Kill Fee (19 page)

11

What a laugh. Nobody could identify him from that silly drawing, he was sure. He was almost sure. A police drawing based on a description given by a stationery store clerk who'd seen him only twice, and that was months ago. It looked like a cartoon, not a person. It certainly didn't look like
him.

Maybe he should grow a beard?

Pluto took a large pair of scissors and cut the sketch out of the newspaper. He pinned the drawing to the corkboard wall of his study. He walked around, looking at it from different angles. He tried squinting his eyes. No, he just could not see himself in the drawing. If that was all the police had to go on, he didn't need to worry. So, no beard. Good; he hated the idea of all that hair sprouting out of his face. But an ounce of precaution never hurt—he'd compromise: a mustache.

Pluto had had enough time to get over the initial shock of hearing his name on the six o'clock news several nights earlier. A police captain who looked like a bulldog and
talked
like an elocution teacher had announced to the world that the NYPD had only recently learned of a murderer-for-hire named Pluto—who killed first and collected afterward. The captain's name was Ansbacher and he told the reporters shouting questions all about Leon Walsh and Roscoe Malucci (Pluto's two big mistakes). Ansbacher said they were investigating other cases that Pluto may or may not have been involved in—the thought of which made Pluto a bit nervous. But he cheered up considerably when he heard Leon Walsh had been charged with being an accessory to murder.

Of course, he would have preferred total anonymity, but Walsh didn't really know anything to tell the police. Every step Pluto had ever taken to protect himself had been chosen with this eventuality in mind: that someday, somehow, the police would learn of his existence. But if anybody was going to jail, Pluto sincerely hoped it would be Leon Walsh. Evidently Roscoe had shot off his mouth just as much as Walsh and had even given the police the bill Pluto had sent. But Roscoe Malucci was a fool, an empty-headed nitwit who'd never be anything more than what he was at that very moment. Walsh, on the other hand, was an educated adult, a professional man, someone who ought to know how to conduct himself in tight situations. Leon Walsh offended Pluto's sense of decorum.

That time when Captain Ansbacher first announced that the police were on to Pluto—that had been a
bad
moment. Pluto had had to fight an unseemly urge to throw a few things into a suitcase and catch the first plane for Switzerland. But then he reflected that, all things considered, it was rather thoughtful of the good captain to keep him informed of police goings-on. Pluto might have blithely gone his usual way and walked right into a trap, a setup. Now . . .

Now
what? Pluto read every newspaper account he could find over the past two days, including today's publication of the police Identikit sketch that was supposed to represent his face. He tried to remember the stationery store clerk who the papers said had helped the police with the sketch, but he came up blank. Since the police had traced the blue paper to the store where he'd ordered it, that meant he wouldn't be able to go on using the Nicholas Ramsay alias any longer. And
that
meant he'd have to change answering services, find a new mail drop. What a bother. Oh well, he'd have had to do all that eventually anyway; might as well be now as later.

At first Pluto thought Captain Ansbacher had done all the investigating himself, but such turned out not to be the case. The man in charge of the Jerry Sussman murder investigation and the one who'd arrested Leon Walsh was a Lieutenant James T. Murtaugh. Ansbacher had failed to mention Murtaugh in his television announcement and in fact had identified him only in response to a direct question from a newspaper reporter the next day. A little interdepartmental rivalry there? Something worth looking into, perhaps.

But he wasn't even going to be able to cross the street from now on without looking both ways twice. All these years he'd been practicing his profession without the police tumbling to what was going on—they hadn't had a
clue.
Now his unique approach to staving off personal economic crisis was smeared all over television and the newspapers for everyone to see. Pluto knew as well as he knew the sun would rise out of the smog the next morning exactly what was going to happen next: imitators. Before long the police would be blaming
him
for copycat killings he wouldn't even know about! What a revolting development.

Perhaps
it was time to retire. The chalet between Lausanne and Geneva beckoned. But the chalet wasn't furnished in the early-rich-man style Pluto wanted, and he didn't have enough for that
plus
the lavish style of living the money-worshipping Swiss so heartily encouraged in their alien residents. Besides—wouldn't it be better to stay in New York where he could keep an eye on things? Pluto didn't think it would be too difficult to stay ahead of the grandstanding Captain Ansbacher.

He turned back to the newspaper clippings, skimming through until he found what he was looking for. Leon Walsh's hearing was scheduled for the following Monday.

Monday,
Pluto mused. Perhaps he should drop in, just to see how things went.

''Lieutenant, she's just not talking. Not even yes or no when we ask her if she wants coffee. We're not going to get anything out of that one."

Murtaugh thought Sergeant Eberhart had a harried look to him. "Does she have a lawyer?"

"She didn't ask for one. She's just sitting there with her mouth shut, waiting us out." Eberhart plopped down on a chair in Murtaugh's office and stuck his feet out in front of him. "We can't hold her much longer."

"I know," Murtaugh said quietly. "But she paid Pluto —I'm sure of it. You confronted her with the evidence that she'd had to raise a hundred thousand dollars in a hurry, didn't you? What did she say then?"

"Same as she said to everything else—nothing. She didn't say 'None of your business' or 'Bug off' or anything. She just keeps her mouth closed and her gaze fixed on the wall behind us. She
ignores
us, Lieutenant. Carolyn Randolph isn't going to tell us a thing."

"Hell. She's the one I wanted the most."

"
How about trying for a search warrant? For her home
and
her office—we might have probable cause. If we could find the bill Pluto sent her—"

Murtaugh cut him off. "Nothing doing there—I already asked. Besides, anybody cool enough to outwait a police interrogation isn't going to leave incriminating evidence lying around where we could find it. Damn. I especially wanted Carolyn Randolph to talk."

Eberhart thought he knew why; there was some hidden connection among Carolyn Randolph and the late William Parminter and Sutton Construction Company and Captain Ansbacher. Not for the first time Eberhart wished Murtaugh would take him into his confidence; he wanted to know exactly what the Lieutenant had on Ansbacher so far. But Murtaugh was keeping him out of it; to protect him, no doubt. Right now, though, the problem was the speak-no-evil Carolyn Randolph. "So what do we do with her?"

"Let her go." Murtaugh sighed. "If the charges against Leon Walsh are dropped, maybe she'll talk to us then."

"I don't think so." Eberhart stood up to go. "She's not like Walsh and Roscoe Malucci, Lieutenant. She knows we got
nothing
on her without her cooperation."

Murtaugh nodded, waved him out. So forget about the Randolph woman; she wasn't going to help. Better to concentrate on one of the other possibles, somebody like the opera singer, what was his name—Bàccolo, Luigi Bàccolo, that was it.

Although he wasn't any too clear on what he hoped any of them could tell him, Pluto's . . . what? Customers, clients? Murtaugh thought the Walsh arrangement was probably typical, and Pluto never came face to face with the people he billed for one hundred thousand each. Roscoe Malucci was the exception to the procedure, the
dumb
bunny who'd failed to understand what very real danger he was in. Even then Pluto hadn't shown his face.

The answering service Pluto had been using sent a monthly statement to Nicholas Ramsay at the Knickerbocker Mail Address Service on Fifth Avenue. Both services said that Ramsay had been a customer for only four months. That meant Pluto periodically changed his name, his mailing address, and his telephone number. A careful man.

Pluto.
A red-hot devil? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. This had to be the most cold-blooded son of a bitch ever to walk the streets of Manhattan. The man must be totally without conscience. What other kind of person could impartially survey a conflict between two human beings he didn't even know, dispassionately pick one of them to champion, and then coolly destroy the other one's life? Pluto had had no compunction about shooting down Roscoe Malucci's grandmother, an elderly woman with no defenses, with no idea even that she was in danger. Poor old woman. What chance do the Mrs. Maluccis have against a Pluto?

That was the thing about Pluto that Murtaugh hated the most: Pluto sucker-punched his victims. They had no warning, not even a hint of what was coming. People living together in society had to trust one another to an extent; they had no choice. You had to trust the short-order cook not to sprinkle arsenic on your hamburger because he was mad at the world and wanted to hit back; you had to trust your life to the
drivers
of the world, taxi drivers and bus drivers and pilots, all of them strangers; you had to trust that the man sitting so close to you in a theater that your elbows touched wouldn't suddenly slip a knife between your ribs. It was a trust that was a little harder come by every year, and someone like Nicholas
Pluto
Ramsay could wipe out what little was left without half trying. One Pluto equaled several thousand cases of paranoia. He had to be stopped, and he had to be stopped soon.

"Murtaugh!"
The word was a shout; Murtaugh looked up to see Captain Ansbacher looming over him. "What do you think you're doing?
What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Murtaugh stood up uneasily. "What do you mean, Captain?"

"What do you mean, Captain?" Ansbacher mimicked viciously. "You're not going to try the wide-eyed innocent shtick, are you? Aren't you a little old for that?"

Murtaugh counted to five. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me, Murtaugh. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Who told you to bring Carolyn Randolph in for questioning?"

"Who . . . ? Nobody told me, Captain. I think she paid Pluto for killing William Parminter—after the fact, of course."

"You
think.
No, Murtaugh, you don't think—that's your trouble. You don't think, and you don't listen. I told you to keep your hands off the Parminter case."

"It's the same killer, both Parminter and Jerry Sussman were killed by the same—"

"There, that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about," Ansbacher interrupted smoothly. "You just don't listen. When was the last time you had your hearing checked, Murtaugh? Maybe you have a physical disability."

Murtaugh fought down the urge to punch this vicious bulldog in the snout, said nothing.

"I pulled you off the Parminter case so you could con
centrate
on nailing the Sussman killer. Then the minute I'm not looking you're back sticking your nose in the Parminter investigation, meddling in somebody else's case."

"I'm not interfering with the investigation—"

"You hauled Carolyn Randolph in, didn't you? What do you call that? I call it interference."

"Captain—"

"And you didn't report to me what you were doing. There's only one way I can read that, Murtaugh—you were going behind my back. You disobeyed my orders."

"Now just a minute, Captain," Murtaugh said angrily. "This has gone far enough. I was ordered to investigate the murder of Jerry Sussman and that's what I'm doing. I turned up a killer-for-hire named Pluto—is that supposed to be the end of it? We don't have Pluto in custody, we don't even know his real identity. Do I just drop the whole thing because he may be the man other investigators are looking for in other cases? What do you expect me to do?"

"I
expect
you to obey my orders."

"Do you mean I'm just to stop my investigation or—"

"I mean what I say," Ansbacher said, deliberately vague. "If you can't follow directions—Murtaugh, listen up because this is the last time I'm telling you. You are not to interfere in the Parminter case. You are not to question anyone associated with that case. You're not to bother Carolyn Randolph again."

"How can I follow up on the Sussman case if—"

"You're supposed to be the bright boy around here, you figure it out. But take this as an official warning, Murtaugh. If I find you anywhere near any case other than the Sussman murder, I'm going to have you sus
pended.
Now I can't make it any plainer than that. Do you understand?''

"Yes," Murtaugh said shortly.

Captain Ansbacher lumbered out without another word.

Murtaugh sank back down into his chair, his skin hot and a tight knot in his stomach. He had never, never before in his life been tempted to strike a fellow policeman. But he had come
so close
—god, if he'd let Ansbacher have it, that would have been the end of his career. Murtaugh wondered if the man had been deliberately baiting him, trying to provoke him into striking out.

He wasted nearly half an hour just cooling down to the point where he could think rationally again. Murtaugh wondered if Pluto had any idea of the extent of the trouble he was causing. He'd probably be pleased if he did know—that one had to have a gargantuan ego to do what he did. But maybe that could work to the police's advantage. Pluto had been supercareful so far, and there was no reason to assume he'd abandon his usual caution now. But he was not omniscient, and that ego might lead him to expose himself in a way he hadn't anticipated. Besides, Murtaugh still had a trick or two up his sleeve.