Kill Fee (27 page)

What Murtaugh had proposed was such a perfect setup for a double-cross! Or a triple-cross, if it came to that. It was also a scenario that would work the way it was supposed to if it was played absolutely straight. And that, of course, depended solely upon Lieutenant James Timothy Murtaugh. Jim Tim. Pluto unaccountably felt a new stab of homesickness.
It's only a few years.

Pluto shifted his weight, trying to find a more comfortable position in his rental car; so little leg room! He was parked across the street from the entrance to Murtaugh's apartment building, in the exact same spot where he'd parked two days earlier. That was the morning after
the
first time he'd spoken to the Lieutenant, the time he'd made all his threatening noises. The following morning he'd seen Ellie come scurrying out the door, escorted by good old Jim Tim and a man Pluto didn't know carrying a suitcase. The three of them had climbed into a sedan driven by a woman Pluto didn't know—and Ellie Murtaugh, her husband, and her two police guards had driven swiftly away. Pluto wondered idly where the Lieutenant was sending her. It didn't matter; just so long as she was out of the way.

That was two days ago. Then yesterday the Lieutenant had come up with his plan.

Ah, at last. Lieutenant Murtaugh's car came nosing up the ramp from the indoor parking area beneath the apartment building. Pluto glanced at his watch: still three minutes shy of seven A.M. The Lieutenant was putting in long hours these days.

Twenty minutes later Pluto let himself into the Murtaugh apartment; it had taken him a while to find the right combination of picks for the downstairs locks plus the four locks on the apartment door. Once inside, he put the canvas case he was carrying on the sofa and his tool kit on the end table. He measured the width of the front door: thirty-six inches exactly. Next, a kitchen chair to stand on. He drilled a small hole in the ceiling two feet in from the three-foot-wide front door, making a face as he did; Pluto hated messing with plaster, such dirty stuff. When he'd finished that he drilled another hole, this one right through the carpet directly under the hole in the ceiling. A tiny eyebolt buried in the carpeting, a small pulley in the ceiling. Then he rigged a vertical trip wire that would be triggered the next time the door was opened. Crude, but it had the virtue of being undetectable from the other side of the door.

Pluto
dragged a heavy armchair into position and piled books (mostly Ellie's) into the seat. Then he opened the canvas bag he'd placed on the sofa and took out the shotgun. He fussed with chair and books until he'd fashioned a stable cradle for the firearm. Pluto didn't care much for shotguns. He'd stolen this one a few years ago just to try it out in his work. No good. Too big and clumsy to carry around easily; and the one time he'd used it, the scatter shot had only wounded, not killed. Lots of blood and mess, ugh; he'd had to finish the job with the Beretta he'd taken along as backup.

But for his present purposes the shotgun was exactly right. He made sure the two barrels were aimed low, knee-level. He didn't want to kill Murtaugh; no satisfaction in that. He did want to cripple the Lieutenant for life—
if
Murtaugh's plan was indeed a trap. But if Murtaugh played straight with him, Pluto would simply let the other man know what was waiting for him at home. Pluto fussed with the positioning some more and was finally satisfied. Some of the shot might go high enough to damage the Lieutenant's manhood.
Too bad,
Pluto sniffed. It all depended on the Lieutenant himself.

Pluto had never had any intention of hurting Ellie Murtaugh. If he did harm her, Pluto thought, Lieutenant Murtaugh would suffer horrible waves of guilt—at first. But that feeling would pass, perhaps even turn into resentment. Murtaugh was basically a decent sort and would resist longer than most men, but eventually he would start to rationalize away his part in his wife's tragedy and go on with his life as usual. But if he himself were forced to spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair—ah, that was quite different! So Pluto had to make sure it wouldn't be Murtaugh's wife who opened that door. The Lieutenant had responded to Pluto's threats against Ellie
with
heartening predictability; Pavlov would have loved him.

Pluto ran the wire through the trigger guard of the shotgun, testing the tension carefully before anchoring the wire to another eyebolt. His original plan had been to get Ellie out of the way and then rig the shotgun to fire into the floor—as a warning, to show Murtaugh that Pluto could get to him anywhere. Pluto had allowed all along for the fact that the Lieutenant would take more convincing than his usual clients. But then Murtaugh had offered him a deal, a scheme to convince the city of New York that Pluto had gone to his Eternal Rest, how sad. The shotgun then quickly transformed itself into an instrument of retaliation, a little surprise awaiting the Lieutenant if he was so foolish as to think he could double-cross Pluto and get away with it.

Connecting balconies ringed every floor of the building, each balcony exactly like every other one. Pluto stepped outside; the balcony was shallow, cramped, covered with New York grit. The only thing the balconies did was enable the landlords to charge a higher rent. With an expression of distaste on his face, Pluto climbed over the divider into the next-door balcony and let himself out through that apartment.

In the hallway he noticed a large ugly smudge of soot on his right knee. Now he'd have to fly all the way to Geneva in dirty trousers.

The building superintendent covered both ears against the whine of the drill. "You sure that warrant covers destruction of property?''

"Yeah, it's okay, don't worry about it," Sergeant Eberhart said with poorly concealed excitement. A police locksmith was working his way methodically down a row of
seven
locks. Eberhart handed the super the police sketch of Pluto. "Are you absolutely certain this is the guy who lives here?"

"That's him, all right. But he's got himself a fancy-schmancy hairdo now."

"Fancy how?"

"Brown and curly. Don't look natural."

Eberhart turned and grinned at the big man hovering over them. "Good work, Costello. You got 'im."

The big man grinned back. Costello was one of the legmen the Deputy Commissioner had provided, part of the army of canvassers Lieutenant Murtaugh had sent into the area of midtown Manhattan he suspected of being Pluto's home base.

Pluto had leased the apartment under the name of Bell, but undoubtedly that was no more his real name than any of the others he'd used. If nothing else, they should at least get a complete set of prints from the apartment, Eberhart thought. "Where are the Crime Lab people?"

"On their way," Costello said. "They told me they were leaving immediately."

"There you are, Sergeant," the locksmith said, opening the door. "Is that all?"

"No, hang around. We might need you inside."

Inside
turned out to be one of those geometric apartments that always made Eberhart uncomfortable. Every piece of furniture looked like a drawing made with protractor and compass. "You look down the hall," he told Costello. The building superintendent had trouble deciding whether to follow Costello or stay with Eberhart; he stayed with Eberhart. The locksmith lounged against the door he'd just opened;

There wasn't much to search in the living room. No
desk,
not even a table with drawers. "Modular seating pieces" instead of chairs and sofas. Pluto, hooked on the minimalist style of the seventies?

Costello was back. "Got a locked cabinet in here. Sergeant Eberhart, come take a look at this."

Eberhart, the locksmith, and the super followed Costello into Pluto's study. Eberhart whistled; one entire wall was lined with corkboard. "Hell of a bulletin board." He turned to the super. "What did he use it for?"

"Beats me. This the first time I've been here since he moved in."

"There's the locked cabinet," Costello told the locksmith.

Nothing was pinned to the corkboard wall except the pins themselves, a couple hundred of them lined up in two neat rows, one at each end of the wall. Eberhart spotted a typewriter on a small desk. Using his handkerchief, he started opening desk drawers and in the bottom one found what he was looking for: blue note stationery with matching window envelopes. "Costello, tell the Crime Lab to check this typewriter against the bill Pluto sent Roscoe Malucci."

"You think that's the one?"

"I know it is. Look at this blue paper. And Costello, go call Lieutenant Murtaugh and let him know what we got here."

"Sergeant." The locksmith had the cabinet drawer open. The four men stood staring at Pluto's collection of guns. A Colt Government Model .45. A Coonan .357 Magnum. Two nine-millimeter semiautomatics, a Beretta and a Browning HiPower. A Smith and Wesson .22. And what looked like a Czech CZ .75 automatic.

The super swallowed audibly. "Gawd."

"
Where's the thirty-eight?" Eberhart muttered.

"Where's what?" Costello called back over his shoulder, on his way to phone the Lieutenant.

"He bought ammo for a thirty-eight. It's not here."

The men from the Crime Lab showed up and the roomy apartment was suddenly very crowded. Eberhart thanked the super for his help and told him he could go. On his way out, the super said, "Will you look at that—he's had a lock put on the hall closet!"

Without a word the locksmith got to work.

Pluto had turned the walk-in closet into a file room. Three four-door file cabinets and a small table with a reading lamp took up most of the space. All three file cabinets had combination locks. "Oh good," the locksmith smiled, and had all three open in no time flat.

Again using his handkerchief, Eberhart opened the drawer labeled "S–T." The drawer held only six file folders, but all six were fat ones. One of them was marked
Sussman, Gerald.

Eberhart couldn't examine the files until they were dusted for prints, but he figured he could make a list of all the names on the folders. He pulled out a notebook and opened the "A–B" drawer.

The first name he saw was
Ansbacher, Edward.

Ansbacher? Pluto had killed Captain Ansbacher?
With a zip gun?

Eberhart didn't understand that. Why Ansbacher? Who profited? Who paid the killer's fee? And why did Pluto use such a clumsy weapon when he had so many sophisticated and well-cared-for handguns right there in the apartment? Eberhart shook his head; he'd have to think about it later.

He went through Pluto's file drawers in alphabetical
order,
finding some unfamiliar names, some familiar ones.
Herman, John
—the Canadian opera singer.
Malucci, Rose
—Roscoe's grandmother.

Murtaugh, James Timothy.

Forgetting all about fingerprints Eberhart pulled out Murtaugh's file. Inside were photographs, newspaper clippings, typed and dated lists of the times the Murtaughs did certain things, Ellie's school schedule, names, addresses. Eberhart felt the hair on the back of his neck rise when he came across a snapshot of himself talking to Lieutenant Murtaugh in the street. Pluto had gotten close enough to them to take their picture and they hadn't even seen him? Good god. Telephoto lens, maybe. Either that, or the man didn't have a nerve in his body.

And now he was going after Lieutenant Murtaugh? Eberhart didn't understand that, either. Say Pluto eliminated Murtaugh. Someone else would just be appointed to take the Lieutenant's place; the investigation wouldn't stop. That couldn't be it.

Something Eberhart had thought peculiar at the time. Just a couple of days ago Lieutenant Murtaugh had assigned two police officers to guard Ellie and had sent all three of them out of town. Nobody else saw anything odd about that, considering how dangerous a man it was they were hunting. But nobody else had worked as closely with Lieutenant Murtaugh as Eberhart. The Lieutenant's forcing his wife to run and hide without some
specific
reason just didn't ring true.

Eberhart looked at the file again.

Lieutenant Murtaugh had heard from Pluto—that had to be it. But why, how? The only time Pluto got in touch with someone was when he wanted to collect his fee . . .
Ansbacher?
Pluto was collecting from Lieutenant Murtaugh for Ansbacher's murder? Was that it? And the fee
—
this time was it something other than money? And Ellie, hiding somewhere under guard—Pluto must have threatened
her
to get the Lieutenant to pay. Aw god, no. Not Lieutenant Murtaugh! But the Lieutenant had to have heard from Pluto or he wouldn't all of a sudden have thought Ellie was in danger. He'd heard from Pluto, and he wasn't telling anybody.

He wasn't telling anybody.

Sergeant Eberhart stood there a long time, trying to decide what to do.

He felt a rawness in his throat, a tickle in the nasal passages. Hell of a time to come down with something.

When he was a boy, his father had refused to take any medication for anything: a burly weekend ballplayer who loved to boast:
Naw, I'll just throw it off.
Thanks, dad o' mine; as a consequence he and brother Desmond had gone through one cold after another, catching every bug his father had ever "thrown off." Murtaugh took a couple of aspirin at the drinking fountain; anything stronger might make him sleepy.

Maybe it was psychosomatic.

Murtaugh looked into the squad room; everything seemed okay. He'd sent Eberhart out to check on a possible identification one of the legmen had turned up. He'd arranged for the other special assignees from the Deputy Commissioner to be out too, following up one lead or another. All except Jacoby, the juniormost member of the team. The baby.

Time to make his move. "Jacoby! Come in here."

The young investigator hurried into Murtaugh's office, his eyebrows asking questions.

"Sit down, Jacoby. Got something to write with? All right, now listen carefully. I just got an anonymous call—
man
said he was paying off Pluto today. One hundred thousand dollars, just like the rest of them."