by Parnell Hall
“How were you going to stop it?”
“Just how I did. Slap him in the face and walk out.”
“How did that help you?”
“It bought time. It made nothing happen. Anyone else but me goes into that bar, they see a guy with a red flower and they take a tumble. They tell the guy what Grackle wants.”
“Which was?”
“Ten grand.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. First bite, of course. If my father runs in a ringer, the ringer reports back, Pay up ten grand, or else. Then my father’s in a bind. But I’ve got the advantage of knowing my father won’t keep the appointment, see? So I tell Grackle I can convince my father to pay up. I ask for a chance to do that to keep things from getting ugly.”
“And Grackle agreed?”
“Sure. He liked the idea. The guy had a perverse sense of humor. He wanted to see the look on my father’s face when I came walking in.”
“He was there?”
“Sure he was there, watching the play. If I deviated from the script, he’d have known. That’s why I played it straight. At least so far as he was concerned. I walked into the bar, saw that the guy wearing the flower wasn’t my father, I slapped his face and beat it.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “So, what was in the envelope?”
“Envelope?”
“The big manila envelope you had. What was that, your father’s police record?”
She flinched. Recovered. “Yeah. That’s what it was.”
“So what happened to it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You took it in the megastore. You came out without it.”
“So you were following me. Boy, am I good.”
“You saw me?”
“I sensed you.”
I fought back the involuntary thrill that statement produced. She sensed me. It was impossible not to remember what she looked like as Barbie.
What she looked like at Midnight Lace.
“Yeah, good for you,” I said bruskly. “What about the envelope?”
“Oh. I was stuck with it. I didn’t want to take it to work, so I called Grackle on his cell phone, asked him what to do with it.”
“Your father was supposed to take it?”
“Of course.”
“So what happened to it?”
“Grackle said to leave it in the bookstore.”
“In the Virgin Megastore?”
“Sure. He told me to leave the envelope on the top row of books in the sci-fi section. So he could pick it up.”
“Why not just give it to him?”
“I was being followed. At least he thought so. He said to go into the Virgin Megastore and listen to a song or two while he made sure. If he didn’t come up and tap me on the shoulder, after three songs I was to leave the envelope, go outside, and take evasive action.”
“Oh,” I said. “So what did you do next? After ditching me, I mean?”
“So that was you. Did you like how I did it?”
“Loved it. What did Grackle do with your father?”
“I don’t know. He took me out of the loop. As if the whole bar fiasco was my fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t know that. Anyway, I argued bloody murder, but it was no use. Grackle said he’d handle my father himself.”
“You warn him then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes faltered. “I wish I had.”
“Why?”
She said nothing.
“You think your father killed Grackle, don’t you? You must, if you left him alive.”
Jenny set her lips in a firm line.
“You told your story to the police?”
“No.”
“You realize if you do you’re putting your father’s neck in the noose?”
“Well, duh. Thank you for that assessment, Mr. Brilliant PI. Are we done?”
“I have a few more questions.”
“I don’t know why I’m talking to you in the first place.”
“I do. You can’t talk to your lawyer. You can’t talk to your father. You must be goin’ nuts for someone to talk to.”
“What are you, a shrink?”
“Not so you could notice.”
“Well, you’re dead wrong. I thought you had something that could help me. That’s what you said. Turns out that was just a ploy to get me talking.”
“Not at all. Truth is, I’d like to help you if I had all the facts.”
“That’s the same old song. I’m outta here.”
She opened the car door.
“Just one more question.”
“What would that be?”
“You wanna close the door?”
“That’s your question?”
“You wanna close the door before I ask it?”
“No. Go on. Shoot. What’s your question?”
“What was your mother doing in Grackle’s apartment?”
25.
JENNY BALFOUR’S FACE WAS as white as a sheet.
That expression has always confused me. I mean, there’s off-white sheets, pale blue sheets, patterned sheets. Kids’ sheets with toy boats and superheroes. Anyway, if we’re talking the pure white type, the hospital variety, the army issue, well, that’s the one she looked like.
She stopped, the car door open, one foot out in the parking lot, for all intents and purposes a young lady about to exit a car. “What?” she stammered.
“Was that too difficult a question? I hope not, since it’s the only one you’re letting me ask. I can rephrase it. Would that count as the same question? I wouldn’t wanna overstep my bounds.”
“Damn it.”
Jenny pulled her foot inside, slammed the car door.
“Do you have an answer? That’s not another question,” I qualified, “just a prompt to answer the first one.”
“Shut up, shut up,” Jenny cried irritably. “You and your goddamned word games. What are you, some sort of frustrated writer?”
“Actually, I am. But that’s not the issue here. Why’d your mother go to Grackle?”
“Who says she did?”
“I say she did. And you say she did. Well, you may not say she did, but you know she did. You saw her out there.”
Her eyes widened. “What are you saying?”
“You’re stalling for time and it’s not gonna work. You know what I’m saying. You went out to Grackle’s. You parked at a fire hydrant. You saw your mother coming down the street. You hid in the shadows till she went by.”
“You followed me?”
“Of course I followed you. See why I’m an important person? See why it matters what I think?”
“Are you going to the police?”
“Not unless I have to.”
She drew back.
“That’s not a threat, that’s a fact. I didn’t go to the police, I came to you. Which isn’t gonna please ’em much. I’d like to think I made the right choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“What about your mother?”
“I don’t know what she was doing there.”
Try again.
“I assume it was the same thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Paying Grackle off.”
“What for?”
“The same thing.”
“The same thing as what? What you told your lawyer, or what you told me?”
She bit her lip.
“See, the problem with lying so much is it gets hard to keep your stories straight. I don’t know if you’ve told me a word of truth, but frankly I’m not inclined to believe anything I can’t check. And if you think I can’t check, consider this. I know about your mom, I know about your pop, and I know about you. So tell me about your mom unless you want me to go ask her.”
“I thought you tried to ask her and she threw you out.”
“She threw me out alone. If I go back with you it could be fu
n.”
Jenny thought that over. “That’s the same threat you used before.”
“Yeah. As I recall, it worked. Tell me about your mom.”
“I have no idea what she was doing there.”
“You haven’t asked her?”
“I haven’t let on I know.”
“Now, that I believe. Go on.”
“What do you mean, go on? That’s all I know.”
“No, it isn’t. Did your mom know Grackle before? Has your mom had anything to do with Grackle? Were you shocked as hell to see her there?”
“Of course I was.”
“Ah. You answered one out of three questions. Not a bad average. Should I ask three more?”
“Are you having fun?”
“Not at all. Tell me about your mom.”
“I don’t know anything about my mom.”
“Do you suspect anything?”
“Don’t be dumb.”
“Tell me why you think she went out there.”
“I told you. To pay him off.”
“For which transgression?”
“My dad’s.”
“How does that make sense?”
“Grackle was an equal opportunity blackmailer. He hit my dad, he hit me, he hit mom.”
“How did he contact her?”
“How should I know.”
“I thought you might. You knowin’ so much about Grackle and all.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“And how did you know he was gonna hit your dad? He just happened to say, ‘By the way, I think I’ll hit your dad?’”
“I don’t remember.”
“Now, there’s a sign of a witness in trouble. The good old, sorry-my-mind’s-a-blank. A subject as important as blackmailing your father would usually be expected to make an impression.”
“Are you always this sarcastic?”
“When I’m being lied to by a murder suspect, invariably. I’ve tried to cure myself of the habit, and I just can’t. How did you find out Grackle was going to blackmail your father? How did you wind up in that bar?”
“He told me.”
“Why?”
“He said I wasn’t paying fast enough. He said I needed help.”
“He tell you what he meant by that?”
“Sure. He laid it out. I begged him not to do it. When I couldn’t talk him out of it, I asked to be the go-between.”
I smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? Why did you think that was worth lying about?”
“I’m not lying,” she said angrily.
“And your mom. He told you he was going to hit your mom?”
“No.”
“He told you since the bar fucked up he was going to have to take matters into his own hands. He told you he was changing the target.”
“No, he didn’t. He said he was going to handle it himself, but he didn’t say how.”
“Or who?”
“Or who.”
“And what about—”
Before I could finish my question, the driver’s door was flung open, and I was unceremoniously jerked out of the car with such force that, had I been wearing my seat belt, I would have been sliced in half.
26.
“SON OF A BITCH!” MacAullif howled. If he’d been taking his blood pressure medicine, one wouldn’t have known it. “Son of a fucking bitch!”
“MacAullif—”
“Don’t you MacAullif me! Just stand there and shut up and take it till I’m done, and if you do a good job I might let you live!”
The sight of a big bruiser like MacAullif leaning on a relatively slim noncombatant like me was too much for Jenny Balfour. She exploded out of the car and said, “You leave him alone!”
“Butt out, bitch!” The vein in MacAullif’s forehead looked ready to explode, like the alien in human form in some of the monster movies. “Keep your fucking yap shut! You wanna slap me and get away with it just ’cause you’re cute? I don’t care how nice and cute and perky you think you are, I’ll rip your fuckin’ tits off and kick your ass all the way back to Hoboken! I’ll deal with you in a minute. Meanwhile, butt the fuck out!”
MacAullif wheeled on me. “Nice conversation we had in my office. Everything you told me was true. Let me ask you something I shouldn’t have to ask you, you motherfucking son of a bitch. Did you happen to leave anything out?”
“MacAullif—”
“Did I ask you to talk? Don’t you know a rhetorical question when you hear one? Or did you perhaps think I was being serious? Did you think perhaps I wasn’t entirely sure if you might have left something out?”
I said to Jenny, “And you thought I was sarcastic.” I probably shouldn’t have. It was as likely a way as any to get the limbs torn from my body.
“Oh, yes,” MacAullif said. “Play to the young lady. Get her good and worked up and then maybe she can pop me another one in the kisser. You two are quite a show.”
Jenny opened her mouth to speak.
“Zip it!” MacAullif snapped. “So, you’re down in my office reassuring me everything’s gonna be fine. Reassuring me, you son of a bitch! That’s nice to hear, because the department’s not as close as one might think; for every good cop helpin’ you out, there’s another upwardly mobile asshole to climb up over your back. But, hey, I’m skatin’ free on this one. ’Cause the bitch that slapped me in the bar is so peripheral to the case, it’s unlikely to ever come up. Then it turns out Balfour’s not even the perp; it’s his daughter that’s involved. There’s one more degree of separation, makin’ me the happiest cop in town.
“So I’m havin’ a great day for myself. Only new homicide comes my way, whaddya know, I clear the sucker in a half hour flat. Not so tough, most homicides are pretty straightforward—this time it’s a man/wife— but even so it’s one chalked up in the plus column, job well done. And I’m leanin’ back at my desk, enjoyin’ a little quiet time, leafin’ through the New York Post. And what do I see? A picture of the perp. A picture of Jenny Balfour, new suspect in the Grackle case. Granted it’s a high school yearbook photo, made up, touched up, dumbed down to sweet-sixteen-prom-girl-moron-bitch sensibilities. But I’m a cop. I can make the ID. It’s the same freewheeling spitfire gave me the mitten very publicly in a very public place. And I’ve suddenly zoomed from peripheral as all hell to right in the fucking middle. Which I could have known about earlier if anyone had bothered to tell me. Would you care to advance the theory that you just forgot?”
I said nothing. Just sat there and took it.
“Well?” MacAullif demanded.
“I’m sorry. I thought that was a rhetorical question.”
MacAuIlif’s lip quivered. I wondered if there was a drug in the world that might damp him down.
“Cyanide,” I murmured.
“What’s that?” MacAullif demanded.
“Nothing.”
“The guy wasn’t poisoned, he was stabbed. By Little Miss Muffett, here, according to the case file. I snuck a look at it before heading out.”
“How’d you find us?” I ventured. It was a gamble. The type of question that could piss him off utterly, or ground him in reality. In this case, it was actually a little of both.
“How’d I find you? Easy. I got a police dog sniffs out backstabbing cocksuckers. Actually, I couldn’t find you. Rosenberg’s office had no idea. So I went about it the other way. Tried to find the girl. ’Cause what with you lying to me and all, if I found her, I’d find you.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“Right, right. The sin of omission. You wanna skate by on that technicality? I don’t think a jury’s gonna buy it.”
“A jury?”
“Compounding a felony. Withholding a witness. Conspiring to conceal a crime.”
“I don’t think you’re really a witness.”
“Not me, jerk. You. You’re a witness. You’re the one doin’ the fancy footwork to get off the hook. Anyway, I found out slap-happy here’d been released. I called her house, got
her mom, found out she’d gone off shoppin’, should have been back long ago. On the off chance I ask if a dip-shit PI with the brains of a lemming happens to have been sniffing around.”
“A lemming?”
“And whaddya think she said?”
“‘Oh, that asshole?’”
“Practically a direct quote. So I figure you’re together. All I had to do was canvass for cars.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Shut up. I’m done with you for a minute. I wanna talk to Little Miss Perp. Sweetheart, you’re young and pretty, and guys give you what you want. But that ain’t gonna work no more, ’cause someone died. You can give the prosecutor a blow job, he’s not gonna let you off.”
“You’re a class act, MacAullif.”
“What? I’m not showin’ proper respect for the slut murder suspect? I apologize, my dear young lady. And just what line of work do you happen to be in?”
“Is he really a cop?” Jenny said skeptically.
“What, you wouldn’t have slapped a cop? I’m sorry, that’s my fault. I should have been wearing my undercover police officer name tag.”
“I don’t have to talk to you,” Jenny ventured.
“No, you don’t,” MacAullif agreed. “You have that constitutional right. But you have to listen. Nothing in the constitution about that. So shut the hell up and give ear.”
“Give ear?”
“He’s actually educated,” I explained. “Sometimes he forgets he’s a cop.”
“I’m not talkin’ to you.” MacAullif didn’t even turn his head. “Look here, you, your lawyer told you not to talk, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. Your lawyer’s a wise man, you keep it up. Now here’s the thing. I don’t wanna know anything about the crime. Anything your lawyer wouldn’t want you to tell me. I just wanna know about the bar. Did you tell your lawyer you slapped me in the bar?”
“No.”
“Of course you didn’t. Because it has nothing to do with the crime. As long as it continues to have nothing to do with the crime, we have no problem. I, out of the goodness of my heart, will manage to overlook the fact I owe you a poke in the nose. Are we clear so far?”
“Now, look here—”
“No, no. There’s nowhere to look. There’s nothing to argue about. We’re either clear or we’re not. Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you’re clear. Because I’m perfectly clear. At least, on what I want. Why any of this happened is another thing entirely. You got any reasonable explanation for that?”
