Killing Time

Twenty-Nine

The living room was crowded when I got back to Cathy’s place. Aside from Cathy and Bill Casale and Hal Ganz, there were three new arrivals, the presence of all of whom surprised the hell out of me. One of them was Ron, whom I hadn’t expected to see out on bail before tomorrow morning. The second was Art, my former bodyguard courtesy of Jack Wycza, whom I hadn’t expected to see ever again. And the third was Councilman Myron Stoneman, one of the seven people to whom I’d made my ultimatum the day before.

Everybody wanted to talk at once, including me, and so everybody jabbered and nobody listened, until finally Ron shouted us all down and said, “One at a time, God damn it, one at a time. Let’s get straightened out here. Myron, you first.”

Myron nodded at Ron. His heavy, not-very-bright-looking face was dark with controlled anger. “Thanks, Ron,” he said. “You’ve been training yourself for the legislature, I see.”

“Speak your piece, Myron,” I said.

Myron turned his scowl to me. “I’ve always thought it a good idea,” he said, “to know what my friends and partners are up to. So I’ve cultivated a few secretaries and clerks — a bush-league spy system — to let me know what’s doing in the world. It’s paid off. About an hour ago, I got a call from Jordan Reed’s secretary. Reed is selling us out. He’s wangled a deal with the CCG, him and Harcum and Watkins.”

“A deal?”

“The way I hear it,” he said sourly, “Jordan has high hopes of being governor.”

So that’s what Jordan wanted, as substitute for a son. The whole state. “What about the rest of you?” I asked.

“He’s throwing us to the wolves. Dan Wanamaker and Claude Brice and Les Manners and Ron over there and you, Tim. A nice all-star lineup for the scandal.”

“So they could be bought,” said Ron softly.

Myron glanced at him and grinned without humor. “They sure as hell could,” he said. “Dan Wanamaker and Claude Brice have already left town. Les Manners is reading his lawbooks. I want to know what you people are planning-on doing.”

Hal Ganz, his faith in human institutions practically indestructible, said, “Are you sure they’ve got a deal with the CCG? Maybe they’re just hoping for one, maybe the CCG doesn’t know anything about it.”

“The CCG knows plenty about it,” I told him. “That’s why Masetti was pulled out. He was a legitimately honest reformer. The new man they sent in, Danile, is a politician’s politician.”

“You talked to him, Tim,” said Ron. “What did he have to say?”

“The brushoff,” I told him. “He didn’t want me or anything I could offer him. When I left, Jordan Reed’s chauffeur was waiting to take Danile for his meeting with Reed.”

“At the plant,” said Myron. “That’s where she said they were getting together.”

“There are six of us here,” said Ron. “Not counting Cathy, of course. Maybe it would be a good idea if we all went over to the plant and had a talk with these people.”

“No,” said Art.

We all turned and looked at him. I’d practically forgotten he was there. I still didn’t know whether Jack Wycza had sent him back, or he’d come on his own hook, sticking to the agreement we’d made.

“Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?” Ron asked him.

Art looked at me. “I don’t know any of these people, Mr. Smith,” he said. “Except Bill Casale, there.”

“It’s all right,” I told him. “We’re all in the same leaky boat together.” I looked around at the others. “This is Art,” I said. “He works for Jack Wycza.”

“Worked,” he corrected me.

I reeled off the names of the other people present, and then said, “Now. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea for us to go down to Reed & King?”

“Because Reed and Jack Wycza have combined,” he said.

And everybody started talking again.

This time, I was the one who shouted them all down and said to Art, “What do you mean they’ve combined?”

“Just what I said. They’ve teamed up. I guess Reed was afraid you people would make trouble. So he and the rest of his crowd are holed up at his plant, and Jack is going there, too, with a small army. That’s the deal. Reed promises to protect Jack from the CCG, and Jack supplies the army to protect Reed from you people.”

“I guess,” said Myron Stoneman slowly, “Dan and Brice had the right idea after all. Leaving town might be the smartest thing to do, under the circumstances.”

“No, God damn it!” I was stuck, and I was getting mad, and there was no place for me to get rid of the anger. “I’m not running away,” I said. “I’m going to beat these bastards!”

“How?” said Myron.

I glared at him, and shook my head. I didn’t know how.

“An army,” said Ron softly, as though he couldn’t believe it. “For God’s sake, he’s got an army.”

And then we were silent. We were all involved in this, and we were all discovering that we’d wound up on the short end of a very dirty stick. All except Bill Casale, still sitting silently in a corner and waiting to find out who had killed his grandfather.

Bill Casale! By God, I had an army, too!

I jumped to my feet. “Bill,” I said. He looked startled at being addressed. “One of seven people,” I told him, “killed your grandfather. One of them is Myron Stoneman, right over there. Two have just left town. One is at home, trying to find a loophole in his lawbooks. And the other three are out at the Reed & King plant. Now, it’s got to be one of those seven.”

“Which one?” he asked me.

“Not me, Tim,” said Myron.

“Shut up,” I said over my shoulder. Back to Bill, I said, “What will you do when I tell you which one it was?”

“I’ll call my father,” he said, “and tell him.”

“And then what?”

“Then the family,” he said stolidly, “will go get the guy.”

“What if he’s one of the three at the plant?” I insisted. “Holed up in there with Jack Wycza’s crowd from the North Side to protect him.”

“We’ll still get him,” said Bill calmly.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I know my family,” he said.

“What if I just tossed out a name?” I asked him. “What if I said right now that Jordan Reed killed your grandfather?”

“Did he?”

“That isn’t the point. What if I said he did?”

“You’d have to prove it to my father,” he said. “The family isn’t here just to do your work for you.”

I’d done my work too well. I could remember the good old days, when the Casale family was ready to lynch Ron Lascow on no more say-so than the radio. Now, when I needed them, they wanted proof.

“If I prove my case, Bill,” I said, “and it turns out he’s one of the men in the plant, then your family will go get him. Right?”

He nodded.

Suddenly Art chuckled. “Mr. Smith,” he said, “You’re a wonder.”

“I don’t understand,” said Hal. He was looking in bewilderment from face to face.

“It’s easy,” Art told him. “Mr. Smith, here, just recruited his own army.”

“It might not be one of the three, Tim,” said Ron.

Hal Ganz said, “Tim, you can’t mean it. That isn’t the way to do things, Tim, you’ve got to let the law—”

“If we let the law,” Myron interrupted him, “we’ll all be on the inside looking out. Oh, not you, I suppose. You look like one of those clean-nosed types. But I’ll be jailed, and so will Ron Lascow over there, and so will Tim.”

“But for God’s sake,” cried Hal, “a pitched battle—”

“What other way is there, Hal?” I demanded.

“I can’t believe the CCG—” he started.

“Hal, wake up,” snapped Ron. “You heard what Tim said when he came back. The guy from the CCG is going off to meet Jordan Reed.”

“Jack Wycza wouldn’t have mobilized his crowd,” said Art, “unless he had a pretty strong guarantee from Reed.” Hal shook his head. “There has to be some other way,” he said. “If we could send a plea to the Governor—”

Ron said, “No, Hal. I’m sorry, but the answer is no. Let me tell you some politics. The Governor of this state lives in the capital, Albany. He belongs to one political party, and the city of Albany is controlled by the other political party. The way I understand it, the CCG has a close unofficial connection with the Governor’s party, and is building up a reputation on small towns in order to get the local machine in Albany. The Governor would very naturally like to see the capital city of the state run by his own party.”

“This has gone beyond politics,” said Hal desperately.

“For you, maybe,” said Myron. “Not for the politicians.”

“A thing like this,” said Ron, “doesn’t leave politics behind until it reaches court, and sometimes not even then. The decision is going to be made in this town long before anybody gets to court. The ones who go to court, indicted by a grand jury, will be the ones who’ve already lost.”

“I don’t see what you’re trying to convince him for,” said Art. “Don’t you have other things to do?”

“I think I should leave,” said Hal, getting to his feet.

I nodded. “Maybe you’re right.”

We waited silently until he left, and then Art said, “When does this army of yours go into action, Mr. Smith?”

“That’s the tough part,” I said. “I have to find out who’s been doing the killing. And if it isn’t one of the people in the plant, I don’t have an army after all.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Myron. “That’s all I can tell you. It wasn’t me, and I didn’t even know about this CCG business until the morning after that gunman tried to kill you.”

“Let’s do this the old classical, way,” said Ron. “The three parts of any murder: motive, method and opportunity.”

“All right,” I said. “Try it and see where it gets you. Opportunity, to begin with. They all had lots of opportunity. The first attempt was made at one in the morning. Myron, where were you?”

He grinned. “Home in bed.”

“That’s exactly what the other six would say, too. And the second try was when the guy shot at me from City Hall. And all seven were in City Hall at the time.”

“My grandfather was killed at eleven-thirty at night,” said Bill.

“Another night-time job,” I said. “Again, everybody’s home in bed. And the fourth one was the bomb in my car. It could have been put in there any time over a twelve-hour period, by anybody in the world. So that takes care of opportunity. What’s next?”

“Method,” said Ron.

I shrugged. “A hired gunman, a grenade, a gun and a homemade bomb. What can you say about method?”

Art said, “Your killer is pretty shy, you can say that much. He doesn’t like to show his face.”

“Staying out of sight when something illegal is going on,” said Ron blandly, “is instinctive with politicians.”

“After the first attempt,” I said, “I gave Harcum a profile of the guy we were after, on the basis of method. He hired a professional killer out of New York. That meant he was pretty well-to-do. He shot the professional with a hunting rifle, which probably meant he had a hunting license and goes out after deer every fall. And the gunman wasn’t worried about being arrested, so the guy who hired him was probably influential locally. There’s your profile, based on method. A rich and influential local citizen who has a hunting rifle.”

“And who’s been to New York recently,” added Cathy.

“That profile fits all seven of us,” said Myron. “Including me, unhappily. We’re all influential locally, God knows, or at least we were up until today. And we all have hunting licenses and hunting rifles. And we’ve all been to New York sometime within the last month and a half or two months. And” — he offered us a crooked grin — “we’ve all made out rather well financially.”

“Method on the second try,” I said. “A gun. Anybody can have a gun.”

“On the third try,” said Ron, “a hand grenade. I shouldn’t think hand grenades would be that easy to come across.” He offered us a sour grin. “Except from the National Guard,” he said.

“All seven of us,” said Myron, “have almost complete run of City Hall. Including the jail and Police Headquarters, down in the basement. I understand they have a variety of weapons in the armory down there, including some souvenir guns and hand grenades and samurai swords taken from our returning veterans after the Second World War.”

“On the fourth try,” I said, “a homemade bomb. I don’t know which one of them has the knowledge to construct a bomb like that. Anybody else?”

“Jordan Reed has his own chemical plant,” said Art.

“That’s a thought. But does it mean he knows how to make a bomb?”

“And does he,” asked Ron, “have the same free access to City Hall that the others have?”

“I suppose he could get any key he wanted, yes,” said Myron.

“So they all had opportunity, and any one of them might have used these methods, though Jordan Reed might be more likely for the bomb in the car.”

“That leaves motive,” said Ron.

“The coming of the CCG,” I said. “Once again, they all fit.”

“Wait a second, Tim,” said Cathy. “You’re not saying that right.”

“I’m not saying what right?”

“You’re saying,” she said earnestly, “that wanting somebody dead is a motive for murder. But that isn’t right. You have to know why the person wanted that other person dead. That’s the motive. You have to ask yourself why the coming of the CCG made somebody want to kill you.”

“I’ve been going round and round with that question for two days,” I told her.

Ron said, “What about this girl that got killed out at Reed’s place? Where does she fit into all this?”

“I don’t think she does,” I said.

“What girl?” asked Myron.

“Girl named Sherri something-or-other,” I told him. “Stacked blonde. You might have seen her hanging around with Harcum lately.”

“She’s dead?”

“Seems she’s an old girl friend of Marvin Reed’s,” I said. “I guess Harcum was around just to give her transportation here, and the first chance she got she lit out to see Marvin. And wound up with a hunting knife in her, out in the woods by Reed’s house.”

Cathy said, “And it looks as though Marvin did it, is that right?”

“Looks that way,” I said thoughtfully. “Funny thing,” I said. “Jordan washed his hands of the whole thing, as soon as he found out Marvin’d been playing around. And Marv said, ‘I’d do anything for you.’ To his father, he said that.”

“So what?” said Ron.

“This is goofy,” I said.

Myron said, “You mean, Jordan killed the girl, and Marvin will take the blame?”

“Something goofier than that,” I told him. “Marvin will do anything for his old man. Including kill me, do you think? If a bunch of reformers are coming into town, and he knows his father is worried—”

“Not Marvin,” said Cathy. “He might kill that girl, because he was all upset. But he wouldn’t coldly plan to kill anybody, and just keep trying time after time.”

“Let’s forget that thing,” said Ron, “and go back to the main issue. We were talking about motive.”

“And not getting anywhere,” I said.

“Why would this guy want to kill you?” Ron asked rhetorically.

“Maybe,” said Cathy thoughtfully, “that’s the wrong question.”

I looked at her. “What other question is there?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t know if this would help or not, but why not ask yourself what would happen if you were dead?”

“What would happen if I were dead?”

She nodded.

“That’s the same question.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Ron suddenly. “Cathy may have something there.” He looked urgently at me. “Tim,” he said, “what would change, what would be different, if you were dead?”

“Nothing right now,” I told him. “Two, three days ago, when this all started — I don’t know, the CCG would probably have had to go somewhere else to get its evidence, that’s all. I can’t think of anything else.”

“Your files would still be around,” said Ron, “where the CCG could probably have gotten hold of them anyway. So that wouldn’t make any difference.”

“There must have been some definite result the killer had in mind,” said Cathy. “Something that would happen if and when you were to die.”

“If we could only—” started Ron, but then it hit me. “Wait a minute!” I shouted, and jumped up from my chair. I pointed at Ron, who blinked at me in total confusion. “You said it!” I shouted at him. “You said it!”

He stared at me open-mouthed. “I said what?”

“Wait,” I said. “Just wait.” I ran to the phone, dialed, waited, and when Charlie came on I said, “Is Sherri London there?”

“She’s dead,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, and hung up, grinning.

Cathy said, “What is it, Tim? Do you know who it is?”

Bill, suddenly alert, said, “You’ve got it, Tim?”

“Call your father,” I told him. “Call him right now. I’ve got it cold.”