02-Murder Read online

  “Well, anyway, it was about a year ago. Ronnie was in Chicago, and there was this party I got invited to by one of my girlfriends, and, miracle, I got a baby-sitter and I went.”

  “And that’s when you met Jane,” I prompted.

  “Yes. Well, I didn’t meet her there, I knew her from college. Not well, but I knew who she was. We were both at Cornell together. I mean, not together, but at the same time. We had a class together, though. I think it was anthropology. Maybe not. Maybe it was English. I’m not really sure.”

  “Probably doesn’t matter,” I suggested.

  “No, I guess not. No, of course not. Well, anyway, I didn’t know her that well, but you know how it is when you meet someone you went to school with. You start reminiscing and swapping stories, and did you know what’s-his-face is a doctor and all that. And of course, she asked me what I was doing and I told her I was married and had a kid. And then I asked her what she was doing, and it turned out she had a kid, too. A boy. Three years old. Just a year younger than Joshua was then.

  “Well, that was great, you know, because it gave us something to talk about. I mean, we really had nothing in common. But a kid, well, that’s a common ground, and I thought, fine, we can chat a bit, just two moms together.

  “Only it wasn’t like that. See, in the first place she wasn’t married. She’d never been married. And if you knew her, that wouldn’t surprise you, because she wasn’t the kind of girl you would have expected to get married. I mean not the kind of girl any one would have wanted to marry. I don’t know how to explain it, really. She wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t ugly, either. She just didn’t have any spark, you know. Some people do and some people don’t. And she didn’t. She just wasn’t the type of person you could imagine anyone being in love with. From what I gathered, the kid’s father was a one night stand. At any rate, he was out of the picture. So it was just her and the kid.

  “And the other thing was the kid. It had problems. Down’s Syndrome. It was severely retarded and required constant care. Just Jane’s luck, somehow. Her medical bills were astronomical. Plus the money she spent on child care. I mean, it’s hard enough on a single mother, without all that too.

  “So, there I was, starting off on this happy, ain’t-it-great-to-be-moms talk, and suddenly I’m caught up in someone’s personal tragedy. So, of course, I was very sympathetic, and I asked her how she was managing all that, and she told me.”

  Pamela paused here, looked down, and seemed to be searching for the right words, and I knew we were getting to it.

  We were.

  “She told me she worked for an escort service,” Pamela said. “She was a paid escort. She went out on dates with men.” She looked up again. “It was strange to think of her doing that. I mean, she wasn’t pretty, and she didn’t have any fire, and she wasn’t the type of girl men noticed, you know what I mean. But she’s young, my age, and I guess if you put make-up on her, and put her in a dress, well, she’s a young girl to some older man. You know?”

  “Yeah,” I said softly.

  Pamela sighed, and her body seemed to shudder. “Well,” she said, “that was it. And that was the end of the party, as far as I was concerned. I mean after talking to Jane, I just didn’t feel like staying there. I made some excuse or other, left, went to a movie so as not to waste the baby-sitter, and went home.”

  She paused again and took a deep breath. This was going to be the hard part. She started, haltingly at first, and told the story.

  “It was about a month later. I’d more or less forgotten about the incident. Put it out of my mind. And I got a call from Jane. Which was a shock. I hadn’t expected to hear from her. We hadn’t exchanged numbers. She must have looked me up in the book.

  “She was really upset. She was crying, and she sounded desperate. Her mother had had a heart attack—wasn’t expected to live. She had to catch a plane, fly to Indiana with her kid. The thing was, her escort service had booked her a date for that night. If she didn’t keep it, she’d lose her job. That’s what she told me. That’s the way she put it. Lose her job. She was hysterical. She kept saying she’d lose her kid. Lose her kid. She wouldn’t have any money, she couldn’t support him, the state would take him away and put him in a home. It didn’t make any sense, but there was no reasoning with her.”

  A pause. Then. “She asked me to cover for her. It was simple, she said. I just had to put on makeup and a dress, look pretty, go to this hotel room and wait, and a man would show up and take me out to dinner.”

  She paused again. I said nothing. Waited.

  “Ronnie was in Atlanta on business. I knew I could leave Joshua with the neighbors next door. And Jane was so upset. So upset.”

  A longer pause. A deep sigh. “So I did.”

  A tear started down her cheek. She brushed it away. Took a sip of coffee.

  I glanced at Alice. She was sitting perfectly still, saying nothing.

  Pamela put down her coffee cup. The clatter of cup on saucer was tremendous in that quiet room.

  “It was a hotel on East 79th Street. Clean. Respectable. I had to stop at the desk to get my key. They gave it to me, no questions asked. I went up to my room. It was a nice room. Comfortable. I sat and waited. I’d brought a book along. I sat and read.

  “At eight o’clock there was a knock on the door. I got up and answered it.

  “It was a man. He looked like a businessman. He had a suit on. He was an older man. Probably in his forties.”

  I’m forty myself, and under any other circumstances, Pamela Berringer would have considered that a tactless remark, but as things were, she didn’t even notice.

  “He wasn’t attractive. He was fat and ugly. And I didn’t want to go out with him, but a deal’s a deal, so I smiled at him, and said, ‘Where do you want to go?’

  “He leered at me. I’ll never forget that look in his eyes. He just leered at me, and there was a cruel smile on his lips, and he said, ‘Go?’ He chuckled and shook his head, and he said, ‘Go?’

  “And I said, ‘Yeah, go. Where do you want to go out to? Where do you want to have dinner?’

  “He was laughing now. He said, ‘Out? Dinner?’ Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the bed.

  “I screamed, and tried to twist away. He slapped me across the face. Hard. It stunned me. I was in shock. And afraid. Very afraid. I looked at his face. It was vicious. Cruel, Jesus. I tried to twist away again, but he grabbed the front of my dress, and pulled, and ripped it down the front.

  “I grabbed for my dress, to pull it around me, and he hit me again. Slugged me across the face.

  “Then he grabbed me and threw me down on the bed, and ... then he raped me.”

  Tears were streaming down both cheeks now, and she was making no effort to stop them. Her shoulders heaved.

  Alice put her arm around her. Pamela stiffened at the touch. Shrugged the arm away. It was as if any physical contact was too much for her now.

  Pamela wiped her eyes, rubbed her face.

  “You wouldn’t have thought it could have gotten any worse, but it did. I was lying there, with this pig on top of me, and suddenly there was a flash of light.

  “I was so startled, I almost flung him out of bed, all two hundred pounds of him.

  “I looked, and there was a man crouched by the bed. A black man. Grinning and holding a flash camera. When I looked up, he took another shot.

  “I started screaming. And he walked over to the bed, all cool and deliberate, and he grinned at me, and he said, “Hi. I’m Darryl Jackson.” And then he slapped me hard.

  “He held up the camera. It was a Polaroid, you know, instant pictures. He held up the two shots he’d just taken, and let me watch them develop. And when they did. When they came out bright and crisp and clear, he grinned again, and he said, “You want these?”

  Pamela let out a tremendous sigh.

  “I’ve been working for him ever since.”

  5.

  MY BEEPER WENT OFF about then, and, qui
te frankly, I was glad. Pamela Berringer was sobbing her eyes out, and, even with Alice ministering to her, it looked like it was going to be a good while before we could continue the interview. I excused myself, went in the kitchen, and called the office of Rosenberg and Stone.

  During my absence, Richard Rosenberg’s two secretaries, Susan the perennially cheery and Kathy the perennially sour, had moved on to greener pastures and been replaced by Wendy and Cheryl, the perennially incompetent. They had similar voices, so I was never sure whom I was talking to. It didn’t matter. Whoever it was, the information would invariably be wrong.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” came the voice of Wendy or Cheryl.

  “Agent double-0-5,” I told her. I used to be Agent Blue, but during my sabbatical, the office bookkeeping system had switched over to numerical coding. I was designated “05,” but I protested that if I had to have a number, it was damn well going to be a double-0 number, and I wrote “005” on all my paysheets and case folders.

  Wendy/Cheryl had a new case for me. I whipped out my pocket notebook and wrote down the info: a Miss Sally Webber of 105 West 141st Street, Manhattan, had fallen down on her stairs and broken her leg, and an appointment had been made for me to see her between 11:00 and 12:00.

  I wasn’t sure how long this thing with Pamela was going to take, and I also had to swing by Photomat to drop off the accident pictures I’d taken that week, so I decided to push the appointment back to between 12:00 and 1:00.

  I called the number I’d been given. I don’t know who the guy was who answered, but he sure wasn’t Sally Webber, and he’d never heard of her either. I called information, and asked for a listing for a Sally Webber at 105 West 141st Street. There was none, but there was an S. Webber at 150 West 141st Street. I said I’d take it.

  I called the number and asked for Sally Webber. She wasn’t there, but damned if Sherry Webber wasn’t, and damned if she hadn’t broken her leg and called Rosenberg and Stone. I apologized and pushed the appointment back an hour.

  I went back into the living room, where things seemed to have calmed down. To be honest, the beep had been a godsend, giving me an excuse to breeze through the rest of the interview, and I played it for all it was worth.

  “O.K.,” I said. “That was the office and I gotta go. I stalled ’em some, but I still gotta go, so we’re gonna have to cut this down to the bare essentials. Now, if I’m going to help you, I gotta have the facts. So I’m going to ask you specific questions, and I want you to give me specific answers. Try to keep your answers as short as you can. In fact, answer yes or no whenever possible. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good start. O.K. The black guy who took your picture. He’s your pimp?”

  She winced at the word.

  My wife said, “Stanley!”

  I turned to Alice. “Well, that’s what he is, isn’t he? Whaddya want me to call him, the Master of Ceremonies? Look, she’s in trouble and she needs help. We’re never gonna get anywhere if we keep pretending her problem is she can’t decide what to wear to the junior prom. Now, keep quiet and let me ask my questions.”

  I’m sure my wife was ready with some terrible rejoinder, but Pamela cut her off.

  “He’s right,” she said. She turned to me. “Yes, he’s my pimp.”

  “Good girl,” I told her. “What’s his name again?”

  “Darryl Jackson.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “Harlem.”

  “And you’ve been working for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a regular basis?”

  “Yes.”

  “How regular?”

  “Five days a week.”

  “How many times a day?” (Despite the fact she was doing great now, I said times instead of tricks. I didn’t want to push it.)

  “Three or four.”

  “What did you charge?”

  “A hundred dollars.”

  “How much did he take?”

  “Eighty percent.”

  I’m afraid I raised my eyebrows.

  “Well, I wasn’t doing it for the money,” she flared. “Sure that’s a lot, but—”

  “Skip it,” I said. “Where was this, up in Harlem?”

  “No. I had a room in a hotel. A nice hotel. On East 79th Street.”

  “The same hotel where—”

  “Yes.”

  “And Duane got you the room?”

  “Darryl.”

  “Right. Darryl.”

  “Yes.”

  “And paid for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And set you up there?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to phrase this one tactfully. “Did you have to go out, or did he send you people?”

  “He sent me people.”

  “Anyone else use the room? When you weren’t there?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. I mean, yes, I’m sure they did.”

  “But you never met them?”

  “No.”

  “Never met any of his other girls?”

  “No. Except Jane.”

  “But he had others?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you went there five days a week?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could you manage that? I mean, how could you get out of the house five nights a week?”

  “It wasn’t at night.”

  “No?”

  “No. It was in the morning. After I took ... after I took Joshua to school.”

  Her lip trembled and we were off again.

  “All right, never mind that,” I said. I felt cruel as hell, but I really had no choice. If I let her go on we’d be here all day. “You can cry later. Right now I need the facts. The thing is, you wanna get out and this guy won’t let you.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you tell him you wanted out?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He laughed at me. He said no one gets out. He’s a monster, a sadistic, cold-hearted—”

  “I’m sure he is. But the point is, you want to get out.”

  She stopped. Looked at me. And then laughed, an ironic, bitter laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “I want to get out. Listen. Do you know how often I go to the doctor? You wouldn’t believe it.” She paused and then said, slowly and evenly, “As of last week I do not have AIDS. But I’m scared. I’m so scared.”

  A chill went down my spine. That part of it hadn’t even occurred to me.

  “I see,” I said. I hated to ask the next question, but I had to. “Tell me, does your husband know about this?”

  She was horrified. “No! That’s just the point. Ronnie doesn’t know. Ronnie must never know.”

  “I see,” I said, and I did. Ronnie must never know. I must say I felt a little funny about dear old Ronnie. Three or four tricks a day, five days a week for six months added up to three or four hundred separate counts of adultery. In some states that would probably entitle Ronnie to a divorce.

  “O.K. I think I got the picture. You want out, and this guy says if you quit he’s gonna tell your husband.”

  Pamela nodded. “Yes.” She lowered her head. “And ...”

  Shit! There was an “and.”

  “And?” Then I remembered. “Oh, yes. The pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “The polaroids.”

  “Oh. Those.” She waved them away. “No, I got those back long ago.” She lowered her head again. “But ...”

  Jesus. An “and” and a “but.”

  “But what?”

  “He has a tape.”

  “A tape?”

  “A video tape.”

  “Of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean he had a hidden camera and taped you without you knowing it?”

  She lowered her eyes, said softly, miserably, “No.”

  Jesus.

  I was trying hard not to be shocked, but this was a little much. I c
ould grant her the motivation and all that. There’d been coercion. She’d been forced into it. But still. Darryl Jackson hadn’t filmed her without her knowledge. She’d posed for the dirty pictures. She’d acted for the camera while that sleazeball made his filthy videotape.

  Now, I’m not a prude, and I’m not even against pornography. In fact, I like to look at dirty pictures as much as the next guy. But you never really think of the people in dirty pictures as people, if you know what I mean. They don’t seem real.

  But Pamela Berringer was. And somehow her posing for the pictures seemed worse to me than her turning tricks.

  It seemed worse to her too. This time there was no stopping the deluge. I managed to worm Darryl Jackson’s address and phone number out of her in between sobs. I wrote it in my notebook.

  I said I’d see what I could do. I nodded to Alice, who was doing her best to be of comfort, and wished Pamela well.

  And got the hell out of there.

  6.

  I WAS IN A FOUL MOOD as I drove down to the Photomat. See what I could do, hell! What the hell could I do? This guy had the tape and I had to get it. What was I gonna do, walk up and ask him for it? I could offer him money, but that wouldn’t work. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Pamela how high she’d be willing to go, but whatever it was, it wouldn’t be enough. The guy was pulling in over a grand a week from her tricking, so it would take a small fortune to make him give that up. So how could I get the tape? Steal it? I’d have to find it first. How would I go about doing that? Damned if I knew. Trick him out of it? How? Scare him out of it? Fat chance, seeing as how I’m a devout coward who doesn’t carry a gun, can’t fight, and avoids confrontations.

  The other thing was, how did I feel about what I was doing? I mean, Pamela Berringer was obviously someone who needed help. Who deserved help. Hearing her story, I couldn’t have felt more sorry for her. Seeing her sitting there, distraught and miserable, pouring her heart out.

  But the thing was, as soon as I got out of there, I began to have doubts. I mean, come on. I’m supposed to believe in a girl so naive she doesn’t know “escort” is a euphemism? Could I take Pamela’s story at face value? The thing is, I’m pretty gullible. I believe what I hear. One of the hardest things about my job is realizing that people don’t always tell you the truth. And one of my severe limitations as a private detective is I’m not always sure what’s true and what isn’t.