by Parnell Hall
I took the other desk, jerked open drawers. Middle. Top right. Bottom right. Top left. Bottom left.
Bingo.
I reached in, pulled out a stack of account books. I grabbed the top book, opened it on the desk.
And someone knocked on the door.
I almost hit the ceiling.
Jesus Christ! Who is that? And what do I do now? Do I open the door? Or do I sit tight and pretend no one’s here? How can I do that, they can tell the light’s on? So what? So they forgot and left them on. Or maybe one of the bigwigs is working in the back office with the door closed and doesn’t hear the knock. Yeah, that’s it. Just sit tight.
For me inaction nearly always wins out over action. I sat tight. In fact, I barely breathed.
The knock wasn’t repeated.
Instead came a sound that sent chills up my back.
The sound of a key being slid in the slot.
The lock clicked back.
The door opened.
A maid with a cleaning cart stood in the doorway.
I gawked at her. She looked surprised to see me. I couldn’t blame her. There I was, standing there with my topcoat on, hunched over a pile of the company’s account books, looking like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone was here. You’re working late.”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought they’d all left. I’ll do the other office and come back. You gonna be long?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t you worry. I’ll just do the other office first.”
She backed out and closed the door.
Jesus Christ. What a victory. Ace private detective manages to bluff out cleaning lady—croaks out yes and no answers rather than confessing on the spot. What a guy.
If I had indeed bluffed her out. If she wasn’t down the hall right now calling security. Come on you son of a bitch, get it and get out of there.
You wouldn’t believe the job I did on those books. I would have put Evelyn Wood to shame.
It wasn’t in the first, second, or third, but in the fourth it was right there on the first page. A list of all the stock holders of Farber Kennelworth Development.
The name Charles Thompson jumped off the page. However, he turned out to be a minor holder with only fifty shares. No, according to the company books, the major stockholder, with in fact a controlling interest in Farber Kennelworth Development, was a Carlton Kraswell of Trenton, New Jersey.
34.
I HIT TRENTON at eight in the morning. I’d have liked to have been there earlier, but I’m only human and I slept through the alarm.
I came in on Route 33 and passed a sign that said ENTERING TRENTON. I was thankful for the sign, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue. It didn’t look like a city much, just a street of small frame houses set close together. I followed the road aways until I came to a curve with an arrow that said, TO NEW YORK. That didn’t look good, so I hung a U-turn, worked my way back a bit and hung a right.
I found myself on a village street with a few stores. There was a police car parked on the corner, so I stopped, got out, and gave the cop the address. He said, “Oh sure, that’s in the Hiltonia section, up by Sullivan Way.” He gave me directions to get there that I knew I could never follow, even writing them down. So I thanked him and asked him where I could get a map somewhere. He directed me to a 711 that sold ’em. Those directions included one light and one turn, and that I could handle and I got my map.
It’s a good thing I did, because even with the map I got lost and made a wrong turn and wound up in the municipal district. A couple of turns later I saw a sign that said, GOVERNMENT CENTER, and I suddenly realized Trenton was a state capital too. So far as I knew, that had nothing to do with my investigation, but it struck me as an interesting coincidence that in the space of a week I’d been to two state capitals. It also struck me as evidence of how apolitical I am that I’d never been to either of them before, and didn’t even know one of them existed.
I caught my bearings off the map, made only one more wrong turn, and found myself on Sullivan Way. I passed the Trenton Country Club. In the summer it probably looked like a million bucks, but now it was January, there was no snow on the ground, and everything looked bare and desolate.
Or maybe that’s just how I felt. That I was a fool on a fool’s errand, I was just wasting my time, and there was no way this was gonna pan out.
I came to a crossroad, checked my map and discovered I’d gone too far. I turned around and passed the country club again. It didn’t look any better this time around. I passed the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. I considered checking in for a refresher course on positive thinking.
I kept a sharp eye on the map, made the right turns, and suddenly there I was. It was a small residential community of perfectly nice houses and lawns. A nice place for nice people with nice families to live. A place no better, no worse that I could see, than that where Councilman Steve Fletcher had lived in Albany.
Carlton Kraswell’s house was a modest two-story affair on a corner lot with a couple of trees and a swing in the yard and a car in the driveway. Which somehow seemed all wrong. I don’t know why, I guess somehow I’d expected a mansion with an iron gate and Dobermans prowling the grounds. But here he was, just an ordinary respectable citizen like everybody else.
I began to have serious doubts. Or I should say, I continued to have serious doubts.
I backed my car up to a point where I could observe the front door of the house without being seen. Sat and waited.
I must say, the whole thing looked very unpromising. The only bright spot was the car in the driveway. For one thing it was a Mercedes. For another thing, it was there, indicating the owner was probably home.
But when would he come out, that was the question. Well, he might come out to get his paper. But there were no newspaper boxes by the road. That surprised me. I would have expected there to be a Trenton Times or News or what have you, with red or green or yellow metal boxes on poles at the foot of the drives. But there weren’t. Nor were there mailboxes. These Trenton people got neither papers nor mail. So if Carlton Kraswell were indeed home, there was no reason for him to come out unless he wanted to go somewhere.
But he didn’t. An hour went by. Nothing happened. I was beginning to manufacture hollow ruses by which to flush the Kraswell from his den. A phone call, first to see if he was home, and second to try to get him out of it. But what would I say? Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the minute he said, “Hello,” I’d recognize his voice. Am I that good at voices? Was his voice that distinctive a one? Had he disguised his voice when he posed as Marvin Nickleson? What would be the point of that? How the hell should I know?
No, you gotta have a ruse. A letter. A special delivery letter. “It’s the post office, Mr. Kraswell, we have a special delivery letter for you.” That would do it fine. If that’s the way the post office works around here. If special delivery letters aren’t actually delivered. But how could they be, with no mailboxes.
As if on cue, a mail truck rounded the corner, rumbled up the hill. It stopped in front of Kraswell’s driveway. The mailman got out, walked up the drive to the house.
I couldn’t believe it. The guy had a special delivery letter for Kraswell, just like I thought, and was going to ring Kraswell’s bell.
He didn’t. He took a bunch of letters from his bag, stuck ’em in a box on the wall by the door.
So. That was why there were no boxes by the road. These guys got delivery up the drive.
The mailman got back in his truck and drove off.
I sat and waited. Come on schmuck. The bait’s in the trap. Go for it.
It was forty-five minutes later, and I was seriously considering the phone idea again when the front door opened. A man stepped out on the porch. He must have been sleeping late, because he was wearing a blue bath robe. I looked at him, and somehow all my feeli
ng of incompetence and futility melted away.
I smiled with immense satisfaction as the man I’d known as Marvin Nickleson riffled through the mail, snuffled once from the cold, and tugged at his scraggly moustache.
35.
I WASN’T GOING TO tackle him alone. I know that blows my image as a private detective, but then again, what doesn’t? And this was a guy who shot people. Or at least had them shot, if he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger himself. Somehow I thought he had. I couldn’t help thinking of the guy as an actor—after all, he’d played the part of Marvin Nickleson—and as an actor, I figured him for a one-man show.
At any rate, for me, getting shot is kind of a low priority. I mean, when I write down a list of things to do tomorrow, you’ll never see getting shot on it. And seeing as how I didn’t have a gun to shoot back with, tackling Carlton Kraswell alone didn’t seem like such a hot idea. No, I was gonna need help.
I drove back to New York and hunted up MacAullif.
Who wasn’t pleased to see me.
He grimaced, he rubbed his hand over his face, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and said, “Why me?”
“Come on, MacAullif—”
“No, you come on. Why do you have to bring me this?”
“I need help.”
“You always need help. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m asking you to square a parking ticket. This guy’s a murderer.”
“Of course he’s a murderer. People who kill people usually are. You went looking for a killer, you found him. What do you want me to do, stand up and cheer?”
“I told you. I need help.”
“Yeah, but why me?”
“I know you.”
“That’s hardly my fault. A guy who gets mixed up in murder investigations is gonna meet a few cops.” MacAullif snatched up the phone, punched the intercom but ton. “Daniels, get the Willford file and get in here.”
I stared at MacAullif. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I’d expected sarcasm and derision, but not an out-and-out refusal.
“You saying you won’t help me?”
“That’s right.”
“Why not?”
MacAullif winced and shook his head. “Why not? The man asks me why not? All right, how’s this?” MacAullif ticked off the points on his fingers. “One: it’s not my case. Two: I solved my ax murder, but I got four more cases pending, and one’s a triple homicide. Three: New Jersey’s out of my jurisdiction. Four: you’re a pain in the ass. You can’t stay out of trouble, and every time things start getting a little sticky you come running in here looking for help. I run five hundred license plates for you, that’s still not enough. Five: you got no proof. Six: you’re a pain in the ass again. You want me to run down to New Jersey where I got no jurisdiction and arrest a guy for murder where you got no proof. Now if I listen to you long enough, you probably got some harebrained scheme for getting proof, but if I do that this department’s gonna go to hell, I’m going to be in hot water, and it’ll probably take five years off my life.”
The door opened and Daniels, one of MacAullif s young detectives, came in carrying a file folder.
“Sir,” he said.
“Ah, Daniels,” MacAullif said, with elaborate sarcasm. “If you could just hang on a moment. I know you got that triple homicide to deal with, but first I gotta take care of this asshole’s personal problems.” MacAullif turned back to me. “Now, where was I? Six? Seven? Probably doesn’t matter. I think you get the idea.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
MacAullif shook his head. “An idea gotta hit you over the head with a hammer? It’s not my case. This upstate police chief—it’s his case. You want the Jersey cops to move on this guy, any authority to do so’s gotta come from him.”
I frowned. “The guy is not too swift.”
“Maybe not, but he’s in charge.”
“And he thinks I did it.”
“I like him already. O.K. I told you what to do. Get the hell out of here.”
I did. I got the hell out of there. And I thought about it. And I got my car and I headed for Poughkeepsie.
On the way up, I thought things over. All in all, it wasn’t that bad. MacAullif was right, of course. It was Creely’s case, and like it or not, I was gonna have to work with him.
Creely was a small town cop, and his facilities weren’t that good, and as I told MacAullif, he wasn’t that swift to begin with. Plus the fact he had me pegged for the killer.
That was on the minus side. On the plus side was the fact he was a small town cop and his facilities weren’t that good, but despite that he had refused assistance and was trying to handle the case himself. Which put him in a hell of a position. Having told the state cops to fuck off, if he couldn’t come up with something soon his ass was on the line. He might not want help solving the case, but the thing was, he had to solve it. By now that much must have dawned on him. And by now he must have found out that the evidence against me was not piling up as he had hoped, and that, coupled with Sergeant Clark’s assurance that I had not committed the crime, must be giving him serious doubt. He was in a mess, and by now he must be feeling pretty desperate to get out of it. So he ought to be inclined to listen.
Or so I hoped.
I pulled up in front of the police station. The sign was hanging on the door, so I guess Creely still was chief. How long that remained true probably depended on whether he cracked the case.
I pushed the door open and walked in.
They were all there. Creely, Davis, and Chuck. For once, Creely wasn’t chewing gum. That’s because he was having lunch. He had a sandwich in one hand, and a can of Coke in the other. He was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk. Davis and Chuck were sitting around eating sandwiches too. They gave the impression of a bunch of guys after work hanging out and shooting the shit.
They all looked up when I walked in.
Creely grinned and shook his head. “Well, speak of the devil and here he is.”
So. They’d been talking about me. Somehow that didn’t bode well.
“Well, Mr. Hastings,” Creely said. “You’re a little early, aren’t you? Your arraignment’s not till next week.”
“I know.”
“So what are you doing here?”
I took a breath. “I came to tell you who killed Julie Steinmetz.”
Creely waved it away. “Oh, we know that.”
Shit. They had their own favorite candidate. Now I not only had to sell ’em on my theory, I had to talk ’em out of theirs. Unless, of course, their favorite candidate was still me.
“You do?” I said.
“Oh sure,” Creely said. “Of course, we can’t prove it. But we know who did it all right.”
“Well, that must be pretty frustrating,” I said. “I’m really sorry. Unless, of course, you still think it’s me.”
Creely grinned. “Oh,” he said. “So that’s why you’re here. No, no. Don’t give it another thought. We know it wasn’t you.”
“You do?”
“Oh, sure. Even without Sergeant Clark vouching for you, we know you didn’t do it. You’re not the type. And as your lawyer says, even if you were the type, you couldn’t be that stupid.” Creely shrugged. “But then on the other hand, if you really still think we might fancy you for this crime, maybe you are that stupid. But set your mind at rest. We know it wasn’t you.”
“Well, this may surprise you, but I’m kind of glad to hear it.”
“Yeah, well don’t go celebrating all over the place. We still got you for obstruction of justice. Which is exactly the sort of thing I do peg you for, and the charge just might stick.”
“Fine, but that’s not what I’m here for.”
“Right, right,” Creely said. “You’re here to tell us who killed Julie Steinmetz.” Creely waved his Coke at Davis and Chuck. “Pay attention, boys. I’m sure this is going to be good.” Creely shook his head. “You fucking amateurs
are such a pain in the ass, you know it? I can’t ignore your theory or I’ll catch heat for it, and now I’ll have to waste a lot of time running down a bunch of false clues.”
Jesus Christ. I was tempted to walk out. If Creely didn’t think I was the murderer, who gave a damn what he thought?
Except for that obstruction of justice charge. And the fact I couldn’t bear to think of letting that prick Carlton Kraswell get away.
“All right,” Creely said. “Go ahead. Tell us your theory.”
“Gee fellas,” I said. “I feel kind of out of my league here. Why don’t you just tell me who did it, and then I won’t have to embarrass myself by being wrong.”
Creely frowned. “Well now, you have to understand. We haven’t got a shred of evidence. Nothing. Zip, So we’re talking strictly off the record here. If you quote me on this I’ll deny it.” He jerked his thumb at Davis and Chuck. “So will they.”
“I understand,” I said. “I wouldn’t quote you to a soul. I’m in enough trouble already.”
“That’s for sure.”
“So tell me. Who did it?”
Creely took a bite of his sandwich, chewed it, cocked his head. “Well,” he said, “the way we dope it out, it’s gotta be Carlton Kraswell of Trenton, New Jersey.
36.
I STARED AT CREELY. “What?”
“Yeah, that’s the way we see it.”
“Carlton Kraswell of Trenton, New Jersey?”
“Best we can tell.”
I sank down into a chair. “Son of a bitch.”
Creely grinned. “That surprise you?”
“It sure does.”
“Oh yeah? Who did you think it was?”
“Carlton Kraswell of Trenton, New Jersey.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be so surprised. You happen to be right.” Creely cocked his head at Davis and Chuck. “You get the feeling this guy ain’t used to being right?”
I shook my head. Looked at Creely. “Would you mind telling me how you figure that?”