by Parnell Hall
IN THE COURSE of my less than illustrious career as an actor/writer, I have been many things and held many jobs. And in all the positions in which I have found myself, one thing has proved to be universally true: no matter how promising any job, or situation, or opportunity might seem to be, eventually it would come to naught. The school I was teaching at would fold, the company I was working for would go union and I would not be allowed to join, the magazine editor who had seemed so happy with my article would publish someone else’s instead. And I would be fucked.
This happened to me so regularly and so invariably, that I soon came to expect to be fucked, and when I was fucked, it was never any surprise to me, but merely an inevitable outcome that I had been anticipating and wondering just when it was going to occur. And it happened so often that after a while I never just thought of myself as being fucked, but always automatically referred to the degree to which I was fucked, as in, slightly fucked, or, very fucked, or, a little bit fucked.
Using this as a yardstick, it was possible to access my current situation.
I was totally fucked.
I tried not to let it show. After all, if I let it show, the game would have been up. Then, I suppose, totally fucked would have moved into the realm of permanently and irrevocably fucked. I kept my face composed, and fought for time.
“She what?” I said.
“She got it wrong. She had the wrong address. It’s in the book. The assignment log. We went down there. We verified it. She wrote it down wrong. Now can you please tell me how you had the right address, when she gave it to you and she had it wrong?”
“I don’t know. I can’t understand it.” I pretended to think about it, which was easy, as what I was doing was thinking about it. Then it came to me. “Unless....”
“Unless? Unless what?”
“Well,” I said. “I’m not that familiar with how the office works, but I think it’s like this. A call comes in. The girl writes down the information on a piece of paper, all right? Then if it becomes an assignment, she beeps me, she gives me the assignment, and then she copies it into the assignment log.”
“So?”
“So that’s what happened. The call came in. She wrote down the address right on the sheet of paper. She gave it to me right, and then she copied it into the book wrong. See?”
He shrugged. “That sounds very logical.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. In fact, I spoke to your boss, this Mr. Rosenberg and that’s exactly what he said. He said the same thing. I spoke to Wendy Millington. She said the same thing too.”
“There you are,” I said.
He shrugged again. “Well, yes and no.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“She couldn’t find the paper.”
“The paper?”
“Yes. The paper. The paper she wrote the address down on before she transferred it into the log. Naturally, we wanted to look at the paper. She didn’t have it.”
“No?”
“No. She had every other paper from every other case that came in today, but not that one. You see?”
“Yeah. She lost it. I’m not surprised.”
“Funny she would have lost that one piece of paper.”
I shook my head. “Not with my luck.”
“Obviously, we need that piece of paper to corroborate your story. It wasn’t on Wendy Millington’s desk. It wasn’t in her wastebasket. The other girl, ah, Miss Cheryl Reeves, didn’t have it either.” He paused, looked at me. I said nothing. “We mean to find that paper. When it turned out the two girls didn’t have it, your boss, Rosenberg, started getting crusty, wanted to know if we had a warrant. Of course we didn’t.”
He stopped talking and just looked at me. I didn’t want to say anything, but with him looking at me the silence got uncomfortable, and I broke.
“So?” I said.
That was what he was waiting for. “So we’re getting one,” he said. “The judge is issuing it now. In the meantime, my cops are sitting down there, no one’s going in and out, and we’re sitting and waiting on a warrant. As soon as we get it we’ll turn that place upside down. When we find that piece of paper you can go.”
“Oh.”
“Providing it corroborates your story.”
I said nothing.
“In the meantime, we’d like you to stick around. You’re not under arrest. You’re doing it voluntarily, because you’re a good citizen and you want to assist the police and do the right thing. At least that is my understanding of the situation. Of course, if I’m wrong, if you want to insist on enforcing your constitutional rights, then I’m sure that the same judge who’s issuing the search warrant would find the evidence is sufficient to issue another kind of warrant, if you know what I mean. So if you decide you want to leave, just let me know.”
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
MacAullif nodded to the stenographer, who closed his notebook and got up. They went out, closing the door behind them.
For the first time since MacAullif dropped the bomb, I had time to think. And the first thought that sprang to mind was the same old adage: how bad is it going to be?
Pretty bad. What are the odds, I asked myself. What are the odds, when they find that piece of paper, that Wendy/Cheryl got the address right? I wouldn’t have staked my life on it, and, basically, that was what I was doing. I mean, when they found that paper it was just as likely to say 309 as it was 307, or even some other number entirely.
And the thing is, it was all my fault. My only excuse was I’d never found a dead body before and I was terribly rattled. But, Jesus Christ. I mean, I knew how incompetent Wendy/Cheryl was. I knew practically every address they gave me was wrong. But I hadn’t thought of that. I’d had the address and I’d given Leroy the address and he’d given Wendy/Cheryl the address, and I’d just assumed that would be that. But that wasn’t the natural order of things. Leroy should have given her the address and she should have given me the address, and I should have written it down. And then I would have had the same address that she had, and my story would check. But it hadn’t happened that way, so it didn’t. And like a fool, I hadn’t even listened to Wendy/Cheryl when she gave me the address on the phone.
It was small consolation to know that even if I had it wouldn’t have done any good. She would have given me the wrong address, and I would have known it was the wrong address, but I couldn’t have interrupted her and said, “Hey, you got the address wrong,” ’cause how would I know? I’d have just had to take it—perhaps even change the address in my notebook—and then what? Pretend I’d called the guy and got the right address? Not on your life. The guy was obviously dead by that time. I wouldn’t have wanted to open up that can of worms—claiming a nonexistent telephone conversation with a dead man. No. I’d have had to grit my teeth, go blundering into 309 West 127th Street, and try like hell to scare up some tenant who could tell me the guy I was looking for lived next door. Then I could have scrawled a 9 over the 7 in my notebook, then changed it back to a 7, and with luck the cops wouldn’t be able to tell which number had been written first. Yeah. That might have worked.
I realized I was engaging in a lot of profitless speculation. I also realized the reason I was doing it was I was fresh out of profitable speculation. As far as I was concerned, the die was cast. It was out of my hands. The police would find the paper and it would either save me or fuck me. And there was nothing I could do but sit and wait.
I sat there for about an hour. Then MacAullif and Daniels came in. I tried to read their faces, but I couldn’t. They looked grim, but, to me, cops always look grim.
“All right,” MacAullif said. “You can go.”
I tried my best not to look as if I’d just gotten an eleventh hour stay of execution from the governor. It was hard. “You find the paper?” I said, casually.
“No.”
“No?”
MacAullif shook his head. “No. We took that whole office apart. We got a matro
n down there and searched everyone to the skin. The paper is gone.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can go. Without that paper, we don’t have sufficient evidence to arrest you. Not at the present time. But you’ll be around. We checked up on you. You got a wife and kid. You’re not going anywhere. We’ll know where to find you.”
“Hey, come on, Sergeant. What have I done?”
MacAullif took a deep breath and blew it out again. “The paper is missing. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the most suspicious circumstance in the case.”
I looked at him. “Give me a break. I’ve been sitting here all afternoon. Whaddya think, I eluded the police guard, rushed up to the office, and snatched the paper out from under the noses of the cops who were searching the place?”
“No, I don’t. But your story doesn’t hold up. Not without that paper. You claim it would corroborate your story. It could also disprove it. As far as I’m concerned, the most significant thing is that it’s gone. I don’t like that.”
“I don’t like it either.”
“Good. Daniels here doesn’t like it too much himself. So we’re all in accord. We don’t like it. At any rate, you can go.”
“Great. What about my briefcase?”
“Downstairs at the front desk. You’ll have to sign for it.
“O.K.”
My beeper went off. I’d forgotten I was wearing it, and I jumped about a half a mile. MacAullif and Daniels never blinked. I shut it off.
“That’ll be your office,” MacAullif said, “telling you your boss wants to see you. He asked us to tell you he wanted you in his office as soon as you were through here. He was rather emphatic about it. Frankly, he didn’t seem happy.”
“I’ll bet.”
“O.K. That’s it. You’re free to go.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Except I was picked up in Harlem. Any chance of getting a ride back to pick up my car?”
MacAullif shrugged. “About as much chance as the Knicks have of making the playoffs.”
I’m a sports fan. I didn’t have to ask him what that meant.
I went out in the hall to the pay phone and called my office. Sure enough, Wendy/Cheryl told me Richard wanted to see me right away. I told her I’d be right there.
I went downstairs and picked up my briefcase. I checked out the contents before I signed for it. Apparently police corruption wasn’t as bad as it was rumored to be, because my camera was still there.
I went outside to Chambers Street and caught the Lexington Avenue subway uptown. I didn’t get off at 14th Street though. I was going to Richard’s office all right, but I had a couple of stops to make first.
On the subway I started getting paranoid that maybe the cops were having me followed. I looked around, trying to spot the tail. The young guy in a suit straphanging about four people down the car looked like a plain clothes cop to me, at least he did until he got off at 23rd Street.
I got off at 42nd Street, shuttled to Times Square, and caught the Broadway 1-train uptown. I couldn’t help thinking to myself, what kind of an asshole detective takes three subway trains uptown when there’s something as important as the videotape evidence that might disappear any moment if he doesn’t get to it in time? The answer, of course, was one with less than five bucks in his pocket who can’t afford to take a cab.
I got off at 125th Street and walked down the elevated platform to the stairs. As far as I could see, I was the only white man who got off at the stop, but it occurred to me if they were gonna tail me through Harlem, they’d probably send a black man to do it.
I walked up to 127th and over to Darryl Jackson’s apartment. My car was right out front where I’d left it. I looked around. There was no one in sight. Well, if they were tailing me, they were just too damn smart. I couldn’t spot ’em. I just had to risk it.
I got in my car, switched off the code alarm, gunned the motor, and pulled out.
I drove around and pulled up right in back of the dumpster. Two teen-age kids were playing football in the street right next to it. They weren’t wearing gloves and their fingers must have been falling off and how they were catching the ball was beyond me, but they were doing it. I wished they weren’t. They were going to think I was pretty weird, but I couldn’t help that. I got out of the car, walked over to the corner of the dumpster, jumped up, leaned my stomach on the side, and reached down.
I had expected to reach all the way down to the bottom, but my hands immediately encountered boards, plaster, nails, bags, and assorted other junk that had been dumped there in the course of the afternoon. Shit. Garbage—what a hell of a thing to put in a dumpster.
I began pawing my way through it, desperately trying to dig down to the bottom. I stole a look. The guys had stopped playing football and were standing there staring at me. I couldn’t help that. I kept on digging.
I found it. A white plastic bag. I pulled it out, straightened up, and hopped down to the ground. I opened it and looked inside, just to make sure I hadn’t grabbed a bag of Rice-a-Roni boxes by mistake. I hopped in my car and took off, leaving two very puzzled looking football players staring after the crazy honky.
11.
IT WAS 5:15 by the time I got to Rosenberg and Stone. The office more or less shuts down at 5:00, but the switchboard stays open till 6:00, so Wendy and Cheryl were still there. I say Wendy and Cheryl rather than Wendy/Cheryl because in person I can tell them apart. Wendy looked like one of those girls you’d see at college whom you knew, on the one hand, would never get a date, but, on the other hand, would get a 98 on the psych final, and wreck the curve for everybody else. Only Wendy was a double-threat—both plain and dumb. Cheryl was not unattractive, and looked as if she might have been moderately intelligent. It was only when she opened her mouth and sounded just like Wendy that one realized there was no one home.
Both girls were in their early twenties, and both were obviously slated for better things. At least, I certainly hoped so. As far as I could see their only redeeming feature was that they were willing to work for the pittance Richard was willing to pay.
Wendy and Cheryl regarded me with hostile eyes, which was not surprising, seeing as how they had both been strip-searched.
“Where’s Richard?” I asked.
“In his office,” Wendy said. She squeezed it out through clenched teeth.
I saw no reason to prolong the conversation. I ran the gauntlet between their two desks and walked across the office to Richard’s door.
I was not looking forward to going in. If Wendy and Cheryl were any indication of the mood in the office, I was not in for a good time. And after all, they were only secretaries—Richard was the boss. And Richard was not easy to deal with, even under the best of circumstances. He was a little guy, but he made up for it by being intense and energetic, almost to the point of being hyper. Dealing with him was kind of like dealing with a high-strung nervous dog. He was all over the place, so you never knew what to expect, and you always had to be on your guard.
And above all, he was money-conscious. He could go berserk over a missing paper clip, so I could imagine how he was going to feel about the disruption of his entire office and the loss of half a day’s work.
I opened the door and walked in. Richard was seated at his desk. Far from being irate, he seemed perfectly calm. His manner was casual, almost benevolent. He actually stood up when I came in.
“Stanley,” he said. “Come in. Sit down.”
I did, wondering what the fuck was going on.
Richard came around and sat on the edge of his desk. “The cops give you a hard time?” he asked.
“No. Not that bad.”
“That’s good. When the cops couldn’t find the paper, I was afraid they’d take it out on you. They definitely did not seem pleased.”
“They weren’t. A Sergeant MacAullif was particularly unhappy. In fact, he considers the disappearance of the paper the most significant aspect of the case.”
�
��I know.”
“In other words, Wendy/Cheryl strike again.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“What do you mean?”
Richard took a pen out of his jacket pocket and began tapping it on his hand. “The disappearance of that paper either screws you royally or saves your ass. Depending on what’s written on it, of course.”
I looked at him narrowly. “Why do you say that?”
“Well,” Richard said. “Whatever else the facts of the case might show, it seems obvious that this fellow Darryl Jackson had been dead for some time.”
“So?”
“Dead men seldom call up to engage my services,” Richard said dryly.
“But it happened. Wendy/Cheryl got the call.”
“There’s no disputing that. I’m just stating that it is rather remarkable.”
“So?”
“I’m just wondering if you’ve given any thought to what’s going to happen when the cops find that paper.”
I stared at him. “But they didn’t find it. They gave up.”
“They didn’t find it, but they haven’t given up. If you look on your way out you’ll see there are cops combing the alley outside the building on the off chance someone tossed that paper out the window.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious. Take a look.”
I went to the window, opened it, and looked out. It was twelve stories down and it was dark, but I could see flashlights moving in the alley.
I closed the window, went back and sat down.
“O.K.,” I said. “So they haven’t given up.”
“Right. So my question is, have you given any thought to what’s going to happen when the cops find that paper?”
“Are you kidding. I’ve been sitting in the police station all afternoon with nothing to do except think of what’s going to happen when they find that paper.”
“And what have you come up with?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“Well you should.”
I was beginning to get annoyed. “All right. Fine. I should. But I don’t. So you tell me. What’s going to happen when the cops find that paper?”