Killed in the Ratings

by William L. DeAndrea

  For myself, I’d reserved the ineluctable joy of fitting Walter Schick into the picture somewhere. Was he a gambler who had similarly backed himself into a corner and been dealt with? Possibly, but only barely. For one thing, there was no evidence Walter Schick was a gambler, let alone a compulsive one. That’s not a thing that comes upon a man all of a sudden, and I was sure Mr. Hewlen would have noticed the signs and eased him out of the Network long ago. For another, even if he had been like that, and a compulsive loser besides, it would still be a real feat to get rid of all the money he had access to: what he had made himself and what his wife had secondhand from Mr. Hewlen.

  After that, any theory I could come up with took me into the realm of the occult. Had Walter Schick killed Carlson? Not breathing with the aid of a respirator and curled up in a fetal position the way he had been for the last six months, he hadn’t. Could Walter Schick have been one of the gamblers (or loan sharks) that Carlson was in debt to? Never, despite how many 1930s movie serials you may have seen. Rich businessmen do not become racketeers just to make more money. Racketeers become businessmen in order to keep more money. And this is granting three things: that Schick had a secret, that he knew Carlson knew it, and that it was worth killing to keep.

  I could hardly wait until Thursday. I hoped Devlin would show up. It wasn’t my fault the police found out about him, he had plenty of time to hang up the phone. I’d be at Penn Station Thursday morning. Even if he couldn’t tell me everything, as he promised, he could certainly tell me something.

  The cab dropped me off in front of the palatial beehive I called home. Bart, the night doorman, was at his post. He could be more cheerful at two A.M. than anyone I ever heard of.

  “Late night, eh, Mr. Cobb?” Some of my fellow tenants sometimes looked at me a little funny, as though they could smell a lack of money on me, but Bart was always friendly.

  “Too damn late, if you ask me,” I said. “How’s it going, Bart?”

  “Oh, ‘bout the same, ‘bout the same. Had a little excitement couple of hours ago, though, heard a gal screaming around the corner. Went to look, but nobody was there.”

  “You took a big chance,” I informed him. “That sounds like a classic setup.”

  He laughed, a big, deep chuckle. “Don’t worry about me, Mr. Cobb. It hasn’t been so long since I was going fifteen rounds twice a month. For less money than I make here, if you count tips.

  “Besides, this uniform’s got big pockets, and I just naturally keep them filled up a little.”

  He pulled one of his pockets open and pointed inside at a nasty-looking little automatic. I didn’t blame him for having it. If I had to stand out on the sidewalk all night, between the possessions of a couple of hundred rich people and maybe a million junkies, I’d have one, too.

  I told Bart good night, and took the elevator upstairs. I took out my keys, then stopped for a second when I heard a faint click from around the corner of the hall. It was the sound of the fire exit door closing. I didn’t like that. This high up in the building, no one would think of using the fire stairs. Some of my neighbors are so spoiled, they wouldn’t think of it even if there really were a fire.

  There was a sound of rapid footsteps thumping on the carpet. They sounded too heavy to belong to the little guy who had tailed me outside Police Headquarters. I picked up the pace of my own steps, and shuffled through the keys to make sure the right one was handy.

  The door to Rick and Jane’s apartment was just around the next bend. When the footsteps behind me stopped, I could picture just what my playmate was up to. He’d gotten some woman to lure Bart away from the door (there are women in New York who will do anything for money), sneaked inside, and come up to this floor. People worry about Siberian tigers becoming extinct. What about elevator operators? I would feel a lot better if I were being followed by a guy who had just climbed eighteen flights of stairs.

  Once he was up here, of course, all he’d had to do was wait in the stairwell with the door open a crack until I came up, and follow me, staying one bend behind so I couldn’t see him.

  He was waiting now, just around the corner, for me to unlock the door. Then he could jump me, drag me inside, and kill me, or worse, at his leisure.

  From around the corner, I heard another click. It wasn’t the fire door. The subject of switchblade knives was very fresh in my mind.

  I thrust the key into the lock. I had to get that door open before Spot betrayed his presence. I turned the key with my right hand, the knob with my left, smashing my shoulder against the door at the same time. Spot’s first bark was just escaping his throat.

  I could feel the intruder behind me. I dove for the floor, rolling sideways to avoid the thrust of a knife. Only it wasn’t a knife I’d heard click, it was a bullet being jacked into the chamber of an automatic. It caught the hall light and winked obscenely.

  As I hit the floor, I yelled, “Take him, Spot!”

  Those were the magic words that turned the mild-mannered house pet into three and a half feet of pure nastiness. Rick Sloan had sunk a lot of money into attack training for Spot, and I hoped it had been worth it.

  He flew by me now, snarling, a snowball with teeth. I saw the attacker as a silhouette in the doorway. He looked enormously tall but he was probably about the same height as me, though he must have outweighed me by fifty pounds of muscle. I couldn’t make out any details about him except the gun and his blond hair.

  He brought the gun up and snapped off a wild shot that missed Spot by a mile but came very near to taking my ear off. Then Spot was upon him. That feisty mutt went straight for the gun arm and latched onto it like a maniacal marshmallow. The gunman screamed in pain, and dropped the gun. Spot pulled him to the left, out of the frame of the doorway and out of my sight.

  All of this took place in about one point seven seconds, but most serious fights don’t take much longer. Spot had taken him by surprise, and turned the advantage from the gunman to me. I rolled over one more time, pulled my feet under me, and dashed out into the hall.

  I was just in time to see Spot’s pads as he tore around the corner in pursuit of his quarry, who had broken away. Spot was tough, but he wasn’t a Doberman, by any means. The gunman had probably outweighed him by two hundred pounds. I took a split second to pick up the gun, and joined the chase.

  When I caught up, I found Spot scratching at the elevator doors and snarling.

  “Okay, boy,” I said. “Cool it, Spot, he got away.” The Samoyed immediately became his old, comical self again, prancing back to the apartment. I didn’t pay much attention. I was thinking how lucky the blond gorilla had been that the elevator happened to be at this floor. Then I realized I had just gotten off it, and it wasn’t likely to have been called away at two o’clock in the morning.

  It wasn’t until I was back inside, and had trouble locked out (I hoped), that the full weight of the realization that somebody had tried to kill me, to kill me, for Christ’s sake, really sank in. I called Spot over to me, scratched his throat. “Good dog,” I said, wiping away fear-sweat. “Goddam good dog.” He licked my face and grinned at me.

  I made a fool of myself over that dog that night. Anybody seeing me would have thought I was auditioning for the Roddy MacDowall part in a remake of Lassie, Come Home.

  I’d been saving a steak for a special occasion. I took it out of the refrigerator and put it in Spot’s dish, and fixed a bowl of Cocoa Crispies and bananas for myself.

  Spot tore into the steak. “Don’t chew with your mouth open,” I told him, but he didn’t pay any attention. I sat down to eat my cereal.

  I have a mind like a tar pit. Things hit the surface, stick, then sink and disappear. Then, after an indefinite period of time, they bubble to the top again, sometimes perfectly preserved, sometimes altered, sometimes stuck to something else.

  That’s what happened this time. I had just put some cereal in my mouth when a combination of a memory and a thought surfaced, sticking together.

  The me
mory was of the phone call I’d taken from Devlin in the hotel room, and the thought was the one I’d had about the scream that had gotten the doorman out of the way: There are women in New York who’ll do anything for money; any act, thought, or word. Like a scream, for example. Or maybe just to say fifteen words on the telephone.

  The guy at the door had been a complication, something that would have to be dealt with. But I had the happy thought I could now deal with the big complication.

  I was anxious to talk to Lieutenant Martin. If I could help him get his case solved, I’d have the NYPD off my back.

  And I was also anxious to see Vern Devlin, more now than ever. I was betting he was the one who had killed Vince Carlson.

  7

  “Man ... woman ... birth ... death ... infinity.”

  —Sam Jaffe, “Ben Casey” (ABC)

  I WAS UP EARLY the next morning. The first thing I did after I brushed my teeth was call Homicide South and ask for Lieutenant Martin. They told me to wait.

  I glanced at the morning papers. The News had devoted its front page to a revelation about a crooked politician (a “Dog Bites Man” story if there ever was one) and had the murder of Carlson well back, on the same page with a record store ad. The New York Times found the story unfit to print. Apparently, the cops were still saving the details, or the papers would be going crazy over the TV tie-in. When was the last time you read any, any good word about the American television system? They hate us; newspapers, magazines, critics, all take their turn. Why? Beats me. The American viewer gets more programming, more variety, and more service than any TV viewer anywhere, for free.

  Critics will say England does it better. But England imports far more of our programs than we do of theirs, however fine they are. Critics will say television should be a force for raising the public consciousness; in other words for telling the public neither more nor less than the critics feel it should be told.

  I think that’s the real gripe the critics have about American television. A critic is by definition an elitist; he lends us poor slobs the benefits of his superior taste. But television is the last Great Democracy. No government bureaucrat or cultural arbiter can decide what you watch. American television is the most successful medium of mass communication in the history of the world, and everybody counts. You cast your vote by means of an on-off switch or a tuner. And if you choose to watch a tenth rerun of “Gilligan’s Island,” and I want to watch “60 Minutes,” more power to both of us.

  As I sat there developing this beautiful polemic, I regretted I had no one to deliver it to. I was going to look for something to write it down with, but had to give it up because there was somebody on the phone.

  “What do you want, Cobb?” It was the voice of Detective Rivetz.

  “Where’s Lieutenant Martin?”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you think a cop is entitled to a little sleep?”

  “No, it’s not that,” I said. “I want to tell him something.”

  “What?” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Hell, I can take your confession as well as he can.”

  Nobody out-sarcastics Matt Cobb at seven-thirty in the morning. “All right, I confess. He’s living in my apartment, disguised as a dog.”

  “Who?” A natural straight man.

  “Judge Crater,” I said. “Now, if you will knock off the Pontius Pilate routine, I’ll tell you why I called.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I have to go up to Connecticut today for a few hours. Business.”

  “You interrupted my cup of coffee for that?” He sounded irate.

  “Well, Lieutenant Martin asked me not to leave town.”

  Rivetz spoke very quietly. “Look, Cobb. You can go to Outer Mongolia for all I care. I ain’t ready for you yet, but when I am, I’ll find you. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Goody!” I gushed. “Now tonight I can sleep all comfy-cozy!”

  Rivetz made a noise before he slammed the receiver down. I think it was “Grr!”

  “Up yours,” I said, trying to get it in before the connection went. I wondered what Rivetz had against me. I was a nice guy; at least I thought so. I would be glad when I told Lieutenant Martin my idea and got the whole thing over with. I didn’t dare try to tell Rivetz anything.

  I got dressed and went downtown. I had an idea that, while my idea was great, evidence would be even better. At the Tower of Babble, I went first to my office to consult a couple of phone books, then back down to the twelfth floor.

  I wanted to have a word or two with Millie Heywood in Network Operations. Millie was a salty dame of about fifty, who was five feet tall on the tallest day of her life. She had joined the Network when female technicians were about as common as purple gorillas in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She knows more about the technical details of networking than anybody in the business.

  I found her, as usual, surrounded by blinking lights and patch racks, delivering an opinion, loudly, of the intelligence, sanitary habits, and ancestry of a hapless technician about three times her size.

  “... and we’ll test the goddam regional split when I say it’s time to test the goddam regional split!” She took a breath. “And another thing, you—Cobb, get the hell out of here!”

  “I missed you, too, Millie.” I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder, and carried her to her private office. She showed me how much she liked it by hitting my back with her little fists.

  I put her down at the door of her office. She took off her harlequin glasses and let them dangle by the string around her neck. That’s how I knew she wasn’t mad. When she was mad, they got pushed up to the top of her head.

  “This is sexual harassment, you bastard! I’ll get the Attorney General after you.”

  I looked at her in mock seriousness. “Okay, Millie, I promise I’ll never do it again.”

  “No?” She sounded disappointed. “You better, you stinker. It’s disgusting, but it breaks up the week. I’ve got everybody around here so buffaloed, they’re afraid to ask me what time it is.”

  “Lot of new ones, huh?”

  “Yeah. All the experienced guys are doing remotes, or took jobs as chief engineers at some hick station.”

  “Why don’t you ease up a little on the kids?”

  “And lose my reputation?” She had a point. A top technician is like a good left-handed relief pitcher. You need them, so you allow them a certain degree of flakiness. Millie’s flakiness expressed itself in a nonstop tirade that was more bark than bite.

  “They’ll see through me sooner or later,” she said. “They always do. Now, little boy, what can Aunt Millie do to get you out of her hair?”

  I handed her a slip of paper with three phone numbers on it.

  “I need a small favor,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you would contact one of your numerous admirers in the phone company, preferably in long lines, and find out what time last night a call was placed from either of these two numbers to this number, in New York.”

  “Where are these other two numbers from?” she asked.

  “Washington, D.C., and Fairfax, Virginia.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Why?” she asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “It’s more of that dirty stuff, isn’t it? That fag actor is in trouble again, isn’t he? Look here, I don’t mind doing a little favor, but—”

  I cut her off before she built up a head of steam, and assured her the famous leading man to whom she had referred was behaving himself commendably. It took a while, but she finally bought it. I thanked her, and left.

  I was feeling pretty jaunty, because I had decided that Devlin had killed Carlson. That call was a fake, I was sure, designed to make me trust him, and not spill what Carlson had told me to the cops. He had no way of telling how much I knew. After I walked in on him, he knocked me out, paid some hooker to pretend to be an operator, and bingo! a long-distance phone call. Lord knew it wasn’t hard to find a hooker in that neighborhood.

&nbs
p; He was fast, but not smart. All long-distance calls are registered by a computer, to be itemized on the bill later. Devlin’s call had ostensibly been person-to-person, so the live operator who had been on duty could back the computer up when Millie’s contact (as I was sure he would) reported that no call had been placed from either CRI or Devlin’s house to the Hotel Cameron.

  I figured naming the killer would go a long way toward helping the police forget my falsified statement.

  But what about Walter Schick? I persisted in asking myself. I still had to know what awful secret endangered the whole Network and even the industry itself. That’s why I had more than one thing to do in Connecticut.

  Upstairs at Special Projects, I told Jazz I was going out to take care of the Kenny Lewis situation.

  She looked worried. “But Mr. Falzet said—”

  “So Falzet’s got you keeping an eye on me.”

  “No, I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “I can worry about myself, Jazz,” I said. “Remember, he can’t fire you unless he fires me first.”

  “Okay.” She grinned.

  “Hold the fort until I get back. I’m expecting a couple of calls. Take a message from Millie Heywood, but tell Jack Hansen I’ll call him back. Get a number.”

  “Sure thing. Anything else?”

  “Yes, don’t go into Falzet’s office alone, no matter what he tells you.”

  I left her blushing.

  The very basement of NetHQ is a garage. I stopped there next and checked out a car. As usual, it was less a car than it was a yacht. Mr. Hewlen had the idea that if an executive, even a very junior executive, were to be seen in anything smaller than an Oldsmobile, the image of the Network would suffer irreparable damage.

  This particular number was unmarked, but it was done up in the Network’s favorite color scheme, black outside, white inside. You haven’t lived until you’ve maneuvered a dinosaur like that out of a cellar garage onto Sixth Avenue at ten o’clock in the morning.