Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  I thought about asking. “Excuse me, where do the assemblymen hang their coats?” And then finding it somehow. And getting in and searching through it for a check hat. Going to jail for obstruction of justice almost seemed preferable.

  I decided to wash it out. Come back at the end of the session, try to spot them leaving. I mean if I just knew where the coatroom was I could stake it out, and—

  Then it hit me. Schmuck. You’re in the city of the mole men. No one needs coats. They leave their coats in their offices and walk around underground all day.

  That decided it. All right, the hell with Check-hat. It was time for Futile-Plan-B. Buy a map somewhere and check out the addresses of the local POPs.

  I went down to the first floor and found the tunnel back to the North Concourse. I was getting pretty good at it by now. I even found what I thought was the right elevator door, if I remembered the vendor opposite it correctly.

  Let’s see, I went one stop, so I was on the top level. That’s level 3C. C, that’s right. Part of my formula. Lucky 7, Blue wa wa ooooo.

  I found my car. I found the parking ticket that the machine had been so reluctant to give me. I paid my parking toll, and followed the arrows around and into the light of day.

  All right. Now to find a store and buy a street map.

  I pulled up to a light and stopped. I looked around. I discovered I was in the same place where I’d come up for air before. There’s the Capitol, there’s the State Education Building, there’s Alfred E. Smith. That’s Washington Street, which will be on my map, and—

  I gawked.

  I blinked.

  You could have knocked me down with a feather.

  The license plate on the car in front of me was POP-422.

  26.

  I’M NOT BIG ON coincidence. And I’m usually not long on luck. But this had to be one or the other, if not both.

  I grabbed for the computer printout. I’d circled the Albany POPs. That sounds like a symphony orchestra, doesn’t it? Yes, POP-422. Kevin Drexel. Hello, POP.

  Kevin Drexel, if it was indeed he, was alone. All I could tell from looking at his back was that he had short dark hair and was wearing a coat. He wore no hat. Unless it was beside him on the seat.

  That thought set up a chain reaction in my head. Holy shit. Suppose it were beside him on the seat? And suppose it were check?

  In the whole time I’d been thinking about POP and Check-hat, it had never occurred to me that they might be one. But I hadn’t seen Check-hat’s car at all. And I hadn’t seen the driver of POP’s car at all. But what would be more natural if Check-hat had called on her once, than that he might come back and call on her again? I’d never even thought of that.

  Until now.

  The light changed, and POP turned right and drove down Washington Street alongside the Capitol. I followed. We were going to have to turn again, because at the next corner Washington Avenue ended. There was a small rotary with a monument in it, and a large brown and white marble building with a tall clock tower. So POP was going to have to turn left or right.

  He didn’t. He pulled up around the rotary and parked by the monument. There were signs all around saying NO PARKING-TOW ZONE, but that didn’t seem to bother POP. He got out and walked toward the large marble building. Well, if he can, I can. I pulled up next to him, parked my car and got out.

  I followed him into the building. The sign over the door said, CITY HALL. Inside was a big lobby with an elevator to the right and the left. POP walked over and pushed a button on the one on the left.

  As far as I knew, he didn’t know me. Unless he’d caught a glimpse of me standing with the cops when he’d pulled into the motel. But he’d have had to be awful observant to have done that, what with spotting the cops and being in such a hurry to back out and get turned around again. Assuming, of course, that he was the right POP.

  At any rate, I wasn’t going to take the chance of letting him get away. I walked over and got in the elevator with him.

  He went up to the second floor. He walked down the hall and went into a door marked 202.

  I gave him a little head start, then walked up and looked at the door. On it read, CITY CLERK, and DEPARTMENT OF LEGISLATURE.

  I went inside. It was a room with a long counter. Behind it, three women clerks worked at desks. One was a black woman with a broad, open, friendly-looking face, one was an older woman with glasses and a gray hairdo that looked as if it had been glued into place, and one was a younger woman in a nicely-filled-out sweater.

  POP was at the far end of the counter talking to the younger woman. He was a young pretty boy type, and he seemed to be handing her a line, or at least telling her a dirty joke, because I heard her giggle and say, “Really, Mr. Drexel,” before he grinned at her and ducked through a door into a room at the far end of the counter.

  I walked up to the counter. The gray-haired woman got up from her desk. She frowned at me and said, “May I help you?”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “I was hoping you could. I’d like to get some information.”

  “About what?”

  “About the city government.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, for instance,” I said, pointing in the direction POP had gone, “what’s that room there?”

  “That’s the City Council.”

  “City Council. I see. And what do they do?”

  She frowned. “Could you give me an idea of what you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to get some insight into the workings of city government.”

  “Why?”

  Time to improvise. I’m not that fast on my feet, so I always figure the closest to the truth the better.

  “Well, you see,” I said. “I’m a writer. I’m doing an article on the government.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “The city government?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Albany city government?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the City Council in particular?”

  “I would like to know about the City Council, yes.”

  She was looking at me very suspiciously. I’m paranoid as hell, so when I start feeding someone a bullshit spiel such as that, I kind of expect them to be suspicious. But in this case I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.

  “Are you from Albany?” she asked.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New York City.”

  Her lips clamped in a firm line. “I knew it,” she snapped. “You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Oh yes, you are. You think I don’t know that? And you probably think you’re the first one, too. Well, let me tell you, there’ve been others before you, and they didn’t get a damn thing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t play dumb with me. You New York City reporters, you’re all alike. You think ’cause New York City’s got a parking violations scandal, Albany’s gotta have one too. Well, guess what? We don’t. We have a clean city government, and I won’t have anyone printing anything any different. You want a story, you know what you’ll have to print? Lies and innuendo. You won’t get one hard fact. The others didn’t, believe me.”

  “That’s not what I’m after.”

  “Of course not. That’s what they all say. But just let one spiteful malcontent make the slightest insinuation, you’ll change your tune.”

  Spiteful malcontent? Good lord. I was dealing with a paranoid government clerk who slept with a thesaurus.

  “I’m not a reporter. I’m not interested in parking violations. I’m interested in the City Council.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I’m doing a story on the functions of local government.”

  “So you say.”

  I was getting nowhere. “All right, look,” I said. “You tell me there’s no corruption in the City Council—”

  It was
the wrong opening. Her eyes flashed. “I knew that was what you were after.”

  I held up my hands. “No, no, no. Time out. False start. Flag on the play. Let’s try again. Your City Council is honest. You haven’t a bad word to say about ’em. Believe it or not, neither have I. If you’d let me ask my questions, you’d see that. So why don’t you let me ask ’em? If I ask anything you find offensive, you don’t have to answer.”

  Which was the wrong thing to say again. I have a knack for it. She was more suspicious than ever.

  “Then you’ll print my refusal, won’t you? ‘Declined to comment.’”

  I took a breath. “I’m going to try one anyway. How many members on the City Council?”

  She looked at me. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. How many?”

  “Fifteen.”

  That was a break. With my luck, it could have been two hundred and forty. But there were only fifteen.

  “And what do they do?”

  “Do?”

  “Yeah. What does the City Council do? You say that’s their meeting room. When they have a meeting, what do they do?”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s because you’ve mistaken me for a muckraking journalist. If you’d figure me for a second-grader on a class trip, you’d be on the right track.”

  She softened somewhat. “What do you want to know?”

  “The City Council. Do they vote on things? Do they pass laws?”

  She blinked. “Yes, they do.”

  “Such as what?”

  She hesitated.

  “Aside from traffic violations, which I don’t care about,” I said quickly. “What else do they do?”

  “They pass city ordinances.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, regarding noise pollution, sanitation, housing, traffic …” Her eyes blinked, nearing a dangerous subject. “Zoning ordinances. Stuff like that.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the State government?”

  She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Absolutely not. It’s totally separate.”

  “I see.”

  She looked at me. “What else did you want to know?”

  I had no idea. It was a dead end as far as I was concerned. And the thing was, it had seemed so promising. I mean, Albany had seemed the right answer. And then finding POP. And finding him connected to the government. True, not the State government, but still the government.

  But Jesus Christ.

  Julie Steinmetz could have been blackmailing a politician. Or, even if it wasn’t blackmail, it was possible she could have gotten involved in something of enough political importance to have gotten her killed. But the way I saw it, in either case that had to mean at least a Senator or Assemblyman. But some dipshit city councilman engaged in passing local ordinances on such weighty matters as noise pollution and zoning, just didn’t add up at all. Frustrating as it might be, I was just gonna have to chalk POP up to coincidence and wash the sucker out.

  I smiled at the perplexed looking woman, said, “No, I guess that’s it,” which puzzled her all the more.

  I nodded at her again and turned to go.

  And in walked a man with a check hat.

  27.

  IF MY FRIEND, the gray-haired clerk, had been confused before, she must have been utterly baffled now. Because I suddenly remembered I had a zillion other things to ask her. I paused in the doorway just long enough to hear the clerk in the pink sweater address Check-hat as Mr. Fletcher and see him disappear into the City Council room, when I was back at the counter saying, “Excuse me.” Which is the sort of thing Peter Falk used to do in the old “Columbo” series, when he had the suspect on the run, telling him, “That’s all,” starting to go, then turning back in the doorway saying, “One more thing.” It was a marvelous technique. It always irritated the hell out of the suspect and caught him off his guard.

  It sure did this woman clerk. She must have been patting herself on the back at how well she’d brushed off the nosy reporter, when there I was again with more questions than ever.

  And this time I realized what I’d missed the first time around. When she’d said, “Then you’ll print my refusal,” the woman had actually been voicing her deepest dread. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me, but she was afraid not to answer.

  So I asked everything. Everything I could think of. About the councilmen. And when they met. And what they did. And was it a matter of public record. And where could I look it up. And the whole shmear.

  That’s not to say that I got anything. I didn’t. I was pretty sure I hadn’t learned one damn thing useful. But I’d sure learned everything. This time around I covered the whole ground.

  I also tailed Check-hat when he left, which was about a half-hour later. This hadn’t been a City Council meeting of any sort. In the half-hour, aside from POP and Check-hat, one other city councilman had come in. I didn’t know why any of them were there, unless it was to check their mail, or whatever it was city councilmen do. The gray-haired clerk didn’t know either. At least she said she didn’t, and I had a feeling if she’d known she would have told me. I really had her going the second time around.

  POP left first, but I let him go. After all, I had his name and address. It was Check-hat that I wanted to tag. All I knew was that he was a Mr. Fletcher, and there were probably a few dozen Fletchers in Albany.

  I suppose I could have asked the gray-haired clerk for a list of the names and addresses of all the councilmen. But I figured that would have been pushing it. If that’s the real reason. If it wasn’t just that it had been a particularly boring day, and having a suspect to tail was sort of fun.

  Mr. Fletcher had parked next to the monument too. I guess it was the city councilmen’s place to park. He hadn’t gotten a ticket, but I had. Wouldn’t you know it. I tore it off the windshield, stuck it in my pocket, and hopped into my car just as Mr. Fletcher pulled out.

  In a perfect world, my car would have started on the first try. As it was, it coughed twice and died. I avoided flooding the engine, and got lucky on the third attempt. The motor roared to life, and I lurched away from the monument and took off after Fletcher. He had about a block head start. I caught him at a traffic light three blocks later. After that I played it cautious, dropped back a bit, tried to keep from being seen.

  I tailed him out of town to a residential section of nice looking houses and lawns. He pulled into the driveway of one of them, parked his car, and went in.

  There was a mailbox at the bottom of the driveway that said, FLETCHER. The street number was on the house, so I had the guy tagged. I also had his license plate.

  So what did I do now? Did I go in and talk to him?

  There was another car in the driveway and a swing and slide set in the side yard. So presumably Fletcher was a young city councilman with a wife and kids. So asking him what he was doing calling on young fashion models at motels would have to give him a bit of a jolt.

  I couldn’t see it getting me anywhere, though. The car meant the wife was probably home, and he wouldn’t want to say anything in front of her. The best I’d get would be indignant denials. All I’d accomplish would be to fuck up his married life.

  On the other hand, I realized, that made the information a hell of a club. If I could get him alone away from home and spring it on him, he might be willing to tell me anything just to keep it from getting back to his wife.

  That was a cheery thought, and showed me how much this draggy case had gotten to me. The most productive idea I could come up with was to blackmail some poor city councilman.

  Who probably had it coming. I shouldn’t forget that. If this was indeed Check-hat, Speedy Gonzales, the in-again out-again man, then he had called on Julie Steinmetz the night she died. Furtively. Clandestinely. Not even driving into the motel lot, but leaving his car parked on the road. So I shouldn’t be wasting any false sympathy on him. No, if I wanted to talk to him. I had every
right and every motivation.

  But did I want to talk to him? That was the thing. Odds are he wouldn’t tell me anything useful. He’d just deny everything and clam. And that would tip him off. Put him on his guard. If he were in cahoots with POP somehow, he’d tip him off. I didn’t know what these guys were up to, and I didn’t know what it was all about, but until I did, I didn’t really want to show my hand.

  Or did I?

  Fuck it. I had to do something. I realized I was just hesitating ’cause I didn’t want to talk to him, ’cause I figured I’d blow it. But what the hell. How could I blow it any worse than it had already been blown?

  One way to find out.

  I got out of the car, walked up the front steps and rang the bell. There was a pause, and then the man I had been tailing opened the door.

  It was my first good look at him. He was a pleasant-faced man in his mid-thirties, with a kind of a homey quality about him, not farmboy exactly, but a certain open, down-to-earth look that would probably appeal to voters. He’d taken off his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt and had probably been in the process of mixing himself a drink when I rang the bell.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Yes?”

  Being a potential member of the press had worked so well with Gray-hair, I decided to stick with it. “Stanley Hastings. I’m with the Albany Times. I wondered if you could give me a few minutes.”

  He frowned, and glanced toward the door to the living room. The TV was on, and over it I could hear the sound of children’s voices. In some back bedroom a baby was crying.

  He looked back at me. “It’s not really a good time. What’s this about?”

  I decided to shoot from the hip. “Julie Steinmetz.”

  It shook him. I’m sure of that. He was a politician, so he was probably used to taking potshots in his stride, and he covered it pretty well.

  But he covered it.

  And that’s what I caught.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said. “Who did you say?”