Fare Play

by Barbara Paul

  She ate the lunch that Gloria brought her at her desk, barely tasting the food. Gloria had then gone back to her own precinct, asking to be notified if Larry Hibler decided to talk. The federal prosecutor showed up trailing two IRS accountants; they insisted on double-checking all the vendors on the O.K. Toys list. Marian herself had a short and unsatisfying interview with David Unger.

  She managed a few minutes with him before Elmore Zook showed up. One bluesuit was in the interrogation room with them, Unger’s guard. “We’ve got you cold,” she told Unger. “There’s no way in the world you can explain away these phony records.”

  “I’m not saying anything until my lawyer gets here,” Unger replied. He sat there so stolidly—a good-looking, prosperous man putting up with the foolishness of the police. Determined to be civilized about it.

  “What were you doing, laundering money? For whom?”

  No answer.

  “Look, Unger,” she said, “we know this whole thing was set up by Oliver Knowles. You just inherited it. Where did the money come from?”

  “I’m not making a statement without my lawyer.”

  “Uh-huh, well, we may just be charging your lawyer as well. If it comes to a choice between saving his own skin or yours, which one do you think he’ll choose?”

  No reply.

  “One of you arranged the hit on Oliver Knowles. Why? He was out of the game. Why’d you have to get rid of him?”

  Stony silence.

  “Unger, don’t you understand? This tax fraud charge is just to hold you until we get one or two more pieces of evidence. We are going to charge you with murder.”

  The first sign of nervousness: he started playing with his mustache. “I want my lawyer.”

  It went on like that a couple of minutes more, until Elmore Zook came bursting into the room, radiating a sense of outrage that Marian didn’t think was faked. The first thing he did was call her a meddlesome bitch.

  “Who do you think you are?” Zook demanded. “Some jumped-up little nobody making trouble for respectable businessmen! David Unger worked all his life for what he’s got … and you come along with a badge handed to you under some half-assed quota system and you think you have the right—you actually think you have the right—to harass a man like David Unger!”

  The veneer of courtesy Zook had displayed at their previous meeting was proving pretty thin. The older man was breathing heavily, more angry at the situation than intimidated by it. The bluesuit guarding Unger slowly closed the door, glowering at Zook. “The phony books,” Marian said evenly. “How does your respectable businessman explain that?”

  “Don’t say anything, Dave,” Zook warned his client unnecessarily. “We don’t have to explain anything to you, Miss Know-It-All. Tax fraud is a federal matter—we’ll clear up this misunderstanding with the federal prosecutor. The police have nothing to do with it. Go home, you silly broad. Leave the running of the world to the men who know how to do it.”

  Surprisingly, the bluesuit spoke up. “Hey, don’t talk to the lieutenant like that, you!” Zook didn’t even acknowledge him. Marian was puzzled by the lawyer’s strategy. Did he think he could insult her into dropping the case?

  Unger made an attention-catching noise. “She says she’s going to charge me with Oliver’s murder.”

  Zook hit the ceiling. “Of all the crazy, incompetent … are you ready to charge him right now? Because if you aren’t, he’s walking.”

  “No, he isn’t. A federal prosecutor and the IRS are in this building right now, and we’re holding Unger for them to question. Your client’s not going anywhere, Mr. Zook. Except to prison.”

  Zook stared at her murderously for a long moment; Marian stared back, unflinching. Zook turned to his client and said, “Don’t say anything, Dave, not a single word. I’ll get you out of here.” He charged out of the interrogation room, even more angry than when he’d come in.

  Marian smiled coldly at Unger. “Well. That was helpful.”

  Unger followed instructions, said nothing.

  “Zook won’t have to ‘get you out of here.’ You’ll be released once the feds have finished questioning you, until they’re ready to bring charges. But you can kiss O.K. Toys goodbye. And Unger—no sudden trips out of town. Got that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She watched him playing with his mustache and wished for some sort of insight into the man. She didn’t know David Unger—what he watched on TV, whether he was good to his family, what he liked to eat, what he did in his spare time. The man was a cipher. She’d get Perlmutter and O’Toole to dig a little deeper. But Unger wasn’t going to tell her anything about himself. Not ever. Marian motioned to the bluesuit to take him away.

  Murtaugh had been observing through the one-way glass. He met Marian in the hallway and said, “You didn’t expect them not to play hardball, did you?”

  Marian shook her head. “No, but it was the wrong guy who was playing. Unger seems so … mild. I can see Zook ordering the hit, but not Unger.”

  “Yep, it’s a pretty good routine they’ve got worked out,” the captain replied indifferently.

  “You think it’s an act?”

  “In this place,” Murtaugh said, “everything’s an act.”

  “You know, there’s one possibility we’ve never really considered. Maybe Oliver Knowles was exactly what he appeared to be—a nice old man who spent his life making toys. And maybe his company wasn’t turned into a money-laundering front until after he retired and was no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of the business. Then somehow Knowles found out what Unger was doing.”

  Murtaugh was nodding. “And that’s why Knowles had to be killed … to protect the scam. It would have to be a pretty new scam, then—only a few years, however long since Knowles retired. And Unger set it all up.”

  Marian was trying not to get her hopes up prematurely, but they had Virgil in a pincer movement. They knew what one of his shooters looked like, and they knew who one of his clients was. Hook Nose or Unger, either one could lead them to the man who dispensed death as if it were any other service available for a fee. Marian couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to put that sonuvabitch out of business forever.

  Then at a little before four, only a matter of minutes until Marian’s shift was supposed to end, Larry Hibler finally broke.

  26

  Robin Muller had been a courier, Larry Hibler said.

  The job had been simplicity itself. In the mail would come an envelope with no return address. Inside would be a locker key taped to an index card on which was written the location of the locker. Sometimes Robin would have to go as far as one of the airports to find the locker.

  Inside the locker was always the same thing: a large manila envelope with a sheet of instructions clipped to the outside that told where the envelope was to be delivered. It was always a public place—a park, a restaurant, a movie theater, a hotel lobby. But a different place every time.

  Did she always deliver the envelope to the same person?

  Not always. Robin could tell if it would be someone she’d not delivered to before because the instructions would say give the envelope to the man wearing the green plaid muffler or the woman carrying a certain book; there was always some specific means of identifying them.

  Woman?

  One woman. The rest were men. Robin never knew their names. After she’d delivered the envelope, Robin would go to a second address listed on the instruction sheet. Again, it was always a public place and never the same place twice. There the paymaster would hand her a small envelope containing her fee, in cash.

  Who’s this paymaster?

  Robin never knew his name, but he knew hers. And where she lived. The first time she’d met him to be paid, she’d had to show him some ID before he’d hand over the envelope. He’d known what name to check for. Thereafter, their meetings had been silent ones, except for times when he complained that she was late.

  What does he look like?
<
br />   Hibler had no idea; he’d never seen the man and Robin had never described him. All she’d said about him was that he gave her the creeps. Oh, wait—she did say he wore an overcoat that was a nauseating mustard color. She’d never seen a man’s coat in that particular shade before.

  Did Robin ever look inside these manila envelopes that she delivered?

  She was afraid to. She’d been warned not to look, and there was also a wax seal on the back. Everyone she’d delivered to always checked the seal before accepting the envelope. She suspected they’d been instructed not to take it if the seal was broken.

  What did she think she was delivering?

  They’d talked about that, Hibler said. He’d thought she was delivering drug money, but Robin had said nobody would trust the delivery of money to an unbonded stranger. Besides, the envelopes were flat. No, they were just papers of some sort. She couldn’t even begin to guess what.

  How did she get this courier job?

  Virgil called her. Robin never met him; it was all done over the phone. She was looking for part-time work. She’d been asking around, posting on bulletin boards—both electronic and the old-fashioned kind. Virgil could have gotten her name anywhere.

  Didn’t it occur to her that she was involved in something illegal?

  Yes, but the money was so good! Robin had been paid three hundred dollars for each delivery; sometimes the job took only a couple of hours, depending on where the locker with the envelope was located. And since she was paid in cash, there was no tax to worry about. To a graduate student trying to live on a scholarship, the job was manna from heaven.

  So, Larry, what went wrong? Why was she killed?

  The only reason he could think of, he said, was that she’d missed a couple of deliveries. The first time, she’d lost the locker key and couldn’t pick up the envelope. The second time, she’d overslept. Robin had pulled an all-nighter, studying for an eleven A.M. exam. After the exam she’d gone back to their apartment for a nap; she’d either slept through the alarm or forgot to set it, because she woke up past the time she was supposed to make the delivery. She’d hurried to the locker to get the envelope, but it was gone. Did people really get killed over things like that? Hibler wondered. What kind of man was this Virgil?

  “A very evil one,” Sergeant Buchanan said. “When you first reported her missin’, you didn’t say nothin’ to me about her workin’ as a courier. But you did drop hints that there was somethin’ shady about her new source of income. Why’d you do that?”

  Hibler’s haggard face turned away from the sergeant. “I was afraid you’d think she’d just walked out on me. I figured if you thought something funny was going on, you’d really look for her.”

  Buchanan sat back in his chair, satisfied. Detective Walker asked, “How often did Robin make these deliveries?”

  “It was very irregular,” Hibler said. “One week she made three deliveries. Another time she went two weeks without making any.”

  “Did Virgil ever call again after that first time he hired her?”

  “I don’t think so. She never mentioned another call.”

  Walker nodded to his partner. Dowd got up and went into the adjoining room, on the other side of the one-way glass. “Anything else?”

  The little room was crowded. Buchanan’s phone call to the Ninth Precinct had caught Gloria Sanchez just as she was leaving. Marian and Captain Murtaugh, as well as Perlmutter and O’Toole, had all been listening.

  Gloria said bluntly, “You’re gonna have to tell him.” The Hispanic lilt was gone from her voice.

  “Tell him what?” Dowd asked. “That his girlfriend was delivering instructions to hit men? Sanchez, he’d be outa here so fast you wouldn’t even know he’d been here.”

  “So what?” Gloria retorted. “We got everything he can tell us. And maybe he oughta get outa here. Way outa here. Like Tibet.”

  “She’s right,” Marian said. “He has a right to know what Robin was involved in.”

  “Get him to sign his statement,” Captain Murtaugh instructed. “Then tell him.”

  Dowd grunted and left to take care of it.

  The others followed him out, glad to be free of the confining little room. “Conference,” Murtaugh said.

  A change in shift had taken place during the interrogation; the squadroom was filled with night staff just coming on duty. Murtaugh’s office couldn’t hold more than three or four people comfortably, and Marian’s was smaller still. Marian sent O’Toole to fetch Walker and Dowd; they all trooped downstairs to the briefing room, where the patrol cops were given their instructions every day at roll call.

  One captain, one lieutenant, one sergeant, and five detectives clustered around the chalkboard at the head of the room. The captain said, “Lieutenant, draw us a picture.”

  Marian stepped up to the chalkboard. “It’s shaping up to look like this.” She wrote:

  client → ? → Virgil → paymaster → courier → shooter

  “Hook Nose at one end of the chain, David Unger at the other. We don’t know how the client makes contact with Virgil. But imagine more chains radiating out from the paymaster, one for each courier he pays off. And we can’t assume that Virgil has only one paymaster. You can get an idea from that how big this thing is.”

  Perlmutter said, “Only one buffer between the client and Virgil? I’ll bet there’s more than that.”

  “Hm, that’s probably right.” Marian added a second question mark between “Virgil” and “client.” “There could be a half dozen there.”

  “A chain is as strong as its weakest link,” Buchanan pronounced sententiously. “And Robin Muller was the weak link. So what’s Virgil gonna do? Put in a stronger link.”

  “What are you getting at, Buck?” Murtaugh asked.

  “Send a female undercover. She could pose as a graduate student, ask around about part-time work the way Muller did.”

  “And get killed the way Muller did.” Murtaugh shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

  Marian said, “Virgil’s already got a replacement, I’d bet on it. The guy’s just too organized to leave a gap of any kind in his network. Any other suggestions?”

  “Find Hook Nose,” said Gloria Sanchez.

  They all nodded. “That’s the way we’re going to get him,” Dowd said. “Through that end of the chain.”

  “This client, David Unger,” Walker asked. “What’s the story there?”

  “He’s not talking,” Marian replied. “And he’s not going to, unless we find a way to link him to Virgil. Probably not even then. We’ll have a better chance of cutting a deal with Hook Nose, once we find him.”

  “If we find him.”

  “We’ll find him,” Murtaugh said positively. “It’s only a matter of time. All right, let’s all sleep on it. This has been a good day’s work, everyone. Now go home.”

  Perlmutter looked at his watch. “My wife’s going to kill me.”

  Marian said, “Walker, Dowd.” They turned. “That was good work, in the interrogation.”

  Dowd tried not to look pleased at the compliment. Walker said, “Thanks, Lieutenant.” They left along with the others; Dowd was asking Gloria Sanchez to come have a drink with him.

  “You too, Larch,” Murtaugh said with a smile. “You’ve put in a long week. Go out, have dinner, have some fun.”

  “Dinner!” Marian said, horrified. She checked the time. “I’m supposed to be in Queens in twenty minutes!”

  “Good luck!” he called after her running figure.

  27

  Marian had called from her car to say she’d be a few minutes late, so Mrs. Aphra Yelincic was still smiling by the time she got there. Dinner had gone smoothly. At first Marian had had difficulty making the mental shift from Virgil to small talk; but Mrs. Yelincic had helped enormously by grilling her on whether or not she missed making a home for a husband and children. Claire Yelincic had tried to divert her mother’s inquisitiveness to a different subject, but Ivan Malecki hadn’t l
ifted a finger; he’d sat there grinning at her the whole time Mrs. Yelincic was poking and prying. Mr. Yelincic had nodded and smiled.

  After dinner they’d once again gone over Marian’s responsibilities as best man. Everything was taken care of that could be taken care of before the day of the wedding itself, which was the coming Thursday. Mrs. Yelincic warned Marian at least four times that she’d need to remind the ushers what time the rehearsal started Wednesday evening.

  Marian’s invitation was for herself “and guest.” “So who’re you bringing?” Ivan wanted to know.

  “Probably Holland. If we’re still speaking.”

  Ivan snorted. “Better get a back-up.”

  “Who’s Holland?” Claire asked.

  “Marian’s on-again, off-again boyfriend.”

  Marian had to smile at the thought of how Holland would react to hearing himself called a boyfriend.

  “What is Mr. Holland’s first name?” Mrs. Yelincic asked Marian sweetly.

  “Curt.”

  “And he is,” Ivan said with a nod.

  “And what does Mr. Curt Holland do for a living?” Mrs. Yelincic continued.

  Next she’ll be asking me if his intentions are honorable. “He’s a private investigator—runs his own agency. He used to be with the FBI.”

  The older woman’s face lit up. “An FBI man!”

  “Former FBI. Very former. Holland hates the FBI.”

  Unexpectedly, Mr. Yelincic said, “Oh, that’s too bad.” Everyone looked at him. He quickly retreated to nod-and-smile.

  Mrs. Yelincic was not to be diverted. “And what are your plans with Mr. Curt Holland?”

  Marian smiled. “To get him to come to the wedding. Beyond that, no plans.”

  That was not the answer the older woman wanted to hear. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Marian, dear—but you’re not getting any younger, you know.” Claire groaned. “If you are serious about Mr. Holland,” Mrs. Yelincic went on, “you really mustn’t delay much longer. So long as you’re sure he would make a suitable husband.”