Stand-up

by Robert J. Randisi

  “How’s Marty?” she asked.

  “He’s fine. I gave him your flowers.”

  “Good.”

  “Ed coming in today?”

  “I called him last night and he agreed to work a double shift.”

  “You won’t have to put Stilwell behind the bar again.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “he doesn’t know a highball from a baseball.”

  “He’s a cop,” I said in his defense. “All they know is beer.”

  Okay, it was sort of a defense.

  I went into the office and pulled Walker’s partnership papers out of the drawer. I went through them, hoping I’d be able to understand it all without a lawyer. It wasn’t that I thought Walker would try to pull anything, I just wanted to know what I was signing before I signed it.

  After I went through the papers, I realized I might have to ask Heck to look through them for me—and then it hit me. Heck had to have computer equipment in his office, and Missy was the one who would operate it. That would save me from having to ask Walker to help even before we were officially partners.

  Since that appealed to me more, I put the papers back in the envelope, then put the disk in there with them. As an afterthought I added the message tapes and closed the whole thing up with the metal clasp.

  “I’ll probably be out most of the day,” I said to Geneva on my way out.

  “What else is new?”

  I waved and went out the door.

  “Heck’s in court, Miles,” Missy said as I entered.

  “Why do you assume I’m here to see him?” I asked. “What if I was here to see you?”

  She started to smile, then frowned.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “It looks worse than it is.”

  In addition to the bruise on my forehead, it turned out that I had one or two others on my face as well. I looked a little bit like I did after my last fight.

  I approached Missy’s desk, but instead of looking at her I was looking at her computer.

  “What can I do for you, Miles?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “So much for wanting to talk to me. When’s the last time we had lunch?”

  “Uh, last week.”

  “Two months ago.”

  “We’ll have lunch next week.”

  “Sure, I’ve heard that before. You know, for the one-millionth time, I’m glad we’re just friends. If we were going out together you’d drive me nuts.”

  “Luckily,” I said, “that’s never been a problem.”

  We both liked it that way.

  “What do you need?”

  “I’ve got a computer disk here, a floppy disk.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  I took it out and showed it to her.

  “Will this fit your machine?”

  “I have a hard drive, a five and a quarter and a three and a half on my machine.”

  A couple of days ago she would have lost me right before “hard drive.”

  I looked at her computer and saw the name IBM on it. Nothing but top of the line for Heck.

  “I need to know what’s on that disk, Missy.”

  “You need hard copies?”

  “Yes.” I felt smug about not having to ask what a “hard copy” was.

  “Doesn’t Walker Blue have his own equipment?”

  “We haven’t signed partnership papers yet. That’s my other favor.”

  I put the envelope down on her desk.

  “I wonder if Heck would have time to look them over before I sign them?”

  “I can ask,” she said, “or I can look at them. After all, I type all of Heck’s contracts. There’s not much I don’t know about them.”

  “Hey, that’d be great, Missy.”

  “I’ll look them over while I’m printing out this disk. You want everything on it?”

  “Yep. Oh, wait, there’s a file on there that needs a password.”

  “Do you know it?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’m going to try to find out or figure it out. Just do everything else and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I redly appreciate this, Missy.”

  “You’ll pay.”

  “I will?”

  She nodded.

  “Once you start working with Walker, I’ll be able to stick you for a real expensive lunch.”

  “You got it. The sky’s the limit.”

  “You’ll be sorry you said that.”

  “Do you know what’s happening with Danny Pesce?”

  “Heck’s working on getting a reduced charge so Mr. Pesce can get bail. He’s not very hopeful, though. The DA is being very tough on this one. I think he thinks he’s got a big fish on the hook.”

  I gave her a look and asked, “Was that a pun, Missy?”

  She stared at me blankly for a moment, then smiled and said, “I guess it was, wasn’t it?”

  49

  I thought about using Missy’s phone before I left, but since I was going to ask somebody to lunch I thought it advisable to use a pay phone outside.

  When I dialed Jonathan Healy’s office, Andrea answered, as I’d hoped.

  “Have you had lunch yet?”

  There was a long pause and then she said, “Miles?”

  “Oh, good. I thought you were going to deal my ego a huge blow there.”

  “What—”

  “I asked if you’d had lunch, yet.”

  “Uh, no, but—”

  “How about half an hour. I’ll come up there, and you pick the place.”

  “I thought—after what happened—”

  “At your apartment? That was a little tiff. Besides, this is business. I want to talk about Stan Waldrop.”

  “I’ll have to get back in an hour or so. I have a conference call.”

  “No problem.”

  “Why don’t you meet me somewhere? It will save time.”

  “Name it.”

  She thought a moment and then asked, “How about Ellen’s Stardust Diner?”

  “That sounds good.” Ellen’s was on the corner of Fifty-sixth and Sixth, an honest-to-God diner with home cooking and, on certain nights, singing waiters. It was famous for having turned Axl Rose of Guns ’n’ Roses away when he asked for a table for six for him and his girlfriend.

  “Half an hour,” I said, and we hung up.

  When I got to Ellen’s, Andrea was already seated at a table along the left wall. Placed strategically and high up were television picture tubes showing fifties TV shows and commercials, and movies.

  Andrea looked very smart in a red blazer with a ruffly white blouse underneath. She had a glass of iced tea on the table in front of her.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  I had taken the subway instead of a cab and had gotten stuck in a tunnel.

  “Just a few minutes,” she said. “It’s all right. Can we order quickly, though? I do have to get back.”

  We called a very personable young waiter over and while she ordered meat loaf, I simply ordered a hamburger because I thought there was a good chance I wasn’t going to get to eat lunch once we started talking.

  “This is the only place in the city I’ll order meat loaf,” she said. “You never know what some places put in it.”

  “And here you do know?”

  “No, but it’s so good I don’t care.”

  I also ordered an iced tea.

  “What did you want to know about Stan?” she asked.

  “I want to know everything about Stan. Mostly I want to know why he came to me to find some jokes that had been stolen when there’s obviously something else going on.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Number one, he’s dead. Right there’s a good indication. Number two, your little seduction scene.”

  “I thought—”

  “And number three, a friend of mine was attacked yesterday in Stan’s apartment which, by the way, was torn apart by someone who was looking
for something.”

  She hesitated a moment, then asked, “Did they find anything?”

  “I don’t think so. The apartment was gone through completely. Unless they found what they were looking for in the very last place they looked, I don’t think they found it at all. Oh, by the way, they smashed Stan’s computer.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think what they were looking for was in the computer?”

  “I want you to tell me what they were looking for, Andrea.”

  “How would I know?”

  “Why were you going to try to seduce me the other night?”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You know,” I said, “I should have let you go through with it. It might have been fun.”

  She gave me a haughty look, raising one eyebrow, and said, “You’ll never know.”

  “No, I probably won’t, but I will find out what you’re hiding, Andrea.”

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  “What was Stan doing in Vegas?”

  “Why are you interested in that?”

  “Because it wasn’t until he came back from Vegas that he noticed his jokes were missing from his compute. Everything seems to have happened since Vegas.”

  “He was performing, that’s all.”

  “Maybe I should go to Vegas and ask some questions.”

  “That would be up to you.”

  Lunch came, but she ignored her plate. I took a bite of my excellent burger.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “I’m wondering why I agreed to come here.”

  “You know, I was wondering the same thing. You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think you want to talk to me. I think maybe you’re in over your head and you can use my help.”

  “In what?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “I think you’re grabbing at straws, Miles. Isn’t that money that Stan paid you almost used up? The police are working on his murder. Why aren’t they bothering me the way you are?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I should have a talk with them. As for the money Stan paid me, I think I’ll just donate the remainder of my services to his memory.”

  She grabbed her purse and said, “I have to be going.”

  “What about your meat loaf?”

  “You’re paying,” she said, getting up. “You eat it.”

  I watched her leave, then looked down at my burger. I finished it, and then slid her plate over to me. After one bite of the meat loaf I knew I’d finish it. She was right. Who cared what they put in it if it tasted this good?

  Andrea had brought up a good point, and that was about the cops. Maybe it was time for me to talk to the detectives again and see just where they were on Stan’s murder:

  After the meat loaf, of course.

  50

  I called the Sixth Precinct to see if Detective Pell was in, and he was. He agreed to see me if I came right over.

  When I got there he was seated behind his desk, looking well groomed and unruffled. The other detectives in the room—three of them, including his partner, Matthews— were all in shirt sleeves and looking harried.

  “How do you stay so cool?” I asked.

  He looked up at me and said, “It’s hereditary. Have a seat.”

  I sat opposite him and he gave me his immediate attention. I was not used to dealing with cops like him. Even Hocus, who I considered my friend, hardly ever gave me his undivided attention.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “I walked into a door.”

  He shook his head slightly. “What have you got for me?”

  I sat there for a minute, confused as to which case he was handling, Joy’s murder or Stan Waldrop’s. When I finally figured it out, I told him what had happened to Marty in Waldrop’s apartment yesterday.

  “So you think this has something to do with his murder?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Have you keyed in on any suspects yet?”

  “Not many.”

  “No?”

  He frowned. “Why does that surprise you?”

  “Well, I’ve talked to a few people—uh, in the course of looking for the missing jokes, of course—and I’ve found out that he wasn’t very well liked.”

  “Who have you talked to?”

  “His uncle, and a man who claims to have been his friend.”

  “We talked to the uncle. My partner remembers having seen him in the Catskills when he was a kid.”

  “That must have gone a long way with him.”

  Pell permitted himself a small smile and said, “It did.”

  “What about Lenny James? Did you talk to him?”

  He nodded. “The uncle told us about him. Told us he was his nephew’s gay lover. He also suggested that his nephew might have been involved in some illegal activities.”

  “Like what?”

  Pell shrugged.

  “Drugs?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Is Lenny James a suspect?”

  “Everybody’s a suspect, Jacoby. Everybody who knew him. You know that.”

  “Except me, right?”

  Pell remained silent.

  “Have you looked into Vegas?”

  Pell frowned again. I had the feeling that when he was fifty he’d still look like a big little boy.

  “What about Vegas?”

  “Waldrop was in Vegas last week, performing.”

  “So?”

  “I just thought maybe something might have happened while he was there.”

  “Where was he performing?”

  “The Aladdin.”

  He picked up a pencil, scribbled something, and put it down quickly. “I’ll look into it.”

  “What about this agent?”

  “Jonathan Healy?”

  “Andrea Legend. She works for Healy, handling clients on her own. Waldrop was one of them.”

  “Nice kind of agent to have.”

  “Was he involved with her, personally?”

  “She says no.”

  “Well, of course she says no.”

  “I’ve seen some photos of him, Jacoby,” he said. “What would he be doing with her?”

  “Maybe the question should be, what would she be doing with him?”

  “We haven’t found any evidence that there was anything sexual going on.”

  “What about this Allegretto guy?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Was he involved with Andrea?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Well, maybe she had him kill Stan.”

  “He was out front with you when Waldrop was killed.”

  “What if he killed Stan and then came out front?”

  “What if you did that?”

  “Hey, I’m trying to help here.”

  “Maybe you’re just trying to get suspicion off yourself.”

  “Get real, Pell.”

  “Do you have something solid to offer me on this investigation, Mr. Jacoby?”

  “I just thought—”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll have to ask you to leave. I have a lot of work to do.”

  I stared at him for a moment, but I’d suddenly lost his attention. He was now treating me like every other cop did.

  All was right with the world again, right?

  I got up and started to leave, but just as I was going out, Detective Sandoval was coming in with his partner, Yearwood, right behind him.

  “Look who’s here,” Yearwood said.

  “Looking for us, Jacoby?” Sandoval asked.

  “As a matter of fact, no. I was just talking to Detective Pell.”

  “Ah,” Sandoval said, “the detective on the other murder you’re involved in. And now I hear you almost had another? A friend of yours?”

  “You t
alked to Detective Hocus, I take it.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sandoval said, “he wanted to coordinate with us. I think we finally decided that if you left New York for good, there’d be less work for us.”

  “I think we could even get young Pell there to agree.” Yearwood threw in her two cents.

  “You guys are funny.”

  “Really? Maybe you could get us an agent?”

  “Sorry,” I said, moving past them, “but I’m on the outs with the only agent I know.”

  “What happened to your face, Jacoby?” Yearwood asked.

  “I bruised myself shaving.”

  I left, thinking that I just didn’t have the knack for this comedy thing.

  51

  I wanted to talk to Sammy Freed again. He hadn’t mentioned anything to me about illegal activities. Why would he say something like that to the police?

  Rather than deli hop to find out where he was today, I went to his building. The same doorman was on duty, and we went through the same routine.

  “For an extra ten,” he said, after I had given him twenty, “I can give you his schedule.”

  “What schedule?”

  “Monday he goes to the New York Deli, Tuesday, Wolf’s, and so on.”

  “This is Thursday.”

  He waited to see if I was going to give him an extra ten, and when I didn’t he shrugged and said, “The Stage.”

  The Stage Deli is on Seventh Avenue between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets. The front is all glass, and I could see Sammy Freed sitting in a corner, right by the window. At the moment, there were two waitresses listening to him as he spoke. As I entered, the two women—both in their late forties or early fifties—broke into laughter and walked away from him, shaking their heads. There were two other waitresses working, and they were considerably younger. They were shaking their heads in a different way. I was willing to bet they had never even heard of the Catskills.

  One of them started toward me and I said, “I’m meeting Sammy.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” she said, and turned around.

  I walked over to where Freed was sitting, now looking out the window.

  “Hi, Sammy.”

  He looked up quickly, frowned as he spotted me, and then smiled. His rug was on straighter today.