Kill Fee (13 page)

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 mir
ror).
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.

No, the officer had no evidence of a payoff, not the kind that would be recognized by a departmental hearing. Just a series of things observed throughout his youth; it was common knowledge in the neighborhood that the cops were paid off by the landlords. Complaints about rats
and
broken plumbing and falling-down staircases would get lost in the files. Buildings the Health Department was investigating would mysteriously catch fire in the night: people died, the landlords collected insurance, investigations headed by Ansbacher uncovered no definitive evidence of arson.