Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  But on a professional basis.

  This was something else.

  MacAullif took out a cigar, unwrapped it, and surveyed the end of it gloomily. I knew he wasn’t going to smoke it—his doctor had made him give them up. He just liked to play with them now and then. Particularly when he had something to say.

  We were sitting alone in MacAullif’s office. He had called me up and asked me to come down. He hadn’t said why, so I had no idea what I was doing there. At least I had no idea when I came. Now I assumed it had something to do with his daughter, unless MacAullif was just making polite conversation. Somehow I doubted it. MacAullif wasn’t much of a one for small talk.

  MacAullif eyed the cigar as if it were a perpetrator. “Yeah, I have a daughter,” he said.

  I had a sudden flash. The cigar was a phallic symbol, the perpetrator was a rapist, and his daughter’d been attacked.

  I felt a wave of sympathy for MacAullif. Fortunately, I didn’t express it, for, as usual, I was dead wrong.

  “She’s twenty-eight,” MacAullif said. “Lives in a suburb of Atlantic City. She’s married; she’s got a daughter, seven.”

  Jesus. MacAullif had a daughter and a granddaughter.

  “I see,” I said. I didn’t see at all.

  “They were up last weekend. They stayed with us. Me and the missus. At our house. We got a house in Brooklyn. Bay Ridge.”

  Things were coming thick and fast. MacAullif had a house in Brooklyn. A house with a woman in it. The missus. A woman waiting to hug the old side of beef when he got home from work.

  My additions to the conversation thus far had not been earth-shattering. To them I now added, “Yes.”

  MacAullif leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, and blew it out again.

  “My son-in-law came with them. He’s thirty. Dark hair, blue eyes, five-ten, a hundred sixty pounds.”

  I realized what I’d just heard was a police description. I also realized MacAullif had just identified the perpetrator. The situation, such as it was, was beginning to take shape.

  “His name is Harold. Harold Dunleavy,” MacAullif said. He added, belatedly, “Oh, I didn’t tell you my daughter’s name. It’s Barbara.”

  As he said that, I suddenly realized I didn’t know MacAullif’s name either. He knew my name—Stanley Hastings—but then, he’d interrogated me in a murder investigation. In such circumstances, it is standard procedure to ask the suspect’s name. It is not standard procedure for the suspect to ask the interrogator’s, however. So the only first name I’d ever heard MacAullif addressed by was Sergeant.

  MacAullif raised his eyes and looked at the wall behind me, another habit he had when he was thinking of what to say. I recalled from the other times I’d been in his office that the wall was covered with framed certificates. It occurred to me that his name would be on them. But I’d never noticed it, which gives you an idea of how observant I am. I didn’t want to turn around and stare at them now, but I made a mental note to check his name on the way out.

  MacAullif’s gaze shifted to his cigar. I think he realized he was squeezing it tighter than the prescribed method for cigar holding. At any rate, he put it down. He rubbed his forehead and looked up at me.

  “It’s about my son-in-law,” he said.

  “What about him?”

  MacAullif rubbed his chin. “I don’t know.”

  “I see,” I said.

  MacAullif looked at me sharply, and I immediately regretted the remark. There was no way it could be considered as anything other than ironic.

  “I know, I know,” MacAullif said. “I don’t seem to be making any sense. I’ll spit it out.”

  He did. After his stumbling reticence, it suddenly all came pouring out.

  “It’s my son-in-law. There’s something wrong with him. But that’s not just it. There’s always been something wrong with him. I never liked him, you know. I know, I know, it’s natural. A father feels that way about the guy who takes away his little girl. But it’s more than that. There’s something wrong with him. Always has been. You gotta understand, I’m a cop. I’m a good judge of people. I know it’s personal, and that makes it different. But even separating that, I can tell. And he’s a wrong one, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But last weekend was different. Harold was different. He’s a stockbroker, and I tell you something, if I had any stocks I sure wouldn’t trust him with them. He’s the type of broker, if he was on Wall Street, I’d suspect him of insider trading. I don’t think they get those opportunities in Atlantic City. Where was I? Oh, yeah. He was different, somehow. I’d ask him about his work—I always did, I had to talk to him about something—and he was particularly evasive. More than usual. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he’d been fired. But if he had, Barbara would have told me. And that was the other thing. Barbara. She wasn’t herself either. You know?”

  I didn’t know. And I felt I was knowing less and less as the conversation progressed.

  “Look,” I said. “Evidently your daughter and your son-in-law are having some sort of marital problems. And I’m sorry about it and I sympathize with you. But, you’ll pardon me for asking, but how in the world does all this concern me?”

  MacAullif sighed. A deep heavy sigh. Then he looked me right in the eye.

  “I want to hire you.”

  2.

  I WAS SHOCKED. Shocked and alarmed.

  I have to explain. You see, I’m a private detective. But that’s misleading. I’m not a real private detective. I’m an ambulance chaser. But that’s misleading, too. What I really am is a failure.

  I am a failed actor. I am also a failed writer. In between those failures, I have held a large and diverse number of temporary jobs. My current job is that of chasing ambulances for the law firm of Rosenberg & Stone. All that entails doing is interviewing the accident victims who call in in response to the firm’s TV ads, taking down the facts of the case, and then photographing the scene of the accident. The thing is, doing that technically makes me a private detective, and I have a photo I.D. to prove it, which I sometimes have to do in the event someone tries to punch my face in for photographing the defect on their property that caused the client’s mishap.

  But the thing is, that’s all I do. I don’t carry a gun or do surveillance or any of that stuff private detectives do on TV. I just photograph accidents. And the only person I work for is Richard Rosenberg of Rosenberg & Stone.

  In all the time I’d been a private detective, aside from Richard Rosenberg, MacAullif was only the second person who’d ever tried to hire me. And the thing was, the first person who’d tried had wound up dead with his dick in his mouth.

  I stared at MacAullif. “What?”

  “I want to hire you.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be too quick to say no.”

  “No.”

  MacAullif nodded. “O.K. You’ve said no. Now you’re under no obligation. Now hear me out.”

  “But—”

  “Just listen.”

  I sighed. “O.K. Let’s have it.”

  “Good,” MacAullif said.

  He got up and began pacing. His office was small and not conducive to the activity, so the fact that he tried it indicated the degree of his distress.

  “The thing is, this is serious. I know it. Oh, they’ve had squabbles before. I’m sure the creep steps out on her now and then. It’s nothing like that. It’s serious. Now here’s the thing. Harold’s gotten into something, and whatever it is, it’s bad. I mean, he’s been in scrapes before, but nothing like this. This is a real humdinger. How do I know? Well, I know because I talked to him and he lied to me. I can always tell when he’s lying to me, just like I can always tell when you’re lying to me. But let that pass. The thing is, I’m a cop and I can tell. And whatever Harold’s done this time, it’s a lulu.”

  MacAullif paused. Considered. “Now, let’s get something straight about Harold. Just in case you haven’t
caught my drift. Harold is a shit. A slime. A sleazeball. If the little fuck weren’t married to my daughter, I’d like nothing better than to rip him apart. But he is married to my daughter. And that’s why, if he’s gotten into something, I want to get him out of it. Not for his sake, you understand, but for hers.”

  “Why?” I blurted. I didn’t mean to, it just slipped out. It was none of my business, of course. But having said it, there I was with egg on my face and MacAullif looking at me, so I said, “What I mean is, if she’s so unhappy with this guy, if he’s such bad news, why doesn’t she just divorce him?”

  “Well,” MacAullif said. “For one thing, there’s the kid. Betty.” His face got soft. “Seven years old. Beautiful. A charmer.”

  “Sometimes saving a bad marriage for the sake of a kid does the kid more harm than good.”

  I couldn’t believe I said that either. I mean, Jesus Christ, here I was talking the pros and cons of marriage and divorce with a homicide cop.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” MacAullif said. “I heard all those arguments. Me, I’m an old-fashioned guy. I don’t believe in divorce. I believe you make a commitment, you honor that commitment.”

  “Why? You Roman Catholic, or something?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand. You’d keep your daughter married to a creep just cause you’re an old-fashioned guy?”

  MacAullif shook his head irritably. “All right. All right. Maybe I overstated the case. I don’t like him. But Barbara does. So he can’t be all bad. Frankly, I can’t see it, but give him the benefit of the doubt. Say he’s just weak.”

  “Fine. He’s just weak. So what?”

  “So if he’s just weak, maybe what he needs is a good kick in the teeth to get his attention. To make him sit up and take notice. Now if this scrape he’s in is as bad as I think it is, maybe it’s just the kind of push he needs.”

  I stared at MacAullif. “What you’re saying is, you want your son-in-law extricated from whatever mess he’s in, him and your daughter reconciled, and they all live happily ever after.”

  MacAullif frowned. He sat down at his desk, leaned forward, and looked at me. “What I want you to do,” he said, “is go to Atlantic City, find out what’s going on, let me know, and then we’ll see what we can do about it.”

  “Why don’t you hire a real detective?”

  MacAullif made a face. “In the first place, I don’t trust ’em. This is personal, this is private, this is not anything I want anyone to know about. In the second place, the situation doesn’t call for a real detective. It calls for a gifted amateur.”

  I smiled. Gifted amateur was a dig. It was what MacAullif had ironically called me when we worked together on the Darryl Jackson case. “Worked together” is a loose expression. I had worked, and MacAullif had worked, and after he had run rings all around me and had enough on me to put me away, we had “worked together.”

  “That’s very nice, but it doesn’t mean anything. What do you mean, you don’t trust a private detective? That’s stupid.”

  “Oh, is it? I’m a cop. The private detectives I deal with in the course of my business usually don’t happen to be on my side, you know what I mean?” He chuckled. “I could tell you stories. But the answer is no, I don’t trust ’em.”

  “But you trust me?”

  MacAullif snorted. “Yeah, I trust you.” With his right index finger, he ticked off his points on the fingers of his other hand. “I trust you to hold out on me every time you get the chance. I trust you to think you’re smarter than I am and to go off on your own and do your own thing. I trust you to fuck everything up at every given opportunity, and not even realize you’re doing it.”

  “Gee, I sound like a great risk.”

  “You’re the pits. But for all that, you wouldn’t deliberately fuck me. If you’d agreed to do it, you’d look out for my interests the best you knew how.”

  Which was true. And I had to hand it to MacAullif. What he’d given me was probably a pretty accurate description of how he really did trust me.

  Which was about how I trusted him. Except for the bit about fucking everything up. I’d learned from experience that MacAullif was usually deadly accurate.

  “So what’s the idea?” I said. “You want me to go down there, talk to your daughter and your son-in-law, and try to get ’em to open up and tell me what’s bothering them?”

  MacAullif shook his head. “Hell, no. I don’t want you to meet ’em at all. Or if you did, you couldn’t let ’em know who you are. You’d have to have a cover story of some kind, I don’t know what. I hadn’t thought about it. But I’d really rather you didn’t meet ’em at all.”

  I stared at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. I don’t want you to talk to my son-in-law. He wouldn’t tell you anything. It’d be a waste of time. No. What I want you to do is put him under surveillance. Keep tabs on him and find out what he does.”

  I blinked. “That’s your plan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Little skimpy, don’t you think?”

  MacAullif shrugged. “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on. Till I do, what more can I tell you?”

  I shook my head. “Look. I chase ambulances. I don’t do surveillance.”

  “Right,” MacAullif said. “Just like you didn’t do surveillance in the Martin Albrect case or the Darryl Jackson case.”

  Martin Albrect was a dead drug courier, and was also the man who had appealed to me for help and lost his genitalia. Darryl Jackson was a dead black pimp. MacAullif knew more about my involvement in those affairs than I’d have liked him to. His mentioning them was not exactly a threat, just a gentle reminder.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not competent.”

  “I think you are. I want to hire you.”

  “I can’t let you. I’d be taking money under false pretenses. You’re asking me to do something I don’t think I’m qualified to do. I couldn’t promise any results.”

  “I’m willing to take the chance.”

  “But I’m not. If I take your money, I’ll feel obligated to you, no matter what. And then if I get in a situation where there’s nothing I can do—which I think is entirely likely—I’ll still feel obligated to you and feel I have to do something. Which is a no-win situation. I’ll wind up having a nervous breakdown.”

  MacAullif sighed and rubbed his head. “This is very hard on me, you know,” he said. “This is my daughter we’re talking about. You got a kid, you must know how I feel. It’s special.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his head some more. “And my Barbara is some great kid, you know. I remember the day I made sergeant. Eighteen years ago. She must have been about ten. Cute, like her daughter. Anyway I made sergeant, and I wanted to celebrate, ’cause it’s a big deal—not just the promotion, it’s more money, the whole shmear.

  “So I bought her a ten-speed bike. She’d been asking for one for months. Me, what did I know from ten speeds? For me, three speeds was a fancy bike, and damned if I ever had one. But she wanted it, and I was a sergeant, and damned if she didn’t get it.

  “Well, I’ll never forget that afternoon. My mom was alive then, and she came over from Queens when she heard the news. And Barbara saw the taxi pull up in front of the house, and she goes tearing out the door—‘Grandma, Grandma, Grandma!’ And her face is all lit up like a Christmas tree, and she yells, ‘Guess what!’ And my mom says, ‘What?’ And my wife and I are standing in the front door waiting for her to tell Grandma all about the new bike she’s been riding around all morning. And she turns around with this big happy smile and she points and she says, ‘My daddy made sergeant!’ “ MacAullif shook his head. “I’ll never forget it. So proud. ‘My daddy made sergeant.’“

  Jesus.

  I must admit I don’t handle sentiment well. Displays of emotion. I tend to get embarrassed. And that’s just with ordinary people. People who aren’t homicide
sergeants.

  The thing is, I liked MacAullif. Inasmuch as it’s possible to like an adversary. And I felt sorry for him, and I felt sorry for his daughter.

  But I didn’t want to do it.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “All right, look,” I said, “I know this is very important to you. But that’s just why I can’t do it. It’s too important. I can’t take your money under these circumstances. Not to do something I’m not qualified to do. I’d be doing you a disservice.”

  MacAullif rubbed his head again. “You won’t let me hire you?”

  “No.”

  He kept rubbing his head. “I didn’t think you would.” He sighed again. “All right. In that case, I have to do something I don’t want to do.” One more sigh, a big one this time. Then he looked up at me. “Do it as a favor.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Dammit,” MacAullif said, and all the helpless frustration poured out. “I’d do it myself, but I can’t. They know me, for Christ’s sake. I can’t follow Harold around without him spotting me. Even if I could, I’m a cop, and I look like a cop. You know how welcome I’d be poking around in Atlantic City? Not to mention the fact that I happen to be up to my ass in homicides at the moment. Look, I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t desperate. But I’m desperate, so I am. It’s my daughter. It’s personal. I need help. So I’m asking. Do it as a favor.”

  I didn’t want to do it. But MacAullif knew the magic word. And he must have been really desperate, because he used it.

  “Please.”

  3.

  I WAS SO FREAKED out by what I’d agreed to do for MacAullif that I was halfway to the subway before I realized I’d neglected to check his name on the certificates on my way out.

  I realize I just dated myself with the phrase freaked out. Yeah, I was a hippie in the sixties. Now I’m a fortyish old fogy and a disillusioned liberal. The disillusioned part has a great deal to do with not having any money. One never seems to think of that in college, however. Everything seems so grand and glorious. There you are, the cream of the cream, one of the privileged few, sipping your beer and getting a higher education. It’s only later, when you get out in the real world, that the disillusionment sets in, when you realize your liberal arts degree is worth about as much as a roll of toilet paper. And has a lot fewer uses.