Killing Time td-50

by Warren Murphy

  "Who's Seymour Burdich?"

  "A nobody. He runs an information service on ce­lebrities. Finds out our favorite colors, the names of our pets, things like that. Then he publishes this drive! in some rag and sells it to fans. It keeps the riffraff out of our hair. Seymour gets to come to all the in parties. We stars like him. He's like our littie mascot."

  "Won't he be at Shangri-la, too?"

  Bobby Jay laughed. "Oh, Seymour would never get into Shangri-la. He doesn't have a nickel."

  "I thought you all liked him."

  "Friendship only goes so far. One does have one's reputation to consider."

  Remo looked back at the list. Burdich's name was near the bottom. His address was listed as Houston Street in the Tribeca section of New York. "Is this where Burdich lives, or where he works?" Remo asked.

  "Both. You won't have any trouble finding him. One can always spot poor people in a crowd. Uh, speaking of which, you aren't really poor, are you?" he asked, moving away from Remo. "I mean, I have been talking with you for some time. I'd hate for anything to rub off."

  The doorbell rang. "Consider it just another social disease," Remo said, opening the door to let himself out.

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  A beefy young blond boy hulked in. Bobby sighed and broke into song. "Lovely to look at, delightful to see. . ."

  "I'm the etheort," the boy said.

  Chapter Five

  A gray-haired man sat at a battered roll-top desk in a storefront in a section of town that looked as if it had been founded by derelicts. There was no trace of former grandeur about the bleak, trash-filled street that howled in abandonment in the dry winter wind. A sheet of newspaper blew onto the wide window of the storefront, on which the words "Stardust, Inc." were hand-lettered with white paint. The newspaper stuck in a crack in the pane, rustling shrilly.

  Remo went inside. The place was clanking and churning with the din of a printing press. The solitary figure in the room bent over the desk, his long hair shaggy along the collar of his black turtleneck sweater.

  "You Burdich?" Remo shouted.

  "Yeah. Who do you want?" He gestured hurriedly toward several stacks of papers on the desk. They were labeled with the names of celebrities and divided by category into film, music, sports, politics, and others. "A doliar apiece. Or you can have the Celebrity Scoop, that's the newspaper, for a buck-fifty." He in­clined his head toward the clanking printing press. "Be ready in a few seconds."

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  The press was spewing out pages of newsprint with headlines like "WHAT THE STARS HAVE FOR BREAKFAST" and "HOW TO MEET A ROLLING STONE." As Burdich spoke, the rumble of the press subsided and ground to a halt. Quiet filled the store­front.

  "I want to talk to you about the party at the Spangiers' in Virginia last night," Remo said.

  Burdich smiled expansively. His breath formed clouds in the unheated room. "Ah, yes. My other life," he said with some dignity. He twirled the ankh around his neck. "You're from a magazine, I presume."

  "Yes," Remo lied.

  "Which one? Teen idol? Rock Beat?"

  "Stars and Stripes," Remo said. "I've come to ask you about Admiral Thornton Ives. The Secretary of the Navy. I understand you were talking with him last night."

  "Well, I do circulate with all the guests, even if they're outsiders," he said smugly. "It's my work. Nat­urally, I'd rather spend my time with people of my own caliber. Military types don't make it with the group. Ives was just invited because of the senator."

  "That's the second time I've heard 'the group' men­tioned. Bobby Jay was talking about it, too."

  Burdich raised an eyebrow. "Bobby Jay? I'm sur­prised he's still in town. The group travels once a month, you know."

  "You know about that?"

  "Oh, all about it." He puffed up with pride. "They let me in on everything they do. They confide in me. They even send me plane tickets to attend their parties." He leaned close to Remo and whispered confiden­tially, "You know, the BPs really are beautiful. The bigger they are, the bigger they are, I always say."

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  "Very profound. About the admiral-"

  "Oh, he didn't count. Say, have you heard about my files?" He gestured to a bank of battered cabinets. "They're legendary. I know everything there is to know about celebs. I've even got Greta Garbo's pri­vate phone number, although that's not for sale. They trust me, you know." He winked.

  "Bobby Jay called you a mascot."

  Burdich rose, sputtering. "That pompous fag . . ." He gained control of himself and sat back down, smoothing the wrinkles in his tattered sweater. "I mean, Bobby's a real card. We always banter with each other. It's the group's way. A laugh a minute." He forced a half-hearted laugh.

  "How do you know Bobby Jay?" Remo asked.

  "Oh, I've known him forever. We went to school to­gether, in fact. I'm tight with all of them. They love me."

  "You two are the same age?" Remo asked, amazed. Burdich looked twenty years older.

  "I'm fifty-two," Burdich said huffily. "Bobby Jay is three years older than I am."

  Remo stared at him. It was happening again. First there was Cecilia Spangler, who looked twice as old as her own mother. And now Burdich, two years younger than a man who could have passed for his son.

  "You don't believe me," Burdich sighed. "I can tell. Well, that's their game. Victims of the disease of van­ity, all of them." His face hardened with bitterness. "Always running around, acting like kids. Kids! Who needs that? Who needs to look half their age, any­way? It's the fault of advertising. The Pepsi Genera­tion has taken over."

  "Uh, yuh," Remo said, bewildered by the sud-

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  den change in Burdich. "About the admiral-"

  "Shangri-la," Burdich whispered, his voice break­ing. "Shangri-la is only for the in group. They !eft me behind. It's too late. Too late."

  Remo squirmed uncomfortably. He had wanted to find out about the Secretary of the Navy. And all he was getting was a string of personal obsessions about some health farm called Shangri-la.

  "Too late for what?"

  "Look at me!" Burdich shouted "I'm old!" He walked over to a small mirror hanging on the wall and smashed it to the floor. "Old! And Hi never be young again. They've all left me behind. Them and their money and their witch doctor. The in group. I wish I were dead. Do you hear me? Dead!" He was standing in the middle of the room, his shoulders heaving, rage burning in his eyes.

  "Try deep breathing," Remo suggested.

  "Oh, what's the point?" Burdich said, sweeping a stack of leaflets to the floor. "I know what I am. A hanger-on. You think I'm a hanger-on, don't you?"

  "I think you're a nut," Remo said. He went on dog­gedly. "I'm supposed to find out about Admiral Ives, if you don't mind. He was murdered last night, and I want to find out who did it. Can you think of anyone at the party who would want to do him in?"

  "He didn't count, I tell you. Nobody there cared about him. They don't care about anything except themselves. Their precious youth. Their exalted Doc­tor Foxx."

  Remo perked up. "Foxx? Who's that?"

  "The diet doctor. Felix Foxx. He's the one who started that place out there, giving the group yet an­other place where they may commune with their rarified peers, away from the rabble. He keeps them

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  young. That's what separates the group from the rest of us poor suckers."

  "What do you mean, he keeps them young?"

  "You heard me. He keeps them young. There's not a one of them up there in Foxx's mountain paradise that'!! ever see fifty again. It's magic, I tel! you. The magic of the rich. Shangri-la. The magical kingdom, where one never grows old, just like in the story. That's what he's done." Burdich kicked at the papers on the floor. "For those who can afford it," he added. "The great line of demarcation between the haves and the have-nots. Eternal youth and beauty belong only to the haves. People like you and I will show our station in life by growing old and ugly. We will wither like the leaves of wi
nter, stricken with the infirmities of age until we die. But not them. Not the in group with their money and connections and their Doctor Foxx in Shangrila. They'll never grow old. Never. They'll leave us all behind."

  Burdich's depression settled into the room like a cloud.

  ''Know any of the names on this list?" Remo asked with feigned cheerfulness, pulling out Cecilia's guest list.

  "All of them. That's the in group. Those swine."

  "You mean they're all out of town?" Remo groaned.

  "Every last stinking rich one of them. It's time for the monthly meeting at Shangri-la."

  Again things were brought back to Shangri-la. It seemed that no matter which direction Remo tried to lead the conversation, all roads led to the health resort in Pennsylvania.

  Remo looked over at Burdich's file cabinets. "Say, do you have anything on that place?"

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  Burdich grunted. "Everything. I told you, I know everything about them. How they live, how they spend their money, what they do. . . .That's what makes it so hard to be on the outside."

  "Can I take a look at your material on Shangri-la?"

  "Never. That's in the file with Greta's phone num­ber. I could never release that to an ordinary being."

  "From the looks of you, you're an ordinary being, too."

  Burdich rose. "I don't have to take that from you."

  "How about taking this?" Remo said, offering up a roll of bills. Smitty kept him in currency. Not that Remo needed much, but the money came in handy at times.

  "How much is there?" Burdich asked, his eyes glis­tening.

  "Count it. Enough to get into Shangri-la, if that's what you want. Just let me see what you've got on the place."

  "But I have to be worth a half-million dollars a year to join," Burdich whined.

  "Say you came into an inheritance. The files?"

  "I guess it wouldn't hurt. An inheritance, huh? Maybe they'd buy that." He counted the money as he pulled open a rusted drawer and extracted a single file. In it was one sheet of paper, a hand-drawn map of a region in northwestern Pennsylvania. "I did it my­self, based on scattered conversations, but it's quite accurate," Burdich said. "I've even been up there to verify the accuracy of it, but they wouldn't let me in." He waved the bills in front of him. "They will now, though."

  "I thought it was too late for you."

  "I'll dye my hair. They'll accept me. I'll have a place. I'll be one of the BPs." He fell to his knees and grasped Remo's ankles. "Thank you. Bless you," he

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  rasped, dragging behind Remo as far as the door.

  So that was that, Remo thought. He hadn't gotten anywhere going door to door. If everybody who last saw Admiral Ives was at Shangri-la, that was where he was going. And it only cost him five or six thousand dollars in paper money.

  "Sure you don't want Greta's phone number?" Burdich yelled as Remo made his way down the street.

  He called Smith and told him about the fruitless in­terviews.

  "They're all out of town?"

  "Just about. Everyone's gone to the clinic or some­thing in Pennsylvania named Shangri-la. The last hoople I talked to says it keeps them young."

  "That's what all those places claim," Smith said.

  "Yeah, I know. Only this seems to work." He ex­plained the discrepancy between the ages of the party guests and their appearances, and gave Smith Burdich's information on Doctor Foxx.

  "Many people in their fifties look twenty years younger," Smith said as the Folcroft computer banks whirred into action. "It seems to be a transitional time of life. . . . Foxx, you said?"

  "Felix Foxx."

  The line was silent except for the noise of the com­puters. "That's strange," Smith said at one point, lapsing back into silence as the bleeps and whizzes in the background increased.

  "It's two degrees above zero, and I'm standing in an open phone booth," Remo said. "Can you think on your own time?"

  "Very strange," Smith said. "I've got Felix Foxx here on the screen, but it's a very sketchy biography,

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  mostly from IRS files. There seems to be no date of birth."

  "I suppose that means he doesn't exist," Remo said.

  "It could," Smith answered. Harold W. Smith had total faith in his computers. They did not, as far as he was concerned, produce incorrect responses.

  "He's on TV, for crying out loud," Remo protested. "He's on the cover of People magazine."

  "And his life seems to have begun with the publica­tion of his books," Smith said. "That's when his IRS records begin. Before then, there are no bank ac­counts in his name, no credit cards, nothing. He seems to have materialized a year ago."

  Remo sighed. "I'm just calling in, the way you wanted me to do. I don't care if the guy exists or not. But if you want me, I'll be at Shangri-la." He gave him the coordinates of the place.

  "Fine. I'll check some cross-references here."

  "And one more thing. I'll need some money."

  The bitter voice at the other end rankled. "I just gave you several thousand dollars."

  "I gave most of it to a guy for a beauty treatment."

  A low whinnying sound issued briefly from the tele­phone before the line went dead.

  Chapter Six

  Patrolman Gary MacArdle opened his desk drawer at the precinct for the twentieth time since he had come in that day and clutched the small rubber stamp hid­den there.

  it would be his way out. Out from under Master-charge, the rent, the grocery bills. Out from under the colossal weight of Christmas in New York and the drain that put on his already straining bank account. The stamp, if he used it often enough, would pull him out long enough to wait for a promotion and a decent salary. The stamp would bring deliverance.

  He didn't think it was illegal. Lots of the guys-even the young ones, the rookies like himself-were al­ready taking bribes from the street dealers they were supposed to be arresting and accepting payoffs from whorehouses. But MacArdle had played it straight. He wanted to be a cop, a good cop. Still, he could see how a good cop could get twisted after his son's first Christmas, when the accounting came due in Janu­ary. So MacArdle was working overtime every night, and he hardly ever saw his wife and kid anymore, and he was dead on his feet, and it didn't matter anymore if it was illegal or not-not at this point.

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  But Herb downstairs said it wasn't. He'd sworn to it, right there in Records. AH MacArdle had to do was to stamp any report with the word fox in it, and he'd get a $20 cashier's check from the government. No depart­ment, no name, no tax. Just money. And Herb would get a check, too, just for adding an extra 9 at the front end of the code when he submitted the report for pro­cessing into the computer.

  Checking to see that no one was looking, MacArdle pressed the stamp onto his ink pad and stamped a piece of scrap paper in the desk drawer. It printed a series of numbers beginning with three zeros.

  How could it be illegal? Nobody except Herb was even going to see the report before it was processed, and Herb was in on it. And afterward, when it had gone through the computer and come out tagged and ready for filing, nobody would see it, either, unless it was a big case, but even then it would only be spotted by some computer nerd.

  "But who's giving you the money?" MacArdle had asked Herb down in Records that day. Herb had done this sort of thing before. Not with fox, but with other key words. From time to time over the years, Herb, who'd made a career out of the 37th precinct's rec­ords, would receive a telephone call. At first he thought the lemony-sounding voice was some kind of crank, but since he had nothing to lose, he'd added the 9 to the appropriate documents just to see what would happen. What had happened was that he'd got­ten a check for each report he'd put through the com­puter with a 9 on it. No strings. No questions. Just money.

  "I don't know," Herb answered. "But it ain't the Ma­fia sending me U.S. government checks. My guess is the CIA."

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  "What? You've go
t to be crazy. What's the CIA want with foxes?"

  "Who knows?" Herb said. "Maybe there's foxes with rabies in New York, and the CIA wants to catch them on the Q.T. All I know is they're in a hurry this time and can't wait for the reports to come down to Records through the usual channels. That's why you got to stamp every one that says 'fox' and bring it down here yourself. Got it?"

  MacArdle was skeptical. "I still don't see why the CIA's so interested in this precinct."

  "Don't kid yourself, kid," Herb said. "I got a friend uptown who's got a stamp just like this one. We make them up ourselves, just like the way the guy on the phone says, and when the first check comes, there's even extra to take care of the cost of the stamp. If that ain't government regulation, I don't know what is."

  And so Gary MacArdle had taken the stamp and carried it with him on his beat and stayed on for over­time and had eaten supper at his desk, just in case any "fox" reports turned up, and now he slammed the desk drawer shut with a bang because any fool knew there weren't any foxes in Manhattan.

  And then Doris Dumbroski came in.

  She was a frowzy redhead with enough pancake on her face to turn the Hudson River orange, and she was screaming at the desk sergeant.

  "What kind of a dump is this joint? What are all you bums doing around here instead of fighting crime out on the street where you belong?"

  "Take it easy," the desk sergeant replied wearily. He'd been on overtime all week, too. "What's the problem?"

  The redhead banged her fist on the desk. "The problem is that my roommate's been missing for ten

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  days, and you yo-yos are hanging around here like you're waiting for a beer."

  "Have you filed a missing persons report?" the ser­geant asked.

  "Yes, I filed a missing persons report," she mim­icked. "Last week. One day after Irma disappeared. You don't even remember. How can taxpayers be ex­pected to-"

  "We get a lot of missing persons in New York City, ma'am," the sergeant said. He picked up a pencil and began to write. "Name?"

  "Whose?"

  "Yours."

  "Doris Dumbroski."

  The sergeant looked up from the paper. "Oh, yeah, I remember. The stripper."

  "Watch it. I'm an exotic dancer." She pouffed her hair elaborately.