Cold Caller

by Jason Starr

  I spent the morning interviewing people for several telemarketing positions. In the afternoon I went to an off-site meeting at a project developer’s office with Nelson and other company executives and discussed the possibility of expanding the Telemarketing Department at a new location. Although I was very busy all day, I didn’t feel as involved in my work as I had on other days. I felt let down, like after a party when everyone leaves and you’re suddenly all alone.

  On the way home, I looked for the van again, and again it was nowhere in sight. I decided that if the pimp didn’t come after me today, he probably wouldn’t come after me at all. He probably believed what the police believed, that the serial killer had killed the prostitute, or he didn’t care enough about her death to try to get revenge. To him, she was just a commodity, a way to make money, and while he would protect her while she was alive, she was useless to him dead.

  My only remaining threat was that the prostitute’s friend, the one she’d been with when she saw me leaving the office that day, would mention me to the police. If she put it all together, she might tell the police that I’d hit the prostitute, but the odds were she wouldn’t think of it.

  When I got home, Julie was still lying in bed. She still hadn’t changed out of her clothes from last night, and from the way her hair looked she obviously hadn’t showered.

  “You can’t just lie there forever,” I said.

  She moaned something incomprehensible. I ignored her and changed out of my clothes into sweat pants and a T-shirt and went out to the living room.

  I looked at the T.V. schedule and saw that the Yankees and Indians were playing at eight o’clock. At seven I’d watch Jeopardy, then maybe I’d order some chicken wings or pizza.

  There was a newspaper on the coffee table so I sat on the couch and started reading the sports section. The Mariners had lost again, but I was happy to see that Griffey had hit another homer, his forty-first of the year. I figured out that if he hit three homers a week for the rest of the season he’d break Maris’ record. I hadn’t seen the Mariners play in person all season long and I decided that the next time they came to New York to play the Yankees I’d go to at least one of the games.

  At six o’clock, I watched the beginning of the news, but there was nothing new on the prostitute’s murder. It wasn’t even the top story anymore. A fire had killed fifteen people in the Bronx and a car bomb had gone off in Israel.

  Before Jeopardy came on, the buzzer on the intercom sounded. I assumed it was the super or some kids playing around so I ignored it. But it kept buzzing and buzzing so I finally got up to answer it.

  “Bill Moss?” the loud, crackly voice said.

  “Who’s this?” I said.

  “Detective Figula. Can I please come upstairs?”

  The police wanting to speak to me again didn’t surprise me. I’d expected it at some point, whether they had any evi­dence against me or not. The only thing that surprised me was that they came to my apartment, rather than the office. What was so important that it couldn’t wait until the morning?

  I buzzed the detective up, then peaked into the bedroom and saw that Julie was still lying there, mumbling to herself. Quietly, I closed the French doors. The last thing I needed was for Julie to get out of bed and say something incriminating about me.

  The doorbell rang. I let Detective Figula and a tall, heavyset black man into the apartment. They were both wearing gray business suits. Compared to the black man, Detective Figula looked even shorter and squatter than he had in my office.

  “What can I do for you?” I said, acting as if their visit had interrupted something important.

  “Sorry to come without any notice,” Detective Figula said. “But there were some things I needed to discuss with you right away.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “This is Detective Bryant, Homicide.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Detective Figula said. “I might as well give it to you straight. I still don’t believe what you told me the other day in your office. I still think you killed your boss and I won’t quit this case until I prove it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

  “We’re talking about murder,” Detective Bryant said. “Two murders to be precise.”

  “I’d like to help you anyway I can,” I said, “but now I’m getting fed up about this. I didn’t murder anyone. Can I make that any clearer to you?”

  “You’re not surprised that Detective Bryant said two murders, are you?” Detective Figula said. “You know exactly what second murder I’m talking about.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, “and maybe I shouldn’t talk to you at all without a lawyer.”

  “You’re gonna need a lawyer all right,” Detective Bryant said. “You’re gonna need a whole fucking team of lawyers.”

  “Where were you last night between eight o’clock and eight-thirty?” Detective Figula asked.

  I paused to think.

  “The movies,” I said. “I was at the movies.”

  “Who were you with?”

  “I went alone. But why do you need –”

  “What theater?”

  “I don’t understand what the point of these questions is.”

  “It would help if you just shut up and answered them,” Detective Bryant said. “You said you wanted to help us, didn’t you?”

  “What theater did you go to?” Detective Figula asked again.

  “The Ziegfeld,” I said. “Here, you want to see the ticket stub?”

  I picked up my wallet from the coffee table and took out the ticket stub. Detective Figula examined it closely, then handed it to Detective Bryant.

  “You always keep the ticket stub when you go to the movies?” Detective Bryant asked.

  “Will you please tell me what this is all about?” I said angrily. “This is really starting to piss me off.”

  “Can you tell us the last time you saw this woman?” Detective Figula asked.

  He held up a small photograph of the prostitute. Her hair was brown in the picture and it looked like it was taken ten years ago.

  “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” I said confidently.

  “You always forget the faces of the people you fuck?” Detective Bryant said.

  “I don’t know if you’ve been following the news lately,” Detective Figula said, “but the woman in the picture was a prostitute. Her name was Denise Furguson. She was found decapitated last night in Chelsea.”

  “Are you talking about the serial killer?” I asked.

  “You know what we’re talking about,” Detective Bryant said.

  Detective Figula held up his hand to Detective Bryant like the stop sign.

  “We don’t believe Ms. Furguson’s death was related to the death of the prostitute in Queens,” Detective Figula said to me. “There were several inconsistencies in the manner she was killed. We believe it may have been a copycat murder.”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said, “but I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  Detective Figula said, “We know that you picked up Ms. Furguson on the street a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Moss. We also believe that you may have been responsible for her death.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” I said. “This is bullshit, that’s all this is.”

  “Are you denying that you beat the shit out of Ms. Furguson last week?” Detective Bryant asked.

  “Of course I’m denying it. What do you think I...I can’t believe this.”

  “We have a witness, Robert Cantello Sr., who saw you go into the Royal Hotel on West Forty-third Street with her Monday, August sixth,” Detective Figula said. “He said that you went up to a room with her for five minutes then you ran down the steps and left. He said that afterwards Ms. Furguson came downstairs with a badly bruised face. She said you were responsible for her injuries.”
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  I laughed sarcastically.

  “That sounds like me all right,” I said. “I go around beating up prostitutes whenever I have the chance.”

  “We know you did it,” Detective Bryant said. “So you might as well save us time and admit it.”

  “What do you think I am?” I said. “Some kind of lunatic? You think I go around beating up prostitutes, chopping off their heads for no reason at all?”

  “No, we believe you had a reason,” Detective Figula said. “We think she tried to blackmail you, or at least you thought she might try to blackmail you. You see, her death was just a little too coincidental for me to swallow. The other day I questioned her about Ed O’Brien’s murder. I was asking around the neighborhood to see if anyone saw somebody leave the building that night between six-thirty and seven. Ms. Furguson claimed she was across the street from the building that night but that she didn’t notice anything. I had a funny feeling she was holding out on me about something, but I didn’t know what it was. Then she turns up dead and lo and behold we discover that you’d beaten her up a week before you murdered your boss.”

  “I didn’t murder my boss,” I said.

  “Well, you have to admit it’s quite a coincidence the way events unfolded.”

  “I don’t find anything coincidental about it,” I said, “because like I’m telling you, I never saw that prostitute before in my life.”

  “Tell him about that guy Jacobson,” Detective Bryant said. “The one who saw him putting the head in the garbage bag.”

  “We have another witness,” Detective Figula said to me, “claims he saw you in the parking lot on West Seventeenth Street, putting something into a large garbage bag. Of course he didn’t know what the object was at the time, but he gave us a complete description of you.”

  I sensed it was a trick, that the detectives were inventing this Jacobson person, but I wondered how they’d found out about the garbage bag. Had the head turned up somewhere?

  “I still can’t believe you’re accusing me of this,” I said. “Mr. Jacobson, whoever he is, must be making a mistake. I had absolutely nothing to do with any murders. I don’t know how I can make that any clearer to you.”

  “What was the plot of this movie you saw?” Detective Figula asked.

  “The plot?”

  “You remember it, don’t you? After all, you just saw the movie last night.”

  Fortunately, I had read a review of the movie a week before and I was able to give the detectives a full account of it, includ­ing what I’d thought were the strong points and weaknesses. Finally, Detective Bryant interrupted me and said:

  “This doesn’t prove anything. He could have seen the movie some other time or heard about it. Why did you dump Ms. Furguson’s head in the Harlem River?” he asked me.

  “I didn’t dump her head in the Harlem River,” I said.

  “Then where did you dump it?” Detective Bryant asked.

  “I didn’t dump it anywhere,” I said.

  “So you took it home with you first?”

  “I never saw the goddamn head,” I said.

  “Well, the head got into the river somehow. It turned up today in a garbage bag and it didn’t get in there all by itself.”

  “Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe the serial killer killed this prostitute, and maybe you’re wasting a lot of time harassing me about it?”

  “The serial killer didn’t kill Ms. Furguson,” Detective Figula said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “The pattern doesn’t fit. In the other murders the prostitute had been picked up first and the murderer had sex with her. We don’t believe the prostitute was working when she was killed.”

  “Then you’re going to have to work on some other theory,” I said, “because you’re way off base thinking I had something to do with it. And I was serious about what I said before about calling my lawyer. There has to be something illegal about what you’ve been putting me through the last few days, even going to my fiancée’s work and harassing her.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look around the apartment before we go?” Detective Bryant asked.

  “You wouldn’t find anything anyway, but unless you have some kind of search warrant I’m not going to let you spend another minute here. You’ve put me through enough hell already.”

  The detectives looked at each other as if they realized they had nothing left to accomplish by questioning me.

  “I’m sure we’ll be talking again,” Detective Figula said to me. “Sooner rather than later.”

  I let the detectives out and locked the door.

  They’d left because they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest me, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case for long. Already, they’d put most of the case together and it was only a matter of time until they figured out the rest of it. The cop who saw me in Harlem was going to come forward soon and then the prostitute’s friend would come forward, confirm that I was indeed the person who had beaten up the prostitute in the hotel. That could be enough for the police to press charges, and then when Lisa came forward and claimed she saw me on the subway with the garbage bag and after the police dredged the Harlem River and discovered the saw and the gloves, I could count on spending the rest of my life in a ten-by-ten cell.

  I suddenly realized that I had been deluding myself all along. There was no bright light waiting for me at the end of the tunnel; the tunnel I was in led to nowhere. The murders were sloppy. They’d been committed impulsively, without any real planning as to how I’d get away with them. I’d left behind so much evidence and so many clues that it was a miracle I hadn’t been arrested already.

  I knew my only hope was to run. I had no future in New York or Seattle or anywhere else in the United States. My only chance was to get to Canada or Mexico and start from scratch. I’d have to change my name, invent a past. No one would hire me to work in a management position without experience, so I’d have to get another low-level job some­where and try to work my way back into advertising. Actually, not having a past wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to worry about personnel directors popping up and revealing old skeletons. People who don’t exist don’t have skeletons.

  I started packing. It might explain my mental state at the time to mention that I had no idea how my escape plan would work. It didn’t even occur to me that the police would be watching my every move now and that there was no way I could make it out of Manhattan, no less to Canada or Mexico. In a matter of a few seconds, I had managed to delude myself again into thinking that everything was going to be all right.

  After I’d stuffed as many clothes as possible into a suitcase, I checked my wallet to see how much cash I had on me. I only had about a hundred dollars. In my bank account I thought I had another hundred. It wouldn’t be enough to get me to Mexico, but it could be enough to get to Canada. I figured I’d take a bus somewhere, then try to hitch a ride. The plan was very vague, but at the time it made perfect sense to me.

  I turned around and saw that Julie was sitting up in bed.

  “Are you leaving me now?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said and I walked out of the bedroom.

  I gathered a few more things in the living room that I thought I might need in my new life – my watch, my sunglasses, my Seattle Mariners baseball cap – then I went into the bathroom. When I came out, Julie was waiting for me in the kitchen. She looked completely deranged and I guess I should have been more worried about it than I was. Her hair was a wild mess, she had deep blue circles under her eyes, and there was more red in the whites of her eyes than white.

  “Can you just tell me why,” she said, “why you had to do this to me?”

  “Do what to you?” I said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Ruin my life,” she said. “Make such a fool out of me.”

  It was like talking to a crazy person. I had no idea what she was talking about and I was getting tired of listening to her.

  �
�Is that what you really think happened here?” I said. “If you do, you have more serious problems than I thought.”

  “You’re a murderer,” she said. “I can’t believe I got engaged to a murderer.”

  “You don’t even know why I’m leaving,” I said. “You think it has nothing to do with you, right?”

  “I never did anything wrong,” she said defensively.

  “That’s what you think,” I said. “But the truth is you’re paranoid, you sabotage relationships. You just can’t believe that I’m a good man so you invent all these problems I have. You accuse me of cheating on you, lying to you, murdering people. If you could just see how crazy you are maybe you’d really try to get some help.”

  “For a telemarketing job, Bill?” she cried. “That’s what this is all about? Some stupid telemarketing job? That’s why you killed a man? That’s why you ruined our lives?”

  I didn’t want to hear it anymore. Pushing her aside, I headed toward the door. That’s when the pain came. It started in my neck and seemed to extend inside me. My legs buckled and a general weakness overcame my body.

  Then all I felt was tingling.

  I was on the floor, a few feet away from the door. Julie was crying and yelling. I didn’t know what had happened to me, how I had gotten this way. All I wanted was for time to stop, to be back in Bainbridge Island and to be ten years old. I didn’t know how I would change my life, but I knew I would. I was crying. The red puddle near my head was getting bigger.

  17

  When I woke up three days later I was facing a white ceiling. I couldn’t move my head and there were tubes coming out of my mouth. My throat was very dry. I tried to scream, but the only sound I could produce was a faint gurgling noise. The face of a woman appeared over me. She was smiling the way people lean over strangers’ baby carriages and smile.

  “Nice to see you up,” she said.

  I tried to say “water.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll be hard to talk for a while. Do you know where you are? You’re in Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. You’ve suffered a serious spinal cord injury.”

  That’s when I realized that I couldn’t feel anything below my neck. I prayed that I was asleep, having a nightmare.