23
DING DONG
McCoo had added that his "friend" had followed Edmond Pottle from the auction last night. Pottle and a young woman, trailed by McCoo's friend, went to a trendy singles bar. There he saw Pottle slip his hand over the young woman's drink while she was watching the action on the dance floor. The friend immediately ordered a very sticky drink, a pousse-café, made of layers of sweet liqueurs. Before the young woman actually drank her drink, he got up, lurched toward the dance floor, and spilled his pousse-café down Pottle's shirtfront. Pottle made such a nasty fuss that the woman called a taxi and went home alone.
McCoo's friend then poured some of her drink into a Baggie inside his own pocket, wetting his jacket but keeping a good deal of the liquid. A chemist could later find Rohypnol in it, if in fact it was there. He would be willing to testify to what he saw.
I thanked McCoo.
I phoned Hal Briskman.
"Hal," I said, "I'm returning your call. Have you heard whether Pottle—"
"You know, I've been thinking a person could do a social history of a culture entirely through its slang. 'It's a doozy' came from the admiration for the Duesenberg automobile, for example, in the days when cars were the latest invention."
"Hal, not now. Can you tell me whether Edmond Pottle's family sent him here to get him out of New York?"
"Mm. Well, yes. That's what I was calling about. There was talk that he'd become something of an embarrassment. Complaints from women."
"And about Taubman. It isn't just his wife who wants him to become a big success, is it? He's more rapacious than he lets on."
"True. He'd go about it differently, though. But I guess you could call him very hungry."
* * *
I had to make one more connection. Time to go to the cop shop.
"Lieutenant, things are just too serious for us to be at cross-purposes all the time."
Hightower sat back in his chair and looked questioningly at me.
I said, "We can help each other."
"There's no particular way you can help me. Unless you actually witnessed something— something
that wasn't in error
."
Low blow. But no worse than I might expect from Hightower.
I said, "Now that Mazzanovich is dead, do you have ali-bis for Taubman or Pottle for the time he was killed?"
"Not the whole time. There's about an hour's gap when Mazzanovich wasn't seen by anybody. Except the killer. Pottle was in his office, but it's not far away. Taubman was in his studio." He smiled at me. "And your brother was working alone at the Emerald City castle."
Very patiently, I said, "Let me tell you what I've been thinking." He glanced at his watch. "Maybe you could have a cup of coffee while I do, Hightower, so that you won't have to totally waste your time."
"I don't drink coffee. I don't consider it healthful."
"But coffee is good for— Oh, never mind. I'll make this as brief as possible."
"Please do."
The guy should choke on a sea urchin!
"All right. Let's for the moment assume Barry didn't kill Plumly."
"I believe he did."
"Just for the purpose of argument. Can you do that much?" Since he didn't answer, I went on.
"There were three of them there with Plumly— Pottle, Mazzanovich, and Taubman. They were either arguing or talking very animatedly. Jennifer probably noticed that, too."
"Just as accurate, I suppose, as her words that she saw Plumly had an unstained shirt."
Grrrr!
"Does that mean you now accept that his shirt
was
bloody?"
"Only that you couldn't tell one way or the other. And you said you could tell. No, Barry's the killer. We have the fingerprints on the knife to prove it. Plus, he's the only person known to have struggled with Plumly."
"Let me finish. Struggle or no struggle, the three were in heated discussion with Plumly. One of them stabbed him. I think to the surprise, but maybe not to the dismay, of the other two. Why did the killer attack Jennifer and me? Because he thought we saw the blood on Plumly as he ran past us. Not the actual stabbing; they were in a huddle right then and Plumly was facing away from me. Why was I not attacked the next day? Because by then the killer had heard that you very seriously suspected Barry, and soon he heard that in fact you had cautioned him, and he knew you wouldn't suspect Barry if Jennifer and I had told you anything to contradict that. So he had killed Jennifer for nothing." I stopped for a moment in sadness, but went on quickly because I didn't want to lose his attention.
"Once you brought in Barry for serious questioning, the killer thought he was home free. We had not told you that there was blood on his shirt from the time he ran away from the three men. Now, the killer knew that he could always blame the murder on one of the other two, if it ever became necessary. For reasons of their own, none of them wanted to talk to the police.
"But then he hears that there's doubt about Barry's guilt. Suddenly things are not so easy. I'm hanging around asking questions of the three of them. Each knows I'm visiting the other two. If one of the innocent ones tells which one really stabbed Plumly, the other innocent one may go along and the next thing you know, the killer is in jail. He can't let that happen. So he has to reduce it to one man's word against the other."
"So he kills Mazzanovich? Unprovable."
"Maybe. I think he killed Mazzanovich for more reasons than just making it one man's word against another's, though. Mazzanovich was either blackmailing him or on the verge of telling the truth about the murder. I saw Mazzanovich the day before he was murdered, and he was rattled. He was a cheap crook and what used to be called a chiseler. But not a killer.
"Now, with Mazzanovich dead, the killer is left with his word against the other guy's. This is perfectly satisfactory for him, because even if the other guy breaks down and runs to the cops, the killer can just say he's covering for his own crime."
"So you've got three men, two of whom are covering up for the spontaneous murder of a friend."
"Not a personal friend at all. A business associate. And not so spontaneous, either. One of the three came equipped with a knife and an untraceable gun. People don't just do that every day."
"Well, Mazzanovich, Pottle, and Taubman weren't friends, either. They have no mutual history. Why protect each other?"
"No, but they had a mutual interest. Mazzanovich, the contractor, and Pottle, the banker, were in a position to get dirty money from the Oz Festival. The lighting designer, Taubman, didn't have money but he needed recognition badly. He and his wife spend like drunken sailors and they have very little income. He sold his car to get money and personally I think he used the money to bribe Mazzanovich and Pottle to get the Oz job. Mazzanovich had a lifetime history of doing 'favors' for payoffs. He was in a position to throw lucrative contracts to people supplying the festival. He also had a lot of cash going out, with two houses, including an expensive one in Northbrook. And Pottle even more so. He's the kind of guy who can never have enough money. He could grant major contracts to suppliers or unions in return for payoffs.
"If it was made public that they were crooks, they lost big. It would utterly ruin Taubman's reputation, obviously. Mazzanovich would lose his aldermanic position and might go to prison. Pottle as a banker has to be above suspicion."
"This is all speculation."
"Plumly told me he hated payoffs. He wasn't the bookkeeper for the festival, but he went over all the festival business papers. For a while I thought he found evidence of the bribes there, but now I don't see how that information would have been in black-and-white anyplace. I think he overheard Mazzanovich, Pottle, and Taubman talking. The walls in the Emerald City castle are three-quarter-inch plywood, and you can hear everything through them. I suspect the three men were alone inside, feeling that they had privacy, talking, and he heard them from outside."
"Conjecture."
"You must be doing serious research into their financial dealings. You'd want to know if they had unexplained sources of income. They're suspects."
"Of course." By his tone, though, I knew he had not given it top priority.
"Then there was the timing. Why was Plumly meeting those three in that half-hidden location behind the popcorn stand at that exact moment?"
"I'm sure you can tell me."
"He invited them to meet him there. It was the opening night of the festival. The mayor, the police superintendent, and a whole lot of other dignitaries and press were going to be present. He met with the three men. He told them what he knew. And he threatened to walk right on over to the bandstand and make it public unless they all agreed to return the money and admit their wrongdoing."
I paused for him to reply.
"Well, Ms. Marsala, thanks anyway. I think our time is about up."
So I didn't tell him I also knew who the killer was.
I left word for McCoo where I was going, why I was going there, and who had killed Plumly.
24
DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE
Seven P.M.
It was a small, shiny gun, an older nickel-plated revolver. Pottle's pudgy hand covered most of it.
"I thought you pitched your gun into the fountain."
"Of course I did. This is a nice fresh new one. Surely you realize there are places you can just about stand on the street corner and yell 'Money for a gun!' "
"Someone will be able to identify you."
"No, not really. I didn't do it quite that way, and I didn't look quite like myself when I bought it, either."
We were in Pottle's office in the bank. Pottle had stopped wheezing. That was surely a bad sign. If his own analysis was right about what gave him an asthma attack, it meant that he was no longer nervous. He'd made up his mind how to get rid of me and he thought his plan would work.
"I've told people I was coming here."
"Indeed. And if they ask, I will tell them you came here. Just in case you really did leave word and anybody outside saw you come in. A secretary leaving work late, the occasional homeless person. Whatever. And I'll tell them you left soon after."
"I told the cops you were the killer."
"Oh, sure. If they believed you they'd be here. So either you didn't tell them or they thought you were a nut. On the whole, I'd suspect the first. But still—"
McCoo would come. But would he come soon enough?
"I must admit, I found it hard to believe you carried a gun to the festival. After all, you're a banker! It was easier to believe a crazy, hungry-to-succeed artist would be a killer. Shows
my
prejudices, doesn't it?"
"Out the door, Marsala."
"But now I know there's something very wrong with you. I guess your family thinks so, too."
"Nice try. You won't make me mad enough to behave irrationally, you know."
I said, "Once Mazzanovich was killed, I knew it was you. Taubman is a lighting expert. He would have known right away that Jennifer and I couldn't have seen blood on a gray shirt in a red light. He wouldn't have needed to kill Jennifer and chase me and Jeremy."
"You're too clever too late."
"And the other reason I knew it was you was this. The man who chased us in the tunnels reminded me of the Tin Woodman. I thought it was something about the way he looked. Taubman was lanky like the Tin Woodman. Mazzanovich had hair that stuck up straight on top. But it wasn't either of them. The similarity wasn't visual; it was auditory. You were wheezing. The Tin Woodman's joints squeak."
"Let's get going," Pottle said, gesturing with the gun. "We don't want to be interrupted."
"I won't move from this office. You can't shoot me here. There'd be too much evidence around. And what would you do with the body?"
"I'd do the same thing I'm going to do with the body as it is. Take you to the basement. I'd just have to use a document cart to move you instead of having you walk there."
"There'd be blood."
"This is a varnished wood floor. I'd deal with it. Get moving. Out the door, please."
Suddenly it seemed like a good idea to do as he said. In this closed room he really could do whatever he wanted. Plus, he was much bigger than I was. He wouldn't really have to shoot me. He could bash me on the head.
Out in the hall, there might be other people around that he didn't know about, or escape routes. I got moving.
The hall was black-and-gray marble, set in a well-bred checkerboard pattern. I couldn't see anybody on this floor. He gestured to the elevator. "Don't yell," he said. "There's nobody to hear you at this time of night."
