Westlake, Donald E - Sam Holt 04

by The Fourth Dimension is Death (v1. 1)

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Feeney said, with his sour smile. “That’s just one of Marie’s little jokes.”

  The idea of Marie LaMarca being a person with a battery of little jokes was impossible to think about. These two had their own variant on good cop/bad cop: they were nasty in completely different ways. While Feeney was slyly comical and malicious, LaMarca was cold and rigid and utterly without humor.

  It was LaMarca who now said, “Have you had time to think about who might have been trying to blame you for Miss Peyser’s murder?”

  I said, “So you know she didn’t write that name herself, eh?”

  Chuckling, Feeney said, “Oh, it was Kim Peyser’s finger that wrote it, all right. Blood under the nail, fingerprint fragments at the ends of strokes. It was just somebody else’s penmanship, that’s all.”

  “I thought you were going to cooperate,” LaMarca said.

  I frowned at her. “I am cooper— Oh. I didn’t answer your question.”

  “No, you did not.”

  “Okay. Have I had time to think about who might have been trying to pin that murder on me,” I said, echoing her question. “Yes, I’ve had time. Have I thought of anyone? No, I haven’t.” I was aware of Mort giving me a veiled disapproving look, and ignored it.

  While LaMarca continued to look at me with pinched lips, Feeney said, with his usual false offhandedness, “How long have you known Julie Kaplan?”

  “I met her yesterday, in this office.”

  He raised an eyebrow, pretending surprise. “You arranged to meet her here, with your attorney? Why’s that?”

  “I didn’t arrange to meet her.”

  “It was coincidence,” he suggested. “She was passing through.”

  I looked over at Mort, who smiled amiably at me and said, “He asked you the question, Sam.”

  “Okay. I was here,” I told Feeney, “discussing some matters, such as my earlier conversation with you two, when Julie Kaplan came here.”

  Feeney turned his magpie smile on Mort. “Is Miss Kaplan your client, too?”

  “Not so far,” Mort told him, smiling back. “And of course in this issue she can’t be, as her interests may not always coincide with Mr. Holt’s.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  Mort’s smile expanded, as though he were really enjoying Feeney. “Detective Feeney,” he said, “I’m a bit older than you, and I can remember a time when most police officers already knew enough law so that they wouldn’t have to ask a question of that sort. No two individuals in any action potentially before the court will have absolutely identical interests, and that is why an attorney cannot represent more than one of the principals involved. As I am already retained by a principal in this matter, being Mr. Holt, I could not represent Miss Kaplan as well, even were she to ask me, which she has not. Even if she were to offer me more money than Mr. Holt,” he finished, with a little smile. Feeney’s smile had been looking very strained ever since Mort’s gentle crack about police officers of yesteryear. Now it twisted around his words as he said, “Thank you for that free lesson in the law, Counselor, but what I’m—”

  Smoothly overriding Feeney, not even seeming rude about it, Mort said, “There’s an incident related to this that might interest you, Detective Feeney. Several years ago, a wealthy man in the Los Angeles area went to one of the most prominent divorce attorneys in California —Marvin Mitchelson, I think it was, to begin with— and paid a considerable amount for an hour of legal advice. He outlined his marital situation, his financial situation, his reasons for wanting a divorce, and his hopes for what he might realize from a divorce settlement. The attorney gave opinions and advice, and the man left. This man then did the identical thing with every other noted divorce attorney in the state, possibly eight or ten people in the top rank. A considerable expense, buying an hour of time from each. Finished, he chose one of them to be his lawyer and sued for divorce.”

  Feeney smirked. “Expensive kind of comparison shopping,” he said.

  “Not really,” Mort told him. “When the man’s wife went to look for an attorney, it turned out she couldn’t hire anyone she might want. They had all already been consulted by her husband, who had exposed to each of them his full financial condition. It would have been unethical for any of those attorneys to represent any other party in that matter. The best talent in that area of law was closed off to the wife, and I would imagine the husband saved quite a bit of money as a result.”

  Feeney’s smile had been getting glassier and glassier, while LaMarca’s frown had grown deeper and deeper. Now, Feeney let a few seconds of silence go by, to be absolutely certain Mort was finished, and then he said, “Counselor, what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing,” Mort told him blandly. “I thought you wouldn’t mind an irrelevancy.”

  Feeney turned slowly to give LaMarca a theatrically wondering look, and LaMarca shrugged and turned toward me, saying, “You were telling us about Julie Kaplan.”

  So I told them about Julie Kaplan. They didn’t interrupt, though Feeney kept looking as if he might, but was thinking better of it. When at last I finished, LaMarca said, “You’re involving yourself in this thing a lot, aren’t you?”

  “How so? Miss Kaplan needed a place to stay and I knew of one. And it’s only for two nights; her agent found her a job in Florida, so she’ll be able to get away from here for a while.”

  Feeney looked dubious. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said.

  LaMarca said, “It sounds to me as though you’re assisting a material witness to leave the state.”

  Before I could answer, Mort said, “If the witness’s livelihood requires her to move temporarily to another jurisdiction, and if she so informs the police here, with her address in Florida, and reports to the police in Florida on arrival, and holds herself in readiness to return for any hearing or interrogation or other official need, she will surely be in substantial compliance with any order you may have given her.”

  Feeney said, “I thought she wasn’t your client, Counselor.”

  “I was thinking of you as the client at that moment, Detective Feeney,” Mort said. “Purely on a pro bono basis, of course.”

  Feeney was still swallowing that one when Myrtie came in, carrying the New York Post. She said, as she crossed to Mort’s desk, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I thought you might want to see this.” She put the newspaper on all the other papers on Mort’s desk, open to an inner page. She tapped a story with a fingertip, turned away, winked at me, and left the room.

  We all watched Mort read, bent forward like a bombardier, looking straight down at the newspaper, his forehead braced on the splayed fingers of his left hand. The room was silent, except for one long drawn- out sigh from Mort. He kept reading, silent again, then raised his head, looked at Feeney and LaMarca, and said, “Dick Babcock is a friend of yours, I believe.” Feeney couldn’t keep the smirk out of his face and voice. “He knows us. We know a lot of reporters.” Mort looked down at the paper again, and read aloud, “Mom charges celeb thumbs nose at cops.”

  Oh. ‘Celeb’ was me, of course; ‘cops’ were Feeney and LaMarca; and Julie had already told me about Mom, the stage mother from Iowa, in town to see to Dale Wormley’s affairs.

  “By Dick Babcock,” Mort read, and glanced up. Feeney spread his hands in a display of innocence, grinning, as LaMarca said, “He didn’t get that from us.”

  Mort looked down and again read aloud: “Laura Wormley, mother of slain actor Dale Wormley, charged today that New York City police have, quote, knuckled under, end quote, to television celebrity Sam Holt. Holt, in front of whose Greenwich Village townhouse Wormley was found brutally beaten to death late Monday night, is best known for the TV series PACKARD, in which he himself played a detective. Apparently feeling that TV detectives know best, Holt, according to police officials familiar with the case, has been uncooperative in the slayings of both Wormley and the related stabbing death of young actress Kim Peyser. Holt has
been particularly unforthcoming, according to these sources, in connection with the details of his relationship with both Peyser and her roommate, Julie Kaplan, Wormley’s former girlfriend.”

  I lifted my head at that, but neither Feeney nor LaMarca was meeting my eye, and Mort wasn’t finished:

  “According to Laura Wormley, police have told her their hands are tied in the investigation into her son’s death because of Holt’s unwillingness to talk. Quote, where I come from, end quote, paren, Mill Corner, Iowa, end paren, Mrs. Wormley said, quote, the law treats everybody alike. If my son hadn’t been killed, he’d have been a big star himself some day, but he never would have thumbed his nose at the law the way Sam Holt does. And it looks like Holt can get away with it. End quote.” Mort looked up, his expression mild. “It goes on,” he said, “but I think the point is clear.”

  Feeney and LaMarca were both looking uncertain now. Feeney said, “I’m sure if Mr. Holt makes a public announcement, and we back him up on it—”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Mort said. Tapping the newspaper, he said, “Babcock didn’t get this slant originally from Mrs. Wormley, and we know he didn’t get it from my client. I’m sure you didn’t intend the story to be read this way, but Babcock let his enthusiasm carry him away, and the implication is crystal clear that my client has either bribed or intimidated you into keeping at arm’s length.”

  Angrily, LaMarca said, “There isn’t a word about bribes in there!”

  “Nor is there anything about intimidation,” Mort told her. “‘Knuckled under’ is the phrase used. And Mrs. Wormley is quoted as contrasting police behavior in New York with that at home in Iowa, where ‘the law treats everybody alike.’ Whereas here, a famous person like Sam Holt can ‘get away with it,’ presumably because you are either in awe of him or have been paid off by him.” Rising, picking up the paper, Mort said, “Sam, I want you to go on cooperating with these two officers, answer anything they might ask that’s even remotely connected to the matter at hand. I’ll be in the other office, making phone calls.”

  LaMarca said, “What phone calls?”

  “There are officials,” Mort told her, “who I will want to reassure on this matter.” He looked at her more directly than he usually does. Shaking the open paper out in the air beside himself, he said, “Are you sure this is what you wanted when you started all this?” Without waiting for an answer, he left the room.

  I said, “Crap like that in the paper can’t make either of us happy.”

  LaMarca, still icy, said, “Not everyone will interpret the story the same way your lawyer does.”

  “Not everyone,” I agreed. “I’ve told you about Julie Kaplan. I’ve told you where I was while Kim Peyser was being killed. I’ve told you my relationship, such as it was, with Dale Wormley. Is there anything else?”

  “Of course there is,” LaMarca said, but beside her Feeney was getting to his feet.

  She looked up at him, surprised and irritated, and he said, “No, there isn’t. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Holt. If we need to talk to you again, we know where to find you.”

  “In this office,” I said. “You’ve already searched my house, if you remember.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Feeney said. Having discovered that his high horse was dead, he was doing his best to climb down from it. He didn’t find that an easy job. “You were certainly cooperative in that,” he assured me. “I’m sure we can work things out with Dick Babcock.” Laughing uneasily—now he was the one trying and failing to make human contact—he said, “Nobody reads the Post anyway.”

  “Some will today,” I suggested, “who don’t usually.” By the time Mort came back, smiling grimly and looking triumphant, the law had fled.

  14

  From time to time, Zack Novak, my agent, sends me scripts to read, to see if I think I’m right for such-and-such a character; not that the producers have asked for me, but that Zack would volunteer me if I approved. I was in my office reading one of these, a pallid private eye story called Murder For Four Hands, in which Zack thought I might be right for Keller, the villain (bless his heart), but which was falling apart on the issue of credible motivation (there was no reason for the hero to go haring off in search of the killer, when the New York Police Department already has a staff of twenty-one thousand people), when Robinson buzzed to say the police were on the line.

  This was about ten-thirty on the morning after my meeting with Feeney and LaMarca in Mort’s office, and I’d been wondering how long they’d take to regroup. There’d been no further nastiness in the newspapers— of course, today’s Post wasn’t out yet—and no developments in the murder investigation that I knew of. So it was with a combination of reluctance and curiosity that I said, “Okay, Robinson, I’ll take it,” and switched over to the outside line, to discover it wasn’t my favorite detectives calling after all.

  “Mr. Holt?” said a woman’s voice that was not LaMarca. “This is Sergeant Shanley, we met back in February.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” My house had been broken into back then—I was away from it at the time, fortunately —and a man connected with an Arab terrorist group had been killed here. Sergeant Shanley, a blunt but smart woman, had been in charge of that case. But that was long finished. “What can I do for you today?” “I’ve taken over the Wormley and Peyser homicides,” she told me. “I wonder if I could come over now and talk with you for five or ten minutes.” Astonished, all I could think of to say was, “Sure. Come right ahead.” And it wasn’t till I’d hung up that I began to work out what this must mean.

  Feeney and LaMarca had zapped themselves, that’s what it meant. In trying to smear a little bad press onto me, they’d overshot and smeared the department instead. As a result, they were off the case.

  And not only that, but clearly somebody in power had decided it would be a good idea to give me a signal that the war between Holt and the police was over, so they’d gone out of their way to find an officer I’d had satisfactory dealings with in the past, and turned the case over to her. So it was, I admit, with some satisfaction that I sat there waiting for Sergeant Shanley to arrive and thinking about the departed Feeney and LaMarca.

  Not that she said a word about them, when she showed up twenty minutes later. A short, wide-hipped woman of about thirty, her pale blonde hair cut short and framing a round face with clear intelligent eyes and a snub nose, Sergeant Shanley arrived alone, her manner businesslike without rudeness, and she acted as though no one named Feeney or LaMarca had ever lived. She took me briskly and unemotionally through my meetings with Dale Wormley, my movements the night he was murdered and the day Kim Peyser was killed, and that was it. “I don’t think we’ll need to bother you again,” she said, at the finish.

  “No bother,” I assured her, and it was the truth. Walking her back to the front door, I said, “Does this mean I won’t be needed around here any more?”

  She smiled, briefly, perhaps acknowledging the difference between her regime and the old one. “If you’re asking,” she said, “if you can leave town, of course you can. You could leave the country, if you wanted.”

  The publicity and problems all around me here would die away of their own accord if I weren’t present to have my very existence fan the flames. “Leaving town is good enough for me,” I assured her, and the next day—after an unsatisfactory evening at Vitto Impero with Anita and Julie Kaplan—Robinson and I flew back to LA. By commercial air. Without incident.

  15

  Monday, November 23rd; a month since the still-unsolved Dale Wormley murder had changed my normal procedures all around and dumped me back on the West Coast instead of the East at the wrong time of year, leaving me edgy and bored, with nothing to do but—for the first time since I’d bought this house— watch leaves fall into the pool. I’d always been away at this untidy season, and it was amazing to me just how many leaves there were on each and every tree on my property, and how unerringly they would spiral across driveway and lawn, catching the
updrafts, spinning and tumbling, stretching like a runner sliding into third, to at last tap down as gently as a butterfly on the surface of the pool. And get wet. And sink.

  My friend Bly Quinn had some time off from her TV sitcom writing, so the two of us took a long weekend away together, driving up the coast to look at some land I own in Oregon, a tract partly wild and partly slated for development that I’d bought when PACKARD first provided me with a bunch of money and all my advisers pointed out that Gene Autry might have gotten rich by singing but he got rich rich by buying real estate. So I bought real estate; in Oregon, for some reason, I no longer remember why. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Various impact statements and water tests and stuff like that are being done, year after year, and the theory is that some day a bunch of high-ticket houses will go up on large lots on the developable part of the land, all of them backing onto the permanently wild chunk, with its hills and rocks and stream. From time to time, when at a loss for anything better to do with myself, I hop into the open Porsche and drive up to Oregon to look at my land. It’s always raining when I arrive.

  We didn’t talk about the Dale Wormley murder on the trip, all of the conversation on that subject having been used up the first couple of days I was back in LA. Bly had put her scriptwriter’s mind to work on the case, coming up with plots and scenarios and murderers and motivations that were all much better than any possible reality, and once that phase wore itself out she grew as tired of the subject as I was, and we got on with our lives. So what we mostly talked about on the trip was her recent desire to write a play for me.

  Her idea was—and I suppose it’s not that bad an idea, really—that since I wanted a non-Packard role to remind the world that I was still alive and still an actor and still capable of performing other parts, and since so far Zack Novak had failed to find any producer willing to go along with that proposition, what I should do was have a play tailor-made—or tailor-written—just for me. Take it to backers, raise the money, put it on first in Los Angeles and see what might happen next.