Kill Fee, page 9
Ellie smiled tiredly. "You're supposed to know the story. Coleridge was staying out in the country somewhere near Porlock. He woke up from an opium dream with his head so full of images that he sat down and started writing the poem. You remember it, Jim—'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. . . .' "
Murtaugh shook his head. He must have read it in high school, but it was too many years ago.
"Anyway," Ellie went on, "while he was writing, he was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was a bill-collector from the town of Porlock. Coleridge finally got rid of him—but when he sat back down to write, his mind was blank. The vision was gone. And so the poem was never finished."
"So 'The Man from Porlock' refers to . . . ?"
"An interrupter, a destroyer of dreams."
"Or a bill-collector?"
"Yes, that too."
A bill-collector.
"The idea is preposterous," Ellie was saying. "Whoever heard of anyone going around killing people and then later collecting from other people who had nothing to do with it! Have you ever run across anything like that?"
"No."
"The story's not badly told, though. A few intrusive writerish tricks. But on the whole not too bad."
Murtaugh didn't say anything; he was thinking. The idea was preposterous, Ellie was right. But he'd run into even more preposterous things during his seventeen years on the force. People were capable of performing any absurd act the mind could conceive. Could J. J. Kellerman be Leon Walsh? Murtaugh tried to compare the styles of the short story and the editorial Walsh had written, but he didn't really know what to look for; he'd ask Ellie to do it tomorrow. Had Walsh written fiction before? Ellie said the story had a few writerish tricks in it but on the whole wasn't bad. Murtaugh didn't know anything about literary values.
But he thought he recognized a plea for sympathy when he ran into one.
The voice on the answering machine said, "For crying out loud, Leila, why don't you return my calls? What do I need—a note from my mother?"
Leila Hudson turned off the machine. Leon always understood only what it was convenient for him to understand.
He'd paid her back twenty-five hundred of the twenty-five thousand he owed her. "Ten percent for a start," he'd smiled, trying to be charming. It was wasted effort. He'd already killed any chance for a reconciliation when he pulled that stomach-turning stunt on her—just to talk her into a loan.
Leila had sat at that table at Luchow's and listened to Leon lying to her about how her own life would be in danger if she didn't come up with twenty-five thousand dollars immediately. She'd sat there thinking I don't believe this while he went on embellishing the story. Leon was so transparent a liar that a child could see through him. This was something he was never able to understand, even though he'd been told so several times. Leila had told him once herself.
In the end she'd decided to let him have the money because obviously he had to be desperate to resort to such underhandedness. Leila didn't know what kind of trouble he was in, but it had to be serious. And the money did seem to do the trick; Leon was able to buy his way out.
But at what cost! Whatever respect and sympathy and concern for his well-being that had been left over from their marriage—now it was all as dead as Jacob Marley and his doornail. My supply of charitable understanding is exhausted, Leila thought. Used up. Gone. How could Leon have done such a thing to her? He'd always used her to a certain extent; that's what had caused the divorce in the first place, his tendency to assume her primary function was to make him feel good. There'd been no malice in it; only thoughtlessness and a seeming inability to learn.
But telling her that grotesque and melodramatic story, trying to make her feel afraid—oh, that was unforgivable. Before he did that, they'd actually reached a point where Leon had begun hinting that maybe this time they could make a go of it. But now she didn't even want to talk to him on the telephone.
Leila was sick at heart. Once again she'd allowed Leon Walsh to let her down.
Pluto was displeased. He was displeased with the weather, he was displeased with having to use the .45 again so soon, he was displeased with having to do so many jobs close together. But most of all he was displeased with a smartass young millionaire named Roscoe Malucci.
It had finally happened. Pluto had often wondered what he'd do if it ever did happen, but without really believing that it would. But now it had. Roscoe Malucci had refused to pay his bill.
Prudence said, Let it go, forget it, write it off. Pride said to Prudence, Get stuffed. Still, if he failed to collect this one time, nobody would know about it. "Not true," Pluto said aloud in the back seat of the taxi. "I would know about it."
"You say something, Mac?"
"No, no—just drive."
Pluto's normal workload was three jobs per year. He'd found he could live quite comfortably on three hundred thousand tax-free dollars a year. (It used to be only two jobs a year, but what with inflation, etc., etc.) Pluto wasn't avaricious; his needs were moderate. He prided himself on not being like rock stars or advertising executives or ballplayers. Or like pretty-boy anchormen who were paid $650,000 a year for reading the news on local television—local, not even network. Pluto tut-tutted at that; no sense of proportion. He, on the other hand, charged a reasonable fee for doing a dangerous job that others didn't want to do.
That was the way it used to be. This year, however, he'd already done eight jobs—and he was behind schedule. Because now he needed money. He'd thought about raising his rates but decided against it. People with money were willing to pay a hundred thousand to have their problems solved for them, but over that amount they tended to get panicky. Pluto didn't want to push his clients over the edge; they were no good to him that way. A hundred thousand was just about right.
He wanted to buy a chalet in Switzerland. He had come upon it quite by accident last year while on vacation, and he'd immediately fallen in love with it. The chalet was tucked away among the vineyards between Geneva and Lausanne, on an estate that itself produced a modest four thousand bottles a year. Pluto had tried the wine and found it a typical Swiss white with no great pretensions; a pleasant wine. The idea of inviting the neighbors over for a glass of wine from the back yard appealed to Pluto. The chalet itself was a work of art, designed to house other works of art. Suddenly Pluto's middle-class, three-hundred-thousand-dollars-a-year way of living no longer satisfied him. He aspired to better things.
As a result he was having to work harder than he'd ever worked since the day he first discovered where his natural talents lay. There was danger in such increased activity; Pluto was convinced the one reason the police had never made any connection among his various jobs was that he'd never gotten greedy. The killings were spaced far enough apart not to attract undue attention, and he followed a strict rotation system governing which weapon he used. But now the chances of the police tumbling to what was going on grew with each new job. The risks were increasing geometrically.
He got out of the taxi at Ninety-first Street and Second Avenue; he was carrying a briefcase. He walked away from the corner, making a moue at the sky. It wasn't raining yet, just threatening. Pluto needed a rainless day. Otherwise the small restaurant he'd selected would not put its café tables out on the sidewalk. Aha! The tables were out. Pluto told a waiter, "I say, I am glad to see these tables! Good show!"—and seated himself with his briefcase between his feet where he had a clear view of Roscoe Malucci's townhouse. The waiter asked him how he liked New York and whether he was planning to stay in America long.
That started him wondering, once again, whether he should work outside New York for a while. Until things cooled down a bit. He sipped his wine and thought about it. Pluto wasn't too happy at the idea; he knew New York and New York was where he operated best. Even after he had his chalet he planned to divide his time between the two places. New York was where he worked. He didn't know how to go about checking credit in Boston or finding a private investigator in Chicago he could rely on. He could learn, but it was all such a bother. Besides, he didn't like Boston or Chicago.
Besides again, he had this deadbeat Roscoe Malucci to take care of before he could do anything else. If only there were more people like Carolyn Randolph! That woman had understood immediately what he'd done for her and she knew exactly what it was worth. She'd not quibbled over the price; she knew a bargain when she saw one. She'd even thanked him. And she'd not lingered in the neighborhood of Carlyle and Piper's bookstore in an attempt to get a glimpse of him when he went in to pick up the money. Her behavior had been impeccable from start to finish. Unfortunately, there weren't many Carolyn Randolphs in the world.
At one time Pluto had toyed with the idea of notifying his clients ahead of the fact, of telling them what he was going to do before he did it. That way there'd be no doubt or tears or panic afterward. But that way there was also the danger that some misguided soul might notify the police. And too, if his clients knew ahead of time what was going to happen—well, that piled a complicating burden of guilt on them. Pluto had learned early that all guilt feelings were to be avoided as assiduously as possible.
Pluto was convinced that everyone in the world yearned for some strong person to come in and solve their problems for them, make the nasties go away, even kill for them if necessary. That way they'd get what they wanted without having to dirty their own hands. Let George do it. Pluto's solution: allow the clients to wear their little blinders until the dastardly deed is done, then slap 'em with a bill. That way they can feel shocked, horrified, outraged—and secretly pleased as punch. But not guilty. Oh no, never guilty.
Leon Walsh had felt guilty. But Pluto thought Walsh must be the kind of man who wallowed in negative feelings no matter what happened. He was the exception, not the rule. Funny those two extremes should come so close together—Leon Walsh and Carolyn Randolph.
But the extreme extreme was the do-nothing young nitwit who lived in the expensive townhouse across the street. It wasn't even his townhouse—well, it was now, thanks to Pluto's intervention. But until recently Roscoe Malucci had been living in a roach parlor in the Village; the townhouse had belonged to Roscoe's grandmother, who'd been on the verge of disinheriting her only son's only son in favor of a remote second cousin's brother's grandnephew umpteen times removed or whatever, some vague male relative she hadn't seen in twenty years.
Pluto wondered whether Roscoe really understood how close he'd come to losing Grandma Malucci's millions. Grandma had been fed up with Roscoe; she was convinced he'd never make anything of himself. (She was undoubtedly right.) All Roscoe wanted to do in life was play his guitar. The only thing he talked about was "my music"—and he talked about it soulfully, with stars in his eyes (a look he must have practiced in front of a mirror). Roscoe was a twenty-four-year-old child who'd learned five or six chords on the guitar and called himself a musician. Roscoe was lazy, and not too bright, and not at all concerned about the difficulties of living in the real world. His family had always had money. Somebody would take care of him.
The thing that really irritated Pluto was that this job had been his most difficult in years. Grandma Malucci wasn't exactly a recluse, but catching her alone out of the house hadn't been easy. And catching her at a time Roscoe had an alibi—for a time it had looked impossible. Roscoe's behavior was totally unpredictable; there was no pattern to his life at all. Roscoe just followed the trail of whoever happened to cross his path that day. If only he'd had a girlfriend! Or even a boyfriend. Leon Walsh had been snuggling up with his former wife in Connecticut; Luigi Bàccolo had taken a soprano from the chorus for an illicit weekend in a borrowed house on Fire Island; Carolyn Randolph had been enjoying her lawyer's special services in Montego Bay. Thank god for sex; it provided so many alibis! But not for Roscoe Malucci. As far as Pluto could determine, Roscoe had no sex life at all. Damn the boy.
But Pluto had finally gotten to Grandma on a weekend when Roscoe had piled into a car with five other "musicians" and headed for a rock festival at Cape Cod. They didn't make it all the way; the car broke down outside New Bedford. But Roscoe's alibi was established. Pluto had typed up his bill on his usual blue paper; but when he'd made his follow-up phone call, he'd been greeted with, "Whaddaya doin', man—puttin' me on?"
All in all he'd made four phone calls, not one of which got through to the two-watt brain of Roscoe Malucci. Pluto had been in turn threatening and sinister, stern and paternal, whimsical and cajoling. Nothing worked. Pluto's rapidly evaporating sense of dignity had left him sputtering into the phone, "I am not a man who takes no for an answer! I always collect my fee!"
The only sound coming back over the receiver was that of a guitar being strummed.
Pluto gave up. Roscoe Malucci was unreachable. That bird-brained thud-plunker had defeated him.
Let it go, his common sense told him. But he couldn't. He just couldn't let that little worm get away with it.
Pluto dropped some money on the table and picked up his briefcase. Roscoe was coming out of the townhouse.
There were many things that Roscoe Malucci could not do, and one of them was drive a car. Eventually it would dawn on him that now he could afford to have a chauffeured limousine waiting for him, but for the time being he still depended on the passing taxicab. Cabs didn't cruise Ninety-first Street, so Roscoe would have to wait until one arrived to deliver a fare. Or else walk back to Second Avenue (but Roscoe was lazy).
Pluto trotted up the steps of a residential building almost directly opposite from where Roscoe was standing. Pluto had checked several buildings on the street before he made his choice. The one he now entered was an elegant brownstone that had been divided into two luxury apartments. That meant elaborate security systems for the individual apartments but only an ordinary lock on the common street door; the second pick he'd tried had opened it. Now he slipped inside and kept the door open.
The foyer was empty. The building had a back door that opened on to one of a series of connecting gardens: his escape route. He'd have to work fast; one of the building's legitimate inhabitants might walk in on him. Pluto opened his briefcase and took out the .45. The street was narrow; easy shot.
Just then Roscoe spotted a taxi coming down the street. He stepped off the curb to signal. He raised his arm into the air; Pluto carefully squeezed the trigger; and Roscoe's left hand exploded.
"I always collect," Pluto murmured.
CHAPTER
8
"I want you to run a credit check on Leon Walsh's finances," Murtaugh said. "Big withdrawals, loans he's taken out, like that."
Sergeant Eberhart looked puzzled. "We already did that."
"We checked for the time around the Sussman killing and right before. I want to know what's been happening lately."
"You got something?"
"Maybe." Murtaugh told him about the story in Summit magazine and laughed at the you-gotta-be-kidding look on the Sergeant's face. "No-down-payment murder—outlandish notion, isn't it? But it's not as far-fetched as it sounds. You have to read the story." He rummaged through the drawers of his desk, found the copy of the magazine he'd brought from home. "Here—read it when you get a chance. It's 'The Man from Porlock' by J. J. Kellerman."
"Kellerman? Who's that?"
"I think it's Leon Walsh. I got Ellie to compare the story to an editorial Walsh had written. She said it was possible both had been written by the same person, but there was nothing distinctive enough in either style to make it a certainty. So before we go charging in and accuse him of paying off a killer, I want to know if he's needed money recently, a lot of money. The story says a hundred thou—but that could be literary license."
"You know he had to come up with a fistful to buy Sussman's shares of Summit."
"I'm allowing for that—I got a contact on Wall Street tracking down the exact figure. I want you to check the loan departments of banks, credit bureaus, and so on. And you read that story."
"I'll do that," Eberhart said with interest. "My god, if you're right—huh, maybe we should have booked Walsh just the way Captain Ansbacher said!"
"Don't remind me," Murtaugh groaned. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now git."
He wished Eberhart hadn't mentioned Ansbacher.
Murtaugh had had to put that little matter on the back burner. He was now one hundred percent convinced that Ansbacher had been on the take for years—but after several weeks of inquiry he still didn't have any evidence. At first Murtaugh had been content to find that a personal enemy was turning out to be so thoroughgoing a bad guy. Justification! But the elation quickly faded as the proof he needed persistently failed to materialize. Instead of hard evidence he had indications, maybes, might-bes, could-have-beens. For instance, Ansbacher had had lunch with one of the Sutton brothers; a waiter at the restaurant had been willing to talk in exchange for a generous gratuity. What Sutton and Ansbacher had talked about the waiter couldn't or wouldn't tell him, but the day after the lunch Ansbacher had pulled Murtaugh off the Parminter investigation. The inference was clear, but there was no proof of a connection between the two events.
Murtaugh had found out about the lunch meeting from the police officer who'd driven Ansbacher to the restaurant. He'd come to Murtaugh with the information on his own—and that was something else Murtaugh had discovered. He was surprised at the extent of cooperation he was receiving; a lot of it he didn't even have to ask for. His not-completely-legitimate investigation of his superior was supposed to be a secret, but he couldn't ask questions without raising questions. Word had slowly leaked among Murtaugh's fellow detectives and lower-ranking officers, and to a man they wanted to help. Until he'd started his investigation, Murtaugh had had no idea of how widely hated Captain Ansbacher was.
Take the young officer who'd reported driving Ansbacher to the restaurant. He admitted frankly that he wanted to "get" Ansbacher. Why? Because certain slum landlords had been paying him off for years. The officer himself was a product of one of those slums. Years ago when he was a boy, his older brother had organized a strike against the landlords. The strike had been broken up by club-swinging cops directed by Ansbacher, still a lieutenant at the time. One of those swinging clubs had caught the officer's brother right in the kneecap; he'd walked with a limp ever since.
