The Killing Man (12 page)

Candace and her boss came out together. He seemed to be a little glassy-eyed, but she was taking it right in stride. For a moment she looked toward me, but two trucks, remote TV units from rival networks, were coming down the street, swerved in hard and disgorged their crews with military precision. In seconds they had targeted on Candace, switched to her boss, sought out other high-priority subjects while one cameraman was trying to edge inside the building.

“How are you going to call this shot when you’re on camera, Pat?”

“Usual. The investigation continues, we have a suspect, we expect an arrest shortly.”

“Motive?”

“Apparent robbery will do for now. His wallet was open, empty and lying on his lap. A crumpled ten-spot was on the floor as if the killer had dropped it pulling the money out of his wallet.”

“Think it’ll stick?” I asked him.

“No reason why not. He’d just come back from a good day at the track, he was alone, somebody knew he’d be loaded and jumped him. Smiley might have been squirrelly to come in at that hour of the morning but that’s the way he always was.”

“If they buy it,” I said, “the heat’ll come off for a couple more days.”

“But what’s your explanation, Mike?”

I grinned at him and he frowned. “All I have to do is make a statement to the police. Speculation isn’t my game.”

Without us seeing her, Candace had come around the back and said, “But if you speculated, Mr. Hammer, what would you say?”

Pat said, “Go ahead and tell her.”

I reached out and straightened the lapels of her jacket. “I’d say somebody just didn’t want old Smiley in a position to identify him or his pals.” I paused for a second before adding, “And that’s
pure
speculation.”

“Captain?” she queried.

“Miss Amory, speculation is what no cop does out loud. When the statements are made, the reports are in and I’ve analyzed the lot, an official announcement will be made.”

She gave both of us a very speculative look, nodded, then walked away.

“Mike, old buddy,” Pat said, “that broad’s got a look in her eye like she wants to clean your plow.”

“That’s a career woman’s defense mechanism,” I told him. “Balls.”

“She’ll get them too if you don’t watch out,” he said.

“You want me to stick around or not?”

“Where you going?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t leave town.”

6

Every building seems to have a forgotten corner to it that isn’t good for anything at all. They are places that just sit there, empty offices with no natural light, their walls always vibrating from the elevator next to them. They smell musty and look dismal so nobody wants to occupy them. Then somebody comes along and sees that spot and to that person it becomes prime territory because it means quiet solitude where the work is intensely mental and a domain is established.

I knocked on the door, opened it and said hello to Ray Wilson. “Do you know that nobody knows where you work in this building? They kept telling me it was downstairs somewhere.”

He waved for me to come in. “My own personal dungeon.” He kicked a chair over to me. “Have a seat. Be right with you.”

I sat down, taking in the rows of filing cabinets around me. There was an odd hum in the room, then muted voices spoke and I saw the scanner on a table in the rear. Ray was monitoring the calls to the prowl cars. Next to his desk was a new-model computer, the viewer lined with figures. There were other machines farther down, not new, but evidently competent for the work load they handled.

Ray slammed a cabinet drawer shut and walked to his desk. He perched on the corner and fired up a cigarette. “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up. Pat said you’d be in sooner or later.”

“Now why would he do that?”

“Because I have fairly immediate access to material it would take you a month to uncover.”

“Like what?” He had me interested now.

“Like the finger mutilation in your office. What does it mean?” he asked.

“It’s twice as many as he took off the US agent in England.”

The cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth. “How the hell did you find out about that?”

“Intelligence,” I said. “Who else lost their fingers?”

He slid off the desk, walked around and sat in the old wooden swivel chair. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mike.”

“Ray ... you got curious too. You have all the machines going for you, all the authority you need and most likely a few good connections thrown in to make things go smoothly. You could get into Interpol, Scotland Yard or the French Sûreté and as long as it’s criminal activity you’re after and not political, you can tap their sources. So who else lost their fingers, Ray?”

This time he took a deep drag on the butt and held the smoke down while he thought about what I said. He breathed out a thin cloud and looked at me. “I located three before it became political.”

“Damn.”

“A French narcotics dealer, low level, but he was skimming from the organization. The fingers were lopped off an hour before a knife stroke killed him. The second was a strange one ... a ten-year-old kid was kidnapped from his home near Rome. The parents were immensely wealthy. The police were ineffectual and they knew they were dealing with a well-organized group of criminals. The ransom was over a million bucks in US currency. Apparently the parents took matters into their own hands, although they never admitted it. But the child was returned to them unharmed, along with a note describing where to find the kidnapper. He was tied to a chair in a barn, five fingers cut off his hand and the pointed end of a pickax slammed through his chest. The rest of the band were located and died in a police shootout.”

“This guy is a wild man,” I said.

“Not really.” He lit another butt from the end of the old one and gulped the smoke down again. “This is no nut case. Not so far. Six months after the kidnapping a major art theft took place in Belgium. Two paintings of one of the great masters were stolen from a gallery. They were like the Mona Lisa, no way you can put an accurate cash value on their worth. At any rate, a reward was offered for their return.”

“No one demanded a ransom price?”

“Apparently this theft was arranged for a private owner. It never went through. Three weeks after the robbery one painting was delivered to the gallery with a letter telling how the money was to be transferred, then the other painting would be returned. No police were involved, the gallery accepted the terms and delivered the money. The painting was subsequently returned. This time a box accompanied the picture. There were five severed fingers in it. A couple weeks later the stench of a decaying body brought the police to where the corpse was, one hand finger-less, and all the direct evidence to point to him as the thief. Whether they got his sponsor, I don’t know.”

“And now he’s here,” I said. “But this time he went for ten.”

“This time he thought it was your hand he was trimming.”

I shook my head. “That, Ray, is the sticker. There is no way I have any connection with this guy. That note had to be a phony. He was after DiCica to start with and I got snarled in it by accident.”

“Pat gave me the hypothesis your funny friends figured out. Given DiCica’s background there could be a probability ...”

“Hell, there’s logic there too, Ray.”

This time Ray said no. “I don’t buy it. Here this Penta character pulls a kill-crazy murder in your office. What were those other kills like?”

“Pretty well oiled,” I said. “He knew what he was doing.”

“But he didn’t instigate the crimes, did he? Somebody sent him out looking for the perps. With the paintings it was the reward that motivated him. The killing was his signature.”

“Then this guy’s a hit man?”

“He’s a fucking marvel, that’s what. Someplace along the line my inquiries got shut down like a slammed window. I’ve been waiting to see if there are any repercussions upstairs, but so far this thing just sits. It’s going to take a lot more weight than I got to climb a political wall.”

“You sure it’s gone that far?”

“Mike, I’m almost due for forced retirement. This private little police enterprise I’ve built into the department is going to go absolutely flat when I leave unless it captures a little glory from the money people in city government. They don’t even know what they got here. The age of computers has tied this place in with every country and industry in the world like a pair of naked lovers in bed.”

“Crazy, man.”

“I got a feeling about this.”

“So have I, Ray, so have I. But where do we pick it up from?”

He had another drag on the cigarette and coughed for half a minute. When he stopped he said, “You killed Penta, Mike. He said so himself.”

“Enough, Ray. You know how long it’s been since I blew somebody away. I’m sick of that stupid note.”

“You I believe. It’s this Penta who’s hard to follow.” He sucked on the cigarette again and coughed again. “You’re still the target,” he said.

“Show me a motive, then I’ll believe it.”

“You realize that somewhere there is a motive. It may be crazy and it may be out in left field somewheres, but the motive
is there.
These kills don’t come from somebody who’s blown his top and is walking down the street with a knife in his hand.”

“So what comes next?”

“The killer is a real stalker.
Something
motivates him and he gets the job done. He’s efficient, silent and completely ruthless.”

“You realize what you’re profiling here, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Ray said, “a terrorist.”

“How long ago were those three murders he pulled off?”

Ray finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray. “I wondered if you’d figure that one out. The last one was twelve years ago.”

“And you think there have been more since, right?”

“A killer like that who enjoys his work doesn’t stop. You know what I think?”

I nodded. “Somebody realized his potential and utilized him for their own ends.”

“Smart bastard,” he laughed. “When we get into the political situation the shades get drawn. Communication gets cut off. I get the feeling that sooner or later somebody is going to be asking me in for a quiet talk.”

“You still going to keep at it?”

He reached for his pack and shook out another butt. “In three weeks I turn in the badge and start on my pension. No way I can leave with a situation like this wide open.” He chuckled and struck a match. “Funny, in a way. I got promoted down to the bottom of the line where I like it best and I want to see the expression on some faces if this opens out to the big glory bust.” He held the match to the butt and sucked on the smoke again, then rattled out a cough.

“Who else gets this research?”

“This is departmental business. Pat gets it. How he disseminates it is up to him. With you it’s off the record. I guess you know that.”

“No sweat. What I heard here I leave here. Thanks for the information.”

“You know somethin‘? For a private cop you got the damnedest connections I’ve ever seen. You go in and outa the department like you really belonged there. You rub asses with the hotshots, walk through the shitpiles without stepping in it and come up smelling like a guy fresh outa the barber shop.”

“You jealous?”

“Nope, just curious as hell.” He started to cough again and stuck the cigarette pack in his pocket.

“Those things are going to kill you,” I said.

He gave me a cold-blooded grin. “Right now I’d say my chances are ‘bout the same as yours.”

“Sure they are,” I said sourly, shaking my head.

He waved the smoke away with his hand as I headed to the door. “Stay alive, Mike,” he said to my back.

 

There was no way I could have avoided the three reporters on the main floor. They were waiting for anyone involved in the investigation of Smiley’s killing, hoping to get Pat, and I walked right into them. They would have had the official version as far as it went, but they were all old-timers and smelled a story brewing that hadn’t erupted into the news yet. Two of them remembered me from a couple other wild sorties and a major court case three years ago. I had always made good copy, and now with the kill in my office and me on the scene of another one, they were trying to make a chain out of something that was only a pile of loose links so far.

I didn’t lie to them. They were too good at putting things together. I didn’t tell them everything either, and they knew it. What they got, the cops already had, so I didn’t leave myself open.

The one reporter who had just been jotting things down when the others put the questions to me finally said, “That guy really messed up your girl, didn’t he?”

My hands locked up again and I could feel the muscles in my neck go tight. “I’d like to kill that fucker,” I said. My voice was suddenly harsh and I spat on the floor.

“She your girl?” he asked quietly. I caught myself just in time. He was watching me carefully, mentally recording my reaction.

“Velda works for me,” I said. “We’re old friends.” I didn’t go any further and before he could press it, Pat came in the front doors with Candace Amory and two of the reporters half-ran to intercept them. The other took his time, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. I was glad when he joined the others.

Pat and Candace dealt with them in a fast and friendly manner, then turned them over to the PR cop who was standing by. Pat had spotted me the minute he came in and waved his thumb at the elevator. The door closed and we started up. “What’re you doing here?” Pat said.

“I thought you wanted a statement.”

Candace gave us both a sharp look. “Didn’t you give one to the officer at the scene?” Her tone was like a reprimand.

I kept my face flat. “Not in superfine detail, lady.”