Headstones folly, p.2
Headstone's Folly, page 2
“It is.”
He folded his arms, looked at the jury, smirked and said, “Prove it.”
“From here?” I looked down at the handcuffs I was still wearing.
“Do you expect us to let you go?” he asked.
“I expected the cops to do their job,” I said. “They didn’t.”
“You were a police officer once, were you not?”
“I was.”
“Where?”
“In New York.”
“How long?”
“Eight years.”
“And then you quit?”
“That’s right.”
“At what rank?”
“Detective Third Grade.”
“After eight years you were a detective?” he said. “You advanced fairly quickly. Why did you quit?”
I hesitated.
“Mr. Headston? Why did you quit? Or were you fired?”
“I quit.”
“Then for the third time…why?”
“Corruption.”
“You were corrupt?”
“No,” I said, “but it was going on around me. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, so I quit and opened my own shop.”
“Ah, so you were an honest cop.”
“Yes.”
“In a department of corrupt ones.”
“There were…bad apples.”
“Why not work to weed them out, then?”
“That didn’t work so good for Frank Serpico,” I said. “I decided to just leave.”
“So you’re an honest man.”
“Yes.”
“Then why sleep with a client’s wife?”
“That was morally wrong,” I said, “not dishonest.”
“Isn’t your license under review for sleeping with a client’s wife?” he asked. “And for possibly killing a client?”
“It is.”
“So you still say you’re honest?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the jury again.
“An honest man who is in danger of losing his license and going to prison.”
“Objection!” Steve said, and I was wondering what had taken him so long. “That’s not a question. The DA is badgering the witness.”
“I don’t think he is,” the judge said. “Your objection is overruled, but Mr. Ryder is correct about one thing, Mr. Adamson. That was not a question.”
“I apologize, your honor,” Adamson said. “I’ll withdraw it.”
“The jury will disregard the district attorney’s last remark,” the judge said. He looked at Adamson. “Continue. And try to stay on track.”
“Yes, your honor.”
He turned to face me again.
FOUR
“Mrs. Balducci testified you asked her to leave her husband, and when she refused, you came to their home and shot him.”
“That’s what she said.”
“And what do you say?”
“I gave the police my statement.”
He looked at the jury and said, “Indulge us.”
“Carla called me, said she needed me right away. She said ‘he’s dead.’”
“Did she say who ‘he’ was?”
“No,” I said, “but I assumed she was talking about her husband.”
“Continue, please.”
“I hurried to the house, and when I got there Vincent Balducci was lying on the floor, dead. He’d been shot several times.”
“And where was Carla?”
“Nowhere.”
“How did you get into the house? A lover’s key?”
“The front door was open.”
“You didn’t find that suspicious?” he asked. “An experienced fella like you?”
“I did, but I was worried about Carla.”
“Who wasn’t there.”
“Right.”
“But the police were?”
“Right again. Before I could leave they came in and arrested me.”
“That’s right,” Adamson said, “because she called nine-one-one and told them a man named Headston had just killed her husband.”
“She lied.”
“Oh right, she had one lover kill her husband and frame the other lover.”
“Yes.”
“How did you end up with the short end of that stick, Mr. Headston?” he asked. “Why weren’t you the other lover? Had she ever asked you to kill her husband?”
“No.”
“So then you were the sap from the beginning?”
“Looks like it.”
“So, rather than arrest you and put you in prison,” Adamson said, “we should feel sorry for you. Is that what you want?”
“Between those two things,” I answered, “that would be my preference, yes.”
“I think that’s enough for today,” the judge said. “Mr. Adamson, do you have more questions for this witness?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I do.”
“Then we’ll pick this up at nine tomorrow morning,” the judge said. “Court’s adjourned.”
Before they took me back to a cell for the night they put me in a room with my lawyer.
“Sit, Johnny,” Steve said.
There was a long, gleaming wooden table in the center of the room, matching chairs, and books all around us—legal journals.
I sat. Steve sat across from me, opened his briefcase.
“They’re offering a deal,” he said. “Second degree—”
“No deal,” I said.
“You haven’t heard—”
“I didn’t kill him, Steve, remember?” I said. “So I’m not pleading.”
“So we keep going?”
“We keep going,” I said.
“Okay.” He closed his briefcase and stood up. “I’ll see you in the morning, Johnny.”
FIVE
Three years later…
I unlocked my office door and, before stepping inside, stared lovingly at that crooked “e” on the end. All twelve desks were empty, except for a layer of dust. Likewise Marlene’s desk. I had heard from her while in prison, telling me she couldn’t wait any longer and had gotten another job. I gave her my blessing.
My once thriving business was now a huge, empty room with bare desks. The Headstone Agency was pretty much just a headstone.
I went into my office, which smelled musty. I opened a couple of file cabinets, found them mostly empty, except for some old paper clips, an empty bourbon bottle—I know, a PI cliché—and the last page of a few files, with only a line or two on them. Marlene had written me in prison that she had farmed my cases out to other agencies. I told her it was okay—which it was—and that I’d see her soon—but I didn’t. It was thirty-eight months before I got out of Sing Sing.
It took that long for the cops to find out who realty killed Vincent Balducci. It was Carla’s other lover. Actually, they didn’t find him, he finally gave in to three years of guilt and confessed. He said Carla had put him up to it, but by that time Carla was gone and the cops couldn’t find her, so they settled for the lover.
They let me out, expunged my record. I was no longer a convicted felon. But I was also no longer a private eye. While in prison my license had been revoked by New York State. Now that I was free, I was going to have to apply to be reinstated. Even though I hadn’t committed murder, I had still done a few things that were considered dodgy. They weren’t about to just let me back in…
I stared at the three people seated at the table in front of me, two men, one woman, all middle-aged.
“I don’t understand,” I said to them. “I’ve been cleared of all charges.”
“Of murder, yes,” the woman said. She was seated between the two men, and seemed to be in charge. “But there are other…matters.”
“Such as?”
“Well, primarily,” she said, “the fact that you had an affair with a client’s wife.”
The two men stared at me and shook their heads. I hadn’t been inside long enough to face a parole board, but imagined it would’ve felt just like this.
“Not very professional behavior, Mr. Headstone,” she said.
“It’s Headston.”
“Really?” She frowned, read her file. “It says ‘Headstone Detective Agency.’” She stared at him. “Are you using an assumed name for your business? Because if you are, that would be a problem, as well.”
“No, no,” I said, “a lot of people make that mistake, and I thought it was a good business name.”
“Hmm.” She frowned again. “Well, there’s still the matter of the illicit affair.”
“Illicit?” I said.
“What would you call it?” she asked.
I decided to play up to her.
“Well, I’d call it a mistake,” I said, “definitely a mistake.”
“Indeed.” She closed my folder and looked at me. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep your license from you a little longer, Mr. Headston.”
“How much longer?”
She folded her hands and set them down firmly on my file.
“We’ll let you know, Mr. Headston.”
Despite the fact that it was going to take time to get my license back, I decided to keep the office. Luckily, it was rent controlled. I was determined that, one day, I’d get my license back, get my business back up and running with butts back in all twelve chairs.
But that was going to take a while. The New York State Division of Licensing Services didn’t just hand those things out, willy-nilly. They were pretty much going to make me beg…for a very long time.
I had managed to get the phone service turned back on, so I dialed a number I knew by heart.
“John Headston for Steve Ryder,” I said to the secretary who answered.
“Please hold.”
After a minute Steve came on.
“Johnny, where are you?”
“My office.”
“Your office,” he said. “Man, you know you can’t be back at work—”
“Relax, relax,” I said. “I’m just keepin’ the place for when I get my license back.”
“Johnny, come on, man, you know that could take a while,” Steve warned.
“I’m well aware, Steve,” I said. “That’s why I thought maybe you could use some help.”
“Me? What kind of help?”
“You know,” I said, “with the investigations on some of your cases.”
“Johnny, I have my guys—hey, I tried to hire you once but you took the high road on me. My cases weren’t big enough for you. You remember that?”
“I do remember,” I said, “but who did I call when I needed my life saved?”
“Okay, look,” Steve said, after a moment, “maybe I can use you, but you’re not licensed. I’ll have to put you on staff as a…researcher, legal assistant, or something. We’ll have to figure it out.”
“I appreciate it, Steve,” I said. “Now that I’m out I’ll buy you a steak at Peter Luger’s.”
“That’s a deal.”
“But maybe…”
“What?”
“…you could give me a little advance?”
PART TWO
SIX
The present…
There was a girl on Saturday Night Live who used to say, “I’m fifty and I can kick.”
Well, I was fifty, and I was getting kicked.
The man I was serving the papers on had taken umbrage and, along with his two friends, had decided to kick the shit out of me. A crowd of people gathered in front of the Tenth Avenue bar to watch, and before long they started to cheer…
I woke up in an alley, sore as hell but apparently still in one piece. Luckily, it didn’t seem as if any of the three half-drunk dudes had kicked me in the head. Getting to my feet I felt the most pain in my ribs. Both my trousers and my jacket had been torn.
I needed a drink, but I couldn’t go into the same bar where three patrons had just kicked my ass, so I walked a couple of blocks before stopping in another Tenth Avenue gin mill.
I had a shot of whiskey and a beer, otherwise known as a boilermaker. It was a drink that was pretty much a staple in these West side bars. But certainly not trendy, in the high-toned bars frequented by millennials, these days.
“Rough day?” the bartender asked.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
That was it, he was done consoling me and moved on to the next customer.
I decided against a second and left, went back to my Fifth Avenue office. There was aspirin in my top desk drawer, and I needed it badly.
As I entered I tried not to think about the twelve empty desks and instead looked at the one occupied one.
“Jesus,” Ally said, jumping up from her chair, “what happened to you?”
“I’m all right,” I said, as she came alongside me. “I just need some aspirin.”
“I’ll get you water.”
She rushed to the small refrigerator she had contributed to the office furniture and brought a bottle of cold water to my desk as I dropped into my chair.
“Thanks.” I accepted it, gratefully, washed down a handful of aspirin.
“You’re only supposed to take a couple of those,” she warned.
It was fall, so she was wearing long sleeves, covering her collection of tattoos.
“You’re gonna need a new jacket,” she said.
I looked down at the dirty, torn sports jacket I was wearing.
“Can’t this be cleaned and mended?”
“Mended?” she asked. “Is that even a word anybody uses, anymore? No, this jacket is for the trash. Goodwill wouldn’t even take it.” She peered under my desk. “Looks like the pants match. You better change before your meeting.”
“What meeting?”
She handed me a message slip.
“That one.”
The slip said I was meeting someone named Mrs. Pennyworth at five p.m. for dinner at Keens Steakhouse, on West Thirty-Sixth Street.
“She’s gonna get a table at Keens?” I asked.
“Apparently.”
Before famed food writer and chef Anthony Bourdain died he once said that you could probably go to Keens in fifty years and it would still look the same. I wouldn’t know, because I’d never been able to get a table there.
“You’re gonna have to go home and change,” Ally said.
“I have a change of clothes here,” I said. “I’ll just wash up first.” I put the message slip down. “When did she call?”
“Right after you left to go and serve your papers,” she said. “Who beat your ass?”
“The last one I went to, Raymond Dexter,” I said, standing and removing my jacket. She took it from me so I wouldn’t hang it up in my closet. “I didn’t find him home, but a neighbor told me where he hung out.”
“A bar?” she asked. “You went to the guy’s bar? Didn’t you think he’d be half in the bag by the time you got to him? Telling a drunk ‘you’ve been served’ is a sure way to get your ass kicked.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
As I headed for the bathroom she yelled, “Change your shirt, too!”
Keens was a hot spot before Bourdain pushed it on TV, so now it was almost impossible to get a table. This lady must have some serious gelt.
“Sir?” the maître d’ asked, as I entered. “Do you have a reservation?” He looked me up and down, frowned at my back-up jacket.
“I’m meeting Mrs. Pennyworth,” I said. “I’m sure she has a reservation.”
“The Pennyworths have a regular table,” the stocky man said, as if that was something I should’ve known. “Are you Mr.…Headstone?”
“Headston,” I said. “John Headston.”
He looked down at his book.
“Yes, well…this way.”
He led me through the restaurant filled with diners to a back table where a woman was seated with her back to me.
“Mrs. Pennyworth,” he said, “your guest is here.”
“Thank you, Charles,” she said.
I went on the other side of the table to sit across from her, with my back to the wall, when I saw her face.
“Oh, I’m gonna need a drink,” I said.
Mrs. Pennyworth, who I knew as Carla Balducci, said, “Hello, Johnny.”
SEVEN
I sat down across from her. She looked good, even though I knew she had to be in her mid-fifties by now.
“You look good, John,” she said.
“Bullshit,” I said. “My hair’s receding and my belly isn’t. On the other hand, you look fabulous.” She was wearing expensive sunglasses, but what I could see of her face was smooth and beautiful.
“Thank you,” she said. “I try.”
A small, older waiter came over, wearing a white shirt and black vest.
“Winston, we’ll each have a vodka martini with two olives.”
“Yes, madam.”
It was what we used to drink when we’d meet in a bar or restaurant, back when we were sleeping together.
“So who’s this Pennyworth guy, Carla?” I asked. “Another sap?”
“Please,” she said. “I go by Constance, now, Constance Pennyworth.”
“So you married this one?” I asked. “And now you want to kill him?”
“Oh my God, Johnny, what an imagination you have.”
“Imagination?” I asked. “You killed your last husband, or don’t you remember that I went to prison for it?”
“I didn’t kill Vincent, Johnny,” she said, “and I know you didn’t, either. That was Philip.”
Philip was Philip Ivy, the lover—sap—who had finally confessed.
“That didn’t stop you from letting me take the fall for it,” I reminded her.
“I was afraid Philip was going to kill me, too,” she said. “I ran. I’m sorry.” She reached out for my hand, which I withdrew. “Come on, Johnny. Don’t be like that. We were in love, once.”
“You never loved me, Carla,” I said. “You were just using me.”
