The Specialists (10 page)

“A room on the first floor. Buddy’s things, you keep what you want, the rest you get rid of. You sleep there tonight.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Platt.”

Ten years minimum, and that was how long it took to replace Buddy Rice. This Gleason, this Buddy Gleason, he could be good or he could be not so good. He’d find out soon enough. He might drive too fast like so many of them did. They tried to show how good they were and they drove you faster than you wanted to go. Or he might not be good with a gun, or he might not know how to keep his mouth shut in front of broads or business people. That was one thing that was good about Buddy, the other Buddy. He knew when to shut up and he looked almost human in a suit. This new Buddy, well, he’d do until something better turned up.

But who killed him? Platt didn’t know, didn’t especially care. Gleason, maybe; he was horny enough for the job. If that was so, then he’d probably be good. Whoever did it, it was somebody in the organization, probably somebody in Platt’s own part of the organization. It was very goddamned professional—gaffing the car to set Buddy up, then taking Buddy out with a knife. Buddy himself had been good with a knife and it would take somebody very good to do him that way.

Woman trouble, he guessed. Something like that. One way or another Buddy stepped on somebody’s toes, and the somebody did the job himself or more likely hired it done, and the hit was carried out in such a way that there was no mess with cops. It was, all in all, a very clean kill to straighten up after. Platt decided he ought to be grateful.

The sky was light by the time he got back into the house. No sleep at all, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep now, and Saturday night was always big. The things you went through.

He went to the downstairs lavatory, chased two Dexamils with a glass of water. Then he woke up the colored woman and told her to make him some eggs and a pot of coffee.

He was still reading the paper when one of the boys called from the front gate. Something about the tree surgeons, the same ones who had driven up yesterday.

All he needed. Rice dead, and the aggravation with Marlene, and not getting to those two quiffy blondes, and now his trees were dying. Five hundred a month for gardening and his trees were dying.

“Yeah,” he said, “send ’em up to the house.”

FOURTEEN

The house was a two-story semidetached on Curline Avenue in Passaic. Kenneth Hoskins lived on the second floor. Heavy Victorian furniture framed a contemporary Oriental rug. Every horizontal surface held things—china dogs, woodcarvings, souvenir ashtrays. Mrs. Hoskins, a plump, bright-eyed grandmother type, had obviously decided what would go where. Mr. Hoskins, a sixtyish Dagwood Bumstead, had obviously never objected to anything, and never would.

Now he said, “I’ve told this story so many times, you see. Over and over and over. Of course I felt terrible about Fred, that was Fred Youngwood, the guard that was shot? I felt just awful, we all did, and Alice, but at least they say she’ll be all right, and there’s the medical coverage, and I think other damages she’s entitled to. I mean Alice Fullmer, the teller, she was shot also?”

Dehn wondered why some people turned statements into questions, and what they expected you to do about it. He nodded, which seemed to be what Hoskins wanted.

“I’ve been with the police, oh, I don’t know how many times. The police here and also the state troopers, and there was the FBI.”

“They came to the house,” Mrs. Hoskins put in, “and several times Arnold had to go to them. That didn’t seem right. Arnold works long hours.”

“I had to look at pictures,” Hoskins said. “So many pictures.” He thought for a moment. “Books and books of them? Of criminals?”

Dehn nodded twice. “I certainly hate to take up your time,” he said. “Especially on a beautiful day like today.”

“It’s their garden,” Mrs. Hoskins said.

“Pardon?”

“Downstairs. They own it, it’s their garden. Where we used to live we’d spend a day like today working in the yard, but it was too big a place with the children grown and moved away, and here we just rent and it’s their garden.”

Her husband said, “The people downstairs? The owners?”

“Yes.” Dehn drew a breath. “But my editors like a fresh approach, you understand. Going straight to the actual eyewitnesses. This seems like an interesting case, no suspects identified to date——”

“You told me the magazine, but I forgot.”

“
Factual Detective
,” Dehn said.

“I think I know that one.”

“One of the leaders in the field. Now I have some sketches here, and——”

Mrs. Hoskins said, “You work for this magazine?”

“That’s right.”

“I mean you get so much a week or what?”

“Well, I’m a freelance writer, actually.” She was a peach, Dehn thought. If he’d hit her on his encyclopedia route, he wouldn’t even have tried to make a sale. He’d have excused himself and gone away at once. “I write pieces for them on assignment,” he went on.

“So you get paid for what you write.”

He nodded.

“How much?”

An old schoolmate of Dehn’s covered crime news for a paper in Kansas City and did occasional freelance pieces for the fact crime magazines, so Dehn happened to know a little about his cover. The magazines paid around a hundred dollars for run-of-the-mill coverage, more if there were good photos. But if he told her that, she wouldn’t believe it anyway.

So he said, “I get reimbursed for research expenses, Mrs. Hoskins. So I might be able to compensate your husband for his time.”

Hoskins’ time turned out to be worth twenty dollars an hour. It was money well spent, and Dehn made a mental note to throw a little cash at all of the witnesses. Because Hoskins was getting paid, he kept his mind on the conversation and dredged his memory for the odd bits of detail that Dehn was interested in. Because Hoskins was getting paid, Mrs. Hoskins kept her mouth shut, and that alone was worth twenty dollars anytime.

Last night Dehn and the colonel had gone over the floor plan of the New Cornwall Bank until either of them could have drawn it with both eyes closed. It wasn’t at all hard to come up with a decent line of operations for knocking the place over. But it wasn’t just a question of doing the job effectively. They had to leave fingerprints. They had to make the score duplicate the Passaic robbery in enough important respects so that the dumbest cop in New Jersey could get the message. The newspaper coverage was thorough, but the colonel had pointed out the importance of primary sources. The little details that would make for instant recognition, a gunman’s phrasing, the positioning of the robbers, these were the sort of trivial points that no one would bother to include in a news story or police report.

Hoskins, for example, had mentioned as an afterthought that one of the gunmen had had a wart on the back of his hand. It would be easy enough to putty a wart onto the back of somebody’s hand, and the fact that the original owner of the wart might have had nothing else in common with the new wart carrier meant nothing, since no one person would have been present at both robberies. Police reports of both cases would mention that wart, and that would be a tag.

None of the original criminals had had a mug shot on file, nor did any of Colonel Cross’s crew. A wart was a wart.

“I think that’s all I can remember,” Hoskins said finally. “Of course there may have been other things I said to Lieutenant Frazier, but he could tell you that. Unless you’ve seen him already?”

On the sidewalk Dehn glanced at his watch, walked over to his car. It was parked so that the license plates could not be seen from the Hoskins house. Lieutenant Frazier, he thought. Well, why not? It might look fishy if a crime reporter interviewed the hell out of the eyewitnesses and never even visited the police station. And the colonel always said that the best defense was a good offense.

The fool things you went through, Murdock thought. All of that time and energy spent talking old Mrs. Tuthill into letting them saw an old limb off her tree, just to have a name to toss out at Platt, and here the old Jewboy could care less. Maybe that was one of the good things about being a gangster, maybe you just never had to worry about getting taken by some small-time con man. But Platt, he never even let them get a word in about Mrs. Tuthill.

“All I know about trees is the leaves fall off ’em,” he had said. “And if they die, you can’t replace ’em, you have to put in a little one and you’re dead fifty years before it’s big enough to sit under. I don’t want trees dying, not with the kind of money I spend on this place. You see the garden? The lawn? I got the best. I pay for it and I get the best.”

Murdock hugged the trunk of the tree, put his foot on a branch to test it. He was some thirty feet from the ground, and he turned to flash a grin at Simmons. Simmons could climb if he had to, but he wasn’t exactly at home in a tree, and it stood to reason that a fool who climbed trees for a living would move around up there like a squirrel, and Murdock could do this. Heights didn’t do a thing to him. The first ten times he jumped out of planes, he shat his pants, and the eleventh time he didn’t, and once falling held no fear, heights became quite comfortable.

The branch was sound, so he stepped up onto it and worked up to the next one, testing first, then making the step. At least he didn’t have to saw anything off this time. They had told Platt that they wanted to go over the entire property and survey the trees, and then the boss could send them an estimate on the entire job. That was the best line they could have pitched him. Platt wanted everything perfect, all at once. He didn’t care what it cost, just so his trees and his lawn and his house and his garden were the best he could buy.

Murdock climbed a few feet higher, took a look around. The tree was probably good for another couple of yards but he didn’t want to push it. He had enough height, there were good openings in the branches, and he was far enough up to be invisible from the ground.

He opened the clasp on the canvas sack slung over his neck and took out the little camera. Giordano had explained it to him, and he had gone over its use again with Simmons earlier that morning. It was about as simple as it could get. You just pointed it and clicked the clicker and after you’d done that a dozen times, you popped in a new cartridge and started over.

He shot the whole roll, spacing the twelve shots around what they had taught him to call a 360-degree perimeter, which was an Army way of saying you did what a dog did before lying down, you turned around in a circle.

He opened the back of the camera, dropped the cartridge into the sack, and inserted a fresh one. Then, whistling softly to himself, he started back down the tree again.

Manso said, “Eddie here, sir. I drove by the house at thirteen ten. Our tree surgeons are on the job.”

“Good.”

“I was wondering when I ought to go in.”

“How do you feel?”

“Nervous, but then I’d figure to be nervous, wouldn’t I? From his point of view, I mean,”

“Yes. Did you sleep last night?”

“Some.”

“Enough so that you’re rested?”

“No problem. Sir? I think I’d like to go in soon.”

“Of course you don’t want to rush things.”

“No, but he’s home now, and it would be easier with him at home.”

“Perhaps. You don’t think the coincidence might strike him as extraordinary?”

“Sir, whatever we do, we’re hung with the coincidence. Tell a lie, you might as well tell a big one. It’s the same as being nervous, anyhow. Now’s exactly the time I’d figure to make my play.”

“Good point.” The colonel paused, and Manso was about to say something when he spoke again. “I’d wait a few hours. Give our friends time to finish their survey.”

“Check. Sir? Just how positive are we on the background?”

“Well, Helen did a very good job. The vital statistics are accurate. He was at the right place at the right time. It could have happened. It’s not the sort of thing that can be easily disproved.”

“I figured on playing it uncertain. Reluctant and uncertain.”

“Yes. Edward, if you’d rather take your time on this, I wouldn’t blame you in the least. I’d rather you held off until you felt sure of yourself. A day or two one way or the other——”

“Could make a lot of difference. No, it could. And the waiting is the hardest part. I don’t know Howard’s schedule, Howard and Ben. I think fifteen hundred hours would be good. And if we overlap by a few minutes, what’s the difference?”

“Well, that’s true enough.”

“So I’ll figure to go in about that time. I don’t know when the hell I’ll be able to get to a phone, but if Howard gaffs the car, I’ll be able to signal. So if you don’t hear from me in seven or eight hours——”

“Be careful, Edward.”

“You spoiled my line. I was saying if you don’t hear from me, just start digging around in Platt’s backyard. It’s not that good a line to begin with, is it? I’ll be all right sir. It’s just butterflies. I’ll be all right.”

“I know you will, Edward.”

When Simmons had seen as much of the grounds as he could stand, he made his way back to the truck. He tossed his clipboard into the front seat, then walked around to the back. Murdock was on his sixth tree and Simmons could only hope he was about ready to pack it in. He was impatient to get going.

Something about the place gave him the jitters. At first the lawn and gardens had overwhelmed him. The plantings were what might be called semiformal, in perfect order and yet with a natural feel to them. As he walked through it all he had thought what a man could do with a place this size, the pleasure you could have.

Then another thought came along and soured it all. What was the thrill of somebody else did it for you? Platt, now, how could he take any pride in what he had? Somebody cut the grass and somebody else weeded the flower beds and somebody else trimmed the shrubbery, and Platt, all he did was write out a check.

Simmons had heard of stamp collectors like that. He was an unsuccessful bidder for one such lot, a prize-winning collection of German States issues that had taken honors at national and regional shows. The condition of the material was of an exceptionally high level, the mounting was magnificent, the degree of completeness most impressive. But the retired rancher who had owned those extraordinary stamps didn’t know a watermark from a perforation. He had professional buyers purchasing stamps for him, and he had a commercial artist preparing his displays, and he kept the whole collection in a bank vault and never even looked at it. Finally he sold it because he got bored with it, but as far as Simmons could understand, he had never gotten interested in it to begin with. He was like Platt. He wanted the best, he could afford the best, but what he wound up with wasn’t really his at all, because all he ever put into it was money.