Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky (19 page)

    “In name only!”

    “He is a face in a semi-final in a few weeks. How can he ask himself questions?”

    “Sedge is sure to be back by then! That will make you
all
happy.”

    “Doesn’t worry me one iota,” said Monty.

    “Makes no special difference to
me
one way or the other,” supplied Ace Jellis.

    “For once, I totally agree with Ace and Monty. Here I am breaking my neck trying to tell you, Peter, if you don’t have Jim Carrey or Jack Nicholson or Steve Martin, it matters not a spoonful of sand in the whole Sahara if you throw the viewers Merryll Manning or Malcolm S. Bloggs.”

    “Thanks very much!” I cried out.

    “Provided he isn’t cross-eyed or hare-lipped, the only requirement for a goddamned TV announcer is that he announce.”

    “Thanks again!”

    But Mr. Kent totally ignored my interruptions: “Only three things influence ratings, Peter – and ratings are all that interest us – you as a sponsor selling a product, Monty as a producer selling a show, and me as a studio manager selling facilities and time. Three things, Peter: One, does the show have popular appeal? Is there something about it to interest every age group, or in particular the age group to which you target your specific product? Two, what bankable emotion does it inspire in the viewers? Answer: Greed! Money – the poor need it to survive, the middle classes use it to big-note themselves, and of course the already rich thrive on it. Three, the ratings themselves! If nurtured correctly, good ratings will grow into better ratings. So what are our competitors throwing against us to seduce our viewers into switching to their own super-trashy, penne ante programs? Fourth and final and most important of all: Publicity! Is everyone talking about us?”

    “It is not fair to use murder – the murder of a lovely, innocent woman – in this way. Not fair at all!”

    “Hell, Peter! I don’t make the rhadamanthine rules!”

    “I wish to cancel,” Peter insisted.

    “We’ve just been through all that! We all loved Spookie. We all loved her and we all miss her. She was a really swell girl, but we can’t bring the dead back to life. So we soldier on without her, even though every day we’re reminded of her presence. This station is co-operating with the police to the fullest and widest extent possible. We’ve given the police
names
of possible suspects, we’ve provided – ”

    “What names?” asked Peter.

    “Unsuccessful contestants from the first six shows.”

    “Waste of time!” Monty explained. “It’s not one of them!”

    “Yes, it is not one of them,” agreed Peter.

    “But the police are checking them out anyway. Gives them something to do.”

    “Why do they waste their time? It is not a contestant,” Peter persisted.

    “How can you be so sure?” asked Kent.

    “I know them. I know their hearts, their minds when they come to me at Total Service seeking their prize money or their vouchers.”

    “You see only half of them anyway! Aren’t you always complaining that more than half your vouchers are unclaimed?”

    “You forget that we know what
all
the contestants look like!” I couldn’t resist spiking Kent’s argument.

    “How in hell do you make that out?” he yelled.

    “They don’t know we have no tapes. Every single one of your contestants would assume we had them on permanent record. They wouldn’t dare kill a fly.”

    “Manning is right,” agreed Peter. “We are the people – the only people – who know the tapes are missing.”

    “But we’ll get hold of them anyway,” I forecast. “I’ve put ads in all the papers. That will flush them out. Not that it will do us any good, but it will keep the police busy and get them off
our
backs.”

    “Good! Very good!” A rare pat on the back from Mr. Kent.

    “The killer is in the files, not the tapes!” I continued. “And that’s why the killer took them. He sure knows his way around! If only we had a line on his motive. What was in the files that was so important, it would have led us straight to him?”

    “Maybe we still find them,” Peter suggested. “A lot of files like that, they are hard to get rid of.”

    “Easiest thing in the world, Peter. He just takes out his own file – when he finds it – and destroys it. Then he sends the lot back to us or leaves it at the city dump.”

    “Why didn’t he do just that in the office?” Kent asked. “Why take the needless risk of carting the whole lot away?”

    “Because he didn’t have time to look for it. Imagine his horror when he opens the cabinet and finds the files are no longer filed in alphabetical order. I was sorting them all out sexually and geographically. But our killer is a quick thinker and – lucky for him! – he’d allowed himself at least an hour. So relays the lot into the boot of his car.”

    Peter laughed. “It is useless!” he said.

    Now what did he mean by that? A little of Peter goes a long way in my book. I confess it. He still frightened me and I often wished he hadn’t told me his secret, so I quickly changed the subject. “What does Sedge remember?”

    “He didn’t see her,” Monty replied. 

    “
Claims
he didn’t see her!” amended Ace Jellis. He shuddered dramatically. “Not until he found her
dead
!”

    All eyes except Peter’s looked to me. Peter kept nodding his head towards the floor.

    “At least Miss Williams had already lined up all the contestants,” Kent growled, as if making a grudging acknowledgment of a rare example of efficiency. “Now, what about the questions? I thought Sedge kept them close somewhere?”

    “An
obvious
deduction!” smirked Ace Jellis.

    “Peter managed to open Sedge’s desk – without doing any damage to the desk at all,” supplied Monty. “We knew Sedge must have written down the questions somewhere!”

    “An obvious deduction,” Kent agreed.

    “In a
briefcase
in his desk,” added Ace Jellis.

    “There was just one problem. But Peter fixed that.”

    “It was nothing!” Peter was determined to be modest. “Just nothing.”

    “And what exactly was this nothing problem?”

    “I don’t like to mention it,” said Monty.

    “God damn it, Monty, you brought it up! What was it?”

    “It reflects on Miss Williams, but we were all thrown off by everything that happened – the threats, the tension on the set, the…”

    “Excuses understood! Get on with it!”

    “You know how we always get the contestants to phone in, to confirm the arrangements? Today, we got seven calls.”

    “Seven calls, Monty? You’re not making yourself clear.”

    “Miss Williams had lined up seven contestants for next Monday night instead of six.”

    “How in hell could that happen?”

    “God knows! But it threw us for a while, I can tell you. Finally, Manning managed to sort the odd man out. From the questions. The odd ball was a coin collector, for God’s sake, but Manning pointed out there were no questions on coin collecting. So then we knew he was lined up by mistake. So then Peter took charge and sorted him out.”

    “How? You bought him off?”

    Peter seemed anxious to downplay his role. “It was nothing.”

    I was confused. A few moments ago, Peter was so anxious to cancel, but now it seemed he was actually helping the show to go on.
Nothing?
Five or ten grand! But then, what did that matter? With the phenomenal increase in exposure of Total Service Travel Agents, Peter was obviously in line to make a fortune. Sentiment notwithstanding, if the ratings were only a quarter of what Kent and Monty were projecting, Peter would be forced to move Total Service from its present cramped quarters into some ritzy high-rise – and like it!

    “How’s the post? Has anybody checked the mail?” Monty asked.

    “Checked it myself!” I told them. “No threats of any kind – not even an overdue bill or two.”

    You could actually hear the sighs of relief.

    “What is then happening with the police?” Peter asked.

    I looked at him in amazement. “We’ve just been through all that, Peter!”

    “How close are they? How close? Do they have ideas? Any ideas? Any ideas at all? Any suspects? They must surely suspect someone! Surely someone?”

    “At the moment, if you must know, we’re all on their list. But top of the list is a lad named Gino! Borne and I tried to check him out at the markets that occupy the ground floor – and then some! – at the building you occupy, Peter. But we drew a blank. Cost me twenty dollars too. I must remind myself to put that twenty on my expense sheet!”

    “Who you see? Who you see at the markets?”

    “A gent named Avati.”

    “Bill Avati? He is a good man.”

    “Most certainly not my impression, Peter! Anyway, the police have this Gino’s boots and gloves, but he himself has disappeared. We’re trying hard to track him down.”

    “Why? Just why?”

    “The police theory is a simple one, Peter. This Gino was a professional con man – or con youth! We think he tried to put pressure on Spookie to get himself into the show.”

    “Eighty thousand dollars up for grabs!” Kent declared proudly. Anyone would think it was
his
money! Who was bankrolling it anyway? Not Monty or Ace, that’s for sure. So presumably they’d talked Peter into sponsoring the whole pot. No wonder he wanted out!

    “You say, the police have questioned Bill Avati? He is a good man. He will put them right.”

    “Peter! We’ve moved on from Bill Avati to the missing Gino.”

    “But what has happened to Bill Avati?”

    “If you must know, Peter, Borne arrested the bastard and I helped escort him to police headquarters.”

    “The police have arrested him? Bill Avati? Bill Avati?”

    “Correct!”

    “Why?”

    “If you must know Peter, the police suspect he knows a real whole lot about illegal activities at the markets. He pretends he knows nothing, and yet he’s the manager. As far as Inspector Borne is concerned, that’s where the buck stops. If you want my impression, I believe the police have been just waiting for a chance to grill Avati and I – thanks to Spookie’s death and Gino’s  disappearance and Avati’s own lack of co-operation – have unknowingly supplied them with that opportunity. You happy now?”

    “Arrested Bill Avati? It is hard to believe.”

    “I don’t know if they’ve formally arrested Avati, but when I left him, the police were questioning the bastard pretty close.”

    “I must try to help. Bill Avati is my old friend. I must phone my lawyer. Please, I must phone!”

    “Feel free!” Kent growled, motioning towards one of the phones on his desk.

    Peter ran forward and was soon jabbering away to some legal Giuseppe in twenty-to-the-dozen, fast-paced Italian. It was so fast, I couldn’t keep up with him, but I got the impression that both Peter and the legal eagle regarded Avati as a cross between Santa Claus and Joan of Arc. It’s marvelous how these guys all stick together. In my opinion, Bill Avati was about as honest as Al Capone and as friendly as a yellow-fanged cobra.

    “Speaking of names,” growled Kent as soon as Peter terminated his call and I was just about to ask to be excused so that I could put in a quick call to Borne from Sedge’s dressing room, “we’ll need a handle for Merryll?”

   
Hell!

    “Obviously he can’t use his own name,” Monty agreed.

   
“That’s just what I’m saying, damn it! Something short and snappy. Two syllable names are best: Ronnie Reagan. Woody Allen. Gary Cooper. Mickey Rooney.”

    “Adolph Hitler,” I murmured. “Joseph Stalin.”

    “Merryll Manning’s just
right
,” Ace Jellis interrupted hastily. “Shame, you can’t use it!”

    But boss Kent had heard me. “Okay, smart ass,” he ordered, looking me full in the face, “let’s hear your big note.”

    “I think we’re all going at this the wrong way,” I answered. “We don’t want a name that viewers will remember, but one they’ll find easy to forget.”

    “I’m with you,” growled Kent.

    “But a name like Jack Smith or Bill Jones is too ordinary. We need a common as tap water Christian name – like Bob or Bill or Dave or Joe – coupled with a surname that’s neither too common not too unusual. My mother’s name was Ellen. How about we spell it, E-l-l-i-n? My dad’s name was Don, so let’s make it Don Ellin. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

26

Try as I might, I couldn’t disentangle myself from Mr. Kent. He doubtless suspected my motives, so I was forced to phone Inspector Borne from Kent’s office with the master listening in on his secretary’s extension.