by Parnell Hall
I thought about Tommie’s tuition, Con Ed, and the phone bill. It was not a happy thought. Well, tax time would be rolling around, and with the year I’ve had, I should be due for a refund. If we’re not evicted by then, I’ll pay the rent.
A car’s headlights snapped on a half-block away. I instinctively gunned the motor, skidded, fishtailed, and nearly side-swiped a parked car. I must have been really tired. I mean it’s not as if someone else was gonna ace me out of the spot. There wasn’t another car for blocks.
The car I’d seen turned out to be one of those that had been bunged up into the drift. It took the driver 20 minutes to get it out, even with a shovel and with me getting out and pushing, which I sure as hell did. I was so pumped up by the time the car finally lurched out of the drift, that if anyone had come along and tried to park in that spot, MacAullif would have had another chance to nail me for murder. Fortunately, no one did. I pulled by the space, gunned the motor, cut the wheel, and slammed backward into the drift. The car teetered on the brink for a moment. Then the wheels grabbed, and I slid back and in.
I killed the motor and killed the lights. Then I slumped forward, exhausted, on the steering wheel.
Well, I’d done it. “Private detective conquers fear--extradites self from holy mess.” Had I really conquered fear? Well, I hadn’t peed in my pants when X pulled the knife—that was something. But I hadn’t taken the knife away from him, given him a spanking, and handed him over to MacAullif, either. Instead, I’d jumped out a window, which, I guess, lay somewhere in between. Well, I suppose it’s a start.
I got out of the car, went into my building, woke up the elevator man, and had him take me upstairs. I unlocked the door and let myself into the apartment. Alice had left the foyer light on for me.
I pulled off my boots, and took off my coat and my tie and jacket, or what was left of them after my brush with X. Add the cost of a suit and coat into my list of debits.
I tiptoed down the hall and looked in on Tommie. He was sleeping soundly in his Keith pajamas—dressed as one of the Space Explorers from Voltron.
I went into the bedroom. Alice had left the reading light on for me. She was sleeping, of course, but she was tossing and turning fitfully, and making grunts and groans. I realized for the first time how hard all of this had been on her. It’s tough when you get so caught up in something, and then you realize you’re not thinking about anybody else but yourself.
I leaned over and put my hand on her shoulder.
“It’s all over,” I whispered. “The cops got the guy who did it. I’m out of danger. Everything’s all right.”
I swear she was asleep. But when I said it, she rolled over and lay quiet.
41.
THERE WERE A FEW LOOSE ENDS to tie up.
I stopped by MacAullif’s office the following afternoon to make sure everything was squared away.
“Pamela Berringer is out of it,” MacAullif assured me. “Her name has not been mentioned, and it won’t be mentioned. Nor will she be hassled in any way. Consider the matter dropped.”
I thanked him.
“No need to thank me. We just happen to have the matter tied up, and she doesn’t happen to be involved. But, just between you and me, you know and I know she’s a hooker, and she happens to be the Skirt. And in all probability, her husband is the Parka. Now all of that paints a nice little picture, but it doesn’t happen to be one that concerns me.”
“What about the Congressman?”
“What about him?”
“Well, what are you gonna do about him?”
“Nothing. He didn’t kill him. He’s not involved.”
“He found the body. He didn’t report it.”
“So did the Skirt and the Parka,” MacAullif pointed out.
“There’s a difference.”
“I fail to see it.”
“The Skirt and the Parka have never been questioned by the police. The Congressman has. And he lied. The most you have on the Skirt and the Parka is failing to report a crime. But the Congressman lied to the police in an official investigation. That’s obstructing justice. It’s a huge difference.”
MacAullif looked unhappy. “I suppose you could look at it that way.”
“Well, how the hell do you look at it?”
MacAullif was a big man and a tough man, and somehow I couldn’t picture him squirming. But he was.
“Listen,” he said. “Sometimes there are things about my job I don’t like.”
I stared at him. “Are you telling me you’ve been ordered to lay off?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not telling you that.”
“But you have, haven’t you?”
He said nothing.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “After all that crap you fed me about being a sergeant all your life and not swallowing the department line, you’re gonna let the Congressman walk. I guess that was all horseshit, right? All part of the trap? You never meant it at all.”
He whirled on me. “Son of a bitch! You know I meant it. Just between you and me the Congressman’s a slime. And I tell you, if I had anything on him, anything at all, orders or no orders, I’d nail his ass to the wall.”
“But you do. You’ve got a witness.”
“What witness?”
“Celia Brown.”
“Yeah.” He looked at me. Sighed. “Celia Brown is dead.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Yeah. She’s dead.”
“My god. How’d it happen?”
MacAullif twisted the cigar in his hands. I could feel the anger in him.
“Well,” he said. “I told you she was a junkie. Well, you know how it is with a street hooker who does drugs. She turns tricks all day to get the money to score. Then her pimp comes along and beats her out of most of it. So she never has enough to score much dope at a time. Just enough to keep the monkey off her back, keep her going another day. So, as near as we can piece it together from talking to some of her street friends, this is what happened. Day before yesterday she finishes her day’s work, her pimp rips her off, she gets ready to score. And what should happen, but a guy comes along and lays five hundred bucks on her. It’s a windfall to her. She’s never had that much money of her own at one time, not that her pimp didn’t know about.
“So she buys skag. A lotta skag. Not just enough to get along. For once she’s gonna have herself a good time.
“So next morning an O.D.’d junkie hooker shows up in the morgue. We didn’t I.D. her till late last night. I just found out this morning.”
I stared at him. “That’s murder,” I said.
“Sure it is,” he said. “But it’s one that’s impossible to prove. Even if we could I.D. the Congressman as the guy who gave her the money—and we can’t—there’s no case. And without Celia Brown’s testimony there’s no case against him on the other thing. So that’s that.”
I sat there, feeling slightly lower than shit. I looked down at the floor. Then I looked up at him.
“I have to tell you something. I’m the one who told the Congressman the cops had a witness. I told him the first time I saw him. I was trying to get a rise out of him. Running a bluff. It was my fault. I’m an amateur and I made a mistake.”
“Well,” MacAullif said, “the pros ain’t so good either. I told him the same thing.”
I looked at him. “For real?”
“Yeah, for real. So take your penny-ante guilt and shove it, mister. It happened to you once. Just for your information, it happens to me all the fucking time.”
MacAullif shook his head. “All right, look,” he said. “I’ll tell you something. Off the record. I’ve got orders to lay off. But I’ll tell you something else. If I had anything, anything at all, I’d nail that fuck to the wall.”
I was hopelessly torn. Talk about a moral dilemma. MacAullif didn’t know about the tape. If I told him, he’d go after the Congressman. I was sure of it. But Pamela Berringer was on the tape, and I’d have to give her up too.<
br />
I couldn’t do it. Even if MacAullif promised her immunity all the way, I couldn’t do it. Some crazy, prehistoric, macho instinct in me that I didn’t even know I had, and that Pamela Berringer certainly wouldn’t even have appreciated, made me feel it was my duty to protect her, told me I couldn’t even let MacAullif see that tape of her, whether he did anything with it or not.
So what the hell could I do?
“So that’s it,” I said. “The police look the other way and the Congressman walks.”
“If you want to put it that way, yeah.”
“It’s not right,” I said.
MacAullif snorted. “Tell me something new.”
“All right,” I said. “Legally, there’s nothing we can do about the Congressman. But the son of a bitch shouldn’t get off scott free. The son of a bitch ought to pay.”
“No argument here. But it’s not gonna happen.”
“I know. The police look the other way and he walks.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“Suppose,” I said, “it were the other way around.”
He looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Suppose the police looked the other way and he paid?”
He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well,” I said. “Speaking hypothetically now, suppose, just suppose, there was a way to make him pay. Providing the police did nothing about it. Would that interest you?”
“That would interest me a lot,” MacAullif said. “Hypothetically, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hypothetically speaking, I would like to know how that could be done.”
I told him.
42.
“I DID YOU A SERVICE, and I want to get paid.”
Congressman Blaine regarded me as if I’d just crawled out from under a rock.
“Let me make something clear,” he said. “The reason I let you in here today was to tell you I don’t want to see you again. If you call on me again, you will not be admitted. If you make a nuisance about it, I will call the police.”
“That’s a very noble sentiment,” I said. “And I understand it entirely. I have no intention of ever calling on you again.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“But I’m calling on you now. I did you a service, and I want to get paid.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know what I’m talking about. The Darryl Jackson murder.”
He looked at me. “It was on the radio. They arrested some punk for it. The Darryl Jackson case is solved.”
“I know. I solved it.”
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
“Yeah, well that’s the way it happened.”
“So what? I tell you, the Darryl Jackson case has nothing to do with me.”
“I know that. That’s why I told you I’d keep you out of it. That’s the service I did you. I kept you out of it.”
“You didn’t keep me out of it, you son of a bitch. You sicked the cops right on me. I had to pull some pretty fancy strings to convince them I wasn’t involved.”
“Don’t blame that on me,” I said. “I didn’t tell the cops a thing about you. I told you, they had a witness. That’s how they got onto you. I kept you out of it. That’s the service I did you, and that’s why I expect to be paid.”
“Well, the service was ineffective, and payment will not be made. I never requested any service and I never promised any payment, if you’ll recall.”
“That’s a bad attitude to take,” I told him. “The case may be solved, but there’s other matters to be tied up. They can’t get you for killing Darryl Jackson, mainly because you didn’t, but you did search his apartment, and you lied to the police about it. That’s breaking and entering, suppressing evidence, obstructing justice, and makes you an accessory after the fact to murder.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“The police can. They have a witness.”
“They don’t have a witness. She—” He cut himself off, but it was enough. It was all I needed to hear to convince me that he’d done it. To make me not feel guilty about what I was about to do.
“Not talking to the cops was only a part of the service,” I said. “If you’ll just bear with me a minute.”
I got up from my chair and reached in my coat pocket.
“I see you have a VCR here,” I said, walking over to it.
I pulled the video tape out of my coat pocket.
“I have a tape here I think you ought to see.”
I punched the VCR on and hit the eject button. A tape popped out.
“Front-loading. Classy,” I said.
I shoved in my tape. Turned on the TV. Hit the play button.
There was the usual burst of snow, then the picture of Congressman Blaine and Pamela Berringer filled the screen.
I let it play for a few seconds, then hit the stop button, and pressed eject.
I took the tape out of the machine. I walked over and laid the tape on his desk.
He was staring at me expressionless, poker-faced, like a player waiting to hear the next bet.
“This is the service I was referring to,” I said. “Getting you this tape. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s what you searched Darryl Jackson’s apartment to find. It’s what you were so afraid the cops would get their hands on.
“Well, they didn’t. I kept it from them. And now I’m bringing it to you. That’s the service, and I want to be paid.”
He looked at me a long time.
“So,” he said. “That’s what this is. Blackmail.”
“Certainly not,” I said. “I’m a reputable private detective. I’ve done some work and I want to be paid for it. I defy you to tell me I haven’t done you a service. I did you a service and I want to be paid. I want $20,000.”
He stared at me. “You’re out of your mind.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “Frankly, it ought to be fifty. I was gonna ask fifty, but then I’m just a nice guy. And fifty’s too much for you to raise easily without making waves. I figure you can handle twenty all right.”
He stared at me. “Who the hell are you?”
“That’s not important,” I said. “All you need to know is I’m a guy who did you a service who wants to be paid.”
He thought for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Fine. Now listen. I thank you for bringing me this tape. It was probably your duty to do so. You were right to bring it to me and not to the police. A public servant is under certain scrutiny, and in order to do his job effectively and serve his constituents, he has to maintain a certain image, and adhere to standards more strict than those enforced upon the general public. So what you’ve done is of some value.
“But $20,000 is out of the question.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s peanuts compared to what Darryl Jackson was shaking you down for. And it’s not blackmail. No one’s gonna bleed you white. This is a one-shot deal. You’re paying me for a service. As I said before, when I walk out of here you’re never gonna see me again.”
He took the tape and slipped it in his desk drawer.
“Frankly, I see no reason why I should pay you anything at all,” he said.
“I was afraid you might have that attitude,” I said. “But I have worked hard on this case, and I don’t intend to take a loss. In the event you do not wish to pay me for my service, I have copies of this tape for channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 11. It will be interesting to see which station pays me most. It will also be interesting to see which one has the most guts. I don’t know how much they can show on TV. Some of ’em may black out half the screen. Others may go with a small black rectangle. I don’t know, but it will be fun to find out.”
“But this isn’t blackmail,” he said sarcastically.
“Certainly not,” I told him. “I did you a service and I want to be paid.”
“Oh stop saying that!
” he said irritably. “All right. All right. Obviously, I don’t carry $20,000 on me.”
“I know that,” I told him. “I’ll take a check.”
He looked at me incredulously. “You’ll what?”
“I trust you. You’re an honest man. I’ll take your check.”
“A blackmailer taking a check?”
“I told you this isn’t blackmail.”
“Yes. You did.”
He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a checkbook.
“Fine. If that’s the way you want it.”
He opened the checkbook. Took out a pen.
He looked up at me then, and despite his predicament, there was a note of triumph in his eye.
“All right, wise guy,” he said. “You think you’re so damn smart. I can’t make this out to cash, you know. After working so hard to remain anonymous, you’re gonna have to give me a name.”
“I can’t help that,” I said. “You can’t have everything.”
He took the pen, poised it over the checkbook.
“All right, wise guy,” he said. “How shall I make it out?”
I waited until he looked back up at me before I told him.
“Make it out to Matilda Mae Smith,” I said, “of Jersey City, New Jersey.”
43.
I RODE THE SUBWAY HOME. It was rush hour, and I was strap-hanging in an unmercifully crowded car, but I didn’t care. I was feeling pretty good.
I was glad I got the money for Matilda Mae Smith. The Congressman shouldn’t have got off scott free. And the law couldn’t touch him. There was nothing MacAullif could do, not without those tapes, and I couldn’t give them up. Not with Pamela Berringer in them. So it was right he should have to pay. It wasn’t enough, but it helped.
And I couldn’t have taken the money for myself, much as I need it. Then it would have been blackmail. The way I saw it, this wasn’t. It was paying off a debt.
I suppose you could say I had an ulterior motive for giving the money to Matilda Mae Smith. You could say giving the money to a black woman was a gesture made by a disillusioned liberal to ease his conscience for the guilt he felt over the fear he felt about going into certain black neighborhoods. You could say that, and you’d probably be at least a little bit right.