3 Strange Bedfellows (2 page)

My movie—actually, after all the rewriting and editing they did, it wasn't quite "my movie" anymore—opened last Christmas and earned the studio enough green stuff to make my million bucks look like chickenfeed. My agent called me with all kinds of lucrative offers to write all kinds of inane movies. My personal favorite was an action-adventure pic about a gang of evil Micronesian terrorists setting loose a thousand cloned grizzly bears in New York City.

But I said no to all offers. Maybe it was writer's block, or maybe I was just being ornery, or maybe in my heart of hearts I still wanted to write the artsy stuff. All I knew for sure was, the idea of sitting alone in my study and wrestling with adjectives and dangling participles from dawn to dusk, coming up with such deathless lines as "Oh, no! It's the bears!", made me want to scream. I'd rather rehab another house.

In fact, I was thinking about buying a HUD foreclosure down the street that was going up for auction next month. What the heck, I told myself, if this was a midlife crisis, then it was a darn painless one.

As I drove up to the radio station, I recalled that the guy who'd interviewed me last year, Charlie Noll, had been going through similar What To Do Next questions about his own life. I'd given him a bunch of tips about getting into freelance writing. I hoped he would remember that and help me out today.

Parking outside the WTRO building, I was disconcerted by how
normal
it looked. There was only one cop car out there, and no yellow tape. I went inside and gave my name to the twenty-something, bleached blonde receptionist at the front desk. She recognized my name as belonging to a famous local screenwriter—in upstate New York, I'm a big fish in a small pond—and batted her eyes at me. She batted them for so long, I got nervous she was about to ask me to read a screenplay she wrote. You'd be amazed how often that happens.

But it didn't happen this time. Maybe she batted her eyes at everyone, just to keep in practice. She escorted me back to the big boss and left us.

He was a big boss, all right. A burly man in a red flannel shirt, Charlie Noll looked more like a lumberjack than an effete NPR-type intellectual. But he'd been running the station for twenty years now, doing everything from political commentary to DJ'ing to fixing the boiler. When I came in, he put down his thick cigar, rose from his chair, and grabbed my hand heartily. "It's the movie man," he greeted me.

"Good to see you, Ch
arlie. How's the freelance writing business?"

He waved my query away. "Don't ask. I'm gonna be married to this station until death do us part. So what brings you here
—as if I didn't know. You're helping out your old pal Shmuckler, aren't you?"

"How'd you know we were pals?"

"Hey, nothing gets past old Charlie. I gotta tell you, I'll bet my right ball Shmuckler did it. I'm the one found the body, you know. Talk about gross. And Shmuckler was standing right there. I asked him straight off, I said, 'Did you kill him?' And he didn't deny it, just stood there."

"He was probably in shock."

"Yeah, I would be too, if I just finished killing somebody."

"Okay, so we won't call you as a defense witness. You wanna show me where it happened?"

He checked his watch. "Sure, I got a few minutes 'til air time. We're doing a special on filberts."

"On
what?"
I asked, as we walked down the hallway.

"You know, the nut. Studi
es show, if you eat at least a quarter pound of filberts per day, it reduces your chances of prostate cancer by thirty-eight percent."

"I'll keep that in mind." Actually, I'd try to forget it immediately.
Filberts?
What would they think of next? Besides, I was planning to put off thinking about prostate cancer for at least another twenty years.

We came to the end of the hallway and started up another one, and finally I saw the yellow crime scene tape I'd been expecting. It was blocking the entrance to the infamous green room. Actually the room was painted blue, but why quibble.

I leaned over the tape to look in there—and immediately regretted it. That blue green room had way too much red. One sofa was decorated with large scarlet splotches, and there was a sea of dried blood on the floor nearby.

On the wall behind the sofa and slightly above it, the cops had drawn a circle in white chalk. In the middle of the circle was a small hole, with more blood splattered all around it. It looked like someone had shot a bullet through the Hack's head and into the wall, and parts of his head had burst open.

I doubled over and tried to breathe. It's a good thing I hadn't eaten lunch yet, or I would have lost it.

"Sorry, I should've wa
rned you," Charlie said. "I figured what with you being an experienced murder investigator and all . . ."

Yeah, some murder investigator. The truth is, I'm such a wimp about blood I faint when I get a tetanus shot. But I steeled myself. "Can we go in?" I asked.

"Read the tape. 'Do Not Cross.' They got a cop guarding the place."

"Yeah? What, is he invisible?"

"No, he just went out for a bite to eat."

"Sounds like our big chance. Come on, Charlie, I won't tell anyone if you won't."

Without waiting for a reply, I lifted my leg and went over the tape. Charlie didn't argue. In fact, he went over the tape right behind me. "I've been wanting to do this all morning," he said.

Keeping my eyes away from the gore, I crossed the room and headed for the bathroom. "Do me a favor," I asked Charlie. "After I go in the john and close the door, could you say, in a regular voice, 'Hi, how you doing?' "

Charlie looked puzzled, but nodded. I closed the door and sat on the toilet. Then I heard Charlie saying, "Hi, how you doing?" from the other room. It was muffled, but I heard it. Well, at least that part of Will's story checked out.

I rejoined Charlie in the green room, still averting my eyes from all things crimson. "Did anyone here at the station have any connection with the Hack?"

"That's what the cops asked. Answer's no. Besides, there were only five of us in the station when the Hack was killed, and four of us were in the recording studio together."

"How about the fifth?"

"That was the receptionist, and she doesn't seem like a killer to me."

She did have killer eyelashes, but still, I had to agree with Charlie. Well,
maybe the shooter came from outside. I stepped to the window. The sidewalk was only a few feet away, and just beyond it was a row of two-hour parking spots.

WTRO was plopped down amidst a strip-mall wasteland, surrounded by vacant storefronts featuring peeling
for rent
signs. The booming national economy was bypassing Troy with a vengeance. I wondered how many Troy residents—what do they call themselves anyway, Trojans?—were walking around outside the WTRO building at the time of the crime, 8:45 p.m. on Labor Day.

Not many, I guessed. And it was already dark by then. Perfect circumstances for a getaway.

But how could the killer make it into the building unseen in the first place? Unless that twenty-something blonde was off somewhere touching up her eye shadow, she would have spotted any intruders.

I turned to Charli
e. "What if somebody parked outside, looked through this window, and saw the Hack sitting all by himself in the green room? Could they sneak into the building, and into this room, with no one from the station seeing them?"

"Fat chance," Charlie declared. "They'd have to come through the front door, and they'd never make it."

"You must have another door to the building."

"Emergency exit. Locks automatically. You can't come in through there."

"Let's go check it out."

Charlie rolled his eyes, but took me out to the hall. The emergency exit door was a mere five steps farther down. We went outside and let the door close behind us. Then we tested it.

Presto
. "Automatic lock" notwithstanding, the door opened instantly.

Presumably the lock was just as "automatic" last night, too. I was feeling pretty proud of my P.I. skills
—and more important, Will's story was suddenly looking a lot more believable.

"Still,
someone
at the station would've seen or heard
something,"
Charlie said defensively as we headed back toward the front of the building.

"But you were all either in the recording studio or at the front desk. And they' re both at least a hallway and a half away from the murder, right?"

"I guess so, yeah. But—"

"You gotta remembe
r, this debate was public knowledge. Killer could've been anyone. He could've shown up here early and waited for just the right moment to kill the Hack."

By now we had reached the lobby. Charlie leaned against the receptionist's desk, and she batted her eyes at him. Maybe it was just that her contacts needed cleaning.

"Jacob," Charlie said thoughtfully, "how well do you really know Will Shmuckler? What makes you so sure he didn't do it?"

"Because he didn't."

"Fact is, your guy had this pathetic dream of becoming a congressman. But he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell—unless he did something drastic."

"Killing the Hack wouldn't have been
drastic,
it would've been
suicidal
. I mean, look what's happening now that he's accused of murder. He won't get a single vote."

Charlie shrugged. "Okay, so it was an act of passion. The Hack stuck out his tongue and said, 'Nyah, nyah, I'm gonna beat you,' and Shmuckler couldn't take it. Pulled out his gun and shot him."

"Will doesn't
have
a gun. He's for gun control."

Charlie snorted with disgust. "I know, and he's against capital punishment. For a politician who wants to get elected, that's pretty suicidal right there. You may call it principled politics, but I c
all it wasting your time. Speaking of which, I better run," he said, shaking my hand and hurrying off. "My show's about to start. Filberts are calling me."

I watched him go. He was right abo
ut capital punishment, of course; taking a stand against it in this conservative era is futile. But agreeing with him made me feel sad. I still longed for the old days, when I thought my generation
stood
for something. Now it seemed like all we stood for was filberts.

Meanwhile the receptionist was gazing up at me. Her newly painted lips were parted, and her eyes were setting the world's record for most bats per minute. "Mr. Burns," she said breathily, "I'm a screenwriter, too."

Oh no, here it comes. "That's great.  Lots of luck to you," I said, and made a mad dash out of the building before she could thrust a screenplay in my hands.

Outside the afternoon sun was shining brightly, but I felt murky. As I fished my sunglasses out of my pocket, I tried to imagine what I would do next if I were Sam Spade.

My guess is, old Sam would have fired up a cigarette, guzzled some whiskey from a hip flask, and swaggered back inside to interview the WTRO employees—especially the eye-batter. Then he would have taken the eye-batter home with him and taught her all about screenwriting and a few other things, too.

But for better or worse, I
wasn't
Sam Spade. I had two kids, it was two o'clock already, and I knew exactly what I had to do next—hurry back to Saratoga, so I'd be in time to pick up my sons at their bus stop. Now that I was hitting Dreaded Middle Age, that's what
I
stood for: Derek and Bernie. Whoever killed the Hack, it sure was inconsiderate of him to do it during my kids' first week of school.

But maybe the killer didn't have time to wait. Maybe, I reflected as I got onto
I-87 north, he had to get rid of the Hack
now,
before the election.

But why? Who else besides Will would benefit from the Hack not getting elected?

Or was I barking up the wrong shrub entirely?

3

While the kids were having their afternoon Wheaties and discussing who was the best shortstop of all time, I called Will and told him the rather skimpy results of my day's sleuthing. That's when I learned he was plugging on with his campaign for Congress.

The New York State Board of Elections had ruled earlier in the day that the special election must go on as planned, even though one of the candidates on the ballot was dead. The Board was adhering strictly to state law, which declares that if a candidate dies within three weeks of an election, the voting proceeds without interruption and any votes for the dead guy simply get tossed out. The Hack had been killed exactly fifteen days before show time.

There was no law against suspected murderers running for Congress, but still, I had trouble believing Will really wanted to persevere. "Yo
u're joking, right?" I said, incredulous. "You'll embarrass yourself. The Republicans will pick a write-in candidate, and he'll kill you. You'll get fewer votes than Elvis Presley."

"Not if you can prove I'm innocent before the election."

"That's just two weeks from now. I'm not God. I'm not even Kinsey Millhone."

"Look, I refuse to let this stupid thing stop me!" Will shouted hotly. "I'm
innocent
. Why should I quit? That would be admitting guilt!"

I didn't have an answer to that, and I agreed to meet him at a campaign event that night and give him moral support. The event was a candidates' forum sponsored
by the Student Political Alliance at Skidmore College, Saratoga's one lonely bastion of liberalism. The forum was scheduled a month ago. The Hack had declined to attend, so the organizers had planned to have Will sitting alongside an empty seat.

It seemed odd that the event wasn't canceled out of respect for the man who'd died the night before. But the Student Political Alliance decided to stick with it, apparently on the theory that the death made their event much more noteworthy. Maybe they'd even get on TV.

Ordinarily, of course, watching a politician sitting next to an empty seat would not be a huge draw. But thanks to Will's newfound notoriety as a killer, the three-hundred-seat auditorium was already jam-packed with students and media people when I arrived there at 6:45. I had to stand in the back. I noticed several policemen in the auditorium, too.

At seven o'clock, Will came onstage and sat in his chair. There was an eerie silence. No one knew whether to cheer or hiss. His gray suit was disheveled, and he looked very small and sh
aky up there. I saw the inevitable cup of java in his hand, and wondered how much caffeine he'd consumed today.

Will was accompanied by the moderator, a Skidmore student wearing a red flannel shirt and a ponytail. He came to the microphone and asked for a moment of silence for Jack Tamarack. Will and the rest of us all bowed our heads
—except for the media photographers, who ignored the solemn moment and instead noisily shot Will with his head bowed.

Then the moderator gave a truly surreal introduction of Will. "I would like to remind people that we are all innocent until proven guilty. So please, everyone keep an open mind as I now introduce to you the Democratic candidate for United States congressman, William Shmuckler."

Once again the hall was weirdly silent, since no one knew how to react as Will stood up and began speaking. "I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy to Jack Tamarack's family," he said, and spoke for a couple of minutes in a stilted, clichéd way about having respected his opponent, and how democracy requires us all to respect our opponents. Then he segued awkwardly into his standard stump speech about protecting the environment. What did this have to do with Jack Tamarack's death? The crowd began shifting restlessly.

Will was speaking haltingly, losing his place, stuttering. It was clear he had no business being on stage that day. He was still in shock. I felt bad that I hadn't protested harder against his going through with this.

Fortunately, Will realized pretty fast that his standard stump speech was inappropriate today. So he quickly brought the speech to a close with a second, stumbling expression of sympathy for the Tamarack family.

When he finally finished talking
—it was only four or five minutes, but it felt like an eternity—the moderator stood up. "Mr. Shmuckler will now take questions," he said. "Please stand in line at the microphone in the middle aisle."

Thirty people, most of them media, instantly jumped up and raced each other in
a frenzy for the microphone. There was pushing, shoving, screaming. "People, please! Calm down!" the moderator called out, but no one listened. Several students standing in the way of the media got knocked down. They pushed back. The cops jumped in and began shoving people around. It had all the makings of a full-scale riot. Will stood up at the front looking stricken.

Eventually the pandemonium died down, and the questions started pour
ing in. "Did you kill Jack Tamarack?" was the first.

"No," Will said.

"Where were you at the time of the murder?" came the follow-up.

"For legal reasons I can't answer," said Will.

Flash bulbs were popping, TV cameramen were angling for position. "Where'd you get the gun?" the next questioner asked.

"For legal reasons I can't answer any questions about the murder. I'm sorry," Will said.

But the questions kept on coming. "Why'd you kill him?" "Were you upset that you were going to lose the election?" "Don't you think it will be seen as outrageous that you're still running?"

Finally Will couldn't take it anymore. He mumbled, "Thank you. Good night," and edged off the stage.

I hurried out the back of the auditorium and dashed to the side door to meet him. I found him in the hallway, scurrying away from me.

"Hey, Will!" I called out. He turned toward me, and his eyes widened. He seemed to be looking over my shoulder. Then he took off like a bat out of hell. Behind me I heard people running and shouting Will's name. I turned around to see ten or fifteen media people bearing down on me, chasing after Will. How could I stop these people from torturing my friend? There was nothing
I could do . . .

But then, without thinking, I reached out my arms and grabbed the first reporter in the pack, a tall, thin man with red hair and glasses. He gave me a puzzled look as I shoved him in the wa
y of reporter number two, a muscular woman with a camera that fell to the floor but luckily didn't break. Reporter number three stopped in her tracks, to make sure she didn't run into the camera. Behind her, a short man with unwieldy TV equipment had to stop, too.

I threw my arms around a cute woman reporter who was trying to make it around the pileup. She stomped me in the foot with a high heel, and that was the end of that maneuver. But by the time the media people got going again, Will had successfully made his escape. A couple of minutes later, when I stood in front of the building looking around for Will, the fourth estate was out there too, doing the same thing I was and cursing their luck.

Later that night, my phone rang. It was Will. "I made an ass of myself tonight, didn't I?" he said.

"I'm afraid so," I replied.

"But I'm not giving up," he said, and when I tried to convince him to at least take a few days off, he hung up on me. When I called him back, his phone was off the hook.

The Hack's funeral was scheduled for the very next day, which surprised me; usually, the only folks that bury their dead that quick are Jewish people and Kennedys. I felt like a sleazeball attending the funeral, since I'd never even met the man—and from what I knew, I didn't like him.

But most of the two hundred other mourners in this huge, impersonal chapel probably didn't like the dead man all that much either. My guess was, they were here because they had to be. I didn't see too many tears, that's for sure. Of course, maybe Republicans don't cry as much as other people.

I recognized the mayor of Saratoga and three or four other local politicos, but no one else. These weren't the type of folks I usually hung out with, and anyway, I tend to have a sievelike memory for faces. Yet another bad trait for a murder investigator. Ah, well.

The unctuous, bushy-eyebrowed minister droned through a long routine about what a great man the Hack had been. If you bought his
shpiel,
the Hack was a loving son, husband, and father who went to church every Sunday and devoted his life to serving others. He always obeyed the speed limit, put fallen baby birds back in their nests, and never picked his nose in public.

Okay, maybe the minister didn't quite say
all
of that, but he came darn close. He was from the Henry James school of literature, never using one word when one hundred would do the job just as well. Even worse, he had a habit of lingering over the "s" sound when it came at the end of a syllable, so a word like "consciousness" took him about ten seconds to spit out.
"Consciousssssnesssss."
It was excruciating. When he sputtered to a halt at last, and the organ churned out a sad ditty, all of us "mournerssss" hightailed it out of the church as fast as we politely could.

I decided to skip the cemetery, out of fear that the minister might show up with new gas in his linguistic
tank. Instead I went to my home away from home, Madeline's Espresso Bar on Broadway, for a cappuccino. Thus fortified, I then crashed the wake at the Hack's house.

The Hack had lived rig
ht in Saratoga Springs, like myself. But whereas I lived in a small colonial in a working-class neighborhood, he lived in a two-story brick affair on Fifth Avenue, one of Saratoga's priciest streets. As I stepped past the Corinthian pillars on the porch and opened the solid oak front door, I felt utterly out of place, like I always do in fancy houses. I got rich so suddenly, even now I don't
feel
rich. I still pick up dirty pennies from the sidewalk.

The Hack's living room was full of forty-something white men wearing suits and ties
—in other words, guys who looked just like me. But still, to my eyes they were creatures from another planet. I wonder, do other men feel like they're donning some bizarre alien raiment when they put on a suit and tie, or is it just me?

When I'm ill at ease socially I always gravitate toward the other misfits, and that's what I did now. I ambled over to the one guy who stuck out like a Tibetan lama at a Burger King. He looked about eighty-five, by far the oldest guy there. His suit hung too loose, and was probably three times cheaper than any other suit in the room
—even mine, and that's saying something.

Most striking of all, the man had the grizzled, careworn face, rough, calloused hands, and sinewy arms that shouted, "blue collar." No one else at the wake had any of these characteristics.

Nor did anyone else have anything resembling his facial expression. It was an unfocused sneer, like he was disgusted with something but wasn't quite sure what.

His sneer was so off-putting that I paused before reaching him, planning to turn back. But then he glanced up and saw me, and I couldn't figure out a graceful way to retreat. "Hi," I said nervously.

He nodded suspiciously. Who was this strange old bird? Maybe the Hack's lawn care guy or something.

"It's a sad day, huh? Were you a friend of Jack's?" I ventured.

"Not exactly," he rasped in a scratchy voice. "I'm his father."

I gulped with surprise. Nothing about this man's blue-collar look or edgy attitude reminded me of the smooth, dull politico I knew as the Hack.

The old man's eyes crinkled with bitter amusement. "What's the matter, I don't look the part?"

"No, you do," I stuttered. "Actually, you look just like him."

"Bullshit," he snarled. But then, out of nowhere, he started to cry. That got him coughing, and soon his whole body was racked by a ferocious coughing spasm.

"Are you okay?" I asked, rather stupidly, because he obviously
wasn't
okay. "Can I get you something?" But he was coughing and shaking so hard, he couldn't answer.

I looked around the room for help, but none of the suit-and-tie guys were paying any attention at all to Hack Sr.'s noisy health crisis. They were wrapped up in their conversations about real estate, politics, and golf. It was as if they had signed a secret pact to ignore the old man.

Hack Sr.'s hacking was getting so explosive I half-expected him to have some kind of seizure. Should I call 911? Get him some whiskey? Or just ease on out of the house and let someone else deal with it?

Just then a little boy about Derek Jeter's age came into the room. He ran up to the old man and threw his arms around him. "Grandpa," he said.

The old man's killer coughs gradually subsided, replaced by gasps. Finally even those receded into ordinary breaths. Hack Sr. tenderly ruffled his grandson's hair and held him close.

Feeling guilty for having brought on this fierce attack, I slipped out of the room. I walked toward the kitchen, which beckoned me with welcoming food smells and the gentleness of women's voices.

There must have been a good twenty-five women in that kitchen, and I swear to God,
every single one of them
was holding a casserole dish. Additional casseroles were overflowing the counters, heating up in the oven, and cooling off in the refrigerator. Why is it that when someone dies, all the women who knew him feel compelled to cook casseroles?