Эд Горман - Murder Straight Up

“They’re obviously very upset about this. I just didn’t want you to have to suffer for it.”

I looked at her and smiled.

“What’s funny?”

“You. You’re kind of the eternal den mother.”

“I suppose it’s my age coming out.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re a real grandmother type.”

“I’m old enough to be a grandmother.”

“Right.”

“No, really. I am. Forty-three. There are forty-three-year-old grandmothers.”

“There are also one-armed baseball players. Just not very many of them.”

She smiled again. There was something about her that put me in mind of warm cotton jammies on cold winter nights.

She shook her head. “The whole week’s been creepy. Ever since the break-in.”

“What break-in?”

“At my office.”

I was going to ask her more questions, but then I saw her head rise and a curious look come into her eyes. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing — just something intense and enigmatic.

I recognized him from the tube. A short man, maybe five-six, five-seven at most, with dark curly hair worn in something resembling a crew cut. His blue blazer and open white shirt gave him the look of an executive after hours. The ferocity of his blue gaze said he was a very successful executive and did not want you to forget it. Napoleon had probably sent much the same signal. There was one thing I hadn’t known about him: the catch in his right leg when he walked. He was lame.

He drew abreast of me, his upper lip curled slightly, as if my existence gave him great offense, and then he snapped his fingers and glared at Kelly and said, “My office. Right away.”

When he had gone by us, she whispered, “God, this is going to be terrible.”

The man we’d just seen was none other than Robert Fitzgerald himself, chief stockholder and president of Channel 3.

The medical examiner was holding a plastic bag up. Inside it was a white tube with the name FIBERALL across its front.

“Edelman, I’ll bet you a steak dinner at Farrady’s that this is how he ingested the cyanide,” the M.E. said. His name was Sullivan. He was one of those doctors who didn’t look like a doctor. Shabby clothes. Bald pate but dandruff anyway. Dirty nails. “Laxative,” Edelman said.

I was back in the studio. The place still resembled a telethon. The press from other channels were in now. They managed to convey the impression that this was a big deal for them. Getting to spy on the competition. The cops had only just begun. Rolls of film were being shot. Pounds of fingerprint powder were being dusted. Yards of cotton tape were being measured off. Dozens of plastic bags were being filled with items that seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on a murder investigation. But that’s usually what did it for a prosecuting attorney. Some arcane little piece of physical evidence. For cops it was informers. Without informers, homicide cops would be out of business, all the clue-solving TV shows to the contrary.

“A laxative,” Edelman was saying. “Christ.”

“And judging from a quick look inside, I’d say that whoever did it really dropped a large amount in here, too,” Sullivan said.

“Wouldn’t he taste it?” Edelman asked.

“You ever use this stuff?”

Edelman shook his head.

“A dog could take a crap in it and you wouldn’t notice it,” Sullivan said poetically. Then he said “Hey!” abruptly to an intern doing something that was apparently not up to Sullivan’s standards.

“God, I’d hate to have that guy for a boss,” Edelman said when Sullivan reached the young intern and started chewing on him. Then he turned back to me. “So, you pick anything up during your week here?”

“Not really.”

“Nobody who really hated this guy?”

I shrugged. “It’s like any other type of show biz. They probably all hated him. He had the job they all wanted.”

“Sound like nice folks.”

“Probably not any worse or any better than anybody else.”

He took out a pipe, put it in his mouth. It was a prop. He had given up Chesterfields ten years ago, and since then, teething-ring style, he’d adopted one of those fancy two-colored pipes. This one was red and yellow. You almost expected to see bubbles wafting up out of it. Everybody called it his ‘toy pipe.’ “I had a very pleasant conversation with Robert Fitzgerald earlier tonight.”

“I just met the man.”

“He seems to be of the opinion that you and the plumber, whose name is Fletcher, should be castrated and then set on fire.”

I sighed. “Yeah. That’s the impression I got.” I shook my head. “I should have gotten him.”

“Huh?”

I had muttered to myself. A sure sign of shame. I cleared my throat. “I said I should have gotten him.”

“The kid?”

I nodded. “Not that I’m sure he did it.”

“He’ll do till somebody better comes along.”

I felt singularly inept. “I just should have gotten him.”

“Hell, no big deal.”

“It will be to Federated Security.”

“What do those guys know?” He grinned wickedly. “They’re just a bunch of guys who couldn’t make the cut as real cops.”

“Thanks.”

“Not you, Dwyer. You’re a real cop.”

“Gee, this is sort of like being knighted.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “How’s that woman you were seeing?”

“Donna Harris?”

“Yeah.”

“Seeing a shrink.”

He looked confused.

“Her ex-husband’s in the picture again. Wants her back. She can’t decide what to do. So she’s seeing a shrink.”

“Does that mean she can’t see you?”

I shrugged, trying to appear far more indifferent than I actually felt about it. That’s a holdover from high school — not wanting the other guy to know how much you care about a certain girl. “It just means we’re kind of not, uh, tied down to each other. You know?”

“Yeah, I know.” He frowned. Tapped my stomach again. “You got a gut. Now you need a wife.”

“You sure make suburbia sound nice, Martin. Sit around with the little woman and stare at your gut.”

He laughed. “I worry about you, Dwyer. I really do.” For all his joking, he was being serious. He did worry about me.

My shift had officially ended half an hour ago. There was no reason to stay around. By morning Robert Fitzgerald would have lodged an official complaint. By noon I would most likely be filling out job applications. Federated had an ongoing contract with Channel 3; they wouldn’t jeopardize it by keeping me on payroll. They would make a very big thing to Fitzgerald about getting rid of me. I would have done exactly the same thing.

A ring of gawkers, kept at bay by police barricades, stood bathed in whirling blue and red and yellow emergency lights. There had been many more of them a while ago, but it was nearing midnight now and the wind was harsh and the novelty was wearing off. A dead local anchorman will not hold your interest nearly as long as a dead network TV star, for instance. And a dead network TV star will not hold your interest as long as a dead bona fide movie star. When you look at it in terms of a pecking order, the universe does make sense.

I recognized a couple of the patrolmen who were drinking coffee out of thermos cups between thick gloved hands. We waved to each other, and for a moment I got sentimental as shit about being a cop. I had had some good times before an appearance in a public-service spot as a cop (what else?) got me interested in acting and led eventually to the breakup of my marriage and my leaving the force. I still couldn’t say it, couldn’t say, “I’m an actor,” when people asked me what I did. I just said, “Security man.” Sounds a lot saner.