by Parnell Hall
“She wasn’t Asian,” I volunteered.
“Well, that narrows it down. Was she black?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re a trained investigator. You’d have probably noticed.”
It was a relief to see MacAullif horsing around, even if it was on a safe subject, far removed from the case in question. I wondered if I should bring it up?
“How long you gonna dick around before you ask me about the case?” MacAullif said.
I grimaced. “I don’t know what to ask.”
He exhaled. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Just like old times. Here you are, totally clueless, looking for a lead.”
“Actually …”
“Yes?”
“I got some more gossip.”
“Do tell.”
“It has to do with the case.”
“Why am I not surprised. This is the real reason for your visit, you’re afraid to bring it up, so you preface it with a similar story that doesn’t mean anything, and might even be fictitious. Is Richard really dating anyone, or was that just a ruse?”
“He’s dating an ADA.”
“Good for him. Who’s the real couple you’re concerned with?”
I told him about the widow and the stud.
MacAullif was actually interested. “You think the guy’s ringing her bell?”
“I have no idea.”
“It would open interesting possibilities.”
“Yes, it would.”
“Particularly if the contractor’s off the hook.”
“Of course, we can’t assume that. Just because his lawyer got him released doesn’t make him any less guilty.”
“You have an annoying habit of stating the obvious.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I should say the obvious but untrue. Since you and I know the guy didn’t do it.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, MacAullif. I can spin you a number of scenarios where the guy’s actually guilty.”
“I’m sure you can. It doesn’t alter the fact he’s not.” MacAullif considered. “I like it. The marital triangle, I mean. It’s a good motive. A lot better than some contractual dispute. Sex beats politics. Sex and politics beats practically anything. I don’t suppose you could spin that, could you? This jock isn’t a political figure?”
“I don’t know anything about him.”
MacAullif grimaced. “And this is the extent of your investigation.”
“I’m a little hampered here, MacAullif. The number of people I can approach in this is rapidly dwindling.”
“Not fast enough,” MacAullif grumbled.
“You’d rather I didn’t bring you this?”
“I’d rather you brought me some facts. Rather than a recitation of who you happened to meet in what lobby. Couldn’t you have found out anything?”
“If I had, you’d be all over me for poking around in a case where I’ve got no business.”
MacAullif looked like he might pick up the phone again.
“You see my problem. The widow thinks I’m one person. The widow’s son’s girlfriend thinks I’m another. The widow’s son’s girlfriend’s parents—”
“Oh, stop it,” MacAullif said. “I get the point.”
“Do you? The doorman thinks I’m someone else. The ADA thinks I’m me but doesn’t know who I am. I mean in terms of my actual involvement and motivations.”
“I could tell him. You’re a major pain in the ass.” MacAullif exhaled, shook his head. “Listening to you whine, I would say there were two ways you could go. You could slip the ADA a tip to lean on this jock. In terms of effectiveness, that would rank about zero. Or you could try to make it make sense. You got a whole bunch of disjointed facts. What you gotta do is find a point where it all hangs together. Right now you got nothing. See what I mean?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “So you’re telling me you’ve got no advice?”
I was out the door before MacAullif hefted the phone.
41
I THOUGHT OVER WHAT MACAULLIF HAD SAID, ABOUT finding a place where it all came together. That wasn’t much help. The unifying factor seemed to be the murder of the congressman. That brought everyone together, but only to the extent they were involved. It seemed to me I had the ingredients in place; I just had to stir the pot. The question was how. As I told MacAullif, I had so many personas kicking around in this little caper it was difficult for me to come and go. I was reminded of the Kurt Vonnegut short story about the very shy actor who merged into the parts he played but had no real personality of his own. That was me all right, the shy, ineffectual detective, wondering Who Am I This Time? And what could I do. Of all MacAullif’s suggestions, such as they were, the one I liked best was the anonymous tip. Of course, that would be my favorite, involving no real action on my part. Just give the ADA the idea and let nature take its course. Only how much credence was the guy going to put in an anonymous tip? They must get a hundred a day, any one as credible as mine. Would he act on it? Not likely. And, if so, was there any way to investigate the possibility without being so blatantly obvious that everyone knew exactly what he was going for, and had no problem evading the issue.
No, an anonymous tip was out.
Luckily, ADA Reynolds and I had a relationship. It wasn’t all that bad. The guy knew me as me. Maybe he didn’t know who the me he knew was, and maybe my intentions were couched in duplicity. But he didn’t know that. As far as he knew, Stanley Hastings, private eye, was an unlucky son of a bitch eager to wash his hands of the whole affair.
I went down to the courthouse and hunted up the ADA. That’s not as easy as it sounds. The guy didn’t just have that one case, he had a lot of cases, spread out all over the court system. Today he was presenting a case to a grand jury. Not the congressman’s case, but another case, about mishandling securities, which was probably very important to those people whose securities were mishandled but which somehow seemed tame next to a murder. I waited for him to break for lunch, which he had to do by one o’clock, since the grand juries change, the morning shift moving out, and the afternoon shift moving in. That’s the good thing about grand jury duty. It’s only half a day. The bad thing is it lasts a month.
I met him in the hall, walked him back to his office. He didn’t seem pleased to see me. At least he didn’t call the cops. “Can you make this fast? I got a luncheon date.”
I told him about Macho Man. I can’t say he thought it was earth-shattering news.
“The guy from the memorial service showed up at the widow’s office. And this concerns me how?”
“Suppose he didn’t just happen to protect her. Suppose they were having an affair.”
“Shocking. Who gives a damn? Except some tabloid reporter. Do you know for sure that they were?”
“No.”
“Do you have anything else to indicate this guy might be involved?”
“Not in itself.”
“Not in itself. God, I hate that expression. Do you have anything that is not in itself?”
“Well, if the evidence should indicate the contractor didn’t do it …”
“Do you have any evidence that would indicate the contractor didn’t do it?”
“Not in itself.”
“Here we go again! What evidence of any kind do you have that the contractor didn’t do it?”
“Well, you let him go.”
“Not because he’s innocent. Because his lawyer made a fuss. Jesus Christ, lawyers try everything they can, not because their client’s innocent, but because they’re getting paid.”
“I understand. Still, if the case was airtight, I don’t think he’d walk.”
“He didn’t walk. He’s out on bail.”
“Potayto, potahto,” I said.
He glared at me. “How do you happen to know this guy showed up at her office?”
“Oh.”
“Oh? What’s the deal?”
“I thought I should pay my respects.”
“You s
aw the widow at her office?”
“That’s right.”
“And she didn’t throw you out?”
“Oh.”
“Oh?” He said. His voice rose ominously at the end of it. “She didn’t know you were the private eye trying to catch her husband with teenage hookers? So who did she think you were?”
“Oh.”
“It gets worse and worse, doesn’t it? You called on the widow in her office and pretended to be who?”
I gave him my gay perfume cover story.
He listened incredulously. “What the hell are you doing? You don’t have a client. No one’s paying you. You have no interest in the case? Why are you involved?”
I had no answer, so any interruption was welcome.
Almost any.
“What’s he doing here?”
I turned and looked.
My mouth fell open.
ADA Fairfield stood in the doorway, makeup on, purse in hand, every bit as alluring as she had been the night before when she’d been going out with Richard.
My mind had a lot to process. This woman knew me from the congressman caper. She also knew Richard was my attorney. But she didn’t know I knew she’d been out with Richard. And she didn’t know, until this moment, I had anything to do with ADA Reynolds. Now she did, and in the general scheme of things, that was not good.
Luckily, her question was not addressed to me. I kept quiet, let ADA Reynolds handle it.
“Oh, right,” he said. “You caught the congressman thing, and this is the guy.”
“Yeah. What’s he doing here?”
“He has theories.”
“Oh, he does, does he? And what might they be?”
“He thinks the contractor’s innocent.”
She turned her eyes on me. I felt the way a mouse must just before being devoured by a snake.
“He thinks the congressman’s wife is having an affair with the father of one of her son’s playmates, and that the two of them conspired to do hubby in.”
“Has he been drinking?”
“Not that I know of.”
She digested that bit of information. “How does he gather this information?”
“You wouldn’t believe.”
The attractive ADA didn’t believe. As ADA Reynolds explained the situation, she looked at me as if I were from another planet. “You know much more than you should.”
“I wish you’d tell my wife. She thinks I’m clueless.”
“You’re clearly not clueless. You’re just not very bright. Constantly throwing yourself at the ADAs in charge.” She considered. “Is there anything you might be afraid of?”
“I’m afraid the cops might screw around and never solve the case.”
She grimaced. “See, that’s the problem. The only way that makes sense is if you knew the contractor wasn’t guilty.”
“Oh, bullshit,” I said. “Sorry, but I’m tired of being used as a punching bag. The cops made a knee-jerk reaction, arrested the guy at the scene of the crime. No one has taken the time to see if he might have been there legitimately.”
“Kind of hard to have a legitimate meeting with a dead man,” she said. “You’re awfully concerned with this. How come?”
“You know how come. I got duped into setting the congressman up. From where I sit, it looks like when they couldn’t frame him, they killed him.”
“What makes you think the two things are related?”
I shrugged. “It seems like a lot of bad luck for one guy.”
She gave me a pitying look.
I put up my hand. “Okay, forget it. I just thought I should pass along the information. In the future, I’ll keep my ideas to myself.”
I turned and walked out the door. Wondered if they’d let me. Not that they could stop me. They weren’t cops, they were lawyers. But they could at least ask me to come back.
They didn’t. I made it down the hallway, turned the corner, exhaled, and leaned against the wall to let my heart stop racing. Talk about bad ideas! Dealing with one ADA was risky enough. Dealing with two was suicidal. I was lucky to walk out a free man. How long I remained that way was another matter. I wondered if they’d have me stopped in the lobby. Paranoid thinking, yes, but I had a lot to be paranoid about.
The problem was, the ADAs’ assessments were right on the money. If my story was true, if I wasn’t holding out on them, if I was telling what I knew, then there was absolutely no reason for me to be there. Which there wasn’t. Aside from knowing the man they were prosecuting wasn’t guilty. And the most likely way to know he’s not guilty would be if I was. All and all, it was a miracle they let me go.
I had just had that thought when they came around the corner.
I nearly jumped a mile. Damn, here I was marveling at my escape, and they got me anyhow.
Only they didn’t. They swept right on by and rang for the elevator. She looked up at him with sparkling eyes. Then I noticed his arm was around her waist.
Son of a bitch.
She was his date.
42
I HAD RUN INTO AMOROUS ADAS TOO CAUGHT UP IN THE throes of their own passion to realize I was delivering myself to them on a plate. And one of them had been out with my attorney the night before. What was the etiquette? What was the protocol? I’d been a married man so long I don’t even know.
I was reminded of the old Everly Brothers song “Should We Tell Him?” To let him go on trusting wasn’t fair, but, on the other hand, it was none of my business. Unless the bitch was playing him for a reason. Which made no sense, because the reason would be me, and I’d just presented myself to her, signed, sealed, delivered, and she hadn’t seemed to give a damn. Perhaps she was just a working girl who liked to eat. I wondered what young ADAs made these days. Probably more than I did. Of course, they’d have years of student loans to pay off. Maybe she just liked dinner. Maybe she just liked Richard. Whatever the reason, I was getting nowhere fast, and no one seemed to want to help me.
So what should I do now? Piss in a bottle, call it gay perfume, and go bluff the congressman’s wife? That seemed like a high-risk, low-yield plan.
I called Hanson’s lawyer. “I see you took my advice.”
“Huh?”
“Your client’s out walking around. I guess that tip on the doorman paid off.”
“My client’s out walking around because he’s innocent.”
“Save it for the press. You know and I know your client’s out walking around because you made a stink about the doorman’s story and the ADA backed down. So don’t give me that my-client’s-innocent shit. I’m more responsible for getting him out than you are.”
“Now, look here—”
“Want some help? You still need it. There’s a big difference between being out on jail and being found not guilty.”
“I’ll get him off.”
“Oh. Bad quote. Sounds like a shyster. What you meant to say is, ‘My client is innocent and a jury will surely agree.’”
The lawyer’s voice was cold. “What do you want?”
“I want to help you. If you don’t want my help, that’s fine. But it’s free. At that price, it’s hard to beat.”
I could hear him take a breath. Then he said calmly, in measured tones, “And how can you help?”
“Got another tip. Take it or leave it. What you do with it is your business.”
“What’s the tip?”
“The congressman’s wife may have been a little too friendly with one of the family friends.”
“Who?”
“Guy who tackled your client at the memorial service.”
“Him? He’s just a dumb jock.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And women never fall for those.”
43
I WAITED FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS FOR THE LAWYER TO stir the pot. It didn’t get stirred. No arrests, no threats, no splashes in the news. I was beginning to lose faith in my powers as an investigator. I’d done a few cases for Richard, each one drearier than the last. I thr
ew myself into them eagerly, hoping the money I earned would go toward the rent and not the potential and ever increasingly more likely necessary Stanley Hastings defense fund.
Finally, I could stand it no longer. I called Hanson’s attorney. “What happened with the jock?”
“Nothing happened with the jock. I called, said I wanted to take his deposition. He said sure, he’s coming in tomorrow.”
“What about your client?”
“He’s innocent.”
“Aside from that.”
“Haven’t heard from him.”
“Since when?”
“Yesterday. Why?”
“You tell him about the anonymous tip?”
“That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“Calling it an anonymous tip. You made it. It’s not anonymous to you.”
Leave it to a lawyer to split hairs. “Fine. The tip. You tell him about the tip?”
“What do you think? I’m taking a deposition and billing him for the time. I’m not going to let him know?”
“That was yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t heard from him since?”
“No.”
“You try to call him?”
“I called him, he wasn’t in.”
“You leave a message?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t call back. It wasn’t urgent.”
I hung up on the attorney, gave the client a call. Got the answering machine. I didn’t leave a message.
I hung up and called Alice. “Wanna look up Leslie Hanson’s address?”
“Why?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
“Maybe he’s not home.”
“It’s a cell phone.”
“So what?”
“Guy’s lawyer can’t reach him. You don’t hide from your lawyer.”
“You do if you owe him money.”
“You trying to kid me out of it?”
“Well, let’s see. The guy’s been charged with a murder you know he didn’t commit. Telling him would make you the prime suspect instead. Yeah, I’m trying to kid you out of it.”
“It isn’t working. What’s the address?”
Leslie Hanson lived on Third Avenue in a fourth-floor walk-up over a pizza parlor. I rang the bell, got no answer. Considered ringing other apartments, see if anyone buzzed me in. Considered loiding the lock with a credit card, had visions of it snapping off with the part that said Stanley Hastings imbedded in the door. Considered taking a step back and kicking the damn thing down.