Right on the Money

by Emma Lathen

  “Bob’s a good production man, and he’s—”

  “Production managers are a dime a dozen,” Conrad snapped. “Particularly now.”

  “This is the ideal time to sell out,” Doug rolled on. “You’re riding the wave of great publicity. Bring in a new man, and you’ll lose all your momentum. You and Bob have got to get your act together.”

  By way of reply Conrad delivered a lengthy, hot-tempered diatribe.

  Unlike her male counterparts, Alice Ecker knew that a face-to-face meeting of the adversaries was doomed before it started. The new Bob Laverdiere was too exhilarated to backpedal for anybody. And Conrad would choke on his own bile before he made a friendly gesture.

  Happily, there was an alternative.

  “I asked Tina to drop in for coffee,” said Alice, flattening Conrad with a fait accompli.

  The peace conference was informal but effective.

  “You see, I was afraid there really might be something wrong, Tina,” said Conrad, finally shuffling into a shamefaced apology. “I should have known that wasn’t possible—not with you keeping an eye on the books.”

  With her husband out of danger, Tina could afford to be generous.

  “I’ll tell Bob what you said,” she told Conrad, making it easy for him.

  “You do that!”

  At the Ecker Company, at least, the hostilities were over.

  Chapter 23

  RANDOM TESTS

  When he left the Sloan, Inspector Giorni realized that his next step had to be a frontal assault on ASI. This time he would be going, not to learn about Victor Hunnicut, but to learn about his murderer. Furthermore Giorni knew just where to start. Phil Pepitone might be linked to criminal activities at Sparling. Wiley Quinn certainly had been sighted at the freight elevator. Under these circumstances, Sam Bradley had the least to lose.

  But nobody at ASI was more conscious of the shifting sands than Bradley, and he was a born poker player. Overnight he had busily calculated the odds. There was virtually nothing to be gained by joining the legion arrayed against Phil Pepitone; becoming his sole ally might pay off in the future. And they both stood to gain by maintaining that Victory Hunnicut had never posed a real threat.

  “I’m glad to help in any way I can, Inspector, but I’ve already told your people what happened at Javits,” he began in mild protest.

  “Let’s start earlier than that, say with your finding out Hunnicut was the source of all the talk here. Is that why you went up to the Ecker Company?”

  “Of course not,” Bradley lied easily. “I’m sure you realize that any merger would mean an integration of both research facilities. I was a little worried about that, because Ecker’s such a small, idiosyncratic operation. The thing to do was to take a look. And I’m glad I went. Even prepared, I was surprised at Conrad Ecker’s work habits.”

  Giorni refused to be sidetracked.

  “But you already knew you were being smeared?”

  “Oh, yes. Naturally I assumed it was the first step in another power struggle. They have them here about once every three months.”

  His indulgent tone was an invitation to Giorni to join in amusement at ASI’s corporate follies. But Giorni had other things on his mind.

  “You’re saying you thought it was some kind of big shot—someone like Pepitone.”

  Bradley shook his head solemnly. “Phil and I aren’t in competition. If you must know, I was thinking about some of the technical people out in the divisions. One or two of them resent having research centralized.” Carried away by a speech he had often made to Gardner Ives, he continued, “They don’t realize that the more you blinker your research people with compartmentalization, the less likely you are to get the benefits of cross-fertilization.”

  Giorni’s opinion of ASI was sinking steadily. If this kind of gobbledygook had protected Bradley’s position, in spite of his dismal record, then almost anything could be pulled off here.

  “But you knew all this talk sprang up at the same time the Ecker acquisition got hot?” he asked, bringing them back to earth with a thud.

  “A lot of things were happening then, Inspector. I didn’t make the connection until I found out what Hunnicut was up to. And I was lucky there. Nobody had told Bob Laverdiere my job at ASI and he repeated some of Hunnicut’s slurs on my work. With that to go on, I came back here and discovered he was behind all the rumors.”

  “Why didn’t you do something about it right away?”

  By now Bradley’s fingers were steepled and he was examining them as if judiciously weighing laboratory results.

  “I didn’t really satisfy myself until just before the trade show and I was still hesitant. Hunnicut was so junior, I thought he might be acting for someone else. Then I overheard him with Quinn at the Ecker booth, and it all became clear. He was trying to sabotage Ecker because some other assistant would get the job.”

  “Then why go to Pepitone? You had just as much at stake.”

  There were at least some aspects of the corporate ethos that Bradley respected.

  “In Fred Uhlrich’s absence, Phil was the proper person to discipline Hunnicut,” he replied gravely.

  “Sure,” Giorni grunted. “And Pepitone blew his top when you told him?”

  Well aware that his conversation with Pepitone had been witnessed by others and possibly overheard, Bradley had long since provided himself with an answer.

  “He was more outraged than anything else,” he said, producing a wry smile. “The arrogance of an assistant trying to deal himself into company policy stuck in Phil’s craw. So he was going to straighten Hunnicut out. That’s all there was to it.”

  It did not escape Giorni’s notice that this rendition accomplished two ends. It reduced the entire problem of Hunnicut’s conduct to insignificance and it distanced Bradley from any subsequent confrontation.

  “And what about you?” the inspector demanded. “You told that guy from the Sloan you were going to get rough with Hunnicut.”

  “Oh, I’m not denying I was annoyed. If it had been left to me, I would have considered firing him.”

  After this, further questions were futile. Bradley had established the general outlines of his position. Hunnicut’s scandal-mongering was a piece of self-interest that had gone astray. The charges against Pepitone and Bradley were ridiculous. Even more absurd was the suggestion that Hunnicut might accidentally have hit a bull’s-eye. Almost as an afterthought Bradley denied hearing any rumors at all about the Sparling acquisition.

  After this polished performance, Inspector Giorni found it a relief to turn his attention to Wiley Quinn. Quinn was braced for an inquisition. His body was stiff, his face tight, and his voice carefully controlled. Like Bradley, he began by declaring that he had told the police all he knew about events at Javits.

  Too clever to attack from the expected direction, Giorni said casually, “Never mind about the trade show. Suppose you tell me the details of all the talk Hunnicut started.”

  “I’ve told that, too,” Quinn responded. “While Vic was at the booth, he smeared everybody at Ecker and made a big thing about Sam Bradley and Phil Pepitone being rotten at their jobs.”

  Giorni shook his head. “I don’t mean what Hunnicut himself was saying. I man how people here took his digs and ran with them.”

  “My God, you’re not wasting your time on that, are you? The talk was plain crazy. You’ve got to realize that everybody was bored, and it had become a game. They were trying to outdo each other in coming up with wild theories. I mean, after they finished trashing Pepitone and Bradley, they even went to work on Gardner Ives. They would have—”

  Frowning, Giorni barked his interruption. “Wait a minute! What are you talking about? What do you mean, they were bored?”

  “I thought you were asking about the fund-raiser.”

  Quinn sounded as if he regretted his outburst, but under prodding he described the evening and the fanciful charges that had been tossed about.

  “And how muc
h of this stuff filtered back to the company?”

  “Too much of it,” Wiley admitted. “But some of it was so way out, it couldn’t stand the light of day.”

  Giorni wondered if he had hit pay dirt. An entire evening devoted to imaginative calumny might have scored one real hit.

  “Any of this talk involve Sparling Castings?”

  A fleeting look of surprise crossed Quinn’s face. This was not the line of questioning he had feared. “It came up at the TV station, but that’s the last I heard of it. People had forgotten Sparling until that gun-running stuff hit the papers. Now, of course, everybody’s saying that when Phil Pepitone recommends a company, it’s the kiss of death. First Ecker gets us knee-deep in a murder, now Sparling has us cheek-by-jowl with terrorists.”

  “Is that all they’re saying?”

  “Believe me, around here that’s enough.”

  Little by little, Quinn’s tone had become almost normal. As long as they were discussing the fund-raiser or reactions to Sparling, he felt safe. No one knew better than Inspector Giorni the stress imposed by alternating between relief and tension.

  “So what Hunnicut said at the Ecker booth was nothing new,” he began, accelerating his tempo. “You’d heard it all before and you knew what he was up to.”

  “That wasn’t hard to figure out. With Vic, it was always himself.”

  “You mean he saw you had a chance for promotion and he was busting a gut to torpedo the deal.”

  “Put it that way if you like.”

  “That’s the way it was,” Giorni shot back, pleased to see Quinn back on the ropes. “And you decided to do something about it. You wanted that job.”

  “Sure I did. What’s so damned strange about that?”

  Giorni had been rattling along like a machine gun but now he paused, allowing Quinn’s discomfort to mount. Then, as if he had reached the only reasonable conclusion, he said softly, “So you decided to settle Hunnicut.”

  “That’s not so! It wasn’t that way at all.”

  “Oh, yeah? You think we don’t know about your movements? After you finished at the ASI display, you started roaming the floor, trying to track somebody down.”

  “Look, you’ve got to understand—”

  “You want me to understand, you’d better stop lying your head off.”

  Cornered, Quinn rubbed the flat of his hand over his head. Little though Giorni knew it, half his work had already been done by Mrs. Wiley Quinn. Breakfast that morning had featured a heated exchange.

  “You can’t keep quiet about this anymore, Wiley.”

  “We’ve got a mortgage and a baby. What do we do if I’m on the unemployment line?”

  “What do we do if you’re in jail?” she had retorted.

  The prospect did not rouse in Wiley Quinn the transcendent glow of self-sacrifice that had sustained Bob Laverdiere.

  “Oh, God, I’m stuck no matter what I do.”

  “Maybe not. Sparling has changed things.”

  He had been afraid to hope, but she remained adamant.

  “Wiley, no job is worth being front runner in a murder investigation.”

  These words were still ringing in Quinn’s ears as he began a halting explanation.

  “I learned a lot from the way Bob Laverdiere handled Vic. The creep would fold if you tackled him head-on. On top of that, his name was going to be mud for causing trouble with the Eckers. Then I heard that Phil Pepitone was looking for Vic.”

  “So you realized that Bradley had blown the whistle on Hunnicut.”

  But Quinn disagreed.

  “No, I’d gotten it all wrong. I saw old man Ecker come busting over to our display, and I thought Phil was on the warpath because of that. It seemed like the right time to tell him what else Vic had been doing. Now, of course, it doesn’t look like such a bright idea,” he concluded sadly.

  “Let me get this straight. You claim it was Pepitone you were trying to find?”

  “There’s no claiming about it. For Christ’s sake, I asked people.”

  Giorni adopted a stance of heavy disbelief. “And just where are you supposed to have tracked him?”

  “All over,” Quinn said evasively.

  “We have a witness who places you right by the murder elevator.”

  A dull-red flush stained Quinn’s cheeks.

  “All right, all right. Yes, someone told me Phil had been heading in that direction. When I went over to take a look, he wasn’t there. I never did hook up with him.”

  “Come off it. The only reason you’ve dreamed up this story is because you’re scared.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, what difference did it make at the trade show? It all seemed cut and dried. One minute Laverdiere was waving a skewer around, mad as hell. The next, we’re told somebody has stabbed Vic with it. It didn’t take a genius to guess what happened.”

  Giorni hooded his eyes in thought. If Bob Laverdiere, faced with much the same progression, had assumed his wife killed Hunnicut, it was not unreasonable for Quinn to draw the same conclusion about a virtual stranger.

  “If it was so damn irrelevant, what was the harm in telling us?”

  “Plenty of harm,” Quinn snapped, irritated. “If I’d put Phil by that elevator for no good reason, what do you think would have happened to my career? Even if my job didn’t go down the tube, I could kiss good-bye to any promotion. Phil would have his knife into me.”

  “You think he’s going to love it now?”

  But Wiley, having finally done the unthinkable and placed Phil Pepitone at the scene of the murder, regained his confidence.

  “These days Phil doesn’t cut much ice in the front office. He’s got other things to worry about.”

  This assessment was confirmed before Inspector Giorni ever reached his last suspect. Questioning Sam Bradley and Wiley Quinn had not entailed penetrating ASI’s front office. But Phil Pepitone could be approached only past the safeguards that protected the high and mighty. Every security guard and receptionist who was part of the process greeted Giorni with avaricious interest. Nobody was going out of his way to protect Phil Pepitone’s image. Only his personal secretary, the final bastion, evinced a different reaction. And she looked worried.

  “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Pepitone himself was making no pretense of being above the battle.

  “You’re all I need,” he welcomed the inspector in a basso growl.

  There was no point in preliminary sparring.

  “We’ve placed you by the freight elevator at Javits,” Giorni said starkly.

  Pepitone did not flinch.

  “So what?” he challenged.

  “You didn’t mention that little fact.”

  “Damn right I didn’t. Why go looking for trouble?”

  Giorni settled more deeply in his chair. Nothing could have suited him better than this readiness to take on all comers. If Pepitone was defying him to do his worst, he was ready to oblige.

  “Well, trouble is what you’ve got now. It makes a neat little timetable. First Bradley tells you that Hunnicut is responsible for all the smears that have been circulating. Then you go off to settle his hash. The last we hear of you, you’re right on the spot where Hunnicut gets himself killed a few minutes later.”

  “Sure I went looking for him, but I never found him. Try and make something of that.”

  Giorni knew exactly what was moving Pepitone to all this belligerence. Unlike everybody else, he had been given no respite. First there had been all the speculation about money changing hands over the Ecker deal. Then the Sparling acquisition had blown up in his face. The man certainly knew that behind countless closed doors, people were discussing the future of Phil Pepitone. It must be a relief for him to have an adversary actually sitting across the desk.

  “Oh, I can make something of it,” Giorni replied placidly. “You admit you’d tracked Hunnicut to the freight elevator. Now you’re telling me you didn’t follow through and take it?”

  “That’s
right. Nobody told me he took the elevator. Some girl had seen him go down that corridor, so I checked it out and he wasn’t there. I never even considered the elevator. There was no reason for Hunnicut to go to the basement. He was supposed to be finding Conrad Ecker. I just went on searching the floor and I missed him.”

  The inspector had already discovered that the more tranquil he became, the more aggressive Pepitone became. Almost offhandedly, Giorni remarked, “That story could be shot full of holes.”

  “Just try it. You can look all you want, you won’t find anybody who saw me get on that elevator. And even if I did, what’s the big deal? I was simply going to chew the kid out. You don’t stab an assistant manager because he steps out of line.”

  “Not usually, no,” Giorni conceded. “Not unless his big mouth is getting everybody too close for comfort.”

  “Jesus! You’re not digging up that garbage about a bribe from Ecker, are you? They just couldn’t get a handle on anything reasonable to accuse me of, so they had to start singing looney tunes.”

  “Actually I wasn’t thinking about Ecker. I was thinking about Sparling.”

  Pepitone stared, then erupted in a contemptuous snort.

  “Sparling! So now you’ve got me as some kind of gunrunner. Am I supposed to be huddling with Libyans? Where do you pick up this tripe?”

  “It’s been suggested that you greased the wheels of the Sparling purchase.”

  “That’s a new one, but why should I be surprised? By now they’ve probably got me pegged as a child molester. Let me straighten you out on some basics, Giorni. Sparling has turned into a lemon and everybody’s busy finding a fall guy. They think they’ve got me nominated. Well, that’s the kind of thing you expect around here and I know the rules. But this load of shit you’ve dragged in here is something else again. I’m not sitting still while they try to saddle me with a murder. Who the hell have you been talking to?”

  Giorni was impassive. “You know I’m not telling you my sources.”

  “I don’t give a damn about you,” Pepitone shot back. “In fact I’m through talking to you. You want any more, make an appointment with my lawyer. But I’m settling things around here.”