Scam

through the crowd to where Sergeant Belcher and I were standing.
    Once again, Chris Harris took charge. “Ms. Greenberg,” he said. “Chris Harris, Channel 2 News. Are you pressing charges against the suspect Stanley Hastings? We understand he attempted to threaten and bribe you. Is that true?”
    “Not exactly,” MacAullif said.
    “And who are you?”
    “Sergeant MacAullif. NYPD. I have a suspect under arrest for the murders of Cranston Pritchert, Shelly Daniels, and Laura Martin.”
    “I beg your pardon, sergeant, but I believe it’s Sergeant Belcher who has the suspect under arrest.”
    “Who, him?” MacAullif smiled. “Well, yes, he does, but he has the wrong man. Stanley Hastings didn’t kill anyone.” He raised Amy Greenberg’s arms to show the handcuffs on her wrists. “I have Amy Greenberg under arrest.”
    “Amy Greenberg?”
    “That’s right. Only in her case, I happen to have a full confession.” MacAullif reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a microcassette. “I have it on tape. A conversation between her and Mr. Hastings. He pretended to record it with a pocket dictaphone. She didn’t say much until after she found it and switched it off. Then she said a whole bunch. Only that dictaphone was really a radio mike, it broadcast the whole conversation, and I recorded it outside in my car. I have it right here. Fascinating stuff, like how she killed three people, then planted the gun on him.” MacAullif shrugged. “Which is the only reason he was ever a suspect to begin with. That, and some rather embarrassingly bad police work, both from the crime-scene units and the evidence room. Mishandling of evidence. Mislabeling of evidence.” He turned to me. “All of which resulted in Mr. Hastings’s arrest.”
    My buddy, Chris Harris from Channel 2, shoved the microphone back in front of Belcher. “Sergeant Belcher,” he said. “What do you have to say to that? How is it you happened to arrest the wrong man?”
    Sergeant Belcher looked totally baffled. He stood there, gawking at the television cameras. His eyes were wide, his mouth was open.
    He said, “Huh?”
    I loved it.

54.
    I T WAS ON EVERY EVENING newscast. Every single channel. We called a bunch of friends, got ’em to tape the broadcasts for us, so I know.
    And every channel had it. The news deals in sound bites. And by far the best sound bite going was Sergeant Belcher saying, “Huh?”
    The rest of the story they handled differently. Some led with me and Belcher, then had MacAullif bring Amy Greenberg in. Some of them started off with her—”Greenberg Arrested”—then ran it back from there.
    It all added up to the same thing. Sergeant MacAullif had the right killer, Sergeant Belcher had the wrong one, and Sergeant Belcher looked like a schmuck.
    And, boy, did that feel good. He deserved to look like a schmuck. True, he wasn’t a snake—that is to say, he didn’t frame me with the gun, Amy Greenberg did that—but he sure looked like a snake. And he sure acted like a snake, messing with the fingerprint evidence, so it sure was nice to nail him on TV.
    And in terms of revenge, that was enough. Since he hadn’t framed me like I thought. He’d planted evidence against me, sure. But, you see, he thought I was guilty. He thought that it was my gun, he thought I’d done it all along. These little assists with the evidence weren’t to frame an innocent man, merely to nail a guilty one.
    Am I excusing him? No, no. Please. The man is a nasty, rotten son of a bitch, a bad cop, I hope he burns in hell. I mean, Jesus Christ, if it weren’t for the fact he did such a good job looking like a snake, the case would have been a whole lot easier to figure out. Because, aside from him, who could have planted the gun?
    Well, Sandy the bartender could have, but he didn’t. He did have the opportunity, as Alice pointed out, but he didn’t really have the motive. I mean, when you examine what people got, Sandy got a hundred dollars cash, and Amy Greenberg got control of a corporation. In terms of motivation, she stood out like a sore thumb. So, subtract Sergeant Belcher, and I solve the case like that. The moment the gun’s in my car, her ass is grass.
    But it’s never that simple. There’s always some schmuck stirring things up. At least, I always find it to be the case. I’m sure other PI’s solve their murders just like that—they always seem to on television.
    Speaking of television.
    Boy, did we stick it to