Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  I put my tail between my legs and slunk back to the motel.

  Monica Dorlander’s car was still there and her light was still on. Thank god. That would have been the ultimate humiliation, losing her in the process of losing him.

  I parked the car and went back to my room.

  The TV was still on, of course. I hadn’t had time to switch it off when I went out. It must have been after eleven, ’cause the news was on. It was a local station, and they were covering a car wreck in Poughkeepsie. I watched for a few minutes. If you think New York City news is bad, try this sometime.

  I flopped down at the table again, pushed the curtain aside. Nothing doing. The light was on, the door was closed, the car was there. All shipshape.

  But the horse had left the barn. Monica Dorlander had had a caller. And it had been important enough that the guy had been discreet enough to leave his car parked on the road, not the sort of thing a person would choose to do in this weather. And I’d blown it. Muffed it. Fucked up utterly. Jesus Christ, I thought. How the hell was I going to get off charging Marvin Nickleson two hundred bucks a day, plus time and a half for overtime, plus gas, tolls, motel bills, etc., when I was giving service like that?

  I sat there watching the door to Monica Dorlander’s unit, feeling slightly lower than shit, while in the background the local news droned on.

  Monica Dorlander must have been watching the local news too, ’cause when it was over the light in her unit went off.

  Oh shit. What did I do now?

  I was sorely tempted to stay up and sit there watching the door of the unit just in case, in the off chance something might happen and I could catch it, and redeem myself for blowing everything utterly so far.

  Like hell.

  I switched off the TV, hung my pants and jacket over the back of the chair, crawled into bed and went to sleep.

  13.

  I DREAMED SOMEONE stole my car.

  It was one of those dreams where you wake up and you can’t remember what you were dreaming. So I didn’t know who, what, why, where, when, any of the circumstances. All I knew was, someone stole my car.

  It was the middle of the night, it was dark, and for a few moments I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered. I was in a motel room on a mountaintop in the middle of god knows where, and if someone stole my car I was in a lot of trouble.

  I got out of bed, staggered to the window, pushed the curtain aside. No. My car was there. It was also dark as hell, so it must still be the middle of the night. Mental-Note-to-buy-a-watch-Number-207.

  I tumbled back into bed and went to sleep again. This time I dreamed someone was nailing me into a coffin, not an uncommon dream, I’m sure, but then I’m not that inventive. Certainly not a pleasant one. Here I was still alive, and these idiots didn’t know it, and they were nailing the lid on the coffin, and I was yelling and screaming but no one could hear me, and they just kept hammering, bang, bang, bang.

  I woke up and light was streaming through the cracks in the edge of the curtains and someone was pounding on my door. Jesus Christ, what the hell time is it, Mental-Note-to-buy-a-watch-Number-208.

  I got out of bed and pulled on my pants. If it was Monica Dorlander wanting to know what the hell I was doing following her, I didn’t want to be standing there in my underwear.

  I opened the door. It wasn’t Monica Dorlander. It was a uniformed cop of some type. I say of some type, because the uniforms I’m used to are New York City uniforms, and this sure wasn’t that. And I wasn’t really alert enough to focus in on what it was. All I knew was that he was a stocky young officer, probably ten years younger than I, and that he didn’t look happy.

  “Yes?” I said.

  The officer fixed me with a cold stare. “Alan Parker?” he said.

  Oh shit.

  I am not at my best in the morning. Till I’ve had a cup of coffee I find it hard to focus on anything. And the last thing in the world I’d want to do would be answer questions for some cop.

  And the first question was the hardest. Alan Parker? How the hell did I answer that? If I said yes, I’d have lied to the police and I’d be in a lot of trouble. And if I said no, the police would know I’d lied to the Woodsman and I’d be in a lot of trouble. Basically, I was in a lot of trouble.

  I tried simple deflection. “What’s this all about?”

  It didn’t work. The square jaw jutted out another inch. “Is your name Alan Parker?”

  I took a breath. “I am registered as Alan Parker. This is my room.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Got any identification?”

  Oh sweet Jesus. “Yeah,” I said. I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. I flipped it open to my driver’s license.

  He looked at it. “Stanley Hastings. Gee, Mr. Parker, could you tell me what you’re doing with Mr. Hasting’s driver’s license?”

  “It’s my driver’s license.”

  “So you say.”

  “Take a look at the picture. It’s a photo I.D.”

  “Yeah, but chop shops make ’em up for you. You steal Stanley Hasting’s license, put your picture on it. It’s done all the time.”

  “I’m Stanley Hastings. That’s my license.”

  “And who is Alan Parker?”

  “No one. I just signed the name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want a record of my stay.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really know the answer. Actually, there was no reason in the world why I couldn’t have written Stanley Hastings in the register. What difference could it have possibly made? Who would have cared? I guess I was just seduced by TV.

  But that wasn’t what he was asking. He was asking what I was doing staying there under an assumed name. And I didn’t want to tell him. So the shrug was as good an answer as any.

  He glared at me for a moment, then grunted, “Put your shoes on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going outside. Now you can put your shoes on or not, it’s entirely up to you, but if you don’t, I bet your feet will be cold.”

  I put my shoes on. The guy took my jacket off the chair and handed it to me. I realized he was doing it to see if I had anything heavy in the pocket. Ditto my topcoat. I put it on.

  He jerked his thumb. “Out.”

  He stepped aside and I walked by him out the door.

  And stopped dead.

  The parking lot was a flurry of activity. There were cops everywhere. Some dressed in uniforms like him. Some in other uniforms I didn’t recognize either. There were half a dozen extra cars parked, not in front of the units, but crisscross in the parking lot. The doors of several of the units were open, and there were people standing in them looking out.

  The door to unit seven was open, but Monica Dorlander wasn’t standing in it. Two cops were standing in front of it however. Somehow it seemed to be the focus of attention. As I watched, a third cop came out.

  All in all, things did not look good.

  My buddy prodded me in the back, which I took to be an invitation to start walking. I stepped out into the parking lot. He put his hand on my arm, probably as a helpful gesture to suggest our rate of speed. We marched out into the parking lot and up to one of the parked cars.

  A young cop dressed in the same uniform as my buddy was standing next to it.

  “Got a live one, Chuck,” my buddy said. “Keep your eye on him.”

  Chuck, who couldn’t have been that far out of his teens, snuffled once, said, “Right,” put his hand on my arm, and fixed me with what he must have thought was a steely glare. The kid was young, inexperienced and nervous, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  My buddy left us and walked off toward the motel office. I looked and saw the Woodsman standing out in front of it talking to a couple of other officers. My buddy walked up to him and apparently said something, but his back was to me and it was too far away for me to hear. He turned back and looked over at me. The Wood
sman looked at me too, and then nodded his head, and I could see him saying something to my buddy.

  While this was going on a car pulled into the driveway. Or I should say started to pull into the driveway. It made the turn, started up the little incline toward the office, and stopped. Where the car stopped the sun was shining right off the windshield and I couldn’t see the driver at all.

  But I could see the license plate.

  Now, I’m not patting myself on the back here. As I’ve said, I’m not that observant. At the moment I was still groggy with sleep, intimidated by cops, not really sure of what was going on and terrified I was about to find out. So for me to catch a license plate number under those circumstances would be a small miracle slightly on a par with the parting of the Red Sea.

  But it was a New York State plate. And in recent years New York State did a smart thing. There were so many cars in the state the license numbers were getting too long to fit on the plates, so they substituted letters for numbers. That solved the problem, because there are twenty-six letters and only ten numbers. So whereas six numbers would only allow nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine plates, three letters and three numbers could accommodate all the cars in the state. So now all New York State license plates, except the personalized ones, consisted of groups of three letters and three numbers, separated by a picture of the Statue of Liberty.

  In most cases, of course, the three letters were gibberish, but in some cases they formed words.

  Now I know under those circumstances I could never have caught a license plate number. And in fact I didn’t catch any numbers.

  But the first half of the license plate of the car that pulled into the driveway was “POP.”

  Apparently POP changed his mind about registering at the motel. I can’t say as I blamed him. I don’t think I’d register at any motel where a dozen policemen were crawling about. At any rate, POP backed right out the drive, spun the wheel, and took off back the way he’d come.

  I looked around at the officers in the lot. Aside from me, I don’t think anybody noticed. Particularly my buddy, who was already on his way walking back.

  He walked up to me, pointed his finger and said, “You’re the guy.” He looked at Chuck. “He’s the guy.”

  “Is that right?” Chuck said.

  They both looked at me.

  I wasn’t going to ask them what they meant by the guy. For one thing, I didn’t want to give ’em the satisfaction. For another thing, I figured I already knew.

  When I said nothing my buddy said, “You watch him. I’m gonna phone in.”

  “Right,” Chuck said.

  My buddy walked over to the police car, reached in the window and pulled out the microphone of a police radio. He pressed the button and said, “This is Davis, over.”

  The radio squawked something that I couldn’t make out, and Davis said, “I got him. What you want me to do with him?” The radio squawked again. Davis said, “Roger, over and out.”

  Davis swung open the back door of the car and said, “Get in.”

  I never was big on resisting authority, no matter what form it happened to take. I got in the back of the car.

  I was just beginning to wake up. It had occurred to me by that point that nobody seemed likely to offer me a cup of coffee, and I was gonna have to do without. So I was doing the best I could of brushing the cobwebs out of a severely befuddled mind, and trying to size up the current situation.

  Which wasn’t that hard to do. I mean what with there being so much police activity and all, and people standing around staring and cops going in and out of unit seven, it didn’t take a genius to figure out my surveillance of Monica Dorlander had somehow taken a turn for the worse.

  And when, while Davis was getting the police car turned around, a meat wagon pulled up and joined the cop cars in front of unit seven, I must say I began to have serious concerns for the state of Monica Dorlander’s health.

  14.

  THEY DROVE ME DOWN the mountain along a few twisty roads into a small town and pulled up in front of a police station. I knew it was a police station because the sign on the front door said, “CHIEF OF POLICE.” Otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue. It was a small frame house just like all the other small frame houses in the town. The sign “CHIEF OF POLICE” was hanging from the front door on hooks, and it occurred to me maybe all the houses in town had hooks, and whoever was getting to be police chief that day, well they just gave him the sign.

  Chuck and Davis got out, and Davis opened the back door. I took that as an invitation to get out and did. They put their hands on my arms and led me up to the police station.

  Surprise. It was indeed a police station, not a private home. It was a large room, outfitted with files, desks, wanted posters, what have you, all the necessary accouterments. It even had a wooden rail with a gate dividing the room in two. This seemed excessive to me, seeing as how the room wasn’t that big. Beyond the gate in the back of the room in the left-hand corner was a large desk. Seated at the desk was a large man. I figured he was the Chief of Police. I also figured he wanted to see me. On both counts I figured right.

  His name was Chief Dan Creely, if the sign on his desk were to be believed. If the man himself were to be believed, the only plausible explanation could be that long ago he had seen Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night and never gotten over it. He was as I said a large man, with a beerbelly gut that spilled out over the belt of his low-slung pants. He had a round, jowled face, adorned with wire-rimmed glasses. He chewed gum incessantly with a bulldog jaw. He spoke in a high pitched whine that aspired to be Southern drawl but occasionally lapsed into Brooklyn twang.

  This explained the wooden gate—Rod Steiger had had one too. It occurred to me all it would have taken to make the man truly happy, would have been to have an officer named Courtney, so he would have been able to say, “Courtney, could you try to get me long distance.”

  Chief Creely had one other distinguishing characteristic. He seemed to regard every person he met as a performer of fellatio. Whether this was a paranoid fear or merely wishful thinking on his part, I have no idea. At any rate, he so designated them. How he squared this with the Steiger image, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe he figured the movie came out before the MPAA rating codes went into effect, and with today’s more relaxed standards that’s how Steiger would have talked. At any rate, that’s how he did.

  When we came in, he shifted his bulk in his chair, pointed his finger at me and said to Davis, “This the cocksucker?”

  I have to admit that doesn’t happen to be one of my favorite terms of formal address. But as I said, I’m not big on standing up to authority. I decided to keep quiet and let them straighten it out.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Davis said.

  Chief Creely grunted and got up from his chair, no small feat, big as he was. He wandered out through the gate, closed it, and parked his butt on the wooden rail.

  He jerked his thumb at me, but spoke to Davis. “What’s his name?”

  Davis grinned, as far as I knew, a first for him. “Well, now, that seems to be the bone of contention. According to his driver’s license it’s Stanley Hastings. According to the motel register it’s Alan Parker.”

  Chief Creely grinned back. “Is that right? So the cocksucker’s got two names?”

  “At least two. Far as we know.”

  “Wonder which one’s his.”

  “Odds favor Stanley Hastings. His driver’s license seems to be genuine. And that’s the name on his other I.D.”

  Good for Davis. I hadn’t even seen him looking.

  “Which name does he answer to?”

  “Neither. I asked him if he was Alan Parker, he told me something noncommittal like go fuck myself.”

  “In those words?”

  “No. He was just loquaciously evasive.”

  Creely grinned. “You going to night school, Davis? Shit. Loquaciously evasive.”

  “That’s what he was
.”

  “Was he now?” Chief Creely said, still talking to Davis, but casting an eye over me. “You know something? I don’t like loquaciously evasive cocksuckers. Loquaciously evasive cocksuckers give me a pain in the ass.”

  “I know that,” Davis said.

  Chief Creely turned his attention to me. “All right, you,” he said. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. If you answer them short and sweet, we’re going to have a good time. If you answer them by being loquaciously evasive, then I’m gonna chain you to the wall in the back room on a charge of talking too much. Then you can talk to the wall all you want till you get it out of your system and we’ll try the whole thing again. How does that sound to you?”

  “Fine,” I said. Short and succinct.

  Creely nodded to Davis. “Guy learns fast.” He turned back to me. “All right. What’s your name.”

  “Stanley Hastings.”

  “Is that right? Tell me, did you stay at the Pine Hills Motel last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What name did you sign in the register?”

  “Alan Parker.”

  Chief Creely nodded. “Nothing evasive about that, Davis. You just have to know how to question these cocksuckers. All right, let’s go for the biggie. Why did you sign the name Alan Parker if your name’s Stanley Hastings.”

  “Because I didn’t want there to be a record of my stay.”

  Creely pursed his lips and frowned. “I sense the onset of an attack of evasiveness. Why didn’t you want a record of your stay?”

  “Because I’m a private detective.”

  Chief Creely’s eyes widened. You would have thought I’d told him I was from outer space.

  He turned to Davis. “He’s a private detective?” Creely said incredulously.

  Davis shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “First I heard of it.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Why the hell would I ask him that?”

  Creely turned back to me. “Got some identification?”

  I reached in my jacket pocket and pulled out my I.D. I flipped it open and passed it over to Chief Creely. As I did, I suddenly realized Chief Creely was fulfilling his lifelong dream. We were doing the movie, and I was playing the Sidney Poitier part for him.