04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  Still, as I said, it was a pretty hilarious time at Rosenberg and Stone, and a jolly good time was had by all.

  It was into this bizarre atmosphere that burst the irrepressible Sam Gravston, fresh from his audition, and ignorant of the events of the afternoon, and oblivious to everyone and everything in the world but his own self.

  “It’s terrific!” he screamed. “They like me! I got a callback! For a part. A real part. Not on a soap, either. For a TV show. Prime time. And not just a show. A sitcom. A series! I can’t believe it. I got a shot at a series!”

  5.

  I HATED HIM.

  If you’re not an actor, you wouldn’t understand, but if you are, I don’t even have to explain. You see, that’s the thing about working in the arts. You can never be really happy about a friend’s success, even a good friend. The thing is, life is such a crapshoot; there’s such a huge distance between success and failure, with really nothing in between. For every actor who gets a part, there are a thousand who don’t. And who never will. And not for lack of talent, either. That’s the excruciating thing.

  And if you’re an unsuccessful actor, what kills you is having to watch the successful ones on television. Not in their shows and movies. That’s all right. At least there you have the opportunity to sit back and comment on how bad the show is, and what a ham the actor is and how poorly he’s doing. No, the thing that kills you is watching them on talk shows. Particularly the early news shows, like “Live at Five,” where an actor is treated as something slightly short of a deity. So you have to sit there and watch some sniveling punk talk about this or that movie, and making the right career choice. And you want to scream out, “You fucking asshole! How dare you sit there talking about career choices, and what is right for your image. Don’t you realize how lucky you are to be working anywhere?”

  See, that’s another thing about the business. For an actor to become successful, it is not necessary for him to be intelligent, likable or even particularly good. And if you’re in the arts, and you’ve spent fifteen or twenty years banging your head against a stone wall, it’s just impossible to relate to some twenty-four-year-old kid’s success. You can’t help feeling they don’t deserve it. They haven’t paid their dues yet. They’re not old enough yet to have even developed a proper sense of futility. So it’s hard to take.

  It was particularly hard for me to take this time. Seeing as how I was the one who had to go to Harlem, lose a half a day’s work, plus stare at a particularly disgusting dead body, and be hassled by an obnoxious cop, so twenty-four-year-old Sam Gravston could get a shot at a sitcom, a career and financial security. Yeah, it was a bit rough.

  My wife, Alice, who is supersensitive to my moods, jumped on me the minute I got home.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I’ve had a bit of a day,” I said.

  I told her about the demise of Winston Bishop and my ordeal with the cops.

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “But it’s over. And it doesn’t involve you.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Then why are you so depressed?”

  “Sam Gravston.”

  “What about him?”

  I sighed. “He may have gotten a series.”

  “A TV series?”

  “Yeah.”

  Alice nodded sympathetically. “Oh.”

  Instant understanding. My wife has shared with me the frustrations of a career in the arts. The problem is, my wife is much more practical than I am, and always has alternative ideas, which, I must confess, I never truly appreciate. That’s because they all involve work. Or, rather, the finding of it. I have no objection to work. But looking for it scares me to death. Getting up in the morning, pushing myself forward, facing the Void, competing with that rising tide of actors and writers. Yeah, when I think of it that way, I realize going into places like Jesus Pagan’s building is not so brave at all. It’s really just the coward’s way out. A way of avoiding the greater fear of looking for work.

  Alice, who is both sensitive and understanding, pointed none of this out to me.

  She simply said, “Don’t worry. Tomorrow will be better.”

  It wasn’t.

  6.

  THE DAY BEGAN on a sour note. I woke up at seven A.M. and realized my car was parked on the good side. Alternate-side parking in my neighborhood is from eight to eleven, which meant if I didn’t hustle, someone parked on the bad side of the street would move their car and double-park in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to get out. I tore on my clothes and stumbled out the door by seven-ten. Sure enough, on our block only one car was already double-parked, but that one car was right in front of mine. Seven-ten is too early to double-park and leave your car, so I was rightfully pissed.

  There was a note in the window. If there hadn’t been, I would have been angry enough to bite off the fender, but there was. Most people who double-park and know the system are thoughtful enough to leave a note in the window. Those who are not thoughtful enough find incredible notes in their windows when they get back.

  This note gave a phone number and an address. I wasn’t in my working gear, I’d just thrown on jeans and a shirt, so I didn’t have a pencil or anything to write the number down. So I kept repeating it over and over to myself as I staggered to the pay phone on the corner.

  And discovered I didn’t have a quarter. Which meant I could still make the call but I had to dial 0-212, and then the number, and then at the tone punch in my calling-card number for Rosenberg and Stone. The calling-card number was for business use only, but if I didn’t get my car moved, I would be doing no business, so I figured its use was legit.

  But the thing was that meant punching a total of twenty-five numbers into the phone. I’m foggy in the morning, particularly before I’ve had my coffee, and I misdialed the first time and had to start over. And, what with repeating the number over and over in my head, and then the digits of the calling-card number and all, by the time the phone was ringing I couldn’t be at all certain the number I’d dialed was right.

  And I got an answering machine.

  Had I been certain the number I’d dialed was correct, I would have loved to have left a message telling how I felt about a person who double-parked his car, left a note in the window and then turned on his answering machine. But I wasn’t sure, and the only way I could make sure was by going all the way back up the block to my car, memorizing the number again and coming all the way back and punching twenty-five numbers into the phone again and the whole bit.

  I wasn’t up to that. Instead, I memorized the address, which was an apartment building on West End Avenue, walked over there and rang the bell.

  I rang five times before a sleepy voice on the intercom system said, “Yes.”

  “Your car’s double-parked and your answering machine’s on,” I said, as politely as possible under the circumstances.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  He was, in about fifteen minutes, after which he moved his car and I moved mine. That left me just time to rush upstairs, shower and put on my suit and tie, and help Alice hustle Tommie downstairs so I could drive him to his school over on the East Side.

  By the time I got back from there it was eight-thirty, and since it was after Labor Day, and everyone was back from their summer vacations, and Columbia University had started and the college kids were all here, it was that insane time of year in my neighborhood when not a parking spot can be found. I cruised around for over half an hour before I was able to double-park.

  Yes, I left a note in my window.

  I walked to the newsstand on Broadway and bought the New York Post, then went for coffee and a muffin at Au Petit Beurre on the corner of 105th. Au Petit Beurre was doing a brisk business, as usual, which shows you what a French name will do. I doubt if the Little Butter restaurant would have done half as well.

  I sat there, drinking my coffee and reading my Post, and suddenly, there it was, a kick in the face on page eight. Ordinarily,
a routine, sordid strangling in Harlem would not have rated that much ink, but the reporter had found a handle for the story.

  “INJURED MAN STRANGLED,” ran the headline. A sub-headline, in smaller type, read: “CALLS LAWYER FOR HELP, WINDS UP DEAD.” The story told how Winston Bishop, who had broken his arm, had called the law firm of Rosenberg and Stone (the reporter had quoted Richard’s slogan from the TV ads: “No case too big, no case too small.”), and the law firm had sent out an investigator, who had walked in and found him dead. The story concluded with the sentence, “The investigator, Stanley Hastings of Manhattan, is not being held by the police at this time.”

  I was furious. That fucking reporter. What insinuation! What innuendo! Not being held by the police at this time. And yet there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t slander. It wasn’t libel. It was the truth. I was not being held by the police at this time. The reporter had made a simple statement of fact.

  But the implications....

  Damn!

  I had just read that when a prim, prissy-looking business man in a three-piece suit stuck his head in the door and demanded, “Anyone here own a Toyota?”

  I was pissed off as hell when I moved it. Those who play the alternate-side parking game are supposed to know the rules. If you’re on the good side and you plan to leave for work at nine-thirty, you get up at seven like I did and double-park your car so you can get out. You don’t show up at nine-thirty, acting indignant that you’ve been blocked in. Because the guys who double-park have rights too, and one of them is, except in emergency situations, they shouldn’t be bugged to move their cars again between eight and ten-thirty, when everyone starts to move back.

  I had just moved the car, and decided since I was in it I’d head out to the Bronx for those three picture assignments, when I got beeped, and when I called in Wendy/Janet sent me to Harlem again because a new case had come in and Sam Gravston couldn’t take it because he had a meeting with his agent.

  That was all I needed to hear. In the years I’d worked as an actor I’d never managed to get an agent, let alone have meetings with one. In fact, getting an agent had always seemed as hard to me as getting work. It had taken me two years to get an agent for my magazine articles, and even then I wouldn’t have gotten one if Alice hadn’t met someone who happened to know someone. But Sam Gravston hadn’t had any trouble.

  I was in a bad enough mood, what with having had my car blocked, having been bad-mouthed in the New York Post, and having had my coffee and muffin interrupted by a creep who didn’t know the system, so having my photo assignments aborted for a second time for Sam Gravston did not endear him to me at all.

  All in all, Sam Gravston was rapidly earning a place on my shitlist.

  7.

  I WASN’T ALL THAT keen on going back to Harlem. I figured I’d be sure to draw a bad building, and after yesterday my nerves were not in great shape.

  However, the building wasn’t that bad. It was a fairly new brick apartment building on Convent Avenue, and it probably wouldn’t have bothered me at all going in there, except for the fact that when I did, once again I had a sense of déjà vu. What do you call it when you get déjà vu again? Déjà déjà vu? At any rate, it increased when I got out of the elevator and looked for apartment 4B, where the client, Shirley Woll, lived. The apartment door seemed familiar, too.

  But the guy who opened the door when I knocked sure wasn’t. I couldn’t have forgotten him. He was a black man of about thirty-five, with deep-set eyes and a protruding jaw that made him look as if he were about to punch your lights out. I must admit I took a half step backward when he appeared in the door.

  “Yeah?” he growled.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m from the lawyer’s office.”

  He stared at me for a moment.

  Then he said, “Shit!”

  Then he slammed the door in my face.

  I stood there in the hallway. I must say, I was not in the best of moods.

  Thanks, Sam.

  From within the apartment came the sound of raised voices. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell that someone was not happy. The guy who’d opened the door for me seemed to be a good bet.

  It had sometimes happened that a client would call Rosenberg and Stone and then their spouse, or mate, or whatever would turn out to be not particularly happy about it, and they would wind up canceling. I had had discussions of that sort take place in my presence. But I’d never had one of them take place with me standing in the hall.

  Thanks, Sam.

  The door was opened by a black woman of about the same age as the man. She was slightly plump and had a roundish face.

  And she smiled at me, and said, “Mr. Hastings?”

  I was not in a good mood to begin with. And meeting this woman’s cheerful friend had not helped. But her seeming to recognize me blew my mind.

  I should explain. I’m terrible with names, and I’m terrible with faces. I know these aren’t great traits for a private detective, but then I’m not really a private detective. And working for Rosenberg and Stone I must have interviewed between five hundred and a thousand clients. So even if this woman was someone I’d interviewed before, there was no reason for me to remember her.

  But she was black.

  And ringing in my ears, like a death knell, was the haunting, taunting voice of Sergeant Clark, saying, “Remember, a lot of these blacks all look alike, anyway.”

  The thing was, I didn’t recognize her. Now, I happen to know that if she’d been one of Richard’s white clients, I wouldn’t have recognized her either. But that didn’t help. Not after my encounter with Sergeant Clark.

  I felt like shit.

  I had her name in my notebook, Shirley Woll, but that didn’t help me any, ’cause I’m as bad at names as I am at faces. So there I was with egg on my face and this woman grinning at me.

  And I knew just what she was going to say.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  And those are the words I always dread to hear. ’Cause I’m always running into people who look vaguely familiar, and I can’t place ’em. And sometimes they’re people I really ought to know. Of course, I never know if they are or not, so every vaguely familiar face is a potential source of acute paranoia to me. Because, what if it’s someone I’m supposed to know? I don’t want to be rude. “So-and-so was very hurt that you didn’t remember him.” I’m sure he was, and I hope he gets over it. And I hope he also realizes the fault is not his, in not being memorable, but mine, in having no memory. At any rate, I’m always terrified that the person will turn out to be someone I should remember, like the principal of my son’s school, or my mother-in-law, or someone else I can equally ill afford to offend.

  In this case, my mind was reeling. At least I knew she wasn’t my mother-in-law. She was obviously a former client, but which of the thousand broken limbs had been hers?

  And that damn, familiar question, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Rather than a bold-face admission, I hemmed and hawed with, “Well, now, let me see ...” And as I had hoped, she jumped in with helpful hints.

  “It was two years ago. I broke my ankle and you came to see me. I fell on the subway steps at 125th Street.”

  And immediately I placed her. And immediately I felt like a schmuck. Sure, I can’t remember the people, just the places where they fell.

  Shirley Woll had fallen on the stairs from the platform up to the token booth on the uptown side of the number six train. There was a crack in the stairs, and when I shot my pictures, school had just let out, so there were about a hundred kids crawling around all over the place. They all got real interested when they saw the flash going off, and by the time I finished shooting, I had a huge audience. And I could hear whispers in the crowd. “Private detective.” I was new enough on the job to have gotten a kick out of it then. So it stuck in my memory.

  “Of course I remember,” I said.

  But, having gotten over
that hurdle, I was suddenly faced with another one. Why the hell was I here? I’d been told that it was a new case, but this was an old one. And the thing was, when I sign people up, and they ask me, I tell ’em, “Don’t expect any money for a while. These things take twelve to eighteen months to sort out.” But, of course, I don’t really know. Once I sign the case and shoot the pictures, it’s out of my hands. I never hear about it again. But seeing as how I’d told her eighteen months, and it had been eighteen months, I kind of hated to ask her. But I had to.

  “So how’d the case go?” I said, rather hesitantly.

  It was all right.

  “Oh, it’s all taken care of,” she said. “I was in to see Mr. Rosenberg just last week, and we got a settlement. Thirty thousand dollars.”

  I blinked. Jesus Christ. I mean, I knew Richard Rosenberg had to be making money, or he wouldn’t be doing what he was doing. But, really. Thirty thousand dollars. For a lousy broken ankle. His contingency fee is a third, so he made ten grand. I make ten bucks an hour plus thirty cents a mile. Seeing as how the case was in Harlem, with virtually no travel time, by signing the case and taking the pictures I’d have made thirty bucks plus mileage, tops. It occurred to me I was in the wrong line of work.

  It also occurred to me that I was still at sea as to why I was there.

  “Then why did you call us?” I asked.

  She was wearing a full-length housecoat. She bent down, grabbed the fabric near the bottom and with a slightly sheepish or maybe even shit-eating grin, raised up the skirts.

  On her right ankle was a fresh, white cast.

  I looked at her. “Same ankle?”

  “Yup.”

  “But not the same stair?”

  “No. I fell on the front steps of a private house.”

  She was grinning and shaking her head, and I must admit I was grinning, too. It was a first for me. My first repeat customer.