by Elaine Viets
She always wore purple, but today’s shorts outfit looked positively royal. Helen’s landlady was seventy-six, with a face as wrinkled as a shar-pei puppy. She also had some of the best legs in Lauderdale. Today, she showed them off in jaunty purple suede mules.
“What’s the occasion for a real bottle of wine, not a box?”
Helen said.
“I’ve finally rented 2C, so we’re celebrating,” Margery said. “I swear that apartment had a weird magnet. It’s attracted one wacko after another.”
Helen wasn’t going to argue with her. The last tenant was a psychic named Madame Muffy. The one before that was still in jail.
“So who’s the new person?”
“Persons. A nice normal retired couple from New Jersey.
Fred and Ethel Mertz.”
“Like on I Love Lucy?”
Margery looked at her blankly.
Helen said, “Lucy’s sidekick was Ethel Mertz. She was married to Fred.”
“Before my time.” Margery poured Helen a generous glass of wine.
“Not too much wine,” Helen said. “I leave for work again at four-thirty.”
“You still have that worthless job? No, I shouldn’t have to ask. I can see you do. You look beat. Those coast-to-coast insults are taking their toll on you, Helen. Why do you work there?”
“For the money.” Helen took a bite of her salad. She hoped Margery would start eating and get off this subject.
“An attractive, hardworking woman like you should have no trouble getting a decent job. Why don’t you let your friend Sarah give you some good leads? She has lots of corporate contacts.”
Because I can’t be in a corporate computer, Helen thought.
“I make twice as much here as my last job. It’s good money,” she said.
“No,” Margery said. “It’s bad money, and you’ll pay a high price for it.”
Helen suddenly lost her appetite. She didn’t want this conversation. She didn’t like to think about her old life, or some of the things she did in this new job. She didn’t want to think, period. She was too tired.
She put down her fork. “Margery, I’m dead tired. I really need a nap before I go back to work. Lunch was lovely. Let me help you clear up and I’ll go inside.”
“I’ll do that,” Margery said. “Go get your sleep. Take your salad with you. You can eat it later.”
Helen was greeted at her door by her gray and white cat.
Thumbs looked like a stuffed toy, until you saw his outsized front paws. He had the biggest feet Helen had ever seen on a feline. He was a polydactyl cat, with six toes on each paw. She absently scratched his ears while she surveyed her two-room furnished apartment. It was like a fifties exhibit. Helen loved the turquoise couch with the triangle pattern, the lamps shaped like nuclear reactors, the boomerang coffee table. The Barcalounger was the best. Helen didn’t dare sit down in it this afternoon. She’d never get up if she did. She put her salad in the fridge and stretched out on her bed for just a moment.
Helen woke up at four-forty-five and ran all the way to work. She didn’t want to be late for survey duty.
Girdner Inc. was a company with a split personality. The Girdner Sales boiler room was on the first floor of the office building. Dirty, dingy, hidden from sight in the back of the building, its staff sold septic-tank cleaner from Maine to California.
On the top floor was their showcase, Girdner Surveys.
They conducted slick surveys for suits at the national ad agencies. Girdner Surveys looked like an expensive lawyer’s office. A rain forest had been cleared to provide its mahogany paneling. The carpet was expensively subdued, some color between blue and gray. It was like walking through a soft smoky fog. The dignified receptionist could have been a dean at an exclusive women’s college.
Helen thought there was something weird about the dual operations. Why was the survey side fit for corporate kings, while the boiler room was the most awful office squalor?
Couldn’t Girdner afford fresh paint and carpeting for the boiler room? Couldn’t they at least clean the place?
Vito, the boiler-room manager, was never seen in the elite Girdner Surveys. Neither were most of his telemarketing employees. The Hispanics and young blacks in their tight tank tops and outrageous platform shoes, the junkies, felons and bikers, were not allowed through the mahogany doors.
Boiler-room refugees like Helen came in the side entrance and were hidden away in a phone room. That door was kept shut. She was below-stairs help, well-spoken enough for survey work, but never seen by the high-priced clients.
Girdner Surveys was presided over by a preppie named Penelope. In her early thirties, Penelope’s beige hair, skin and suits were forgettable. What Helen remembered was her stiff, rigid manner. She reminded Helen of those dolls with the bendable joints. Penelope talked through clenched teeth.
Helen thought her other orifices were probably clenched, too.
Penelope did not give pep talks to the phone staff like Vito. She hated talking to them. When she was forced to communicate with the lower orders, she sat behind her desk, gripping her chair arms and staring straight ahead.
Mostly she issued orders to the phone-room supervisor, Nellie, a lively blonde who had more personality in her little finger than Penelope had in her whole body. Nellie, fat and fifty, had a voice so alluring that men proposed marriage when she called them.
“OK, ladies, it’s just the three of us tonight,” Nellie said.
“We’re recruiting from the A-list, which does not stand for asshole, no matter how abusive these guys get. These are the richest names in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward Counties. We’ll pay good money—two hundred bucks if they’ll participate in a martini study. Just remember, two hundred bucks is pocket change to these people.”
Berletta, the other woman working the phones, groaned.
“The richer they are, the meaner they are,” she said in her beautiful Bahamian accent.
It was true. Surveys for beauty products, candy and beer paid only forty or fifty dollars. But most blue-collar subjects needed the money. They were polite.
“Cheer up,” Nellie said. “You could be calling doctors.”
Doctors were paid the most—up to three hundred dollars per survey. Arrogant and greedy, they acted as if they were stepping off their thrones to participate.
“You know the drill,” Nellie said. “Be polite. Be persuasive. We need to sign up thirty people, ages twenty-five to forty, who make more than one hundred thousand a year and drink martinis made with Silver Spur vodka. The computer database is sorted and ready. Start dialing.”
Girdner’s computers had incredible information on their survey subjects. Tidbits mentioned in a casual phone conversation with a survey recruiter found their way into the database.
The computer told Helen who took Prozac, lived with a boyfriend, split with their mate or suffered from bipolar disorder. She knew who just had a baby—a newborn opportunity for diaper and formula surveys. Helen could see which women used tampons or pads, information used for personal-care product surveys. She knew who had hysterectomies, disqualifying them for those same surveys.
For nearly an hour, she labored through voice mail, answering machines, “he’s not home” and “don’t call me at dinner” without one bite. Not even a nibble. She was getting discouraged.
She looked at the information on the next prospect: “Age 40.
Occupation: Financier. Annual income: More than five hundred thousand. College educated. Smokes Dunhills. Drives a Land Rover and a vintage Porsche 911. Owns a Cigarette boat. No pets. Uses MCI long-distance service. Drinks martinis made with Silver Spur vodka more than three times a week.”
There was one other comment, this one by a survey recruiter: “Good talker in focus groups but has a bad temper on phone. Can be mean.”
Mean or not, he had the right demographics for this survey. Helen took a deep breath, dialed and said, “May I please speak to Mr. Henry Asporth?”
<
br /> “This is Hank.” The man had a rich voice to go with all that money.
“Hi, this is Helen and I’m with the—”
“What? Sweetie, wait a minute.” Sweetie. Helen ground her teeth. She’d rather he was mean than call her sweetie.
Asporth had put the phone down. Helen would wait thirty seconds before she hung up on him. An old anti-telemarketer trick was to put down the phone and never come back.
Helen heard someone say, “Hey! Wait a minute.” A woman. She sounded young. She seemed surprised and a little scared. Then Helen heard a man and a woman arguing, but it sounded far away. It probably was. A house like Hank’s was measured in acres, not square feet.
“What do you mean, ‘What am I doing in here?’ ” The woman’s voice was higher and clearer than the man’s.
The man’s voice was a low, angry rumble, but Helen couldn’t pick up any words.
The woman sounded defiant, but there was a taunting, teasing quality to her voice. She seemed to have the upper hand. “You want it? Well, then you better give me what I want. Otherwise, you’ll never get your hands on it. You’ll be sorry. I can put you away for a long time. You’ve been a very bad boy, Hank. You’re just lucky I like bad boys. I’ve waited long enough. I want an answer, and I want it tonight.”
Helen heard the man’s voice again, low and angry, but still impossible to decipher. Even without the words, Helen felt its cutting edge.
“I’m not lying,” the woman insisted, her voice rising.
Then the woman’s voice changed. Now she was afraid.
“What are you doing here? Get away from me. No!” More voices, talking over each other. The man, angry. The woman, sounding more frightened. Her high, light voice was easier to understand. His was a low rumble. And was that a third person? Helen couldn’t tell. They were too far away.
Helen heard a loud clunking noise, like something heavy was overturned. Then the woman said something that didn’t make sense. It sounded like, “It’s the coffee—” Her words were stretched into a short, explosive scream.
But there was no misunderstanding her next frantic words: “What are you doing? No! No! Hank!” Her scream was cut off.
Helen had never heard anything as terrifying as the next sound. It was an awful guttural choking noise. It sounded like someone was fighting for air. Helen had her hand protectively on her own throat, as if the strangler might grab her through the phone.
“Hello?” Helen said, her voice a frightened croak.
Dead air. Then a click.
Someone had hung up the phone.
Chapter 2
“Oh, my God,” Helen yelled to the other survey takers.
“Someone’s being killed. I heard it. He’s killing her right now. What do I do?”
“Call 911,” said her supervisor, Nellie. “Now.” She put down her phone and came over to stand by Helen. The big blonde’s presence was solid and reassuring. Nellie was one of those people who became calmer in a crisis. Berletta, the other woman working in the survey room, stopped calling but said nothing. She was there if Helen needed her.
Helen’s fingers moved slowly, as if she was dialing under water.
“Wait. Nellie, what if I’m wrong? What if he really didn’t kill her? What if I didn’t hear what I think I heard? What if I’m sending the police to an innocent man?”
“Then the cops will leave, no harm done. But ask yourself this: What if you really did hear someone killing a woman, and you did nothing? Could you sleep at night?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that...”
“Helen, what was your first thought when you heard those sounds?” Nellie said. “Your first thought—not your second.”
“A woman was being killed.”
“Then listen to your instincts. Make the call.”
Helen’s fingers felt cold and unwieldy, a dead woman’s fingers. Her brain was racing: Nellie believed her, but what if the cops didn’t? What if—?
“911. Do you need police, fire or medical?”
“Police.” Helen had trouble getting out that one word. The others came in a gasping rush, as if she’d been running for miles. “I just called a house. I heard a woman being hurt. No, killed. I heard her die. They were having a fight and she was screaming and he killed her.” At least I think so. Helen silently smothered her doubts.
The 911 operator said, “Where is help needed?”
Helen found her businesslike tone soothing. Just the facts, ma’am. We can deal with this, no matter how bad it seems.
Helen read the address on her computer screen. “It’s 1751
Seamont. On the Intracoastal Waterway. Hurry, but I think it’s too late.”
“What city?”
“Brideport,” Helen said.
“What was the phone number of the person you were calling?”
Helen read it from the computer screen.
“What is your name and telephone number?”
“Helen Hawthorne.” She gave the Girdner number.
“Where are you calling from?” The litany of questions was comforting. The 911 operator’s voice was soothing as poppy syrup.
“Girdner Surveys,” Helen said. “It’s near Broward Boulevard and U.S. 1. I’m a telemarketer there. I was calling the Asporth house when I heard someone murder this woman.”
“And the name of the person you were calling?”
“Henry Asporth. He answered the phone. He said his name was Hank. Then he put the phone down and I heard him arguing with a woman. She sounded young, but I don’t know who she was. She screamed, but it was cut off. I think he strangled her or broke her neck. He killed her. I heard it.”
“For my own clarification, you did not hear shots,” the operator said. “You heard the male subject strangle the female?”
“Yes,” Helen said. “I didn’t hear a gun. I think he killed her with his bare hands. It was horrible. Then he hung up the phone.”
“How much time has gone by since you hung up?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said. “A couple of minutes. Maybe five at the most. Nellie—she’s my supervisor—she told me to call. It hasn’t been real long. And I didn’t hang up the phone. He did.”
“Did he sound like an older male or a younger male?”
“Old. No, young. But not too young. He was grown up.”
“Did it sound like there was another male present?”
“I didn’t hear another man. Just Hank Asporth and the woman he strangled.” And maybe another woman, Helen thought. But before she could say it, the operator said, “What makes you think that he strangled her?”
“I heard him! It was this awful choking noise.”
“Was she choking on food?” the 911 operator said.
“No, it wasn’t choking like that. She was fighting, trying to stay alive, and then she made this terrible sound.”
“What sound?”
Helen couldn’t describe the sound and she couldn’t forget it.
“A dying sound,” Helen said. “She was murdered and I heard it.”
All her doubts went away. At least for the moment. After Helen repeated everything Hank had said again, the 911 operator told her the police and paramedics had been dispatched and that the police would contact her later. Helen put down the receiver. It felt like it weighed twenty pounds in her hand.
“Are you OK?” Nellie asked.
“I’m fine,” Helen said.
“You don’t look fine,” Berletta said. “Not unless you’re wearing flour for makeup. Let me get you some water.”
Penelope had strict rules about telemarketers being seen but not heard. “You can’t go out now,” Helen said. “There are clients here. If you’re caught roaming the halls, you’ll be fired.”
“If they want to fire me for acting like a human being, shame on them,” Berletta said.
Helen started to get up, but Nellie pushed her down. “Sit.
You look like particular hell. I’ll lie for Berletta if I have to.”
Berletta had a ten-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy.
Her free days were spent fighting with the insurance companies for disallowed medicine and treatments. Her evenings were spent at Girdner, trying to pay off medical bills that had climbed to six figures.
“Don’t worry, I’m packing protection,” Berletta said. She picked up a clipboard. “This is a trick my husband learned in the army. If you walk around with a clipboard, nobody questions you.”
Helen laughed. The laugh turned into a shrill giggle that she had trouble stopping.
“Do you want to go home?” Nellie said to Helen. “I’ll write you an excuse.”
“I’m fine,” Helen said. She could feel tears clogging her throat, but she fought them back.
“How about some chocolate therapy?” Nellie said. “Sugar and caffeine are good for shock. The almonds will give you protein.” She pulled out a gold-wrapped chocolate bar.
“Ah, the healing powers of Godiva,” Helen said. She ate the chocolate. Berletta returned unscathed with a bottle of water and a damp paper towel. Helen gulped the cold water, then wiped her face with the towel and took a deep breath.
“Enough,” she said. “I’m going back to work.”
“You’re one tough woman,” Nellie said.
“It’s all the abuse I take as a telemarketer.”
The hourly insults, sexual slurs and questions about her parentage had toughened her up. She could work. She would work. She had a quota to fill, or she’d never get survey duty again.
Helen didn’t want to think about what she had unleashed.
If the cops really did find a dead woman, they might look into Helen’s past. She’d changed her name, but she was still on the run. Any halfway smart cop could figure it out.
The cops would find no credit cards, no bank account, no phone in her name. They’d realize she was using a false name in about thirty seconds. She’d be on her way back to St. Louis. Helen wondered if she’d have to wear handcuffs the whole trip.
She went back to the computer, and called the next person, a thirty-two-year-old stockbroker named Ashley Lipston. “May I speak to Ms. Lipston?” Helen’s voice sounded like it came from a newly opened tomb.