The thing about the one-way mirrors they have in police station interrogation rooms is that everyone knows they’re one-way mirrors. Who, after all, is crazy enough to think these eight-foot long, four-foot high reflecting surfaces are there to help you straighten your tie or repair your make-up?
When you’re left alone in a room like this with one of these things staring at you—literally—as was happening to me when my two detective questioners excused themselves to “check something out,” I couldn’t help but get the jumps. Which of course is the way I was supposed to feel. I started communing with the can of Diet Coke they left me for company, moved on to wondering who was watching me and what they were saying, began to think maybe I should put on some kind of innocent person act to entertain the watchers and maybe myself.
Except how does an innocent person act innocent when both watchers and watched know that watching is going on but both parties must maintain the pretense that the watched is unaware of the watchers? The question has an almost Zen-like quality. A person could meditate on something like this and maybe attain sartori.
On the other side of the glass, detectives Ryman and Smith were checking out
their suspect, hoping for some motion, some twitch, that might give them a questioning edge. Obvious signs of increased nervousness would be good, too. While these didn’t necessary suggest guilt, overly anxious suspects often revealed interesting tidbits of
information. Just now, however, the detectives were confused.
“What the fuck is he doing? Looks like he’s in some kind of trance. Another minute he’s up on the table in the lotus position.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Frank. With your right hand?”
“You said your back was bothering you. I thought I’d sort of...”
“Thought you’d massage my bra strap to relieve the ache in my back? Maybe massage the front of the bra, too, to take away pains I might be having in my chest?”
“If you think it would help...”
“Jesus, Frank.” Tammy Smith sighed heavily. This crap was beginning to wear her down. So I’ve got a nice pair of knockers. Big fucking deal. Half the females in this town have boobs bigger than average. That’s why there’s an average.
The thing with Frank Ryman was that she really liked the guy. Professionally. Even personally with reservations. He was very good at his job and she learned valuable stuff every time they worked a case together. Nothing seemed to faze him. He was never offended, even in dealing with the most offensive perps. He was patient and didn’t pass over the little details because he was too focused on the obvious big ones. And he was exceptionally careful never to make the kind of mistakes that might let some smart-ass lawyer get a perp off on appeal.
On a personal level Ryman also displayed the sort of cynical humor you needed for a long term relationship. If the relationship was going to be with another cop. He could tell stories about the most horrific things in a dry, almost folksy way that had you rolling on the floor. Hell, he wasn’t even married anymore, which was the
trouble with most of the other cops who were always hitting on her. He didn’t drink more than she did. He kept up with his child support payments. He was, in a lot of ways, her dream cop lover.
But those teeth. Jesus! A guy in his early forties with Crayola yellow teeth because he was still a two-pack-a-day Malboro man. Clothes that always seemed to smell of mold because his ex- hadn’t taught him the importance of putting them through a dryer instead of letting them sit in the washer overnight. Ground zero stuff for any relationship that was going to have a future. And Tammy Smith had started at ground zero too many times before to start there again.
Which only brought her back to another kind of ground zero. How was she supposed to keep this guy’s professional friendship without letting on why she found the thought of intimacy with him....unappealing?.
“Frank. We’ve got a suspect in a deep trance. What now?”
Ryman removed the hand from under the back of his partner’s blouse. “Now, I take a leak. Then we go back in the room and hear how Mr. Kahn and Mr. Hamish got back together again after all their years apart.”
Do we read the guy his rights first?”
“Rights? Oh yeah. Those.” Tammy almost chuckled but choked it off. It would only encourage him.
“Not unless he asks for an attorney,” Ryman continued. “We take him up to the point where he and Hamish are in a situation that might directly relate to the murder. Then we mention rights. Say he can have a lawyer if he wants one.”
“Suppose he just wants to walk?”
“He walks. He didn’t kill Hamish. He wasn’t even in the Bernstein Building when the guy got bumped. That building’s security is tighter then a nun’s you-know-what.
We know the killer was someone who entered the building that morning and didn’t leave before the internal monitoring system went down, which is when Hamish got it. Kahn wasn’t in the building then and even has an alibi during the time the monitors
were down.
“So why hasn’t he walked out of here yet? Why is he talking to us at all?”
Ryman made a conspicuous show of seeming to consider the question. “Hmm. Could be he’s a good citizen and wants to help the police. Could be, being a freelance intellectual and all, he just has a need to talk about the circumstances of an old friend’s violent death with certified professionals like ourselves.”
“Yeah, yeah. So what’s the real reason he’s still here?”
“Because, Detective Smith, our unlicensed PI knows if he gets on the wrong side of real investigators like ourselves he’ll be on our mess over list for the next hundred years. You sure you’re not into some world class chest decongesting?”
“Go take a leak.”
Philly’s answer to Joe Friday and Karen Sisco came back into the interrogation room a few minutes later. The she of the detecting team brought me another can of Diet Coke. I noticed she had also buttoned the next-to-the-top button of her blouse, though the back of the blouse was oddly disarrayed.
The team leader carried a file folder into the room. He glanced meaningfully at the folder’s cover, which surprise!, had the word ‘Confidential’ prominently written on it.
When Ryman closed this dossier he gave his partner a knowing nod. Their expressions were carefully constructed so as to betray nothing while hinting that they knew everything. It was all very stylized. A kind of cop kabuki. I appreciated the effort.
Ryman was up at the plate again. Smith stood in the corner of the room, staring fixedly in my direction.
“So, where were we? You came into some money. Hamish said nasty things to
you a couple of decades back and you didn’t hear from him again until a few weeks ago. What happened to you in the interim? How did you land in Philly? Where did the money you came into come from?”
The odd thing about the temporary spurt of solvency that sprung me from the employ of Myron Hamish was that it came from the same source that was making my employer his own pile—Jamaica Plain’s crazily escalating residential real estate prices.
My mom had just died. A sad event, yes, but since I had been on the outs with my family for a very long time, and since she had been threatening to expire since I was eight, not a terribly crushing or totally expected event. What was unexpected was that she left me a small legacy in her will instead of bequeathing the money to a cat shelter, which is what I expected. The old girl loved her tabbies..
Just about the time she favored me with this modest inheritance, my own apartment, in a building that had been constructed in the early twentieth century and which contained units that had miraculously not been sub-divided to accommodate students and other transients, was purchased by a would-be developer. This conversion meister, unlike my own employer, buckled under pressures from area locals who were angry as hell about his plans to bring a better heeled class of people into their neighborhood and force them out. He did something extraordinary in order to grease the deal. He guaranteed the mortgage for any current building resident who could come up with a down payment. A down payment which just happened to equal
the sum I had just inherited.
So there I was. One of the few leftover dregs in this classy upscale condo
development whose other tenants were almost all lawyers and financial planners. The
leper in their attic. We’d meet in the hallways or down by the mail boxes and they would look at me and wonder how to get me legally evicted. While I would look at them and wonder about the bizarre economic upheaval that had inclined these dummies to work twelve-hour days in order to afford living in the same apartment-cum-condo that I used to afford working twelve hours a week.
Then came the real fun part. Though like my mother’s death, it didn’t seem like fun at first. I fell behind in my condo payments and got a notice from the condo board saying they were about to seize my unit. A day after getting this missive I’m down by the mail boxes wondering what other happy tidings might be in the post, and I come upon a stranger.
“Can I help you,” I ask, hoping this excessively healthy looking young man wearing jeans with a dollar bill-sized label above one rear pocket, and a form fitting body shirt with a black polo emblem where a nipple ought to be, gives me a cute comeback so I can beat him senseless with a clear conscience. This being before I got in touch with the more feminine and loving side of my personality.
“I’m here about the condo that’s for sale. What a steal.”
“Sale? Steal?”
“Yeah. Unit 2-A. It’s on the market for $150,000. But I think I can knock her down two $145,000, maybe $140,000.”
I’m speechless. I had purchased my own unit for $40,000 two years earlier. Had prices really gotten that wacko in just two years?
In fact, they had. I put my own unit, the one directly above 2-A, on the block that
same day. It sold for $140,000 the following week. I walked away with $100,000 cash and gave Myron my notice.
I related this tale in abbreviated form to the Sherlock twins. Told them how I
stuck around Boston for another year or two before moving to Philly in search of a funky old East Coast city that hadn’t been renewed and improved to the point of unlivability. How I used a big chunk of my remaining capital to purchase a small rowhouse on Irving Street. How I did some construction and other odd jobs to get by. Then, after sitting in on a bunch of evening courses at local colleges, spending countless hours at the main Philadelphia Free Library at Logan Circle reading books on everything I could think of, got into my present line as a freelance intellectual.
All kinds of interesting things were left out of this recitation. Some, perhaps, of a borderline legality. There was no need to burden these folks down with trivia when they had a murder investigation on their hands.
Ryman: “What, exactly, does a freelance intellectual do?”
“”That’s a hard question to answer.”
“Stop playing with me, jerkoff. How do you make your money?
“I sometimes help with the seating arrangements at clubs.”
“You’re a bouncer.”
“I help couples resolve marital affairs.”
“You follow cheating husbands.”
“I do specialized research for overworked professionals and aspiring professionals.”
“You find reports on the Internet for college students too lazy to do their own assingments.”
“Sometimes I assist people who work with the court system.”
“You do the hump work for bondsmen and find bail jumpers. Got ya. Glad to see you’ve transcended the ham-fisted stuff. That you’re finally using your mind to its full
potential. So now we get to Myron Hamish.”
I had put an ad for my services in a local blatt, hoping to drum up some business. Any business, because frankly, though my personal nut is minuscule by most standards, even a squirrel needs a few acorns to get him through the winter.
Myron must have seen the ad and recognized my name. He called, threw out a few overblown friendlies, made a big thing about remembering me fondly, congratulated me on my new career, indicated he’d love to hear more about it, and suggested we meet for lunch on his credit card at a five-star eatery that was three stars better than the places where I usually dined.
So we met for lunch. After we were seated with enough fanfare to inaugerate the President of Ghana, Myron took the liberty of ordering our meal, including a French wine whose place of origin and pedigree he was at pains to show he knew quite well. The waiter was so impressed by his knowledge and pronunciation that he actually seemed to be dovening with admiration as he wrote down the order before rushing off to fill it.
I was less impressed. Even after all these years, in five minutes I read this guy again. It all came back. The shifty way he thinks. The phony way he operates.
I said: “So, Myron, who do you want me to kill?”
“You want the list now or you want to wait until after lunch?”
“You read my ad, right? I don’t do the things I used to do.”
“I read the ad. I also called around and discovered that you haven’t evolved totally into a new way of dealing with...situations. Here’s our soup.”
We were surrounded now by men of Middle Eastern or perhaps Balkan origins
who were expertly catering to more needs than I thought I had until arriving here. One
brought a basket of fresh baked bread that appeared to be coated with fungus.
Another expertly filled our soup bowls from an ornate tureen, after which an associate materialized to offer fresh ground pepper. A server in a different colored jacket poured Myron a thimble’s worth of wine for the traditional tasting. While still another individual, this one dressed like a mortician, circled the table in an apparent supervisory capacity. There hadn’t been this many supernumeraries cluttering up a dining area since the Emperor Nero invited guests over to watch a fire.
When this first round of servers finally cleared out in a flurry of bows and smiles, Myron raised his glass. “To old times.”
I raised mine and took a swig. It tasted great. Give me wine from corked bottles instead of screw caps any day.
“I appreciate the grits, Myron. So what kind of trouble are you in?”
“Well, old buddy,” and I watched as his smile faded and his lower lip actually began to tremble, “I think someone’s going to kill me.”
Detective Ryman, who had now stopped blowing cigarette smoke in my face, is favoring me with a kindly, receptive, please continue smile. His partner, standing in the corner of the interrogation room, is doing her best to blend into the wall like one of
those clay men characters in the old Flash Gordon movie serials so as not to distract me from continuing with this very interesting flow of information.
“Yes,” said Ryman.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, who did Hamish think was going to kill him?”
“He didn’t say.”
The truth was I didn’t ask because I didn’t care who might want to kill Myron
Hamish. Why should I? What really held my attention at the time, as I tried to explain to my interrogators, was the soup, a fish and cream concoction, which was excellent.
The entree that followed, lamb in mint sauce, which was even better. And those desserts! That black forest chocolate cake with fresh raspberry topping. To die for.
Ryman is on me like a ferret. Maybe I shouldn’t have described the meal so favorably. I mean, he’s a civil servant and probably doesn’t get invited to the sort of places that freelance intellectuals occasionally visit.
“Tell me what Hamish said about someone wanting to kill him. Without the sidebars. Without the smartass. Now!”
I repeat what I’d said. Nothing specific was mentioned at that first lunch get-together. Myron dropped a few hints about things getting really, really hairy at work, perhaps leading up to some violence. I got the feeling he was just feeling me out. Planting seeds. Testing my reactions. For my own part, once the eating was done and we’d gotten to the coffee stage, I thought it best to appear at least marginally interested lest he ask for separate checks and I end up a bonded kitchen slave for the next six months to work off my lunch debt.
“But you met Hamish again before he died.”
“Yes. We met two more times. Over a quick beer at a Sixteenth Street gin mill where he stuffed a couple of hundred dollar bills in my pocket and made me promise
to visit him at the Bernstein Building where he would fill me in on what he referred to as his ‘nasty situation.’”
“Then you went to see him at the Bernstein Building. And he did fill you in. Right?”
Well, not exactly. At this last meeting he told me a few odd things, some of which were doubtless related to his subsequent demise. But he didn’t really fill me in.
Half fill would be a better way to phrase it. There was no reason, however, to make this subtle distinction for the two detectives whose patience with my wit and wisdom
had by now pretty much come to an end.
Ryman has rattled off my rights and asked if I wanted a lawyer. It’s an appealing offer. If I wanted to push things I could probably just get up and leave without even finishing my Diet Coke. But all those in attendance know this is not a real option until a provide them with a few more tidbits. I’m a bug on the local constabulary’s windshield. They can wipe me off anytime they want.
So I tell Ryman almost everything that happened between Myron and me during that last visit to the building named after Philly’s favorite billionaire. Well, almost everything. And during this recitation, contrary to common sense, I somehow find myself becoming a lot more personally caught up in this killing affair.
Part of me has always wanted to live a life like the one claimed to be most desirable by a Greek philosopher whose name I can never remember. The guy who defined pleasure as the absence of pain, and by extension, who thought the most pleasure-filled life was one lived free from dealings with the assholes who cause pain.
But I also have these other leanings that frequently get me into situations that undermine this eminently sensible philosophy. Like my curiosity. I’ve always been a very curious person. That’s what this freelance intellectual thing that everyone thinks is a joke is really all about. For some reason I get very upset when loose ends won’t fit together.
I have this thing about authority, too. The best way to avoid pain is to play meek and mild when dealing with folks more powerful than yourself. Go along and get along. Don’t rock the boat.
Except I always seem to get into the wrong boat and end up rocking it.
Sometimes out of simple curiosity. Sometimes to settle scores with people who think they have the power and position to jerk me around without paying a price.
I’m the kind of guy you can walk all over. Up to a point. Then watch out.
