by Parnell Hall
She didn’t want to come—she wasn’t involved, she saw no point, she had nothing to say—but she came.
Her coat was over the back of her chair. She had on a pink sweater. She looked young, frightened, helpless.
Virginal.
“The cops have a witness in the Darryl Jackson murder.”
She looked at me. “Are you kidding?”
“No. I know you appreciate my sense of humor, but I rarely kid about murders, particularly ones involving me. The cops have a witness. A young, black girl with a walkman on. She was sitting on the steps of that building. She saw who went in and out.”
Pamela tensed. “And?”
“And what?” I said. “If you weren’t there, she couldn’t have seen you.”
She bit her lip. “That’s right.”
“Well, were you there or not?”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Then what I’m going to tell you will probably be of no interest to you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. According to this girl, about 12:10 a young woman went in. White, twenties, pretty. Sound like anyone you know?”
“No. It could be anyone.”
“It could, but I think it was you.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
“You don’t lie very well. You ought to practice, if you expect to keep on fooling dear old Ronnie. I’m not so sure you are, anyway. It happens that after this young woman who wasn’t you left, a young man answering Ronnie’s description who’d been waiting around outside went in right behind her.”
“My god.”
“Of course, if it wasn’t you, it wasn’t him, so you got nothing to worry about.”
“What did he do?”
“This guy who wasn’t Ronnie? He went right in and right back out again.”
“Oh.”
“The cops figure either he knocked on the door and got no answer ’cause the guy was dead, or he got cold feet and never even knocked, or he went in and found the body, or he went in and killed him.”
She stared at me. “How do you know all that?”
“I’m a detective.”
I loved saying that. It was such a jive thing to say. But she accepted it. She took it for an answer.
“Oh,” she said.
I was staring right at her, and her eyes faltered. She looked down at her plate.
While I had her off balance, I shot at her, “Does Ronnie have a gray parka?”
She looked up startled. “What?”
“Ronnie. Your husband. Does he own a gray parka?”
“Yes. Why?”
“That’s what the young man was wearing.”
Pamela said nothing. She looked miserable.
“Of course, it wasn’t you, so it wasn’t him. Which is fortunate. You sure it wasn’t you?”
“No, no,” she said weakly, tonelessly. “It wasn’t me.” She took a breath, seemed to pull herself together. “Look, it wasn’t me, but I’m still in terrible trouble. My fingerprints are in that apartment. If the cops find that tape, I’m dead.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I suggested it would be a very good idea if you could come up with some sort of alibi for the hours from 12:00 to 1:00. As I recall, you didn’t take kindly to the suggestion.”
“Because I don’t have one,” she said. “Don’t you understand?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid I do.”
She leaned across the table. “Look. Please. I’m going crazy. You gotta help me. You’re very smart and very resourceful. You must be, to have all that information. You gotta do something for me. You gotta find out if the police have that tape.”
I couldn’t do it to her anymore. She was just too distraught.
“They don’t,” I told her.
She stared at me, open-mouthed. “What?”
“I have the tape.”
She was astounded. “You what? You have? But— How did you get it?”
“That doesn’t matter. The important thing is, I have it, and the police aren’t going to find it. So you can stop worrying.”
“Give it to me.”
“I don’t have it with me.”
“Let’s go get it.”
“No.”
She looked at me. “No? What do you mean, no? I asked you to get that tape. That’s what this was all about. You said you’d try to get it for me.”
“I know I did. But things have changed. Now it’s murder. That tape may be the only thing standing between me and a murder rap.”
“But you couldn’t—”
“I won’t. I’m not going to let the police have it. I’m not going to let anyone see it. But I’m not giving it up, either. Not now, anyway. Not till this thing is settled. Now, I promise you, I’ll protect your reputation if I can, but I’m not going to jail for you.”
She looked at me. “You’ve seen the tape.”
“Yes.”
“I know you have. Your manner’s changed. Just the inflection you used when you said, ‘protect your reputation’. The trace of irony. The slightly mocking tone.”
I looked at her. “Hey, what are you saying?”
“You’ve judged me.”
“What?”
“You’ve judged me. Haven’t you? Before you were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Now you’ve made up your mind.”
I was having trouble meeting her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, yes you do. You saw the tape. And it changed you. You can’t forgive me anymore. Can you?”
That was too much. She’d pushed too hard. I’d done a lot for this ingrate, and I wasn’t going to let her browbeat me.
“All right,” I said. “That’s enough. You wanna talk about the benefit of the doubt? I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt. I’ve taken you on faith. You wanna know the faith I’ve taken you on? I’ve put my ass on the line believing in a girl who didn’t know what an escort service was.”
Her eyes faltered slightly. “I see. But you never raised the point until you saw that tape.”
I said nothing. I sat and waited.
“All right,” she said. “If it makes such a difference. All right, let’s say for the sake of argument, I knew there might be more involved than just going to dinner. And I still went.” She looked in my eyes, pleadingly. “But you must believe me. When I got there, I couldn’t do it. I swear to you. I couldn’t do it. That man raped me. He did. No matter why I went there, or how I went there, what happened happened. And what happened was I was beaten and raped. And that’s the truth.”
“O.K.,” I said.
She looked at me closely. “You say ‘O.K.’, but you don’t mean it. Because of the tape. And not because of what I did on the tape. Because of how I did it.”
She paused. Looked down. Took a breath. Then she looked up at me. She was no longer the timid little girl. Nor was she embarrassed any more. She was strong now, and in complete control.
“I was forced to make that tape. And everything else I did. I was forced to do. I had no choice. So I did it. I didn’t want to do it, but I did it. You don’t understand that because you’ve never been in my position. You didn’t know Darryl Jackson. You don’t know what it’s like to be threatened by someone like him. I’d have done anything he told me to. I didn’t want to make that tape, but he told me to, so I did.
“And now you’ve seen that tape and it’s changed you. And I know why.”
She paused again. Then looked straight at me. “I was good at it. I didn’t want to do those things, but when I was made to do them, there wasn’t any tentativeness, any hesitation. That’s what you can’t forgive.”
“That’s not true,” I said. But I couldn’t meet her eyes.
“You know it’s true.” I was still looking down, but I could hear the scorn in her voice. “Let me ask you something Mr. Moral One, Mr. Morality. You saw the tape. What did you feel when you saw it? Cool and impartial? Just evidence to look at, right? Or did it turn you on? Did it get you hot, excit
ed? And if it did—were you ashamed that it did? Or did you consider your reaction perfectly normal? Did you think, who wouldn’t be turned on?”
Her eyes were blazing into me, and I couldn’t meet ’em. I said nothing. There was nothing to say. She had me. Game, set, match to Pamela. She was right up and down the line.
21.
MY WIFE GAVE ME HELL when I got home. I guess it just wasn’t my day. First Pamela Berringer getting the better of me, and then my wife. I’d handled the men pretty well, Sandy and the Congressman, but women seemed to be my downfall. At any rate, Alice jumped on me the minute I got in the door.
“Pamela Berringer called,” she said.
There is no way to do her justice in describing her tone of voice. Suffice to say, it was a flat accusation.
“Oh,” I said neutrally, the snappiest response I could come up with under the circumstances.
“You have her tape,” Alice said.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell her. You didn’t tell me.”
“I had my reasons.”
“I’ll bet.”
There was a pause, and then:
“You saw it.”
“What?”
“You saw the tape. You watched it.”
“Of course I watched it. How else would I have known what it was?”
“I’ll bet you watched the whole thing.”
“Oh, come on now.”
“Did you?”
“I skimmed it.”
“I’ll bet.”
It went on like that for some time. Suffice to say, I wound up the greatest lecher since the dawn of time. My wife was adamant. Nothing I could say would shake her. It was kinda funny, really. My wife was ready to defend Pamela to the death for making the tape. But she was ready to condemn me to death for having watched it.
I learned a bitter truth that night. Morality is relative. It’s not what people do.
It’s who does it.
22.
IT SNOWED THAT NIGHT. A good twelve inches. Late November is early in Manhattan for snow, so we weren’t prepared for it, especially since all the local TV forecasters had predicted heavy rain. In the morning they were all backtracking nimbly and talking about ‘Arctic flows’ and ‘inverted high pressure systems’ and a whole bunch of other gobbledegook, all of which added up to the fact that it was snowing. I could tell that just by looking out the window.
The snow closed the East Side Day School, which meant I didn’t have to drive Tommie and Joshua, since it was my turn for the car pool. It also suspended alternate-side parking, which meant I didn’t have to move my car, which had been on the bad side, of course, so I could get out for the school run. I didn’t even bother digging it out. I left it buried under a ton of snow and took the subway down to the office.
There were no messages on the answering machine, but I had expected none. Snow creates a time lag in my business. No one wants to deal with a lawyer in the middle of a snowstorm, so the usual routine cases are put off till the next day. So today would be dead. Tomorrow would be crazy, however, as all the people who slipped on the ice and snow and went to the hospital today would start calling in.
I switched on my beeper just in case, however, and sat down to ponder my next move. I wasn’t sure what it was. I had a few leads, a few clues, but that was it. The Congressman was almost certainly Gray Hair, but had he killed him? I didn’t know. He might have, but so might Pamela, or even Ronnie baby. So how could I tell?
The problem was, figuring out who had committed murders was not really in my field of expertise. Getting camera angles on broken sidewalks so they looked like disaster areas was more in my line.
After some reflection, it occurred to me that there was one thing that I could still do. I could finish watching the tapes.
I threaded up tape #3, thinking what Alice would say if she knew I had six of the damn things. I hadn’t rewound it, so it was right where I’d left it when I’d frozen it on the picture of Congressman Blaine. I realized I hadn’t even watched the gentleman’s performance. Perhaps it would be interesting to see how he served his constituents.
I switched the tape on. Once again, the Congressman’s face filled the screen. As he moved into position, I saw what I hadn’t realized before: his partner was Pamela.
After my talk with Pamela last night, I didn’t really want to watch this.
But I did.
I don’t know how to rate the Congressman’s performance. I could damn it with faint praise: it was adequate. Actually, it was not bad.
But there was something else, too, and it bothered me. It really bothered me, and not just because it was with Pamela, although I’m sure that had something to do with it. It was the look on the Congressman’s face. Aside from the ecstasy, of course, there was a look that was gloating, almost cruel. I’m sure I projected a lot of it because I didn’t like the man, but I swear it was there.
I sped through most of it, and through the rest of the tape. I sped through the other tapes too. I learned nothing new, except for the fact that the Congressman appeared in segments on two of the other tapes. He was the only john who appeared more than once, a good indication that he was the big fish in the pond. In every case, his partner was Pamela, which indicated to me that at least he was a man of discernment.
I rewound all the tapes, put them back in the boxes, sat, and thought some more. The only thing I came up with was the fact that I was getting hungry.
I walked out to Broadway and got a slice of pizza. As I stood in the pizza parlor eating it, I spotted Sandy standing on the sidewalk outside. He was all bundled up in a heavy coat and hood, and he was turned sideways and trying to look inconspicuous, but it was Sandy all right.
I was glad to see him. His presence confirmed one thing: he hadn’t realized I’d ditched him deliberately. If he had, he’d have reported to MacAullif that I was wise, and MacAullif would have pulled him off the job and assigned someone else. So the cops were still guessing.
I finished my pizza and walked down Broadway to a penny arcade. I went in and started playing Megazone, one of the video games. Three quarters later, I noticed a guy playing Q-bert a few machines down the row. The guy had been in the pizza parlor with me. He was older than Sandy, and he looked a little like a college professor. It struck me kind of funny. Sandy, the poor student, had fucked up the assignment, and his teacher had come along with him this time to show him how to do it.
I left the penny arcade and led Sandy and the Professor back to my office.
I sat down and reassessed the situation. O.K. I was still in the clear. The cops weren’t wise to the fact that I was wise to them. If they had been, they’d have pulled Sandy off the job. Instead they’d reinforced him with the Professor. So they regarded my ditching Sandy as an accident, and they were just taking care to make sure it didn’t happen again.
And it probably wouldn’t happen again. I’d walked away from one man, but I probably couldn’t walk away from two, particularly when they’d been alerted to see it didn’t happen.
So what the hell could I do? I thought about it, and the answer was: nothing. MacAullif had restricted my movements, so I couldn’t do anything. ’Cause anything I did would tip him off to the fact I was involved, and I couldn’t afford to do that.
Why not?
The thought chilled me. Why not? I was in an impossible position. As long as I operated on the premise that I couldn’t do anything that would give MacAullif a lead, I was stymied. But suppose I threw that premise away? After all, MacAullif knew I was involved, or he wouldn’t be wasting all the time and manpower on me. So what if I confirmed his suspicions? What would that do to me? Or, as I always ask myself, how bad could it be?
I started thinking along those lines. So far I’d accomplished nothing because I’d been bending all my energies toward keeping MacAullif from getting a lead. Suppose I turned things around? Suppose I stirred things up a bit?
Suppose I gave him a lead?
23.
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br /> THIS TIME I didn’t bother with any formalities. I just walked straight through the crowded waiting room up to the receptionist’s desk and said shortly, “Tell the Congressman I’m here.”
Her reaction was encouraging. She regarded me as if I were a hitman sent by the Mafia. She got up, edged around the corner of her desk, and virtually fled into the inner office.
She was back in moments.
“Mr. Jackson,” she said.
I went through the door. I swear she backed away from me as I did.
Congressman Blaine was all cordiality this time. He was up and around the desk with his hand extended before I was even halfway across the room.
“Come in, come in,” he said, smiling and shaking hands. “Do sit down, Mr.—”
“Jackson will do,” I said.
“Yes, but that’s not your name, is it?”
“No.”
The Congressman sat down. “Well, then, who are you?”
“That’s not important,” I told him.
He frowned slightly. “I like to know who I’m dealing with.”
“That’s all right. You’re not dealing with me.”
“True. But I might.”
“Oh?”
“I believe you said you were a private detective. Sometimes in the course of my business it becomes necessary for me to employ one. You strike me as a very competent and resourceful man, and it is conceivable that at some time I might be able to offer you employment.”
“I’ll put it on my resume,” I said.
He frowned. “What?”
“A tentative, potential, future job possibility is rather nebulous. But I’ll certainly consider it.”
“How would I contact you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll contact you.”
He frowned again. “This interview is not going exactly as planned. I would like to know your name.”
“I gathered that.”
“But you’re not going to tell me?”
“No.”
“Is there any reason why you don’t want me to know who you are?”