by Parnell Hall
David Pryne took the tape out of the answering machine and made the call. He hung up the phone, said, “They’ll be right over.”
“Who’d you talk to?” I asked.
“The assistant district attorney.”
“He’s coming over?”
“I don’t think so. He said someone.”
Someone turned out to be Sergeant Thurman. He stomped in not ten minutes later and unceremoniously demanded, “Where’s the tape?”
“Right here,” David Pryne said. He held up a white business envelope. “I sealed it in this.”
“Uh-huh,” Thurman said. He turned to Winnington. “This was on the answering machine when you got home?”
“That’s right.”
“You all heard it?”
“Yes, we did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Same guy?”
“As nearly as we can tell. You have to understand, it’s just a hoarse whisper.”
“Uh-huh. And when was the message left on the tape?”
“This afternoon. While we were all downtown.”
“Are you sure of that? This couldn’t be a message left yesterday you just never listened to?”
“No. It came in today.”
“Uh-huh,” Thurman said. “Which means it came in after the murder. Which is bad news. The killer strikes once, now the killer’s targeting you.”
“Not me,” Winnington said. “These threats are being made to my wife.”
“Right,” Thurman said. “The killer’s targeting you, Mrs. Winnington. Under the circumstances, you should be very careful. I would prefer it if you didn’t go out. And the same with you, Mr. Winnington. We’re dealing with a crank caller and a killer. That’s a very sick combination. Until we know more about it, we gotta be careful.”
Winnington blinked. “You’re telling me not to go out?”
“That would be best.”
“Excuse me,” David Pryne said.
Thurman ignored him, but Winnington said, “What is it?”
“You know you have a signing tonight?”
“What?”
“With all that’s happened you probably don’t remember, but you have a signing scheduled.”
“For today?” Winnington said. “You mean today?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What’s a signing?” Thurman said.
“A book signing. I’m signing my books.”
“At a bookstore?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’d better cancel.”
“Cancel?” Winnington said. “They’ve advertised it. They’ve ordered the books.” He turned to David Pryne. “Christ, who is it?”
“Barnes and Noble.”
Winnington made a face. “Shit. If it was just a little book store, what the hell. But I’m not gonna piss off Barnes and Noble.”
“What time’s the signing?” Maxine said.
Her husband turned on her. “You’re not going.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, ma’am,” Thurman said, holding up his hand. “I don’t think you understand. We’re dealing with a killer here.”
“Give me a break,” Maxine said. “You expect me to stay in my apartment till you catch this guy?”
“No, ma’am. But I expect you to take reasonable precautions.”
“Don’t be silly,” Maxine said. “I’m perfectly safe in a public place. I always go to signings. I like signings, and I’m going to go.”
“I may not even do it,” Winnington said.
“If you cancel, you cancel,” Maxine said. “If you go, I go.”
“I can’t cancel Barnes and. Noble.”
“Then I’m going.”
I stayed out of it. Not that I didn’t have an opinion, just that I didn’t want to get involved.
Then suddenly I was.
“If she goes, you go,” Winnington said.
It took a moment to realize he was talking to me. “I beg your pardon?”
“If my wife refuses to listen to reason—which I wish she would—but if she insists on going, I want you to go with her.”
“As a bodyguard?”
“Exactly.”
I could see Sergeant Thurman rolling his eyes. I wished to god he hadn’t been there. I figured I’d better point out my deficiencies before he did.
“A little bit out of my line,” I said. “I don’t even carry a gun.”
“Gun?” Winnington said. “Don’t be silly. I don’t expect you to shoot anyone. Just be on the lookout for anyone hassling my wife.”
“Oh, come on,” Maxine said. “It will be fun.”
I blinked. As a private detective, I try to have a good opinion of my clients. It was a little hard to reconcile someone in her situation talking about having fun.
“What time is the signing?” I said.
“I don’t know. What time is it, David?”
“Eight o’clock.”
When I hesitated, Maxine said, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay you. Put in for a double day.”
A double day?
I must admit, in the midst of all the chaos, my mind zeroed right in: five hundred plus five hundred equals a grand. If you can’t appreciate that, you must not be trying to support a wife and kid in New York City.
“All right,” I said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll go to the signing.”
Sergeant Thurman stuck his chin out. He didn’t look pleased. I guess he wasn’t having a thousand-dollar day.
“Me too.”
22.
I GOT BACK TO MY APARTMENT building to find Alice coming out the front door.
“Hi,” I said, “where you going?”
“I’m at a meter.”
“Huh?”
“I couldn’t get a parking space. The car’s at a meter.”
“Listen, I got a lot to tell you.”
“Not now. I’m gonna get a ticket.”
I didn’t argue. In New York City potential parking tickets take precedence over anything. At fifty bucks a whack, they command your attention. If your parking meter’s running out, you do not stop to chat.
Alice hadn’t. She was already hotfooting it toward Broadway. I took a hop skip and caught up.
“Where you going?” Alice said.
“I’ll help you move the car.”
“I’m a big girl. I think I can handle it.”
“Humor me.”
The car was parked on the corner of 104th in front of the Suba Drug Store. The meter was red, but the windshield was bare. I looked up the street, and Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, was half a block away. Some days you get lucky.
“You want me to drive?” I said, but Alice had already stepped out in the street.
“I’ll drive,” she said. “Get in.”
We got in the car and started doing the parking space shuffle, the late afternoon fun game that sometimes can take upward of an hour.
We went down Broadway to 103rd. Right on 103rd across West End Avenue to Riverside Drive. Up Riverside to 104th. 104th across West End and back to Broadway. Broadway to 105th. 105th across West End to Riverside Drive. Riverside to 106th. 106th to West End. South on West End to 104th. 104th to Broadway. Broadway to 103rd, and the whole loop begins again.
We made it several times. While we did, I filled Alice in on the events of the day. Which took a lot of doing, as there were a lot of events. Throwing in a murder didn’t help.
I must say I was impressed by Alice’s concentration. She often kids me that I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. That isn’t true—I just don’t often chew gum. Anyway, she had no problem driving the car and paying attention to what I said.
“So, the bottom line is you’re not a suspect.”
“Not officially.”
“Officially or unofficially. The cop and the ADA—no one thinks you did it. Which is pretty remarkable. You call on the woman at about the right time. And she was holding a piece of paper with your name on it�
�that really happened?”
“So they say.”
“You see,” Alice said, “that would tend to indicate to me that someone was trying to frame your client.”
“My client?”
“Not her. Him. Winnington.”
“The paper had my name on it.”
“Sure, but like you say, no one thinks you did it. So if it was supposed to frame you, it simply didn’t work. Kenneth P. Winnington is another story.”
“How do you figure that?”
“A corpse clutching a piece of paper with a name on it is straight out of a book. It’s what a writer would come up with. I bet the cops like him for this much more than they like you.”
“They don’t like me for it.”
“So they say. Which doesn’t have to be true. It’s really what’s-his-name—the dumb one?”
“Yeah. And Baby Face Frost too.”
“He’s not so dumb. If he doesn’t think you did it, you’re in the clear.”
“True.”
“So basically, you could butt out on this one.”
“Yeah, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
I told Alice about the book signing. Her eyes widened, and she almost stopped the car. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just told you.”
“Yeah, after everything else under the sun. You’re making a thousand dollars today?”
“That I am.”
“For being a bodyguard?”
“Are you going to sing again?”
“And you weren’t going to mention it?”
“Hey, you make it sound like I was boring you with idle chitchat. There happened to be this murder.”
“Which nobody thinks you did. Where’s the signing?”
“Barnes and Noble.”
“Which one?”
“This one. Upper West Side.”
“What time?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“Damn.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t go. I got a meeting at Tommie’s school.”
“So skip it.”
“I can’t skip it. I’m the class parent.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t know I was the class parent?”
“I know you’re the class parent I have a lot on my mind.”
“So I can’t go. Damn.”
Alice spotted a parking spot half a block away. She floored it, nearly giving me whiplash. She screeched the car to a stop alongside the precious space, and proceeded to back in.
Alice got out of the car, slammed the door harder than necessary, and said, “Damn, it would have to be tonight.”
“You really want to go to the signing?”
“Of course I do. It sounds like a lot of fun.”
I sighed. Christ, it had been a long day.
“Don’t bet on it.”
23.
“KIMBERLY STUMBLED BLINDLY DOWN THE dark street, her blond hair streaming out behind her, her blouse rustling in the breeze. The rough wind slammed into her face, caked the salty tears upon her cheeks, rubbed her skin raw.
“She barely noticed. Gasping for breath, she filled her lungs with air, then exhaled in sharp, choking sobs that shook her limber body as she forged on.
“Beneath it all her mind was churning, even as her heart was pounding, around and around the endless spiral of self-doubt, thrust upon her like a red-hot branding iron, the overwhelming revelation of seeing Brian, the one man she could count on, the one man she could depend on, the one man she could trust, in the arms of another woman.
“And not just any woman.
“But her.
“The vixen.
“The bitch.
“Her nemesis.
“Sabrina.
“The echo of her name went through her like a knife. Her whole body shuddered and she lost her balance, staggered, nearly fell, before bracing herself against the light post on the street corner. She clung to it for dear life, embraced the splattered, battered, paint-peeling pole, oblivious to the faint scent of dog urine wafting up from the street below. Steadied herself, tried to get a grip.
“A sound from the street made her spin around.
“A man with a knife?
“No.
“A bum with a deposit bottle.
“Only we don’t call them bums now, we call them homeless, Kimberly told herself, then half-smiled at the irony that she should have this thought just now.
“She backed away from the pole, away from the man. Away from the street light that was creating patterns on the pavement, and into the dark shadows near the row of shops. The butcher and the laundry, familiar places in the light, now intimidating in the dark, or was everything just scary now, since her world had been turned upside down?”
In the back of the audience Sergeant Thurman jabbed me in the ribs. “This guy’s good.”
That figured. To me it was absolute drivel, so it was only natural Sergeant Thurman would think it was good. For my money, the only good thing about it was the delivery. Kenneth P. Winnington was a better actor than a writer, and seemed to get a kick out of reading his work. Though how anyone could possibly enjoy reading those lines was beyond me.
Kenneth P. Winnington was reading his book in the Barnes and Noble on Broadway and 82nd Street. About fifty chairs had been set up in a corner of the second floor, but it wasn’t nearly enough. There must have been at least a hundred and fifty people there. They crowded around, squeezed between the shelves of books, to listen to the great man.
Fortunately, by getting there early, Maxine Winnington had a seat. She was fourth row, center, and very visible in a red silk dress that didn’t look bad from the back where Sergeant Thurman and I were standing, but must have looked terrific from the front, with a plunging neckline with a tendency to gape. Anyway, there she was, safe and sound in plain sight, and with Sergeant Thurman and me there to keep an eye on her, any danger she might be in seemed minimal at worst.
Which is why my mind wandered as I listened to her husband read his work. Not that surprising, considering what he was reading, and considering how many things were going through my head.
It occurred to me, this was the book. The one that not two days ago Sherry Pressman had coerced me into agreeing to buy. My only concern then had been how much it would cost. The estimation was I would be out about twenty bucks. Now, irony of ironies, the woman was dead, because of which I was standing here making five hundred.
Should I buy the book, fulfilling my promise? Be content with a four hundred and eighty dollar profit?
And if I did buy the book, should I have him sign it? If he did, I wondered what inscription he would write. The mind boggled.
I was aroused from my musings by the sound of applause, indicating Kenneth P. Winnington had finished his reading. That was good news. Now he could sign his books and get out of here.
Only not just yet. First he took questions from the audience. Which he also seemed to enjoy, judging from his gratified smile when, “Are there any questions?” was greeted by a dozen hands.
The first question was, “Where do you get your ideas?” Apparently, that wasn’t a favorite question, because Winnington winced perceptively when he heard it, but recovered quickly and launched into what sounded like a fairly stock answer.
Beside me, Sergeant Thurman said, “This guy’s sharp.”
It was all I needed. To be forced to listen to Kenneth P. Winnington on the one hand, and Sergeant Thurman’s approbation of him on the other.
Winnington finished with that question, then fielded a string of what purported to be questions, but consisted largely of nothing so much as people raising their hands and telling him how much they liked his books. This seemed rather boring to me, but from the smile on Winnington’s face, and the graciousness of his replies, I gathered this sort of sycophantic response was exactly what he was looking for.
Anyway, it was a good ten minutes by my watch before
anyone asked anything even slightly substantial.
“Do you ever write in the first person?”
The man asking the question had a round face with thick glasses and a bald head fringed with curly yellow hair. I had noticed him before, because he had had his hand up from the start, but hadn’t been called upon till now.
“I’ll tell you why I ask,” he said. He had a whiny, sort of irritating voice, with a slight edge to it. “I ask because all the books of yours I’ve read are in the third person. So I’m wondering if you ever write in the first.”
“Certainly not,” Winnington said.
“Oh? Why not?”
Wmnington's smile was condescending. “You can’t write suspense in the first person.”
As the man opened his mouth, Winnington pointed his finger, “And I’ll tell you why not,” which prompted a laugh from the audience. He smiled, said, “Why can’t you write suspense in the first person? Well, it simply doesn’t work, and I’ll tell you why. To begin with, what are the basic elements of suspense? Well, the basic element is danger. Putting the protagonist in danger. The basic premise of suspense is, will the hero be killed, or will the hero get away?”
Winnington smiled again. “Naturally, the hero gets away. Otherwise you have a depressing book that no one wants to read. However, there is still the possibility—and the reader buys into it—that the hero could indeed be killed.
“And that is what sustains the suspense. The underlying possibility. The fact that it could happen.”
He held up his finger. “On the other hand, you take a first-person narrator, you know they’re not going to die, otherwise who’s telling the story?”
Winnington spread his arms, smiled, and looked around at the audience, who were all smiling back.
Except for the guy who asked the question, who didn’t look at all convinced. “Is that the only reason? Come on, give me a break. You say yourself the hero’s not gonna die, so what’s the big deal? I mean, is that the only element to suspense?”
“It’s a major one. But even setting that aside, there’s another reason why first-person narrative simply wouldn’t work.”
“Why?” the man said, in a quarrelsome tone.
There was rumbling from the audience. Clearly the author’s supporters didn’t like this.
Winnington put up his hand. “No, no,” he said. “It’s a perfectly good question. I’d be happy to answer it. You see, there’s another key element to suspense, probably more important than the one I just mentioned. Basically, it’s this. Suspense doesn’t just consist of putting the hero in danger. It consists of putting the hero in danger that is known to the reader; but is not yet known to him.”
