by Parnell Hall
“But he’s unlucky. He doesn’t get called. He sits there, and he doesn’t get called. But finally he does. And when he does, it’s the perfect case. A simple trip-and-fall, gonna be one day, two days tops. He’s got it made.
“Then I open my mouth and get him booted out of there.”
“For which he kills an actress he never met?”
“He spent a week hating me. Every day. You should have seen the venom. If looks could kill, his would have.
“And then, the final humiliation. His last day there. After serving his full two weeks and never being called. The day he’s gonna leave. He walks into the room and what does he see? Me, with a gorgeous blonde hanging on my arm, who’s telling everyone in her chirrupy voice how great it is the two of us are on this jury together.”
“So he kills her?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why her? You’re the one he’s mad at. Why not you?”
“Two reasons. Or theories. I don’t know. Two somethings. One, he’s fairly big and probably strong, but he’s an old man. And he couldn’t handle me. Or at least, thought he couldn’t.”
“Great,” MacAullif said. “And the other?”
“The other, you wanna punish someone, you want to make ’em suffer. You don’t kill them and put ’em out of their misery. You kill the one they love.”
“You loved Sherry Fontaine?”
“I’m talking from his perception.”
“You’re talking out of your asshole.” MacAullif shook his head. “You want a motive for murder, I mean, Jesus Christ, that’s as bizarre as you can get.”
“Some motives are bizarre.”
“That don’t make ’em likely.”
“What’s so unlikely?”
“Jesus Christ. To kill her ’cause he’s mad at you? The guy would have to be nuts.”
“Oh? Are most murderers sane?”
“Not necessarily. But they’re usually rational. Even a demented motive should make sense.”
“This might make perfect sense to him. After all, the man may well be nuts.”
“He’s not the only one. Jesus Christ.”
“All right, look,” I said. “I traced the guy home and got his name. Nathan Hargraine.”
“So?” MacAullif said. “So what?”
“That’s why I’m here. To see if you could run a trace on him.” MacAullif snorted. I went on as if he hadn’t. “To see if he’s got a record or anything. A history of mental illness. Maybe he’d been committed somewhere.”
MacAullif sighed. “You come here and interrupt my lunch hour for the second day running just for that?”
“Hey, it could be important.”
“So’s my lunch.”
I looked at him. “You won’t do this for me?”
MacAullif pursed his lips. “Let’s see here. You talk to the neighbors?”
“No.”
“You talk to the boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was on my way when I ran into this guy. Then I got caught up following him.”
MacAullif nodded. “I’ll say.” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ. I don’t know what it is with you. I tell you talk to the neighbors. I tell you talk to the boyfriend. You don’t do either. Instead you come in here with some little old man who was just unlucky enough to happen to be in the neighborhood.”
“We’ve been through all that.”
“We sure have.”
“So, you gonna help me or not?”
MacAullif rubbed his head. “It’s not my case. And hard as this may be for you to understand, I got my own work to do. I’m not sayin’ I won’t help you, but there’s a limit to what I can do. I can’t drop everything and start working on your case every time you come running in here with some wild idea. So I gotta slam your brakes on. You want help, well, figure I’ll do one thing for you. One unauthorized, extralegal bit of investigation that I really shouldn’t be doin’. So figure you got a credit from me, okay? But only one. So you shouldn’t waste it. Not on this. At least, not now. You get a little further, you learn a little more, then maybe you come up with something you really want. Talk to the boyfriend. Talk to the neighbors. Exhaust your possibilities. You hit a dead end, you got nothing else, you really want me to do it, I’ll do it. Stupid though it is. But do me a favor. Try something else first.”
It was infuriating. MacAullif was wrong, I knew that. He hadn’t been there, he hadn’t seen, he didn’t know. Yeah, MacAullif was wrong.
He was also inflexible. Nothing I said was going to sway him. Like a tree that’s standing by the water, he shall not be moved.
I sighed. “Okay,” I said.
35.
THE SILVER FOX RESTED HIS CASE!
That was the good news. The bad news was that it was now Wednesday afternoon. We’d begun the trial Tuesday afternoon the previous week, which meant we’d put in six full days in the courtroom already. And now Peter, Paul and Mary got their shot. If the plaintiff’s case took six days to put on, did it follow that the defendant’s case would take six days too? Or, since there were three defendants, did that mean it would take eighteen days to put on? The mind boggled.
Still, the Silver Fox resting his case was a milestone, and the atmosphere was one of excitement in the jury deliberation room during the ten-minute recess Judge Davis granted us before allowing the defense to start putting on their case. Considering how down everyone had been, what with the murder on the one hand, and the dreariness of the trial on the other, the jurors were practically bubbling over now.
Maria, the Nameless Mother and OTB Man immediately started talking about the case. About the Silver Fox (whom they still called Pretty Boy), and how well he’d done and what they thought he’d proved, and what Peter, Paul and Mary could do now, and the whole bit.
Ron soon put a stop to that. As foreman or law student or whatever, he took charge. He reminded them all that they were not to discuss the case until they had heard all the evidence and Judge Davis had given them their instructions to deliberate. This wasn’t popular, but was at least obeyed. The conversation became general. Talk about the case died out.
So did the feeling of elation. It evaporated like the snow. By the time ten minutes was up and Ralph arrived to lead us back into court, the grim realization had set in that the case was not over, was not likely to be over soon, and we were still stuck with it.
And what happened next was not encouraging. Peter (or Paul), the attorney from Veliko Tool and Die, called an employee from that company to testify about the fire all over again. Which was just like the testimony we’d heard before. Except that, whereas the witnesses called by the Silver Fox all attempted to say how great the damage had been, Peter/Paul’s witness did his best to minimize it.
This did not fool me in the least. The witness, an elderly mechanic, still worked for Veliko Tool and Die, and obviously knew which side of the bread his butter was on. He wasn’t going to say anything that was going to hurt his boss. As the guy droned on with his testimony, the only thing that really cheered me was the realization that while there were three defendants, there was only one plaintiff, so this time around only one person would have to cross-examine.
Wrong again. We were dealing with comparative negligence here. All the defendants had a stake in how responsible Veliko Tool and Die had been for the fire, and so Mary and Paul (or Peter, if Veliko Tool and Die’s lawyer was Paul) both got a crack at him too. This was dreary, depressing, and, needless to say, time-consuming, and the most ominous portent of all was that this one stupid witness took up the whole afternoon.
So at five o’clock, here I was, once again, bummed out and faced with the unappetizing choice of the neighbors or Dexter Manyon.
Once again, Dexter Manyon wasn’t home, making it an easy choice. So, what the hell. MacAullif wasn’t going to help me if I didn’t get it done, so I walked across Franklyn and caught the subway uptown to interview the neighbors.
This time I saw no one outside Sh
erry’s building. Thank god. If my buddy, Nathan Hargraine, had been going by again, I’d have flipped out. But this time there was no one there.
And this time her foyer door was locked. Shit. That was an unwelcome development. I know a TV detective could slip a lock with a credit card, but I couldn’t even begin to try. The only way I know to get in a locked door is with a key.
I didn’t have a key. Which was real bad news. I was gonna have to ring the intercom and try to get someone to buzz me in. Which wasn’t gonna be easy, ’cause when they said, “Who is it?,” I wasn’t gonna know what to say. I knew “Stanley Hastings” wouldn’t do the job. But I didn’t want to say I was a cop. So what did I say?
I had no idea, but I didn’t want to stand in the foyer all night like a schmuck. Sherry Fontaine’s bell was 4A. I rang 4B.
Sometimes you get lucky. No voice said, “Who is it?” Instead, after a few moments there came the buzz of the occupant of 4B releasing the lock on the front door.
I pushed through it gratefully. Hot damn. Now that I was inside, I could ring all the fourth-floor doorbells in turn. I doubted if it would get me anywhere, but that wasn’t the point. It would satisfy MacAullif. Then I could get what I really wanted.
I got in the elevator, rode up to four, and rang the doorbell of 4B.
The occupant of 4B obviously hadn’t stayed by the door to wait for me after buzzing me up, because I wound up standing there for a bit. While I did, I glanced across the hall at the door of Sherry Fontaine’s apartment.
It was open.
Not much, which was why I hadn’t noticed when I walked down the hall. But it was unlocked and standing open a crack, and the light inside was on.
And through the crack in the door I could hear the sound of someone moving around in the apartment.
36.
I WAS SCARED TO DEATH.
Good lord, what did I do now?
I knew what I should do. I should get out of there and call the cops.
But what if there wasn’t time? What if I did that, and the guy in there got away? What if—
There was a click behind me and I jumped a mile. I wheeled around to find it was the sound of the door to 4B opening. Good lord. I’d forgotten I’d even rung the bell. I’d forgotten what I was there for. But I’d rung it, and someone had answered it, and the door was opening and what the hell did I do now?
The door swung open. Standing there was a little old lady, who might well have been ninety. Good lord. How had she lived so long? Buzzing me in without asking who it was. And then swinging her apartment door open wide. The tough young Luke Brent had used a safety chain. And here she was, so frail a breath of wind might knock her down, flinging her door open to anyone, without even looking through the peephole first.
Jesus Christ, what an added complication. I didn’t know who she was, but I didn’t want her to die. And I had the thought that if she stayed out in the hall, that was a strong possibility. I had to get rid of her fast. And here she was, smiling at me sweetly, oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong.
“Yes?” she said, in a tiny, bird-like voice.
I gulped. “Zeke Finklestein?” I said.
She frowned. “What?”
Great. She was deaf. “Zeke Finklestein?” I said in a much louder voice.
She winced. “I hear you,” she said. “Who do you want?”
“Does Zeke Finklestein live here?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have the wrong address.”
I turned, walked quickly back to the elevator and pushed the down button. Unfortunately, the damn thing was right there. The elevator door opened.
I glanced back down the hallway. She was still looking after me. Damn.
I stepped into the elevator. In New York City a lot of the elevators are as slow as hell. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them. The minute I stepped in, the door started to close. As it did, I heard her apartment door slam.
I lunged for the buttons, pressed four. The elevator door stopped midway, then slid open again. I held it open, poked my head out.
Yes, the door to 4B was closed. It was diagonally across the hall from me, so I could tell that. 4A was on the same side of the hall as the elevator, however, so from this side I couldn’t see it at all. I presumed it was still open a crack.
So what did I do now?
Call the police. That had been my first thought. That was probably what I should do. And if I’d talked my way into the old lady’s apartment, I could be calling the police from there right now. But I hadn’t thought of it in time. And I didn’t really want to do it, anyway. I didn’t want to alarm her, and I didn’t want to have to explain. And I didn’t want to be in her apartment with the door closed, when maybe whoever was in Sherry Fontaine’s apartment might be leaving. No, I’d done the right thing there.
But what about calling them now? I had the elevator, I could ride it down and call ’em from the pay phone on the corner.
Well, same thing. What if the guy in her apartment left? No problem. The pay phone was right on the corner, I’d see him when he went out.
Assuming I knew him. Assuming the murderer was someone I knew. Which I had no right to assume. But what if he wasn’t? If a stranger came out the front door, I wouldn’t know if he was the guy in Sherry’s apartment or not. He could be just some tenant in the building, how the hell should I know? And if someone did come out the front door, should I follow him or not? If I didn’t follow him and he was the murderer, he’d escape. And if I did follow him and he was just some tenant in the building, then the murderer would also escape.
Shit. Calling the police was out.
Not unless I’d seen him. Not unless I knew who he was.
Damn.
I eased my way out of the elevator, released the door. It closed behind me, and I could hear the elevator start down. Great. I’m trapped here now.
I stood in the hallway a moment, listening for sounds. I heard none, either from apartment 4B or 4A.
All right, ace detective. You’re on.
I stepped down the hall to Sherry Fontaine’s door. Sure enough, it was still open a crack. I put my ear to it. Listened. Heard nothing. Christ, could he possibly have gone?
No, he couldn’t have. I’d been right there in the hall. He was in there, all right.
I took a breath, put my hand on the door. Pushed it open an inch.
Through the wider crack I still saw nothing. Just a portion of the living room. No sign of an occupant.
I pushed the door a little further.
The hinges creaked, slightly.
I stopped, held my breath.
Still no sound.
I pushed a little more. It was open about a foot now, wide enough for me to stick my head in.
I didn’t want to do it. It was quiet in the apartment. Too quiet. Like someone was lying in wait. I’d stick my head in the door and get sapped. Come to hours later wondering what the hell hit me.
Assuming I did come to. Assuming after I was sapped, I wasn’t strangled as well.
Oh, shit. Did Sam Spade ever hesitate like this? Come on, asshole. Do it.
I stuck my head in, peered behind the door.
Nothing.
I looked around the room.
Nothing.
Empty.
I pushed the door open a little further, eased myself into the room.
The first time I’d pushed my way through Sherry Fontaine’s open door I’d found a dead body. Hers. Lying there, naked on the floor.
Christ. There was a chalk outline on the floor where the body had lain, just like in the movies. Life imitates art. Aside from that, the room was just as it had been then.
So where was he?
Well, either the bathroom, bedroom or the kitchen. You know he’s still here. You gotta see his face.
My palms were sweaty and my breath was coming short. This guy had killed someone. Strangled them. I told myself he’d killed a woman, a woma
n smaller and frailer than I was. He’d strangled her, so he probably wasn’t armed. It would be him against me. And I was bigger, stronger than Sherry Fontaine. I’d have a chance. Wouldn’t I? I’m not a fighter, but I’m athletic. I can dodge, I can run.
What a hero. Think about running. I hadn’t seen the guy, and was already thinking about turning tail. Come on, schmuck. Do it.
I crept across the room. Quickly eliminated possibilities. There was no door on the kitchen, it was a small hole-in-the-wall affair, and he obviously wasn’t there.
I crept to the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom. As I reached it, I saw the bathroom door was open and he wasn’t there either.
That left the bedroom door around the bend. Shit. What a narrow hallway. What a hell of a place to get cornered in.
I crept down the hallway, reached the corner, peered around. Yeah, there was the bedroom door. And directly in front of me, the bed. But I could only see half the room. And the guy wasn’t in my line of sight.
But he was there. I could hear a sound, like a drawer opening or closing.
I took a breath. Oh, Jesus.
I slipped around the corner, crept down the hall. I reached the door to the bedroom, flattened myself against the wall. Leaned out, peeked in.
There he was. A man going through her dresser drawers.
I could hardly contain myself. Good lord, this was it. What was he after? What clue was it that the police had overlooked that the murderer knew he had to destroy?
I had no idea.
And I still hadn’t seen his face. His back was to me and his head was down, and I just couldn’t see him at all.
I leaned further into the room, trying to catch a glimpse.
The man suddenly slammed the drawer, straightened up and turned around.
And saw me.
He saw me at the same moment I saw him.
It happened, so fast, I didn’t have a second to think, a second to react, a second to do anything. One moment I was looking at the back of the guy’s head. The next moment, there I was in Sherry Fontaine’s bedroom, standing face-to-face with a killer.
Her ex-boyfriend, Dexter Manyon.
