Blackmail

by Parnell Hall

  “How do you know?”

  I told her about the bit with the purse.

  Alice wasn’t impressed. That figured. I just hadn’t been that impressive lately.

  “Doesn’t mean he has a girlfriend,” Alice said.

  “What else could it mean?”

  “What if it’s his wife’s purse?”

  “Then why would he hide it?”

  “A guilty reaction. He doesn’t like the idea of you knowing he’s been going through his wife’s purse.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “So what? He could still have that reaction. Maybe even more so. Rifling his dead wife’s purse.”

  “I really can’t see it,” I said.

  Alice shrugged. “It may not be true. You may be perfectly right about the girlfriend.”

  We were in the kitchen and Alice was cooking. Alice is hard to argue with in general, but she’s invincible when she’s cooking. It’s as if no one preparing anything that delicious could be wrong.

  “Say I’m right,” I said. “About the girlfriend.”

  “Say you are.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The man is horny.”

  “His wife was just killed.”

  “True. Are you suggesting that should make him less horny?”

  Unbelievable.

  If I were suggesting the man were horny, Alice would be all over me, blasting me for being obsessed with sex.

  “You’re missing the point. If Connely had a girlfriend, it redefines his interest in the case. Particularly if he were involved with her before his wife died.”

  Alice paused in the midst of mincing a clove of garlic. She looked up at me. “Are you suggesting he killed his wife because he was involved with another woman?”

  “Uh ...”

  “Well?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a factor to be considered. That the man had an outside interest.”

  “So what?”

  “Alice,” I said. “Come on. Weren’t you the one who said he did it? That was your first reaction, right? Don’t you remember that?”

  Alice looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “That was when it was just his wife. The murder might have been completely unrelated to the blackmail scheme. Now you’ve got three people dead, including the blackmailer. A slightly different situation, wouldn’t you think?”

  I blinked, tried to think of an appropriate response. There was a flaw in that logic somewhere, I was sure of it. Unfortunately at that moment Alice threw the chopped garlic into a frying pan of sizzling butter, and any hope of coherent thought evaporated in the fragrant mist.

  “No fair,” I said, fighting for time. Then I had it. “How can you say her death was unrelated to the blackmail scheme? Back then, I’m talking about. Regardless of the other murders. She was killed as part of the blackmail scheme.”

  “Who says she was?”

  “Come on. That’s how I found her body. I followed their directions, went where they told me to go, and there she was.” Damn. I had her. “See? Killed as part of the blackmail scheme.”

  Alice shook her head. “Not at all. She may have gone there as part of the blackmail scheme. It doesn’t mean she was killed because of it. Say she goes there as part of the blackmail scheme. Her husband, who’s been keeping tabs on her and looking for an opportunity to kill her, follows her there. And says, ‘Hey, here’s my chance. What could be better? If I kill her here, it will look like something else.’”

  See what I mean? Invincible when she’s cooking.

  I exhaled. “How do you account for the other two murders?”

  Alice looked utterly surprised. “I now.”

  “What is your present theory?”

  “At the present,” Alice said, “I don’t have enough data to make an assessment.”

  Good lord. She had no data whatsoever when she made her Bradley Connely—guilty pronouncement. The logic of which she had just successfully defended.

  “I see,” I said. “And I suppose this is my fault? In not supplying you with sufficient data to crack the case?”

  “There’s no need to be so defensive,” Alice said. “I wasn’t blaming you.”

  “Maybe not. But tell me. Is there anything you think I should be doing? I mean something you feel I should be doing, that I’m not?”

  “What do you think you’re not doing?”

  “Nothing. I just—”

  “Then I don’t understand the question.”

  I rubbed my head. “Alice, let me phrase this another way. You mentioned that you didn’t have enough data. Could you suggest any way I might be able to get you some more data?”

  “Sure,” Alice said.

  I blinked. Mentally shot myself. Wondered for maybe the hundredth time in our marriage if Alice really understood the fine line she drew between what she felt I should do and what she felt me deficient for not doing.

  I did not bring any of that up, and I swear there was no edge in my voice at all as I asked, “And what would that be?”

  “The people in the pictures,” Alice said. “We still don’t know who the people are in the pictures.”

  I exhaled. “That’s right,” I said. “I don’t know. You don’t know. The police don’t know. Baby-Face Frost doesn’t know.”

  “You suppose he knows they call him that?”

  “I don’t know, Alice,” I said. “And I don’t know who the people in the pictures are. But aside from what I’m doing, I can’t think of a practical way to find out.”

  “I know,” Alice said. “It’s frustrating. But I was thinking.”

  “What?”

  Alice had moved on to chopping onions. I found my eyes tearing. Magically, hers appeared clear and bright. Somehow that figured.

  “It occurred to me you should trust your first instincts more.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  When you saw those blackmail pictures, what did you think?”

  “Huh?”

  “What did you think when you saw them?”

  “That’s a complicated question.”

  “Why?”

  “The guy’d just tore the thing open, showed them to me. I wasn’t supposed to see them. I—”

  “No, no, no,” Alice said. “I don’t mean that. Never mind all that emotional baggage. I mean, what did you think about them? In terms of what they were?”

  “Dirty pictures.”

  “Yes, but more specific. What kind of dirty pictures?”

  “I don’t know. They weren’t S and M, but they seemed to feature everything. Well, not golden showers, but you certainly had your—”

  Alice wheeled around brandishing the knife with which she had been cutting onions. I don’t think she intended it as a weapon, but still I instinctively stepped back.

  “Stanley,” she said. “Don’t go off on a tangent. That’s not what I mean. Don’t you remember when you brought the things home? What you said they looked like—the people in the pictures?”

  Under normal circumstances I would have remembered. But as so often happens under Alice’s cross-examination, my mind blanked out.

  “No,” I said. “What did I think they looked like?”

  “Porno actors.”

  40.

  I MUST ADMIT I’VE BEEN in porno shops before, but not in many, many years, and never because my wife asked me to. If that wasn’t enough to make me feel like a fool, add in the fact I was looking for something that on the one hand they wouldn’t naturally have and on the other there was no way to ask for without sounding like a total idiot.

  The bald fat guy with the mustache and the stubby cigar squinted at me through the smoke. “Pictures?” he said. “Are you kiddin’ me? Buddy, we got nothing but pictures.”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m not talking about magazines. I’m talking about photographs.”

  “What do you thin
k are in the magazines?”

  “You don’t understand. I mean eight-by-ten color photographs.”

  “Eight-by-ten?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If it’s size you want, we can do better than that.”

  “I don’t want better than that. I’m looking for a store that sells eight-by-ten pictures. Not in a book. Not in a magazine. Just the pictures. The photographs. The separate photographs. Loose.”

  He frowned. “You want the artwork?”

  Jesus Christ. My head swirled. Here, in a porno shop on Forty-second Street, the proprietor, who looked very much as if he’d just been sent over by Central Casting to play a proprietor of a porno shop, refers to the photos shot for a skin mag as “the artwork,” just as if he were a Madison Avenue type discussing the layout for Cosmopolitan.

  “Right,” I said. “The artwork. The photographs. Where could I buy the photographs themselves.”

  He shrugged. “From the photographer.”

  “You don’t sell ’em?”

  “Nah.”

  “Suppose I don’t know the photographer—is there any place I could look—any place might have ’em.”

  “You talkin’ hard core or soft?”

  “Hard.”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “But soft you would?”

  “I wouldn’t know that either.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “To find out what you want. Now if it’s hard core you want, I got plenty of stuff here. So the pictures aren’t loose. Big deal. You want single shots, take a scissors, cut ’em out.”

  “Thanks for the suggestion.”

  The second shop I tried was much the same thing, except the proprietor didn’t speak as good English and wasn’t nearly as friendly. I got the impression he thought I was a cop. What the hell he thought I might be busting him for—since as far as I know all that stuff was legal—was beyond me. Unless the guy had kiddie porn in the back somewhere. At any rate, he was hostile and noncommunicative, and his shop was a total washout.

  Third shop, I met the Crazy Eddie of the porn world, with prices so low he must be giving it away. A little old man with greedy eyes and an ingratiating smile, he seemed to take the idea that someone might leave his store without buying something as a personal affront, and would not be undersold. If I wanted dirty pictures, I was gonna have dirty pictures, even if he had to get a girl and a camera and take them himself. Which he would have had to do, since he didn’t happen to have any in his shop. All he had were magazines and video tapes, just like everybody else. But what was the big deal, he wanted to know, whether I saw the pictures before they were put in the magazine or after? “Pictures are pictures,” he said with a shrug. “Come on, I give you a good price.”

  It wasn’t till I got to the next shop that I realized what the guy said made sense. If the pictures I was looking for really were porn pictures of porn actors posing for a photographer, what would be more logical than that they would eventually wind up in a porn magazine?

  So I started looking at magazines.

  Oh boy.

  Even having a noble purpose could not make up for the funny feeling I felt standing there flipping through the mags. It occurred to me, what if the principal of Tommie’s school should walk in and see me doing this? I’m such a jerk it took a while before I realized if that actually happened, the man would be hard pressed to fault me.

  I found that small consolation.

  It was maybe five shops and I can’t tell you how many sexual organs later when I found it.

  It was a dive on Eighth Avenue, a grungy place even by porno-shop standards. It was a hole-in-the-wall affair boasting no live girls, no peep show, no films, videos, or what have you. Just dirty magazines, and from the looks of them, recycled ones at that.

  In the back of the store was a bin. On the front of the bin was a sign. Old. Faded. So much so you could barely read it anymore. The sign said: 3 for $1.00.

  The proprietor of the store was a little guy with a runny nose, who looked like a rat who had survived by being just barely smart enough not to eat the poison. I pushed by him to the back of the store and looked down into the bin.

  It was filled with pictures. Old, glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Here it was, the answer to what became of porno photographers’ old pix. Ratface sold ’em three for a buck.

  41.

  “IT’S HER,” ALICE SAID.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Can’t you tell it’s her?”

  “I thought it was.”

  “Well, you’re right. Good for you. You’re usually not good at recognizing faces.”

  I said nothing. I wasn’t about to point out to Alice it was in the woman’s distinctive erect nipples that I had first noticed a similarity.

  “Her hair’s different,” I said.

  “Yes, of course, her hair’s different.”

  “But it is her?”

  “Of course it’s her.”

  “It’s a different guy.”

  “Yes. That’s obvious. But it’s her all right.” Alice indicated the photo. “This is the only one you could find?”

  “That’s it. And I went through all the others again, once I found this. To make sure I hadn’t overlooked her. Since she looked different, I mean.”

  “She doesn’t look different.”

  “She does to me. Anyway, this is all there was.”

  “It’s very old.”

  It was indeed. And in rather poor condition. It had actually been creased twice. Across the bottom, and diagonally across the top-right corner. The corner crease had flopped around enough to have worn thin enough for the corner to be in danger of falling off. The picture was in such poor repair that Ratface, the porn-shop owner, could hardly believe I wanted to buy it. Or that I only wanted one. “Three for a dollar,” he whined. “I mean, come on.” To shut him up I’d finally given him a dollar just for the one print.

  Alice put the picture down. “So,” she said, “what now?”

  “I don’t know. I gotta try to trace it. I don’t really know how. There’s nothing on the picture to indicate where it was processed. Which means the photographer probably did it himself.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Alice said.

  “Oh? What do you mean?”

  “The cops. Are you gonna show it to the cops?”

  Shit. What was I gonna do about the cops indeed? I mean, I didn’t want to give this to Thurman. No way I wanted to give this to Thurman.

  I said as much.

  Alice said, “You don’t have to give it to Thurman. You can give it to Frost.”

  “Who’ll give it to Thurman. Same difference. The question is, do I turn it in at all?”

  “Don’t you have to?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “So?”

  I exhaled. “All right, look. I found this picture. It’s the woman we’ve been looking for, but it’s not the guy. So it’s not one of the blackmail photos. So is it really evidence?”

  Alice looked at me. “Don’t be a jerk. This woman is a murder suspect. The cops are going nuts trying to find her. That’s why we were down there doing the drawings. Now you got a photo of her and you wonder if it’s evidence?”

  “All right, I know it’s evidence. And I know I gotta hand it in. The point is, is there anything I need to investigate before I do?”

  “Stanley. I don’t want you to go to jail.”

  “I’m not gonna go to jail. I’m gonna turn the picture in like a good boy.” I jerked my thumb at the window. It was already getting dark. “But not now. It’s late. It’s nighttime. These guys wouldn’t be there. I’m not gonna go rushing down to the police station now. On the other hand, tomorrow’s Saturday. “Will these guys even be there?”

  “Stanley.”

  “Alice, I am definitely turning this picture in Monday morning. No argument there. But am I legally required to bust my ass going down there over the weekend when
the guys I wanna see may not even be there?”

  “Bullshit,” Alice said. “You know what they’ll say? They’ll say, legally you should have gone downtown straight from the porn shop.”

  “With what?” I said. “I wasn’t even sure it was the same woman till I talked with you.”

  Alice frowned. She shook her head. Then she looked up at me. “You’re different,” she said. “Since the drunk tank. It’s not just getting even. It’s like you’re a different person. The guy they threw in there would never have thought of withholding this from the cops.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But the point is, I don’t feel like giving this to ’em. I’ll give it to ’em Monday morning. At the latest.” I shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll give it to ’em tomorrow. But first I got it and I want to see what I can do with it.”

  “Like what?”

  I grimaced. “That’s the problem. It’s the weekend. Places will be closed. I was thinking I could contact skin-mag companies, get the names of their photographers. Show the picture around. See if anybody recognizes the work.”

  “Please,” Alice said. “As if the style were distinctive.”

  “All right, but maybe I’d find a photographer who remembers taking the pix.”

  “And maybe you’ll win the lottery,” Alice said.

  “You got any better ideas?”

  “Well, what about the guy?”

  “I couldn’t find any pictures of the guy.”

  “Not that guy.” Alice pointed at the picture. “This guy.”

  “Him?” I said. “He had nothing to do with it.”

  “Yeah, but he knew her. At least from the photo shoot. If you found him, he might remember who she was.”

  “How am I gonna find him?”

  “Was he in any other pictures?”

  “Shit, Alice. I didn’t look.”

  “There you are.”

  “And what if he was? What good would that do me?”

  “Aren’t some of these pictures stamped with the photographer’s name?”

  I groaned. “Shit, I didn’t look.”

  “Well, there you are,” Alice said. “You find one of those, and the photographer fingers the guy who fingers the broad.”

  “Broad?”

  “I got carried away.”