by Parnell Hall
“Damned if it doesn’t.” MacAullif picked up the phone, punched a button. “Daniels. Get me a rap sheet on—.What’s the guy’s name again?”
“David Melrose.”
“David Melrose. Rap sheet and a Motor Vehicle check. Find it and bring it in.” He hung up the phone.
“Motor Vehicle check?” I said.
“Hey, why not? You’ll get a birth date and address. And if the guy’s got no convictions, it’s better than nothing.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He shrugged. “Hell, it’s the easiest way to get you out of my office. And it happens to be a piece of cake. Now, you really want some advice?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s a piece of shit assignment, seems stupid to me, but I want to give the woman value for her money.”
“Then you’re doin’ the right thing. If the guy’s got a criminal record, that ought to do it. If he doesn’t, there’s only a few other things that matter. You check if he’s married?”
“Not according to Vital Statistics.”
“Yeah, well it ain’t always accurate. He own any property?”
“I haven’t checked, but according to his girlfriend he doesn’t claim to, so there’s not much point.”
“Yeah, unless he owns a lot of property he don’t want her to know about. Like property he screwed other women out of.”
“Shit.”
MacAullif grinned. “Hadn’t thought of that? You have much too trusting a nature.” He thought a moment. “You check up on his work?”
“No. What’s to check?”
“You won’t know till you try. Where’s he work?”
I gave him the address of the advertising agency David Melrose worked for. MacAullif picked up the phone, called information, got the number and punched it in.
“What you doin’?” I said.
“Just checkin’.”
“Checkin’ what?”
MacAullif held up his hand. “Yes, could I speak to David Melrose, please? ... David Melrose. Is this the Breelstein Agency? ... Fine, could I speak to David Melrose?” A pause, then, “David Melrose, please?” MacAullif grinned and hung up the phone.
I looked at him. “What the hell did you just do?”
“Saved you a couple of hours of work and got you something you can use.”
“What?”
“Whatever David Melrose told your client, he is not a big wheel at this agency. The receptionist has to double-check to place the name. Then she says, “Oh, yes,” puts me on hold, and the next thing I know a voice answers sayin’, ‘Mail room.’”
“No shit.”
“None. So David Melrose is not an executive at this agency, he works in the mail room. If he’s told your client anything different, that’s one thing you’ve found out and one strike against him.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because it’s too simple and direct. You were probably workin’ on some scheme to go to the agency posin’ as an executive from some company lookin’ for someone to handle a big advertising account.”
I said nothing. In the course of the morning, I’d considered exactly that.
“So now you don’t have to,” MacAullif said. “Score one for the home team.”
The phone rang. MacAullif scooped it up. “Yeah?” He listened a few moments, said, “Thanks,” and hung up. “Well, we drew a blank.”
“Oh?”
“I got rap sheets on three David Melroses, none of them yours.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. One’s sixty-eight, one’s black, and one’s a juvenile.”
“Not mine.”
“No shit. Motor Vehicles shows four David Melroses, not yours either.”
“Verified?”
“Trust me. Two of them are the same as the rap sheet, the other two are out of the age range.”
“Shit.”
“Hey, it’s good and it’s bad.”
“What’s good about it?”
“No record at all means maybe David Melrose isn’t the guy’s right name.”
“That’s good?”
“Sure. It would mean he’s a creep, which is what you want to find out.”
“Right. But there’s nothing to go on. I mean, how the hell can I tell if it’s his right name or not?”
MacAullif shrugged. “Only one way I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
“Tail him.”
7.
I HATE SURVEILLANCE. I HATE it because it’s what TV detectives do, and on TV it looks so easy. But in real life it is such a pain in the ass. Because the TV detective is following a script, and unless the script calls for him to lose the subject, he doesn’t lose him. And unless the script calls for the subject to spot the detective, he doesn’t spot him. And, worst of all, eventually the subject will go someplace and lead the detective to something useful, because otherwise the scene wouldn’t be in the damn script. In real life, even if the surveillance is performed perfectly, and the subject doesn’t lose the detective or spot him, there is still no reason to believe he will ever lead the detective anywhere.
Which makes the whole thing a less than attractive proposition. I mean, if you were to check the forms of people applying for career guidance, I doubt if you would find many of them had indicated a preference for something difficult, tedious, and most likely futile and pointless.
But that’s what I was up to later that afternoon. There I was, the tough P. I., stakin’ out the Breelstein Agency.
I was across the street with a picture of David Melrose waiting to spot the bum when he came out the front door. If he came out the front door. If they didn’t have a side service entrance for mail room employees.
Not to worry. He came out the revolving door promptly at five o’clock wearing a spiffy suit and tie, just as if he really were a high-level executive.
I didn’t like him at once. I hadn’t liked his picture, and I liked him even less in person. He was young and handsome, with curly black hair and a pretty boy face, medium height and a thin, youthful build. But there was something sharp about him. Something smooth, something slimy. I could tell all that from across the street.
Unless, of course, I was projecting it. Which was quite possible. Because I looked at him and I looked at my client, and I thought, Jesus Christ, why is the sleazo son of a bitch messing around with her?
Just as I had that thought, bingo, there she was, gingham, calico and all, throwing her arms around his neck and giving him a big kiss on the cheek.
Which I really wasn’t ready for. A mousy Melissa Ford I could deal with. An animated mousy Melissa Ford was something else. I couldn’t see from that far, but I could tell the eyes behind those wing-tipped glasses must be shining.
He put his arm around her and walked her down the street.
So far, the picture I had envisioned was checking out—David Melrose, mail room employee posing as advertising executive does not let girlfriend come up to the office to see where he really works, but meets her out front in the street. Davey-baby, I got you pegged.
I followed them from a discreet distance. Of course, Melissa Ford showing up had complicated the situation. There was no immediate danger of David spotting me, but Melissa Ford knew who I was. I hadn’t told her I was going to tail David, and I had no idea how she would take to the idea. If she spotted me, there’d be hell to pay. Even if she didn’t outwardly disapprove, I couldn’t imagine her being cool enough not to let on.
They walked up to the corner and stepped out in the street to hail a cab.
On TV there’s always a second cab for the detective to hail. Piece of cake. Right. Just hop in and say, “Follow that cab.” I guess none of those TV shows were shot at rush hour in midtown Manhattan.
However, for once, luck was with me. They’d walked up Madison, and since Madison is one-way uptown, any cab they hailed would have to pass me first.
“Not through the Iron Duke,” I muttered, stepping out into the street. It was a ph
rase left over from my bridge playing days, sometimes uttered when playing a king on a trick. It worked on cabs too—when a vacant one came along, I got it first. I hopped in, and as usual made the cabbie’s day when he found out what it was I wanted.
We sat there another five minutes until Melissa and David got a cab, then followed them uptown to a small restaurant on Third Avenue. Which, of course, was a big pain in the ass because I had to hang out on the sidewalk while they ate their way through a leisurely two-hour dinner.
While they did, I began to have serious doubts. Shit, maybe this was a match made in heaven, maybe I was wasting my time. What bothered me most, was what I was gonna have to tell Melissa Ford Monday morning. “Yeah, the guy’s a real sleazeball. I checked him out. You know what he did? He went out and had dinner with you.”
What was also bothering me was wondering if after dinner she’d go back with him to his apartment. If she did, I didn’t want to know it. Hell, I didn’t even want to think about it. It was none of my damn business. But I’d taken the job, so it was my business. I just didn’t like my business.
When they finished dinner, we went through the same cab routine again, and I followed them to an apartment building on York Avenue. So she wasn’t going up to his apartment. He was going up to hers. I wondered if that was better, worse, or just the same.
He didn’t though. They got out of the cab, she gave him a hug, he kissed her discreetly on the cheek and she turned and went inside.
He got back in the cab. I, like a schmuck, had let mine go.
I looked around frantically in a blind panic, but fortunately rush hour was over and, just like on TV, a vacant cab was coming down the street. It was on the wrong side, but what the hell, beggars can’t be choosers. I sprinted across the street and flagged it down.
The cabbie was a little startled by the request. “What?” he said.
“Make a U-turn and follow that cab.”
“You shitting me?”
I flashed my I.D. at him. “Not at all. This is legit, and I’ll pay the tickets. Just don’t let the guy get wise.”
“Say, what is this?” the cabbie said.
“Just boring, sordid, domestic surveillance.”
It didn’t sound boring to him. “Son of a bitch,” he said, and wheeled the cab into a U-turn and took off after David’s cab, which had already started down the street.
“Don’t crowd him,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” the cabbie said. “Will he be lookin’ for a tail?”
“He shouldn’t be.”
“Then it’s a piece of cake. Just leave it to me.”
The cabbie was young, white, long-haired, probably an unemployed actor working a job-job, and he was obviously getting a kick out of the whole thing. I can’t say that I was. I’d realized the direction we were heading in was the direction of David Melrose’s address, and in all likelihood he’d pay off the cab and go home and that would be that.
But he didn’t. A half a dozen blocks down York the cab pulled into the curb and David Melrose got out and went to a pay phone.
That was something. There’d been a pay phone on the corner in front of Melissa Ford’s building. But David Melrose hadn’t used it. Instead he’d driven out of sight of her building to make the call.
I’d sure have liked to know who he was calling, but there was no chance of me hopping out of my cab and getting close enough to overhear. Not without him spotting me. And even though he didn’t know who I was, him seeing me at the phone booth would blow my cover and kill my chances of ever getting close to him later on.
I’m sure a TV detective would have had no such problem. He’d have walked by the phone booth, overheard just the part of the conversation that mattered, and got back in his cab without the guy spotting him and just before the guy hung up the phone and got back in his.
I can’t begin to tell you how many ways that scenario would have fucked up if I’d tried it. For one thing, it was a very short conversation and he hung up the phone before I could have even gotten there. For another thing, he hopped right back in his cab and took off and in all probability I would have lost him. As it was, my cabbie had to pull out quick and run a red light to keep up. It’s a good thing he did, because a couple of blocks later David’s cab hung a left and headed for the East River. This, I knew, was not the direction of his apartment. My spirits brightened considerably.
The cab got on the FDR Drive and headed downtown, which depressed me again. David’s apartment was in the East 20s, so maybe he was going home and the cabbie was just using the Drive to make time.
He wasn’t, though. Traffic on the Drive was light, and in no time at all we sped by the 34th Street Exit and the 23rd Street Exit, and kept on going downtown. We curved around Alphabet City, where Manhattan gets wider to accommodate Avenues A, B, C, and D. I wondered if that was where he was heading. If so, a drug buy seemed likely. And that should be enough to clinch the case for Melissa Ford.
When we flashed by Houston Street, that theory went out the window. We kept going downtown and finally got off the highway at Canal.
That set my mind racing. David Melrose, the Chinese connection? Tong wars? Illegal fireworks, for Christ’s sake?
Not at all, thank god—even with all the proof in the world, I couldn’t imagine getting Melissa Ford to swallow that one. But not to worry. The taxi drove across Canal Street, turned uptown for a block, and pulled up in front of a loft building on Grand. David hopped out of the cab, went up to the front door and rang a bell.
The building where the cab had stopped was right near the corner, so our cab hadn’t been able to turn onto Grand. We were on Wooster a few car-lengths back from the corner, looking across the intersection at the scene. I’ll say this for my cabbie, he was taking the whole thing seriously—we had a good view from there and there was no chance at all of our being seen.
A few minutes later the front door of the loft building opened and a man came out. I tensed up immediately. The man was wearing ragged jeans, a filthy T-shirt, and sneakers with no socks. He was young, say mid-thirties, with long yellow hair and a stringy, wispy beard. He was thin, almost what you’d call emaciated, and he made quite a contrast next to David Melrose in his spiffy three-piece suit.
Unfortunately, when they started talking they turned the other way and all I could see was their backs. But I could see the guy take something out of the back pocket of his jeans, and I could see his arm move, handing it to David, and then David’s arm move, tucking it into his jacket pocket.
My original theory started to look good again. Drug buy.
It looked good to my cabbie too. “Drug buy?” he asked.
“Damned if I know. But it sure is interesting.”
“Yeah. What now? You take the new guy, or follow the cab?”
The cab was still waiting there with the door open.
“The cab,” I said. “The other guy lives here, I can get him any time.”
Prompted by that thought, I whipped out my notebook and copied down the address.
By the time I’d finished, scraggly beard was heading back inside, and David hopped into his cab and took off. We followed him back uptown, and I figured this was it. The guy scored some dope and now he’s goin’ home.
Wrong again.
We whizzed right by any reasonable exit for Davey-baby’s address, and didn’t get off the Drive until 96th Street. The cab cruised around a few blocks and pulled up in front of a brownstone on 89th. From our vantage point half a block away, the cabbie and I saw David get out, walk up the front steps and ring the bell.
The brownstone must not have had a buzzer system to open the front door. And I was sure glad it didn’t, because about a minute later a knockout of a young blonde opened it instead. Davey-baby stepped right inside and the door swung shut, so I couldn’t see if he gave her a big hug, big kiss or big whatever. But it didn’t matter. By now it was getting on to ten o’clock. And why the hell else would a young stud who had just scored drugs in So
Ho be calling on a young blonde in her apartment building at that time of night? No, unless Davey-baby popped right out again, I had him dead to rights.
He didn’t. The cab he’d been riding in turned on its light and drove off. So I paid off my young cabbie—who was mighty reluctant to go, and who only did so after I gave him a large tip to keep his mouth shut, which absolutely thrilled him—and I hung out on the sidewalk to see just how long Davey-baby would actually spend with the young blonde.
He was out at twelve-oh-five by the two-dollar Casio I got for going to Yankee Stadium on Watch Day.
Now I must admit, the Casio is not entirely accurate—what I do is, look at it and subtract eight.
But even so, I figured eleven fifty-seven was pretty late for David Melrose to be coming out of a young blonde’s apartment when he was supposedly betrothed to the fair young Melissa Ford.
8.
MELISSA FORD WAS PISSED. At least for her she was pissed. For anyone else, she would have sounded positively normal. But I knew her and I could tell.
For one thing, her voice was audible. For another thing, she occasionally actually looked at me. So I could tell she was really steamed.
“You followed him?” she said.
“Yes, I did.”
“You had no right to do that.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s what you hired me for.”
“I hired you to check into his background.”
“Exactly. That’s what I was doing.”
“No, you weren’t. You were following him. Spying on him.”
“Of course I was.”
“I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“You didn’t tell me not to do it, either. You hired me to get the dope on this guy and that’s what I did.”
“I didn’t tell you to spy on him. I would never do that. That’s terrible.”
I took a breath. Melissa Ford certainly drew a thin line. She had no compunction at all about hiring a private detective to investigate her young suitor’s past. But she was horrified I might check up on his present.
“Well,” I said. “Then we seem to have a misunderstanding. But what’s done is done. I’m sorry you didn’t approve of my following David, but I did, and would you like to hear what I learned from it?”