Shaughnessy said, “Sir ...”
Fleisher stopped, and shook his head violently to clear it. I’m getting too old for this crap, he thought. Not enough sleep. Too many nuts running around.
“Okay, Mike,” he said. “I’m all right.” There was nothing else he wanted to ask these two punks. He was just about to say, “Let’s get out of here,” when he heard the thump of a hand slapping the metal exterior of the truck, and the chief’s voice yelling, “Hey, Joe, come on out. Looks like this might be your baby, after all!”
Fleisher cursed, expressively and sincerely, then turned to the boys and said, “Well, I hope your mother will be very proud of you. Her little suggestion has gotten somebody killed.”
They’d already gotten a lot accomplished by the time Ron Gentry, in response to Shaughnessy’s phone call, arrived at the scene, so they could take the time to berate him for what they considered Benedetti’s lack of manners.
“Look,” Ron interrupted, “I’ve known all about that guy for years. I’ll tell you exactly what he said. He said, ‘I have no time for repetition—’ ”
“He said ‘redundancy,’ ” Shaughnessy corrected him.
“Okay, redundancy. Then he said, ‘I will not be interrupted!’ then he made a snide remark about me, told you where I was, and said you should bother me. Right?”
Shaughnessy was forced to admit that was just about it, and Ron said, “All right. So don’t complain to me when the professor gets difficult. What have we got?”
What they had was the body of Gloria Marcus, Mrs. Xhema Marcus, who was a charwoman at Sparta’s biggest downtown office building. She often stopped in the Clockround Market before going home to fix breakfast for her husband, who had a small watch-repair shop in town. The couple was childless; Mrs. Marcus was forty-five.
They’d found her body under a jumble of twenty-eight ounce cans of Tahiti Delight Fruit Punch; the cans were the remains of an eighteen-foot pyramidal display that had taken an hour and a half to put up, a store employee told them sadly. She was the only person in the store who hadn’t gotten out. The fire department made a careful check after the fire had been extinguished.
According to Dr. Dmitri, of the Medical Examiner’s Office, the victim had died of lack of oxygen as a result of smoke and toxic fumes from burning hydro- and fluorocarbon products in the store. He also said, however, that Mrs. Marcus sustained a blow to the skull that probably would have sufficed to render her unconscious long enough for her to be overcome by the smoke.
“He says,” Fleisher concluded, “that there’s no reason it couldn’t have been an accident.” Fleisher’s voice was calm, but Ron noticed his hands were clenched in tight fists.
“I can see how it could have been an accident,” Ron said. “There’s smoke, the alarm, confusion—she might panic and run blindly into that stack of cans, bringing it down on her. One hits her in the head, there you are.” Ron had been straddling a fire hose and had to make a quick little jump out of the way as the firemen gathered it in. “Oops! Now where was I?”
“How you could see it might be an accident,” the inspector said sourly.
“That’s right, thanks. On the other hand, if it was murder, this could be the one that busts it open.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, do you think Hog was standing around this store at what? Five-thirty in the morning? Pricing pig masks or something, when the fire just happened to break out?”
“No,” Fleisher said. It was the flattest “no” Ron had ever heard.
“Well, then, maybe we better talk to those two juveniles again and ask if anyone other than their mother had a hand in inspiring the fire.”
EIGHTEEN
I NEVER SAW ANYTHING like it,” Ron told the professor later that morning. “This one has got to be an accident. If it was Hog, which God forbid, either he bribed those kids with something extremely special, or he pulled off another miracle!” Ron took another spoonful of cereal. “This guy scares me, Maestro.”
Benedetti sipped his tea and nodded sympathetically. Ron had come home ready for another shouting match with his mentor, but the professor’s painting frenzy was over—at least for the time being. Ron found him downstairs, watching Seven Ways from Sundown, with Audie Murphy, on television, happy and conciliatory.
“Good morning, amico, I hope you spent a pleasant night?” The expression on his face wasn’t quite the usual leer. For all his continental charm and advanced intellect, Ron found the professor’s mind distressingly locker-roomish when it came to women.
Wondering why the old man seemed so happy, Ron dashed upstairs for a look at the canvas. New York State was gone—the fat part was now completely round, and the long part was much longer, with the smooth edge on the top instead of the bottom. It took Ron a few seconds to figure out what it was because he was still thinking of it as a map. Finally, he realized it was no longer a map at all, just a painting of a gold key on a blue background. He shrugged. If it meant anything, the old man would tell him when he got around to it.
When he came downstairs, the old man told him, “Ronald, did you know it is possible in this country to send flowers to a lady and have them added to one’s telephone bill? I took the liberty of sending some to our hostess of last night.”
On my telephone, of course, Ron thought. Oh, well. “A bouquet from both of us, Maestro?”
“Of course not!” The professor was stung. “Niccolo Benedetti does not use half-measures. Mrs. Chester this morning will receive a lovely bouquet from each of us!”
Ron grinned. “Thanks for thinking of me, Maestro,” he said.
“Non é niente,” the professor told him graciously.
Ron brought him up to date, telling him about the bolt cutter and Jastrow results, then about the fire and its aftermath.
“... and you would never believe such virtue in a pair of teen-age arsonists,” he concluded. “Fleisher questioned them for a solid hour and a half. Nobody told them to torch that place; nobody helped them; nobody paid them. It was their own idea—they did it as a public service. Fleisher offered them immunity if they’d talk, and they still wouldn’t say anything. That’s what convinced Buell—he met us downtown. Here the inspector is, giving them the perfect chance to lie their way out of it, and they don’t take it.”
“Well, perhaps as you say, their reward from Hog was enormous. Have the police intercepted a note?”
Ron tilted his bowl to get the last of his milk. “Fleisher no longer waits for notes. He has started large-scale investigations into the eleven customers and three employees that were in that store when the fire hit, solely on the basis of the pig masks the place sold. You must have done an excellent job selling my Hog-pig connections last night. Which reminds me. How did the inspector take Buell’s revelations last night?”
“He accepted it as yet another thing that had come along to complicate his life. He had, by the way, already checked into the possibility that the Guardians of America might have been behind these deaths.”
Ron was surprised. “That wasn’t in the reports,” he said.”
The old man grinned. “He was embarrassed to tell us because he thought it was ‘too wacked-out’ as he put it.” He stopped grinning. “It makes little difference, however. I believe I have an idea how to find Terry Wilbur.”
Ron dialed the 401 area code for what seemed like the hundredth time. Richard Bickell had to be the hardest man in all of Providence, Rhode Island to speak to. He was out. He was in conference. He was not to be disturbed. But it’s about his daughter’s murder. Sorr-ee, Mr. Bickell was not talking to reporters, click.
Ron tried a different approach. Using his full catalog of tricks, he pried loose the Bickells’ unlisted home phone number. A female answered the phone. She told him curtly that it was strictly against doctor’s orders for Mrs. Bickell to speak to anyone, especially about that, and how did he get the number, and if he called again, there would be trouble.
“Well, if she changes h
er mind, have her call me, all right?”
“I don’t think she’ll change her mind.”
“But if she does ...”
“Yes, goodbye.”
The professor, at this moment, was upstairs taking a nap. Ron held it against him. True, the old man had stayed awake all night coming up with the idea that Ron was trying to follow up, but this was a lot more difficult than he expected. It probably wasn’t Bickell that was the problem, Ron knew; it was some middle-echelon gatekeeper obsessed with following orders to the letter, the kind that, if you send them to the store, you have to remember to tell them to come back.
In his frustration, Ron was starting to doubt Benedetti’s idea had been so good in the first place. One had to consider the source after all; it had been inspired by Herbie Frank and his talk about Terry Wilbur and his jingling keys.
That was the “one significant thing” the professor had gleaned from the conversation with Herbie. It got the professor’s mind working on Terry Wilbur and keys, and it had finally worked itself out on the old man’s canvas last night.
Leslie Bickell had given Terry a key to her apartment. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had duplicates made of all her keys to give to Wilbur. It was possible. The idea now was to find out just what she had keys to. Instead of looking for Wilbur in the places one might expect to find him, as the police had been doing, maybe they’d be better off looking for him in a place they might expect to find Leslie. If they could get somebody to tell them where that might be.
Correction: if he could get them to tell. Ron was in this alone. For some reason (pure damn conceit, if you asked Ron), the professor had forbidden bringing the police in. Not, he had to admit, that it would make much difference. He had already claimed to be a policeman three times to three different secretaries.
He decided he needed a break, so instead of dialing the area code, he dialed a local number.
It was answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hello, Funnyface.”
“Ron,” she said. She made it a happy word.
They talked. They talked about fire and death in lovers’ tones; it was what had brought them together. As he had promised, Ron told her all about recent events, right up to his unsuccessful phone calls. The professor had only said not to tell the police—he hadn’t said anything about Janet.
She was sympathetic. “I can see why those secretaries and whatever won’t put you through, though, especially when you say you’re the police. Not that he would, of course, but Bickell could probably buy and sell the police—”
“That’s it!” Ron said. “Janet, I love you. Beauty and brains both. I’ll call you later, ’bye now.”
By now he had the number memorized. “Providence Seafood,” the operator said.
“Give me Dick Bickell’s office,” he said gruffly. He should have know. Benedetti was the only one who could get things accomplished by being polite. It was something you had to be born with.
When Bickell’s secretary, or whatever he was, picked up the phone, Ron said, “Let me talk to Dick.”
“Whose calling please?”
“I can’t afford to have underlings know I’m calling. Put Dick on the phone. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”
The voice wavered, but held firm. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Bickell is in conference. Can I take a message?”
“Yeah,” Ron barked. “You tell him he’s got a hell of a nerve trying to keep that merger with Con Foods a secret, especially from his friends.”
“Ah ... Hold on a second, would you please?”
Ron timed it. Twenty-five seconds until he heard a friendly baritone in his ear. “What’s all this nonsense about a merger with Con Foods?” He should have realized that the way to crash a fence built around a businessman is with business. No one would ever protect the boss against a chance to make money.
“Dick?”
“Yes,” the voice said. “What do you want?”
That accomplished, Ron apologized for his imposture, and in five minutes had found out what he wanted to know. “Imagine them thinking I wouldn’t want to help you with this,” Bickell said sadly. “I’m going to have a few people reexamine their values around here.”
“Good idea, Dick.” Bickell had told Ron to go on calling him Dick.
“And Ron?”
“Yes?”
“When you find Wilbur, let me know. I—I want to talk to him. I’ve got to try and ...”
“He may not be the Hog,” Ron pointed out.
“Even so.”
“Okay,” Ron said. “But if he is, the professor gets first crack at him.”
Inspector Fleisher was experiencing a literal agony of fatigue. He couldn’t remember the last time he was home; all he could remember was whenever it was, he hadn’t been able to sleep. His brain had had enough abuse and ceased to function. He seemed to be able to feel it, inside his head, clenched tight like a fist and somehow detached from its usual moorings.
His eyes still worked, but his brain refused to interpret the signals they sent him, so what good was it? He walked through a world where meaningless colors and shapes jumped around the way tongues of fire did.
It surprised him that his hearing worked so well. He recognized the voices of Shaughnessy and Tatham, who kept asking him if he was all right.
“Of course I’m all right, for crysake!” he snapped. “Who the hell would run this investigation if I wasn’t all right? The commissioner? Ha! Benedetti? Hell, he don’t even care any more!”
“We don’t really know that for sure, Inspector,” Buell pointed out.
“Well where is he? We’ve all been here all morning, and where is he? This is what, the sixth victim?”
“Seventh,” Shaughnessy corrected.
Fleisher thought he would have remembered that, but after the weeks of grinding, frustrating routine, the days ran together, and the crimes with them. Fleisher had, in fact, forgotten all about the professor’s timely intervention with the press yesterday, except for the boast that Hog would be in custody within a week. He says that, the inspector thought, then he goes home and dabs canvas, for crysake.
There was a horrible wailing from the main room. It was old man Marcus—he’d been going on like that all morning. His beautiful Gloria, his wonderful Gloria, okay already. Marcus’s lamentations had exactly the same effect on Fleisher as the rasping of an electric alarm clock.
“Shaughnessy,” the inspector said, “go out there and shut him up, or I swear to God I’ll shoot him.” Shaughnessy went.
Fleisher looked blearily at the pile of shapes that produced Tatham’s voice. “Buell,” he said, “after I drop in my tracks on this case, you write my obit, all right?”
“Don’t talk like that, Inspector.” The reporter sounded very uncomfortable.
“This is my last case,” Fleisher went on. “I’m going to die, right here, reading that last report that alibis one of those jerks in that store this morning.”
“You’re just down from fatigue, Inspector—you’re dead beat, that’s all.”
“Dead beat? I’m beat dead for crysake.” On sheer nerve impulse, not strength, Fleisher got up and started to pace.
“Some good news will perk you up,” Buell said cheerfully. “Maybe the lab will find something about that note.”
The note. They already had the note, only a few hours after the murder—the post office had fallen in with the spirit of the thing and spotted the latest note before mail from the various dropboxes was mixed together. This one came from the box on the corner of State and Harriman streets. Right in front of the Public Safety Building. Insult to injury; which brought him back to Benedetti.
“And the goddamn professor! Doesn’t he even care about the note, for crysake? Nothing to say at all?”
“He doesn’t know about the note,” Buell said. “Gentry’s line has been busy all morning.”
“Oh, for crysake! Don’t just stand there, try it again!”
Buell mumbled some
thing, and left the office to find the phone.
Fleisher stood in the middle of the floor, rubbing his eyes. My God, he thought, did I actually do that? Am I actually ordering Buell around like he was a cop? And he’s humoring me, for crysake. You’re in bad shape, Joe.
Do something constructive. You’re a detective-inspector. Inspect. Detect. Read the note again. The lab has the note, but you’ve got a photo to look at, right? So look at it.
It was the hardest thing he ever did, but Fleisher forced his brain to make sense of that note. It was the same format as the previous ones (except for the one with the blood spatter). It read:
TATHAM—
THIS SHOULD HELP THEM SELL THEIR MASKS, SHOULDN’T IT? I USED TAHITI DELIGHT TO HELP THAT WOMAN ESCAPE THE SNOW AND COLD. I LOVE TO HELP PEOPLE. TILL NEXT TIME.—HOG
I’ll help you, you bastard, Fleisher thought. He tried to read the note again, and burn it into his memory, but it was no good; might just as well have been alphabet soup, the way letters went swimming around.
Then everything was doing it, and Fleisher was on his knees with his hands flat on the desk for balance. This is ridiculous, he told himself, and tried to get up, but his legs couldn’t stretch down far enough to find the floor, and he fell unconscious on his own linoleum.
NINETEEN
THE TOLL OF THE wounded was catching up with the toll of the dead. Janet was hors de combat with her twisted ankle, practicing walking with a cane. Four persons connected in various ways with the Hog case were occupying beds in St. Erasmus Hospital: Barbara Elleger, Bizarro, Joyce Reade, and now Fleisher. What a bridge foursome that would be, Ron thought.
Ron and the professor had come to the hospital to visit Fleisher, but since he was out cold paying back the interest on the rest he owed himself, they wound up talking with Buell Tatham and Sergeant Shaughnessy, who had come for the same reason.
“Have you spoken to the doctors?” Ron asked.
“Yeah,” the sergeant told him. “He’ll be okay, but he’s totally worn out. You have to remember that he was going not only on the Hog stuff, but on every single damn fatal accident in the area for three whole weeks.”
Hog Murders Page 17
