by Parnell Hall
“Damn right,” he said. “Fucking cops.”
“Didn’t even ask you.”
“Didn’t even know.”
It was all I could do to keep from asking a question. “Some pictures,” I ventured.
“I’ll say”
“What a beauty.”
“What a slut.”
“Sexy stuff.”
Keyson tried to say pornographic, but stumbled over several of the syllables.
“Pissed Joe off,” I told him.
“I’ll say.”
“Is that what they fought over?”
Oh, dear. There I was, Orpheus, almost out of the gates of hell, looking back to make sure Eurydice was behind me, and, bang, she was gone. The one mistake, the one error, the one thing I knew was fatal. In spite of myself I went ahead and did it.
This time the door slammed shut with a note of finality.
Keyson steeled himself against any entreaty.
The interview was over.
44.
ALICE WAS IMPRESSED. Predictable, since I’d basically blown it. She tilted back in her computer chair and nodded in satisfaction. “Great. You confirmed the fight and dragged in the photos. It’s gotta be what he fought over.”
“He didn’t confirm that.”
“No, but it’s a fair inference. And what you did get is interesting. Particularly the fact the guy expected to be paid.”
“Or didn’t expect to be paid,” I pointed out. “He did at one time, but not anymore. He kept bitching that I was too late.”
“That’s hardly your fault.”
“Thanks for your assurance. Anyway, the guy’s pissed off he didn’t get to be a witness. Even though he’d be a terrible one.”
“How come?”
“Are you kidding? He oozes prevarication.”
“Can one ooze prevarication?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’re a writer.”
“Alice, stick with me here. The guy’s a liar. He comes across as a liar. A child of five would look at him and say, ‘Liar!’ He’s not the type of guy you build a case around.”
“Yet someone did.”
“No, someone threatened to. They took his witness statement. It never got to the police. Because it was never intended to. It was just a club to hold over Balfour’s head to bleed him dry.”
“It worked?”
“Of course it did.”
“Why, if the guy’s so unreliable?”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s the connection. Between the fight in the bar and the man who died. Plus he saw the dirty pictures. So he knows the motive too. The guy is real bad news.”
“You like some good news?”
“Alice. What is that, a segue?”
“Sorry. I’ve been dying to tell you.”
“What?”
Alice gestured to the desk. Next to our computer was the Mac PowerBook she had gotten “me” to look at Grackle’s files. I was yet to use it.
“Grackle’s disk. I ran some word searches.”
“Bet the name Balfour came up.”
“Actually, it didn’t. But Herman Bertoli did.”
“Oh?”
“I ran the names Herman Bertoli and Darien Mott.”
“Yeah? And?”
“Well, Darien Mott’s clean as a whistle, but guess what Herman Bertoli does every single month?”
“I give up. What?”
“He writes a check for a thousand dollars payable to Philip T. Grackle.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do. And so do Grackle’s records.”
“Grackle was a blackmailer who took checks?”
“Evidently. Unless the guy was indebted to him for something else.”
“Like he was a silent partner in the strip club?”
“That wouldn’t be a personal check.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“And when you put it together with the alias and the rap sheet, it’s gotta be blackmail.”
“So it seems. Is that the only one?”
“The only one like that. The Balfours must have been paying cash.”
“That is the approved method.”
I noticed Alice’s eyes twinkling. “What is it? You holding out on me?”
“Not at all. I’ve answered all your questions and given you all the information you asked for.”
I thought that over. “All right. What didn’t I ask for?”
Alice grinned. “Similar deposits. I got one, thousand bucks a month, dating back to the end of time. Or at least to the end of the computer’s memory.”
“Who would that be?”
“Mr. Headly.”
“What are you talking about. Headly’s dead.”
“Yeah, but nobody told his bank. According to Grackle’s records, Headly’s bank been cuttin’ a check for a thousand bucks once a month, regular as clockwork.”
“How can that be?”
“Pretty damn simple if no one knew about the account.” Alice’s eyes gleamed as she laid it out. “Here’s how I see it. Headly dies in a barroom brawl. Grackle immediately sews up the witnesses and starts bleeding the guy who killed him dry. So Grackle is on the scene, Grackle leaves before the cops arrive and sees Headly crawl off and die. Grackle, prince that he is, riffles the guy’s wallet and takes his bank card.”
“Unnoticed?”
Alice shrugged. “If Headly is as slimy as Grackle, which is almost a given, I’m assuming he had at least two bank accounts, one of which was full of dirty cash. His regular bank account is closed, but the one that no one knew he had remains open. And the guy with the ATM card proceeds to bleed the account dry a thousand bucks at a time. Till when? Two years ago, when the account got small enough to close without attracting attention. Which Grackle did, cashing a check on the account for sixty-two grand.”
I whistled. “You have all that on disk?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then the police have it too.”
“If they know how to look.”
“Why wouldn’t they? Isn’t it in Grackle’s bank account?”
Alice waggled her hand. “It was funneled through Grackle’s bank account. But Grackle had a very small balance.”
“You’re telling me that’s part of the money in the bottom of Grackle’s file cabinet?”
“I would say that’s a pretty good bet.”
Alice turned back to the desk and began banging on our computer. I can’t watch her when she does that. We have no extra chair, so I have to lean over to look at the screen. Even if we had a chair, I wouldn’t want to watch her.
I walked across the room, sat down on the couch.
Zelda came, put her head in my lap, and whimpered softly.
“Does she need to go out?”
“Oh, hell, I didn’t walk her,” Alice said. “I got caught up on the computer.”
“Where’s Tommie?”
“Don’t bother him. He’s got a book report due tomorrow.”
“Okay, Zelda,” I said. I got up and got some plastic bags from the kitchen. I took the leash out of the drawer in the foyer, slipped a Baggie of Cheerios in my pocket to use for treats, put the leash on Zelda, and headed out.
On my way to the door, I snapped my fingers, turned back. “What’s the date?”
“What date?”
“The date of the transaction. The transfer of the sixty-two grand.”
“Let me see.” Alice moved over to the PowerBook and called it up. “That would be two years ago, on August fifth.”
“Is that the date Jenny went to the hospital? The date of the dead John Doe?”
“I have no idea.”
“Wasn’t it around then?”
“I don’t know. It was a couple of years ago.”
“Look it up, will you?”
Zelda voiced her displeasure at our interrupted progress. I dug a Cheerio out of my pocket and fed it to her. She ate it, but continued to indicate a strong preference for the front
door.
“Here it is. That would be Saturday, August third.”
“Two days before the final withdrawal?”
“That’s right.”
“Woof!” Zelda said.
I couldn’t argue with that. I took the elevator to the lobby, ran her down to Riverside Drive.
The urgency of Zelda’s need can be measured in easily recognizable increments. She will not use the sidewalk, so the direst of emergencies would be the street outside our front door. A standard emergency would be the mouth of 104th Street on the other side of West End. A slightly less pressing need would be the space by the fireplug halfway down the block.
Zelda, who likes the grass, will attempt to hold on till Riverside Drive. When we reach Riverside, an emergency ceases to qualify as an emergency if we queue up to cross the four-lane avenue. But if time is of the essence, we veer right to visit the tiny grassy knoll on the east side of Riverside. I do so with some reluctance. Dog owners are required by law to clean up after their pets. The grassy knoll north of 104th and Riverside Drive is one of the few places in the city where this law is flouted daily by daring daylight poopers, those shit-and-run dog owners who come and go and leave their mark behind.
At any rate, as I walked Zelda on the bank, my mind wandered from my appointed task of watching my feet.
Because it all fit so well. Balfour kills Headly, winds up paying off Grackle, who has seized Headly’s checking account, and is bleeding it dry. Grackle is also bleeding Mott/Bertoli/topless bar owner, which is a less irregular arrangement and allows for the cashing of checks. However, it is enough of a hold that Grackle is able to request a favor now and then. Such as—and here I am getting brilliant, I really better watch my feet—hiring Balfour’s daughter to dance in the bar, to earn enough to pay off the money he was squeezing out of her.
I glanced down and saw that Zelda had accomplished her mission. I whipped out a plastic bag and accomplished mine.
“Good girl,” I said. “Let’s go get a bagel.”
Zelda gets a piece of frozen bagel after her last walk. Kind of a nightcap. The suggestion gets her home on chilly evenings. Or when I have something on my mind.
I walked her home, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.
I was halfway up the block when it hit me.
Alice was wrong!
What a revelation. Alice was never wrong. At least, not so far as I could remember. There were times I had thought she was wrong, and even times I had attempted to point out to her she was wrong. On such occasions she had assured me she was right. And not only had she been capable of demonstrating that fact, but before she was done I would have been hard pressed to state my own name with any degree of certainty.
Except now. I was right, and Alice was wrong. Granted, Alice was not privy to all the facts as I knew them. And Alice had not had time to think it out. And when she did, she would surely do better. But she was wrong about Jenny Balfour’s car accident.
Grackle cashes a thousand-dollar check every month for years, until Jenny Balfour winds up in the hospital the same day as the John Doe, at which point he closes the account.
Quite a coincidence.
Grackle was a clever blackmailer. Careful not to get his hands dirty. He has a stooge. The stooge’s job is to keep the bank account open and write the checks. The stooge takes a shine to Jenny Balfour, beats and rapes her. Daddy flips out, kills the stooge with his bare hands. He dumps the body where it’s found as a John Doe, and takes his daughter to the hospital, claiming she’s been in a car accident.
Grackle, who knows better, gathers grounds for blackmail, and, with his check writer gone, closes Headly’s account.
That had to be right. That had to fit.
I marched Zelda triumphantly across West End Avenue, took the elevator upstairs, and burst in the door.
“Alice!” I cried, before I’d even taken off Zelda’s leash. “There was no car accident. The John Doe is Grackle’s accomplice. Balfour killed him for raping his daughter.”
Alice turned away from the computer, raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You thought all that up walking the dog?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
Alice shrugged. “Well, for one thing, you’re wrong.”
45.
THE FINGERPRINT EXPERT cocked his head. A pudgy guy with thick-rimmed glasses, a mustache, and not much hair, he clearly wasn’t comfortable dealing with anything out of the ordinary. “You don’t want a written report?”
“No.”
“I always write a report.”
“Go ahead and write one. I just don’t want it.”
“This is most unusual.”
“Not really. Just tell me if the fingerprints match.”
“To what degree of certainty? Eighteen points of similarity will stand up in any court.”
“This doesn’t have to stand up in court. I just want to know.”
“Yes, but surely you want to be certain.”
“Hey, man,” I said. “I’m in a bit of a bind. Just tell me if they match. You’ll know if they do. I don’t care if you find four points of similarity or forty. Just tell me.”
He picked up the two papers. The first contained Herman Bertoli’s fingerprints, which I had copied from his police record, carefully removing his name. The second contained the fingerprints taken from the water pipe in Grackle’s basement.
He frowned. “Is this a police exhibit?”
“Absolutely not,” I assured him. It was, in fact, a photocopy of a police exhibit. A fine distinction, but one’s own. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Yeah. Go out there and read a magazine. What you want shouldn’t take long.”
“If you only knew,” I told him.
I went out in the waiting room, where no one else was waiting. I wondered how the guy made a living. I wondered less when the hundred bucks he was charging me turned out to be for five minutes work. Of course, I hadn’t wanted a written report, but that probably would have been extra.
“It’s a match,” he said, sticking his head out the door.
“You sure?”
He grimaced. “I’m as sure as you wanted me to be. You want me to look again?”
“No, that’s fine,” I told him.
“Good. Here’re your prints. You mentioned this would be cash?”
“It seemed appropriate.”
I came out on Broadway feeling good. The prints had matched up. I’d figured it was a pretty good shot, what with Mott/Bertoli’s rap sheet in Grackle’s files, but the god of Dork visits me so frequently I tend to expect him.
Not this time. I had a match.
Onward and upward.
I set my briefcase down on a newspaper vending machine and popped the lid.
I pulled out an envelope, addressed it to Darien Mott at Midnight Lace.
I took out a sheet of paper and wrote on it, THIS IS WHY THE POLICE MISSED YOUR FILE.
I folded the piece of paper, stuck it inside the instruction manual for Grackle’s file cabinet.
I put the manual in the envelope and sealed the flap.
I took it down the street to the Speedy Day Messenger Service.
46.
MOTT/BERTOLI SHOWED UP around 11:30. He came creeping down the street as furtively as if he were about to rob the place. If I were a cop, I’d have been watching him on general principles.
Mott came down the block, scoping out every passerby as a prospective cop. These included a sixteen-year-old boy, an elderly woman, and a man with a Saint Bernard. The dog didn’t look suspicious to me, but what do I know?
Mott passed the dark alcove where Jenny had ducked in to avoid her mother. Luckily, Mott’s mother wasn’t coming, so he didn’t have to do that. He kept going, reached Grackle’s building.
Where he proceeded to have an anxiety attack. He whipped out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, cupping his hands against the wind. Then he strolled slowly across the alleyway, side-spying up at the windows on the second floor. No lights fl
ickered behind the drawn curtains. The apartment was dark.
Mott walked all the way to the corner, turned around and walked back, smoking as he went.
Calming himself.
This time he slowed as he passed the darkened alley, stopped, flicked his cigarette butt into the street. He glanced up and down the block, then went up the front steps.
Mott tried the front door. It opened easily. That surprised him. He hesitated a moment, then went in.
For thirty seconds nothing happened. No sound, no movement, no lights switching on. I wondered how he planned on getting through the apartment door. Not my problem, still I wondered. Particularly when nothing happened.
Then, very faintly from the back alley, nestled among the city street noises, came the sound of a window sliding open. Moments later, in the rear of the alley, a silhouette appeared on the fire escape. A hand gripped the side rail. A leg slung over. Then the other. The shadowy figure stood outside the fire escape, a foot on the edge, a hand on the rail. In the dark the other foot reached out along the side of the building to the window of Grackle’s apartment. The foot reached the sill, slipped once, then found a foothold.
The window was open a crack. The climber’s hand reached out toward it. Rested, pushed up. The window slid easily.
The figure stood for a moment spread-eagled in space, then pulled himself over to the window and hopped inside.
A light flickered on. A dim light, like the beam of a flashlight. It moved away from the window, played around the walls.
Then all hell broke loose.
There came the sound of a crash. Every light in the place came on. A curtain in the open window was yanked aside, and a leg thrust over the sill. Mott’s head followed, ducking under the window to the open air. His eyes were wide, desperate. He might have been trying to reach the fire escape again, but he might have just been trying to jump.
It was a moot point. Arms grabbed his shoulders, yanked him inside.
A police car screeched to a stop in front of the townhouse. Two cops erupted from it, rushed inside.
They were out minutes later, ushering a handcuffed Darien Mott. One cop marched on either side. A third cop marched behind, holding Mott’s shoulders.
As they came down the steps, Sergeant Thurman roared up. The good sergeant looked utterly confused, horribly conflicted. He was delighted, of course, to have his trap work, but baffled by what he’d caught. Clearly whoever’d radioed him hadn’t mentioned the identity of the intruder. He’d been hoping for Jenny Balfour. Darien Mott wasn’t nearly as good.