Killed in the Act

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got to get back to my folks—”

  “I’ve got to know more,” I snapped. “Did he call you? Write?”

  “I don’t know, I was out of the country! You’d better ease up, Cobb, this is no place for this kind of thing.”

  I apologized, he accepted. “But look, you haven’t been home long, have you? Haven’t gotten your mail?”

  “No, I haven’t. He may have written. Now that I think of it, he may have told my folks something. Look, I’m sorry about before, I said I’d co-operate—”

  An old sales trick, apologizing for something the other person did.

  “—so here’s what we can do. I’ve got to stick with my folks, you understand that, right? So one of you come with me, and maybe we can talk to them a few minutes, if we don’t upset them, and the other one can go to my apartment, and check the mail.”

  “I’ll go to your place,” Llona said. “Do you still live on Rumson?” Alex said he did.

  “All right,” I said. “Anything from Jim, anything from the West Coast, anything from Latin America, okay, Llona?”

  “Sure, Matt,” she said.

  “And I’ll go with you, Alex. And thanks.”

  “Forget it, it’s for Jim.” He took out a key case, removed a key. “This will let you in, Llona,” he said, giving it to her. “And, while you’re there, bring me a couple of clean shirts, will you? Top left-hand drawer in the bedroom. This is going to be a long weekend.”

  We followed the limousine in the Network car to the house of Alex’s parents, then Llona dropped me off and left for Alex’s.

  I learned a lot talking with the old folks. Not about the case—Jim’s death was just Fate catching up to them, the way they saw it—but about the people themselves.

  Alex had to translate, because little, withered Mrs. Bevic had no English, and gnarled, twisted Mr. Bevic had just enough to get him through a day at the mill, and he was retired from all that.

  They had no idea why their son was killed. To them, the idea that a person could be killed over something he wrote in a book was not tenable in America. They couldn’t read their son’s book, but he had been honored and respected for it, even though it said something bad about the government. That was what they had come to America for, they said.

  I thanked them, and went out to the porch to wait for Llona.

  Llona was gone longer than I expected, but eventually she returned to report no progress. She seemed very upset over it. For the first time since I met her she seemed hesitant and indecisive. I grinned at her, and gave her a playful punch on the chin, to cheer her up. “I never said it was going to be easy,” I told her.

  She gave me a weary grin in return. “Well, you were right.”

  We knocked on the door to deliver the shirts, then got in the car and headed home.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Meanwhile, back at the ranch...”

  —COMMERCIAL TRANSITION, “HOPALONG CASSIDY,” SYNDICATED

  LLONA HAD GASPED WHEN she first saw where I lived. “How can you afford such a magnificent place?” she’d breathed. I told her it wasn’t what I had, it was who I knew who had it.

  Now I told her to make herself at home, and called Lieutenant Martin.

  “I’m probably a fool for asking this,” he said as he picked up the phone, “but what can I do for you, Matty?”

  After I told him what had happened that morning, he said, “I knew it. I knew it. Sometimes I think you were put on earth to make trouble for me.”

  “Come on, Mr. M., this is an important piece of the puzzle.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “At the very least, it explains Jim Bevic’s trip to California. If he was starting a book on McHarg, it’s only natural he’d go talk to some of the victims of the swindle, right? Shelby and Green were among the more prominent victims, remember?” Then I got another idea.

  “But it could even be more than that. Something about that old scandal could be the cause of Bevic’s murder or the attempt on Shelby and Green. Or both. Maybe Bevic found out something from our pal Ollie, and the killer is afraid he told one of the boys.” The lieutenant grunted. “Well,” I said, “it’s something to look into, isn’t it?”

  “You think you’ve practically solved the case for me, don’t you, Matty?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I began.

  “You damn well better not go that far. According to you, all I’ve got to do is find a bowling ball dropping maniac who was in Los Angeles last week and New York this week, and who was tied in with this Utopia Uranium racket over ten years ago. Did I leave anything out? Oh yeah. He’s got to have a hot line to Costa Rica. Either that or a crystal ball, because according to you, he knows what happened at a conversation we can’t even say for sure took place!”

  He knew I was aware of all that, he was just complaining about the work it would take to check it out. But we both knew it would have to be checked out, so I didn’t bother to defend myself. Instead, I said, “Don’t yell at me, I’m only an idea man.”

  “Swell,” the lieutenant said. “Any ideas on how I should go about this?”

  “Well, for one thing, you should talk to everyone who was fleeced in the UU scandal...”

  “Right,” he said.

  “...And you should try to have a few words with Ollie McHarg down in Costa Rica, and find out if Bevic talked to him, and what was said if he did.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Mr. M. sighed.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing, Matty, nothing; it’s the thing to do all right. Just that I’ve been through this kind of thing once already, trying to find out why Bevic was down there in the first place. Jesus, I don’t know whether a foreign country or our own State Department is the bigger pain in the ass to work with. This could take months.”

  “Maybe not,” I said thoughtfully.

  “Matty, you scare me with that tone of voice, you know that? What are you up to?”

  “Look, the Network doesn’t have treaties with anybody. We can’t violate protocol, right?”

  “Matty, I’m warning you!”

  I knew he was, that’s why I hung up.

  “I’ve got to go down to the Tower for a little while,” I told Llona. “You can stay here, if you want. Spot seems to think you’re okay, so that’s good enough for me.”

  She was playing with him, laughing like a little girl. “Thank you,” she said. Her face was still, but her eyes laughed.

  Then the laughter left her eyes and she said, “Matt, what’s the point of all this, really?”

  “God, Llona,” I said, “if I waited for an answer to that, I’d never do anything.”

  “You can’t bring Jim back. Or Jerry, either.” She started scratching Spot’s throat. While she did that, she must have had a long, silent conversation with herself, because at last she said, “Well, I’m alive.” She looked up at me, as though she wanted confirmation of the fact.

  She was alive, all right. Complex and beautiful and exciting and alive. I noted, for the record, that it had taken me until just now to link Llona and Monica in the same thought; the thought was that maybe Llona was the girl who would help me get over Monica.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, as I kissed her good-bye.

  I was in the office, thinking things over at my desk, listening to the first sleet of autumn clicking against the brown-glass windows of the Tower. I couldn’t decide which of Cobb’s Commandos was going to get a tropical vacation at the Network’s expense. After twenty minutes of agonizing, it finally occurred to my alleged brain to look at the files on these people. That made it easy. Cobb, Santiago, Arnstein, and Ragusa spoke Spanish. I wasn’t about to leave New York with a killer running around my building. Jazz held the department together. Ragusa was still too inexperienced. I called Shirley at her apartment in Brooklyn, and asked her if she’d mind coming in.

  You’d have thought I’d asked her if she’d mind if
I gave her a mink coat. I never saw such a glutton for punishment.

  I told Jazz to get busy making plane reservations, and contact the Network’s Latin American news bureau to arrange for Shirley’s accommodations. Then I put on the office TV and watched Bugs Bunny cartoons for a while.

  Shirley showed up with a gleam in her eye and a packed bag in her hand. She was either a clairvoyant, or a sneak. Under intense grilling, she admitted she’d called back and found out from Jazz what was up. “I figured it would save time,” she said.

  “Right. I admire initiative. Remind me to put you in for a raise.” Then, I told her why she was going to Costa Rica, and what I wanted to know. I didn’t exactly tell her that if she was caught or killed, Jazz would disavow any knowledge of her actions, but I impressed on her the need to be careful.

  After that, I returned like a tongue to an aching tooth, to Studio J. I wanted to see how the great Save “Sight, Sound, & Celebration” Scheme was coming along. If sheer activity counted for anything, it was coming along fine. The whole scene reminded me of one of those building-the-pyramids movies Hollywood used to turn out.

  There were almost two hundred workers busily repairing the set. The carpenters were all but finished, and the electricians were busy wiring a new system of monitors, mikes, and lights; the set decorators were champing at the bit to lay the carpet and repaper the flats. It was going to be close.

  Actually, just getting that army there was a remarkable achievement for Reigels, or Falzet, or whoever had done it. The workers had been flown in from Boston, D.C., Chicago, and L.A., all cities where the Network owns and operates TV stations. I found out later that the other three networks had offered to loan us men, but the International Radio and Television Employees, the union here at the Network, nixed the idea.

  You see, the only thing that irks the union more than management is another union. Millie Heywood tells a story about the time a visitor to the Network went to the men’s room on the sixth floor, and had a heart attack while combing his hair. Somebody (probably another visitor) discovered him lying there, rushed out to call an ambulance, and, while he was at it, brought back a wooden chair for the victim to sit on while he waited.

  After the patient was taken away, that stupid chair sat in that sixth-floor men’s room for eight months, while the chair-moving union fought it out with the bathroom-cleaning union over who had the right to remove the chair. I repeat: this is a true story. The final compromise was this: a member of the chair-movers was allowed to take the chair out of the bathroom by belting it with a sledge hammer, while a member of the bathroom-cleaners followed him and picked up the splinters.

  Naturally, then, no red-blooded son of IRATE would stand by and let infidels from some other union travel two blocks and invade their turf when fellow IRATE’s could be brought in from hundreds of miles away.

  In all fairness, I am constrained to admit that it didn’t make much difference. “Sight, Sound, & Celebration” was now a guaranteed money-losing venture, through water-damage to equipment alone. It occurred to me, though, that the Network could have brought in all sorts of scab labor if it wanted to. With so many new faces in the room, who’d know the difference? There was too much work to do for someone to ask to see a union card every time you asked him to pass the hammer.

  I was very surprised to see Ken Shelby and Lenny Green in Studio J, oiling the hinges of the Great Bomboni’s magic cabinet, until I remembered that in another momentous jurisdictional decision, magicians had won the right to handle their own equipment. Green was a card-carrying magician; they probably both were.

  “Hi, Matt,” Green said. He moved away from the cabinet, and stepped on a little square rubber pedal on the floor that was connected to the cabinet by a tube. “Nothing,” he said. He shook his head. “It’s not gonna work.”

  Shelby showed him a hand, bidding his partner to be patient. “Let’s oil the catch and try it again.”

  “Okay, but there’s nothing wrong with the catch.”

  “What’s the trouble?” I asked.

  “Nothing really,” Shelby told me, working the oilcan. “We’re lucky—the main machinery for the thumps and rattles inside the cabinet is in good shape, but the compressed air gimmick that has the door swing magically open doesn’t work.”

  “It’s not the gimmick,” Green said, “it’s the wood. It swells up when it gets wet, you know? The door is too tight a fit in the doorway now to swing when the catch is released.”

  “Sure.” I grinned. “Capillary action. I’m surprised at you, Ken. You directed ‘Dr. Wonder.’ You should know all about capillary action. It’s the force that lifts tons of nutrients to the topmost leaves of a giant sequoia. It’s the power that makes a wet sponge expand to twice its dry size—”

  “Enough!” Shelby said, in mock torment. “What did I do to deserve the past coming back to haunt me like this?”

  I snorted.

  “What’s that for?” Shelby wanted to know.

  “You don’t know the half of it yet.”

  “He knows enough.” Lenny Green draped an arm around Shelby’s shoulders. “Shelby and Green is as far back as I want my partner to go. Nobody needs him directing kids’ shows.”

  Shelby put the oilcan down and said, “Right you are, Len. To hell with this door. We’ll tell Melanie about it and ad lib around it during the show.”

  Green said, “Now you’re talking.” He turned to me. “Matt, is there a decent, stand-up saloon around here? If there is, I’m buying.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve drunk more since you guys got into town than I usually drink in a month.” That was true, but it wasn’t all their fault. The banquet had a lot to do with it.

  “Hell,” Green smiled, “you’re not trying, Matt. Women love a drinking man.”

  “Cobb does all right,” Shelby deadpanned. I felt a sick, guilty sensation. I hoped he was joking.

  I was all set to go along with them but Colonel Coyle buttonholed me on the way out of the studio. He certainly didn’t need a drink. He was already drunk, with power.

  “I’ve got something to show you, Cobb,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Shelby said they’d wait for me in his dressing room, and I went with Coyle. The colonel had taken over the J. V. Hewlen Kinescope Library as his seventh-floor command post. That way if anyone came to visit him, he could point to the empty spaces on the film rack and say that was what happened when you didn’t listen to Security experts.

  He’d picked Jerry de Loon’s old work table as his desk. There was a scrapbook lying open on it. My God, I thought, he’s going to swap army stories with me.

  What he wanted to show me was a series of articles clipped from newspapers and magazines about the library project and about “Sight, Sound, & Celebration.” He was angry over them.

  “Look at this,” he said, pointing a bony finger at a subhead that said, “Eighteen Months in Preparation.” “Everything the enemy could want to know, right here! The layout, the schedule of events, even the list of all the personnel who would be here!”

  The colonel’s voice took on an ominous tone. “This is the doing of that Ritafio fellow.”

  It’s lonely being sane.

  “Of course it’s the doing of that Ritafio fellow, Colonel. That’s what he’s supposed to do—get people to write articles about the Network.”

  “Well, it’s dangerous,” he blustered. “It’s like the Pentagon publishing its plans.”

  “The Pentagon,” I said, “doesn’t have to worry about the Nielsens.”

  “I still say this publicity is dangerous. And I must say, I’m disappointed in you, Cobb. You face many of the same problems I do. I thought together we might formulate a plan to do something about the situation.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I said. It was useless to argue with him. “Why didn’t you say so? There’s only one thing you can do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Write a memo.”

  He was not amused. “I know
that,” he began, but he was interrupted by a commotion in the corridor. I stuck my head out the door in time to see what looked like a gang rape of Melanie Marliss by five of the colonel’s security guards. It took all five of them to hold her down—she was thrashing like a Great White Shark, and cursing like the fisherman who had just pulled him in. She had done some damage with her nails, too. At least three of them had parallel red scratches on their cheeks, like wet war paint.

  I screwed my eyes shut, hoping it would go away. It occurred to me my life had gotten to be like a boxing match between a quadruple amputee and Muhammad Ali. A lot of bad things were happening, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

  “What’s going on, Cobb?” Coyle asked from his table.

  I didn’t want to talk to him. I opened my eyes. Things had changed, slightly. Melanie had cut down the odds with a well-placed knee. One of the guards was out of the fight, and might just possibly be singing a new part in the Network Christmas Choir.

  I supposed I had to go rescue her, if only to save the rest of the baritone section. I dashed down the hall and yelled, “What the hell is going on here?”

  One of the guards looked up to tell me, and Melanie bit a chunk out of his forearm. “Goddammit, get off her!” I yelled.

  They sprang up as though Melanie were a bomb. “I’ll have you all strung up by your balls!” she hissed.

  “Go away,” I told the guards.

  “But—”

  “Go. Or I’ll turn her loose on you again.”

  They fled.

  It was a ticklish situation. The bowling ball was going to be nothing compared to this. I couldn’t stand it. I was debating whether to climb all the way to the roof to jump, or just smash a window and go from my office.

  But Melanie was not angry. She was exhilarated. Mountain air couldn’t have made her as refreshed. Her feminine radiance was at peak operation.

  The question was unnecessary, but it was the only thing I had in my brain at the moment, so I said it. “Are you all right?”