by Parnell Hall
Very impersonal.
Very unreal.
Hard to relate to.
And so there’s really nothing I can say that can make you understand the difference that getting shot made in my life.
30.
DEPARTMENT OF HORRENDOUS ANTICLIMAX.
I’m referring, of course, to my grand jury appearance. As you might recall, I had envisioned myself as feisty, argumentative, combative, challenging the prosecutor on points of law, raising issues of relevance and admissibility, winning the support and admiration of the grand jurors themselves and fighting the exasperated prosecutor to a standstill.
That was before I got shot.
Now I felt I should get points just for showing up.
Show up I did, nine-thirty sharp, just like it said on my subpoena. Actually, I got there at nine-fifteen, overcautious, overprotecting, let’s not give anyone any reason to be mean to me.
I located the right room, where I was, of course, denied entrance by a court officer who instructed me to sit on a bench in the hall. I was not, as I say, looking for any trouble. I sat on a bench in the hall. I sat alone, it being nine-fifteen.
About nine twenty-five another man showed up—fiftyish, plump, graying dark hair and a moustache. The court officer stopped him at the door and consigned him to the bench too. He sat down next to me, looked at my sling, then up at me.
I didn’t want to talk about my sling, but I felt impelled to say something. “Witness?” I asked.
The court officer gave us a stern look. “No talking.”
Amazing. One word, and I’m in trouble already.
The man looked at me, looked at the officer, rolled his eyes and shook his head as if to say, “What an asshole.”
I wasn’t about to express my agreement in any manner the court officer could pick up on. I contented myself with a slight smile.
About then a third man showed up, fortyish, faded suit and tie, and he was instructed not to talk and consigned to the bench too.
The three of us sat there on the bench not talking to each other until well after nine-thirty, when three other men showed up and stood in the hallway, gabbing and joking and laughing. The court officer didn’t tell them not to talk to each other or instruct them to sit on the bench. From this I gathered either they weren’t witnesses or else they were witnesses, but they also happened to be cops.
The latter proved to be true, because about ten minutes later the court officer came out, called one of them by name and ushered him into the room. That left the other two cops to stand and horse around and me and the other two guys to sit on the bench like dopes and feel like second-class citizens.
Having correctly pegged the wiseacres for cops, I was curious about the guys I was sitting on the bench with. They were obviously civilians like me, and from what I knew of the case, the only thing I could figure out they might possibly be were mail room employees who had overheard Melissa Ford threaten David Melrose, or the locksmith who had copied David Melrose’s key. In either case, it was interesting, and it would only take a question or two to pin it down. But the court officer had told us not to talk. He wasn’t always present, but the two cops were, and they were obviously buddy-buddy and part of the system, and would be bound to report any transgressions.
Wouldn’t they?
Or would they? And if they did, what the hell difference could it make? What were they gonna do, keep us after court? I mean, you can’t be in contempt of court if you’re not in court, can you?
No, but it occurred to me there were other crimes. How about tampering with a witness? These guys were obviously witnesses. Would talking to them constitute tampering?
Hell no, I told myself.
But I kept quiet.
And felt like a schmuck.
The other cops went in, one by one. And when they came out, they didn’t hang around, they left. So when the third cop went in, that left the three of us alone sitting on the bench.
I still said nothing.
I felt like shit.
But the other guys had no such restraints. As soon as the cops were gone, they started chattering away like school kids when the teacher leaves the room.
And it turned out I was absolutely right. The first guy with the moustache was the locksmith, and the second guy in the faded suit was a mail room employee.
Which was great. I could sit there without violating any rules and let the two of them drop it in my lap.
I’d just had time to think that when the door opened and the court officer came out.
“Hastings?” he said.
That figured. Today just wasn’t my day. I got up, followed him into the grand jury room.
Small shock.
Things are often so different than you picture them. Thinking of the grand jury, I had imagined a high bench, like a judge’s bench, only long, across the whole front of the courtroom, with perhaps Ls down the side walls, an immense lofty bench to accommodate all the grand jurors, forming a three-sided arena in which the witness would sit and the prosecutor would stand to do combat while the grand jurors peered down from on high.
Not quite.
The grand jurors sat in individual little desks that looked like the ones you sat in back in high school. There were two rows of them across the room in a slight semi-circle. The witness chair sat facing them within the arc.
The court officer led me up to the chair and one of the grand jurors, probably the foreman, got up from his little desk and administered the oath.
After I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I sat down in the witness chair and he sat down at his little desk, and there I was, sitting facing them as if I were a schoolteacher (most likely a substitute) whose desk had just been stolen.
I looked over my class. They were, as Richard had promised, absolutely ordinary people, well mixed in terms of age, sex, race, what have you. They were dressed in ordinary street clothes, a far cry from the regal justices I had once envisioned in flowing black robes.
There wasn’t time to count them. The two rows were not entirely filled, but I had no way of knowing if there were exactly twenty-three desks, for the maximum number of grand jurors allowed, or possibly more, so that didn’t help me much. On a guess, I’d say there were eighteen to twenty grand jurors, but that’s as close as I could come.
I was working from a high degree of paranoia, but I would have to say the faces I saw did not seem hostile. They didn’t seem friendly, either, just neutral and interested. Which, I guess, was exactly what they should be.
If this description seems sketchy, it’s because I saw all this in about two seconds from the time I took the oath and sat down to the time a man who had been standing off to the side stepped in front of me, blocking my view and commanding my attention.
He was a young man, but when I say young, once again I’m using the yardstick of Sergeant Reynolds and the doctor. Was it just coincidence that since I got shot to me everyone looked young? Anyway, he did. His brown hair hadn’t started to gray like mine. It was straight, short and neatly combed straight back. He had a plump face and a plump body, which his tailored suit seemed to accentuate rather than hide, as if he’d gone for the opposite of the lean and hungry look—the well-fed, prosperous look.
As if in keeping with his image, his expression was smug. He smiled and said, “Mr. Hastings, I’m A.D.A. McNulty and I’d like you to answer some questions, please.”
With that he turned and walked away from me, back to the grand jurors and past them until he turned and stood behind the two semicircular rows, so that in looking at him I would be facing them. Of course, that put him out of the picture—where he was standing the grand jurors couldn’t see him at all. That struck me as a showy gesture—giving stage. “Never mind me,” it seemed to say. “Look at him. This is gonna be good.” I wondered if this was a pet tactic on his part, or if all prosecutors did it. At any rate, it sure changed the picture I had envisioned. I had imagined the two of us in the arena,
slugging it out with the grand jurors looking on. But, no, it was as if I were in a shadow box, with a disembodied voice prompting me as to what I should say.
The first questions were easy: name, address, married or single, how many years have you lived in New York? Nervous as I was, I’m pretty sure I got most of those right.
While I was answering, I was studying the faces of the grand jurors, trying to judge their reactions. As far as I could tell, there were none.
Until the prosecutor asked my occupation. They perked up on the answer to that one. People always do. A private detective. Wow. You could feel a change in the room. Some jurors smiled, some glanced at each other. This, they told themselves, was going to be good.
It wasn’t.
It was dull as dishwater. I promised you an anticlimax, and you got it.
“And in the course of your work,” A.D.A. McNulty asked, “were you ever employed by one Melissa Ford?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Could you tell us when that was?”
“She first contacted me on the morning of Thursday, September 21st.”
“She employed you at that time?”
“Yes, she did.”
“And what did she employ you to do?”
“To investigate her boyfriend, David Melrose.”
“You accepted this employment?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You investigated David Melrose?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In the course of your investigation, did you have occasion to put David Melrose under surveillance?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And just when was that?”
“The evening of the following day.”
“That would be Friday, September 22nd?”
“That’s right.”
“At what time?”
“Approximately five o’clock.”
“Where did you begin this surveillance?”
“I picked him up when he left his place of work.”
“That would be the Breelstein Agency on Third Avenue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what did he do?”
“He met Melissa Ford and took her out to dinner.”
“You followed them?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did he do then?”
“He took her home.”
“How?”
“In a cab.”
“What time was that?”
“About eight-thirty.”
“Did he go home with her?”
“No, he dropped her off.”
“He kept the cab?”
“Yes, he did.”
“You continued to follow him?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where did the cab go?”
“The cab went five blocks, and he got out and made a phone call.”
“Do you know who he called?”
“No, I do not.”
“What did he do then?”
“Got back in the cab and went down to an address on Grand Street.”
“Do you know the address?”
“Not offhand. I could consult my notes.”
“Please do.”
I took out my notebook, looked up Charles Olsen’s address, read it into the record.
“And what did he do there?” McNulty asked.
“Rang the bell and conferred on the sidewalk with a man who lived in the building.”
“Did you know who that was?”
“Not at the time.”
“Do you know now?”
“Yes, I do. Charles Olsen.”
“Who is Charles Olsen?”
“A graphics artist employed by the Breelstein Agency.”
“How long did David Melrose talk with this man?”
“Not long. Maybe five minutes.”
“What did he do then?”
“Got back in the cab and went uptown.”
“To where?”
“A building on East 89th Street.”
“What did he do then?”
“Got out and rang the bell.”
“Was he buzzed inside?”
“No. A woman came down and opened the door.”
“A woman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“An attractive woman?”
I’d had no problems with the questions so far. I had a problem with this one. And I was prepared for it. I’d already played the scene out in my mind. That question is objected to as calling for a conclusion on the part of the witness.
And here’s the anticlimax I promised.
“Yes,” I said.
“And David Melrose went inside with this woman?”
I have no idea where David Melrose went after he went inside.
“Yes.”
“And how long was David Melrose inside with this woman?”
I have no knowledge of the fact David Melrose actually was inside with this woman. He could have gone anywhere after she let him in the door.
“Two hours.”
“So he spent two hours in the apartment of this lady whom you have described as attractive?”
I have no specific knowledge as to that, and I object to your summarizing my testimony.
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. And did you communicate this to your client, Melissa Ford?”
Objection to the characterization “this” as too broad in the context. I did communicate with my client.
“Yes, sir.”
“You told her David Melrose had spent the evening in the apartment of another woman?”
Objected to as leading and suggestive, particularly with regard to the phrase “other woman.” I reported to her only what I observed.
“Yes, sir.”
“An attractive other woman?”
Objection to the characterization “attractive,” objection to the characterization “other.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what was Melissa Ford’s reaction when you told her this?”
Objected to as calling for a conclusion on the part of the witness.
“She seemed surprised.”
“Surprised? Was that her only reaction? Wouldn’t you say she was outraged, angry, in fact, totally furious, Mr. Hastings? Wouldn’t you have to say she seemed angry enough to want to kill?”
Objected to as argumentative, calling for a conclusion on the part of the witness, assuming facts not in evidence, and viciously leading and suggestive! And what’s more, Melissa Ford couldn’t have killed David Melrose—I should know because I shot the son of a bitch myself!
I took a breath.
“Yes, sir.”
31.
THE LOCKSMITH AND THE mail room clerk were the only witnesses left, their examination was bound to be brief, and it occurred to me I could hang around outside and nab ’em when they left. They were obviously eager to talk, and I was sure I could pump ’em for all they had. Not that anything they had to say was likely to do me any good, but anything they had, I’d be welcome to it.
The mail room clerk was probably a washout, but what about the locksmith? Maybe there was something he’d observed, something in her manner, some insignificant fact that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else, but in some way would furnish a clue. Or, better than a clue, something she said that, taken in the right context, could definitely establish the fact that at the time she made the key she had no idea David Melrose was dead.
But wait a minute. She did know he was dead. Either way around, she knew that. Her story was she took the key from his dead body to copy because she was afraid the cops wouldn’t believe her story that she found the door open. If I couldn’t even remember that, you can imagine where my head was at. But, nonetheless, even so, there might have been something that she did, something that she said that was inconsistent with the actions of a killer. I had no idea what that might be, but of course, if I did, I wouldn’t need to ask. And it wouldn’t hurt me to stick around and find out.
But after my
ignominious performance before the grand jury, I just wasn’t up to it. No, I just slunk home with my tail between my legs.
Well, not exactly home. I wasn’t up to going home either. Wasn’t up to facing Alice. Letting her know how miserably I’d failed. What a wretched piece of man-flesh she’d married.
Man-flesh?
Good lord. There’s a word. Talk about being depressed. I wonder what the feminists would make of that? Man-flesh. Dead meat, that’s more like it. That’s what I was feeling like. Dead meat.
No, I wasn’t up to going home. I took the subway uptown to my office. I got off at Times Square and walked up Broadway, past the hookers and sleaze merchants. Past the weirdos, junkies and bums. All of them, I was sure, with more dignity than I could muster.
I went up to my office, unlocked the door. The sign on my door read STANLEY HASTINGS, private detective. Friends had given it to me as a joke, and I’d hung it up as a joke.
Some joke.
I went inside, collected the mail that had been slid through the slot in the door. Three bills. I wondered if Melissa Ford’s five hundred bucks would cover them. That was a fair price—five hundred bucks to help convict her of murder. I’m sure some detectives would have charged a grand.
My answering machine was blinking. Three blinks meaning three calls. I wondered if I wanted to hear them. I figured I probably didn’t.
I slumped down in my desk chair, rubbed my head. With my good arm, of course. That was something. The whole time I’d testified, the prosecutor had never asked me about my arm. Of course not. If he knew about it, as he surely did, he would never bring it up in a million years. Never let that implication get put in the grand jurors’ minds. That I’d gotten shot investigating the murder. Because, even with the statement I’d given Sergeant Reynolds, the cops had to figure that was a possibility.
That was the killer. That was the cruncher. Because I knew it was a damn sight more than just a possibility.