by Parnell Hall
Oh, I got by. I’d get drunk and kill my inhibitions. But I still had trouble, particularly with one-night stands. And, forgive me for being a sexist pig again, but when you’re young, most girls are one-night stands, or are meant to be. And there’s always such a frantic hurry the first time. Once you get her pants off, you want to get it in there before she comes to her senses, realizes the enormity of what she’s doing, and puts them back on again. So you’re always in a rush, and you always defeat your own purpose. Or I always did. I’m sure other people aren’t necessarily so neurotic.
But that, as I say, is in the past. With my wife, with whom I’m secure, it’s different. Give me a look at her tits or ass and generally I’m a goddamn pogo stick.
Tonight was different. My wife was really nice about it. She thought I was upset about the amputee, having a transference, going through castration anxiety. She helped me along and we got the job done, but it was a struggle.
She fell asleep afterwards, as is her fashion.
I turned out the lights, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay there beside her in the dark, feeling somewhat lower than shit.
34.
IT WAS EIGHT THE NEXT morning when I pulled into a deserted junkyard out in Queens. I got out of the car and looked around, but there was no one there. I wouldn’t have been there either, if I could have helped it. The sun wasn’t high enough yet to really steam up the garbage, but nonetheless the place really stunk. Well, I never expected the job to be easy. I gritted my teeth, and wandered out among the junk.
I found a king-sized mattress right off the bat. I hauled it out and propped it up against the shell of what had once been a Chevy van. I paused to catch my breath, then plunged back into the rubble for another mattress.
This time I couldn’t find one. I found cars, refrigerators, TVs, washer-dryers, but no damn mattress. What was going on? Was someone running a used mattress concession? Had I been one step ahead of him in bagging a mattress someone had just thrown out the day before? Christ, I hoped not. The one I’d found I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy.
I found another mattress, queen-sized this time. Well, the queen should go with the king. It was a longer haul this time but I got it there, and propped it up against the first one.
Once more into the breech. An even longer journey this time, and a less rewarding catch. Another king, but in terrible condition, the bottom edge resting in mud and all but rotted away. Well, beggars can’t be choosers. I pulled it out, making a mental note to be sure to wash thoroughly and hoping such a precaution would be effective, in light of the strong possibility the mattress might have passengers aboard. I lugged it over and leaned it against the other two, putting the queen in a two-king sandwich.
I went back to the car, popped the trunk, and took out Pedro’s gun.
I think I’ve mentioned I don’t like guns. In fact, months ago, when Fred Lazar first asked me if I wanted the job as a private detective, my first question was, “Will I have to carry a gun?” Of course, I didn’t have to. If I had, I wouldn’t have taken the job. But, as I discovered, most private detectives don’t carry guns. Oh, sure, some of them do. I’ll be talking to some of Richard’s other operatives and see that they have a piece tucked in the front of their pants. I always think, “How can they do that? Why aren’t they afraid they’ll shoot themselves in the leg, assuming they don’t blow their balls off?” But somehow they never do.
In all my months on the job, I only had a gun pulled on me once. It happened on just my second week on the job, and it probably would have ended my detective career if we hadn’t needed the money so damn badly. It happened that I had to serve a divorce summons in upstate New York. Richard doesn’t generally handle divorce cases, just accident cases, but this was a favor he was doing for a former client. She and her husband were divorcing, so Richard gave me the papers to serve. I was told it was an amicable divorce, so rather than drive 50 miles upstate and find out the guy wasn’t home, I called him up to ask him about it.
Naive me. It turned out the guy was living with his mother. I got her on the phone, and she gave me a song and dance about her son not being there and not knowing when he would be in. So I reported back to Richard, who called the client, who provided the information that the guy was indeed living there, and what’s more, he worked in Manhattan somewhere and left the house for work every morning at seven sharp. So Richard gave me a description of the guy, and told me to get up at five in the morning, drive up there, stake out his house, and serve him when he left for work.
So I did it. As I said, it was my second week on the job. It was the first summons I’d ever served, so it was almost even fun. I got up there by 6:45, found the address, and discovered it was a private house on a corner lot, with cars parked on both sides. I picked a spot across the street from which I could see both sides of the house, and sat in my car to wait.
Sure enough, at 7:00 the side door opened and a young man with long hair and a beard came out the door, carrying a coat over his right arm. I’d been given the description of a man with a mustache, but I figured a mustache could become a beard, given a little time, so I got out of my car and started across the road.
“Charles Petralini,” I called out.
He stopped and turned around. “Yeah.” I had him.
I crossed the road and walked up to him. He shrugged the coat off his arm. In his right hand was a single-barreled shotgun with no stock, your basic, ugly, lethal, concealed weapon.
“Whaddya want?” he snarled.
What I wanted was to get back in my car, drive off, quit the detective business, and never serve another bloody fucking summons the rest of my life. But I couldn’t do that.
“I have divorce papers from your wife,” I said. I reached into my jacket pocket, very slowly so he could see that was what I was taking out. I held them out toward him. “I was told you were expecting them.”
He snatched them from me and looked at them. Then he looked up at me. “Yeah,” he said bitterly. “That’s cool.” He looked down at the papers again. Then he looked straight at me, his face hot with anger, and his hand clenched around his gun. “But I never want to see your face again, douche bag.”
I didn’t ask him how he knew my name. I just got back in my car and drove off. It was a good twenty miles before I convinced myself the son of a bitch wasn’t following me.
That was my first experience with what I presumed was a loaded gun. Picking up Pedro’s in the bathroom was my second.
This was my third. It was also my first time firing one. I’m sure I did everything wrong. I gritted my teeth and winced as I pulled the trigger. There was no noise, because of the silencer, but the gun jerked like a son of a bitch, and I nearly fell on my ass.
I steadied myself, looked, and discovered that by some miracle I had managed to hit the broad side of a king-size mattress, a good six feet away. It had been close, though. The small round hole was near the top edge of the mattress. I had aimed dead center. No matter. It would only make the bullet that much easier to dig out.
I took out my pocket knife and began to look for the bullet. It had gone clean through the first mattress. I flopped it over. There was an exit wound in the back. The king is dead, long live the king. The queen was also dead. I flopped her over too. There was no exit wound in the other king, so the bullet was still in it. I was glad. I was running out of royalty.
I began cutting away the material around the hole. I didn’t dig for the bullet itself, because I didn’t want to mark it with the knife. I dug out around it. Eventually I was able to pull out a wad of cotton stuffing. I spread it apart with my fingers. The bullet lay inside. I took out one of my father-in-law’s plastic bags, dropped the bullet in it, and put it in my jacket pocket.
35.
ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I learned about cops was that they don’t like private detectives. At least, private detectives of my type. The reason is, a lot of the claims we investigate are against the city for which they work, and sometimes ev
en involve negligence, or even liability, on the part of the police department itself. So I’ve never got along very well with cops.
The desk sergeant was no exception. “You want to see who?” he said.
I didn’t point out that he should have said “whom.”
“I want to see the guy who’s in charge of the case of the businessman who got murdered in the midtown parking lot. I think the paper said his name was Albrect. The dead guy. Not the cop in charge.”
“Why you wanna see him?”
“I have something I think might be evidence.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“I’d like to talk to the guy in charge.”
“You’re talking to me. What have you got?”
“I found something in the parking lot.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure, but I think it might be a bullet.”
Things happened fast. One thing that didn’t happen was my being ushered into the presence of the officer in charge of the case. Instead, I was placed in a room by myself and told in no uncertain terms not to leave. There was actually no question of my leaving, because, when I looked out in the corridor, I discovered they’d stationed an officer at the door.
They also took my bullet. I surrendered it when asked, rather than making them frisk me for it. I wasn’t looking for trouble.
I sat in the room for about two hours. No one came in. No one even peeked in the door.
Then the whole world came in. First was a beefy guy who appeared to be a sergeant, and was, because when he got close enough for me to read his name tag, I discovered I’d correctly interpreted his stripes. He was followed by two junior officers and a stenographer. The stenographer sat at the table. The two younger officers stationed themselves along the walls. The sergeant drew up a chair to where I was sitting, turned it around, and put his foot up on it. He leaned in to me.
“All right,” he said. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”
“Tell you about what?” I asked him.
“Don’t get cute with me, kid,” he said, flattering to a 40-year-old. “You know. About the bullet.”
“Is it a bullet?” I asked him.
“You know damn well it’s a bullet,” he said. “Now why don’t you tell us about it.”
“What do you want to know?” I asked him.
The stenographer coughed significantly. The sergeant gave him a look, but took the hint.
“Name,” he asked.
“Stanley Hastings.”
“Occupation.”
“Private detective.”
That caught him up short. He looked at me. “What?”
“I’m a private detective. But that’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Is that so? Let’s see your credentials.”
I handed him my I.D. He opened it, looked it over, then read it aloud so the stenographer could take down the information. He handed it back to me.
“Let me see your gun permit,” he said.
“I haven’t got a gun permit,” I told him.
“You haven’t got a gun permit?”
“No.”
“How come you haven’t got a gun permit?”
“I haven’t got a gun.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what the hell kind of a private detective are you if you haven’t got a gun?”
“I don’t do criminal work. I chase ambulances.”
“Oh,” he snorted. “One of those.”
“Yeah. One of those.”
“Why don’t you tell us about the gun?”
“What gun?”
“The gun the bullet came from.”
“I don’t know anything about any gun.”
“I think you can do a little better than that.”
“You think wrong. I don’t know anything about any gun. I found that bullet, if it is a bullet, in a parking lot. I found it last night. I parked my car in the lot. When I came back to get in, I saw it lying on the ground. I picked it up. It looked like a bullet. I remembered reading in the paper that a guy had been shot in that lot. I thought the bullet might be evidence, so I brought it in. I figured maybe the lab could match it up with the fatal bullet and see if it came from the same gun.”
The sergeant just stared at me. I must say, he was good at it. He had the most wonderfully ironic, mocking look. His face said it all. He didn’t believe a word I was saying.
“Was the bullet from the same gun?” I asked. I already knew the answer. They wouldn’t be talking to me if it wasn’t. But I needed to be sure.
“We’re asking the questions here,” the sergeant snapped.
This was the part I wasn’t looking forward to. You see, I’ve always been intimidated by cops. I’m one of those people who, when they’re driving along and they see a cop car with the lights flashing, immediately think, “Shit! They got me!” even though they’re not doing anything wrong. And if a cop should pull me over and ask me for my license and registration, I’d give it to ’em. It would never occur to me to say, “No,” or even, “Why?” Because police are authority figures, and it’s just natural to do what they say. At least it is for me.
However, the sergeant had said, “We’re asking the questions here,” and I was never gonna get a better cue line than that for my purpose, so it was up to me to pick up on it. So I gritted my teeth and I did.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Well, you’re going about it all wrong.”
The sergeant’s head shot up. Apparently he wasn’t used to having his authority questioned any more than I was to questioning it. “What?” he said ominously.
“You’re going about it all wrong,” I told him. “If you’re accusing me of a crime, you haven’t advised me of my rights.”
“No one’s accusing you of a crime,” the sergeant said.
That was what I expected him to say. It was also my next cue, and it was the biggie. I was ready for it, but it still took all my nerve to carry it off.
“Fine,” I said. “In that case, I’m leaving.”
The sergeant’s mouth fell open. “What?” he said incredulously.
“I’m walking out of here,” I told him. “It’s been nice talking to you.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“That’s what you think,” I said. “If you’re not charging me with a crime, you got no right to hold me. I’m getting out of here.”
“That’s what you think. You’re not getting out of here until you account for that bullet.”
“Sorry, Sergeant, I don’t have to. You wanna hold me, you gotta charge me. I know my rights.”
The sergeant looked as if he’d just eaten a bucket of nails. “All right,” he said. “You’re under arrest. The charge is accessory after the fact to murder. I hope that satisfies you. Now what about the bullet?”
“You haven’t advised me of my rights.”
“You said you knew your rights.”
“That doesn’t matter. You haven’t advised me of them.”
The sergeant sighed. “All right, Nelson, read him.”
Nelson, one of the cops against the wall began the drone, “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney—”
That was my last cue, and I jumped on it. “That’s it,” I said. “I have the right to an attorney. I want to call my lawyer.”
36.
ASIDE FROM MONEY, THERE IS nothing Richard likes better than bopping cops around. I’d called him once before, when the King’s County Hospital security staff had attempted to impound my film for taking a picture of one of the patients. I’d called Richard and he’d been there in 20 minutes.
He beat that record today, and I’m sure it was not because he thought I was the best person in the world, or because he could not bear my sorry plight, but just because he absolutel
y loves confrontations.
The first words out of his mouth as he strode into the room were, “Did they touch you?”
I shook my head.
“All right, gentlemen,” he said, surveying the room. “Perhaps we can still avoid a lawsuit. Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” said the sergeant.
“All right, Sergeant, what seems to be the trouble?”
“This man brought in a bullet. It’s evidence in a murder case. He claims he found it in the parking lot where the man was killed.”
Richard’s eyebrows launched into orbit. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me be sure I understand this. A private citizen came to the police station of his own accord to deliver to you something he thought might be evidence. In return for his effort, you have taken this conscientious good citizen, sequestered him in a room, held him incommunicado for hours, and then attempted to violate his rights by interrogating him outside the presence of his attorney, and what’s more, have gone so far as to charge this good Samaritan with a crime?”
“Well—” the sergeant began.
“Well, gentlemen,” Richard said. “I’m not sure, but perhaps it is not too late to avoid a suit for harassment and false arrest. Now, my client and I are walking out of here. If any one of you lay your hands on us or attempt to detain us, I promise you, on my word as an attorney, that I will be spending every penny you ever make in your lives, and that includes your pensions.”
Richard and I walked out the door. No one made any effort to stop us.
Outside, he turned to me and said, “What the fuck is this all about?”
“I found a bullet in a parking lot where that guy got killed. I thought it might be important so I brought it in. You know the rest.”
“Assholes,” Richard said.
“Listen,” I said. “Thanks a lot. And you can do me a favor. Another favor, really.”
“What’s that?”
“Listen, I know this is a great story to kid me about and all that, but if you happen to call me on the phone don’t mention this to my wife.”
