04-Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  In my mind, I immediately dubbed her Tessie the Tumbler, after a character in a detective story who made a living by pretending to be hit by cars, and turning in insurance claims based on X rays of a leg she’d managed to break somewhere.

  I got out my fact sheet and began taking down the information, and Tessie the Tumbler and I were having a fine old time until my beeper went off, which precipitated the boyfriend out of the bedroom like a linebacker blitzing through to tear off the quarterback’s head, and we had a tense moment or two before I got the damn thing shut off and explained.

  “Charlie,” she said. “It’s just the man’s beeper. He has to call his office. Everything’s all right.”

  Charlie glared at me and retreated back into the bedroom, slamming the door. I was glad to see him go. It would not have surprised me too much if he turned out to be a crack addict. It occurred to me that if he was, it was a good thing Tessie the Tumbler had broken her ankle again, because her thirty thousand dollar payoff wasn’t going to last very long.

  I called Rosenberg and Stone. Wendy/Janet answered.

  “I got a new case for you.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In Queens.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I was going to give it to Sam, but the address is too far out, and he has an audition and says he’d never get back in time.”

  Great. A case way out in Queens. Time and mileage. I couldn’t even begrudge Sam his audition. I was happy to have this one.

  I was happier when I heard the details. A Gerald Finklestein, a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman, had got his hand caught in the vacuum cleaner he was demonstrating, and lost a finger.

  I’ve already admitted it’s wrong to laugh at other people’s misfortunes, but some cases I get strike me funny, and I must say, if I hadn’t had a client standing right next to me, I’d have been on the floor. As it was, it was all I could do to keep a straight face.

  I must say, I was getting in a much better mood. This day that had started out so poorly, was really looking up. First, Tessie the Tumbler, and now, Hard-sell Finklestein, the vacuum-cleaner man. Plus, I’m getting out of Harlem and driving way out to Queens on a nice, sunny day. And putting hours and mileage on the paysheet. Things could be worse.

  They were.

  I was just finishing up having Tessie the Tumbler sign the retainer when my beeper went off again.

  At least Charlie didn’t explode from the bedroom again, but when I called in it was worse.

  Hard-sell Finklestein would have to wait a bit.

  I had to keep an appointment with Sergeant Clark.

  8.

  “I HAVE A PROBLEM.”

  My personal opinion was that Sergeant Clark had a lot of problems. I did not express this opinion, however. In fact, I did not express any opinion. I sat and waited.

  I was seated in Sergeant Clark’s office, which was not unlike Sergeant MacAullif’s, with which I was well familiar. Sergeant Clark was seated at his desk. He was playing with a rubber band. I wondered if playing with things at their desks was something sergeants always did. MacAullif usually played with a cigar.

  I must say I was in no way ill at ease at being called into Sergeant Clark’s office. This marked the first time in my life that I’d ever been called into a policeman’s office that this was true. But the thing was, I wasn’t involved in Winston Bishop’s death. Sergeant Clark was welcome to all the information I had. In fact, he had already had it. So anything he wanted had to be total bullshit. If anything I was annoyed. This officious prick was keeping me from my joyride out to Queens.

  “Yes,” Clark repeated. “I have a problem.”

  I wondered if we would sit there all afternoon unless I asked him what his problem was. I was willing to find out. The thing is, I was pissed as hell, and I was damned if I was saying a word.

  “Yeah, big problem,” Clark said.

  Jesus Christ. I was tempted to say, “Is it bigger than a breadbox,” but I’m not that jive, and I don’t really like getting into adversary positions with people.

  So I just sat quiet, which was as hostile as I could handle being. Good old passive-aggressive, that’s me.

  “It’s the Winston Bishop case,” Clark said.

  I’d assumed it was. No new information there.

  “That’s what I have a problem with.”

  Good lord. A new police interrogation technique. Suspects crack through boredom.

  I did.

  “What is your problem?” I asked.

  The question seemed to give Sergeant Clark great satisfaction. You would have thought he had cracked the case, rather than just my composure.

  “Ah! Good question, Mr. Hastings. A very good question. Well, let me tell you something. It may surprise you, but we cops actually work toward solving crime. We take it seriously. We do our homework.

  “Take this case, for instance. Do you know what M.O. stands for?”

  “Modus operandi,” I said.

  He looked at me as if I’d just spoiled his lecture.

  “How do you know that?” he said.

  “Give me a break,” I said. “I read murder mysteries just like anybody else.”

  “Of course,” Sergeant Clark said, with a thin smile. “And that is why you think of the police as bumbling fools, and private detectives as the only ones with any sense.”

  I refrained from comment.

  “All right,” Clark said. “Modus operandi, method of operation. Because killers are not very imaginative. They often repeat themselves. So the first thing we look for is, is there a similarity to another crime.”

  “Have you had other stranglings in Harlem?” I asked.

  The thin smile was even frostier now. “No.”

  Sergeant Clark reached into his file and pulled out a paper. “The similarity in this case is even more striking than that.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “Yes. The case of Darryl Jackson, murdered in Harlem last year.”

  I couldn’t believe it. My déjà vu. And Sergeant Clark had found it.

  “Now,” Sergeant Clark went on, “Darryl Jackson was stabbed with a knife, and Winston Bishop was strangled, but aside from that, the cases are identical. In each case, a black man, living in Harlem, called Rosenberg and Stone, asking for an appointment. The office beeped you, sent you over there and you walked in and found the client dead.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s quite a coincidence.”

  Sergeant Clark fixed me with a hard look. “I don’t believe in coincidence,” he said.

  I resented that. That was MacAuIlif’s line. Sergeant Clark had no right to it.

  “All right,” I said. “You don’t believe in coincidence, but that’s all it was.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Clark said.

  “There’s no maybe about it.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Clark said. “When crimes follow an identical pattern, we have to look for a common link.”

  “A common link?”

  “Yes. To see if they are related. In two crimes so similar as this, we can’t discount the theory that they were committed by the same person.”

  I stared at him. “What, are you nuts? The murderer of Darryl Jackson has been tried and convicted. He’s in jail.”

  Sergeant Clark seemed unimpressed. “It wouldn’t be the first time the courts have made a mistake.”

  “And he confessed to the crime.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a man has made a false confession.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

  “Of course I do. What I’m saying is, in any case where we have two such similar crimes, we cannot discount the fact that they may be part of a pattern. We have to consider the possibility that we are dealing with a serial killer, as in the Son of Sam case, and that these two are part of a series of murders.”

  I stared at him. Good lord. The man was a total moron. A serial killer. A series of mu
rders.

  I knew who killed Darryl Jackson. I knew it very well. And that man was behind bars and had not killed Winston Bishop.

  “May I ask you something?” I said.

  “Certainly.”

  “Have you talked this over with Sergeant MacAullif? He handled the Darryl Jackson case.”

  “Yes, I have,” Clark said.

  “And what is his opinion?”

  “Sergeant MacAullif feels, as you do, that the Darryl Jackson case has been solved.”

  “There you are,” I told him.

  “Of course, he could be mistaken,” Clark said. “And, of course, it’s only natural for an officer to want to feel he’s arrested the right man.” Sergeant Clark smiled at me. “We always have a horror of sending an innocent man to jail, in spite of how cold and uncaring the public might think us to be.”

  I hated him. Worse than that, I felt contempt for him. I flashed on what he’d said about private detectives always thinking they’re smarter than policemen. As I’ve said, I’d always found the reverse to be true. In the cases I’d dealt with, I’d always found the police to be incredibly smart—or at least a lot smarter than I was. And I must say, I’d always had nothing but respect for their intelligence and abilities.

  Until now.

  Sergeant Clark kept me there for half an hour, asking me questions about the Darryl Jackson case. The best I can say is that I was not openly rude. I was not particularly cooperative, either. My answers were, to say the least, succinct. I volunteered nothing.

  I left his office with a chip on my shoulder that must have weighed a ton.

  9.

  I STRODE DOWN the hall to Sergeant MacAullif’s office. He was in. Busy, but in. I waited for about ten minutes while he grappled on the phone with some subordinate who was having a problem with some fingerprint identification.

  Finally, he hung up the phone.

  “Hi,” MacAullif said. “You look just like my detectives do when they spend six months working on a case and the judge throws it out of court. What’s up?”

  “As if you didn’t know,” I said. “Sergeant Clark.”

  MacAullif grinned. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I thought he’d be getting around to you.”

  “I’m glad you find it so funny,” I said. “I’ve just spent a half hour listening to that asshole.”

  “Now, now,” MacAullif said. “Clark’s a good man.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “A good man. A little too straight-laced, a little too by-the-book, but still a good man.”

  “Give me a break,” I said.

  MacAullif laughed. “I’m sorry, but it is kind of funny. Hoist by your own petard, aren’t you? I mean, you mocked up that whole Darryl Jackson thing to get yourself out of a jam, and now it’s come back to haunt you.”

  “I’m glad you think this is so funny,” I told him. “Now that moron, Clark, thinks that those two murders are part of a series, that you arrested the wrong man and that there’s a serial killer running around someplace. Now I’ve got to deal with him, and the man’s a total idiot.”

  “Now, that’s hardly fair,” MacAullif said. “The supposition that Sergeant Clark is going on is the supposition that for two so similar crimes to be committed, it can’t be merely coincidence. It couldn’t just happen that way.” MacAullif smiled. “And, he is absolutely right. It didn’t just happen that way. The crimes are similar because you mocked up the evidence in the Darryl Jackson case. If you hadn’t done that, there would be only one case of a Richard Rosenberg client who called in for an appointment and was discovered dead. And Sergeant Clark would not be bothering you because there would be nothing to go on.

  “What he is reacting to is the fact that, because it happened twice, something must not be kosher, and as I say, he is absolutely right.”

  “But ... but ...”

  “Not doing well, are you?” MacAullif said.

  “Damn it,” I said. “You know what the story is. Why don’t you straighten Clark out?”

  “Well, there we have a problem,” MacAullif said. “In the first place, we are both sergeants. I am not his superior officer, he is not accountable to me, the Winston Bishop case is his and I got no business butting in.”

  “But the Darryl Jackson case was yours.”

  “True.”

  “And he’s stirring it up again.”

  MacAullif shrugged. “Which he has every right to do.”

  “But as a result, he’s making unfounded suppositions and reaching illogical conclusions.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “Straighten him out. Clue him in to what really happened.”

  “Well,” MacAullif said, “that’s the problem.”

  Jesus. Today everyone had a problem.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, see, the things you did in the Darryl Jackson case were not strictly legal. To put it another way, they were illegal. And, unfortunately, the statute of limitations has not yet run out on such crimes as suppressing evidence, compounding a felony and accessary after the fact to murder.” MacAullif looked at me. “Now, as I’ve said, Sergeant Clark is very much by-the-book. And the book would tell Sergeant Clark to prosecute you on those charges.”

  I stared at MacAullif. “You’re telling me there’s nothing I can do?”

  “That’s one thing.”

  “And that I’m fucked.”

  “That’s another. Now,” MacAullif said, “I know I owe you a favor, but as you can see, straightening Sergeant Clark out on the Darryl Jackson case would not really be a big favor.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “So,” MacAullif said, “there you are.”

  And there I was.

  As I’ve said before, it was not a good day. But I was determined to make the most of it. When I finally got out of the police station, I drove out to Queens, feeling as carefree as I could under the circumstances, and ready to enjoy to the fullest, without actually laughing in his face, the plight of Hard-sell Finklestein, the door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman who had had his finger nipped off by his own machine.

  Only when I got there, Hard-sell Finklestein had been strangled.

  10.

  IT WAS HARD to take. And not just finding another dead body. Sure, that was hard to take. I threw up again and the whole bit. No, what was hard to take was Sergeant Clark being right.

  He was right, but for all the wrong reasons. All right, so maybe the Winston Bishop and the Hard-sell Finklestein murders were the work of the same party. Maybe we were dealing with a serial killer.

  But Darryl Jackson was not part of the series. And the Darryl Jackson case was the case upon which Sergeant Clark had based his conclusion. An utterly false conclusion that absurdly, had turned out to be true.

  And the dumb fuck didn’t even know it.

  “Three,” he said, and I swear there was smug satisfaction in his voice. “Now we have three.”

  What an asshole. Yes, now he had three. And who, naturally, was his prime suspect? I didn’t even need the New York Post to point it out to me. It was none other than yours truly.

  And this time when he interrogated me, I had something to hide. Not about the Finklestein murder, of course. About the Darryl Jackson case. Which was enough to make me uneasy and keep me on my guard. What a mess.

  The other thing was, I had information about the Finklestein murder. I’d spoken to him. Of course, that was Sergeant Clark’s fault. Because of Sergeant Clark’s insistence that I come in and talk to him, I’d had to call Finklestein and stall him along. So I, presumably, was the last person to talk to Finklestein while he was alive. Which, I realize, is a stupid way to put it. I’m pretty sure no one talked to Finklestein after he was dead. At any rate, I had that information.

  If Sergeant Clark believed my story. Which he gave every indication that he didn’t.

  We were standing in Finklestein’s foyer. The body was lying there on the living room floor. Having seen two,
I can now go so far as to generalize that a strangled person is not a pretty sight.

  Hard-sell Finklestein was about sixty years old. He was bald with a fringe of white hair. He had a protruding nose and appeared to at one time have had a protruding adam’s apple, which was crammed backward into his throat. His eyes, like Winston Bishop’s, bugged out of his head. In his death throws, he’d apparently puked a stain of green slime down his shirt. Either that, or he was a terribly sloppy eater.

  I’d managed to get to the toilet before I heaved my guts out, which so far seemed to be my only accomplishment in this case. Things were really not going well.

  From where Sergeant Clark and I were standing in Finklestein’s foyer we could see Finklestein’s body lying on the floor in the living room. The living room was swarming with people, and the cast of characters was not that different than what it had been in the Winston Bishop case. This was somewhat remarkable, seeing as how we were in Queens. Indeed, the first detectives on the scene had been from Queens County. But someone must have tipped Clark off, for he had arrived not fifteen minutes on their heels, and citing a tie-in with a previous case, immediately preempted command, so the detectives now processing the crime scene were from his unit.

  The medical examiner was different, however. Bad as my memory is for faces, the first one had been white and this one was black, and that much I could handle.

  The medical examiner rose from the body and came into the foyer. He started to say something to Sergeant Clark, then looked at me, caught himself and looked inquiringly back at Clark.

  “Outside,” Clark said.

  The medical examiner nodded and went out the door. Sergeant Clark looked at me briefly, then followed him out.

  That left me alone in the foyer. I considered going over to the door and watching the activity going on in the living room, but the uniformed cop was eyeing me with extreme suspicion. On second thought, I didn’t really feel like doing it anyway.

  What I felt like doing, if the truth be known, was going home, lying down in bed, pulling a comforter up to my chin, having Alice make me a cup of hot tea with honey, turning on the TV and forgetting about life for a while.