by Parnell Hall
But it meant I could go up if I wanted to.
I sure didn’t want to. If she was in the shower, maybe I could make her hear by pounding on the door. But if so, I didn’t really want her coming to the door in a bath towel. The woman was hard enough to deal with with her clothes on. I didn’t need any adventures with her naked. With my luck, she’d drop her towel and run giggling into the bedroom to get dressed. And I was having a hard enough time with Alice. I didn’t need Sherry Fontaine’s naked body on my mind the next time Alice and I discussed her pros and cons.
But I was too pissed off to stand in the lobby, and as I said, I just couldn’t bring myself to drive off. So I checked the apartment number again, 4A, got in the self-service elevator, and pushed four.
I got off on the fourth floor and looked around. 4A turned out to be at the end of the hallway in the front of the building. I walked up to it and pounded on the door, hard.
The door swung open. It had been closed, but not latched. When I knocked, it opened a good four inches.
I grabbed the knob with my left hand to hold the door steady, and pounded some more.
Nothing. No response.
I pushed the door open a few more inches and bellowed, “Sherry.”
No answer.
I leaned my head closer to the open door and, sure enough, I could hear the sound of the shower running.
Damn. My worst nightmare. She was in the shower, and I was either gonna stand here like an asshole, or go in and find her naked.
I bellowed, “Sherry,” again, once more to no response.
Aw, hell.
I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and went in.
Jesus Christ!
It was my worst nightmare, all right.
She was stark naked, just like I’d imagined.
She was also dead.
18.
I THREW UP.
I staggered into the bathroom with my head spinning, guided largely by the sound of the running water from the shower, and vomited in the toilet. I ended up on my knees, gripping the edge of the toilet seat, hanging on for dear life.
I threw up when I found my first dead body. And when I found my second. I broke myself of the habit during the Rosenberg and Stone murders, when a bizarre twist of fate had made finding dead bodies just a matter of course. I managed to steel myself to it, blot it out, take it in my stride.
But this was a woman’s body.
A naked body.
Sherry Fontaine’s body.
That was it.
Sherry Fontaine’s body.
For the first time, the body was someone that I knew.
I rubbed my head to clear it, steadied myself and got to my feet. I flushed the toilet. Then I turned on the sink, got some water to rinse my mouth. I knew I shouldn’t be doing those things—I shouldn’t be touching anything, destroying any evidence. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to leave a toilet full of vomit, and god knows I had to rinse my mouth.
There was tube of toothpaste on the sink. Crest. “Look ma, no cavities.” I picked it up, took off the cap, squeezed some toothpaste out on my finger and stuck it in my mouth. I added some water, sloshed it around, got rid of the horrible taste.
I straightened up and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible. I splashed some water in my face. It didn’t help.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Come on, pull yourself together.
I took a few deep breaths, calmed down, steeled myself.
And went back into the other room.
Sherry Fontaine was lying in the middle of the floor. She was lying on her back, with her head twisted to the side. Her legs were apart like in a porno magazine, and I could see the slit of her vagina. It was pulled slightly open by the position in which she’d fallen.
And then her breasts. Those braless breasts that I had found so disturbing. A woman’s breasts are deemphasized when she’s lying on her back. Compound that with her being dead, and you can’t even begin to imagine.
What I’m trying to say is, there was nothing sensual or erotic about Sherry Fontaine’s naked body. The sight was nauseating, sick and sad.
There was a wet pool emanating from between her legs. In death, her bladder had released, the final humiliation. I didn’t notice and almost stepped in it. Thank god I didn’t. It flashed on me, Jesus, just like Lincoln Monroe Jackson. Slipped in urine.
I tried to compose myself. I ran my hand over my face. My god, what do I do, what do I do?
Of course, I knew what I had to do. I had to call the cops.
But not from here. I’d touched enough things in the apartment already. I couldn’t touch the phone. I had to go out and call.
But not yet. First I had to look around. Occupational hazard. If you’re a detective, you have to look around.
I told myself that. Never mind what you think, never mind what you feel, never mind that it’s personal, never mind that you knew her—you’re a detective and you have to look around.
The front door was open. Lying just inside it was a towel. Sherry Fontaine’s body was about ten feet further into the room from that. And the shower was going. She’d been in the shower, someone had knocked, she’d wrapped a towel around her and she’d opened the door—Jesus Christ, an old Bobby Darin song—the man had grabbed her, she’d dropped the towel, and then—
Oh, Christ. It was obvious what happened, but that didn’t help. Nothing helped. And nothing would help. Shit, I gotta get out of here.
Yeah, you’re a detective so you gotta look around.
Some detective.
I went out to the street and called the cops.
19.
SERGEANT THURMAN WAS NOT EXACTLY the most sensitive of men.
“Gees, look at that twat. Ten-to-one it’s a rape.”
A TV detective would have punched him in the face. Except on TV Thurman couldn’t have said that. But a movie detective would have punched him in the face. I, of course, just stood there and seethed.
That remark alone was sufficient to insure my not liking Sergeant Thurman. Sufficient, but not necessary. I wouldn’t have liked him anyway. Thurman was a barrel shaped man with a bull-neck, a flattened nose, and a crewcut. Probably it was the broken nose that did it, but somehow he looked like a man with zero IQ. The eyes, though hard, seemed vacant, as if what they were taking in had nothing to do with what his mouth was spewing out. As if his brain was processing information on some prehistoric, caveman level. His speech, guttural, and flavored with the “duh” sound, added to the primitive image.
The simple ideas his one-cell brain could process, he clung to like the gospel, and his opinions, such as they were, he barked out in a preemptory fashion, as if his word were law.
Which, of course, it was. For though he looked and acted like an army drill sergeant, he was actually a homicide sergeant with the NYPD.
It was about a half-hour from the time I’d called in. Sherry Fontaine’s apartment was a flurry of activity. A Crime Scene Unit was already processing the place for evidence, dusting for fingerprints, and doing the things Crime Scene Units do. A police photographer had already taken a million pictures of Sherry Fontaine’s body, including several closeups of her vagina. I couldn’t help wondering if those were really for evidence, or just to give the boys back at the precinct a thrill. Now the medical examiner was having a crack at her.
“What’s the word, doc?” Thurman barked at him.
The medical examiner, a plump black man with an easygoing manner, looked up from where he knelt by the body and shrugged. “She appears to have been dead for some time. I’ll pin it down when I get her to the morgue.”
“Was she fucked?”
“No obvious signs of semen. I won’t know till I do an internal.”
“Don’t you doctors know anything?”
“I know she’s dead.”
“Gee, you college boys are smart. Wanna tell me what killed her?”
“Most likely she was strangled.”
Shit. I’
d figured that. The Rosenberg and Stone murders had been stranglings. I’d recognized the look. The protruding tongue, the slightly bug-eyed look. The look I’d hoped I’d never see again.
I was residing in the company of a young officer whose instructions were to keep me off to the side and not let me touch anything. I hadn’t moved, so I guess he was doing a hell of a job.
So far, no one had questioned me. That was because the cops had arrived all at once, so there was too much to do. Thurman had ascertained that I was the one who’d called the police, assigned the young cop to ride herd over me, and that had been it.
He turned his attention to me now. He strode over, stuck out his chin at me as if I were a young recruit, and demanded, “You the one called this in?”
“As I told you, yes, I did.”
“What’s your name?”
“Stanley Hastings.”
“You found the body?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How’d you happen to find the body?”
“I came to pick her up. She was late and didn’t answer the bell. The door was open, so I went up to see what was keeping her.”
“The upstairs door was open?”
“The downstairs and the upstairs door. The downstairs door was propped open. When I knocked on the upstairs door, it swung open.”
“You saw the body then?”
“No. First I banged on the door and called her name a few times. She didn’t answer. Then I heard the shower running. Then I opened the door and found her.”
His eyes narrowed. “You heard the shower running?”
“That’s right.”
“You were gonna walk in and surprise her in the shower?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Then why did you open the door when you heard the shower running?”
“I figured she was in the shower so she couldn’t hear me. I went in so I could shout through the bathroom door for her to hurry up.”
“Shout through the bathroom door?”
“Yeah.”
“Not go in the bathroom and find her?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely?” He chuckled. “Oh, it’s absolutely, is it?” His eyes narrowed. “You fuckin’ her?”
I controlled myself with an effort. “No, I was not.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. She wasn’t my girlfriend. I’m a married man.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, gee,” he said with elaborate sarcasm. “Excuse me. A married man. How stupid of me. Then you couldn’t have been fuckin’ her, could you?”
I took a breath. “Sergeant, I’m a little upset at finding a friend of mine dead. I know you gotta ask your questions, but your bedside manner stinks. So let me tell you, I did not have any physical relationship with Sherry Fontaine. I was just picking her up because we’re jurors and—Jesus Christ!”
“What is it?”
“What time is it?”
The young cop guarding me looked at his watch and said, “Ten to ten.” It was an automatic reaction, and one he instantly regretted. Sergeant Thurman glared at him as if he’d just given away military secrets. The young cop seemed to wilt under his gaze.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I gotta make a call.”
“What?” the sergeant demanded.
“I gotta make a phone call.”
He shook his head. “Not now, you don’t. You wanna call a lawyer, you got that right. But no one’s accusing you of anything. There’s no reason to take that attitude.”
“I don’t wanna call a lawyer. I gotta call the court.”
“What?”
“I’m on a jury. I gotta call the court and tell ’em I’m gonna be late.”
“Yeah, well that’s tough,” he said. He jerked his thumb at the detectives processing the apartment. “Phone’s off limits.”
“So have this guy take me down to a pay phone.”
He stuck out his chin. “Where the hell you get off telling me what to do? This isn’t fun and games. This is a murder case, and I need you here.”
“You’re not gonna let me call?”
“You can call when we’re good and ready. Right now we got things to do.”
I smiled. “Thank you, sergeant. You just let me off the hook.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“With the court, I mean. I was gonna be in a lot of trouble with the court for showing up late. Now I’m not. When Judge Davis demands to know why I was late for court and didn’t call in, I’ll be able to state that I asked to call her at ten minutes to ten before court convened, but Sergeant Thurman of the NYPD refused to let me. So thanks for taking the responsibility and letting me off the hook.”
Thurman looked like he wanted to bite my head off. But he was a cop, and he had to work within the court system. He didn’t need the flack. Plus, I hadn’t mentioned that it was a civil suit, which might have made a difference. At any rate, the end result was the young cop took me downstairs to the corner to a pay phone.
Ralph answered on the first ring. I could tell he was not in a good mood. Of course, Ralph was never in a good mood, but even for him. I guess in his business, calls this time of the morning were always bad news.
“Yeah?” he growled.
“Ralph, it’s Stanley Hastings.”
“Hastings, god damn it. Do you know what time it is?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“It’s two minutes till ten, that’s what time it is. Wherever you’re calling from, you’re gonna be late.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“God damn it, two minutes to ten, you’re not supposed to call at two minutes to ten. I told you that. You’re gonna be late, you don’t call at two minutes to ten, you call earlier. So I can inform the judge. I shouldn’t even be on the phone now, I should be out in the hall bringing the jurors in. Instead, I’m on the phone listening to some jerk who calls in at two minutes to ten.
“So where are you, and how late are you gonna be?”
“I’m uptown, and—”
“Uptown!”
“Yes, and I may not make it at all.”
“What?!”
“Listen, Ralph, you don’t understand. I—”
“No, you don’t understand. You can’t call in like this and say you may not make it at all. What happens now is, you’ll be replaced, that’s what. And don’t think it gets you out of service. All you do is lose the time you put in. You go back in the pool, and you start over from day one. And don’t think they’ll take exception and let you go, because I will keep on top of it, and I will see that they don’t. Understand, you’ve blown it, and you’re gonna be replaced.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What?” Ralph said. “You talkin’ back to me? I just told you you’re out. You’re off the jury. You’re replaced. I’m bootin’ you off, and bringin’ in the alternate, and—” It hit him. “Hey, wait a minute. You’re the alternate, aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.”
20.
THEY BROUGHT ME DOWNTOWN and took my statement. They took my fingerprints too, so they could compare ’em with the ones in the apartment. I told them that wasn’t necessary, I’d had my fingerprints taken in a previous case and they’d be on file, but they took ’em just the same.
They also held me for several hours without a charge, which they had no right to do, and if I’d felt like it, I could have called Richard Rosenberg and he’d have come over and kicked some ass. But I didn’t want to do that. Not at this stage in the proceeding. Because Richard Rosenberg, for all his ambulance chasing, is actually a frustrated Perry Mason, and the mention of a murder case gives him a hard-on. He’d come to my aid before a couple of times, and when he did, his method was not to win friends and influence people. If I called him in there’d be hell to pay, and eventually I’d be the one paying it.
Which would be fine, if I were actually suspected of anything. Richard would come trotting in, growling and snapp
ing and barking at everyone like a rabid dog until he got me out of there. But as long as I wasn’t being charged as a suspect, there was no reason to make waves.
Particularly since I didn’t have to get to court. Yeah, I explained to Ralph what I’d meant by the cryptic, “Not anymore.” I know that wasn’t kosher, and if he hadn’t been such an asshole and had let me get a word in edgewise, I wouldn’t have done it. But he was such a schmuck I just couldn’t resist.
After he understood the situation, Ralph was actually rather chastened. Sherry Fontaine was dead, so I was no longer the alternate, I was the juror filling her spot. And since I was the only alternate, there was no alternate to fill my spot, so if I couldn’t be there, court was off. It was a series of circumstances even Ralph couldn’t argue with.
Ralph finally left me hanging on the phone and went off to confer with Judge Davis. He was gone long enough for the mechanical operator to make me deposit two more quarters to avoid being cut off, and finally came back with the word that court was adjourned until Monday morning at ten o’clock.
So I was off the hook, as far as court was concerned.
Whether I was off the hook for murder was something else.
I hung around downtown, and it was hours before anyone got around to me. Finally Sergeant Thurman showed up, and ordered me into an interrogation room where he and a stenographer took my statement.
I was careful during this part, first because what I said was being taken down, and second, because no one had read me my rights. I knew that technically made me safe, but in dealing with the police I’d learned to be wary. I’d also learned that being wary isn’t enough, because I’m not as smart as I think I am. So I was on my guard.
Sergeant Thurman shot a glance at the stenographer and began, “Your name’s Stanley Hastings?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a private detective and you work for the law firm of Rosenberg and Stone?”
“No.”
He frowned. “No? When I questioned you uptown, you said you did.”
“We were talking informally then. You’re taking down the answers here.”