Stand-up
Page 5
“Maybe I am, and maybe you can. What can you tell me about stand-up comics?”
He made a face and said, “They make lousy actors. I mean, once in a while one makes good, like Eddie Murphy. But have you seen Seinfeld? The guy can’t act. Paul Reiser, now he’s pretty good, and he’s got that Helen Hunt to work with—man, is she cute or what—but if you ever saw Frank Gorshin and Don Rickles try to act—”
“Frank, Frank,” I said, getting him to put on the brakes. “I’m more interested in them as stand-ups, not as actors.”
I wondered how high up this guy was where he worked. I mean, when he had to stop and switch gears I could see it on his face.
“Well, whataya want to know?”
“Their jokes, do they write them down?”
He thought a moment, then said, “I dunno.”
“Well, how much joke stealing goes on among them?”
“Hey, plenty. Haven’t you ever heard of Henny Youngman?”
I stared at him for a moment, then decided to cut my losses.
“Okay, thanks, Frank. You’ve been a big help.”
“Hey, Jack, you know, if you ever do wanna get on TV I think this bit, you know, the private eye bit with the bar, I think that’d work well for a sitcom.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Frank.”
“I’m serious, babe,” he said. “We should have lunch on it.”
“I’ll have my girl call your girl,” I said, and fled to my office.
12
I have one answering machine, and I used to keep it in my apartment, but when I started using the office at Packy’s for my P.I. business I moved it there. I took Ray’s message tape out of my pocket and put it in my machine, then pressed the “save” button. Immediately, the little red light started to blink. Luckily, mine worked the same way Ray’s did.
I played back all the messages. Joy said she had called Ray on Monday night. Hers was the second message. Tyler had probably called Ray on Monday and again on Tuesday before calling Heck. Why would he have tried Ray at all? Hadn’t his client told him to go to Heck Delgado to get him for his defense? At the same time, Tyler was asking Heck—and me—to find Ray, but he obviously had Ray’s phone number before he came to us. Did he have his address as well?
Not only was I going to have to talk to Heck tomorrow, but Tyler as well—and Stan Waldrop’s agent, a man named John Healy.
I was playing Ray’s messages back again when Geneva came in to get a bottle of gin off the shelves that lined the walls. We had enough liquor on those shelves to get an elephant drunk, and we still managed to run short of something every night.
“What are you doing? Playing with your machine?”
“I want to hear the messages on this tape over and over.”
“Working on a case?”
“Yes.”
“That comic guy that was here?”
“No, this is something else.”
She came over, put the bottle down on the desk, and leaned on it.
“I’ve got the last six messages that were left on the machine, and something doesn’t strike me as right. I wish I could hear what was on here before.”
“You can.”
I looked up at her.
“What do you mean? Once you listen to your messages, the machine tapes over them . . . doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” she said, “but you know what I found out? That tape that fits in the phone?”
“Yeah.”
“It also fits into one of those microrecorders. You know, those little jobbies that fit in your pocket or, in my case, my purse.”
“So?”
“So when you do that you can play all the messages that are on the tape, not just the last ones that were left on a particular day.”
“And the others haven’t been recorded over?”
“Some have, some haven’t. Try it. I was playing around once, and there was still a message somewhere on the tape that I’d gotten weeks before.”
“Geneva, is this on the level?”
She picked up the gin bottle. “Why would I lie?”
“Do you still have one of those little recorders?”
“Sure I do.”
“In your purse?”
“No, I don’t carry it with me everywhere I go. Get real.”
“Can you bring it with you to work tomorrow? It would really help me.”
Her eyes got a crafty look and she said, “For another day off with pay I can.”
Lately Geneva had started to bargain for what she wanted, usually time off with pay.
“Half a day and it’s a deal.”
“Done. Hah! I got me a half day off.”
“When we’re not busy.”
She made a face at me and said, “I knew there was a catch. I’ll have the recorder here tomorrow, Boss.”
She left, swishing her butt at me saucily like she knew she’d gotten away with something.
Before closing up and leaving the bar that night, I tried Ray’s phone number. His machine didn’t answer, and that’s when I realized that I hadn’t replaced the tape I’d taken. There was no way he could get any more messages, but more messages might help me find him. I needed to go back and put a clean tape in the machine. I’d call Joy in the morning to see if she had a key to his place so I wouldn’t have to go up the fire escape again.
I left the bar and went home to my apartment on University Place and Thirteenth Street. I liked it because it was near the subway—the Fourteenth and Union Square Station—as well as being over a restaurant and across the street from a deli. I figured to stay there even when I started making more money working with Walker.
I took a beer out of the fridge—a John Courage, which I didn’t carry in the bar—and went to the phone. I tried Ray again, just in case he’d come home, but hung up after four rings.
I made a quick ham sandwich for dinner, finished off the beer, and decided to turn in early. I had a busy day ahead. I was going to be talking with a lot of people, and it usually helped to be alert.
13
After breakfast I dialed the phone number of Stan Waldrop’s agent, John Healy. What I would have liked to have done was call Heck Delgado, but I knew he’d still be at the Tombs talking to his—our—potential client, Danny “the Fish” Pesce.
The phone was answered by a secretary who said that Mr. Healy was “very busy.”
“Would you tell him please that I’m calling regarding one of his clients, Stan Waldrop?”
“And who shall I say you are, sir?” The woman sounded young, with a deep, sexy voice.
“My name is Miles Jacoby,” I said, and then added, “I’m a detective.”
“Oh, just one moment, please.”
It was more like three, but who was counting?
“Hello, hello! What’s this about Stan Waldrop? Did something happen to him?”
“Mr. Healy?”
“That’s correct.”
“My name is Miles Jacoby.”
“Detective Jacoby?”
“Um, I’m a private investigator—”
“You told my secretary you were a policeman.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I did not. I told her my name, and that I was a detective.”
“I see. Well, what’s this about, Mr. Jacoby?”
“Stan Waldrop.”
“What about him?”
“Well, he’s hired me to find some missing jokes.”
“What?”
“He says somebody stole his jokes—”
“I can see this is going to take a while,” Healy said, interrupting me.
“Why don’t we make an appointment?”
“All right . . . wait . . . let me check . . . can you come and see me . . . between four and four-fifteen today?”
“Four and four-fifteen? Can you spare the time?”
“Yes, I can,” he said impatiently, “fifteen minutes between four and four-fifteen.”
“I don’t suppose—” I started, but I was speaking to
a dead phone.
At least I’d been granted a fifteen-minute audience. That was something.
When I got off the phone with Healy it was eleven A.M. I wanted to make a call to California, but it was too early. The man I wanted to call, a P.I. named Saxon, would bite my head off for sure if I called him at eight in the morning. I decided to wait until about one, my time.
Saxon was a P.I. whose name was in a book I had inherited from Eddie Waters, a phone book containing numbers of other P.I.s around the country. When he needed something done in another state, he called one of them. I had taken to doing the same thing, with great success. They say cops are a close-knit bunch, but I haven’t found too many people I find nicer and more helpful than some of my colleagues.
So I’d give Saxon a call later, and I knew he’d help me if he could.
I left my apartment at eleven-thirty and walked over to Packy’s. Geneva was already there, everything ready to open by noon.
“I got your recorder, Boss,” she shouted as I used my key to enter.
“How about a ‘good morning’?”
She put her hands on her hips and faced me. She was wearing some kind of sleeveless, hooded sweatshirt in white, with a flash of something red underneath.
“You wouldn’t be here before opening if it wasn’t for that recorder.”
“Hey, I come in a lot before opening.”
“Yeah, bite me,” she said. “The recorder’s on your desk.”
I bit back a sexist remark about where I’d like to bite her and went into the office, stopping in the kitchen to grab a cup of Geneva’s great coffee.
I sat at my desk and took the tape out of my pocket. Geneva’s recorder was on the desk, looking very tiny, but the tape was a perfect fit. I put it in, rewound it to the beginning, and then pressed the “play” button.
Geneva was right. There were messages on there other than those recorded that last day. Some were just snatches, because they were constantly being recorded over, but some were there in their entirety.
As it turned out, Ray got lots of cryptic messages, probably because of the nature of his business.
“Ray, Ken, call me.”
“Ray it’s me. Call me tonight.”
“Hey, Ray, goin’ to the track Saturday. Call if you’re interested.”
“Ray, baby, I miss you. Call me.” That was Joy. The others were male voices I didn’t recognize.
And then there were the snatches:
“Mr. Carbone, please call me at . . .”
“. . . one last time, and then I’m not callin’ . . .”
“. . . how about Tuesday . . .”
“. . . heard from you in a week . . .”
“. . . please hang up and dial again . . .”
“. . . press ‘one’ to accept . . .”
All in all, there wasn’t much I could use, but I was willing to listen to it a few more times just to make sure. I was rewinding it when the phone rang. I looked at the clock on my desk as I answered it. It was twelve-fifteen.
“Hello?”
“Jack?”
“Heck, are you back from the Tombs already?”
“I have what I need.”
“Are you taking the case?”
“I am.”
“Then I guess I am too.”
“Have you found Mr. Carbone?”
“Not yet. Can we talk? I need more info.”
“I’m due in court . . . wait. . . can you be here at four-thirty?”
“Maybe five. Is that okay?”
“Any time after five is fine, Miles.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, you want to go and see a stand-up comic tonight?”
“A comic?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a client who does stand-up. He’s at this place in the Village, and he’s leaving two tickets for me.”
“Uh, I don’t think so, but thanks for the offer.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Be a shame to waste that other ticket.”
“You’ll find somebody,” he said. “You’re a popular guy, Miles.”
Yeah, I thought as I hung up, tell that to my private life. I touched the little phone book in my pocket and thought that maybe I should ask one of my fellow P.I.s to go with me. Nah!
14
Linda Matella was a lady cop I’d met a while back while working a case. Since then we’ve gone out a few times, but we haven’t gotten serious. She’d been involved with a married colleague whose murder I was looking into. His name was Andy McWilliams, and it was his wife, Caroline, I was helping. She also had a P.I.’s license, and once she and I found out who had her husband killed, she tried to continue his business. We saw each other once in a while, but eventually it got to be too much for her. She packed it in and moved to the Midwest to be near her family. I never told Caroline about Linda—not that she had been seeing her husband, and not that I was seeing both of them at the same time. Even though I was seeing them casually, I still had some guilt about it. It was funny, though; Linda knew about Caroline.
Linda also knew about my long-distance relationship with Cathy Merrill, the Florida deputy.
Linda was smart, fun to be with, and somebody I think I was really resisting getting involved with—or maybe she was resisting me. Anyway, we had an occasional dinner together, and when one of us got tickets for something, invited the other one.
I called her at police headquarters, where she worked. When I got her on the phone she only had a minute, so I invited her to see Stan Waldrop with me and she accepted. We arranged for me to pick her up, and then she went back to work.
I called Joy White at home, but there was no answer. It looked like I was going to have to get into Ray’s apartment the same way I had before. On the way over I stopped in an electronics store and bought some more tapes for the answering machine. The smallest pack they had was four, but I could eventually use the other three.
When I got to Ray’s building, I went through the routine with the fire escape. This time, all of the apartments I passed seemed to be empty. In fact, the fourth floor apartment where I had seen the man and woman in bed looked odd. Either they were real clean people, or the apartment was vacant.
I bypassed Ray’s magnetic lock again and entered his apartment. Everything looked just the way I had left it, so apparently Ray hadn’t come home last night. I didn’t bother with another search of the apartment; I just put the new tape in his machine. I was about to leave when I realized that there had to be an outgoing message on it.
I couldn’t impersonate his voice, so I just said, “Leave a message after the tone.” I vacillated over using tone or beep, and decided tone sounded better. Even if it was really a “beep,” who was going to complain?
Also, when I picked up his machine and looked at the bottom there was the code number for picking up messages from outside. It was only two digits, so even I could memorize it.
I left the apartment by the front door again and stopped at the fourth floor. I knocked on the door of the apartment under Ray’s. Still no answer Then I heard somebody coming up the steps. A middle-aged woman with gray hair appeared and was so startled by my presence that she almost dropped her bag of groceries.
“Sorry if I scared you,” I said.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I just didn’t expect you.” She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, right down to the white shoes. “Do you want to see that apartment?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The apartment?”
“Oh, I guess there’s nobody home.”
She laughed and said, “Of course there’s nobody home. It’s vacant.”
“Vacant?”
At her door she used one hand to fit her key into the lock.
“Aren’t you here to see it?”
“Uh . . . if I was here to see it, who would I see?”
“Why, the super.”
“And who would that be?”
“Ray Carbone.”
“Is he around?”
“He lives up in Five B,” she said, opening her door, “but I haven’t seen him in days.”
“I see. Uh, how long has this apartment been vacant?”
“Months,” she said, then added, “maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it or anything.”
“That’s okay. Uh, do you want some help with those groceries?”
“No, thank you.” She was starting to look at me funny, and I figured it was time to leave.
“Well, thanks for the information.”
She watched me as I went down the stairs, and then I heard her door close.
If the apartment underneath Ray’s had been vacant for so long, who were the man and woman I’d seen on the bed? Had they broken in just to use it for sex, or were they there for another reason?
I went outside, back to the fire escape, and worked my way up to the fourth floor. I was getting familiar with the route.
On four I stopped and pressed my face to the window. There was a bed with a mattress, but no sheets or pillowcases. There didn’t seem to be any other furniture. The mattress was cheap and thin, one of those pin-striped ones. There was nothing else in the room except for something under the bed. I pressed my face to the window again, cupped my hand around it, squinted, and made it out to be a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.
15
It was pretty clear to me now that somebody had been staking out Ray’s apartment. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so clear, but it was a good theory. Why should I think that I was the only one looking for him?
I was still puzzled, though, by the man and woman having been in bed together. Had they leaped in to bed when they’d heard me on the fire escape? Or had they been overcome by lust while on stakeout? And who were they? Cops? Bad guys? Knowing Ray, it could have been either, even without his involvement in the Pesce murder case.
There really wasn’t much more I could do until I talked with Heck. I checked out a few places I knew Ray hung out—bars, a couple of gyms, a pool hall—but nobody had seen him for days. I finally gave up on Ray for a while and headed uptown to meet with Stan Waldrop’s agent.