Kill Fee (5 page)

3

Fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes James Timothy Murtaugh went off duty, and he was leaving whether the goddam paperwork was finished or not. He pecked away at the typewriter, filling in the form on some stupid kid who'd tried to lift his billfold. Normally he'd have given the kid a kick in the ass and sent him on his way. But Ansbacher had announced before a squad room full of people that Murtaugh hadn't made a personal collar in two months; and when Captain Ansbacher spoke, the world rolled over with its paws in the air.

So there he sat, making out a report on some thick-witted teenager who hadn't even known it was a cop's billfold he was boosting. Murtaugh was a lieutenant, for chrissake, not some patrolman in a prowl car; he was supposed to oversee busts, not make them.
"
I like my ranking officers to keep in touch with the street," Ansbacher had said, overarticulating as usual. The man was an artist at dealing out small indignities. So Lieutenant James Timothy Murtaugh put the collar on an adolescent
pickpocket
and typed up the report in quadruplicate.
Keep in touch with the street.
Hah. The wonderful Captain Ansbacher himself never put in an appearance at the scene of a crime until after the shooting was over, when the arrests had been made and the hooraw had died down and it was safe once again for God-fearing people to walk the streets.

Ten minutes. Murtaugh hadn't watched the clock like that since he was a rookie. The phone rang.

Speak of the. "Murtaugh?" Ansbacher said. "We've got a street shooting, near Fifty-third and Park. I want you to cover it yourself."

Murtaugh groaned; only ten more minutes. "Right, Captain
."
He hung up
.
Bastard knows it's the end of my shift.

Fifty-third and Park. Not your usual setting for a street shooting. Murtaugh stuck his head out of his office door to see who was available. "Eberhart! You're coming with me."

Sergeant Eberhart nodded and got up from his desk with no particular show of resentment; he'd just come
on
duty.

The scene of the shooting was oddly quiet in spite of the number of people there. The rotating light on top of the medical examiner's van served notice to passersby (some of whom stopped to gawk) that something was wrong. Officers in uniform, two patrol cars. Sergeant Eberhart pulled up to a fire hydrant and parked.

A man's body lay dramatically spread-eagled on the sidewalk in front of an office building; an Oriental named Wu from the medical examiner's office was inspecting the dead man's hands. Three uniformed officers were standing guard. Murtaugh knew one of them. "Fill me in, Sodini."

"
Hello, Lieutenant. Victim's name is Jerry Sussman, and he has an office upstairs here." Officer Sodini jerked his head toward the office building behind him. "Shot at approximately ten-fifteen P.M. That's forty-five minutes ago, Lieutenant."

Murtaugh closed his eyes. "I know what time it is, Sodini. Who called the police?"

"Sussman's secretary. She witnessed the shooting, sir. My partner took her back inside."

Murtaugh nodded to Sergeant Eberhart, who went into the building to talk to the secretary. "You have his billfold?"

"I didn't touch the body, Lieutenant."

Very proper. "Anybody else see the shooting?"

"The secretary says not. None of these people saw anything." He meant the gawkers.

"I want you—and you and you," including the other two officers, "to do a door-to-door—say one block each side of the street. Anybody who saw anything, heard anything. Look for nightwatchmen, like that. Get going."

The three officers moved off on what they all knew was most likely a time-wasting expedition. Murtaugh hunkered down beside the Oriental examining the body and said, "Doctor Wu," by way of greeting.

"Evening, Lieutenant. Looks like a straightforward one this time."

"What can you tell me?"

"Only that he was shot within the past hour at fairly close range. Could be a forty-five—look at the size of that wound. We'll have to find the bullet to be sure."

"I'm going to need his billfold."

Wu gestured with one hand. "Help yourself."

Murtaugh fished out the billfold and a ring of keys. The billfold said Gerald M. Sussman, home address Cen
tral
Park West, business cards, credit cards, membership cards to private clubs. A fat cat. "When do I get the autopsy report?"

The doctor shrugged. "When it's done. You got a rush on this one?"

"Not particularly. Mostly I want a confirmation on the caliber of the bullet. We don't see forty-fives so much any more. Everybody's moving to nine-millimeter."

Wu grunted. "I'll call you as soon as I have it. Anything you want here or can we take him?"

"You might as well take him." Murtaugh stood up and watched as Wu's assistants zipped the body into the plastic carrier with some effort. The victim had been a big man; the body was heavy and bulky. They were driving away when Murtaugh went into the lobby of the office building to see what Sergeant Eberhart had found out.

"Lieutenant, this is Mrs. Janice Kluvo, kay ell you vee oh. Lieutenant Murtaugh. Mrs. Kluvo saw the shooting but she didn't get a look at the killer's face. Guy was in a car."

Janice Kluvo was in her fifties, tired, and obviously under a strain even though the initial shock had worn off. She was sitting on a folding chair the young police officer standing nearby had scrounged up for her somewhere. She focused on Murtaugh with effort and said his name.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kluvo—I know you want to go home, I'll try not to keep you. You say the killer was in a car?"

"That's right, Lieutenant, he shot from the car."

"How? Bang-bang Chicago style?"

"No, it wasn't like that. He was just driving along like everybody else. Then he pulled out of the line of traffic—"

"
Dark two-door sedan, no make," Sergeant Eberhart interrupted.

"He drove right up to the curb. We'd just come out of the building—we were working late tonight. Then the man in the car said, 'Jerry Sussman?' Like asking a question. Mr. Sussman went over to the car and the man shot him—just like that!"

Murtaugh and Eberhart exchanged a quick glance. A professional checking to make sure he had the right target? "Did you go over to the car with Mr. Sussman?"

"No, that's why I didn't get a look at the driver."

"Only the one man in the car?"

"I think so. I'm sorry to be so unhelpful, but it was dark and it happened fast and it was Mr. Sussman I was concerned about. I didn't even think to look for a license number." Her face was strained.

"Don't worry about it, Mrs. Kluvo, it was probably a rental anyway. Did you and Sussman work late often?"

"No, almost never. It's just that this month has been especially hectic and the work piled up. Mr. Sussman was selling one project and buying another, and between the two transactions we got a little behind."

"What projects? What line of work was he in?"

"Mr. Sussman is a publisher." She paused, and the men watching could see her think:
was.
"He was selling
Summit
magazine and buying into
Q. T."

"Summit
I know—what's
Q.T.?"

"A supermarket tabloid." She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands against her eyes; Murtaugh could see her hands were trembling.

Suddenly the young police officer who'd been hovering discreetly in the background stepped up to her. "You all right, ma'am?"

Mrs. Kluvo nodded and mustered up a smile for him.
Murtaugh
felt that quick wave of sympathy he always felt for eyewitnesses. Especially if the witness knew the person he or she had watched die. Mrs. Kluvo probably wanted to scream and scream and scream; but she was still making the effort to be civil.

He handed her Sussman's key ring and asked which was the office key. She picked out the right one and told him the office number. "Is this going to take much longer, Lieutenant? I'd like to call my husband. I know he's worrying."

Murtaugh pressed his lips together and thought. "I don't see any reason why you can't go on home now. We can finish this tomorrow." He arranged with her to come in and make a statement the following morning and turned to Sergeant Eberhart. "You have her home address?"

Eberhart looked pained. "Yes, Lieutenant, I've got her home address."

Murtaugh suppressed a smile; he didn't like being asked obvious questions either. "Thank you for your help, Mrs. Kluvo. The officer here will drive you home." He didn't know the young man's name.

In the elevator on the way up to Sussman's office, Eberhart said, "Couldn't have taken more than ten seconds, the way Mrs. Kluvo tells it."

"Yeah. He pulls up to the curb, pops Sussman, and drives away. Nice and neat."

"Sure looks like a hired job."

Murtaugh agreed.

Sussman's office was rather characterless, although someone—Mrs. Kluvo, no doubt—had tried to pep the place up with an array of houseplants. Murtaugh guessed that Sussman didn't spend a whole lot of time in the office; his desk had that look to it. A man on the go, then.

Murtaugh
sent Eberhart into the file room while he himself went through Sussman's appointment calendar and unanswered correspondence. Twenty minutes later he still didn't have a picture of the kind of man Jerry Sussman had been. He was big physically, Murtaugh had seen that for himself. He was pretty big financially as well—that meant he'd made some enemies along the way. What little Murtaugh could glean from the correspondence made Sussman sound like a hard case, a touch ruthless in his business dealings. So far, no surprises.

There was much about Sussman he still needed to know. Who stood to profit from his death? What about his business associates—who were they and did they have the kind of connections that could put them in touch with a professional killer? What happened to Sussman's various holdings now? Who was his lawyer? Did he have any family? What happened to the two deals he'd been making when he was shot down—did they fall through or were the papers already signed?

Sergeant Eberhart came in from the file room with a slightly dazed look on his face. "Lieutenant, we got a hell of a lot of work ahead of us."

"Um. I'd just come to that conclusion myself. I think we'll start with the two things he was working on. The sale of
Summit
magazine and the purchase of
Q-Tips
or whatever the hell it is."

"Q.T.
Like, what we're telling you is on the q.t." The Sergeant grinned. "They pronounce it 'Curie.' "

"Eberhart, you amaze me. All right, pull the files on those two. We might as well get started."

Two days later the phone call Murtaugh had been waiting for came.

"He's here, in his office," Sergeant Eberhart's voice
said
over the phone. "Says he's been out of town and didn't know about Sussman. Came back as soon as he heard."

"Sit on him." Murtaugh slammed down the receiver and hurried out of his office.

In the past two days Murtaugh had learned quite a lot about Jerry Sussman. The man used his money to bully people. Nothing new about that; an uncomfortably large segment of the population thought that was what money was
for.
But Sussman had had a way of making the intimidation a personal matter, as if he fed on other people's discomfort. One-upmanship was the air he breathed.

None of his business associates had really liked Sussman; they did business with him because he was a good money risk or because they had no alternative. His secretary, Mrs. Kluvo, liked him; he'd paid her a good salary and delegated a lot of authority to her. She admitted he wasn't in very often and she could run the office pretty much as she pleased.

Sussman had been married and divorced; his ex-wife and their fifteen-year-old daughter were now living in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sussman had provided for his ex-wife in his will—rather generously, Murtaugh thought.
Just generously enough,
Sussman's lawyer had remarked dryly,
to prevent the former Mrs. Sussman from making trouble.

The bulk of Sussman's money was tied up in his various projects. In all of his partnership contracts, there was a clause to the effect that in case of the death of one partner, the surviving partner or partners had first option to buy up the deceased partner's shares. Whether they exercised the option or not, the proceeds from any sale were to go to Sussman's daughter.

So a teenager in Arizona who hadn't seen her father
since
she was six years old was on the road to becoming a very wealthy young lady. Mrs. and Miss Sussman's presence in Scottsdale at the time of Sussman's death had been satisfactorily attested to. In addition, Mrs. Sussman had cut all her ties to New York; she didn't even exchange Christmas cards with former friends who still lived there. It seemed highly unlikely that she could have engineered Sussman's death.

Murtaugh mentally scratched her off the list and concentrated on the two transactions Sussman had been working on right before he was killed. Both deals were now off; papers had been signed in neither case.

In the case of
Q.T.
, the present publisher and the editorial staff were desolated by Sussman's murder.
Q.T.
had been dying on the stands and in the supermarkets; too much competition. The market was saturated with gossipy tabloids, and only the strongest (that is, the juiciest) were going to make it. The people at
Q.T.
needed fresh money, a financial shot in the arm if they were going to compete on the level needed to survive.
They
had approached
Sussman,
not the other way around. Now, unless they could find another money man fast,
Q.T.
would fold.

Summit
magazine, however, was quite a different matter. Sussman had been negotiating its sale to UltraMedia Corporation without the consent or even the knowledge of the editor. The editor, Leon Walsh, had built
Summit
up from nothing and was a part-owner. But he couldn't override the majority owner's decisions and had learned only a few days ago that his magazine was being sold out from under him.