It doesn’t take long to dislike Ron Pinkmans. They’re pure breed character types who don’t exhibit a lot of confusing complexity. Ten seconds after meeting one you pretty much know what you’re dealing with and you’re starting to figure out ways to avoid future dealings.

“Let’s make this fast,” he’d said upon entering the Fishbowl earlier in the day for our interview. Then he’d turned his back on me and walked off to get a cup of coffee. Once seated, he snapped open a cell phone and made a call to his wife to discuss plans for an upcoming dinner party as if no one else were in the room. When he’d finished on the cell he looked my way, sneered, and said: “Are we done here?”

For the rest of our half-hour together he checked his watch a dozen times and gave smirk-answers to all my questions, determined not to provide any useful information or insights. But of course he did. Pinkmans always do.

People who fall into the clutches of the police regularly, and even those having frequent dealings with illegitimate offshoots of authority like myself, know enough to clam up as much as possible. They know these meets aren’t a fair intelligence contest. An Einstein trying to finesse a conversation about a felony with a police professional who has been having these chats for twenty years and questioned a dozen of Einsteins along with hundreds of more conventional criminal cretins is going to get squashed every time. A smart guy like Pinkman, smart-assing for half an hour, is a gold mine of giveaways. It was just a matter of listening for the nuggets among the put downs.

There was, for example, his attitude toward murder. None of the Bernstein crowd was really sorry Myron Hamish was dead. Most, in fact, seemed to think it made the world a better place. But victim aside, the concept of murder, a murder in their own place of work, clearly troubled them all. Except Pinkman, who seemed to view it as a mere distraction from more important things.

Unlike the dinner party he’d just now been talking about with his wife. That event clearly had him upset. You could tell from his breathing and the white-knuckle grip he had on his cell phone that his home life was the evil twin of his office life. While at Bernstein’s he did the pushing, even a quick eavesdrop made it clear that at home he was the one whose brows were beaten.

On the short list of suspects for Myron’s murder that I’d been given, Ron Pinkman was the choice that struck me as likely. He came across as arrogant but scared, pushy but insecure, close to the edge of something and trying to shoo it away with bluster. I pegged him as defintely capable of violence against a man his own size. As someone who could be so obsessed with work and a desire to move up, so sure he could bulldoze or bluff his way out of any kind of trouble, that murder might seem no more distasteful than renegotiating a deal that had gone sour.

As for whether he killed Lisa Sankerson, the girl in Powelton that Joe Connors told me about last night. My gut told me he could do that one, too. And if he did do it, sex would be involved somehow. Pinkman’s sexual loser vibe was so strong it could set off car alarms. Maybe he wanted sex from Sankerson and wasn’t getting it. Maybe he got some and was afraid someone would find out. His wife, his boss, another company division head. And when I heard from somebody I’d spoken with earlier today that they called Pinkman ‘Pinky’ behind his back, and saw the way my informant smirked when saying the nickname, my suspect short list for the Sankerson murder shrunk to one.

As much as I personally dislike this weasel, however, I know that Pinkman isn’t stupid. Which raises an interesting question. Why didn’t the head of Bernstein’s news financial department beg off this assignment and give it to a subordinate, even though his boss had requested that he handle it personally? He had to know he was being looked at as part of a murder investigation, and that every unstructured situation, especially one with someone like me present who might have special knowledge of the crime, could be dangerous. So why is this clever and conniving individual walking into this oh, so, obvious trap? Why does he feel confident enough about the ultimate outcome of a double murder investigation to play a part in this evening’s fun and games?


Opening my front door yet again, I confront a small mass of humanity and equipment huddled together under pattering umbrellas. Pinkman fronts the group, with the taping crew’s lower rankers pushing in from the rear so as to get another foot or so further away from the now fully exposed chasm in the street. I am almost knocked over as they crowd into my house.

How many Bernsteiners does it take to record a poetry reading for later viewing on television, I’d wondered? The answer appears to be five. One handling the camera. One the sound. One the lighting. A guiding producer, played this evening by Ron Pinkman. And jumbo Clay Mason, who is here for reasons I suspect have nothing to do with production values.

This assemblage and its accouterments fill almost a third of my trinity’s ground floor. Pinkman appears disgusted as he surveys the very limited space available for his assigned task, but puts on a happy face when he sees his boss at the other end of the room with Joe Connors and a person he assumes is the subject of this outing.

I’m handed Pinkman’s dripping raincoat as he moves off to pay his respects. The other crew members follow their producer’s lead and give over their own dripping outer garments. Clay Mason, the last to make this unwelcome bestowal, whispers: “Stay clear when the shit hits the fan,” then moves on quickly so as to stay close to Pinkman, and to get between him and Mitch Bernstein instantly if that should become necessary.

I take all the rain soaked garments handed me and deposit them on the floor in a corner with their predecessors. No one seems to notice, or if they do, pretends not to. Everyone has more important things to worry about. The fact that their unwilling host has been drenched by their rainwear doesn’t rate a comment. The American press corps in action.

After Pinkman does his suck up to Bernstein and the latter is finally able to retreat to the second floor, a very professional crew goes about the business of getting this totally inappropriate setting ready for a taping. Jay is positioned in front of the slider door that leads to my trinity’s tiny garden. A cloth backdrop that supplies the right contrast is draped over the curtain that covers the slider. The desk where I pay bills and write letters to the editor is to the right of where Jay now stands facing the camera. A low bookcase is to his left. Good framing, I have to admit, for the supposed creative space of a poet.

Under Pinkman’s direction, much of the middle space on the trinity’s first floor that isn’t taken up by the staircase is now covered with lighting, camera, and sound equipment, along with the cables link them all together. Also under Pinkman’s direction a kind of mini-theater seating arrangement is created in the area near the front door, on the other side of the room from Jay. Clay Mason helps me move a couch and a few chairs so they face toward where Jay will do his reading. The plan is for me, Clay, Joe Connors, and Pinkman himself to sit in this cramped bullpen during the actual taping.

Happy sounds begin drifting down from the second floor. The words “Try some, Mr. B.” from Pam, and “As a courtesy” from Mitch Bernstein. Libby giggles away. Glad they’re enjoying themselves, I think. One less thing to worry about. What really concerns me now is the rising water level in the basement. That could be trouble if water gets into the house wiring.

All this shooting preparation has consumed a good chunk of time during which Jay has been getting more and more nervous as he paces back and fourth practicing his poetry. Pinkman is fully engaged in preparations for the shoot while Connors and Clay Mason, seated elbow to elbow just a foot or so in front of me in the bullpen area, watch Pinkman’s back intently. Soft and friendly comments from the second floor gradually gave way to traded wisecracks between Pam and Bernstein. Libby’s own happy sounds now cause even Jay to look up from time to time.

All hail Pam’s magic hip flask. It now occurs to me that this nineteen-sixites lawyer lady survivor might have something in that flask other than straight alcohol.

Pinkman is finally satisfied. He takes his seat in a folding chair directly in front of Clay Mason and says: “Let’s shoot it.”


Before the shooting can begin there’s a knock on the door. A pounding, actually.

“Police.” The word is half drowned out by the crash of nearby thunder.

Everyone looks at the front door.

DEAR GOD. SHOVE IT UP HARDER. HARDER. STICK IT TO ME. OH MY GOD...

“What is that? What is that?” shouts Pinkman.

“Not now. Please. Not now,” whines Jay.

Everyone’s attention turns toward the wall that joins MarySue Lamont’s trinity to
my own.

The pounding on the front door gets harder. “Open the door or we’ll break it down!”

The entire taping crew, all of us in the bullpen, now turn to the front door. But MarySue in delecto extremis is impossible to ignore, even with the cops threatening to force their way into the house.

FUCK ME, APE BRUTE. STUFF ME, GOAT BOY. YEAH, OH YEAH...

Everyone seems frozen in place. Except for their heads, which swing back and forth, first to the door, then to the wall I share with MarySue Lamont, as if watching a tennis match between the NYPD and Deep Throat. My own gaze is fixed on Jay, whose expression has become a mixture of confusion, horror, and anger. He’s seeing his one big chance wash away in a tsunami of door banging and sex cries. In a desperate effort to regain center stage he starts reciting lines of a poem in a rising voice:

When all the markets glisten
And all your hopes ascend,
And ev’ry tip’s a winner
And ev’ry stock’s a friend...

STICK IT TO ME, SUPERBOY. DEEPER, HARDER. DEEPER, HARDER. OH, YEAH...

Jay shouts louder:

You think yourself a genius
You never see a hitch,
And no one then can tell you
Not everyone gets rich...

“Police. We’re coming in!”

I’M COMING. DEAR GOD, I’M COMING. OH MY GOD...

Then the water level in the basement reaches the house wiring and the lights go out.

(End of Chapter XXV)