor bandaged my nose and put my hand in a cast. He said I’d have to keep the cast on for a few weeks, maybe longer. Afterwards, Julie and I took a cab home. I showered and then we ordered Chinese food. I was still in a great deal of pain, but I felt that I had weathered the storm. I had made a few mistakes, paid for them, and now everything was going to be all right.

  At eleven o’clock, we watched the news. Racial tensions around the city had eased. Black leaders were still protesting, demanding Greg’s release, but there had been no new bias attacks. The mayor commended “the maturity of New Yorkers for maintaining their emotions during a time of intense crisis.” There was no mention that any other clues had developed in the case, or that any other witnesses or evidence had been discovered. The footage of Greg being arrested, holding his head down so the cameras couldn’t show his face, was shown again. I found this very disturbing. I kept thinking about the jokes he’d always made in the office, how he’d always made me laugh. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I flicked the remote to another station.

  “Poor thing,” Julie said. “This must be so difficult for you.”

  I mumbled something incoherent.

  “I feel so guilty,” Julie said. “You’ve been going through this terrible time, with your boss dying and then breaking your fingers trying to help somebody and all I do is get jealous and start accusing you of things. You must think I’m so insensitive.”

  I said I didn’t blame her for anything. We went into the bedroom and made love.

  The next day at work it seemed like I had to tell the story about the old woman and the wet newspaper a hundred times. I told it so frequently, in such detail, that I was starting to believe it had actually happened.

  After the morning meeting, Marie Stipaldi ap-proached me. She seemed very concerned, asking me all sorts of questions about my injuries. I decided that yesterday I had been all wrong – she didn’t suspect me at all for Ed’s murder.

  Later, I met with Nelson. He gave me more information about my promotion, including that my salary would be sixty thousand a year, plus two percent of all sales generated from the telemarketers’ appointments. My old salary had been thirty-five thousand a year plus one percent of sales. In a matter of a few days, my pay had almost doubled.

  I started moving things into Ed’s old office right away. I got a couple of telemarketers to help me put his files and the contents from his drawers into boxes and we moved them into the storage room. When I was fully moved in, I sat in the padded reclining chair and leaned back with my feet resting on the desk, thinking about how fortunate I was. I was so happy I didn’t do any work all day.

  That night, I told Julie about my new salary. She was thrilled. We agreed to start looking for an apartment in a doorman building as soon as possible, and rather than going to Cape Cod on our honeymoon as we’d planned, we decided that we could now afford to go to the Bahamas or Hawaii. Julie was also ecstatic when I told her we could afford to chip in with her parents and invite more guests to the wedding and have a more expensive caterer. Again, she apologized for the way she’d acted last night, and I could tell that any doubts she may have still had about me had now officially disappeared.

  The next day, Nelson hired a van to take several people from the office to Long Island for Ed’s funeral. First we went to a church service, then we went to the cemetery. I volunteered to be a pall bearer. Ed’s relatives and friends were crying uncontrollably throughout the service. At the cemetery, when they were lowering Ed’s coffin into the ground, Nelson put his arm around me for support. I put my arm around him, trying to look upset, but the truth was I didn’t feel any guilt or remorse for causing Ed’s death. That had happened in the past, and I knew that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do anything to change it. If I felt guilt for anything, it was for what had happened to Greg. He wasn’t convicted yet so there was still a chance I could save his life, if I could only figure out a way how.

  For the next couple of days, my dream life continued. The telemarketers treated me with fear and respect, making it incredibly satisfying to come into work every day. I decided that to be happy I needed to control people, and that I couldn’t live my life any other way. Julie and I booked a date for the wedding – April fourteenth. I had started to save for a ring.

  Then bad things started to happen. That night on the news we heard that the two witnesses who had claimed they’d seen Greg on the elevator the evening of the murder had mysteriously changed their stories. On the morning news, the police announced that they were searching for new evidence in the case and that it was possible that they would have to drop their charges against Greg. Later in the day, Clara Daniels from Smythe & O’Greeley came forward and told the police about the conversation she’d had with Ed before he was murdered. That afternoon the police returned to the office to ask me a few more questions.

  14

  When Detective Figula arrived at about two o’clock, I was eating lunch. I was surprised to see him, but I wasn’t worried. I assumed he’d returned to ask some routine questions, probably to firm up his case against Greg. The last thing I expected was that he had come to interrogate me.

  When he came into my office, he stared at me strangely.

  “Did you have some sort of accident?” he asked.

  I had taken the bandage off my nose but it still looked purple and swollen.

  “Yes, a few days ago,” I said. “Let’s just say it wasn’t one of my better days.”

  “Hope it’s not too serious.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  That’s when he told me the latest news in the case. I still didn’t know whether I had anything to worry about. Afte
r all, what could Ms. Daniels say that could really incriminate me? I had my alibi and I knew that as long as I stuck to it I’d be safe.

  “Excuse me, Detective,” I said, “but I don’t really see what this has to do with me. So Ms. Daniels talked to Ed that day. There were probably a lot of people Ed spoke to that day.”

  “But they were talking about you,” the detective said. “I think that could be a significant development.”

  “You’re not saying you think I had anything to do with the murder, are you?”

  “Right now we’re exploring all possibilities. If you’d just bear with me, I’d appreciate it.”

  I shook my head cynically, to show him that I thought he was wasting his time.

  “Did Mr. O’Brien tell you about this conversation he had with Ms. Daniels?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact he did.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me about this the last time I was here?”

  “Because I didn’t think it was important. He told me he spoke to someone in the Personnel Department at my old job, just doing some routine check. He said he found out that I was fired from my old job and I explained to him why I didn’t put it on my application. He didn’t have a problem with my explanation and that was the end of it.”

  “What time did he talk to you?”

  “I don’t know. Fiveish?”

  “According to Ms. Daniels, Mr. O’Brien was extremely upset when he learned that you were fired from your old job. She said he told her that he planned to fire you.”

  “Well, he didn’t fire me,” I said. “Like I said, we talked and worked everything out.”

  He stared at me with his big dark eyes, as if trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth.

  “I understand you didn’t have the best relationship with Mr. O’Brien.”