Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  Blackmail?

  Hmmmm. Blackmail.

  A blackmailer’s a good target for murder. And a person paying blackmail doesn’t need more than five minutes to pop in and out again. And an attractive young woman just might be in a position to put the squeeze on some people. Yeah, blackmail seemed a lot more likely.

  But why would the people she was blackmailing happen to live in Poughkeepsie? I mean, a blackmail victim’s gotta be someone important, most likely a wealthy businessman or a politician. From what I’d seen driving through Poughkeepsie, it had no large industry to speak of. And the local government couldn’t be that important, could it? I mean maybe Poughkeepsie was the county seat or something, not that that would mean much.

  So what the hell was so important about Poughkeepsie?

  I had no idea. But it occurred to me I could find out.

  I went in the office and dug out Tommie’s class list, which had the addresses and phone numbers of all the parents. Frank Wilkes, the father of one of Tommie’s classmates was a sociology professor at NYU. I got the number and gave him a call.

  He was home, but just going out the door. I told him it was important, I needed information about Poughkeepsie. He grumbled a bit, but put down the phone and was back a minute later saying he had two reference books that might help.

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll run over and pick ’em up.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “So leave ’em with your doorman.”

  “There’s no doorman. It’s a brownstone.”

  “Look, I’ll run right over.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said impatiently. “I’ve got a class. I can’t be late.”

  He had a class, but I had a murder. “Please. I’ll leave right now.”

  He exhaled. “Where are you?”

  “At 104th.”

  “All right. Meet you halfway. Broadway and 96th. Southwest corner.”

  “Great.”

  I slammed down the phone, grabbed my jacket and dashed out the door.

  I’d already rung for the elevator when it hit me. Meet you halfway.

  Shit!

  The compass!

  I jerked the door open, dashed back inside. As I did, I heard the clang of the elevator man opening the door to discover no one. “Just a minute!” I yelled. I’d have to meet Frank all right, so I wouldn’t hang him up, but I didn’t need his books anymore. ’Cause I’d been right all along. There was nothing in Poughkeepsie. Meet you halfway.

  I snatched up the map just to verify it, though I didn’t really need to. Somehow it just had to be.

  Sure enough, Poughkeepsie was almost exactly halfway between New York City and Albany.

  The state capital.

  25.

  I’D NEVER BEEN TO Albany before. But apparently other people had, because the Thruway went right there. I came over a rise in the road and there it was in front of me. A cluster of official-looking buildings, and a huge stone egg, which I later learned was the Arts Center, and was actually called The Egg.

  You couldn’t miss the government center because there were huge signs proclaiming EMPIRE STATE PLAZA, STATE CAPITOL, GOVERNMENT CENTER, and what have you. While I was reading the signs I missed the exit and wound up in Menands. When I did, I found I couldn’t get back on 787 going south because I couldn’t make a U-turn. But the road I was on ran parallel to it, so I figured I could just follow it back to the center of town. I followed it back until I’d gotten myself pretty thoroughly confused, and finally spotted a sign for 787. I figured I must have worked my way past the government center by now, so I got on 787 going north.

  Wrong again. As soon as I got on the elevated road, the stone egg winked at me like a giant eye, behind me and to the left, and I wound up in Menands again.

  This time I didn’t give a damn. I drove down the parallel road, turned off on another road, hung a U-turn on that road, hung a left on the parallel road, came back to the turnoff, and got on 787 heading south. I kept an eagle eye open, and managed to make the turn into the government center this time, on only my fourth pass.

  I followed the signs and suddenly I was underground. In an immense parking lot. There were signs saying VISITORS PARKING so I followed them and eventually came to an automatic gate where the machine failed to dispense a parking ticket. I sat there with my window open looking futilely at the machine for some button I might be supposed to push, until an attendant finally came over and glared at me as if the whole thing were my fault. He stuck a key in the machine, did something, and the ticket came out and the gate went up.

  It took me ten minutes to find a place to park. I was in section C 7 BLUE. I was afraid I’d forget it, and I went to write it down and discovered I’d forgotten my pen and notebook. All right, let’s remember it. 7—lucky 7, roll of the dice. C—Gentleman’s C in college. Blue—I’m Mr. Blue, wa wa oooo, when you say you love me. Got it. O.K. Now to get out of here.

  But how? There were a lot of signs saying EXIT, but they were for cars. Where the hell did people go? Well, they went somewhere, because they weren’t here. I looked around the vast garage, and while it was packed with cars, aside from myself, there wasn’t a person in the place. What was this, an episode of “The Twilight Zone”? I stood there looking around like an idiot, and then I spotted it. In the far corner, movement. A car circling, and, yes, finding a parking space. I headed for it.

  I’d managed to go enough rows so that I wasn’t sure any more where C 7 Blue was, when the man himself appeared, walking between two cars. I tailed him across the lot until he walked around what looked like a pillar, and turned out to be the back of an elevator. He got in and so did I. There was only one level above ours and he pushed it, so I didn’t have to do anything. The elevator went up, the doors opened and I got out.

  And discovered I was still underground. In a huge corridor that signs proclaimed to be NORTH CONCOURSE. It was weird. It was like a New York City street fair. The center of the corridor was lined with tables of merchants hawking their wares. Jewelry, clothes, knick-knacks, what have you. I walked along it, wondering what any of it had to do with government, and what one had to do in this city to get out from underground.

  At the far end of the corridor was a booth that said INFORMATION. That was for me. I walked up to it and found it was manned by an attractive young woman in a guide’s uniform.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  I had a wild impulse to say, “Yes, could you tell me where I can find a man with a check hat and another man named POP who may have killed a woman?” I stifled it and merely asked her where the Capitol was. I’m sure it was a good choice, because she seemed well versed on that subject—the Capitol, I mean. She reached into a cubbyhole and pulled out what proved to be a black and white sketch map of the government complex.

  “You’re here,” she said, making an X on the drawing. “The Capitol building is here.” She pointed down the corridor. “Go through those doors, keep going straight, go up the escalator, and you’ll be there.”

  I followed her directions and found myself in a building of no distinction whatsoever. I walked down the hall and came to a dead end in a tiny lobby with a hole in the wall newsstand and not much else. Damn. Could this really be the Capitol?

  I went back the way I came and found a corridor leading off to the right. I took it and soon came to an immense staircase. Immense was the right word, but I’m afraid does not really do it justice. I mean I’m talking big here. This was one big mother staircase. It went up the center of the room to a landing, then branched upwards at right angles in both directions, and down again in the direction it had been going. The up branches led to the second floor, where the whole pattern repeated again. The staircase was like some huge stone plant growing up in the middle of the building.

  A sign on it said, THIS IS AN HISTORIC STAIRCASE. PLEASE USE CAUTION. That puzzled me somewhat. Caution? Caution not to harm it? Caution not to fall? Caution because some historic figure might leap out at you
on some landing?

  I climbed the stairs with caution. I explored the corridors on the higher floors. On the second floor, I found the Department of Criminal Justice. That started several associations in my mind, but in terms of what I wanted, didn’t seem promising.

  I struck paydirt on the fourth floor. At the end of a corridor was a door. It was open, and when I walked through it, I stepped out onto a small balcony overlooking a huge assembly room. Countless small desk units arranged in a semicircle facing a large main desk, which was right below me. I had to lean out over the balcony to see it. It was a long, sprawling affair, the type I would have expected to find in a legislative chamber. But what surprised me was that built into the middle of it were a whole bunch of electronic controls and a TV monitor. I don’t know why that surprised me so much. I guess I’m just so apolitical that my views of government come from watching Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washing ton, making TV seem an anachronism.

  At any rate, I figured I’d found what I was looking for.

  As I was standing there looking around, a man came out of an office down the corridor. I figured he was as good a person to ask as anyone, so I hurried after him and stopped him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, pointing. “Is that the Senate?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s the Assembly.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And who meets there?”

  He looked at me a moment before answering. “The Assembly.”

  I blinked. I realized the man realized he was dealing with an idiot. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t know anything about the government. What is the Assembly?”

  The man was younger than I, but twice as wise. He adopted a fatherly, educational tone. “It’s a legislative body.”

  “State legislature?”

  “Of course.”

  “They pass laws?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just like the Senate?”

  “Exactly.”

  “State laws?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, what’s the difference, then? Between the Assembly and the Senate, I mean? Are there different areas of jurisdiction? Different types of laws involved?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “No, no, no. You don’t understand at all.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “The Assembly votes on legislation. If it passes the Assembly, it goes to the Senate and they vote on it. If it passes the Senate, it goes to the governor.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Kind of like the Congress and the Senate of the United States.”

  “In a way.”

  “I was thinking maybe one was City and one was State.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I see. Tell me. How many assemblymen are there?”

  “One hundred and fifty.”

  “And how many senators?”

  “Sixty.”

  I smiled and nodded, but I was dying inside. Jesus Christ. Why couldn’t it have been something simple? Two hundred and ten candidates to choose from. With just a check hat to go on.

  “When’s the Assembly meet?” I asked him.

  “Two o’clock this afternoon.”

  By reflex action, I looked at my watch, which of course wasn’t there. However he looked at his and I saw it was nearly twelve.

  “What about the Senate?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Where does that meet?”

  He pointed. “Go down the corridor, turn left, walk across the building. You’ll be able to look down through the windows.”

  I thanked him and followed his directions to the other side of the building. Sure enough, there were windows looking down into another large assembly room. It was sort of like the other room, only more plush. The furniture was older and more established, and more of what I thought a legislative body should be. The desks were of aged wood. Large, more spread out. And fewer, of course. It had a sort of British clubroom atmosphere. I don’t know why that image came to me, never having been in a British clubroom, but that was the impression I got.

  I followed the windows around looking for the door. When I found it, I realized why the man had told me to look in the windows. Unlike the Assembly room door, this door was locked. Not only that, it had a metal detection device in front of it, one of those door frames you step through, like they have in airports. Apparently the senators were slightly more selective about who watched them legislate then the assemblymen.

  All right. Two hours to kill. Where the hell were these guys when they weren’t passing laws? Shit. I should have asked my buddy. Did they have offices in the building or what?

  I went down to the third floor and looked around. I found a hallway where the doors started saying Assembly, then one grand looking doorway marked ASSEMBLY, which was closed. Of course. I’d seen the room from the balcony level. This would be the main room down below.

  But where the hell were the offices? There was a desk outside, but there was nobody at it to ask. But there were notices tacked to the wall behind it. I stepped behind and read them. One was a list of the various branches the assembly had jurisdiction over. Another was a list of all the assemblymen with the room numbers of their offices. At the bottom of the list it said, “All room numbers, except those marked (C) (for capitol), are in the Legislative Office Building.”

  I whipped out my map. I was in the State Capitol, building number one. The State Legislative Building, building number four, was a long black rectangle directly across the street from it. Great. If I could ever find the street.

  I went back down to the first floor and there over a doorway, as if it had been put there just for me, was a sign reading, TO LEGISLATIVE OFFICE BUILDING. I went through the door, down a hallway, down some stairs, and found myself in a long, mineshaft-like tunnel that seemed as if it might go on forever. It didn’t, it finally surfaced inside another building.

  It was too much for me. I mean, I’d been in town for a couple of hours, and aside from some black squares and rectangles on a sketch map, I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was.

  I was on ground level and there was a door. I pushed it open and walked outside.

  Wow. Fresh air. Sunlight. What a bizarre concept.

  Before me was a spacious lawn. Around it were buildings reflecting a clash of the old and the new. I admit I know nothing about architecture, but one was a modern office building, and one was a massive stone affair with peaked towers on its center and sides.

  It was quite a sight. I wondered if the politicians had ever seen it. Or if they just drove into the garage in the morning, went about their business, and drove out again. By now I’d begun to think of New York State politicians as mole-men, strange furtive creatures who never saw the light of day.

  I looked back at the building I’d just come out of. A sign over the door said, ALFRED E. SMITH BUILDING. Damn. I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere in the underground. I looked at my map. Let’s see, Alfred E. Smith was building number three. The building over there said, STATE EDUCATION BUILDING. That gave me the orientation. So the modern building was building number four, the State Legislative Building. Which made the old building with the pointy towers building number one. The State Capitol.

  While I was standing there, a woman parked her car, got out, looked around and came up to me.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Do you know where the State Capitol is?”

  I smiled. Incredible. What with me being a stranger in these parts, and knowing so little about government, and having no idea what was really going on, it was funny someone should happen to ask me the one question to which I knew the answer.

  “Yeah,” I said, pointing, “It’s the building right there.”

  She looked, said, “Oh?”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “I guess I was expecting a dome.”

  She smiled, thanked me and walked off.

  I checked the map again, crossed the street, and went into the Legislative Office Building.

 
It was a huge long building. With a huge long lobby. With elevator banks at either end. I was on the street level, but there was of course a lower level, the underground level for the mole-men. The middle of the lobby was open, so I could look down on the lower level, where there were other banks of elevators and corridors leading off in various directions.

  So what the hell did I do? Take the elevator up and go through the offices one by one—”Excuse me, sir, do you happen to own a check hat?” Or did I pick an entrance, any entrance, and wait to see who went in and out? I mean, a check hat was a long shot to begin with, but to pick one out of possibly ten entrances, made the odds somewhat like those of winning the lottery.

  I was beginning to feel rather stupid. I was also beginning to feel hungry. I went down to the lower level and sure enough found a tunnel marked TO NORTH CORRIDOR. I made my way along it and back to a cafeteria I’d spotted on the way in. I went in and had lunch, and discovered to my satisfaction that politicians don’t eat any better than anybody else.

  By the time I finished it was nearly two, so I caught my bearings again, and mole-manned my way back to the capitol.

  Where I had another choice. Assemblyman or senator? Two separate entrances on two sides of the building, can’t watch both.

  I picked the Assembly. I figured there were one hundred and fifty assemblymen and only sixty senators, so that made the odds five to two.

  I took up my position right outside the main entrance to watch the assemblymen file in. Apparently these sessions didn’t start on the dot, because nobody was there at two o’clock. The first assemblymen arrived around two-ten.

  And reminded me once again I’m a total schmuck.

  They were wearing suits and ties. But not coats and hats. They didn’t wear their coats and hats into the assembly room, take ’em off and hang ’em over the backs of the chairs. They hung ’em somewhere else. And if they did, it was a sure thing the senators did too.