Authors: Parnell Hall
"No. Why?"
"Probably just as well."
"Anyway, you couldn't come up with a guy this good. You
must have had this name in your hip pocket just waiting for a
chance to use it."
MacAullif leaned back in his desk chair. His grin was
mocking. "Anytime you want to give me the name of your real
hitman, feel free."
ALICE WAS TOTALLY SUPPORTIVE. Under the circumstances,
overly supportive. She was also braless, wearing a scoop-neck T-shirt
that transported me back to my adolescence every time she leaned
forward.
I'd swung by home after MacAullif, not to play no-peekie with
Alice, but because I had no cases, having cleared my workload to
be free to handle the hitman.
Which I'd agreed to do. In light of MacAullif's findings, there
was no reason not to. When Kessler called my cell phone, I told
him I'd start that afternoon.
Then I went home and told Alice.
Alice, predictably, was unpredictably less upset about me taking
the job than she was about MacAullif. "He's being a jerk," she
asserted.
"He's not being a jerk."
"Sure he is. Ridiculing you like that."
"He thinks I'm putting him on."
"He doesn't think that."
"He said he did"
"Yeah, but he has to say something."
"He acted like he thought that."
"How did he act?"
"Like he was having a good time."
"See? He's worried. If he was really having fun with you, you
wouldn't know it. He'd be putting you on and laughing up his
sleeve."
"I think you're wrong"
Alice went on as if she hadn't heard that assessment of her
opinion. "See how he's being a jerk? He's taking a bad situation and
presenting it to you so that there's nothing further you can do."
"He offered to trace another name for me"
"You got another name for him to trace?"
"Of course not. He's the guy."
"Of course he is. MacAullif's being a jerk."
"He traced him and got nothing."
"That should tell him the guy's a pro. He'd have to be to have
a spotless record."
"He had a moving violation."
"I bet MacAullif got some mileage out of that."
"He seemed to enjoy it."
"I bet he did. The prick"
"Alice-"
"Stanley, did you stop to think why MacAullif is having so
much fun?"
"Because I made an utter fool of myself."
"Talk about ego."
"What?"
"You'd see a lot more clearly if you didn't define everything in
terms of you."
"Alice-"
"I'm not you, so it's easier to take you out of the equation. What
is MacAullif doing? He's sweating bullets. He's been presented
with a situation that might blow up in his face. What if this guy
that he checked out actually killed someone? That's gonna be
embarrassing as all hell. Does MacAullif want to face that possibility? He most certainly does not. He ridicules the theory. But it's
scaring the shit out of him"
"I think you're overreacting"
"I'm overreacting? How did you feel when he told you the guy
was clean?"
"I thought we were keeping me out of it"
"Oh, no. We were keeping you out of MacAullif's evaluation.
Never mind. The main thing is MacAullif checked the guy out,
came up empty. Which is good. He's paying cash. Still, you
wouldn't want to be working for a deadbeat."
"That's the least of nay problems"
"You think so? Take a look at the monthly bills."
She had a point. Living in Manhattan isn't cheap. Even with
rent stabilization we were barely getting by.
"I can work for Richard"
Alice blinked. "What?"
"I don't have to pick the guy up until this afternoon. I can do
some cases first."
"I thought he was paying you by the day."
"So?"
"He's paid you for the day. You gonna work for someone else?"
"Absolutely. I'm gonna work for Richard. I'll call the switchboard, tell 'em I'm on the clock till three."
"You gonna tell the guy you're doing it?"
"No. Why?"
"You don't think he has the right to know?"
"I don't think he gives a damn, as long as I do what he wants."
"You really took the job?"
"It seemed the only thing to do."
"Yeah, sure."
"Well, what would you think of nie if I said, `Screw it, go ahead
and kill the guy'?"
"Oh, you idiot," Alice said.
She leaned forward to pat nay head, and I forgot what we were
talking about.
"I'LL HAVE TO HEAR IT from Richard,"Wendy/Janet said.
Richard Rosenberg's two switchboard girls had identical voices.
I never knew which one I was talking to. Not that it mattered. Neither had the brains of a turnip.
"Okay," I said. "Put him on the phone."
Wendy/Janet gasped. She always did when I talked like that. The
prospect of bossing Richard around was more than she could handle.
Richard came on moments later. "You're back to work. So, the
job's done?"
"No, but the hours are flexible."
"I don't like the sound of that."
"Why not?"
"Flexible things stretch and bend. I don't like the idea of my
cases getting short shrift."
"Richard, your cases are trip-and-falls. I could do 'em in my
sleep. I'm going stir-crazy sitting around. I need the work."
"You just sitting around?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"You talk to MacAullif?"
"Why do you ask?"
"So you did. You realize that'll hang you, if things don't work
out"
"What could possibly go wrong?"
"Yeah. All right, you want work, I got work. Hang on."
I heard the buzz of the intercom, Richard's voice saying, "Pick
up line one," then a click and Wendy/Janet's voice saying, "Yes?"
"Stanley's on the clock, give him work," Richard said, and hung up.
Wendy/Janet paid me back for going over her head to Richard by
giving me the worst case she could find. Maybe I'm just projecting.
Still, the crack house in East New York in which one Yolanda Smith
lived had to be way up on my list of least desirable abodes. The two
black guys on the front steps had about three front teeth between
'em, and that was counting top and bottom, and one on the side. The
tatters they were wearing were fine for the summer. In winter their
balls would have frozen to the stoop. Neither had shaved in this millennium, nor ever seen a comb. Somehow or other, these unprepossessing souls had managed to score enough drugs to get high.
Either that or their brains were just permanently addled. But they
looked at me without fear or loathing or even the slightest interest
as I marched up the rickety steps and pushed open the front door.
Neither rain, nor snow, nor strung-out homeless junkies ...
On the first-floor landing a slightly more upscale clientele were
smoking crack.You could tell they were more upscale because they
had crack, not to mention a crack pipe and a butane lighter. They
probably took me for a cop, because no white man in a suit and
tie who wasn't a cop would ever be there. They made no move to
hide the drugs. If I was gonna bust them, I was gonna bust them.
Not much they could do about it.
The guys on the third floor were mainlining crystal meth. I wondered if that was a step up from the crack smokers, or a step
down. I'm just not up on drug etiquette. Anyway, they were
sharing needles and probably HIV. I tried not to appear terrified as
I gave them a wide berth.
On the next floor I found Yolanda.
Her story blew me away.
The problem with the negligence business is you build up a
contempt for your clients. No matter what your good intentions,
the job quickly wears you down. Part of it's the monotony, and the
repetition, and the fact that each case seems exactly like the one
before. But it's also the fact that your clients aren't the most intelligent people in the world. Not that intelligent people wouldn't
call Richard Rosenberg, but, in point of fact, intelligent people
wouldn't call Richard Rosenberg. They'd go to their own or some
friend's recommended lawyer, not some guy they saw on TV. So,
for the most part, we're talking about people who tend to fall into
the category of greedy, indolent, and not particularly bright. Sort
of hard to root for. Sort of hard to work up any enthusiasm for
their cases. Add to this the fact that the people most likely injured
themselves through some stupid action of their own, and it's really
hard to care.
Yolanda Smith was something else.
For one thing, she was gorgeous. A light-brown-skinned
African-American woman, lithe, large-breasted, though not disproportionately so, twenty-three years old, mother of two.
For a few fleeting moments, a mother of three.
Usually, I ask questions and take notes.
Yolanda, I just listened to.
A welfare mother with two kids living in a crack house in East
New York gets her big break, meets Mr. Right, a young whiz-kid,
hip-hop record producer who's gonna to put her in rap videos,
gonna make her a star. Meanwhile, she's gotta earn her keep.
I sighed.
"Not like that." Brown eyes flashing. "He no pimp. He legit.
He real. "
"Go on"
"He gotta friend. Inna business. Movie business. Not porn. Jus'
playactin'. No sex. No danger. Like HIV. Unnerstand?"
"The sex was simulated?"
"Ain' no sex. Jus' skin. Give me 'nuff to live on, with the welfare check."
"So what happened," I prompted.
"I tellin' you what happen. All parta what happen. Is why it
happen" She took a breath, composed herself. "Director, he say the
rap work inna bag. Only I gotta wait 'cause he can' use no big
bitch inna video."
"Big bitch?"
She looked at me as if her estimation of my intelligence, never
high, had just dropped a few notches. "Like big." She patted her
tummy. "Don' work for a song."
"He can't use you in a rap video if you're pregnant?"
"Tha's right. Is on hold, he say, till the kid. After that, he line
me up wit' someone like Snoop Dogg, only he ain't got him."
"And what went wrong?" I said, gently urging her toward the
point.
"I tell you what went wrong.You don' listen, you don' hear."
In a less attractive woman, it would have been rude. In her it
was spunky.
"I'm listening. Go on"
"I's inna hospital. An' the baby come. Only it ain't right. Lotta
pressure. Lotta pain. Doctor say, `Shit!"'
"The obstetrician?"
"Head's not down! Tha's what he say. Head's not down!"
"It's a breech?"
"Tha's right. Is a breech. Baby can't breathe. Baby gotta come
out now!"
"The baby was in fetal distress. The doctor had to do a
C-section."
"Right. He gonna cut me. Sean say no."
"Sean? Who's Sean?"
"Director."
"The director. He was there?"
"Yeah."
"How come? Is he the baby's father?"
"Could be."
"And he said no?"
"Tha's right. He say don' cut her. Baby come natural."
"And the doctor listened?"
"Sean, he persuasive."
"I don't understand."
"He don' want me cut. For the video. For my career"
"If you had a C-section you couldn't be in rap videos?"
"Not with a scar. Not there."
"Did he order the doctor as the boy's father?"
"No. He jus' tell him."
"Is his name on the birth certificate?"
"What birth certificate? Baby dead."
"Did you write him down as the baby's father? When you
checked into the hospital?"
"No."
"If he wasn't the father, what was he doing there?"
"Lookin' out for his investment."
"And he told the doctor not to do a C-section, and the baby
died?"
"Tha's right."
"What was the cause of death?"
"Couldn't breathe."
"Asphyxia?"
"Yeah."
"Because the doctor tried to do a vaginal delivery?"
"Tha's right."
"Did you tell the doctor not to do it?"
"'Course I did."
"What did you say?"
"Said save my baby."
"And he didn't?"
No.
"I still don't understand. How come the doctor did what
Sean said?"
"They buddies."
"Huh?"
"He and the doc. Tha's why Sean had me go to him"
Jesus Christ.
Like I say, most of the cases I get are simple and straightforward.
Some idiot falls down because he is too dumb to look where he is
going. He then sues anyone he can think of for his broken leg.
Occasionally I get a case that is so egregious, so clear-cut, so
black and white, and so despicable in its nature, that it makes me
want to turn the system upside down if necessary, to right a wrong,
to see an injustice is avenged. They don't come often, but, when
they do, god, how they shake me up.
The bad thing about my job is most of the time you don't care.
The worst thing is sometimes you do.
MARTIN KESSLER DIDN'T WANT ME to pick him up at school.
That doesn't sound right. That sounds like I'm carpooling. What I
mean is, he didn't want me to stake out his school and start tailing
him when he got out of class. Which I quite understood. Teachers
with tails don't get tenure. Sounds like a PI novel. He didn't need
me following him then anyway. I didn't know why, and I didn't
really want to know. Probably the guy we were supposed to whack
didn't get off work that early.
Anyway, Kessler didn't want me going anywhere near his
school, so he niet me at my office. That also gives the wrong
impression. It's not like he came upstairs or anything. At four fifteen, he was waiting for me outside. I came down, spotted him
staking out the place. As instructed, I gave no sign, just turned and
headed west. He followed me on the other side of the street. At
Broadway, we changed positions without ever appearing to do so.
I turned south, toward Forty-second Street. So did he, but since he'd been on the downtown side of Forty-seventh Street and I'd
been on the uptown side, I was now behind him. I tagged along
for two blocks, then crossed Broadway, and paralleled his actions
from the other side of the street.