Time to Murder and Create

Chapter 19

I had never been in the building before. There were two doormen on duty, and the elevator was manned. The doormen made sure that I was expected, and the elevator operator whisked me up eighteen floors and indicated which door was the one I was looking for. He didn’t budge until I had rung the bell and been admitted.

The apartment was as impressive as the rest of the building. There was a stairway leading to a second floor. An olive-skinned maid led me into a large den with oak-paneled walls and a fireplace. About half the books on the shelves were bound in leather. It was a very comfortable room in a very spacious apartment. The apartment had cost almost two hundred thousand dollars, and the monthly maintenance charge came to something like fifteen hundred.

When you’ve got enough money, you can buy just about anything you want.

“He will be with you in a moment,” the maid said. “He said for you to help yourself to a drink.”

She pointed to a serving bar alongside the fireplace. There was ice in a silver bucket, and a couple of dozen bottles. I sat in a red leather chair and waited for him.

I didn’t have to wait very long. He entered the room. He was wearing white flannel slacks and a plaid blazer. He had a pair of leather house slippers on his feet.

“Well, now,” he said. He smiled to show how genuinely glad he was to see me. “You’ll have something to drink, I hope.”

“Not just now.”

“It’s a little early for me too, as a matter of fact. You sounded quite urgent on the phone, Mr. Scudder. I gather you’ve had second thoughts about working for me.”

“No.”

“I received the impression—”

“That was to get in here.”

He frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m really not sure whether you do or not, Mr. Huysendahl. I think you’d better close the door.”

“I don’t care for your tone.”

“You’re not going to care for any of this,” I said. “You’ll like it less with the door open. I think you should close it.”

He was about to say something, perhaps another observation about my tone of voice and how little he cared for it, but instead he closed the door.

“Sit down, Mr. Huysendahl.”

He was used to giving orders, not taking them, and I thought he was going to make an issue out of it. But he sat down, and his face wasn’t quite enough of a mask to keep me from knowing that he knew what it was all about. I’d known anyway, because there was just no other way the pieces could fit together, but his face confirmed it for me.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“Oh, I’m going to tell you. But I think you already know. Don’t you?”

“Certainly not.”

I looked over his shoulder at an oil painting of somebody’s ancestor. Maybe one of his. I didn’t notice any family resemblance, though.

I said, “You killed Spinner Jablon.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“No.”

“You already found out who killed Jablon. You told me that the day before yesterday.”

“I was wrong.”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Scudder—”

“A man tried to kill me Wednesday night,” I said. “You know about that. I assumed he was the same man who killed Spinner, and I managed to tie him to one of Spinner’s other suckers, so I thought that cleared you. But it turns out that he couldn’t have killed Spinner, because he was on the other side of the country at the time. His alibi for Spinner’s death was as solid as they come. He was in jail at the time.”

I looked at him. He was patient now, hearing me out with the same intent stare he had fixed on me Thursday afternoon when I told him he was in the clear.

I said, “I should have known he wasn’t the only one involved, that more than one of Spinner’s victims had decided to fight back. The man who tried to kill me was a loner. He liked to use a knife. But I’d been attacked earlier by one or more men in a car, a stolen car. And a few minutes after that attack I had a phone call from an older man with a New York accent. I’d had a call from that man before. It didn’t make sense that the knife artist would have had anybody else in on it. So somebody else was behind the dodge with the car, and somebody else was responsible for knocking Spinner on the head and dumping him in the river.”

“That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it.”

“I think it does. As soon as the man with the knife is taken out of the picture, it’s obvious that everything was pointing to you all along. He was an amateur, but in other respects the operation was all quite professional. A car stolen from another neighborhood with a very good man at the wheel. Some men who were good enough to find Spinner when he didn’t want to be found. You had the money to hire that kind of talent. And you had the connections.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“No,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it. One thing that threw me was your reaction when I first came to your office. You didn’t know Spinner was dead until I showed you the item in the paper. I almost ruled you out, because I couldn’t believe you could fake a reaction that well. But of course it wasn’t a fake. You really didn’t know he was dead, did you?”

“Of course not.” He drew his shoulders back. “And I think that’s fairly good evidence that I had nothing to do with his death.”

I shook my head. “It just means you didn’t know about it yet. And you were stunned by the realization both that Spinner was dead and that the whole game didn’t end with his death. I not only had the evidence on you, I also knew you were tied to Spinner and a possible suspect in his death. Naturally that shook you up a little.”

“You can’t prove anything. You can say that I hired someone to kill Spinner. I didn’t, and I can swear to you that I didn’t, but it’s hardly something I can prove either. But the point is that it’s not incumbent upon me to prove it, is it?”

“No.”

“And you can accuse me of whatever you want, but you don’t have a shred of proof either, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then perhaps you’ll tell me why you decided to come here this afternoon, Mr. Scudder.”

“I don’t have proof. That’s true. But I have something else, Mr. Huysendahl.”

“Oh?”

“I have those photographs.”

He gaped. “You distinctly told me—”

“That I had burned them.”

“Yes.”

“I’d intended to. It was simpler to tell you it had already been done. I’ve been busy since then, and didn’t get around to it. And then this morning I found out that the man with the knife was not the man who killed Spinner, and I sifted through some of the things that I already knew, and I saw that it had to be you. So it was just as well that I didn’t burn those pictures, wasn’t it?”

He got slowly to his feet. “I think I’ll have that drink after all,” he said.

“Go right ahead.”

“Will you join me?”

“No.”

He put ice cubes in a tall glass, poured Scotch, added soda from a siphon. He took his time building the drink, then walked over to the fireplace and rested with his elbow on the burnished oak mantel. He took a few small sips of his drink before he turned to look at me again.

“Then we’re back to the beginning,” he said. “And you’ve decided to blackmail me.”

“No.”

“Why else is it so fortunate for you that you didn’t burn the pictures?”

“Because it’s the only hold I’ve got on you.”

“And what are you going to do with it?”

“Nothing.”

“Then—”

“It’s what you’re going to do, Mr. Huysendahl.”

“And what am I going to do?”

“You’re not going to run for governor.”

He stared at me. I didn’t really want to look at his eyes, but I forced myself. He was no longer trying to keep his face a mask, and I was able to watch as he tried on one thought after another and found that none of them led anywhere.

“You’ve thought this out, Scudder.”

“Yes.”

“At length, I would suppose.”

“Yes.”

“And there’s nothing you want, is there? Money, power, the things most people want. It wouldn’t do any good for me to send another check to Boys Town.”

“No.”

He nodded. He worried the tip of his chin with a finger. He said, “I don’t know who killed Jablon.”

“I assumed as much.”

“I didn’t order him killed.”

“The order originated with you. One way or the other, you’re the man at the top.”

“Probably.”

I looked at him.

“I’d prefer to believe otherwise,” he said. “When you told me the other day that you’d found the man who killed Jablon, I was enormously relieved. Not because I felt the killing could possibly be attributed to me, that any sort of trail would lead back to me. But because I honestly did not know whether I was in any way responsible for his death.”

“You didn’t order it directly.”

“No, of course not. I didn’t want the man killed.”

“But somebody in your organization—”

He sighed heavily. “It would seem that someone decided to take matters into his own hands. I… confided in several people that I was being blackmailed. It appeared that it might be possible to recover the evidence without acceding to Jablon’s demands. More important, it was necessary to devise some way in which Jablon’s silence could be purchased on a permanent basis. The trouble with blackmail is that one never ceases to pay it. The cycle can go on forever, there’s no control.”

“So somebody tried to scare Spinner once with a car.”

“So it would seem.”

“And when that didn’t work, somebody hired somebody to hire somebody to kill him.”

“I suppose so. You can’t prove it. What’s perhaps more to the point, I can’t prove it.”

“But you believed it all along, didn’t you? Because you warned me that one payment was all I was going to get. And if I tried to tap you again, you’d have me killed.”

“Did I really say that?”

“I think you remember saying it, Mr. Huysendahl. I should have seen the significance in that at the time. You were thinking of murder as a weapon in your arsenal. Because you’d already used it once.”

“I never intended for a moment that Jablon should die.”

I stood up. I said, “I was reading something the other day about Thomas Becket. He was very close to one of the kings of England. One of the Henrys, I think Henry the Second.”

“I believe I see the parallel.”

“Do you know the story? When he became Archbishop of Canterbury he stopped being Henry’s buddy and played the game according to his conscience. It rattled Henry, and he let some of his underlings know it. ‘Oh, that someone might rid me of that rebellious priest!’ “

“But he never intended that Thomas be murdered.”

“That was his story,” I agreed. “His subordinates decided Henry had issued Thomas’s death warrant. Henry didn’t see it that way at all, he’d just been thinking out loud, and he was very upset to learn that Thomas was dead. Or at least he pretended to be very upset. He’s not around, so we can’t ask him.”

“And you’re taking the position that Henry was responsible.”

“I’m saying I wouldn’t vote for him for governor of New York.”

He finished his drink. He put the glass on the bar and sat down in his chair again, crossing one leg over the other.

He said, “If I run for governor—”

“Then every major newspaper in the state gets a full set of those photographs. Until you announce for governor, they stay where they are.”

“Where is that?”

“A very safe place.”

“And I have no option.”

“No.”

“No other choice.”

“None.”

“I might be able to determine the man responsible for Jablon’s death.”

“Perhaps you could. It’s also possible you couldn’t. But what good would that do? He’s sure to be a professional, and there would be no evidence to link him to either you or Jablon, let alone enough to bring him to trial. And you couldn’t do anything with him without exposing yourself.”

“You’re making this terribly difficult, Scudder.”

“I’m making it very easy. All you have to do is forget about being governor.”

“I would be an excellent governor. If you’re so fond of historical parallels, you might consider Henry the Second a bit further. He’s regarded as one of England’s better monarchs.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I would.” He told me some things about Henry. I gather he knew quite a bit about the subject. It might have been interesting. I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then he went on to tell me some more about what a good governor he would make, what he would accomplish for the people of the state.

I cut him short. I said, “You have a lot of plans, but that doesn’t mean anything. You wouldn’t be a good governor. You won’t be any kind of governor, because I’m not going to let you, but you wouldn’t be a good one because you’re capable of picking people to work for you who are capable of murder. That’s enough to disqualify you.”

“I could discharge those people.”

“I couldn’t know if you did or not. And the individuals aren’t even that important.”

“I see.” He sighed again. “He wasn’t much of a man, you know. I’m not justifying murder when I say that. He was a petty crook and a shoddy blackmailer. He began by entrapping me, preying on a personal weakness, and then he tried to bleed me.”

“He wasn’t much of a man at all,” I agreed.

“Yet his murder is that significant to you.”

“I don’t like murder.”

“You believe that human life is sacred, then.”

“I don’t know if I believe that anything is sacred. It’s a very complicated question. I’ve taken human life. A few days ago I killed a man. Not long before that, I contributed to a man’s death. My contribution was unintentional. That hasn’t made me feel all that much better about it. I don’t know if human life is sacred. I just don’t like murder. And you’re in the process of getting away with murder, and that bothers me, and there’s just one thing I’m going to do about it. I don’t want to kill you, I don’t want to expose you, I don’t want to do any of those things. I’m sick of playing an incompetent version of God. All I’m going to do is keep you out of Albany.”

“Doesn’t that constitute playing God?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You say human life is sacred. Not in so many words, but that seems to be your position. What about my life, Mr. Scudder? For years now only one thing has been important to me, and you’re presuming to tell me I can’t have it.”

I looked around the den. The portraits, the furnishings, the service bar. “It looks to me as though you’re doing pretty well,” I said.

“I have material possessions. I can afford them.”

“Enjoy them.”

“Is there no way I can buy you? Are you that devoutly incorruptible?”

“I’m probably corrupt, by most definitions. But you can’t buy me, Mr. Huysendahl.”

I waited for him to say something. A few minutes went by, and he just remained where he was, silent, his eyes looking off into the middle distance. I found my own way out.