by Anthony Rome
Diana, tears staining her face, blurted, “Russ, is he . . .”
“Doc Andrews is taking out the slug now. He says he’ll be all right. It got him in the shoulder. Lucky he moved when he did or I guess it would’ve broken his spine.”
Diana moaned and lowered her face to her hands. Her husband put his arm around her shoulders and murmured, “Don’t, honey. He’ll be all right, just like the doctor says. It’s only a shoulder wound. Hell, I got a lot worse than that in the war, and I’m still around and healthy enough to make trouble for you.”
Chief Patrick looked at me, then at Rita Kosterman. “Okay, now. Did either of you see enough of the guy that shot him to give me a description?”
I shook my head.
Rita had gone back to staring blankly at the opposite wall. Her whispered “no” didn’t move her lips.
Patrick sighed. “How about the car?”
Rita spoke first in a low, even monotone, “Blue sedan. New.”
Patrick looked at me. I nodded. “Ford two-door hardtop. The Galaxie Club Victoria model.”
“Get the license number?”
I glanced at Rita, waiting to hear what she’d say.
She surprised me: “I didn’t get all of it. I think it started with SJ-4.”
“That’s right,” I told Patrick. “The rest of it’s 61.”
Patrick turned to his waiting deputy. “Well? What’re you standing there for? You should’ve got that.”
The deputy said defensively: “I was waiting for you. I figured . . .”
“For crissake stop talking,” Patrick snapped at him. “You’ve got the description and number on the car. Get on it.”
The deputy hurried off along the hall and ran down the steps.
Patrick turned back to us. “Okay . . . anybody got any ideas on who’d want to kill a nice guy like Mr. Kosterman?” Diana shook her head without raising it.
Darrell Pines said, “Hell no. I’ll tell you something. Rudy’s a rough man to do business with. But even men he’d outsmarted on a contract or gotten a job away from couldn’t stay sore at him. He’s that kind of guy. Everybody likes him.”
“Somebody doesn’t,” Patrick stated. He looked at Rita. “Mrs. Kosterman? Any idea? Any personal enemy, maybe?” Rita Kosterman went on staring at the wall above my head. Something unpleasant flickered in her eyes. But she didn’t answer him.
Patrick frowned and turned to me. “Well?”
“I’ve got some ideas,” I told him. “Nothing definite. And I don’t want to say anything till I talk to Kosterman when he comes out of it.”
“He may not be in any shape to talk to you today.”
“He will be,” I said. “It’s only his shoulder. He’s healthy and built solid. And he’ll be wanting to talk to me as soon as he comes around.”
“Oh?” Patrick eyed me, looking like he didn’t know whether to be sore about it or not. Finally he just said: “I’ve been hearing a lot about you the past couple of days. From the boys down in Miami.”
“Mostly bad I imagine.”
“All bad. They’re pretty sore at you.”
“I don’t imagine they like you very much, either,” I said. Patrick nodded. “Not much. But that’s no skin off my nose. They figure I’m just a hick cop and I figure to hell with ‘em. This is my bailiwick. They can’t bother me any. But with you it’s different. You got to live with ‘em. You better come up out of all this smelling mighty sweet and bringing ‘em a present.”
“I don’t know how I’ll be smelling by then, I said, but I figure on having that present for them.”
“Yeah?” Patrick shrugged, took a pipe from his jacket pocket, and began stuffing tobacco into it. “This is getting too complicated for me. Sometimes I wish I was back in the MP’s.”
Ten minutes later Dr. Andrews came out of the operating room. Diana jumped up off the bench, but Rita got to him first. She seized his white jacket with the fingers of hands as if she were going to tear it off him. “How is he?” she whispered harshly. “Will he . . .”
Dr. Andrews gave her his best bedside-manner smile and patted her arm. “He’s going to be just fine, Mrs. Kosterman. I got the bullet out. It didn’t even break the bone. Of course there’s shock and loss of blood. But we’ve given him a transfusion and . . . well, just take my word for it. Your husband is going to be all right. By tomorrow he’ll probably be sitting up and demanding rare steaks.”
Rita slumped back against the wall, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. I saw it was requiring willpower to keep her knees from buckling.
Diana, looking as though a heavy weight had been removed from her, asked the doctor, “Can we go in and see him now?”
“Not yet. He’s just coming out of the anesthetic. I’ll let you know when.”
“I want that bullet,” Patrick told him.
“I have it for you, inside.” The two of them went into the operating room, came back out a minute later. Patrick had the slug in a white envelope. He hurried off down the corridor. The doctor went in the opposite direction, toward the private rooms.
Five minutes later Patrick returned. “I sent the slug over to the state police lab,” he told me. “Looked like a .38 to me. That mean anything special to you?”
I shook my head. But I thought about the .38 slug that had killed Turpin.
We waited.
An hour dawdled by. Dr. Andrews reappeared. “Russ,” he told the chief of police, “Mr. Kosterman wants to see you.”
Patrick gave me a pleased grin. “Wise guy.”
Rita asked Dr. Andrews, “Rudy’s conscious? He is going to be all right?”
Dr. Andrews smiled at her soothingly. “Of course. Just as I told you. You’ll be able to see for yourself, after he talks to Chief Patrick. Come on, Russ.”
They went off toward Kosterman’s room. I looked at Rita. “Mrs. Kosterman, there were those questions I was going to ask you. Maybe we’d better get them over with now.”
“It’ll have to wait,” she said, meeting my eyes without expression.
“It can’t wait much longer,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “I know that. Just till I see Rudy.”
A couple of minutes later Patrick came back, his face grim again. He looked at me. “You win. I’m just a hick cop who does what I’m told. He wants to see you.”
Dr. Andrews was waiting for me outside Kosterman’s room. “Make it short,” he said. “He’s not that strong yet, and his family will want to see him next.”
I nodded and went in. Kosterman’s nurse closed the door as she went out, leaving me alone with him. The smell of ether spiced the air in the room. Kosterman rolled his head slowly toward me in the hollow of his pillow. His face was gaunt, its flesh collapsed in on the bone structure. His eyes were only half open but quite clear as they focused on me. He raised one limp hand a few inches off the top sheet in a weak greeting.
“Almost got me,” he said in a very small voice that revealed more than anything else how completely he’d been drained of strength. “That was a surprise.”
“To me, too,” I admitted. “I never guessed there’d be an attempt on your life. I still don’t know the why of it. Maybe you do.”
“I can’t think of any reason,” Kosterman said.
“There’s money,” I said. “Money’s always a strong reason for murder.”
“Money,” he repeated. “Yes . . . I used to think money would solve all my problems. But it just makes more of them . . . I’m scared, Rome. Not for myself.”
“Sure. I don’t blame you. It makes you wonder about the people closest to you. The ones who’d benefit from your death.”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s better to know, Mr. Kosterman. Who does get your money when you’re dead?”
He rolled his head away from me on the pillow till he was looking toward the drawn blinds of the windows.
It was a while before he answered: “Rita . . . Oh, God!”
“Just your wife? How abou
t your daughter? Your son-in-law?”
“Darrell doesn’t get anything except through Diana. Of course I expected Rita would want him to take over as manager of my businesses. Diana—by the terms of my will the sum left to her will be doled out to her in monthly amounts until Rita’s death. To prevent her from giving any large sum to her mother and Boyd.”
“Your wife gets the rest? Everything?”
“Everything . . . the insurance, control of my businesses. Everything.”
He looked at me again, and now his eyes were wide open. “Rome, I instructed Patrick not to let any other police agency touch this case. Whatever he finds out, he’ll report it to me before taking any action on it. And I’ve told him to work closely with you. That you know best what I want. You do, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Keep it in the family . . . if I can.”
“I promised you a generous bonus if you succeeded in doing that. Now I’ll name a definite amount. Five thousand dollars. Is that enough? Or . . .”
“It’s enough if I can do it. If it can’t be done, going higher won’t help.”
The door opened. Dr. Andrews looked in. “Mr. Rome . . .” he warned.
“I’m leaving now,” I told him.
“Rome . . .” Kosterman whispered. “Please . . . try.”
I said “Yeah” and went out.
Diana and Pines were still on the bench waiting where I’d left them.
Rita Kosterman was nowhere in sight.
Pines rose from the bench. “Well, do we get to see him now?”
“Uh-huh. Where’s Mrs. Kosterman?”
“She went out for a breath of fresh air. Probably be back any minute.”
I hurried off along the hall and ran down the steps to the hospital entrance. Outside, I looked around for Rita. She wasn’t there. Neither was her cream-and-bronze Fiat.
Chief Patrick was in his car at the corner with the door open, talking over his radio-telephone. He hung it on the hook as I leaned in the open door.
“Nothing on that blue Ford yet,” he told me. “But there will be. I notified the state police to be on the lookout for it before Kosterman gave me the word to keep it between us.”
“Did you see Mrs. Kosterman come out of the hospital?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Said she was going home to get some rest. Guess seeing her husband that way on that hospital bed finished her.”
“She didn’t see him,” I told Patrick.
“Oh?” His eyes narrowed. “You think she’s the one behind the shooting? And now she’s scared and making a run for it?”
“If she is she couldn’t get far in that foreign car without being spotted and caught.”
“Not by me she won’t be,” Patrick said, with just a tinge of bitterness. “And I’m not sending out any calls to pick her up. Kosterman gave me my orders. Protect his family even if I have to smother this whole case to do it. And work with you to make sure it’s done right.”
“Kosterman make the law around here?”
“I’ve got a big house, a wife who likes good clothes, and three kids to raise,” Patrick said. “This is a nice, solid job. With a sweet retirement pension—if I last long enough. I buck Kosterman, and I won’t even be considered as a candidate for re-election. That’s the way it is.”
“I thought you might resent my butting in.”
Patrick shrugged. “Not in this case. What the hell, Kosterman’s the one got shot. If he doesn’t want the guilty party prosecuted, why should I care?”
We gave Rita Kosterman ten more minutes to get home, if that was really where she’d gone. Then we went into the hospital receiving room to call the Kosterman estate.
“I’m just doing this out of curiosity,” Patrick warned me as we went in. “If she’s skipped, I’m not going to do anything about it. That’ll be Kosterman’s worry.”
I stood by the phone booth as he put through the call. He got the Kosterman butler.
“This is Chief Patrick,” he said into the phone. “Is Mrs. Kosterman there?” He listened, said, “Hold on a minute,” and looked at me. “She’s been—and gone. Left the Fiat and drove away in a black Buick. Guess she figured the Buick’d be harder to find.”
“Let me talk to him,” I asked Patrick.
He slid out of the booth after telling the butler he was putting his assistant on. I got in the booth and spoke into the phone: “Did Mrs. Kosterman take anything with her when she left? Suitcases? A change of clothes, anything like that?”
“No,” the butler said. “No suitcase.”
I heard the hesitation in his voice. “What did she take?”
“Well . . . she . . . I always keep a loaded revolver in my room just in case. She asked me for it. I gave it to her.” My silence scared him. “Was . . . did I make a mistake?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “You’ve got lots of company.”
CHAPTER
17
I WAS SITTING in Patrick’s car with him when the state troopers’ report on the blue Ford with the license number SJ-461 came over the police radio.
The car from which Kosterman had been shot belonged to a druggist in Brookville, a town ten miles south of Mayport. The druggist had reported it stolen on Sunday night.
“Well, that’s that,” Chief Patrick growled. “Our would-be killer figured somebody might get his license number. So he used a stolen car. We’ll find it all right in the weeds off some back road. But he won’t be in it. He’ll be far away in his own car. Which leaves us nowhere. No way to trace him. We don’t even have a description of him. And we can’t find him the logical way through whoever he was working for. Because even if Mrs. Kosterman hadn’t skipped, Kosterman doesn’t want pressure put on his family. Ah, to hell with the whole damn thing.”
‘Interesting,” I commented. “The fact that the Ford was stolen Sunday night. And this is Wednesday.”
“So?”
“Sounds like our man’s a professional.
Patrick turned his head and gave me his full attention then. “Keep talking.”
“The real pro—the experienced killer-for-hire—works it that way. Steals a car for the job. But not the same day he’s going to do the job. Because when a car’s stolen a bulletin goes out on it. For a while, its description is fresh in the minds of all the prowl-car cops in the area. Any one of them might spot it before the killer got a chance to do his job—or even while he was doing it.”
Patrick began to look thoughtful. I gave him the rest of it: “The real pro steals a car some days before the day of the killing. Then he finds a drop—a garage for rent. He puts the stolen car there and leaves it while he spends the next few days tailing his victim. He learns his victim’s habits and decides on the best place and time to do the kill. And by the time he drives the stolen car out to do the job, its description has faded from the cops’ minds. Buy it?”
Patrick nodded slowly. “Maybe. Could be. Somebody in the family hires a professional killer to knock off Kosterman. The killer steals this Ford in Brookville Sunday night, drives it up around here, and hides it somewhere. Then he tails Kosterman in his own car. Sees Kosterman leaves his plant exactly the same time Monday and Tuesday. Five o’clock. And at that time the street where Mrs. Kosterman picks him up is pretty empty. So that’s where and when he tries to kill Kosterman on Wednesday. Today. Only today there was something different there at that time. You. You shot back at him and scared him off before he could put a couple more slugs in Kosterman to make sure he was dead. The killer drives off, leaves the stolen car somewhere, and scrams in his own car.”
Patrick got out his pipe and began cleaning it carefully with a pipe cleaner, seeming to give it his full attention.
“Okay,” he said negligently. “I’ll buy it. It’s as good a guess as anything I’ve been able to come up with. So, while you’re giving me lessons in big-city techniques, what do I do now that I know all that?”
I almost told him. But I stopped myself just in time. I had enoug
h cops peeved with me.
“You can figure that out better than I can,” I told him. “That’s your department.”
Patrick relaxed a bit. He almost smiled. “I figure the first thing we do is find the garage where our killer stashed the Ford. If we can find somebody who remembers renting a garage for that Ford, maybe he’ll be able to give us a description of our killer. With his description, we’re in business. If he was tailing Kosterman the past couple of days, he must’ve been staying somewhere around here. We’ll check the hotels, motels, and rooming houses till we find where he was holed up. Maybe he’s still there. If he’s not . . . we’ll see.” He looked at me. “Sound right?”
“Sounds perfect,” I said. “And you don’t need me for any of it. I’m behind time for dinner. If you find out anything you want to tell me, I’ll be in that diner down on the corner there.”
I got out of his car, hesitated, and looked back in at him. “Just a thought,” I said carelessly. “You might check the want ads in all the local weekend papers. Try the private garages that were offered for rent on Saturday and Sunday first.”
Then I walked down the street to the diner.
The roast beef was tough and stringy; the mashed potatoes were cold and lumpy. But the meal filled me, and the coffee wasn’t bad. I sat in a booth making a slow business of drinking cups of the coffee, while I did some thinking about the time element involved in the shooting of Kosterman.
The Ford the killer had used was stolen Sunday night. So quite likely he’d been hired Saturday or early Sunday.
What had happened over the weekend that might have triggered someone into deciding to kill Kosterman?
Friday night, Diana Pines had passed out drunk in the Moonlite Hotel, Turpin had stolen her daisy pin, and I’d taken her home to the Kosterman estate on The Island. Friday night, Langley and Oscar had searched me, my boat, my car, and my office for that pin, but hadn’t found it.
Saturday, Diana had hired me to get her pin back. Saturday, I’d gone to Turpin to brace him about the pin, and Nimmo Fern had tailed me there and listened through the door. Saturday, I’d followed Diana to the ruined estate where her mother lived with Boyd and Boyd’s brother—and from there I’d followed her home. There, I’d had my talk with Kosterman, another talk with Rita, and a run-in with Darrell Pines. Saturday night, I’d returned to my office to find Turpin dead. And someone had left my office with Turpin’s .45 slug in him.
