Kill Fee, page 16
"Ah, Lieutenant, Lieutenant," Pluto shook his head. "Make a mistake. Goof. Get off on the wrong track." He sighed. "Don't make me do it."
Murtaugh raised his eyebrows. "Pistol ranges?"
"Man doesn't buy eight dozen rounds just to scare off burglars," Eberhart said. "So he's gotta have a place where he goes to keep his eye sharp. So we check pistol ranges."
"Does he need to?" Murtaugh asked. "Keep that kind of sharp, I mean. Jerry Sussman was shot up close—he went right up to the car Pluto was driving. William Parminter was shot in an elevator—another close job. Roscoe Malucci's hand was shot off from the other side of the street. But it's a narrow street and Roscoe had gone out into the street to stop a cab—shooting distance was only twenty feet or so. Hardly sharpshooter range."
"What about that Canadian singer—the one who got shot at Lincoln Center?"
Murtaugh frowned, concentrating. "You're right. That was a distance shot. But we don't know that was one of Pluto's jobs."
"Oh, come on, Lieutenant—you know it was!"
"I think so, but we don't know. It's damned tempting to hang every unsolved killing we got on our elusive friend. But okay, let's say Pluto needs to practice on a more-or-less regular basis. Our circulars for gun-related killings automatically go to firing ranges as well as gunsmiths. But they get so many of the damned things they hardly look at them any more. Your clerk in the gun store paid attention, but nobody else did—so, we go jog their memories for them. We'll need a list of pistol ranges and addresses—"
"Got it." Eberhart waved a sheet of paper in the air.
Murtaugh grunted approval. "Give me half. Captain Ansbacher's letting me have five more men, but we don't get them until Thursday."
Eberhart folded the sheet of paper, tore it in half. "Here."
Murtaugh glanced at the paper and scowled. "For chrissake, Eberhart, don't you ever use a typewriter? I can't read this."
"All right, all right, I'll type it," Eberhart muttered, snatching back the paper. Some days even the best of lieutenants liked to make life bothersome for sergeants.
Pluto stepped out of his rented car and looked around for a place to stand—there, in that shop doorway. A man sitting alone in an automobile at night always looked suspicious.
Just as Lieutenant Murtaugh was looking suspicious. The lieutenant was across the street, sitting in his car, alone, at night. And it looked suspicious. Just a man waiting for his wife, but it did look odd.
The front doors of Murray Hill Academy opened and a harried-looking woman with a briefcase came out—that was Ellie. Pluto strained to get a good look at her. She got into the car with Murtaugh and they drove away.
Pluto wrote down the time in his notebook, knowing it was a detail he probably wouldn't be needing. But his methodical approach had stood him in good stead for too long for him to abandon it now. And he had so few details about Ellie yet.
Ellie. What about her? Pluto was having trouble deciding whether Ellie would have a role to play in the new scenario or not.
Dan Grogan was already waiting in Michael's Bar by the time Murtaugh got there. Murtaugh had known Grogan for a long time; they'd been rookies together, seventeen—no, eighteen years ago now. Grogan had wanted Murtaugh to meet him.
Murtaugh picked up a beer and went over to Grogan's booth. ''Trouble?'' he asked as he slid on to the wooden seat.
Grogan shook his head. "I got what you wanted to know."
"Why not just call?"
"We're both on open lines, Murtaugh. No telling who could be listening in."
Murtaugh felt a mild shock. Grogan was the investigator Ansbacher had appointed to take over the Parminter case when Murtaugh began breathing too hard on the Sutton brothers and their tainted construction business. Grogan was also in charge of another "Pluto possible"—the murder of Metropolitan Opera tenor John Herman, the Canadian. Murtaugh had asked Grogan to check on the finances of tenor Luigi Bàccolo, to see if he'd had to raise money in a hurry right after the Canadian's death. But now, if Grogan was so afraid anything said over the phone might get back to Ansbacher, afraid that Ansbacher would find out he was doing a favor for Murtaugh—good god, things were even worse than he'd thought! "You didn't step on any Sutton toes, did you?"
Grogan laughed mirthlessly. "I'm not even allowed close to those two. You know your files have disappeared? The ones you put together on the Suttons and Parminter. So I'm left with no reason to investigate the Sutton Construction Company."
Damn that Ansbacher—all that work, down the drain. "That rotten son of a bitch," Murtaugh said bitterly.
Grogan looked uneasy. "Don't talk like that. You don't know who's listening."
Murtaugh stared at him. "What's the matter with you? You never used to be afraid of your shadow!"
Grogan stared back. "You don't know, do you?" He took a deep breath. "Ansbacher knows you've been investigating him. He knows you're out to get him."
A second shock ran through Murtaugh, a much stronger one this time. "How'd he find out?"
"Know a guy named Hanowitz? Works the Burglary Unit. He told him."
Murtaugh remembered Hanowitz, a weasely man he'd trust about as far as he could throw. "Hanowitz told Ansbacher?"
"Right out in the hallway, where other people could hear. That was weeks ago, Murtaugh. I thought you knew."
"No." Murtaugh was stunned; he'd more or less expected it eventually . . . what was Ansbacher doing, what kind of waiting game was he playing? "Christ."
Grogan looked at his watch nervously. "I've got to be going—"
"What about Luigi Bàccolo?"
"Oh yeah—almost forgot. He raised the money all right—a hundred thousand dollars, the exact amount. He had to be one of Pluto's customers too."
"Mm. What'd he say when you asked him about the money?"
"Well, first he claimed his poor old mother back in Napoli needed a series of operations. When we pointed out his mother has been dead for twenty-one years, he said, Did he say mother? He meant aunt, and she was in Palermo, not Napoli. He's changed his story a dozen times, and each time it gets a little more farfetched. No question, in my mind—he paid off Pluto. Bàccolo's one of those high-strung types—we got him sweating, it's only a matter of time. He'll tell us."
"Good, glad to hear it. And Grogan—thanks for letting me know."
"Sure. We owe you for the tip." Grogan wanted to get away. "Uh, tough luck about Ansbacher. I thought you knew."
Murtaugh shrugged a good-bye. Grogan left, and Murtaugh sat on for a while, watching his beer go flat.
Thursday.
Pluto was torn. He wanted to avoid taking any risk he didn't absolutely have to, but he also wanted to pick up his new suit. The tailor had promised it for two o'clock—but the tailor knew him as P. N. Wolfe and that could get sticky. The new police circular had the name listed right under the sketch that now would no longer identify him. But the false name—would his tailor know about it? Police circulars went to gun shops and like places, including (obviously!) private clubs with pistol ranges in their sub-basements. But what possible cause would the police have for notifying a toney haberdasher on Fifth Avenue? There was no reason for Lieutenant Murtaugh to connect the killings with Farrell Custom Tailoring—Farrell's Apparel, Pluto called it.
Pluto wanted that suit; he wanted it in the worst way. Irish tweed, softer than any he'd ever seen. From a distance the material appeared gray, but up close it was an understated green. Pluto didn't have any green clothing; green tended to make him look chubby. But not this green, not this masterpiece of soft-pedaling. It did make him look just a tiny bit sallow—but now with his newly brown hair . . . he decided. He'd go get the suit.
He approached the tailor's cautiously, stopping to look in store windows as he tried to spot any signs of a stakeout. The trouble was, he didn't really know what to look for. He peered around, looking for Lieutenant Murtaugh and those of his cohorts Pluto knew, but all he saw was an ordinary street scene, Fifth Avenue at two in the afternoon on an ordinary Thursday.
Pluto studied a window display of men's formal footwear and thought about using a messenger service to pick up the suit. But his tailor was such a prima donna Pluto knew he wouldn't let the suit go without one last fitting. At the very least sending a messenger would stir up a fuss, and the last thing Pluto needed was a fuss. So, no messenger.
Nothing ventured. Pluto pushed through one of the two main entrances to Farrell Custom Tailoring and—well, well. Look who was over there pretending to be a customer. Eberhart, David J., Sergeant. Lieutenant Murtaugh's right-hand man, talking to Pluto's tailor. Pluto bought a sixty-two-dollar pair of socks and left, going out the other main entrance and displaying prominently his designer plastic bag with the word Farrell on it.
This time Pluto spotted him: Lieutenant Murtaugh, standing in a phone booth, doing a good imitation of a man looking up a number in the directory. Ah well, Pluto thought philosophically. Maybe he just wasn't destined to wear green.
He moved off down Fifth at a brisk pace, leaving Murtaugh and Eberhart and five other men watching over Farrell Custom Tailoring, watching and waiting.
Watching. Hoping.
CHAPTER
13
Murtaugh sank down into his desk chair spiritlessly. He'd finished his half of the list of pistol ranges. Nothing.
Eberhart still had a few to go on his half, but Ansbacher had put the sergeant to work on something else the minute he'd come in. Eberhart had been on the telephone all morning; he'd been phoning when Murtaugh left, and he was still phoning when Murtaugh got back. After lunch Murtaugh would get the names of the pistol ranges Eberhart hadn't gotten to and take care of them himself.
The five men Murtaugh had been given for the futile stakeout of Farrell Custom Tailoring—they'd been reassigned the next day. Now Ansbacher was stripping him of his only remaining help; when Eberhart finished his current assignment, Ansbacher would come up with another one for him. And then another one. And another one after that. When Pluto failed to show, Murtaugh had lost his last defense against Ansbacher. The Captain would win. It was only a matter of time.
Pluto, Pluto—where are you? Why hadn't he shown up at the tailor's, how had he known they'd be waiting for him? How had he known? No matter how close they got, Pluto was always one step ahead of them. Was he psychic? There couldn't be a leak inside the Department because only Murtaugh and Eberhart knew where the investigation was heading—Eberhart? No, out of the question. But only he and Eberhart knew . . . until he'd gone to Ansbacher for help with the stakeout.
"Jesus, I'm going nuts," he said aloud. Ansbacher was a shit and Murtaugh could believe almost anything of him. But to think of a police captain feeding information to a wanted murderer just to spite one of his lieutenants—well, that was really stretching it. "I'm getting paranoid," he muttered.
Eberhart stuck his head in the door. "Shoo flies." He disappeared.
Now what? Murtaugh thought in irritation. He needed meddlers underfoot the way he needed a hole in the head. Two men loomed in his doorway, a tall one and a taller one; Murtaugh knew neither of them.
"James Murtaugh?" the merely tall one said. "I'm Sanders of Internal Affairs, this is Karp." The other man nodded and stepped into Murtaugh's office; Sanders followed and shut the door.
"Come in," Murtaugh said dryly.
Sanders and Karp positioned themselves in front of the desk. "I'll get right to the point," Sanders said. "A charge of malfeasance has been brought against you. Suspicion of taking a bribe."
"What?" Murtaugh jumped to his feet. "A bribe? That's absurd! Who's supposed to have paid me?"
"The killer you're allegedly hunting. The one known as Pluto."
Allegedly hunting. "That's ridiculous. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Who brought the charge? Ansbacher?''
One of Sanders's eyebrows rose. "What a lucky guess. Or was it? You knew Ansbacher was on to you, didn't you, Murtaugh? He's had your number for a long time. I want your shield and your weapon. Now."
Murtaugh started to reach angrily toward Sanders, but Karp stepped in and Murtaugh thought better of what he was doing. Stay calm, he told himself. "That's all it takes?" he asked. "Ansbacher points a finger and you come running to do his dirty work?"
"You were overheard making plans to set up a phony stakeout."
"A phony . . . that stakeout was legit! You're talking about the one at the Fifth Avenue tailor's, aren't you? Why would I set up a phony stakeout?"
"A diversion, a ploy. Ansbacher has a witness who heard you making plans on the phone to steer the investigation into safe waters. He heard you call the person on the phone 'Pluto'."
Murtaugh felt paralyzed, as if some vital function in his body had been summarily switched off. He knew what his captain was capable of—why was he so surprised that Ansbacher had set him up? Why hadn't he anticipated it? He worked his jaw a couple of times and said, "Who's this witness who claims he heard me incriminating myself?"
"Hanowitz, in Burglary. He reported the conversation to Captain Ansbacher."
Hanowitz again. "That lying little ass-kisser. He'd do anything, say anything he thought would help him get a leg up!"
"You'll get to tell your side of it at the hearing," Sanders said. "In the meantime, get yourself a lawyer. And Murtaugh—get a good one. A ranking officer who'd let a paid killer go free . . . let's just say he's going to need damned good legal representation."
"You've made your mind up already, haven't you?" Murtaugh said bitterly.
"You may be clean. I don't know yet. But your own captain has been suspicious of you for months, and we do have a witness. It doesn't look good. You're suspended without pay until our investigation is complete and a hearing is scheduled." Sanders dropped an envelope on the desk. "There's the authorization. I want your weapon and your shield. You're to leave now and not return until the time of the hearing. Take nothing with you—all your files are impounded, even the contents of your desk."
"Want to search me before I go?" Sanders didn't answer the sarcasm. Murtaugh put his badge and his gun on the desk. "How long until the hearing?"
"However long it takes us to complete the investigation, and buddy, we are going to investigate you good. Get a lawyer."
Murtaugh walked around the desk and stopped to stare at Karp. The taller man hadn't uttered a word the whole time; Sanders had done all the talking. "Why'd they send two of you?" Murtaugh asked Karp sourly. "Are you the muscle in case I get violent?"
"I'm a trainee," Karp said.
It figured. Murtaugh nodded and went on out.
Captain Ansbacher felt perspiration beading up on his forehead but resisted the temptation to reach for his handkerchief. A man mopping his brow never looked good on television; he lost stature.
This wasn't going the way it was supposed to. In all his years on the force, Ansbacher had never met a news reporter yet who didn't start to salivate at the merest hint of scandal inside the Police Department. Most of them found misbehavior on the part of New York's finest downright titillating; something to do with suppressed envy, Ansbacher supposed, a sexual reaction. But here he'd just handed them a nice juicy tidbit and they were all acting surly about it.
The man from the Times asked, "Does this mean you busted Lieutenant Murtaugh on the basis of one overheard telephone conversation?"
Ansbacher enunciated his words carefully; reporters were so prone to misunderstanding. "There were other matters taken into consideration."
"Such as?"
"I'm not at liberty to discuss that."
There were several audible snorts from the reporters. A woman in an unnecessarily tight red sweater asked, "So what happens to the hunt for Pluto now? Who's taking over Lieutenant Murtaugh's investigation?"
"I am," Ansbacher said. "I will be coordinating the efforts of all our investigators—"
"You mean they haven't been coordinated up to now?" the woman interrupted.
"Let me finish," Ansbacher snapped. "I will be coordinating various lines of investigation and taking over Murtaugh's case load myself," avoiding her question. "I'll have—"
"How many cases did Murtaugh have?" asked a slightly overweight man with curly brown hair and glasses.
"I don't have the exact number at the moment. As I—"
"Wasn't it just one?" the man persisted. "The Jerry Sussman murder?"
"I'll have to get back to you on that. As I was saying, I will be organizing the hunt to bring in the killer we know as Pluto. And I'll tell you this. We're getting close. We have several strong leads that I intend to pursue personally. We're anticipating an arrest before long."
The man with the curly brown hair spoke again; the little fag wouldn't shut up. "Those strong leads you're going to follow—weren't they all developed by Lieutenant Murtaugh?"
"The leads came from many sources. This is a cooperative effort, you know—"
"Come on, Captain, isn't it true Murtaugh was the only one who was getting anywhere tracking down Pluto? And all of a sudden he's under investigation by Internal Affairs—what's really going on?"
"I've told you all I can at this point. Thank you for coming—this press conference is ended."
"Is Pluto a cop?" somebody shouted.
"NO!" Ansbacher roared. "That is a totally irresponsible question! Pluto is not, repeat not, a member of this police force—or any other police force so far as I know. He's a civilian just like you, and he's out there, and we're going to get him!" On that strong finish Ansbacher strode from the room.
