The woman was the fourth bystander killed so far this year. Last year the city had set a record, with thirty-four bystanders gunned down. If present trends continued, the News announced, that record could fall in mid-September.
On Park Avenue, a handful of blocks from Chance's gallery, a man had leaned out the window of an unmarked white van to snatch the handbag of a middle-aged woman who was waiting for the light to change. She'd had the bag's strap looped around her neck, presumably to make it harder to steal, and when the van sped off she was dragged and strangled. A sidebar to the main article advised women to carry their bags in a manner that would minimize physical risk if the bag were stolen. "Or don't carry a purse at all," one expert suggested.
In Queens, a group of teenagers walking across the Forest Park golf course had come upon the body of a young woman who had been abducted several days earlier in Woodhaven. She'd been doing her grocery shopping on Jamaica Avenue when another van, a light blue one, pulled up at the curb. Two men jumped out of the back, grabbed her, hustled her into the van, and climbed in after her. The van was gone before anyone could think to get the number. A preliminary medical examination disclosed evidence of sexual assault and multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen.
Don't watch television, don't carry a purse, don't walk down the street. Jesus.
I got to the video store at nine-thirty. The owner, freshly shaved and wearing a clean shirt, led me to his office in the back. He remembered my name and introduced himself as Phil Fielding. We shook hands, and he said, "Your business card didn't say, but are you some kind of investigator? Something like that?"
"Something like that."
"Just like in the movies," he said. "I'd like to help if there was anything I could do, but I didn't know anything the last time I saw you and that was six months ago. I stayed around last night after we closed and checked the books on the chance that I might have the woman's name somewhere, but it was no go. Unless you've got an idea, something I haven't thought of-"
"The tenant," I said.
"You mean her tenant? The one who owned the tapes?"
"That's right."
"She said he died. Or did he skip out on the rent? My memory's a little vague, it wasn't a high-priority thing for me to remember. I'm pretty sure she said she was selling his things to recoup back rent that he owed."
"That's what you said in July."
"So if he died or just left town-"
"I'd still like to know who he was," I said. "Do many people own that many films on videocassette? I had the impression that most people rented them."
"You'd be surprised," he said. "We sell a lot. Children's classics, especially, even in this neighborhood where not that many people have kids. Snow White, The Wizard of Oz. We sold a ton of E.T. and we're selling Batman now, but it's not as strong as I would have predicted. A lot of people will buy the occasional favorite film. And of course there's a big market for exercise videos and instructional stuff, but that's a whole other area, that's not movies."
"Do you think many people would own as many as thirty films?"
"No," he said. "I'm guessing, but I'd say it'd be rare to own more than half a dozen. That's not counting exercise videos and football-highlight films. Or pornography, which I don't carry."
"What I'm getting at is that the tenant, the owner of these thirty cassettes, was probably a film buff."
"Oh, no question," he said. "This guy had all three versions of The Maltese Falcon. The original 1931 version with Ricardo Cortez-"
"You told me."
"Did I? I'm not surprised, it was fairly remarkable. I don't know where he got that stuff on video, I've never been able to find it in the catalogs. Yeah, he was a buff."
"So he probably rented films besides the ones he owned."
"Oh, I see what you're getting at. Yeah, I think that'd be a sure bet. A lot of people buy an occasional film, but everybody rents them."
"And he lived in the neighborhood."
"How do you know that?"
"If his landlady lived around here-"
"Oh, right."
"So he could have been a customer of yours."
He thought about it. "Sure," he said, "it's possible. It's even possible we had conversations about film noir, but I can't remember anything."
"You've got all your members programmed into your computer system, haven't you?"
"Yeah, it makes life a whole lot simpler."
"You said she brought in the bag of cassettes the first week in June. So if he was a customer, his account would have been inactive for the past seven or eight months."
"I could have a lot of accounts like that," he said. "People move, they die, some kid on crack breaks in and steals their VCR. Or they start doing business with somebody down the block and stop coming here. I've had people, I don't see them for months, and then they start coming in again."
"How many accounts do you figure you have that have been inactive since June?"
"I have no idea whatsoever," he said. "But I can certainly find out. Why don't you have a seat? Or browse around, maybe you'll find a movie you want to see."
It was past ten by the time he was finished, but no one had come knocking on the door. "I told you the mornings were slow," he said. "I came up with twenty-six names. These are people whose accounts have been inactive since the fourth of June, but who did rent at least one tape from us during the first five months of the year. Of course if he was sick a long time, stuck in the hospital-"
"Let me start with what you've got."
"All right. I copied the names and addresses for you, and phone numbers when they gave them. A lot of people won't give out phone numbers, especially women, and I can't say I blame them. I also have credit-card numbers, but I didn't copy those down because I'm supposed to keep that information confidential, although I suppose I could stretch a point if there's someone you can't trace any other way."
"I don't think I'll need it." He had copied the names on two sheets of lined notebook paper. I scanned them and asked if any of the names had struck a chord.
"Not really," he said. "I see so many people all day every day that I only remember the regulars, and I don't always recognize them or remember their names. With these twenty-six people I looked up what they'd checked out during the last year, that's what took me so long. I thought maybe one person would shape up very definitely as a film buff, with rental choices that made sense in terms of what he owned, but I couldn't find anything that looked like a buff profile."
"It was worth a try."
"That's what I thought. I'm pretty sure it was a man, that the landlady referred to her tenant as him, and some of the twenty-six are women, but I put everybody down."
"Good." I folded the sheets of paper, tucked them into my breast pocket. "I'm sorry to have put you to so much trouble," I said. "I appreciate it."
"Hey," he said, "when I think of all the pleasure you guys have brought me on the screen, how could I turn you down?" He grinned, then turned serious. "Are you trying to bust a porn ring? Is that what this is all about?" When I hesitated he assured me that he understood if I couldn't talk about it. But would I at least drop by when it was all over and tell him how it had turned out?
I said I would.
I had twenty-six names, only eleven with phone numbers. I tried the phone numbers first, because it's so much easier when you can do this sort of thing without walking all over the city. It was frustrating, though, because I couldn't seem to complete a call, and when I did I succeeded only in getting a recording. I got three answering machines, one with a cute message, the others simply repeating the last four digits of the number and inviting me to leave a message. Four times I got the NYNEX computer-generated voice telling me that the number I had reached was no longer in service. On one occasion it supplied a new number; I wrote it down and called it, and nobody answered.
When I finally got a human voice I barely knew how to respond. I looked quickly at my list and said, "Uh, Mr. Accardo? Joseph Accardo?"
"Speaking."
"You're a member of the video-rental club"- what was its name?- "at Broadway and Sixty-first."
"Broadway and Sixty-first," he said. "Which one's that?"
"Next to Martin's."
"Oh, right, sure. What did I do, not bring something back?"
"Oh, no," I said. "I just noticed there's been no activity in your account in months, Mr. Accardo, and I wanted to invite you to come in and check out our selection."
"Oh," he said, surprised. "Well, that's very nice of you. I'll be sure and do that. I got in the habit, going to this place near where I work, but I'll stop by one of these nights."
I hung up the phone and crossed Accardo off the list. I had twenty-five names left and it looked as though I was going to have to do them on foot.
I called it a day around four-thirty, by which time I'd managed to cross off ten more names. It was a slow process, slower than I might have expected. The addresses were all pretty much within walking distance, so I could get around without too much trouble, but that didn't mean I could establish whether or not a particular person still lived at a particular address.
I was back in my hotel room by five. I showered and shaved and sat in front of the TV. At seven I met Elaine at a Moroccan place on Cornelia Street in the Village. We both ordered the couscous. She said, "If the food tastes as good as the room smells, we're in for a treat. What's the best place in the world to get couscous?"
"I don't know. Casablanca?"
"Walla Walla."
"Oh."
"Get it? Couscous, Walla Walla. Or, if you wanted couscous in Germany, you'd go to Baden-Baden."
"I think I get the premise."
"I knew you would, you've got that kind of mind. Where would you get couscous in Samoa?"
"Pago Pago. Excuse me, will you? I'll be back in a minute, I have to make peepee."
The couscous was terrific and the portions were large. While we ate, I told her how I'd spent the day. "It was frustrating," I said, "because I couldn't just check the doorbells to determine whether or not the person I was looking for lived there."
"Not in New York."
"Of course not. A lot of people leave the slot next to their bell blank on general principles. I suppose I should understand that, I'm in a program that places a premium on anonymity, but some people might find it a little strange. Other people have names on the doorbell but the names aren't theirs, because they're living in an illegal sublet and they don't want anybody to find out. So if I'm looking for Bill Williams, say-"
"That's William Williams," she said. "The couscous king of Walla Walla."
"That's the guy. If his name's not on the bell, that doesn't mean he's not there. And if his name is on the bell, that doesn't mean anything either."
"Poor baby. So what do you do, call the super?"
"If there's a resident super, but in most of the smaller buildings there isn't. And the super's no more likely to be home than anybody else. And a superintendent doesn't necessarily know the names of the tenants, as far as that goes. You wind up ringing bells and knocking on doors and talking to people, most of whom don't know much about their neighbors and are very cautious about disclosing what they do know."