by Barbara Paul
“How would I know? I wasn’t there!”
“Oh, knock it off, Sauerkraut!” Marian said sharply. “Of course you were there. What happened?” The barman looked up at her tone.
The only word King heard was Sauerkraut. That name again—that insulting, degrading name! Now even the goddam New York Police Department knew about it. How? How? “Listen, Marian. The only reason I didn’t show up for that meeting is that I thought it was scheduled for the next day. I left the apartment before Dennis and Gregory died. You got that? Before.”
He might as well not have spoken. “Dennis must have been your primary target. Then you had to kill Gregory because he just happened to be there.”
“No, dammit! You couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t think they were murdered at all.”
“Two accidents at the same time? I could buy one, but not two. Was that how it happened? You killed Dennis by accident and then murdered Gregory to get rid of a witness?”
King clenched his teeth. “I … have never … murdered … anyone.”
“Then they both were accidents? Maybe I should charge you with reckless endangerment and take you in right now. But I don’t think so. You knocked the TV set into the bathwater and then for an encore you dropped a window on Gregory Dillard’s neck. Or was Gregory first?”
He pushed the empty beer glass away from him. “I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”
“Well, that would be a mistake, because Mimi Hargrove’s talking her head off. She told my partner that Dennis was trying to sell Keystone out from under you. She said Warren Osterman was going for a merger with both Keystone and SmartSoft, but you told her you’d only recently found out about it. That means Dennis had been negotiating with Osterman behind your back. You found out what was going on, and—wham! I got to tell you, King, you’re looking good for this one. You killed your partner to stop his betraying you, and then you had to get rid of Gregory Dillard to shut him up.”
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! But he said nothing, refusing to be baited.
“Although I have to admit that decapitation by falling window is a rather unusual way of murdering someone,” Marian went on. “Gregory must not have known Dennis was dead—no, he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have stopped to feed the pigeons otherwise … or trusted you to hold the window. But since you were the only other one in the apartment, he’d have known eventually. That’s the way it was, right?”
Wrong. King kept his mouth clamped shut.
“Mimi says you and Dennis didn’t get along—there was bad feeling between you even before all this talk about a merger. She says you were jealous of his talent and stuck him with managing the business so you could keep all the big projects for yourself. She told Ivan that the real reason you wanted Gale Fredericks for your partner was that Gale wouldn’t be the competition that Dennis was.”
King clenched his teeth. Mimi was doing her damnedest to make sure the police zeroed in on him. She was doing exactly the same thing to him that he’d been doing to her—only she was doing it better.
“You’ve got the motive all right, Sauerkraut, no question of that,” Marian said conversationally. “And you don’t really have an alibi. All the eating as well as the mugging took place hours afterward. Yes, indeed, you’re looking good for it.”
I have changed, I have changed, King repeated to himself like an incantation. I will not rise to the bait. I will keep my mouth shut and I will ride this out.
Marian Larch kept after him, but eventually she had to accept the fact that he just wasn’t going to talk anymore. Grumpily she paid for their beers and drove him home.
In the car, he broke his silence once. “How did you know about that name Sauerkraut?” he asked.
“Warren Osterman told me. When he was trying to convince me that you were too clumsy to carry out a successful double murder.”
She let him out at the apartment building. He waited in the foyer until he saw her drive away and then slipped back out again. There were things he had to do, and little time in which to do them.
12
The rain had slackened into a soft drizzle; King turned up his jacket collar and wondered where he’d left the umbrella. Hell of a time to go shopping. King let loose a sigh; it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to construct a small robot and use it to cause an “accident”. A remote-controlled toy car would be the easiest way to start; any electronics store could supply the capacitors and resistors and photocells and other parts he’d need to modify it. The right-sized circuit boards might be a little harder to find, but they’d be available somewhere.
However—and it was a very big however—this little accident was supposed to pass as one that Mimi had rigged; would it be that easy for her to build a robot, even a simple one, by herself? Not very likely. That wasn’t her area of expertise; it was his. If King used a robot, any kind of robot, he might as well sign his name. No one would be fooled.
So robots were out, alas. What would Mimi do, if she truly were out to kill him? She’d probably go for something that could be made to look like a domestic accident, something that could reasonably be expected to happen in the apartment—such as a falling window, or an appliance in the bathwater. But all the windows in the second apartment opened outward, not up. And fortunately, or unfortunately, King took showers instead of baths. Mimi wouldn’t know that, though, unless she made a habit of peeking through keyholes. Think like Mimi: Does King Sarcowicz take showers or baths? Oh dear, I don’t know.
No bathroom accident, then. And no bedroom accident, either, simply because King couldn’t figure out a way to make it work. Therefore: the media room. That was the place.
He needed tools, wire, clamps, and the like. A couple of remote controls—one to use and one to plant in Mimi’s room. But that afternoon’s trip to Fifty-seventh Street with Marian Larch had reinforced a lesson King first learned years ago: strangers remembered him. Including, presumably, clerks in hardware and electronic stores. So he loitered in front of a big hardware store on Forty-second Street until a boy of high-school age came by; King offered him twenty dollars to go into the store and fill an order for him. The kid wanted thirty but settled for twenty-five; fifteen minutes later King had what he needed.
The drizzling rain had stopped. The wet streets cast up reflections of hundreds of neon lights, giving a noirish look to the oncoming night that well suited King’s mood. He repeated the procedure he’d used at the hardware store at two different electronics shops. Loaded down, he found himself wishing he’d thought to bring along his new briefcase to carry some of his supplies. No sooner had he thought that than he spied a bag lady hauling three full shopping bags along the street. “I’ll give you ten dollars for one of those bags,” he said to her.
She looked at him suspiciously. “It’s worth fifty.”
They agreed on fifteen. The old woman dumped out the contents of one of the bags right there on the sidewalk—men’s shoes, a couple of sweaters and a flowered skirt, a plastic vanity mirror, a package of cocktail napkins, an AT&T 800-number directory, two Blake’s 7 buttons, one wool glove. The bag was old and well worn, but it held all of King’s packages. He left the bag lady redistributing her possessions between her other two shopping bags.
King was hungry, but it was turning dark and there was no time for a restaurant; street food would have to do. He bought a gyro and ate the juicy, dripping sandwich as he looked around for a taxi, all of which seemed to be headed in the wrong direction. He started walking.
His route took him past a Radio Shack on Broadway, and the window display made him pause. Red Racer, with a roll cage, $9.95. A radio-controlled toy car that could be adapted into an autonomous robot. A soldering iron and the right parts … the robot would need only the simplest of functions to do the job. Search, avoid, possibly follow—
No. No robots. King plowed on homeward.
The rain was just starting up again by the time he reached the apartment. One of the security guards in the lobby told
him his lady friend was waiting for him upstairs. King groaned; evidently Marian Larch didn’t have anything to do with her life except hassle him.
But it wasn’t the police detective who was waiting; it was Gale Fredericks. And she looked absolutely miserable. “Gale! What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“I had to talk to you … in person. Is this a good time?”
“Sure. Just let me dump this stuff in my room.” He did so and came back to where Gale was nervously pacing in the living room. “Where’s Mimi?”
“In the office room. She won’t come out—she talked to me through the door. King, what’s going on?”
He grimaced. “Mimi thinks I’m the murderer the police are looking for. Or at least she’s pretending she does.”
Gale was astonished. “But … but that’s absurd! How could you … besides, if she really thinks you’re a murderer, why is she still here in the apartment?”
“That’s the part I haven’t figured out.” There was an awkward pause. “Gale, I’m always glad to see you, but what are you doing here? Is something wrong in Pittsburgh?”
“No, everything is fine.” She took a deep breath and plunged in. “What’s wrong is me. I can’t do it, King. I just can’t do it.”
King felt a ringing in his ears. “Oh, Gale!”
“I know I told you I would, and I even got caught up in the excitement of the design … I shouldn’t have let that happen. I should never have let myself be seduced by the challenge.”
“Gale—”
“Don’t, King. Even before my plane landed in Pittsburgh Sunday, every cell in my body was shrieking No! I’ve spent the last few days trying to talk myself into it, into keeping my word—but it’s impossible. I simply cannot contribute to a killing machine. I can’t do it.”
“You don’t have to work on the weapons,” King said desperately. “I’ll put you in charge of locomotion. You can solve the problem of where to put the extra wheels and legs and—”
“Oh, King, you don’t really think that makes a difference? I’d still be helping build a war machine.” She smiled wanly. “Besides, I know how much you want to do the locomotion yourself. I appreciate the offer, but the answer is still no.”
King argued. He cajoled. He tried sophistry and emotional backmail. He appealed to her professionalism, to her ambition, to her loyalty to him. Then he made the mistake of slipping into a threat; he told her that the kind of partner he was looking for was one who wouldn’t let him down, one who wouldn’t let her personal convictions interfere with business.
“I thought it might come to that,” Gale said wryly, “so I’m going to save you the trouble of making that decision. I can’t stay on at Keystone now. You didn’t make the partnership contingent on my working on the gun platform … but it was lurking there beneath the surface all the same, wasn’t it? But partnership or no partnership, I just can’t stay with a company that accepts Defense contracts. I don’t want to have anything at all to do with weapons.”
“Gale, you’ve tossed me a curve, I’m saying things I don’t mean—of course I want you to stay, and as my partner. I never—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “Gun people never really understand how repulsive their weapons are to non-gun people, do they? Guns can have a hypnotic effect, you know. King, you’re no warmonger, but you’ve gotten so caught up in the lure of the technology that you’ve blocked everything else out.” She dropped her hand in a gesture of hopelessness. “Oh, what’s the use. You think I’m a kook and I think you’re sick. We’ll never agree.”
King stared at her icily. “You think I’m sick.”
“If you can talk yourself out of thinking about the people you’ll be helping to kill—yes, I’d say that’s sick.” She hesitated. “King, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would end on such an ugly note. I came here to say goodbye. Shake hands?”
He turned his back on her outstretched hand. She spoke his name, but said nothing more when he didn’t answer. After a few moments he heard her leave.
To fight against drowning in disappointment, King tried to talk to Mimi. But the door to the office was locked. Mimi yelled through the door for him to go away and leave her alone.
He’d lost Gale. Lost her permanently—she wouldn’t even be working with him anymore. Damn the woman! How could she do it? He’d offered her half his business; nobody turned down an offer like that just to maintain some self-flattering, high-minded moral posture. There had to be some other reason. One of his competitors must have made her a better offer; that was it. She’d turn up as European Director of Rhobotics International or some big outfit like that. Or maybe Warren Osterman had offered to make her heir apparent instead of Rae Borchard—no, that was ridiculous. King was finding it harder and harder to trust anybody.
But Gale was gone, and that was that. The old King would have sat around and moped about his loss, mooning over what might have been and feeling sorry for himself. But the new King had work to do.
Get to it. His plan was to rig a short in the media room’s control unit touch screen, just enough to make the unit hiss and spark and give a mild shock to whoever was handling the unit. Mimi knew about wiring; an attempt to electrocute him would be more in keeping with her abilities than the use of a homemade robot. The short would be “detonated” by a remote control he’d carry in a jacket pocket and then dispose of as soon thereafter as possible; a second remote keyed to the same frequency would then be discovered in Mimi’s room.
He took care of that part first, while Mimi was keeping herself locked in the office. What was she doing in there? Why hadn’t she locked herself into her bedroom if she was just trying to avoid him? He slipped into her room and looked around. Under the mattress? Too obvious. He used a dime to loosen the screws in a ventilator grid and pushed the remote control unit into the vent. That should do it.
The media room door had a lock on it too and King used it; he didn’t want Mimi walking in on him while he had the control unit open. He got to work. He wanted to run a test when he finished, so that meant he’d have to wire up his dummy weapon twice. And it had to be done tonight; for all he knew, Mimi’s husband could show up as soon as tomorrow.
King was counting on Marian Larch’s putting in an early appearance the next day; he’d be watching a movie when she arrived, so he could say Come on into the media room, I left a movie running. If he could think of a way to get her to use the control unit, that would be good. But if not, he’d do it himself. All she had to do was witness what was supposed to be Mimi’s unsuccessful attempt on his life. Then he’d open up the unit, examine the wiring, and exclaim in a tone of great wonder that the unit appeared to have been booby-trapped. He’d mention it was probably set off by remote control and leave it to the already suspicious detective to do the rest.
Sergeant Larch wouldn’t simply take his word for it about the booby trap; they’d have to wait for the police’s expert to examine it. But that plus the remote control concealed in Mimi’s ventilator shaft would surely be enough for the police to charge her with attempted murder. And even though they could never prove she had anything to do with the deaths of Dennis Cox and Gregory Dillard, they’d be satisfied that she was guilty and investigate no further. King would hand them their “murderer” gift-wrapped, and then they’d have to leave him alone.
And he would have Mimi Hargrove out of his hair as well.
It wouldn’t go as smoothly as all that, of course; things never did. He’d have to keep on his toes, be ready to bounce in any direction. Stay loose. He’d watch Marian Larch closely, take his cues from her.
Then it was time for the test. King felt a little nervous about sending even a mild jolt of electricity through his body, but it had to be done. He steeled himself and pressed the button. The control unit accommodatingly popped and sparked, King’s body twitched from the electric shock—and all the lights went out.
Damn. That was something he hadn’t counted on, shorting out the apartment lights. But as he
floundered in the dark toward the door, he thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing; it would add a nice theatrical touch. But right then he had to get the lights back on.
Mimi was yelling from behind her locked door. “It won’t work, King—I’m not coming out!”
Mimi Hargrove, the center of the universe. “I don’t give a damn whether you come out or not,” King yelled back. “Do you know where there’s a flashlight?”
A pause. “Maybe in the kitchen.”
The switch box must be inside a closet, most likely the one in the entryway; King was closer to there than to the kitchen. He felt his way through the darkened apartment, hitting his shins and swearing. He thought he remembered seeing a bowl of matches bearing the MechoTech logo somewhere, but he’d never find it in the dark. Finally he reached the entryway and located the switch box in an inside closet wall. He fumbled the switch box door open and ran his fingers over the circuit breakers, locating one large one at the top: the master switch. King pressed it; the lights came on. Now everything digital in the apartment would have to be reset.
He went to the office door and banged on it once with his fist. “All right?”
“All right,” Mimi’s voice said.
Back to the media room. King replaced the burned-out wires in the video control unit and rigged his false weapon the exact way he’d done it the first time. The lights flickered once while he was working but didn’t go out. The wiring in this whole apartment needs to be checked, he thought absently. Then he slipped a videocassette into one of the VCRs and played a little of it, just enough to make sure his electronic equivalent of a smoke bomb didn’t interfere with the normal operation of the equipment. He left the cassette in the player, ready for viewing tomorrow morning when Marian Larch would be there to act as his eyewitness. Then he gathered up his tools and leftover wires and parts, tied them all together, and tossed the bundle down the apartment’s trash-disposal chute.
Everything was ready.
