by Parnell Hall
“I shouldn’t be touchy—I’m on vacation, suddenly I’m a goddamned witness?”
“So am I.”
“You’re not a cop. I’m supposed to be a trained observer. Well, what the fuck do you think I saw?”
“Same as I did. The rail cracked and the guy fell.”
“You’re a civilian. That’s all you’re supposed to see. You won’t have some sarcastic ADA wonderin’ why you can’t do better.”
Yeah, that made sense. To an extent. It didn’t explain why Sergeant MacAullif was so particularly cranky on the one hand, so particularly hostile to me on the other. Unless he blamed me for getting him the job in the first place—which I certainly hadn’t—and getting him into this mess. But he was decidedly cranky, even defensively so, and—
Shit. Defensively. The minute I thought it, I knew.
The crime-scene unit was here, but the officer in charge hadn’t shown up yet.
I turned to MacAullif. “Who’d you call?”
“What?”
“Who’d you phone this in to. You didn’t just phone it in, did you? You gave it to someone.”
MacAullif took a breath, exhaled noisily. “There’s a previous homicide. The two things are probably unrelated, but still. I had to give it to the officer in charge.”
“Who?” I said, but in my heart I knew.
All the officers I’d ever dealt with in the course of my detective work were intelligent, efficient men, well suited to their jobs.
Except one.
Sergeant Thurman.
You remember my description of the actor playing Wickem—with no discernible features and no neck? Well, he looked like a Rhodes scholar compared to Sergeant Thurman.
I met Sergeant Thurman in the course of three separate homicide investigations. They’d been solved, but that wasn’t Sergeant Thurman’s fault. The man didn’t have a clue. He always had a theory—simple, obvious, and straightforward—from which he would not budge. Instead, he would twist all available facts to support it. He was, in short, exactly the sort of policeman who always turned up in detective novels—a bungling fool, desperately in need of the assistance of some private eye. To anyone who knew him, he was the last man on earth to whom you’d ever assign a case.
MacAullif had done that. And I couldn’t really blame him. The murder of some old bum in an abandoned warehouse was exactly the sort of case you gave to Thurman. An unimportant case with no leads and little hope of ever being solved. MacAullif had done that, and now, with the death of the boom man, it had backfired in his face. Good god, Sergeant Thurman dealing with these movie folk? The mind boggled. No wonder MacAullif was so uptight.
When MacAullif didn’t answer me, I said, “It’s Thurman, isn’t it? You gave the job to Thurman.”
MacAullif took a deep breath, exhaled, then turned and looked at me. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
I blinked. He didn’t? Then what was all the fuss?
And a car pulled up and out stepped Sergeant Clark.
16.
I MET SERGEANT CLARK BACK during the Rosenberg and Stone murders, when a number of Richard Rosenberg’s clients began turning up dead. He’d solved that case, though I couldn’t give him any credit for it. He’d solved it for all the wrong reasons. I mean, his theory was right in one respect and wrong in another. So it almost wasn’t fair that he’d solved the case somehow. Even though I had to admit that his approach was fundamentally sound. Though flawed. And—
Aw, hell.
I just didn’t like the man. Alice put her finger on it way back when. Everything else was a rationalization. The simple fact was I didn’t like him.
Why? Well, because he wasn’t a man so much as a machine. Sergeant Clark was a cold, efficient, methodical officer who did everything strictly by the book. He was short and slight for a cop, and, in my personal opinion, he saw this as a defect and went out of his way to overcompensate.
I also had the feeling he liked me about as much as I liked him.
I looked up at MacAullif. Jesus Christ, no wonder he’d been ill at ease. Sergeant-fucking-Clark.
Sergeant Clark emerged from his car and spotted MacAullif. He must have spotted me at the same time, but he gave no sign, just strode up to MacAullif and without so much as a howdy-do said, “Where’s the body?”
MacAullif pointed. “There.”
“And the crime scene?”
“There.”
“You holding the witnesses?”
“Absolutely.”
“Segregated?”
“Not possible.”
“I didn’t say it was, I just asked if they were,” Clark said. “I understand you’re a witness yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“Good. That’ll make the others toe the line. Why is he here?”
The transition was so abrupt it took MacAullif a second to realize he was talking about me. “Oh,” he said. “It’s his movie.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He wrote it.”
Sergeant Clark frowned. “I thought you were a private detective.”
“That’s a job-job. To pay the bills. I’m really a writer.”
“No kidding,” Clark said without enthusiasm. “Well, I guess I’d better see the body.”
We went with him. Not that I wanted to. I’d already seen the body, which was a bloody, broken mess. But I wanted to see what Sergeant Clark would make of it.
Not much. He took one look, said, “Okay, hold him for the medical examiner.” To MacAullif he added, “Not that it matters much. We know the cause of death. And I assume the time of death?”
“Nine fifty-four,” MacAullif said.
“Noted,” Clark said. “Who was he, by the way?”
“The boom man. That’s the sound man who holds up the boom mike during a shot.”
“I know what a boom man is,” Clark said. “What’s his name?”
“Charles Masterson,” MacAullif said. “No one seemed to know that, by the way. The production manager did, ’cause he hired him. But the rest of the crew just knew him as the boom man.”
If Sergeant Clark found the death of an unknown boom man ironic, he didn’t say so. He merely nodded and said, “Anything else I should know about him?”
“Yeah,” MacAullif said. “It’s possible this was the second attempt on his life.”
Clark raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“First day of filming he got a shock. From the boom mike itself. It wasn’t serious, but I guess it could have been.”
“Was the equipment tampered with?”
“According to the sound man it was. Someone crossed some wires. But that’s just according to him, and he’s the type of guy, no one listens to him.”
Clark gave MacAullif a look. “You didn’t inform me at the time?”
MacAullif exhaled. “Like I said, you gotta consider the source. Everyone, me included, figured the guy just fucked up.”
“And now?”
“It’s still a hell of a stretch. I just tell you for what it’s worth.”
“Noted,” Clark said. “All right, let’s go topside.”
“Over here,” MacAullif said, and led him to the construction elevator.
Dan and the gofer who had given us hard hats were accompanied by a police guard.
“Anyone up there?” Clark said.
The guard jerked his thumb. “Two guys from crime scene. Up there now.”
Clark nodded. “They process the elevator?”
“Sir?”
“For prints. They dust it for prints?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then they didn’t. Who ran ’em up there?”
“He did,” the guard said, pointing to Dan.
“Is that right?” Clark said.
“Yes, sir.”
Clark turned to the other gopher. “What about you?”
“Sir?”
“You ever run the elevator?”
“No, sir. My job was down her
e.”
“That’s fine, but we’ll take your prints anyway.”
“Prints?”
“Right.” Clark turned back to Dan. “All right, we’re going up, but I don’t want you touching the controls. You got gloves?”
“Gloves? No.”
“What about a handkerchief? Any piece of cloth?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s all right, I got one,” Clark said. “Come on in and show me what to do.”
Sergeant Clark stepped into the construction elevator. MacAullif and Dan followed. I stepped on, half expecting Clark to boot me out, but he didn’t seem to mind. Either that or he was too preoccupied with the gofer.
“Don’t touch the lever,” Clark said. “Don’t touch anything. Keep your hands to yourself. Now, then, I assume that lever’s the control?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pull it back is up?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” Clark said. “I’ll do it.”
He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, used it to pull the cage door closed, then to pull down the lever. The elevator clanked upward.
We reached the top, emerged on the catwalk. On the far end two plain-clothes detectives were inspecting the scene. One had a camera and was snapping pictures of the broken rail. When he saw Clark he stopped, stood up, and said, “Sir.”
“Perkins,” Clark said. “How are you coming?”
Perkins, a tall man with a drooping mustache, said, “Just about done. I can do better when we move the camera.”
“That’s where you found it?”
“Absolutely. I waited for you.”
“Good man. Can we move it now?”
“Hang on a minute, let me get a picture first.”
Sergeant Clark turned to MacAullif. “You were there and you saw it?”
“Yeah.” MacAullif jerked his thumb at me. “Him too.”
“So what happened?”
MacAullif pointed. “They were shooting right there. There wasn’t much room, and they were having trouble getting the boom mike in. The boom man was squeezed between the camera and the rail. When they rolled the shot he leaned on the rail and it just gave way.”
“Uh-huh,” Clark said. He walked over and inspected the rail.
Before it had given way, the rail had appeared perfectly sound. It seemed standard for construction sites and must have conformed to some building code or other. It consisted of vertical metal posts with pockets for holding three two-by-four horizontal rails. The bottom rail was flush with the floor, probably to prevent tools from being kicked over. The middle rail was knee high. The top rail was waist high.
Only the top rail had given way, but that had been enough. The middle rail was too low to hold anyone up, and the boom man had flipped right over it.
Jesus.
I pushed the thought from my mind, forced myself to take a look.
As far as I could tell, everything was just as we’d left it. The wooden rail, broken in two, jutted out over empty space. It had snapped in the middle. The two remaining ends had been pushed outward away from the catwalk. The right-hand one was nearly level, but the left-hand one drooped about forty-five degrees. They were pushed out far enough that it was hard to see the crack where it had given way.
Clark turned to the detective named Perkins. “All your measurements completed?”
“Absolutely.”
“You got all the pictures you need?”
“Till we move the camera.”
“All right. Let’s move it.”
“Fingerprints?”
“On the camera? I doubt if that’s an issue.” Clark turned to us. “When and how did the camera get here?”
“This morning, after we did,” MacAullif said. “They shot another scene across town and brought it from there. The camera came up in the elevator sometime around nine o’clock. A couple of grips brought it.”
“And you were up here from then on?”
“That’s right.”
Clark nodded. “Then fingerprints are meaningless. Go ahead and move it.”
The two crime-scene detectives rolled the camera dolly out of the way, revealing a rather chilling sight. No, not just the broken rail. It was the cord of the boom mike, which was still dangling over the side.
“Pull it in?” Perkins asked.
“Yeah, but don’t handle it. Just lay it down.”
Perkins pulled the boom mike up hand over hand by the cord, and laid it down on the catwalk in front of the sound hamper.
“All right,” Clark said. “Let’s bring in the rail.”
Easier said than done. Neither of the detectives had brought a grappling hook, nor had any such object been brought topside by the crew.
This created what seemed an interminable delay, as first the elevator was processed for fingerprints before Dan was allowed to take Perkins down to look for a tool.
He returned with a broomstick with a hook taped to the end of it with gaffer’s tape. He went to the edge of the catwalk, reached down, hooked the end of the broken rail, and pulled up.
I marveled at the ease with which he did this. His toes were right up against the edge of the bottom two-by-four, and he had to lean over the middle one slightly to hook the rail. I was a good four or five feet farther back and feeling mighty brave to be there.
Perkins straightened, raising the beam to level, then hand over hand pulled it in.
“Look!” I said. And immediately kicked myself. I’d just been lecturing me to keep my mouth shut, and here I was crying Look! just like a kid. But I couldn’t help myself.
There was a gap in the middle of the rail. It hadn’t just snapped in two. There was a piece missing. You couldn’t tell with the two pieces out at an angle and the one hanging down. But the minute Perkins pulled them together it was readily apparent. There was a gap of at least a foot.
“Anyone look for a piece on the ground?” Clark said.
Perkins shrugged. “I’ve been up here. But I would say probably not. There was no reason to think there was one.”
“Well, let’s see what’s left.”
Clark, cool as a cucumber, walked right up to the edge where Perkins was standing.
I saw no reason to crowd him. Neither did MacAullif. “We stood, waited, while Sergeant Clark inspected both broken ends.
When he was finished he turned back to MacAullif. “You did well to call me.”
“Oh?”
Clark nodded. “That’s right. The rail was sawed halfway through.”
17.
“WHAT’S HE DOING HERE?”
Sidney Garfellow meant me. We were back on solid ground, and Sergeant Clark was taking witness statements. For that purpose he had commandeered Jason Clairemont’s Winnebago, and he, MacAullif, and I were sitting in the plush camper while Perkins ushered in the witnesses. First up was Sidney Garfellow, who took exception to my presence.
I could understand his point of view. Sergeant Clark and Sergeant MacAullif were cops, but who the hell was I?
“Who, Mr. Hastings?” Clark said. “He happens to be a private detective.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Clark nodded. “A valid point. But I’ve worked with him before. And he happens to be a witness to what happened. As is Sergeant MacAullif. Which is a stroke of luck. It’s not often you have trained observers witness a crime. Since it happened, I certainly intend to make use of it. I wasn’t there, they were. I want them to listen carefully for anything that doesn’t jibe with their recollection.”
“Including me?” Sidney said. “You have them judging me?”
“Judging? Certainly not. More like compare and contrast. Now, then,” Sergeant Clark said smoothly before Sidney could protest again, “you saw this happen?”
“Yes and no,” Sidney said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I didn’t really see it happen. I mean, I heard it—the scream and the crack of the rail. Then I looked and the man was g
one. But I didn’t really see him go.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? My attention was elsewhere. We’d just rolled camera. We were about to shoot a scene. I was watching the actors.”
“Who were where?”
“In front of the camera, of course.”
“Yes, but in relation to the catwalk and the place where the boom man fell.”
“All right,” Sidney said. “They were at the end of the catwalk closer to the elevator.”
“The end of the catwalk?”
“Not the end of the catwalk. They were in the middle of the catwalk. But they were closer to that end. Closer than we were. We were shooting in that direction.”
“And you were behind the camera?”
“Of course.”
“Where were you?”
“Like you said. Right behind the camera.”
“Not to one side or the other?”
“Behind and to the right.”
“Close behind?”
“Sure. So I could talk to the DP.”
“That’s director of photography?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Mr. Masterson was where?”
“Who?”
“Charles Masterson. The boom man.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t know his name?”
“Come on. He was the boom man.”
“And the boom man was where?”
“To the left of the camera dolly.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you just know that because that’s where he fell, or did you see him there?”
“No, I saw him there, I know for sure. Because we had problems with the boom mike on that shot.”
“What kind of problems?”
“It was in the shot. The guy was trying to mike it from below, and Eric—that’s the DP—could see it in the shot. I told the guy he’d have to mike it from above. The only way he could do that was to squeeze in between the camera dolly and the rail and hold the boom up high over the action.”
“Which he did?”
“That’s right.”
“Which is why he leaned on the rail and fell?”
“I suppose so.”
“If he’d miked the scene from below, he’d still be alive?”
“No, he wouldn’t. Because I’d have killed him for getting the boom mike in the shot.”
