Kill Fee (20 page)

They now had a greatly improved version of the Identikit picture of Pluto. The people who had come face to face with Nicholas Ramsay were few and far between, but Murtaugh had found one of them. Nobody at the answering service Pluto used remembered talking to him in person, but a young Englishman working at the Knickerbocker Mail Address Service remembered him quite well. "I can always spot an American trying to pass as British," he'd said with a smirk. With the Englishman's sugges
tions,
they'd been able to fill in the original outline so that now it looked more like a real face.

Murtaugh had ''forgotten'' to forward a copy of this new sketch to Captain Ansbacher; he didn't want it splashed all over the newspapers. The city's patrolmen had copies; ordinary citizens almost never fingered suspects for them solely on the basis of sketches in the newspaper. Murtaugh thought it was a bad mistake, letting Pluto in on what they knew.

Behind my back,
Ansbacher had said. He wouldn't like it when he found out.

Pluto—so what answering service and mail drop was Pluto using now? Which ones had he used before he went to Backtalk Telephone Answering Service and Knickerbocker Mail Address Service as Nicholas Ramsay? With the new sketch, there was a good chance of getting a fresh line on their killer. Still a lot of leg work to be done. Murtaugh had been planning to ask Ansbacher once again for more men, but there was no point in that now. It was all up to him, to him and Sergeant Eberhart.

Murtaugh stood up resignedly. Better get on with it.

Leila Hudson was the first one out of the courtroom. She was uncomfortable in there, as if
she
were the one on trial, the target of all those staring eyes. She leaned against the wall of the hallway and wanted something—a cigarette, a drink, something. She'd come down to the Criminal Courts Building on Centre Street for Leon's hearing and was only now realizing the extent of her emotional investment in the outcome.

The charges against Leon Walsh had been dismissed. The prosecutors hadn't exactly strained themselves prosecuting, Leila noticed; they probably had too many real criminals to worry about without wanting to go after
half-
and-half types like Leon. When the defense attorney introduced the matter of Roscoe Malucci and how his hand had been shot off when he failed to pay the killer, the Assistant District Attorney hadn't made so much as a token objection. Defense and prosecution alike seemed convinced the same man was responsible in both cases. Dave Eberhart had told her the hearing was a test case; the D.A. and the police simply wanted a ruling to establish precedent. With precedent, they'd have a legal guideline for dealing with the other people who'd paid Pluto off.
What other people?
she'd asked.
Dozens of them,
Dave had said.

What a monstrous thing. So Leon had been only one of a series of people whom Pluto had "helped out"—to the killer's way of thinking. Poor Leon; how frightened he must have been. Getting caught in a situation like that would strain the resources of anyone. It must have been Roscoe Malucci's missing hand that convinced the judge; that gruesome bit of evidence ruled out the possibility that Leon was exaggerating the potential danger to himself. Yes, Leila thought, that must have been the clincher. The man sitting next to her thought so too, some Englishman with the beginnings of a mustache. The judge had decided Leon Walsh was more sinned against than sinning—he'd actually said that. But whatever had convinced him, Leon was now free.

And Leila was free of Leon. She'd felt the need to see this last bit of trouble through, more out of self-respect than anything else. What kind of person would turn her back on a man she was once married to, at a time his whole life was in danger of collapsing? But the danger had passed, and Leila felt her final responsibility to Leon Walsh was discharged. Leon was truly on his own now. He had no criminal charges hanging over his head and
he
had no Jerry Sussman interfering with his work. Leon should do all right now. He
was
deeply in debt—but then who wasn't these days? Leon would have to get out of that hole by himself.

When she'd first arrived at the courthouse, Leila had hoped to slip unobtrusively into the back row and then out again at the end of the session. But the courtroom was much smaller than she'd expected, and Leon had spotted her right off. He'd probably looked for her to rush down front and congratulate him at the conclusion of the hearing, but Leila shrank from that kind of public display. Besides, it was Leon's victory; let him enjoy it.

"Leila." He stood close to her; she hadn't seen him approach.

"Congratulations, Leon," she smiled at him. "I'm happy for you."

"Thank you. And thanks for coming."

Like a funeral,
she thought.

Leon himself was strangely calm. "It hasn't really hit me yet," he explained, half-apologetically. "So many things have happened lately—it's all left me kind of numb."

Leila nodded. "But at least your story has a happy ending, Leon. It all worked out right. The police—or I guess I mean the prosecution—
somebody
could have made it rough for you. But nobody did." She was thinking of "The Man from Porlock"; Lieutenant Murtaugh had testified that the story was what had tipped him off to Pluto's free-lance murders. But no mention was made of the fact that the ostensible author was someone named Kellerman; Murtaugh had simply identified Leon Walsh as the author, to no objection from the defense. Leon's reputation as an editor of integrity had been sort of pro
tected.
"They could have shot you down, Leon," Leila said, "but they didn't."

He looked puzzled. "Shot me down?"

She lowered her voice. "I mean the Kellerman business."

"Kellerman?"

He really could be obtuse at times. "I'm talking about the
story."

"The story?"

"Leon, do you suffer from echopraxia?"

"Echo—"

"Stop repeating everything I say."
She took a deep breath. "Forget it. Just forget I said anything."

"No, I want to know. What about Kellerman?"

All right, if that's the way you want it.
"I just meant they could have made a big thing out of your publishing your own fiction under a pen name."

"Is that what you think?" His eyebrows climbed upward. "That I wrote 'The Man from Porlock'? You're wrong, you know. I told Kellerman what had happened to me and he wrote it up."

Oh, Leon!
She looked at him sadly, saying nothing. Even his close brush with imprisonment had taught him nothing. Still the transparent liar, still thinking he could fool people.

"Leila, let's not quarrel," he said abruptly. "Let's go somewhere and have a drink. I want to celebrate! Come help me celebrate."

She shook her head. "I'm waiting for someone."

"Oh." A possibility that clearly hadn't occurred to him. "Well. Ah. When will I see you then?"

How easily he assumed they
would
be seeing each other. "Let's not make any plans," she said.

"
I see." An uncomfortable silence grew between them. "If it's your money you're worried about, I'll be making another payment next week," he said sharply.

"Oh, Leon, I'm not worried about the money!"

Just then Dave Eberhart came up to them; he had been a witness in the hearing. "Congratulations," he said to Walsh. "I'm glad the charges were dropped."

"Thank you, uh, Sergeant," Walsh said, obviously not remembering Eberhart's name. "I have to say that sounds a mite peculiar coming from you."
Since you're the one who arrested me,
he meant.

"Yeah, I know," Eberhart grinned. "But it's such a freaky situation we had to get a court ruling on it. Especially since you didn't call in the police yourself."

"But why me? Why not the Malucci kid?"

"We didn't know about him yet. You were the first."

Walsh started to say something sarcastic but changed his mind. Why bother.

"I'll say this," Sergeant Eberhart went on. "You sure got the
cleanest
hearing I've seen in a long time. Not muddied up by a lot of extraneous stuff, I mean. You go into any normal trial courtroom and you find the prosecutors and the defense attorneys all doing exactly the same thing. They just snow the judge and the jury with as much picayune detail as they think they can get away with—a real trial is not the clear-cut, one-thing-at-a-time kind of argument you see on television. And if one side says a thing is true and the other side says no, it's not—then more often than not it's just dropped and the issue is never resolved. There are dozens of loose ends like that in every trial. Of course, this was only a preliminary hearing and there wasn't any jury—but it was still the cleanest inquiry I've ever sat through."

"How very interesting," Walsh said dryly.

Eberhart
turned to Leila. "The car's five blocks from here. You wait down front while I go get it, okay?"

"Sure," she said. Eberhart waved casually to both of them and left.

Walsh was staring bug-eyed after Eberhart. "That's the one you were waiting for? That
cop?"

"He's a very nice cop."

"But he's younger than you are!"

Leila's mouth twisted into a cynical smile. "Shocking, isn't it? We all know it's the woman who's supposed to be younger. Younger, smaller. Less."

"Oh Leila, for crying out loud, act your age. You know better than to—"

"Butt out, Leon." She spoke so harshly that a passerby turned to look. Leila shook her head in dismay; this wasn't how she'd meant it to be. "Leon, I don't want to fight with you. Can't we just say good-bye without making a big thing of it? All I want is for us to—"

But she didn't get to finish saying what she wanted them to do, because Leon Walsh had turned his back on her and walked away.

CHAPTER

12

They were parked on Tenth Street. "A regular garden of delights," Murtaugh coughed, glaring at the small mountain of garbage five feet away. Yellow and blue Chiquita Banana Puree drums topped with plastic bags, a good half of which were split open and spilling their contents on to the sidewalk. ''Jesus, what a place to meet."

"His home turf," Eberhart said apologetically.

"Which ought to be a good reason for meeting somewhere else."

"Yeah, well, he's not too bright."

Murtaugh grunted. "Where'd you get this guy?"

"Inherited him from Grivalski." Grivalski had been Eberhart's predecessor on the job, an exhausted and cynical cop who'd quit the force to become police chief of a small desert town in New Mexico. "I've used him four or five times."

"What's his name again? Barnaby what?"

"Barnes, Barnaby Barnes," Eberhart said. "That's his
real
name, too, I checked it out. Just don't call him Barney—that makes him mad."

Barnaby Barnes was an on-again, off-again police informant. He picked up a living as best he could—mostly on the fringes of other people's operations, many of which were even legitimate. When he worked at a steady job, he liked to sell women's shoes. At least he used to like it, before so many women started wearing trousers all the time.

"Here he comes," Eberhart said.

A man in his late thirties, tall and clumsy, was trying to make himself smaller by hunching his shoulders. He slid into the back seat of the car. "Drive," he rasped.

Yessir, bossman.
Eberhart started the car. "This is Lieutenant Murtaugh, Barnaby. You tell him what you got to say."

"Outa here," Barnaby commanded, slouching down in the seat. Eberhart dutifully turned uptown.

Murtaugh unfolded one of the drawings of Pluto's face. "You know this man, Barnaby?"

"You gotta understand something first," Barnaby said. "I ain't talking for myself. I'm just the intermediary."

Murtaugh nodded. "Understood."

"My friend that sent me, he wants to know what's in it for him."

"Now, Barnaby, you know that depends on what you got to sell," Eberhart put in.

"What I got's worth a hundred."

"Must be good," Murtaugh said. "Let's hear it."

"Okay. This friend, he sold your man Pluto a forty-five. And don't ask where it came from because he don't know."

"Then how'd he get it?"

"
From another friend. Look, I said don't ask, okay?"

"When was this?"

"Coupla years ago . . . yeah, about two years, that was it."

"So why are you telling us now, Barnaby?" Murtaugh asked. "A two-year-old sale of a single firearm isn't what I'd call red-hot news."

"Willya let me finish? My friend, he seen this Pluto again, just a coupla days ago."

"And?"

"And that drawing you got ain't exactly right. He's got a mustache now."

Eberhart glanced over at Murtaugh. "We put out a third version?"

"Looks like it," Murtaugh said. To Barnaby: "Handlebar, pencil-line, cookie-duster, Fu Manchu, what?"

"I dunno, just a regular mustache. Kinda full."

Murtaugh reached over the seat and handed him the flyer with the sketch of Pluto and a pencil. "Draw it in."