05-Client

by Parnell Hall

  We pushed the buttons and made Link, our young protagonist, walk over and pick it up.

  Immediately, a diagram of the layout of the labyrinth appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It always does when you get the map.

  Tommie and I looked at it and said, “Wow!”

  There were three rooms we’d never been in. They were beyond the Triforce room, where we’d never thought to look. And why should we? After all, we’d been through nine labyrinths in the first quest, and three labyrinths in the second quest, and there was never anything beyond the Triforce room. You got the Triforce and that was it. But there they were.

  Tommie and I were hot to check ’em out. But first we had to get out of the labyrinth and go to the fairy pond and fill up our life-hearts, and get twelve more bombs, and buy more water of life. That accomplished, we returned to the labyrinth, fought our way to the Triforce room, walked behind the altar, pushed the up button on the controller, and disappeared through the wall.

  Into the promised land.

  We fought our way through a room of red Darknuts, knocked off three Dodongos, and, with our last life-heart ebbing away, polished off an assortment of enemies in the third room. We pushed all the stones in the room until one moved. A passage opened and we went down and grabbed the elusive raft.

  I can’t tell you what a feeling of accomplishment that gave us. Tommie and I were both jumping up and down and yelling and giving each other high-fives. And Alice heard the commotion and came popping in from the kitchen, saying, “You got the raft?” ’cause we’d been talking about it all weekend and what else could it be? And she stayed and watched while we took the raft to level five, and a grand old time was had by all.

  But eventually, all good things must end. Tommie had to stop and do his homework.

  I had to stop and do mine.

  But with a fresh new outlook.

  Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that finding the map in “Zelda” told me I had to look at my map. After all, I had the map out already, checking the towns around Poughkeepsie. And it wasn’t even as if finding the three rooms beyond the Triforce room told me I hadn’t gone far enough and wasn’t looking in the right place. Though all that did occur to me later.

  No, I think it was just the whole “Zelda” experience was so exhilarating it raised my expectations. It made me feel a seemingly insoluble problem could be solved, if you just approached it in the right way. So I was full of confidence when I pulled out the map.

  My confidence quickly ebbed. The map looked just as it had before. There was Poughkeepsie. There were the outlying towns with their potential POPs.

  So what?

  In “Zelda,” aside from getting the map, you can also get a compass. When you pick up the compass a light goes on on the map, telling you where the Triforce room is.

  That was the problem. I had no compass. No light went on on my map.

  As I stared at the map my eyes began to glaze over, my feeling of exhilaration was gone, and I was right back where I started again.

  I set the map aside, leaned back and rubbed my head. All right, the hell with the map. Let’s just try to figure this out.

  I thought about it, and I decided what the “Zelda” experience really taught me was, I’m not as smart as I think I am. And whatever the hell it is I’m thinking is probably wrong, so I ought to take a good hard look at it and try thinking something else.

  So that’s what I did.

  Julie Steinmetz had driven up to Poughkeepsie and registered at a motel. Not to mention the murderer, she’d had at least two callers, Check-hat and POP. I didn’t know why she’d gone there, or why they’d come to see her, or what it was all about. But it had happened in Poughkeepsie. Why? I mean, what the hell’s in Poughkeepsie anyway?

  I didn’t know.

  But I did know this. Julie Steinmetz had gotten involved in something important enough to have gotten her killed. Now what the hell could that have been?

  Well, organized crime would fit the bill. But I couldn’t see an attractive young fashion model getting involved in organized crime somehow. Or maybe I just didn’t want to think that. Because if that was true, then I was in way over my head, and the situation was so bad there was nothing I could do about it. The saving grace was, if she was somehow involved with the mob, surely the police would uncover the connection. Though, on reflection, with Chief Creely in charge of the investigation, they probably wouldn’t.

  Organized crime was a thought, but for practical purposes I could pretty well wash it out.

  What did that leave? What other motivations for murder were there?

  Sex? Always a biggie, but not likely here. Not with Check-hat in and out in five minutes flat.

  Drugs? Slightly more likely, but even so. I mean come on, Julie Steinmetz, high-class fashion model, leading a double life as the Poughkeepsie Connection? Well, if that were true, wouldn’t the cops have found some evidence of it? No. Any drugs involved, the killer would have taken away. But even so, could there really be two big time drug dealers in Poughkeepsie, POP and Check-hat, and yet another who had seen fit to kill her and rip her off? Somehow I didn’t think so.

  Blackmail?

  Hmmmm. Blackmail.

  A blackmailer’s a good target for murder. And a person paying blackmail doesn’t need more than five minutes to pop in and out again. And an attractive young woman just might be in a position to put the squeeze on some people. Yeah, blackmail seemed a lot more likely.

  But why would the people she was blackmailing happen to live in Poughkeepsie? I mean, a blackmail victim’s gotta be someone important, most likely a wealthy businessman or a politician. From what I’d seen driving through Poughkeepsie, it had no large industry to speak of. And the local government couldn’t be that important, could it? I mean maybe Poughkeepsie was the county seat or something, not that that would mean much.

  So what the hell was so important about Poughkeepsie?

  I had no idea. But it occurred to me I could find out.

  I went in the office and dug out Tommie’s class list, which had the addresses and phone numbers of all the parents. Frank Wilkes, the father of one of Tommie’s classmates was a sociology professor at NYU. I got the number and gave him a call.

  He was home, but just going out the door. I told him it was important, I needed information about Poughkeepsie. He grumbled a bit, but put down the phone and was back a minute later saying he had two reference books that might help.

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll run over and pick ’em up.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “So leave ’em with your doorman.”

  “There’s no doorman. It’s a brownstone.”

  “Look, I’ll run right over.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said impatiently. “I’ve got a class. I can’t be late.”

  He had a class, but I had a murder. “Please. I’ll leave right now.”

  He exhaled. “Where are you?”

  “At 104th.”

  “All right. Meet you halfway. Broadway and 96th. Southwest corner.”

  “Great.”

  I slammed down the phone, grabbed my jacket and dashed out the door.

  I’d already rung for the elevator when it hit me. Meet you halfway.

  Shit!

  The compass!

  I jerked the door open, dashed back inside. As I did, I heard the clang of the elevator man opening the door to discover no one. “Just a minute!” I yelled. I’d have to meet Frank all right, so I wouldn’t hang him up, but I didn’t need his books anymore. ’Cause I’d been right all along. There was nothing in Poughkeepsie. Meet you halfway.

  I snatched up the map just to verify it, though I didn’t really need to. Somehow it just had to be.

  Sure enough, Poughkeepsie was almost exactly halfway between New York City and Albany.

  The state capital.

  25.

  I’D NEVER BEEN TO Albany before. But apparently other people had, because the
Thruway went right there. I came over a rise in the road and there it was in front of me. A cluster of official-looking buildings, and a huge stone egg, which I later learned was the Arts Center, and was actually called The Egg.

  You couldn’t miss the government center because there were huge signs proclaiming EMPIRE STATE PLAZA, STATE CAPITOL, GOVERNMENT CENTER, and what have you. While I was reading the signs I missed the exit and wound up in Menands. When I did, I found I couldn’t get back on 787 going south because I couldn’t make a U-turn. But the road I was on ran parallel to it, so I figured I could just follow it back to the center of town. I followed it back until I’d gotten myself pretty thoroughly confused, and finally spotted a sign for 787. I figured I must have worked my way past the government center by now, so I got on 787 going north.

  Wrong again. As soon as I got on the elevated road, the stone egg winked at me like a giant eye, behind me and to the left, and I wound up in Menands again.

  This time I didn’t give a damn. I drove down the parallel road, turned off on another road, hung a U-turn on that road, hung a left on the parallel road, came back to the turnoff, and got on 787 heading south. I kept an eagle eye open, and managed to make the turn into the government center this time, on only my fourth pass.

  I followed the signs and suddenly I was underground. In an immense parking lot. There were signs saying VISITORS PARKING so I followed them and eventually came to an automatic gate where the machine failed to dispense a parking ticket. I sat there with my window open looking futilely at the machine for some button I might be supposed to push, until an attendant finally came over and glared at me as if the whole thing were my fault. He stuck a key in the machine, did something, and the ticket came out and the gate went up.

  It took me ten minutes to find a place to park. I was in section C 7 BLUE. I was afraid I’d forget it, and I went to write it down and discovered I’d forgotten my pen and notebook. All right, let’s remember it. 7—lucky 7, roll of the dice. C—Gentleman’s C in college. Blue—I’m Mr. Blue, wa wa oooo, when you say you love me. Got it. O.K. Now to get out of here.

  But how? There were a lot of signs saying EXIT, but they were for cars. Where the hell did people go? Well, they went somewhere, because they weren’t here. I looked around the vast garage, and while it was packed with cars, aside from myself, there wasn’t a person in the place. What was this, an episode of “The Twilight Zone”? I stood there looking around like an idiot, and then I spotted it. In the far corner, movement. A car circling, and, yes, finding a parking space. I headed for it.

  I’d managed to go enough rows so that I wasn’t sure any more where C 7 Blue was, when the man himself appeared, walking between two cars. I tailed him across the lot until he walked around what looked like a pillar, and turned out to be the back of an elevator. He got in and so did I. There was only one level above ours and he pushed it, so I didn’t have to do anything. The elevator went up, the doors opened and I got out.

  And discovered I was still underground. In a huge corridor that signs proclaimed to be NORTH CONCOURSE. It was weird. It was like a New York City street fair. The center of the corridor was lined with tables of merchants hawking their wares. Jewelry, clothes, knick-knacks, what have you. I walked along it, wondering what any of it had to do with government, and what one had to do in this city to get out from underground.

  At the far end of the corridor was a booth that said INFORMATION. That was for me. I walked up to it and found it was manned by an attractive young woman in a guide’s uniform.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  I had a wild impulse to say, “Yes, could you tell me where I can find a man with a check hat and another man named POP who may have killed a woman?” I stifled it and merely asked her where the Capitol was. I’m sure it was a good choice, because she seemed well versed on that subject—the Capitol, I mean. She reached into a cubbyhole and pulled out what proved to be a black and white sketch map of the government complex.

  “You’re here,” she said, making an X on the drawing. “The Capitol building is here.” She pointed down the corridor. “Go through those doors, keep going straight, go up the escalator, and you’ll be there.”

  I followed her directions and found myself in a building of no distinction whatsoever. I walked down the hall and came to a dead end in a tiny lobby with a hole in the wall newsstand and not much else. Damn. Could this really be the Capitol?

  I went back the way I came and found a corridor leading off to the right. I took it and soon came to an immense staircase. Immense was the right word, but I’m afraid does not really do it justice. I mean I’m talking big here. This was one big mother staircase. It went up the center of the room to a landing, then branched upwards at right angles in both directions, and down again in the direction it had been going. The up branches led to the second floor, where the whole pattern repeated again. The staircase was like some huge stone plant growing up in the middle of the building.

  A sign on it said, THIS IS AN HISTORIC STAIRCASE. PLEASE USE CAUTION. That puzzled me somewhat. Caution? Caution not to harm it? Caution not to fall? Caution because some historic figure might leap out at you on some landing?

  I climbed the stairs with caution. I explored the corridors on the higher floors. On the second floor, I found the Department of Criminal Justice. That started several associations in my mind, but in terms of what I wanted, didn’t seem promising.

  I struck paydirt on the fourth floor. At the end of a corridor was a door. It was open, and when I walked through it, I stepped out onto a small balcony overlooking a huge assembly room. Countless small desk units arranged in a semicircle facing a large main desk, which was right below me. I had to lean out over the balcony to see it. It was a long, sprawling affair, the type I would have expected to find in a legislative chamber. But what surprised me was that built into the middle of it were a whole bunch of electronic controls and a TV monitor. I don’t know why that surprised me so much. I guess I’m just so apolitical that my views of government come from watching Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washing ton, making TV seem an anachronism.

  At any rate, I figured I’d found what I was looking for.

  As I was standing there looking around, a man came out of an office down the corridor. I figured he was as good a person to ask as anyone, so I hurried after him and stopped him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, pointing. “Is that the Senate?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s the Assembly.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And who meets there?”

  He looked at me a moment before answering. “The Assembly.”

  I blinked. I realized the man realized he was dealing with an idiot. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t know anything about the government. What is the Assembly?”

  The man was younger than I, but twice as wise. He adopted a fatherly, educational tone. “It’s a legislative body.”

  “State legislature?”

  “Of course.”

  “They pass laws?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just like the Senate?”

  “Exactly.”

  “State laws?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, what’s the difference, then? Between the Assembly and the Senate, I mean? Are there different areas of jurisdiction? Different types of laws involved?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “No, no, no. You don’t understand at all.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “The Assembly votes on legislation. If it passes the Assembly, it goes to the Senate and they vote on it. If it passes the Senate, it goes to the governor.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Kind of like the Congress and the Senate of the United States.”

  “In a way.”

  “I was thinking maybe one was City and one was State.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I see. Tell me. How many assemblymen are there?”

  “One hundred and fifty.”

>   “And how many senators?”

  “Sixty.”

  I smiled and nodded, but I was dying inside. Jesus Christ. Why couldn’t it have been something simple? Two hundred and ten candidates to choose from. With just a check hat to go on.

  “When’s the Assembly meet?” I asked him.

  “Two o’clock this afternoon.”

  By reflex action, I looked at my watch, which of course wasn’t there. However he looked at his and I saw it was nearly twelve.

  “What about the Senate?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Where does that meet?”

  He pointed. “Go down the corridor, turn left, walk across the building. You’ll be able to look down through the windows.”

  I thanked him and followed his directions to the other side of the building. Sure enough, there were windows looking down into another large assembly room. It was sort of like the other room, only more plush. The furniture was older and more established, and more of what I thought a legislative body should be. The desks were of aged wood. Large, more spread out. And fewer, of course. It had a sort of British clubroom atmosphere. I don’t know why that image came to me, never having been in a British clubroom, but that was the impression I got.

  I followed the windows around looking for the door. When I found it, I realized why the man had told me to look in the windows. Unlike the Assembly room door, this door was locked. Not only that, it had a metal detection device in front of it, one of those door frames you step through, like they have in airports. Apparently the senators were slightly more selective about who watched them legislate then the assemblymen.

  All right. Two hours to kill. Where the hell were these guys when they weren’t passing laws? Shit. I should have asked my buddy. Did they have offices in the building or what?

  I went down to the third floor and looked around. I found a hallway where the doors started saying Assembly, then one grand looking doorway marked ASSEMBLY, which was closed. Of course. I’d seen the room from the balcony level. This would be the main room down below.

  But where the hell were the offices? There was a desk outside, but there was nobody at it to ask. But there were notices tacked to the wall behind it. I stepped behind and read them. One was a list of the various branches the assembly had jurisdiction over. Another was a list of all the assemblymen with the room numbers of their offices. At the bottom of the list it said, “All room numbers, except those marked (C) (for capitol), are in the Legislative Office Building.”