Fare Play

by Barbara Paul

  “Did Unger say this was their latest printed?”

  “I asked for a current catalog and that’s what he handed me. Took it off of a stack.”

  “Money.”

  “Unger says he already owns ten percent of O.K. Toys. Knowles had shown him his will, he says, and that gave him an option to buy another thirty-five percent. But Unger says Austin Knowles, the son, is going to sell him more than that. Enough to make him the majority stockholder.”

  “That part’s true,” Marian said. “Austin Knowles told me that himself, and Elmore Zook confirmed it this morning. Who’s Unger’s lawyer?”

  O’Toole grinned. “Elmore Zook.”

  Just then Perlmutter appeared in the doorway, back from lunch. “Something at O.K. Toys?”

  “Fill him in, O’Toole,” Marian said.

  Perlmutter took the only other chair as O’Toole repeated what he’d just said. “Interesting,” Perlmutter commented when his partner had finished. “Austin Knowles and David Unger using the same lawyer. You’d think Unger would want separate representation. But if it’s a friendly sale and Zook is the business’s lawyer, I guess it makes sense.”

  “There’s something else.” O’Toole scratched the back of his neck. “No toys on display in that office. No pictures of toys on the walls. Whether they’re manufacturing or just distributing, they oughta have some toys around. That office coulda been selling jock straps, for all I could tell. Wasn’t right.”

  Marian pursed her lips. “You have kids, O’Toole?”

  “Yeah, two. And we get toy catalogs in the mail all the time. O.K. Toys just doesn’t smell right, Lieutenant.”

  The man had a gift for recognizing his own kind, Austin Knowles had said. “Tell me about the two men. Zook and Unger.”

  Perlmutter and O’Toole could have been talking about the same man. Courteous, well-spoken, educated, cooperative without volunteering anything. Efficient; spoke straight to the point without wasting time or words. Poised. Relaxed. The only differences between the lawyer and the toy company manager were physical ones. Zook was in his sixties, Unger was about forty; Zook was stout, Unger was not; Zook was partially bald, Unger could do with a haircut, in O’Toole’s opinion. And both detectives agreed that what they’d seen had been a façade, a mask worn for talking to the police.

  “There may be nothing in that,” Marian pointed out. “Most professional people have a persona they put on when dealing with the public. So, O’Toole, what do you think is going on at O.K. Toys?”

  He shrugged. “A money-laundering operation? They’ve got a good set-up for it. Let me tell you what I did. I called the IRS and told them I thought O.K. Toys was cooking its books.”

  “You what?” Marian and Perlmutter yelled at the same time.

  O’Toole blanched. “I thought we could get the IRS to do some of our work for us—check them out, like.”

  “O’Toole, that is the dumbest thing I have heard since … since I don’t remember when,” Marian said angrily. “The DA’s office has accountants—you don’t use the IRS for something like that. You don’t use the IRS for anything. Once Internal Revenue gets its hooks into those books, we’ll never get a look at them. You may have just ended this investigation right here.”

  The rookie detective looked stricken. “Oh jeez, I didn’t think of—”

  “No, you didn’t think, did you? O’Toole, do you remember standing right here in this office and listening to me tell you not to do anything without checking with Perlmutter first? Do you remember that? Do you?”

  He gulped. “Yes.”

  “You damned well had better remember it from now on. Now you go get on that phone and call the IRS and tell them you made a biiiig mistake, that the toy company is on the up-and-up and there’s no need for the IRS to investigate.”

  “I talked to three people there.”

  “Then call all three of them. Then find out if they talked to anyone else there and call them. You don’t do anything else with your life until you squash this—do you understand? Now move.”

  Red-faced, O’Toole hurried out to his desk to start phoning.

  Perlmutter cocked an eyebrow at Marian. “Kind of rough on him, weren’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m always rough on people who don’t know how to listen,” she replied shortly. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Lucas Novak.”

  15

  One look at Oliver Knowles’s Central Park South apartment told Marian more about the dead man than anything the investigation had turned up so far. The man had had sybaritic tastes … and the wherewithal to indulge them.

  “A lot of money in toys, huh?” Perlmutter had murmured when they first went in.

  It was the trains that got to Marian. The luxurious furnishings, some of which must be antiques, were impressive in their own right. But the most elaborate train set Marian had ever seen took up two entire rooms in a building standing on some of the highest-priced real estate in the world. Oliver Knowles was not a man to deny himself what he wanted.

  Ellen Rudolph, the late-fiftyish or early-sixtyish housekeeper, was having trouble keeping back her tears. “Mr. Knowles loved those trains,” she said as she showed the detectives around. “After he retired, he’d spend hours in there. Always building, changing the layout, trying new switching systems and the like.” She smiled sadly. “Lucas and I learned a lot about trains, living here.”

  “Where is Lucas Novak?” Perlmutter wanted to know.

  “He said he’d be right back. He had an errand to run.”

  “How long have you lived here, Mrs. Rudolph?” Marian asked.

  “Call me Mrs. R,” the housekeeper said. “Everyone does. I’ve been looking after Mr. Knowles for twenty-one years. I came to work for him right after my husband died, and I’ve been with him ever since. Was with him,” she amended. She took a tissue out of a pocket and blew her nose. “Excuse me. I’m just getting over the flu.”

  “That’s a long time to work for one man,” Marian said. “What’s going to happen to the trains?”

  Mrs. R’s face took on a pinched, disapproving look. “Austin is going to auction them off. He’s going to auction off the entire contents of the apartment. The appraiser is coming tomorrow.” She shook her head. “How can he do that? How can he just auction off his father’s things?”

  Perlmutter spoke up. “Who’s going to take the cat?”

  The housekeeper looked blank. “What cat?”

  “Mr. Knowles had a photo of a cat in his billfold.”

  “Oh, that must be Phineas. White Persian? Phineas died four or five years ago. Mr. Knowles never got another cat.”

  Marian said, “May we see the bedroom, Mrs. R?”

  “Certainly.” She led the way.

  Perlmutter said to Marian, low, “The guy carried a photo of a dead cat but no pictures of his wife or son?”

  Knowles’s bedroom was solidly masculine in a traditional way—heavy furniture, muted colors, no ruffles or flounces. Marian slid open the door of the large walk-in closet: all men’s clothing. “Did Mrs. Knowles have a separate bedroom?”

  Mrs. R looked shocked. “Oh, Mrs. Knowles never lived here! Didn’t you know, Lieutenant? They’d been separated—oh, it must be thirty years.”

  Marian shot a look at Perlmutter, who shrugged. “No, we didn’t know. No divorce?”

  “No. Mr. Knowles supported her and put Austin through college, but they were never divorced.”

  They started back toward the living room. Marian asked, “Did Austin live with his mother?”

  The housekeeper said he did. “Austin was just a schoolboy when they separated, and it was hard on him. Still, he was over here a lot. Mrs. Knowles didn’t like that.”

  “Why not?”

  Mrs. R just shook her head. “Some women are so vindictive. She didn’t want Austin to have anything to do with his father. Sometimes Austin would be so upset when he came here—after a row with his mother, I mean.” At that moment they heard the door in the apartment
entryway open. “There’s Lucas now,” the housekeeper said, and went to meet him.

  Marian could hear the murmur of their voices from the vicinity of the front door. Mrs. R returned, followed by a middle-aged man whose expensive suit didn’t quite hide the fact that he was going to fat. He peered at Perlmutter querulously through rimless spectacles.

  Mrs. R said, “Lucas, this is Lieutenant Larch and Detective …?”

  “Perlmutter,” he supplied.

  Lucas Novak shifted his gaze to Marian. “You’re the lieutenant?”

  “I’m the lieutenant,” she said neutrally. “Could we sit down? We need to ask you a few things.”

  “Of course. But I don’t know what I can tell you.”

  They found seats, all but Mrs. R who said, “I’ll fix some tea. Or would you prefer coffee, Lieutenant?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks.” Perlmutter declined as well.

  As soon as the housekeeper had left, Novak said, “Do you have a line on the man who shot Oliver?”

  “He was a hired killer, Mr. Novak,” Marian said. “We’re trying to find out who hired him. And why.”

  “Yes, why?” He frowned. “There’s no reason. None. He must have killed the wrong man. That’s the only explanation.”

  Perlmutter cleared his throat. “Professionals don’t make that kind of mistake. The hitter followed him onto a crowded bus, shot him, and got off before anyone knew what had happened. Cool and sure. There was no mistake.”

  “Mr. Novak,” Marian said, “why did a retired toymaker need a secretary? What did you do for him, exactly?”

  “Not so much as before,” Novak said. “Oliver still maintained an interest in the business, although he was no longer involved in the day-to-day running of it. Mostly what I’ve been doing the last couple of years is tending to his personal affairs—correspondence, taxes, bill-paying. That’s what I’ve always done.”

  “You handled his personal correspondence? Anything out of the ordinary there lately?”

  Novak slowly shook his head. “There wasn’t much of it. Primarily Oliver liked to keep in touch with business contacts he’d made over the years.”

  “Was he in touch with anyone in Texas?”

  The secretary looked surprised. “No, no one. Why do you ask that?”

  “He was from Texas, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he’d cut all ties with that early life—long before I came to work for him.”

  “And you saw all his correspondence?”

  “Every piece. When the mail was delivered, I saw it before he did. I threw out the advertisements and solicitation letters, that sort of thing, and passed on to him only those letters I knew he’d be interested in seeing.”

  So Novak had screened Knowles’s mail. Perhaps keeping something from him? “No threatening letters?”

  He gave her the ghost of a smile. “No, Lieutenant.”

  Marian sat back in her chair; Perlmutter picked up his cue and asked, “You’ve been in Florida?”

  “Attending a funeral,” Novak said. “My uncle’s. He’d raised me … my parents were killed in a traffic accident when I was ten. I’d planned to stay on another few days until Mrs. R called and told me Oliver had been shot.”

  All the time he was talking, Marian was studying him. He was very composed for someone who’d just lost two older men to whom he’d been close. As if reading her mind, Perlmutter asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Oliver left me an annuity, I know. But I’ve had a standing offer for years from one of Oliver’s associates to come work for him. They used to joke about it—Oliver’s leaving me to the associate in his will, that sort of thing.”

  “Who is this associate?” Marian wanted to know.

  “Oliver’s lawyer. His name is Elmore Zook.”

  All in the family, Marian thought. She listened as Perlmutter went on probing, trying to find some hint of a reason anyone would want Knowles dead. But Novak had nothing at all to tell them.

  Abruptly, she asked, “What do you think of David Unger?”

  “A good man,” Novak answered without hesitation. “Oliver trusted him.” He said the last as if that were the unquestioned standard by which all people were to be judged.

  Soon after that, Mrs. R brought Novak a cup of tea. Marian thanked them for their help, which was perhaps more than they realized; she and Perlmutter left.

  Perlmutter was driving. “Whaddaya think, Lieutenant?”

  “I think Oliver Knowles was a genius at surrounding himself with people on whose loyalty he could rely. Look at the way the housekeeper automatically sided with him in his quarrel with his wife.”

  “Huh. She knew which side her bread was buttered on.”

  “It’s more than that.” Marian thought back. “She called Mrs. Knowles vindictive. Too bad the lady isn’t still with us to tell her side of the story. Perlmutter, tomorrow I want you to go see Austin Knowles. Find out what the trouble was between his parents.”

  He looked surprised. “You think that’s pertinent?”

  “Probably not. But so far the late Mrs. Knowles is the only one we’ve come across who didn’t think the late Mr. Knowles was a saint.”

  When they were back in the stationhouse, Marian went looking for Captain Murtaugh. She found him leaning against the wall by the coffee machine, staring dourly at the brown liquid in the paper cup he was holding.

  “Why do they call this coffee?” he greeted her glumly. “It doesn’t even remotely resemble the real stuff.”

  “The hot chocolate’s not bad,” she said.

  “But it doesn’t have caffeine,” the captain objected. He took a swallow and made a face. “The Knowles case? Do you have a suspect?”

  “A potential. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow. David Unger, the manager and soon-to-be majority stockholder of O.K. Toys. He’s the only one who will be noticeably better off because of Knowles’s death, but we still have no link between him and the shooter. Could we get a DA’s accountant to go over the company books?”

  Murtaugh nodded once. “I’ll get the warrant. Anything else?”

  “Tell him to look for recent transactions. Lists of vendors and customers for the past year.”

  The captain suddenly looked interested. “Not really a toy business?”

  “O’Toole thinks there’s something fishy there. Should be easy to prove, one way or the other.”

  “What are you going to do? Call the vendors and verify recorded orders?”

  “That’s the idea. We shouldn’t have to call them all.”

  Murtaugh looked at her, hard. “Gut response, Larch. What do you think was going on?”

  She took a breath. “I think Oliver Knowles went to extraordinary lengths to insulate himself. He built up a whole network of bought-and-paid-for loyalty which turned out to be extraordinarily reliable. The man was a shrewd judge of people, Captain. But he must have made one mistake, one lapse in judgement. And that one mistake cost him his life.”

  “Someone close to him, then? You’ve ruled out business competitors?”

  “He was out of business. Retired. A competitor would have gone after him when he was still a player.”

  The captain nodded. “Let me know what you learn about Unger.”

  Marian said she would and turned to go—and then turned back. “Captain, you remember the wedding I’m going to be in?”

  His face broke into a grin. “Best man.”

  “I’m following your advice. Tonight I’m meeting the bride’s mother.”

  “She’ll fill you in, count on it. Have fun.”

  “Fun?” She shuddered. “I’m dreading it.”

  Marian left him still leaning by the coffee machine. As she passed Dowd’s desk, he said without looking up: “Package on your desk. Messenger brought it.”

  “Thanks, Dowd.”

  It was an ordinary mailing bag. She found the tab on the back and ripped the bag open.

  Inside was a set of keys to Holl
and’s apartment.

  16

  “The thing to remember,” Ivan Malecki said, “is always to agree with her. The lady has very pronounced opinions. Got that?”

  “Mm,” said Marian.

  “I mean about everything, Marian. If she tells you the world is flat, you nod knowingly and say you’d always suspected that was true.”

  “How does she feel about your asking me to be your best man?”

  Ivan laughed out loud. “First time I’ve ever seen her not know what to think. When I told her my former partner was going to be my best man, she was pleased—that demonstrated loyalty on my part, ya see. But when I said my former partner is a woman, she hit the ceiling. It was outrageous, she never heard of such a thing, was I trying to insult her daughter, et goddam cetera.” He laughed again. “Then I told her you were a police lieutenant—and she just stood there with her mouth working, not knowing what to say. God, I loved it.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “So she’s torn between your rank and your, er, womanness. Just come on like an authority figure and you’ll be okay.”

  Marian groaned.

  Ivan pulled up to the curb. “Here we are.” They were in a section of Queens that Marian didn’t know, a neighborhood of free-standing houses squeezed close together on narrow lots. The Yelincic house—their destination—had the porch light on. They were expected.

  Claire Yelincic opened the door, a pretty blond past the flush of girlhood but with an open smile and straight gaze that had made Marian like her from the first time they met. Claire gave Ivan a quick kiss and turned to Marian. “She’ll swoop in on you like a hawk, Marian—brace yourself.”

  “Hanh,” Marian said weakly.

  “Believe it or not, she’s a little nervous about meeting you. And I apologize in advance for all the personal questions she’ll ask.”

  “Claire! You don’t have to do that.”

  Ivan and Claire were nodding in unison. “Yes, she does,” the former said.

  “Come on in,” Claire told them.

  They stepped into a hallway that ran straight back, doorways to the right and left and a stairway about halfway down the hall. Claire no longer lived with her parents, but this was the house she’d grown up in. She hung up Marian’s and Ivan’s coats and led them through the doorway to the left into the living room.