4 Strangler

by Parnell Hall

  Still, I didn’t know Phillip Lester, and I certainly wished him no ill.

  In other words, I hoped he hadn’t been strangled.

  He hadn’t. But it certainly wasn’t his fault. Phillip Lester was sixteen, and he was one of those teenagers who inspire people to acts of violence. How his parents had managed to live with him for that long was beyond me. Phillip Lester answered every one of my questions about his skating accident with either a shrug or, “I dunno.”

  It went something like this:

  “Well, what do you think made you fall?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Was the floor slippery?”

  Shrug.

  “Was there anything on the floor that you tripped on?”

  Shrug.

  “Did anyone bump into you?”

  “I dunno.”

  It was a bad signup, and what made it worse was that Detective Walker sat there grinning like a Cheshire cat the whole time. It was a great relief when I finally got the facts, what there were of them, taken down, and had the mother sign the retainer, which she had to do since Phillip was under age. I shot pictures of the sullen punk’s broken leg, and Walker and I got the hell out of there.

  He was still grinning when we went out the front door.

  “This mean you’re gonna have to go roller skating?” Walker asked me.

  I shook my head. “I’ll give it to Sam. He can take a girlfriend with him and snap pictures of her at the rink.”

  “And what will those pictures supposedly show?” Walker asked.

  I shrugged. “The condition of the rink, such as it is. That’s not my problem. Nor is it Sam’s. We’re paid to do the assignment. We shoot what’s there. Sometimes it’s nothing. Frankly, just between you and me, it’s a lousy case and Richard will probably reject it. But that doesn’t concern me. I was assigned the job, I did it, so I get paid.”

  “Right,” Walker said. “And then everything’s fine unless this kid gets mad about being rejected and starts murdering people.”

  “There’s always that,” I said.

  My beeper went off just as we got to the car. There was a phone on the corner so we walked down to it and I called the office. Sure enough, Wendy/Janet had a new case.

  One thing about my job is, after a while you find things tend to run in cycles. That is to say, I’ll get a string of octogenarians, one right after another. Then I’ll get a run of amputees. Then I’ll get one client after another who doesn’t speak English.

  Now it appeared I was getting a run on minors. The client was eight years old. His name was David Dressler. He’d fallen on a swing on a school playground, and had ten stitches over his left eye.

  “What’s the address?” I said.

  She gave it to me. A project on West 135th Street.

  “That’s Harlem,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m in Queens. What about Sam?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I beeped Sam and gave it to him. He called back all excited. His agent called and said they want to see him again. He still may have a shot at that series.”

  My head was spinning.

  I hate to admit this, but I do get premonitions. I’m not superstitious, and I don’t believe in that junk, but sometimes something hits me. I’m a writer, so often it’s words.

  And that’s what hit me now.

  Sam’s got a shot at a series.

  Series.

  Series.

  Series.

  I gave it to Sam.... He can’t take it ... audition ... Harlem ... shot at a series.

  Jesus.

  No.

  Not a kid.

  Please.

  Not an eight-year-old kid!

  19.

  DAVID DRESSLER was fine.

  In fact, he was more than fine. He was intelligent and vibrant and helpful. Though half the age of Phillip Lester, he was more than twice as swift. Though, to be fair, by the time he was sixteen, David Dressler could turn out to be quite a punk, too. But fortunately, I didn’t have to find out. I took down the information, signed him up and Walker and I headed back to the Bronx.

  We never got there.

  Because, with Sam Gravston off to another audition, I was shouldering the whole load again, and despite Richard’s concerns about losing business, the phones at Rosenberg and Stone were ringing off the hook.

  In the course of the day, Walker and I called on Natalie Woodridge of College Point, Queens, who had slipped on the sidewalk and broken her leg; Albert Winestock, of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who had been in a car accident and fractured his collarbone; Bob Dawson, of the Melrose section of the Bronx, who had been hit by a car and broken his hip; and George Webb of Harlem, who had been strangled.

  20.

  WHICH CLEARED ME.

  I realize that’s a horribly selfish way to look at it, but from my point of view, that’s what I saw. The demise of George Webb cleared me of suspicion of murder. For which I was duly grateful.

  Thanks, George.

  George Webb lived in a second-floor walk-up on Adam Clayton Powell. His body was lying half in, half out of the bedroom. The legs and feet were in. The shoulders and head were out. The stomach straddled the doorway. One of the legs was wearing a cast.

  George Webb was a black man of about thirty. He was lying on his back, so we could see his face just fine. It was not a pretty sight.

  It was a first for me. I didn’t throw up. I looked at his body and I didn’t throw up. I felt numb, I felt weak, I felt nauseous, but I didn’t blow lunch. The seasoned investigator. The tough P.I.

  Walker didn’t blow his lunch either. I was still huffing and puffing and swaying queasily and congratulating myself on the strength of my stomach when he was already calling it in. He pulled a walkie-talkie unit I hadn’t even known he had out of his belt, snapped it on, barked some police code or other into it that I was too far gone to copy, and before I knew what was happening, there were cops all over the place.

  “Downing, you call this in to Clark?” Walker said.

  “Already been done,” the cop called Downing said. “Clark’s on his way.”

  “How long has this place been sealed.”

  Downing whipped out a notebook. “Thirty-five minutes now. Call came in at four-fifteen. First cop on scene at four-twenty-two. Backup three minutes later, four-twenty-five.”

  “Anyone in and out since then?”

  “Woman with a baby carriage left at four-thirty-three. She’s being tailed. That’s it.”

  My head was buzzing. All this was happening around me. I was there, but I wasn’t there, if you know what I mean. What with the shock of finding another dead body, and the sudden appearance of a million cops, I had a little catching up to do in the thinking department. Concerning the significance of what had just happened, I mean.

  As I’ve said, my initial reaction was just the realization that I had been cleared. If you’ve never been a murder suspect you probably can’t understand that, and I couldn’t even begin to explain. But after the thrill of that had begun to wear off, I started coming back to my senses and thinking about someone other than myself, and then I realized what was going on. And what it meant.

  The cops were here. They’d been here before us. Ever since the call came in. They’d been here sewing up the apartment and keeping tabs on everyone who went in and out. Before we got here. Before they knew George Webb had been murdered.

  Which meant they’d been everywhere. At Phillip Lester’s. At David Dressler’s. At Diane Johnson’s. At every client we had called on in the past two days. Every phone call that had come in to Rosenberg and Stone, Sergeant Clark’s men had sewed up the apartment. And kept it sewed tight until Walker had called in to report that the client was still alive.

  For the past two days there had been cops everywhere I went. And I hadn’t seen one of them. Never even suspected. Though, on reflection, it was a shrewd and logical move. But I hadn’t even considered it.

  Some detect
ive.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Sergeant Clark. He breezed in as usual, crisp, efficient and cold as ice. Not a word of greeting, not a word of well-done for Walker.

  “Where is it?” he snapped.

  “In there,” Walker said, pointing over his shoulder.

  “Strangled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Black?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Harlem, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Sergeant Clark looked at me. “What a coincidence,” he said, ironically. He looked back at Walker and jerked his thumb at me. “He been with you the whole day?”

  “Since eight-thirty this morning.”

  Sergeant Clark grunted, and nodded toward the bedroom. “Medical examiner in there?”

  “Not here yet,” Walker said.

  “Is that so?” Clark said. “I’m here, and I had farther to come.”

  He managed to say it as if it were Walker’s fault.

  Before Walker could respond, the pudgy medical examiner I’d seen at Winston Bishop’s came bustling in the door.

  “Where is it?” he said.

  “Well, took you long enough,” Clark said. “It’s in there.” Clark jerked his thumb toward the door. “And get me a prelim right away, wouldja?”

  I swear the medical examiner smiled as he went by.

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  Sergeant Clark turned his attention back to Walker. “They trace the call yet?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been with him.”

  “Let’s find out. Who’s on the phone tap?”

  “Donaldson.”

  “All right. Check with him. This apartment have a phone?”

  “Yes, it does,” Walker said.

  That startled me. I’d been told the client had no phone, and I hadn’t noticed one in the apartment. But Walker had.

  “Is it working?” Clark said.

  “I haven’t touched it. I didn’t want to mess up any prints.”

  Clark nodded. “Not that they’ll do us any good,” he said, sourly. “Prescott,” he shouted to one of the detectives.

  “Sir?” Prescott said, coming in from the hall, where the body was.

  “Dust this phone for prints, willya, so we can use the damn thing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make it snappy, willya?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I thought Sergeant Clark should know about the discrepancy. “I was told the client had no phone,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you’ve been told a lot of things,” Sergeant Clark said. “You probably believe ’em all, too.” He snapped over his shoulder, “That phone ready yet?”

  “Working on it,” Prescott called. “It’s lousy with prints.”

  “Then photograph ’em, lift ’em and get on with it,” Clark said. “I want to use the damn thing.”

  A young detective emerged from the direction of the bedroom. “Sir?”

  “Yes?” Sergeant Clark said.

  “The dead man, sir. He was tentatively ID’d as George Webb.”

  “So?”

  “There was no identification on the body. But we found a wallet in one of the dresser drawers.”

  “Yes?” Sergeant Clark snapped. “Are you rehearsing for some TV thriller? Spit it out.”

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the young detective, who was obviously flustered by Clark’s overbearing manner.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. From the identification in the wallet, the victim is actually Clarence White.”

  “You sure it’s the victim’s wallet?”

  “Yes, sir. I found a photo ID.”

  “What kind?”

  “Driver’s license.”

  Clark nodded. “Probably valid. What address?”

  “Here.”

  “Phone ready yet?” Clark shouted over his shoulder.

  “One minute,” called back Prescott.

  “Damn it, I—”

  “Ready, sir.”

  Clark strode to the phone, picked it up and punched in a number.

  “This is Clark. Get me Donaldson.” There was few seconds wait, then, “Donaldson. Clark. Did you get it?” Another wait, then, “Hell!”

  Clark slammed down the phone and strode back to us.

  “A pay phone on Broadway and 125th. They sewed it up, but no one’s there.”

  I just stood there, taking it all in. The client had a phone, but his phone had not been used. The call had come from a pay phone many blocks away. The guy had given the right address, but the victim’s wrong name.

  What the fuck was going on?

  I had just had time to think all that when the medical examiner emerged from the bedroom.

  “Got the prelim,” he said. He looked at me, then at Clark.

  “It’s all right,” Clark said. “We’re all family here. Let’s have it.”

  “Well, he was strangled, all right.”

  “I know that,” Clark said, impatiently. “The question is when?”

  “You understand this is preliminary, and not very accurate.”

  “Come on, Murray, I don’t want excuses, I just want an answer. When was the guy killed?”

  The medical examiner rubbed his chin. “Well,” he said, “best I can tell you is, the guy’s been dead at least twelve hours.”

  21.

  WHICH FUCKED ME AGAIN.

  I’d had a series of jolts. It was like watching layers of reality being stripped out from under me. First George Webb clears me of murder. Then George Webb turns out not to be George Webb, but some other guy named Clarence White. Then Clarence White puts me back on the hook for murder again.

  I could have killed Clarence White. I realized it the minute Murray, the medical examiner, said twelve hours. Walter gave me an unimpeachable alibi from eight-thirty in the morning on.

  But not before.

  My wife is a sound sleeper. And she goes to sleep early. Usually, she passes out before the end of the eleven o’clock news. So there was nothing to stop me from waiting until Alice went to sleep and then getting up, putting on my clothes, going out to Harlem and strangling Clarence White. Then going back, climbing into bed, getting up in the morning, taking my son, Tommie, to school and waiting there, oh so innocently, for my friend Walker to hop in the car with me and give me an alibi for rest of the day.

  I hadn’t done that, but I could have.

  The only thing that saved me was the phone call. I couldn’t have made the phone call. I was in the car with Walker when it came in. And the cops would have a recording of that call. We could play it back and hear the caller’s voice.

  Hope flickered for a moment.

  Then.

  The voice of my accomplice. That’s what Clark would think. Or some stooge on the street I’d slipped a few bucks to and told to make the call. Yeah, that’s what they’d think.

  Sergeant Clark had taken the medical examiner off in the corner of the room and was chewing his head off. I had no idea about what. Apparently, he wasn’t too happy with the diagnosis. Or is that right? Can you have a diagnosis of a dead body? I guess not. You have an autopsy, don’t you? But that’s in the morgue, when you cut it up. So what was this? A preliminary examination. Prelim. Or was that a preliminary report? I don’t know. How about a postmortem? Is that what this was? A postmortem?

  Who gives a shit. The fact was, whatever you called it, George Webb, or Clarence White, or whatever you called him, had been dead for more than twelve hours, and I was fucked.

  Sergeant Clark finished with the medical examiner and strode back to me.

  “Walker,״ he barked.

  “Sir,” Walker said, striding up.

  Clark put his hand on my shoulder and I knew what was coming. The ride downtown.

  “This man can go,” Clark said. “Send him home.”

  “Yes, sir,” Walker said. “And do I pick him up again tomorrow morning?”

  “No,” Clark said.

  I blinked
. A double whammy. Clark wasn’t having me arrested. And he was taking off my nursemaid.

  What had the medical examiner told him? Was I cleared after all? What was going on?

  “You won’t be meeting him tomorrow morning,” Clark said, “because he’ll be meeting you.” Clark turned back to me. “I want to see you and Richard Rosenberg in Rosenberg’s office, first thing tomorrow morning, at nine A.M. sharp.”

  22.

  “GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE a situation.”

  The gentlemen Sergeant Clark was referring to were Richard Rosenberg, Detective Thomas Walker and me.

  The situation was obvious.

  But that didn’t stop Sergeant Clark from stating it.

  “Mr. Rosenberg, someone is killing your clients. Or your potential clients. Or more to the point, someone is making it appear that someone is killing your clients.

  “Because, you see, there is no evidence to the fact that these people were ever your intended clients at all.

  “But leave that for now. The fact is, we have a situation. And regardless of whether the clients are really clients or are only being made to look that way, or regardless of why, the fact is that the situation we are dealing with is that of a serial killer,”—Sergeant Clark looked at me—“and not the case of a copycat crime. There have been no leaks to the press. None. And yet the crimes continue. We have a serial killer committing a series of crimes.

  “And it must stop. And that is why I am here.”

  Richard had been controlling himself with an effort. Now he snapped. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said sarcastically. “So far all you’ve done is take over my office, harass my staff and bird-dog me. And meanwhile the killings go on. I must say, your methods, such as they are, seem to be totally ineffective.”

  Sergeant Clark regarded Richard as if he were a particularly odious beetle with which he was reluctant to stain the heel of his shoe. “You, sir, are a lawyer. Presumably that presupposes that you are possessed with the ability to reason. Though, considering some of the attorneys I’ve met—but let that pass. The point, sir, is that the latest victim, Clarence White, alias George Webb, did not call your office. He had, in fact, been dead for several hours before the call came in. In light of that, perhaps you would care to suggest to me how the murder might have been prevented?”