Killed in the Ratings

by William L. DeAndrea

  When I was close enough to him so he didn’t have to shout, the Chairman of the Board said, “What is the meaning of this, Cobb?”

  “You’ve lost your rocker, Cobb,” Falzet said. “I told you you were fired.”

  “True,” I admitted, “but I have a duty left to perform. I was ordered by Mr. Hewlen to find out who was responsible for messing up the CRI ratings, and causing ‘Harbor Heights’ to be cancelled.”

  I backed around toward the ceiling-to-floor windows, to have rain-swept Manhattan for a backdrop. My audience was in a ragged semicircle: Mr. Hewlen at his big desk on my extreme right, Falzet in a leather chair, Roxanne standing, Harris Brophy next to Roxanne, Goldfarb in a chair, Rivetz standing next to him, Lieutenant Martin standing alongside the chair occupied by Cynthia Schick, Gayle Spencer and Shirley Arnstein on a love seat that matched the chairs.

  “Does everybody know everybody?” I asked. Lieutenant Martin did the honors. He might have felt he was sinking fast, but by God, he was going to sink with style.

  “Get on with it, Cobb,” Mr. Hewlen said.

  “Yes, sir.” I cleared my throat for effect. “Actually, the big problem in solving this case was that there were so many crimes involved, it was hard to know which ones made any difference.

  “Now I know that there were five interconnected crimes: fraud (the ratings gimmicking), blackmail, two murders, and an attempt on my life.

  “It cleared away the deadwood. Now I am absolutely sure Walter Schick’s accident was an accident. And I know why Devlin was killed.”

  Lieutenant Martin broke in. “Why was Devlin killed?”

  “Because he knew who killed Carlson, and why.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m coming to that,” I said.

  The lieutenant shrugged and looked heavenward. I ignored him.

  “This whole dismal thing started,” I began. “Well ... it’s hard to say when it started. It started either when Vincent Carlson became so desperate for money he had to rape the broadcasting industry for it, or when Walter Schick and his wife became tired of waiting to see who would succeed Mr. Hewlen as President of the N—”

  “You take that back!” Cynthia Schick was livid.

  “Cobb! How dare you—”

  “Save it, sir,” I said, not disrespectfully. “It gets worse.

  “Anyway, when both of these things happened, a deal was made. If ‘Harbor Heights’ were to fail, Walter Schick would certainly be made President of the Network. That’s the way it worked out, you’ll remember.

  “I’m not sure who approached whom ...”

  “Schick approached Carlson,” Rivetz said. He drew everybody’s eyes, and seemed surprised at himself. “I did some checking up at this Network,” he said. “If it was Carlson who made the deal, it would be more natural for him to go to Falzet, who was in charge of programming. Of course, this is just figuring,” he added sheepishly.

  I smiled. I was delighted to find an ally in such an unexpected place. “True, but you probably don’t know that Carlson (and Devlin for that matter) knew Walter Schick personally, from the time the ARGUS system was being installed at CRI. Which, by the way, Mrs. Schick lied to me about. She said she never heard of Carlson and Devlin, and she said she ‘doubted’ her husband knew them. Two different witnesses told me both Mr. and Mrs. Schick knew them both.” I didn’t say that one witness was Monica (who in fact never said anything about Cynthia Schick at all) and the other one was Devlin. I did suggest to Lieutenant Martin that he ask Miss Spencer about the matter.

  I didn’t give him time to do it right then, though. The idea was to keep everybody dazzled with footwork until I was finished, and hope by that time Lieutenant Martin would have enough pieces to build a court case out of. Air-tight evidence is hard to find.

  “There is no doubt that the ratings were tampered with,” I went on. “I’ll tell you how.” Devlin was good at explaining things, I have to give him that. I let them have the explanation he had given me Thursday morning, practically verbatim.

  Lieutenant Martin whispered a word to one of the detectives, who nodded and left the room, “I sent a man to check,” he said. “Matty, this is the wrong way to go about this. I want to talk to you, in private”

  Then came a moment I’ll treasure for the rest of my life; Falzet shushed him, fascinated (he’d been the one shafted, after all), and wanting me to go back to the story. The lieutenant was so surprised, he did stop talking.

  Before astonishment could change to rage, I stepped into the breach.

  “Now we all know what happened in January. Walter Schick drove off that road and is now little more than a vegetable.”

  Roxanne was staring at me: she’d never seen Matt Cobb like this before. It was as though one of the plants in her living room had talked back. “I thought—” She gulped and started again. “I thought you said that was an accident.”

  “I did. But, Roxanne, what happened before your father left the house? What did you say must have happened?”

  “Roxanne!” It was a command from her mother, a plea from her grandfather.

  She glanced at each of them, then returned to me.

  “You don’t have to say, Rox,” I told her. “Mrs. Locker can tell the police from her own knowledge.”

  “They had a fight!” Roxanne said. “Big deal! I said my Dad must have been upset to have an accident, that’s all.”

  “That’s all,” I said. “But something else started in January. Shirley?”

  “Huh?” she said. “Oh, right. On January fifteenth, Mrs. Schick withdrew ten thousand dollars from the State National Bank of Connecticut. On February fifteenth, she withdrew ten thousand dollars from the Fairfield County Trust Company. On—”

  “Sum it up, Shirley.”

  “Okay,” she said, checking her notes. “Every month since January, Mrs. Schick has raised ten thousand dollars in some way. I haven’t been able to find out what she did with it. Fifty thousand dollars, so far.”

  Cynthia Schick was gathering herself up, waiting for me to say the awful word, so I didn’t. I let the room be quiet, and the cops, no fools they, did the same, waiting for someone to have a revelation.

  It came to Mr. Hewlen. Quite wonderingly, he whispered, “Blackmail.”

  “A blackmail demand came on January eleventh, Mrs. Schick?” I asked gently.

  She looked as though she wanted to deny it but couldn’t find the strength. At last she nodded.

  “Is that what Walter and you argued about? Before Roxanne called and he went out?”

  Her face was dead. Looking at a point three feet above my head, she said, “Walter was furious, just furious. He said he was going to have it out with Father the next morning. He wasn’t going to pay, he wouldn’t stand for it, he—”

  “Cynthia ...” her father warned. “Lieutenant, I demand this farce be stopped! Cobb is making dangerous and illegal allegations!”

  Mr. M. made the old man wait while he lit a Camel. “Actually, you may as well let him finish, Mr. Hewlen. If he’s not right, he’s committed enough slander to keep him in jail until Fire Island gets a pro football team.”

  “But he’s accusing my daughter of murdering this Carlson because he was blackmailing her!”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “That wasn’t what I was getting at at all.”

  “No?” Rivetz said in surprise.

  “Not at all. Carlson wasn’t the blackmailer, and Mrs. Schick didn’t kill him.”

  “Then who—” The lieutenant dropped his cigarette, it rolled to the feet of Goldfarb, who had been watching the whole performance with a beatific smile on his face. With his free hand, the ex-professor picked it up and handed it to the lieutenant, who did not thank him.

  “Then who—” the lieutenant said again.

  “Devlin,” I said. “Harris?”

  “Vernon Devlin opened accounts at six banks and savings and loan associations in the greater Washington, D.C., area, to the tune of about twenty-seven thousand buck
s, since the beginning of the year. In addition, he moved to a new apartment, and his fiancée has been driving a new BMW to work.” It figured Harris would have something extra like that to throw in.

  “Thank you,” I told him, then addressed the whole gathering. “If you want to know how Devlin found out, it’s very simple. Devlin had an inkling, approached Carlson, and Carlson told him. Carlson was like that, ask anybody who knew him. Yes, Miss Spencer? Did I say something wrong?”

  The CRI operator was sucking air in like a pubescent girl warming up for a hyperventilation fit. “You’re not going to get away with this!”

  “Yes, I am.” It’s always a good idea not to say what they expect you to say.

  It shocked her out of her fit. “You admit it? You admit you’re trying to pin it on Vern because he’s dead?”

  “Of course I’m trying to pin it on him. He did it.”

  “You can’t prove it. Those bank accounts aren’t proof.”

  I had to admit she was right. “No, I can’t prove he blackmailed Mrs. Schick.”

  “Aha!”

  “All I can prove is that with your help, he murdered Carlson.”

  Hell broke loose in the office. I was rather proud of myself. Cynthia Schick was horrified. Lieutenant Martin clapped a hand to his head. Roxanne looked puzzled. Falzet kept looking around himself, saying “ludicrous” to anyone who would listen. Goldfarb threw back his head and laughed. Rivetz grabbed him by the collar and shook him. It was his position that Goldfarb had no right to enjoy anything, at any time.

  Gayle Spencer drew back as from an electric shock. Mr. Hewlen bellowed, “Martin, I’ll have your badge if you don’t get this madman out of here!”

  But the lieutenant said, “Well, you blew it, Matty, it was fun while it lasted, but how can you explain that alibi of Devlin’s? How did he fool you, Rivetz, and the phone company computer?”

  “Come on,” I said. “Didn’t this whole mess come about because Carlson diddled the CRI computer? This one was even easier to fake.

  “Devlin bothered me from the first time I spoke to him, Lieutenant Martin and I have already discussed that. His apparent attitude didn’t match his actions. He begged me to keep his name out of the problem, then kept the line open until he could speak to the police.

  “I came up with a theory, a really beautiful one, that said Devlin had hired a woman to impersonate an operator, and had called from a booth near the Hotel Cameron. Of course, the phone company and their famous computer put that out of the question.

  “Miss Spencer, did Devlin smoke cigarettes?”

  The redhead looked surprised. “What has that got to do—oh, okay, yes, he did.”

  “That can be checked, of course, Lieutenant, but I believe it.”

  “Naturally,” he said drily. “It suits your theory.” It drew a few random chuckles from the gathering.

  “Find any cigarettes on the body? I say there weren’t any.”

  Rivetz told me I was right.

  “Well, that’s how I got back on to Devlin as the killer. I was with him for a short time Thursday, about an hour and a half, and during that time he must have gone like this”—I showed them the body-patting routine—“seven or eight times. He said he was looking for a pair of glasses, but I found out later that was a lie. According to the police, Devlin’s license says he had twenty-twenty vision. He was looking for his pack of cigarettes. I realized that when I saw Lieutenant Martin pat his body the same way. Smoking is a filthy, stupid, disgusting habit, but it is a habit, it’s not usually done consciously. Lieutenant Martin didn’t remember what pocket he’d put his pack in. Devlin didn’t remember he didn’t have any cigarettes on him.”

  I beat everybody to the obvious comment. “Big deal, right?

  “The big deal was that when I asked him about it, he lied. Why the hell should he lie? I am personally of the opinion that tobacco is the Red Man’s Revenge, but Devlin couldn’t know that. Even if he did, who was I to him? What did he care what I thought?

  “The only explanation, or at least the only one my limited resources can come up with, is simply that Devlin didn’t want anyone to know he smoked, anyone connected with the case, I mean. Because the police lab had determined that two people had been smoking in Carlson’s room at the hotel. Carlson was one, the murderer was probably the other.

  “It could be that Devlin didn’t want to leave a butt around for analysis. I know they can type blood from saliva samples. I don’t know if they can make positive identifications, but I wouldn’t bet my life they couldn’t, and Devlin wouldn’t either. I say he knew he was an unconscious smoker, so he made sure he didn’t have anything on him to smoke.

  “But the fact remains, if he was so concerned about smoking, he must have been the one who smoked the cigarettes with Carlson at the hotel.”

  “Very clever, Mr. Cobb,” Herschel Goldfarb said. “Brilliant, in fact. But it all rests on your unsupported assertion that this body-patting took place at all.”

  “Shut up!” Rivetz barked.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “Your point is well taken, Mr. Goldfarb, but I’m not presenting legal evidence. I’m describing the way events and my thoughts led to the evidence.”

  “I see. Sorry to have interrupted. Please continue.” Goldfarb smiled graciously and leaned back in his chair.

  “Actually,” I went on, “a lot of this thinking was filled in later. The solution of this case came big end first, this afternoon, when Lieutenant Martin mentioned that Devlin’s fiancée, Miss Spencer, was the switchboard operator at CRI. Then the answer was as obvious as a pimple on Telly Savalas’s head. Want to tell them how it was done, Miss Spencer?”

  “Don’t say anything,” the lieutenant warned her. He read her her rights. “Okay, Matty,” he said when he finished. “I think even I could line it out from here. You don’t need her.”

  Gayle Spencer was single-mindedly exercising her right to remain silent. Her freckled jaw was firm, but her eyes were jumping around.

  “Okay,” I said, “but I don’t think she was in on the planning. I think Devlin killed Carlson because Carlson was having conscience trouble. He was going to tell what he did. He came to me, which was his tough luck.

  “Knowing Carlson, I think it’s reasonable to assume he told his pal Devlin that he was going to blow the whistle on himself and, for Devlin’s own protection to forget he had ever been in on the secret. Carlson was too nice a guy.

  “Because he didn’t know about Devlin’s hundred-twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year hobby. Devlin couldn’t let Carlson talk. Not only would the money be gone, but if Carlson talked, Mrs. Schick had nothing left to protect. You can bet Devlin would have gone down, too.”

  I had them, now. There’s a feeling in the atmosphere when everyone’s attention is on you and nothing else. They were all almost holding their breaths waiting for what I would say next. I was enough of a ham to enjoy it.

  “When Carlson came to New York—because I was here—Devlin moved. He set up what I’m sure he told Miss Spencer was a practical joke, then followed Carlson.

  “Tuesday night, Devlin sneaked into the Hotel Cameron, to Carlson’s room, and tried to talk him out of telling the story, without success, so regretfully—I’m sure it was regretfully—he stabbed his friend in the back with a switchblade knife, and began wiping his fingerprints from the room.

  “He was just finishing up when I walked in. He beaned me with an ashtray, wiped it again, and left to put his alibi into operation.

  “Now the idea was to get it established with the police that he was in Washington, D.C., a couple of hundred miles away, at the time of the murder. Of course he wasn’t, but his voice was.”

  Rivetz broke in. “Are you trying to say it was a recording? It wasn’t, you know, it answered questions, for God’s sake.”

  “No, it wasn’t a recording. In fact, maybe I was wrong to say his voice. What we heard was electromagnetic waves generated by his voice recondensed and reamplified to sound like hi
s voice.”

  Rivetz still looked bewildered. Lieutenant Martin said, “Look, it’s simple. Devlin conks Cobb, then goes outside to a phone booth. First, he calls the precinct, with the anonymous tip about the body. Then he calls this chick at CRI—”

  “Collect,” I said. “On a WATS line.”

  “Yeah, so he wouldn’t have to keep shoving coins in the phone,” the Lieutenant continued. “So the Spencer woman takes the call right there at the ... what do you call it, with the holes?”

  “Patch rack,” I said. “Or switchboard, I guess for telephones. Doesn’t matter, it would work with one of the new push-button systems like the one we have here at the Network, too. All she did was this: She took the output of Devlin’s call from New York, and plugged it into another outside line. Then she dialed the number of the Hotel Cameron, and presto, the phone company computer says the call we got from Devlin came from D.C., as of course it did. It didn’t tell us about the first leg of that call, coming in from New York at the same time, but only because we didn’t ask. There’s your evidence. That call will still be in the computer, and if he did call collect, there may be a living long-distance operator who can remember taking the call.

  “Any comments, Miss Spencer?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Vern said it was only a practical joke and ... and I guess I want a lawyer.”

  Lieutenant Martin told one of the detectives to take Miss Spencer to Headquarters and see about getting her a lawyer.

  “Of course,” I concluded when they were gone, “as soon as he finally got the phone call through, Devlin hauled out to the airport and got a plane back to D.C. in time to be interviewed by the local police the next morning. What is it, an hour flight? Not a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second like the telephone, maybe, but plenty fast enough.

  “It would have stood up, probably, but I was involved in the case. I’m not bragging, far from it, I was in the dark for a long time. But paranoia set in, for the killer and for me. The killer wanted to neutralize me, for fear of what I’d find out, and I had to keep digging for fear of what the killer would do to me.