I'll Cry When I Kill You

by Peter Israel

  Sidney Frankaman, she said, was an ass-pincher, so was George Varga, but she took it from George while she couldn’t stand it from Sidney. She’d done business with them both. Frankaman, who owned a chain of stores specializing in science-fiction books and regalia, had started a line of greeting cards several years before with her art. She’d always guessed, though had never been able to prove, that he’d cheated her on royalties. George, on the other hand, knew exactly what he wanted, bought art for his magazine at fixed prices, and you either took it or you didn’t. You also got your bottom pinched in the bargain, but he paid on time. Both went back a long way with Bashard. Varga had printed lots of Bashard, including serializations of all Bashard’s novels up until some ten years ago. She’d heard it said that after then, Bashard wanted too much money for the rights.

  Ollie Latham was a gentleman of the first order, she said, which made him the more dangerous. Also an extraordinarily gifted writer. She’d always heard it said that he was Raul’s oldest friend, at least living friend, although she’d hardly ever seen them together. Probably he could tell me more than any of the others, if I could get to him. He lived a reclusive life. She had talked to Ollie, too, since the weekend. He had invited her to create the cover art for his own next novel, when it was finished. She was pretty sure she’d do it, even though the money wouldn’t be as good as for a Bashard.

  Norman Hermatius she knew the least. She’d always found him something of a windbag in person, but he made good films. Or hired people who made good films, she didn’t know which. He and Bashard collaborated only the one time, and she’d heard they’d had terrible fights—presumably because Raul thought he knew more about movie scripts than anyone else, including Norman.

  Ron Whitefield was okay, a good businessman and a fairly decent person. She thought he resented her because her fee was so high, yet he had to pay it because of Bashard. He paid slowly; most book publishers did. He screamed to high heaven over what he had to pay Bashard, but he always paid, she supposed. She thought he didn’t give a fig for science fiction, or what was between the covers of any book as long as it sold. Between the covers was Helga Hewitt’s department. Had I met Helga Hewitt? She’d heard Helga and Ron spent time between the covers themselves, but you heard a lot of that in publishing. Ron Whitefield had called her, too, to make sure she’d be on time with her last Bashard jacket.

  Sam Wright, finally. Sam Wright was a pure gem, married to one of the world’s greatest bitches. If Sam Wright could get rid of the bitch, she—Cyn Morgan—would marry him in a minute, and she’d told him that. But the bitch had the money and the money, she guessed, had Sam. Of all of them, with the possible exception of Latham, Sam had the most genuine love for science fiction. For most of them—herself, too, she thought—it was a way of making a living, but Sam really cared. He’d called her as well, but just to say hello.

  “I don’t know,” she said when we’d finished the list. “Seriously, I mean. Maybe somebody there did have a reason to murder Raul, but it escapes me. That was a terrible way to die. A lot of people didn’t like him, but a lot of people don’t like any of us and we don’t get ourselves beaten to death. I guess you’d have to eliminate the married couples, wouldn’t you?”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Well, unless you think two people bashed his head in together? Well, maybe they did. Come to think of it, in case you didn’t know, Richard’s wife, and Sidney’s, take mega-sleeping pills.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I heard them talking about it. The night before at the banquet. In—please pardon the expression—the ‘little girl’s room.’ Charlotte Frankaman said she’d have to take an extra pill or she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Frau Brinckerhoff … what’s her name? Serena … Serena said she was going to do the same. Come to think of it, I think I like the idea of that: Sidney tiptoeing through the hall with a poker in his hand while Charlotte snored in the bed. And—

  “But it’s not so funny,” she interrupted herself, slowing down, “is it?”

  “Did you know Bashard was going to die anyway?” I asked in turn, taking a leaf from Squilletti. He, Bud, and I had agreed that we could use this information, at the right moment.

  “What do you mean, die anyway?”

  “It came out in the autopsy examination.”

  “What came out?”

  “That he had a brain tumor. They think he had maybe a year to live at the outside. I think he knew it, too.”

  “Lord,” Cyn Morgan said. “That’s heavy stuff.”

  She stared at me, bewildered. Clearly she hadn’t known. Equally clearly, she was thinking something but not sharing it.

  “Right there, Cyn,” I said. “What’re you thinking?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re thinking something, I can tell. What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she said, recovering. “I was just wondering if he knew that when he proposed to me the last time. I guess he must have, huh?”

  I wouldn’t swear to it, but I had the impression that wasn’t what she’d been thinking at all. Much as I tried, though, I couldn’t pry it loose. She went on talking, covering up the moment, about Bashard’s money and the will—she supposed I knew about the will, didn’t I? and was it true Grace would get everything?—about how maybe the murder involved something that had happened a long time ago, before her time, and maybe one of the others could throw some light on it. I was going to talk to them all anyway, wasn’t I?

  Yes I was, either myself or someone else.

  Good.

  It was around in there that she invited me to stay for lunch. A part of me might have liked to, but I had other things to do, so I declined. She pushed, but not too hard.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been much help,” she said over her shoulder, leading me back through the cluttered little apartment. “If I think of anything else, I’ll call you. Or if you think of any other questions … You have my number, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well I’ll be here,” she said, laughing throatily. “Until I move, that is.”

  The door to the street opened right from her living room. She held it open for me. She held out her hand, and when I took it, she said something that threw me altogether off balance. I turned and stumbled up into the street, feeling small in a suddenly giant world.

  When I turned around, she’d closed the door behind me.

  What she’d said was: “I think I like you, Phil. I also think you’re going to find out who murdered Raul. But a part of me hopes you fail.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  There’s nothing wrong with a beeper that couldn’t be cured by putting it in a bag of cement and dropping the bag off the Brooklyn Bridge. The way Bud Fincher and I had divvied up the list, I was supposed to catch a plane for Los Angleles the next morning. In between I had an appointment with Oliver Latham, about a two-hour drive each way I figured. On the assumption that I’d be back in the city not long after nightfall, I’d made a late dinner date with Ms. Laura Hugger.

  A few minutes after I left Cyn Morgan, though, the beeper went off in my pocket. I stopped at a booth on Sixth Avenue and called the office and got Roger on the phone.

  “Mr. Camelo’, Philippe, he wants you at three o’clock,” said the mellifluous, vaguely foreign voice of our receptionist. “In the office.”

  Monsieur Roger—or Ro-jay—LeClerc, could, I knew, handle English as well as he wanted to, but he liked calling me Philippe, French-style, and dropping the t from Camelot. Particularly when he was passing orders along.

  “You’d better put me through to him, Rodge,” I said. “I can’t make it at three o’clock.”

  “I’m zo sorry, Philippe, he is out to lunch.”

  “Where did he go? To La Gonzesse?” I asked, thinking of the bistro on Lexington the Counselor favored.

  “How should I know that?”

  “Well, give me Ms. Shapiro.”

  “Sorry, Philippe
, Ms. Shapiro has also gone to lunch.”

  “Charlotte, then.”

  “She also. To lunch.”

  “All gone? Well who’s there beside yourself?”

  “Muffin’s here,” he answered. “Do you want to speak to Muffin?”

  I was in no mood for his humor. I stood there on the avenue while the diesel trucks roared by, figuring out the pros and cons. I wouldn’t give Roger the benefit of asking him how important it was that I be there. I thought of trying the restaurant, but God knows what emergency it would take for the Counselor to tolerate having his luncheon interrupted. I also knew the Counselor knew my schedule.

  “Allo? Philippe? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” I said, still thinking.

  “Do you want me to tell him you can’t make it?” asked Roger, enjoying the idea.

  “No. Never mind.”

  I hung up on him.

  I called Latham twice, both times a poor connection. No, he said, I couldn’t come the next morning. He said something to the effect that it was too bad I had to cancel, he’d been looking forward to my visit. Finally I made a new appointment with him two days away, and told him I’d call to confirm before then.

  I thought of taking Cyn Morgan up on her lunch invitation, but in the end I settled for a hot dog and soda from a Sabrett’s wagon on Sixth Avenue.

  I was back in my office by two-thirty. The Counselor still hadn’t shown up. Ms. Shapiro had, but when I went upstairs to ask, she said she didn’t know what the Counselor wanted me for, only that he did. I ran into the cocker bitch on my way back downstairs, but for once she gave me a wide berth. I sat at my desk and stared at the English hunting prints, which had once hung in the Counselor’s office, and the glassed-in mahogany cases which held what was left of our law library. Then I started my report on the Cyn Morgan interview. I hadn’t gotten very far, though, when the Counselor came in the front door accompanied by Harmon Waller, the small, spare district attorney from the Catskills.

  I joined them in the Counselor’s office.

  I sat by the massive desk, across from Waller, while behind it the Counselor started his stuffing and lighting routine with a pipe.

  “How far along are you in your investigation, Phil?” the Counselor asked through a cloud of smoke, shaking out a match and rummaging for an ashtray to drop it into.

  He knew full well how far along I was. I assumed he was asking for the district attorney’s benefit.

  “We’re working on the list,” I answered, “Bud Fincher and me.”

  “Any progress?”

  “Some,” I said, knowing that with the exception of the info picked up in the Cyn Morgan interview, he knew we were nowhere.

  “Any new suspects?” Harmon Waller asked in his dry, high-pitched voice.

  “We’ve plenty of suspects,” I answered. “But no, no new ones.”

  “What about facts?” Waller said.

  “Some facts, too,” I answered.

  “Relevant facts?”

  “It’s still too early to say which ones are relevant and which ones aren’t.”

  “In short,” the district attorney said, the light glinting off his rimless glasses, “you haven’t gotten anywhere, isn’t that right?”

  “Wait a minute!” I started to retort. “Squilletti …” but the Counselor waved me off with his pipe hand.

  “Easy does it, Phil,” he said. “Mr. Waller here has come down to New York because he wants to talk to Grace Bashard. I believe he even has a subpoena in his pocket. He’s close to bringing an indictment against Grace, and naming you as an accessory.”

  “That’s not what I said!” Waller protested, his voice escalating a note up the scale.

  “I know that’s not what you said,” the Counselor rumbled on, “but it’s clearly in the logic of what you did say.” The Counselor had a habit—a conscious one I knew—of talking to someone while looking at someone else. He was doing it now, gazing at me while talking to the district attorney, and I thought I could feel Waller’s irritation. “You seem to forget, Harmon,” he went on, “that we made an agreement. We agreed to cooperate with you to the fullest, and Phil and his people are working ’round the clock to that end.”

  “Yes,” Waller snapped, “and you agreed to make the daughter available to us, as needed.”

  The Counselor’s pipe had gone out already, or so he pretended. He pushed papers around on his desk, apparently looking for matches. Such gestures had a way of distracting people’s attention, and I was conscious of the district attorney watching them.

  The Counselor found matches, lit one, but then held it in the air.

  “The problem, Harmon,” he said, shifting his gaze and now firing it on Waller, “is that you haven’t really convinced me of your need.” Then, when Waller didn’t answer: “In fact, if you’re not close to bringing an indictment against her, then I can only conclude that what brings you to our city is a mere fishing expedition.”

  The Counselor brought the match to his pipe and puffed, sucking the flame up and down into the bowl. He shook out the match and puffed some more, while smoke swirled upward in front of his face.

  “I don’t understand something,” I said. “Yesterday, after the funeral, we sat down with Al Squilletti and—”

  Waller started to answer but the Counselor talked through him.

  “From what Harmon’s been telling me, Phil,” the Counselor said, looking back at me, “your friend Squilletti is on the verge of being removed from the case. In all fairness to Harmon, the pressure on him has been intense. The media have begun to bay at the moon—as we all knew would happen. For whatever reason, Bashard’s murder has attracted international attention. There are journalists in town from all over the world. They haven’t been able to locate Grace, which was our intention, and the police aren’t telling them anything. Harmon may be forced to give them Squilletti. There have been suggestions of everything ranging from incompetence to cover-up and collusion.”

  “Collusion?” I asked. “Between who and who?”

  “Between us and the police,” the Counselor answered. “I had a reporter this morning who said that if I didn’t talk to him, he was going to print that I’d made a deal with the police to keep Grace out of it. I told him to go ahead and print it.”

  “You what?” the district attorney said, the rimless glasses bobbling on his nose.

  “Don’t worry, Harmon,” the Counselor said, chuckling. “His paper won’t print it. Remember, they have lawyers, too. The last thing they want is another libel action from me.”

  I remembered the incident he referred to. The case in question had never gone to court, but the settlement had cost the newspaper big money, as well as an embarrassing retraction.

  “There is time pressure though, Phil,” the Counselor went on. “Tell us, how long do you expect your investigation to go on?”

  He knew, probably Waller did, too, that there was no good answer. But the Counselor stared at me, clearly expecting one.

  “This phase?” I said as blithely as I could. “About a week maybe. A week at the outside.”

  “In which you may or may not turn something up?” Waller interjected.

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s too long,” he said sharply. “A week’s too long.”

  I started to object, but the Counselor interrupted: “He’s right, Phil. A week’s too long. If we’re still in the same place a week from today, all hell will have broken loose. The media just aren’t going to let this one die, short of a new war or a hostage crisis.”

  I started to object. He cut me off.

  “What’s your schedule, Phil? Give us your plan.”

  He already knew it, but I gave it to him, for Waller’s benefit, including that the present meeting had prevented me from getting to Latham.

  “When are you going to Los Angeles?” the Counselor asked.

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s too late. Why don’t you get out there today
? You can still catch a plane this afternoon.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was three-twenty.

  “Don’t worry about the time. Get Myrna to help you.” The Counselor was the only one in the office who called Ms. Shapiro by her first name.

  “But I’ve already got appointments sched—”

  “Never mind,” he said, pressing the intercom on his phone console. “Ms. Shapiro? Phil is going to need your help. He’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Yes, Mr. Camelot,” the voice answered. “You should know that Mr. Trout’s waiting.”

  “Arthur Trout?”

  Arthur Trout, I knew, was, or had been, Bashard’s personal accountant.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, tell him to wait. I need five more minutes.” This sudden display of busy-ness was, I guessed, at least partly for the district attorney’s benefit. The Counselor cut off the intercom, then looked at me, then at Waller. “Three days, Harmon,” he said firmly. “We’re going to give Phil three days.”

  “And then what?” the district attorney asked.

  “Then?” the Counselor repeated, his bushy brows lifting. He glanced at me. “Well, if he’s got nothing after three days, then we’ll give you Grace. And Philip, too.”

  On this note of confidence I left them arguing, knowing the Counselor would win, if at my expense. Ms. Shapiro got me on a flight after all (not that anything she could manage ought to have surprised me), and I left her with the phone numbers of the people I had to see in L.A.

  I ran into Arthur Trout downstairs but had no time to talk to him. No time to go home either. I grabbed my briefcase from my office, and a toiletry case I always keep there for emergencies. As it was, I had to hustle to make the flight.