Kill Fee (16 page)

"Some people carry grudges," was all Ansbacher would volunteer.

Hanowitz laughed. "Well, he's carryin' one big enough to make Arnold Schwarzenegger sweat. Man, he is asking questions about
everything.
He's even asking how many cars you own." He laughed again. "Ever hear anything so stupid?"

Ansbacher stopped in front of his office door and stared at Hanowitz until the other man started to fidget. "Well, I gotta be going," Hanowitz said and hurried off, feeling Ansbacher's eyes burning holes in his back.

"
Twenty-five thousand from Sterling National Bank and Trust," Murtaugh read from his notebook. "Thirty thousand from Chase Manhattan Bank. Six thousand from Franklin Savings. Five thousand from Citibank."

Leon Walsh's lips moved soundlessly; his face was ashen. Sergeant Eberhart stood by the closed door of the editor's office, his arms folded across his chest.

"Two thousand each from First Federal Savings and Loan, Lincoln Savings, and Dry Dock Savings. Three thousand from Dollar Savings. And last, twenty-five thousand from Leila Hudson." Murtaugh snapped his notebook shut. "Grand total, one hundred thousand dollars. That was a busy three weeks you spent, Walsh."

Walsh had to swallow twice before he could speak. "Why are you still checking up on me?"

"One hundred thousand dollars," Murtaugh repeated. "Exactly the amount needed to pay off the killer in 'The Man from Porlock.' "

"What?! That's just a
story,
for crying out loud! You don't think—"

"Who is J. J. Kellerman?"

"Uh, a writer. A short-story writer."

"You know him?"

"Not personally, no. I've published his work before, though." Walsh cleared his throat. "Good writer."

"Where does he live?"

"What?"

"You heard me. Where does he live? You had to send him a check, didn't you? That means you have an address."

Walsh gave a totally unconvincing laugh. "Lieutenant, you don't think I carry my writers' addresses around in my head, do you?" He buzzed his secretary and asked her to bring in the Kellerman file. "Why are you asking
about
Kellerman?" Walsh said, obviously preferring this line of inquiry to the earlier one.

Won't work,
Murtaugh thought wryly. "Why did you take out a hundred thousand dollars' worth of loans over a three-week period?"

"Excuse me, Lieutenant, but that's none of your business."

"Excuse
me,
but it's very much my business. Now do you want to tell me here or do you want to come down to the station and tell me there?"

Walsh got a moment's reprieve when his secretary walked in with a manila folder. When she'd left, Walsh looked through the folder, taking his time. "Well, well. . . I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but we don't seem to have Kellerman's address. Somebody goofed."

I'll say.
"Then how did you send him his check?"

"We obviously did have his address at one time, but somebody forgot to write it down in the file."

Eberhart strode over to the desk and took the file from Walsh. "No address," he confirmed.

"You can't just take things out of my hands that way," Walsh protested.

"Tell us about it." Murtaugh sniffed; what a poor liar Leon Walsh was. "Look, Walsh, enough of this pussyfooting. We know you and J. J. Kellerman are the same person and—"

"That's crazy! Where'd you get an idea like that!"

"And we know 'The Man from Porlock' isn't just a story you made up. It really happened that way. You needed the hundred thousand to pay off Sussman's killer."

"This is insane!
You
are insane! Just because I published a story about a killer . . . somebody else's story, I didn't even write it. You put
me
in the story and claim
I
. . . do you really think I'd meekly hand over one hundred thousand dollars to some homicidal maniac who . . . who goes around calling himself
Osiris,
of all things?''

"Not Osiris. Pluto."

Until then Murtaugh would have said it was impossible for Walsh's face to turn any whiter. For a long moment none of the three men either spoke or moved. Then Walsh slowly lowered his face into his hands. Eberhart resumed his post by the door, a conscientious sergeant-at-arms.

"You understand, we do know what happened," Murtaugh said quietly. "Pluto watches the growing conflict between you and Sussman—and when your partner is on the verge of selling you out to UltraMedia, Pluto steps in and kills Sussman. Then he sends you a bill. He waits a while, giving you time to raise the money. You hit the banks for loans, borrow from your ex-wife. Then he calls with instructions where to leave the payoff. You comply."

Walsh lifted his face from his hands and stared blankly at Murtaugh. He said nothing.

"But then your conscience gets to bothering you," Murtaugh continued. "You start feeling that since you paid Sussman's killer the fee he demanded, you have in fact sanctioned the killing. You try living with the guilt, but it's too much for you. You need to tell somebody about it, about how it really was. But you can't. Then you hit on the idea of telling
everybody
about it—in the form of fiction. So you write 'The Man from Porlock' and publish it in
Summit.
Did it work, Walsh? Did it make you feel better?"

Walsh looked on the edge of collapse. "You don't understand."

Murtaugh snorted. "That's what my seventeen-year-
old
nephew says every time somebody disagrees with him. What don't I understand, Walsh? Make me see it."

"Why are you talking to me like this? I didn't order Sussman's killing!"

Eberhart spoke up. "But you paid for it. We want the bill Pluto sent you, Walsh. The killer in the story sent a bill. So you got one. From Pluto."

"I, I don't have any bill."

"Jesus Christ, Walsh!" Murtaugh exploded. "Are you going to go on pretending you don't know anything? You're not our only source. How do you think we knew the killer's name is Pluto? You're not the first person who's paid him off and you won't be the last. We've got to find this killer and stop him.
Now where's the goddam fucking bill?"

He shook his head. "I got rid of it. I tore it into small pieces and flushed it down the toilet."

"Terrific," Eberhart grunted.

"All right," Murtaugh sighed, "tell us what you know about him. Ever meet this Pluto face to face?"

"No. We just talked on the phone."

"How many times?"

"Three altogether. I'm afraid the first time I was rather incoherent. You see, I couldn't really believe it was happening. Everything was going so well until this note came in the mail asking for a hundred thousand dollars. Well, I didn't know what to think—would
you
have believed it, Lieutenant? Did you ever get a bill from a murderer? I just couldn't believe it. So I hadn't done anything about raising the money the first time Pluto called."

"So what happened?"

"He threatened me. He
threatened
me, Lieutenant! He said if I wanted to live to see the next issue of
Summit
on
the stands I'd jolly well better get the money up PDQ. He said there was no place I could go where he couldn't find me."

" 'Jolly well '?" Eberhart echoed. "He actually said that —'jolly well'?"

"That's what he said."

"Is he English?"

Walsh shrugged. "He's either English or he wanted me to think he is. I couldn't really tell—the accent sounded pretty authentic."

"Then what?" Murtaugh asked.

"Well, he convinced me. What can I say? I thought my life was in danger—and I still think he would have killed me if I hadn't paid him."

Or shot your hand off,
Murtaugh thought. "All this is still the first phone call?"

"That's right. The second time he called, I'd raised seventy-five thousand and I asked him if he'd settle for that."

"And he said no."

"He said no. By the third phone call, I had the entire hundred thousand and he told me where to leave it."

"Which was?"

"The men's room at the Mark Hellinger Theater. Inside the paper towel dispenser."

"Anybody in there?"

"No, the place was empty."

"So you never saw Pluto at all?"

"Never."

"And you never got a receipt, either," Eberhart said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

Walsh flared up. "Why do you keep on at me about it? I tell you my life was threatened and you treat
me
like
the
criminal!
I
didn't threaten anyone and I certainly didn't kill anyone!"

"But you did pay a fee to the man who killed your partner."

"Because I had no choice! What else could I do?"

"You could have called us," Eberhart pointed out.

Walsh wouldn't look at either policeman, obviously rattled.

"He's right, you know," Murtaugh said reasonably. "Why didn't you call the police?"

Walsh muttered under his breath.

"What was that?"

"He told me not to."

"Pluto? When did he tell you that?"

"During that first phone call. The same time he was threatening me."

"But you could have called for help before that, couldn't you? When you first got the bill? But you didn't say a word."

Walsh glared at Murtaugh. "I told you I didn't believe it. Why should I call the police about a . . . a crank letter?"

"Oh, you believed it, Walsh. You believed it right from the start. It's only lately you've convinced yourself you didn't believe it—it makes a better story that way. Or at least it makes you look better. Not such a pushover."

Walsh had the wounded look of a child unjustly accused of eating all the Christmas cookies. "Why do you hate me? What have I done to you?"

Murtaugh closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose; he wasn't enjoying this. "Nothing. You never did a thing to me." He had only just then realized how much he disliked Leon Walsh. Even Walsh's
Why do you hate me?
annoyed him. The man was in a peck of trouble
and
couldn't be expected to behave rationally; it was just that Murtaugh had a low tolerance for self-pity. He opened his eyes and looked at Eberhart. After a moment's silent communication, Murtaugh muttered, "We have to."

Eberhart nodded and started to speak. "You have the right to remain silent. If you—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute—
hold on!"
Walsh yelled at them. "What is this? Am I being arrested?"

"Yes, you are," Eberhart said.

"Why? What's the charge?"

"Accessory after the fact."

"Accessory . . . ? But I told you, I paid that money because my life was threatened!"

Murtaugh pulled at his ear. "It's a peculiar situation. You were the victim of extortion, that's true. But when you paid off the extortionist, you made yourself an accessory to murder. I don't know how the courts are going to handle this one. You could plead extenuating circumstances—a good lawyer can probably get you off. But that's not my concern. My business is bringing in lawbreakers. And, Mr. Walsh, you broke the law."

"How?" he screamed. "By protecting myself? By saving my own life?"

"By cooperating with a murderer," Murtaugh snapped. "By concealing knowledge of a crime. Every time someone like you pays off without a fuss, you're just paving the way for the next murder. And the next. And the next. This Pluto is a leech—don't you see that? He needs people like you to feed off of."

"So you're saying I shouldn't have paid him? You're saying I should have just stood around and waited to get shot?"

"No, I'm not saying that. We don't expect you to take
on
a murderer by yourself. But we do expect you to inform us if you're being pressured by a self-admitted killer. How can we help you if you don't let us know what's going on? If you'd called us in the minute you got the bill, we could have had a line on Pluto by now."

"You don't know that," Walsh said weakly.

"But you don't know otherwise. And not only do you fail to call the police, you also destroy the one piece of evidence that might have given us a lead." Murtaugh looked at the crestfallen man in front of him. "Look, Walsh, we're not unsympathetic to your position. I know killing Sussman was Pluto's idea, and I know you were scared out of your skull. But you did pay a
killer
for
killing
—we can't just pat you on the head and say 'Oh, that's all right.' You are accountable for what you've done. We have to arrest you. What happens next isn't up to us."

"It might not even go to court," Eberhart said helpfully. "It depends on what the prosecutors decide to do. But we still have to take you in and book you."

Walsh had no arguments left; all the fight had gone out of him.

"Let's go," Murtaugh said.

Sergeant Eberhart was talking to Leila Hudson's answering machine when she cut in.

"This is Leila Hudson live," she announced. "Sorry about the machine—I thought it might be someone I didn't want to talk to. Are you calling about Leon?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Oh. That doesn't sound good."

"We've just placed him under arrest. Accessory to murder. The money he borrowed from you and all the rest of it—it was to pay off Jerry Sussman's killer." There was a long silence. "Leila?"

"
I'm here. Did it happen like—was it like the story you told me to read? 'The Man from Porlock'?"

"Almost exactly. Walsh wrote it, you know—did you recognize his writing?"

"I suspected it was Leon's. Do you really have him in jail? It seems to me he's the victim, not the, ah, perpetrator. He was trying to save his own life. You don't put people in jail for that."

"It's a tricky problem, all right," Eberhart admitted. "But it's one the courts are going to have to solve, not the police. As for Walsh's being in jail, he'll be out in a matter of hours. He's talking to his lawyer right now."

"You aren't going to keep him locked up, then?"

"Naw. If he was a dealer or a rapist, he'd be out already. But since he's part victim, that complicates things."