Blackmail

by Parnell Hall

  “Sure.”

  “Swear to god. I treat my suspects right.”

  “Suspect?”

  “You got it, asshole. Any witness who don’t talk is a suspect. That happens to be you. You’re on my suspect list. You’re on my shit list. You’re slightly lower than garbage. You wanna get off, you drop the lawyer crap and loosen your jaw.”

  “I know my rights. I wanna talk to my lawyer.”

  Sergeant Thurman just sat there long enough for me to wonder if we were going in the alley again. Then he said with what for him had to be a rare display of patience, “You know who talks to their lawyers? Criminals. When you arrest ’em, they get their phone call, they call their lawyers. Witnesses, they don’t call their lawyers, they tell what they know.

  “Now, you say you got a right to call your lawyer? Well, sure you do. But not yet. Not if we’re just talkin’ here. Not unless I suspect you of something—I’m gonna arrest you—then you got a right to a lawyer.

  “But the way things stand, what you’re saying just don’t make no sense.”

  “Right. Beaten senseless. Can I quote you on that?”

  Thurman stuck out his jaw. “You can see a fuckin’ demonstration. Now, I’m not gonna ask you again. You gonna talk or not?”

  “I wanna call my lawyer.”

  “Fine. Like I said, you can only do that if you’re under arrest. So, fuck you, you’re under arrest.”

  “What’s the charge?”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  Sergeant Thurman jerked the door open, got out, and went back inside. He came back minutes later with the two uniformed cops who had been the first to answer my call. I was not in good shape to judge, having just survived a severe beating, but it occurred to me they didn’t look too happy.

  Sergeant Thurman gave them some final instructions, went back inside. The cops got in the car and pulled out.

  “Where we going?” I said.

  The plumper cop, who was driving, said nothing, but the taller, thinner of the two turned around in his seat. “We’re going downtown,” he said. “You’re bein’ booked.”

  “Oh?” I said. “What’s the charge?”

  He muttered something unintelligible.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  The plumper cop half turned around in his seat. “Drunk and disorderly,” he said.

  My mouth dropped open. “What the hell?”

  The taller cop shrugged. “Orders is orders.”

  “I demand a breathalizer test.”

  “Sorry. We don’t do that.”

  “What the hell—”

  The taller cop held up his hand. “Listen. Take it easy. I understand you wanna call your lawyer. When we book you, that’s your chance.”

  Fat chance.

  I didn’t have Richard’s home number. When I called the office number, I got a service saying to leave a message and Richard would get back to me. I said it was an emergency and asked when Richard would get that message. And the nice woman on the line told me she was not at liberty to say.

  Great.

  That made two of us who weren’t at liberty.

  12.

  THEY THREW ME IN THE drunk tank. A popular scene in TV shows, books, and movies. Only they never do it justice. In TV shows, books, and movies, it’s always exciting and often humorous.

  Tell me about it.

  To begin with, it stank of vomit. I know that’s a given, but even so. A description can’t really suffice. You have to imagine the stench of large numbers of people vomiting again and again, building up over a very long period of time. The stale odor of old vomit mingling with the sharp, pungent odor of the new.

  In a way, I was lucky I’d thrown up myself. I had my own nauseating breath to filter the atmosphere through.

  But Jesus Christ.

  It was a large room. Or cell. Or tank. Or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. The floor was stone. And wet. Wet with vomit, and wet with water sprayed on periodically with hoses to wash the worst of the vomit away. Not that that did any good. Probably merely served to freshen it up by keeping it moist.

  In the cell were maybe twenty bunk beds. Rackety steel-framed affairs, with paper-thin, rotting mattresses. All were occupied, so there was no chance of my choosing one. Not that I would have. For any number of reasons.

  Aside from the forty men in the bunks, there were another forty or fifty doing without. Some of these were actually—gag—sleeping on the floor. Others were standing along the side with their arms through the bars, as if for support. A few were conversing, if that’s what you could call it, in a loud, obnoxious, slurred manner that left no doubt as to why they’d been interred. But most of the occupants of the pen were in no shape to do anything.

  Which was fortunate. Because the one thing I was most afraid they would do was me.

  I must admit I am a paranoid schizophrenic by nature. But I have to think that even if I’d been a brave man I would have been scared.

  Raped in jail. That was the phrase that kept going through my head. Raped in jail.

  A frighteningly real possibility.

  I tried to tell myself this was just paranoia, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. Why me, I asked myself. There’s almost a hundred people in this tank, why would they pick on me?

  Unfortunately, I had the answer: because I was probably the youngest, whitest, healthiest person there.

  Is that racist? I don’t know, but it happened to be a fact. The majority of the occupants of the drunk tank were minorities, mostly black and Hispanic. A larger number were old, and an even larger number were sickly, or at least appeared so as a result of either drugs or alcohol. By drunk-tank standards, a healthy, clean-shaven man in his forties was positively nubile.

  I stayed off to one side near the bars and prayed they would not come.

  They came.

  First off was a skinny Hispanic who might have been anywhere from forty to sixty. He boasted a scraggly two-day growth, a missing front tooth, and breath that would have felled a bull elephant. Which was saying something, considering it had to penetrate the vomit stench to even be noticed.

  He came over, leaned in conspiratorially, and said, “What you in for?”

  I paused a second or two, trying not to breathe, then said, “Drunk and disorderly.”

  He stood there, looking at me. His eyes blinked twice. They traveled over my body, looking me up and down. I felt like meat.

  “Same as me,” he muttered.

  That concept seemed to overwhelm him, and he wandered off.

  I understood his confusion. He was dressed in close to rags and looked as if he’d been on a seven-day binge. I was, of course, still wearing my suit and tie. It occurred to me Sergeant Thurman was going to have a hard time making drunk and disorderly stick if this guy couldn’t even buy it.

  Next up I almost pissed in my pants. For a lot of reasons. For one thing, I really needed to go. There was a single seatless toilet in the far corner of the cell. But the one thing I knew for sure was that no matter how great the urge, there was no way I was whipping my dick out in front of these guys. But I certainly had the need.

  I also had the impetus. It arrived in the form of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound skinhead black man who looked like he could have played linebacker for the New York Giants. At least in soberer days. Now he looked lucky to be able to walk.

  But walk he did, or at least stumble, far enough to reach where I was standing by the side of the cell. He lurched up, grabbed a bar for support, hung on, and leaned up close to me.

  “Well, ain’t you cute,” he said.

  Not exactly what I wanted to hear.

  My heart started palpitating, and I wondered if I was about to have an anxiety attack. If not a heart attack.

  Good god.

  See what I mean? In a book, movie, or TV show, the hero would have some snappy comeback, joking bravely in the face of fear.

  Well, sorry. I have to admit that at that moment my wits had left me, and
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  Instead, I weighed my chances. If the guy got hold of me, I was lost. If not, he was very drunk or stoned or whatever, and I could probably outrun him.

  But I didn’t want to run. Not there. In the drunk tank. Tripping through the vomit. With nowhere to go but round and around.

  And that wasn’t the half of it. I didn’t want to run because I didn’t want the others to see me run. Because to even the most drug- or alcohol-deadened mind, that would make me the quarry. The hunted. The object of pursuit. Not a role I particularly coveted. Not a part I wanted to play.

  But I couldn’t just stand there and let him grab me.

  So what the hell could I do?

  That decision was made for me when the gentleman in question suddenly belched, doubled over, and vomited at my feet.

  I moved away, but it didn’t look like flight. Arnold Schwarzenegger would have moved.

  That was the last I saw of that particular chap. After recovering from his fit of indigestion he seemed to have forgotten all about me. Or so I concluded from my observation point, way on the other side of the cell.

  No one bothered me for a while after that. I wondered if it was a result of the incident. If somehow I’d gotten a reputation. If people who hadn’t really been watching had come to the conclusion that I had made the guy throw up. Slugged him in the stomach, perhaps.

  At any rate, after that I was pretty much left alone. Pretty much. It was still a perfectly nerve-wracking experience. But after a while I got into a kind of a rhythm. A kind of turn, move away, tiptoe through the vomit, and reach another isolated spot to stand a while alone.

  Never, of course, making eye contact. Not that tough for a New Yorker, already well disciplined in the art.

  And so it went.

  All fucking night long.

  For of course I could not stop. Could not rest. Ever.

  And so I played my game of paranoid,, no-peek, hide-and-go-seek freeze tag keep away, from the time they threw me in the drunk tank right up until Richard showed up to bail me out at nine-thirty the next morning.

  13.

  “IT’S NOT THAT BAD,” Richard said.

  I gave him a look. “That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t spend the night in the drunk tank. You don’t smell like vomit.”

  Richard crinkled his nose, peered at me from behind his desk. “A valid point. I wonder if you should be sitting in that chair.”

  “Damn it, Richard.”

  He held up his hand. “Sorry. But you do need to get cleaned up. If I’m to work out any sort of deal.”

  “Do you think you can?”

  “Oh, absolutely. That’s why I say it doesn’t sound that bad.”

  “Great,’“ I said. “Listen, Richard. I’ve had no sleep. I spent the whole night absolutely terrified some huge drunk with AIDS would cornhole me. Largely because I don’t have your unlisted number.”

  Richard shook his head. “The service should have called.”

  “Don’t tell me. Tell them. Anyway, I’m too stressed out to appreciate subtleties. Just tell me straight out what you mean.”

  “Okay,” Richard said. “What I mean is, from what you say, there’s no real reason for anyone to assume you did this. The murder, I mean.”

  “This Sergeant Thurman’s a moron. He won’t need a reason.”

  Richard waved it away. “Fuck him. Who cares what he thinks. I’ll deal with the A.D.A.”

  “How?”

  “Like I said, make a deal. I’ll get you immunity and you’ll talk.”

  “Will he go for that?”

  “He should. That’s the nice thing about your story. As far as the cops are concerned, you’ve got a lot of information. About this guy Barry. About the porno prints. They’ll eat that up. Plus, it’s all a great reason why you had nothing to do with the killing.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you’re the dumb-ass messenger boy, of course. You’re not important.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t get huffy. I’m on your side. Anyway, that’s why your story is nice. The only problem with it is, you gotta admit to a few counts of blackmail.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, you’re an accessory. But actually that’s a big advantage. If you were innocent of the blackmail, it would be tough to prove. But what the hell. You’re guilty. Which is real nice. I don’t have to prove your innocence, just exonerate your guilt. Which is a snap. I get you immunity on the blackmail in exchange for your cooperation on the murder.”

  “Will they go for that?”

  “They should, if I lay it out right.”

  “Yeah, but how? The guy’s not going to know what my story is till I tell it. And I’m not going to tell it till I get the immunity. It’s a chicken-and-the-egg situation.”

  “Or an after-you-Alphonse. But that’s no problem. I am quite well versed at stating hypothetical situations.

  “Then, of course, we have the benefit of this shit-head sergeant who threw you in the drunk tank.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s a wonderful bargaining chip. We have a false arrest and unlawful imprisonment to trade against the blackmail counts. You should come out of this smelling like a rose.”

  “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Richard?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What about the murder?”

  “What about it?”

  “Someone killed her.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah, but who?”

  He shrugged. “That’s not my job. Even if it were, my choices for speculation would be somewhat limited. Assuming it wasn’t you, Barry and the couple in the pictures are the only people we know who are involved.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Fine. So don’t worry your head about it. Right now, let’s us just clean up the details.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s start with the money.”

  Of course I’d had the blackmail money on me when I’d been arrested. It had been taken from me, along with my wallet, car keys, pocket change, belt, and beeper when I’d been booked. Everything else had been returned to me when I’d been released. But the envelope had been held for evidence.

  “What about the money?” I said.

  “First off, do you have any idea how much it was?”

  “Probably five thousand dollars.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because that’s what it was the first time.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I told you. I saw it. Barry tore the envelope open, dumped it out on the bed. It was a stack of hundred-dollar bills, and from the size of it, it appeared to be fifty of ’em.”

  “And the envelope the cops have?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Did you open it?”

  “No, I didn’t. But from the feel of it, that’s what it is.”

  “So the cops are holding an envelope with five grand?”

  “That’s right.”

  Richard nodded. “Good. Then our position is, we want the money.”

  I looked at him. “What?”

  “Well, why not? They’re not entitled to it. That money was in your possession.”

  “Yeah, but ...”

  “But what?”

  “It was given to me to pay blackmail.”

  “Pish tush. By a woman who’s dead. What are you going to do, give it back to her?”

  “No, but ...”

  “But what?”

  “I’m wondering about the legality of the situation.”

  “Don’t do that. I’m the lawyer. That’s my job.”

  “Yeah, I know. But ...”

  “You worry too much. This is a minor matter. A detail to be straightened out. But if there’s five grand kicking around, who should have it, us or the cops? Anyway, don’t let it worry you. Let it worry me.

  “Okay,” Richard said. “I think t
he situation is quite clear. Our position is, they have our money and we want it back.”

  “Fine.”

  “So why don’t you go home, get cleaned up. Meanwhile I’ll line up this A.D.A. and we’ll play ‘Let’s Make a Deal.

  14.

  A.D.A. HENRY FROST LOOKED LIKE a chubby baby. A chubby baby with horn-rimmed glasses. They adorned a pudgy, round face, topped by thinning wisps of cornsilk hair, and they appeared totally out of place, as if some preadolescent had tried on his father’s glasses in an attempt to make himself look older. A wholly unsuccessful attempt, by the way. A.D.A. Frost looked positively immature.

  Which I found strangely disconcerting. Maybe it was just that it was later that same afternoon and I still hadn’t had any sleep. Or maybe it was just that I was still shaken by the trauma of the drunk tank. Or maybe it was just that as I sink deeper and deeper into the sludge of my forties, the people around me seem younger and younger. But for whatever reason, it was a sobering thought that my fate rested in the hands of this child. And I must say, I found the prospect of being grilled by him positively weird.

  Grilled. Maybe that was it. I expected to be grilled, even though by rights I shouldn’t be. First off, Richard was there to protect me. Second off, he had made his deal. So I was free to say anything I wanted. I just didn’t want. Because, even with immunity, confessing to something is just no fun.

  A.D.A. Frost adjusted his glasses, nodded to the stenographer, and said, “Very well, let’s begin.”

  Before he could ask his first question, Richard jumped in. “Yes, let’s. Let the record show that I am Richard Rosenberg, and that I am present as attorney for Stanley Hastings. Let the record further show that my client, Stanley Hastings, has been granted immunity for any crime other than murder that may be revealed during the course of this questioning. That under those circumstances, I am prepared to waive his constitutional right against self-incrimination.”

  “Fine,” Frost said. “Now, if we may get on with it.” He turned to me. “What is your name?”

  “Stanley Hastings.”

  “What is your occupation?”

  “I’m a private detective.”

  “Are you acquainted with a woman by the name of Patricia Connely?”