04-Strangler Read online

  Praise for Parnell Hall’s mystery Strangler

  “Entertaining ... the charm of Stanley Hastings lies in his chummy, loquacious, self-deprecating commentary.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Wonderful, top-notch ... memorable characters and witty dialogue ... sure to win plaudits and fans.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Great fun.”

  —Booklist

  Strangler

  Parnell Hall

  Copyright © 1989, 2011 by Parnell Hall

  Published by Parnell Hall, eBook edition, 2011.

  e-reads.com, 2003

  ISBN:978-0-759215-60-3

  Published by Signet, NAL-ONYX, 1990.

  ISBN:978-0-451402-17-2

  Orginally published by Donald I Fine, Inc., 1989.

  ISBN:1-55611-125-8

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-936441-44-0

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-936441-45-7

  Cover design: Michael Fusco Design | michaelfuscodesign.com

  For Jim and Franny

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Books by Parnell Hall

  1.

  I DON’T LOOK FOR IT.

  I know some people thrive on violence and action and mystery. I don’t. You see, I’m not a real private detective. Not really. I’m an ambulance chaser. I work for the law firm of Rosenberg and Stone. I spend my time driving around New York City in my beat-up Toyota, signing up clients who have called in response to Richard Rosenberg’s TV ads. Technically, that makes me a private detective, and that’s where the trouble comes in.

  You see, sometimes people want to hire me. And the thing is, I don’t want to be hired. That’s because the people who want to hire a private detective usually have a distorted view of what a private detective really is. The reason, of course, is television. The minute you say the words “private detective,” people always think of some macho guy with a gun who has shoot-outs and car chases every week, and who always stays two steps ahead of the cops (who are always slightly dumb), and who always manages to solve murder cases that have the poor cops baffled.

  In real life, of course, the reverse is true. In the few murder cases I’ve been involved in, I’ve always been a few steps behind the police, and they’ve always turned out to be smarter than I was.

  Yeah, I’ve been involved in some murder cases. And, believe me, I didn’t look for ’em. And solving them was not my idea of a good time. Hey, I’m not a movie hero—I’m just a fortyish old fart with a wife and kid to feed, trying to scratch out a living the best I can. The only reason I work this job for Rosenberg and Stone is I don’t seem to have the brains or the gumption to find myself anything else. That, and the fact that in theory the job is supposed to be flexible to leave me time to write. Somehow it never does. Or, at least, I never manage to get anything written. The fault, dear Brutus, probably lies not in my stars but in myself, that I am an underling.

  At any rate, I don’t crave adventure. My idea of excitement is miraculously finding a babysitter and taking my wife, Alice, out to the movies, preferably (my preference, not hers) something fast-paced, funny, unsubtitled and with no redeeming social value whatsoever.

  I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Hell, I’ll go on anyway. The fact is, I don’t carry a gun, I never punched anyone in my life and I don’t even do surveillance.

  And I’m not particularly brave. That is an understatement. In fact, in the murder cases in which I’ve been involved, my greatest act of heroism to date has been not pissing in my pants in tense situations. So if urine retention were the only requirement for bravery, I guess I could pass, but if there are any other criteria, count me out. See, if you wanted a recommendation from any of the policemen with whom I’ve been involved, I’m sure you could get one: “Stanley Hastings? Oh yeah, that’s that chicken-shit asshole.”

  So, as I say, I don’t look for it. And I must tell you, as I drove up the Grand Concourse in the Bronx on that sunny September morning to interview Jesus Pagan, who had fallen on the stairs in his building and broken his leg, the last thing in the world I was expecting was murder.

  2.

  THE MOST DANGEROUS part of my job is calling on clients who are economically deprived. That’s because the places they live are inherently dangerous.

  If you’re a white man in a suit and tie, you might be slightly wary walking through the South Bronx. You might keep your eyes open, saying, hey, I don’t want to get mugged. But let me tell you, that’s nothing. Suppose you had to go into the buildings?

  All right, here’s a huge, six-story apartment building. The glass in the front double doors has been smashed, the lock has been kicked in and the doors are standing open. Inside is a cavernous lobby, two stories high, fifty feet wide, a hundred feet deep, unlit. And no windows. No light at all in the cavern, except what filters in through the front door. Somewhere in the back, dimly perceived on either side of the back wall, narrow staircases leading up to floors where the hallways may or may not connect. And you, looking for 6D. And realizing that once you choose a stair, you won’t know if it will get you there until you reach the second floor and find out if you’re on the A,B,C,D line or the E,F,G,H line in the event the hallways don’t connect. And then if you’ve chosen wrong, you’ll have to go down and take the other stair. And you don’t want to do that. Because in situations like this, you want to get in fast and get out fast, to minimize risk.

  And to top it off, standing next to this front door are two unwashed, unshaven guys in tattered army coats, passing a bottle of cheap booze back and forth.

  Would you want to go in there?

  Well, that’s where Jesus Pagan lived.

  So that’s what I did.

  I chose the wrong stair, too. I always do. When I got to the second floor, I found, as I’d feared, four apartments clustered around the stairwell. Most of the apartment numbers had fallen off. Two of the doors still had 2s on them, somewhat less than helpful, since I knew I was on the second floor. One of them had a flimsy H.

  Wrong line.

  I went down the stairs and tried the other side. No 2s this t
ime, but a dangling B told me I was getting warm. I figured by the time I reached the sixth floor I’d know the whole configuration.

  I’d just reached the fourth floor when a door flew open. Standing in the doorway was a large black man in blue jeans and a short-sleeved undershirt. Billowing out around him from the apartment came clouds of marijuana smoke, and I could hear the sound of voices from within.

  My heart leaped. It always does in situations like that. I walk in paranoid and tense as hell, and then when something happens they almost have to scrape me off the ceiling. So I’d have to say that it was a bit of a shock to me.

  But it was also a bit of a shock to him. His eyes widened; he said, “Oh, shit!” He hopped inside and slammed the door in my face.

  You see, he thought I was a cop. That’s what most people think when I do signups like this. Because, assuming that I was a sane, rational person, why else would I be there?

  At any rate, I was glad to see him go, and I hustled on up the stairs.

  Jesus Pagan was a thirty-year-old Hispanic with a chip on his shoulder and a cast on his leg. The chip on his shoulder had to do with the City of New York. Jesus Pagan figured, as long as he was giving the City of New York $159 a month to live in his three-room apartment, they could damn well fix the fucking stairs.

  The stair that drew Jesus Pagan’s wrath was only slightly cracked, and it would be a bit of a stretch for Richard to make a case for negligence about it, but that wasn’t my concern. I’d been assigned the job, and if I did it I’d get paid, so I damn well did it. I took down all the facts about Jesus Pagan’s accident, got him to sign a retainer agreeing to give Richard Rosenberg one third of any settlement and shot two rolls of the stairs from the sixth to the fifth floors, where Pagan had fallen down. I usually only shoot one roll of film on an accident of this type, but I couldn’t really see any defect in the step, and in a case where there is no discernible defect, Richard Rosenberg’s theory was shoot more pictures, because maybe one of them will show something.

  The other part of my assignment, in filling out the fact sheet, was to ask if there were any witnesses. Usually, in accidents like this, there aren’t, but Pagan had one, one Gilbert Star. He took me down to meet him, and Gilbert Star turned out to be the black man I’d encountered on the stairs on my way up. He was a little shocked to see me again, but when Jesus Pagan explained the situation he got real friendly. Then we all went in and sat down with him and some of his buddies, and they all passed joints around and tripped out on rapping about how Jesus Pagan had fallen down the stairs.

  They offered me a joint, of course, seeing as how I wasn’t a pig, but I courteously declined. It wasn’t just that I am a straight, uptight family man (though I am); it was also that there was no way I wanted to be stoned out of my mind in that building. I mean, whatever gets you off, but at some point this party would have to end. I didn’t really feel like standing around the South Bronx in my suit and tie going, “Wow, what’s happening?”

  The other thing was I got beeped. The beeper on my belt went off with its high-pitched beep, beep, beep. And by the time it went off, Jesus Pagan and the guys had gotten themselves thoroughly whacked. Their reactions were pretty incredible, ranging from “Oh shit!” (dropping joint), “Muthafucker!” (attempting to climb wall), to “What the fuck was that?!” (dropping out of chair).

  The dropping out of chair was Pagan, and I sure hoped he hadn’t reinjured his leg.

  The fourth guy didn’t say a word, but his reaction was the one that got me. Suddenly there was a knife in his hand. I didn’t see him pull it, and I have no idea how it got there, but there it was. I mean, the man was quick, and the man was ready.

  I was quick too, switching the damn thing off, calming them down and explaining what had happened.

  And that turned out to be the end of the party, at least so far as I was concerned, because what the beeper meant, of course, was for me to call the office, and these guys had no phone. So it was either go back up to Pagan’s or leave. Since I had what I came for and Pagan showed no signs of wanting to go anywhere, I opted to split.

  I went on outside, encountering no one, which is always a blessing. You always wonder, when you go into a building like that with guys hanging out outside, whether they’ll be waiting for you to come out. No one was. I hopped in my car, drove six blocks and found a pay phone. I got out and called Rosenberg and Stone.

  Wendy/Janet answered the phone. Wendy/Janet used to be Wendy/Cheryl, Richard Rosenberg’s two-headed monster, two secretaries that were like each other only in that they had identical voices and were both incompetent. Cheryl had moved on to greener pastures, but Richard, in his infinite wisdom, had managed to find another secretary whose voice was indistinguishable from Wendy’s and who was equally incompetent. I don’t know how Richard did it. It was as if he’d put an ad in the paper: “SECRETARY WANTED: young, incompetent, adenoidal voice, dumb.” At any rate, he’d done it, and Wendy/Cheryl was now Wendy/Janet.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” came the voice of Wendy/Janet.

  “Agent double-O five,” I told her.

  “Hi, Stanley,” said Wendy/Janet. “I have a new case for you.”

  “Oh? where is it?”

  “In Harlem.”

  “Hell.”

  The thing was, I didn’t want to go to Harlem. I was in the Bronx already, and I had three photo assignments that I was planning on knocking off that afternoon. But in my work a new case takes precedence over everything. That’s because, when you get a new case, the client hasn’t signed yet. And he doesn’t become a client until he signs. And Richard Rosenberg’s prime directive is sign the clients. Sign them up as fast as they come in. Because there’s a lot of accident lawyers working New York City. And Richard Rosenberg figures if we don’t grab off a client fast, the client will get pissed off and call Jacoby and Meyers or Davis and Lee. Richard’s only number three in New York, and he figures he has to work harder. Or, to put it more accurately, he figures I do.

  But, as I said, I had these three photo assignments I was planning on knocking off and putting in on my paysheet at a hour or two apiece, so I was damned if I wanted to drop everything and rush back to Harlem.

  “I thought Sam was working Harlem,” I said.

  Sam Gravston was another one of Richard Rosenberg’s investigators. Sam was new, but then most of Richard Rosenberg’s investigators were. In the year and a half I’d been on the job, I’d seen a lot of ’em come and go. And most of ’em went pretty fast.

  See, the idea is pretty appealing. You put an ad in the New York Times saying, “PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR WANTED: no experience necessary, will train,” and you’re gonna get a lot of young guys who think it’s gonna be grand and glamorous like on TV. And they come in and train, and then they go out on their first assignment and walk into a building like the one I’d just come out of, and they come back to the office, turn in their kits and say they don’t think they really want to be a private investigator after all. And I can’t say I blame ’em.

  Sam Gravston had lasted almost two months, which was pretty much of a record for Richard’s investigators, with the exception of me. Sam Gravston was about twenty-four. He was a tall, thin, hulking guy, with longish blond hair and what a casting director would refer to as a ruggedly handsome face. And I’m sure one probably had, since Sam Gravston was an actor. He was only doing the P.I. shit because it was flexible enough to let him go to casting calls.

  “Sam’s off this afternoon,” Wendy/Janet said. “He’s got an audition.”

  I must say, I didn’t feel kindly toward him. I never felt kindly toward actors who had auditions. After all, I’d been an actor, and I never seemed to get any auditions. Which was why I’d become a writer who couldn’t get any work either, and wound up a private eye.

  “Ah, hell,” I said. “Let me have it.”

  She did. A Winston Bishop, in a project on Madison Avenue around 120th Street, had fallen on a subway steps and had a fractured arm. He was expecting
an investigator between one and two P.M.

  Ordinarily I’d have called and stalled the guy off until I had time to knock off those photo assignments, but, wouldn’t you know it, the son-of-a-bitch had no phone.

  Which also meant I couldn’t call him and verify his address. And with Wendy/Janet on the job, cases like that made me incredibly nervous.

  “You sure about that address?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Wendy/Janet said. “In cases where the client has no phone, Richard insists we make ’em give us the address three times.”

  I was glad to hear it, because that was at my suggestion.

  “Then let me read it back to you one more time, just to be sure we got it right,” I told her.

  I did, and damned if she hadn’t transposed two numbers in the address. I read it two more times just to be sure I had what she had, and figured that was the best I could do. I let it go at that.

  I hung up, got in my car and got on the Major Deegan. I got off at the Willis/Third Avenue Bridge, had my windshield washed at a red light against my will for a quarter by a skinny ten-year-old kid, then went over the bridge and wound my way down into Harlem.

  The address turned out to be a project of the kind you always dread. A steel outside door with the glass and lock smashed and no security of any kind, and grungy, foul-smelling elevators that you don’t want to get trapped in but that you have to take unless you want to walk up to the twelfth floor.

  Winston Bishop lived in 12C. I wasn’t up to the walk, so I got in the elevator.

  It stopped on the ninth floor.

  And I hate that. I mean, I’m going to twelve, and someone on nine presumably wouldn’t ring unless they were going down. That’s not to say someone who stops the elevator on the way up is necessarily looking for an affluent-looking white man in a suit and tie to rip off. But people who ring both the up and the down buttons when they want to go down generally turn out to be young, aggressive, hostile types who are looking out for number one and don’t give a shit who they’re inconveniencing. Having a couple of them join me in the elevator never really makes my day.

  This time, however, it was two young black girls. Teenagers. They looked at me as if I were from another planet, but the looks weren’t hostile. And they engaged in some good-natured whispering and giggling. I had a feeling it was about me.