by Parnell Hall
“Signal strength, for one thing. At $79.95, you can cover a five-mile radius. You wanna go higher than that, you’re dealing with a larger transmitter with a higher frequency, and of course the price goes up.”
The unit I wanted went up all the way to $249.95. It had a fifty-mile radius and could pinpoint a car ten miles away within an area of about ten blocks. Following the signal vector, and turning right or left as it increased and decreased, sort of in the manner of playing the children’s game of “hotter and colder,” would enable you to locate any stationary transmitter in a matter of minutes.
I lifted the transmitter part out of the box.
“How does it attach to the car?”
“It’s magnetic. Clamps right on underneath. Just stick it on to the gas tank.”
“What if it falls off?”
“It won’t. It’s very strong. It’s fully guaranteed.”
“You mean if it falls off I get my money back?”
“That’s right.”
“What about the car?”
“What about the car?”
“Right,” I said. “All right, I’ll take it.”
I paid for the transmitter with three of Albrect’s hundred-dollar bills. I felt bad doing it, but my Master Charge wasn’t going to stand this one, even with a $2000 limit. And after all, I was sort of doing this for Albrect. Besides, he didn’t need the money.
I packed up the unit, picked up my car, and drove to the Essex Hotel. I registered at the front desk, paying with another hundred-dollar bill. It was easier the second time. I took my room key, went back out, got in my car, and drove around to the indoor garage. I flashed my key at the guard and he waved me in. I found a parking spot, locked my car and got out.
It took me fifteen minutes to find Red’s car, which was parked down on the third level. I took out the transmitter, looked to be sure no one was in sight, bent down, and pressed it against the bottom of his gas tank. As the guy had assured me, it stuck like glue. I tried tugging at it, but it seemed fairly secure.
I went back up to the first level and got in my car. I took out the receiver and switched it. on. Sure enough, I was getting a beep. The only trouble was, the direction vector was having trouble figuring out where to point. That’s all I need, I thought. The one faulty unit in the store. Then I remembered. I tilted the receiver on its side, and the vector, happily reassured, pointed straight down at level 3.
I switched off the unit, stuck it in the glove compartment, got out, and locked the car. There was an elevator against the far wall of the garage. I went over and rang the bell. The elevator arrived promptly. I got in and rode up to the lobby.
I went to the front desk, slid my key across the counter, and said, “I’d like to check out.”
The desk clerk stared at me. “Check out? You just checked in.”
“That’s right. Now I want to check out.”
“Is something wrong with the room?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been up to the room.”
“You haven’t been up to the room?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s perfectly simple. Here’s my room key. I’m checking out.”
“Are you asking for a refund? “
“Certainly not.”
The clerk was making an effort to understand. “You say you haven’t used the room? You’re saying we’re free to rent it again?”
“Well, you’re welcome to try,” I said. “Some guests may be more picky than I am.”
I smiled at the discomfited room clerk, and headed for the elevator. God, I felt cocky. Three days ago, such jive repartee never would have occurred to me, and even if it had, I wouldn’t have had the guts to do it.
Taking the elevator back down to the garage brought me back down to earth. Doing it made me realize I could have just walked through the lobby, gotten in the elevator, and gone down to find Red’s car without ever having rented the room at all. So I wasn’t the sophisticated, suave, smooth private investigator I’d thought I was; I was still the same old naive, bumbling asshole, groping his way in the dark, that I’d always been.
I got in my car, drove out of the garage, and back to my first hotel. I took the receiver out of the glove compartment, and went up to my room. I pulled the briefcase out from under the bed, opened it, and assured myself that the receiving unit would fit in it. Then I started to pack up to go.
Which presented me with a problem. What to do with the cocaine. The bank was closed, so I couldn’t put it back in the safe deposit box. I couldn’t leave it in the hotel room unless I rented it for a week, which seemed a poor idea, prices being what they were. Even then, I’d have to find some way of getting back down here in a week’s time, which wasn’t going to be easy.
I toyed with the idea of wrapping it up and mailing it to my office in New York, but somehow that seemed like a poor idea. Surely packages from Miami would be highly suspect. And simply the idea of having my name on a package of those contents was more than I could deal with.
That left me with two alternatives: throw it away, or take it with me on the plane. You can’t throw it away, it’s evidence, I told myself. Bullshit, myself cried. You just don’t want to part with it. I had to admit that that was true. Somehow the idea of throwing something worth twenty or thirty grand, whatever it might be, in the garbage, went sorely against the grain. So the only thing to do was take it with me on the plane. What an unattractive proposition! Consider the fact that Tony Arroyo, Pluto, Floridian #2, and the rest of the boys, heavy hitters indeed, had found taking it on the plane so risky an operation that they were willing to pay huge chunks of money to poor schmucks like Martin Albrect to drive it up instead. Granted, they weren’t really giving him anything—they were fleecing him at the roulette table and making him drive to pay it off, but the underlying principle was the same. And, of course, they were doing it as a regular thing. I’d only have to do it once. And they were moving much larger quantities. Still, the quantity I had would be large enough for the drug enforcement boys. I could envision the phone call I would have to make: “Yeah, honey, I’m in jail. What’s the charge? Drug trafficking. No. Not possession. Not sale. Trafficking. Transporting large enough quantities of regulated substances to be considered a major cog in the drug traffic machine of America. Bail? Do we happen to have $100,000 in the account?”
It was not a pretty prospect, and it tipped the scale. I was not going to take it on the plane. Which meant I had to throw it away.
Or did it?
Vaguely I recalled a principle from my old math days. I’m sure the wording is all wrong, but it went something like this: if you find yourself working on a problem where every conclusion that you reach is unacceptable and wrong, reexamine your hypothesis.
My hypothesis was that I had only two alternatives: throw the kilo away or take it on the plane.
13.
THE GUY IN THE ELECTRONICS store raised an eyebrow. “You again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The bad penny.”
“Let me guess. The transmitter fell off and you want your money back?”
“Not at all,” I told him. “In fact, I’m so impressed with it I decided to give you some more of my business.”
He shrugged. “If I worked on commission I’d be thrilled. Whaddya want?”
“The magnets that hold that thing on. They’re terrific. I wonder if you have them without the transmitter, perhaps attached to some small bag or other.”
He didn’t, but what he did have, and what I eventually bought, were suction cups, the kind with the lever on the top that clamps down to lock them in place, the kind you see cat burglars use in the movies. I bought four of them, and a small canvas backpack with buckles and straps.
I took the stuff back to the hotel room and put it together. When the levers were closed on the suction cups, it formed a perfect loop for the straps to go through. I shortened the straps as far as they would go, so the thing wouldn’t hang down any more than it h
ad to, and the end result wasn’t bad. I figured it would do.
I took the kilo of coke out of my briefcase, and put it in the backpack. It wasn’t a bad fit. I buckled it shut and tested the flap. It was O.K. If the buckles stayed put, there was no way it was going to fall out.
I put the whole shmear in my briefcase, went out, hailed a cab, and had it take me to the Essex Hotel. This time I didn’t bother to register for a room I didn’t need. I just walked through the lobby and took the elevator down to the garage.
I had a moment of panic when I didn’t see Red’s car, but then I spotted it behind a Lincoln Continental that had come in since the last time I’d been there. I went to the back of Red’s car and bent down. The transmitter was still in place, though why it should have moved when the car hadn’t is beyond me. I gave it a tug anyway just to be sure. It didn’t budge.
I glanced around to make sure no one was coming, then popped open the briefcase and took out the four suction cups and the canvas bag. One at a time I snapped the cups in place on the underside of the car next to the transmitter. I threaded the straps from the bag through the levers as I snapped them closed. The whole operation seemed an eternity but took about 30 seconds. I snapped the briefcase shut, jumped up, and did my impression of a guy minding his own business looking for his car, just in case anyone was coming. No one was.
I bent back down and inspected my work. It wasn’t bad. The straps were short, and I’d pulled the suction cups as far apart as they’d go, to keep the straps up tight. The bag hung down, of course, but not that much. It cleared the ground by a good 6 inches. Of course if you bent down and looked you’d see it, but you had to be looking for it. From a standing position it didn’t show at all.
I left the Essex, took a taxi back to the Sheraton, and went up to my room. I packed the tracking unit in my briefcase and the grinder in the paper bag the suction cups had come in.
I checked out, got in my car, and drove to the airport. On the way I stopped and threw the paper bag with the grinder into a trash can on a street corner. It still had four or five good lines in it. Some bag lady was in for one hell of a time.
14.
THE NEXT DAY I FOUND OUT why cocaine is so psychologically addictive. There is no hangover quite so bad as a coke hangover, at least none that I know. You’ve been up so high, and suddenly you’re down so low. Who wouldn’t want to feel good again when they’re feeling so bad?
Of course, it was a surprise to me. I’d gotten high in Miami, and come down in Miami, and I thought that was all there was to it. Naive me. The next day is a real kick in the ass, and I felt like shit that morning as I drove out to Brooklyn to see Mrs. Rabinowitz.
The case, however, was, as I’d imagined, a dream assignment. Nice old apartment building, clean lobby, automatic elevator, Jewish tenants. Mrs. Rabinowitz was even pretty nice, considering I’d stood her up three times. And for once, the case was simple and straightforward. The roughest part of the form I had to fill out was the blank marked “HISTORY.” There were five blank lines under it, but often they weren’t nearly enough, since clients’ complicated and sprawling accounts of their mishaps often spilled over onto the back page, filled it, and continued on into the pages of the yellow legal pad I carry for taking witness statements. Mrs. Rabinowitz’s said, in its entirety: “Client tripped on a hole in the sidewalk and fell down.”
Also, many clients have a medical history that could fill a small novel, with frequent visits to a number of hospitals, a myriad of doctors, none of whom agreed with each other, and courses of treatment to be followed and understood only by those with degrees in medicine—preferably specialists. Mrs. Rabinowitz had broken one leg, gone to one hospital, once where one doctor had put it in one cast.
I was done in half an hour. I’d have been done in half the time, except Mrs. Rabinowitz interrupted me incessantly in her eagerness to hear the grisly details of the automobile accident that had delayed me the day before. She seemed a nice old lady, so I created a particularly gruesome version, giving firsthand accounts of severed limbs, copious quantities of blood, and even—though suspecting I was pushing it a bit—a decapitation. Mrs. Rabinowitz ate it up, and I was glad, for she was a game old lady, and even accompanied me downstairs on her crutches to point out the defect in the sidewalk that had felled her. It was a few buildings down the street from her. It was a beauty, and I was able not only to get pictures, but also the street number of the building it was in front of. All in all, a profitable morning. Richard would be happy.
I offered to see Mrs. Rabinowitz back to her building, but no, she was heading for the drugstore on the corner, so I said goodbye and got out of there fast. I knew she was on her way to pick up the Post and the Daily News to look for pictures of the accident on the Major Deegan, and I didn’t want to stick around and see her disappointed.
My beeper went off just before I got to my car. That was a blessing. Usually the damn thing went off when I was on the Grand Central Parkway or some such highway where I’d have to get off and drive all over creation to find a phone. When I did find one, it would either be broken, or be occupied by some Spanish-speaking woman who was planning her life. And once I did find an unoccupied working phone, I would discover that there was no easy way of getting back on the highway from where I was.
I went to the pay phone on the corner. It was unoccupied and working. I dialed 0, 212, and the office number, waited for the tone, and then punched in the office calling card number.
Kathy answered with a snarl. “Well, it’s about time.”
“You just beeped me,” I protested.
“Today I just beeped you. What about yesterday? What about Mrs. Rabinowitz?”
“It’s all signed. No problem.”
“No problem for you. I’ve had it on the books for three days with Richard wanting to know how come it wasn’t done.”
“Then he’s gonna be real pleased when you tell him it is. And he’s gonna love the accident pictures.”
“He can love his grandmother, for all I care. I just want the case closed.”
“It’s closed. Look, did you just beep me to compliment me on my performance, or was there something else?”
“I have a new case. Any chance you’ll have it done before Monday?”
“I’ll have it done before lunch.”
“Oh yeah? Then how the hell you gonna get off charging 3 hours on it the way you always do?”
“That was a figure of speech. So I have a late lunch. Just give it to me, will you?”
She gave it to me. 212. Death. 5th Avenue. Not so bad. But a pretty high number. Ten bucks said it’d be above 110th Street. I pulled out the Hagstrom map. Sure enough, I owed myself ten bucks. Right around 114th Street. The apartment number was the kicker. 14G. A project.
I’ve been in some pretty grungy four-story walkups in Harlem with rotting floorboards and unlit hallways, but I think I like housing projects even less. A friend of mine in the detective business once told me he figured when the city set about to build the low-income housing projects, they got a mugger, a rapist, and a murderer together to help design them. I wouldn’t disagree. Projects have front doors that anyone can get in, long, narrow dead-end hallways to get cornered in, alcoves for unsavory types to lie in wait in. The room numbers are so flimsy and fastened so poorly to the doors that they never last more than a few months, leaving any poor outsider desperately trying to locate an apartment, stranded forever in the aforementioned mineshaft-like corridors, hoping like hell if he rings a doorbell the person who comes to the door either is the person he’s looking for, knows the person he’s looking for or, failing either of these, doesn’t kill him.
I was in for a surprise. The building wasn’t that bad. The lobby was fairly clean. My client’s apartment number was on her door, which I located easily. She turned out to be a perfectly nice young black woman, who kept a clean, if modestly furnished, apartment and had a five-year-old son who had broken his wrist, not, as is so often the case, through some
negligence of her own, but because someone at his day care center had slammed a door on the kid’s hand.
I felt like a schmuck. I also felt relieved. It was a damn good interview, and the only thing that made me the least bit uncomfortable was when her son got into my briefcase, which I had left open on the floor, and pulled out the receiving unit of my electronic tracking device.
“What’s this?” he said.
I looked up, saw it, and realized that today at least it had been business as usual, and the only effort I’d made in the direction of continuing the Albrect investigation had been in sticking the unit in my briefcase.
The unit was on, of course, primed to inform me of Red’s impending arrival.
I smiled as I took it away from him. “That’s a tracking device, so my office can keep in touch with me.”
The young mother frowned. “Don’t they just beep you?” she said, pointing to my belt.
“Sure they do,” I told her. “But this tells ’em where I am, so if they get a case they can beep the agent closest to the area.”
“Agent?” she said. “I thought you were a lawyer.”
I smiled. “No, ma’am, I’m not,” I said, and launched into my “I’m not a lawyer, I’m an investigator” spiel.
I got out of there with the signup, but I was lucky. The girl was nice, sharp, intelligent. I felt like a fool, but it was good. When you realize you’re a schmuck, you might as well realize you’re a big one.
But the kid finding the unit really bothered me. Not that he found it, but rather, that it was on and nothing had happened yet. How long did it take to drive from Miami, anyway? How would I go about finding that out? Add up the miles and make an estimate? How would I go about finding out how many miles it was? What kind of detective was I, anyway? I had the answer to that. A schmuck. An asshole. The real question was, when the fuck was Red going to show up?
15.
RED SHOWED UP THAT NIGHT at three in the morning. Oddly enough, it was my wife who proclaimed his arrival. She shook me out of a sound sleep, and said, “What the fuck is that?”