Fare Play

by Barbara Paul

  “Murtaugh just left,” DiFalco said. “We’re going to make this a joint Ninth Precinct/Midtown South investigation. It’s official now.”

  Marian introduced Sergeant Buchanan. “The sergeant will be acting as liaison.”

  DiFalco barely spared him a glance. “We need your reports on the Knowles shooting and we need them now.”

  She counted to ten. “I’ve already told Gloria we’ll forward our reports.”

  “Today, Lieutenant. I want this thing nailed down.”

  Marian smiled, with her mouth. “Oddly enough, Captain, that’s what we want too.” Reminding him she was no longer under his command.

  “Don’t get sarcastic with me, Larch,” the captain snapped. “You may have moved uptown, but you’re on my turf now. I call the shots here.”

  Feel my muscles? “You and Captain Murtaugh, yes. On this case.”

  He dismissed Murtaugh with a wave of his hand. “Just get those reports over here!” He charged away.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Marian said to his retreating back.

  Gloria waited until DiFalco was out of sight and then hugged herself in an exaggerated shiver. “Brrr. Somebody turn up the heat.”

  “Yeah,” Buchanan agreed, “the temperature did drop about twenty degrees, dinnit?”

  “What are you, a comedy team?” Marian growled. “Let’s go see what the tech’s got.”

  The lieutenant’s office where the graphics tech was working was smaller even than Marian’s office. The three witnesses who’d said they could describe the man who’d sat next to Robin Muller on the subway were crowded around the woman seated before her laptop computer, all three of them arguing about how wide the man’s face was. The smallest printer Marian had ever seen was set up on the desk and waiting.

  The tech was Paula Dancer, the same one who’d tried to put together a composite of Rosalind Bowman’s face from André Flood’s unhelpful description (and ended up with a picture of herself). She looked up and saw Marian. “Hello, Lieutenant. What are you doing down here?”

  “Same killer as in the Knowles case,” Marian told her. “Or at least the same MO. Have you got anything?”

  “I’ll show you what we have so far.” Dancer hit a few keys and turned the laptop so Marian could see the small screen.

  “His face is narrower than that, I tell ya,” one of the witnesses said, a man wearing coveralls with the name “Jerry” stitched over his heart.

  The face on the screen had no mouth yet. Its most prominent feature was a hooked nose, thin and sharp-looking. Marian asked Buchanan, “You ever run across that face before?”

  He said no. “I’d remember that nose.”

  The small room was hot and crowded, so the three detectives went outside to wait. Not too much time passed before Paula Dancer emerged carrying a stack of pictures she’d just printed out. She handed one copy each to Marian and Buchanan and gave the rest to Gloria. “They’re all agreed this is pretty close, although they’re not all three happy with the face width and the hairline.”

  The computer-generated portrait showed a clean-shaven man with black hair and eyes, the hook nose, and lips so thin they made his jaw appear more prominent than it probably was. “Naw, I don’t know this guy,” Buchanan repeated. “New talent in town, maybe.”

  Dancer pointed to the mouth. “This is unusual. Most people’s lower lips are larger than the upper, but all three of the witnesses were vehement about the equal sizes here. They said he had almost no lips at all.”

  “This is great,” Gloria said, studying the picture. “Two distinguishing features, nose and mouth. I’ll get the pictures distributed to the bluesuits.”

  “We’ll cover the airports,” Buchanan said. “Bus and train stations too, although I’d bet this guy is used to first class. He don’t know we’ve got his face on paper, but he could get spooked.”

  Gloria asked, “How many copies can that little thing you’ve got in there print out?”

  “As many as you want,” Dancer said.

  “Then you take these.” Gloria handed the stack of portraits to Buchanan. “I’ll get more.”

  Marian said, “Gloria … discreetly?”

  The other detective placed her hand over her heart. “My middle name, woman! Now I gotta get the witnesses’ statements—are we done for now?”

  “For now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  On the way downstairs, Marian checked her watch. “You’re off duty, Sergeant.”

  “So are you, Lieutenant.”

  Rush-hour traffic slowed them down. While they were waiting for a green, Buchanan said, “That Sanchez. Why won’t she take the Sergeants Exam?”

  Marian eased the car forward as the light changed. “Beats me. I’ve been after her to take it—but she always puts me off and never says why.”

  “I thought she was black when I first saw ’er. But with a name like Sanchez—”

  “Black mother, Puerto Rican father,” Marian explained. “Gloria can be black or Hispanic, as the mood takes her. You happened to catch her on one of her black days.”

  The minute they were back in the Midtown South stationhouse, Buchanan headed straight for the phone to get the airport watch set up. Even before taking her coat off, Marian went looking for one of the clerical workers to arrange for copies of the Knowles case reports to be delivered to Captain DiFalco.

  Sergeant Campos was working late too, sitting at his desk and trying to catch up on the paperwork that constantly threatened to drown every police detective. Marian told him she needed two men from his squad to work on the Knowles case.

  He objected. “We’re all overloaded now. I can’t dump the casework of two men on somebody else.”

  “I know you’re overloaded and I’m sorry about this. But there’s been a development.” She explained about the Robin Muller shooting and the almost one hundred percent probability that it was the same shooter they were looking for in the Oliver Knowles case. “He’s a hired killer with god knows how many other contracts in his pocket. We’ve got to stop this guy.”

  “Take somebody from Buchanan’s squad, Lieutenant.”

  “I’ve got Buchanan himself. Now, I want two men from your squad.”

  “Can’t the Ninth Precinct provide some manpower?”

  Marian sighed. “Campos, everything I say to you, you argue with me about it. Two men. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning. My office. Got that?”

  He looked disgusted, but he nodded.

  Marian shucked off her coat, made a quick trip to the ladies’ room, and gathered her notes together. The last thing she did before going in to report to Captain Murtaugh was call Holland and cancel their dinner date.

  22

  Captain Murtaugh examined the computer-generated portrait Marian had handed him. He nodded, pleased. “An easy face to spot. But no one actually saw him pull the trigger, right?”

  “No one ever sees this guy pull the trigger,” Marian said. “This is our man, Captain. She’s alive, he sits down next to her, he stands up, she’s dead. Entry wound on the left side of the chest, just as in the Knowles killing.”

  “You’re sure she was alive when he sat down?”

  “The witnesses are. They say she had to move a little to make room for him.”

  He nodded. “Tell me how you’re handling it.”

  She explained the division of labor, Gloria Sanchez getting the portrait to Manhattan’s bluesuits and Buchanan covering airlines and other terminals. “I’m adding two men to the Knowles investigation, now that we can go at it from both ends.”

  “The shooter and whoever hired him, right. I’ve got something else for you. The computer search turned up one other killing with the same MO. Out at Kennedy. Queens just faxed me the report.”

  Marian sat down and quickly read the report. The victim was a second-generation Italian named Anthony Pasquellini, a greengrocer on Mulberry Street. He’d booked passage on a TWA flight to Rome, going back for a family visit. Pasquellini was in a window seat rea
dy to go when the pilot announced there would be a delay. Bad weather was coming in, and it would be at least two hours before they could take off. The passengers were told they could return to the terminal for that period of time if they wished.

  So for two hours—actually closer to three, as it turned out—people were leaving the plane and coming back on again. Anthony Pasquellini never left his seat; the flight attendants thought he was sleeping. But one eventually began to think he “looked funny”; Pasquellini was on the corpulent side, but the attendant couldn’t see his chest moving as he breathed. And his head was at a funny angle. When she tried to wake him, she discovered he was dead. The bullet wound in the left side of his chest was covered by a propped-up copy of Opera News.

  The investigators learned that Pasquellini had been involved in a bitter feud with a rival greengrocer named Enrico Toma, a feud kept burning by personal as well as business antagonisms. Toma had an airtight alibi for the time Pasquellini was killed, and no evidence had yet been uncovered to indicate that Toma had hired a hit man. Neither Pasquellini nor Toma was connected.

  Marian looked up from the report. “Not connected. Remember when the Mafia was the scariest thing around?”

  Murtaugh looked grim. “Now they’re just one spoke in a global network of crime.”

  She reread part of the report. “There’s nothing before this one shooting last week?”

  “Not as far back as the computerized records go. This guy has to be imported talent.”

  She nodded her head, thinking. “But for a stranger in town, he sure knows how to find his way around. Robin Muller had been hiding out in Brooklyn, and he found her. This Pasquellini was on the verge of leaving the country, and he got to him in time.”

  “You’re saying he’s not imported talent?”

  “No, I’m saying he must have lived here once. He may have, er, honed his skills elsewhere. Or maybe he changes his MO frequently. But he knows New York.”

  Murtaugh mulled that over. “That means this guy could have been here before, using a different MO each time. Hell, he could have been here a dozen times! And we’d never know it.”

  “It also means,” Marian pointed out, “that he has a steady source of contracts here.”

  The captain sighed heavily, deep from the gut. “A syndicate. A ring of hired killers, operating like any other business. Right here under our noses.”

  “We knew from the start that was a possibility.”

  Suddenly Captain Murtaugh unfolded his long frame from behind his desk. “I’m getting cabin fever. Let me buy you a cardboard sandwich.”

  Marian welcomed the idea; her stomach was beginning to growl. They plodded downstairs to the machines and made their selections; that plus a cup of ersatz coffee was dinner. Marian leaned against the wall, chewing her dry ham-and-cheese, thinking.

  She swallowed and said, “Gloria Sanchez isn’t going to find any connection between Robin Muller and Oliver Knowles. The only thing they have in common is that the same man was paid to kill them both.”

  “Sanchez will be looking for motive?”

  “She’ll have to, but I don’t know what she can find. Robin Muller was a schoolgirl. Not into drugs. The only thing unusual about her was this mysterious source of income she’d had for the past several months. And if she didn’t even tell the guy she was living with about that, we’d be better off concentrating on the shooter and working backward.”

  “If she didn’t tell the guy she was living with,” Murtaugh said pointedly.

  Marian tossed her empty coffee cup into the trash bin. “Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that. Larry Hibler—the boyfriend—wanted to make sure we understood he didn’t know anything about Robin’s ‘job,’ whatever it was.”

  “Bullshit. He had to know. Bring him in tomorrow,” the captain ordered. “Lean on him. Get the truth out of him.” He headed toward the stairs, still talking. “Make sure Sanchez does a full background check on both Muller and Hibler. And don’t ease up on Knowles because now we got a shot at nailing the trigger man.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” Marian panted, running to catch up.

  The captain’s long legs took the stairs two at a time. “You’ll get the accountant’s report on O.K. Toys tomorrow. If they’re clean, forget the money motive and go after personal stuff.”

  She gasped a laugh. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

  He stopped and turned. “Yeah, sometimes people do kill each other for reasons other than money. Or so I’m told. Larch, how many ‘crimes of passion’ have you investigated since you got your gold shield?”

  She didn’t have to think long. “Only one. But aren’t all murders crimes of passion in some sense? Even this cold-blooded, hook-nosed sonuvabitch we’re looking for now—he gets something out of it other than just his fee. A sense of superiority, maybe. Or perhaps the satisfaction of seeing an obstacle removed … like pushing a chair out of the way.”

  He scowled. “And you don’t think that’s cold-blooded?”

  “To us, it is. But to him, that’s his passion. Satisfaction.”

  Murtaugh raised an eyebrow. “Let’s leave the psychological profiles to those who get paid to write them up. From you, I want hard evidence that’ll stand up in court. And explanations. Like, who the hell is this Virgil?”

  “I’d say he’s the main man. The one who operates this ring of killers.”

  They were back at Murtaugh’s office, but neither of them went inside. The captain leaned against the doorjamb and suggested, “It could be the code name for a contact to the main man.”

  Marian admitted the possibility. “But when Robin Muller called her boyfriend, she said that the paymaster had warned her. That sounds to me as if the paymaster is the contact and Virgil the head honcho—she said Virgil was going to send someone after her.”

  “But why would Virgil’s paymaster warn one of the victims?”

  “To rub it in?”

  “What? I don’t follow.”

  “Robin told her boyfriend that the paymaster had warned her ‘spitefully’—that’s the word she used. Isn’t that odd? Spitefully. Like … ‘Nyah, nyah, you’re gonna get yours’?”

  “Suggesting that the paymaster and Robin Muller had had previous contact of a not altogether satisfactory sort.” Murtaugh locked eyes with Marian. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That Robin Muller worked for Virgil?” She nodded. “It would explain a lot of things.”

  “Hoo.” The captain leaned his head back against the doorjamb. “Where did she fit into this network of efficient killers? What was her job? This thing is like a web spreading out, with a big fat spider named Virgil sitting in the center.”

  “The paymaster would be closest to Virgil, wouldn’t he?” she guessed.

  “Seems reasonable.” He straightened up. “Get that boyfriend in here. First thing tomorrow. And get the truth out of him. I don’t care how you get it, but get it! You can bring out the rubber pipes, for all I care.”

  “Rubber hoses,” she corrected with a smile.

  “Pipes, hoses, whatever. But get the truth out of him!”

  “I will,” Marian promised.

  23

  She was dragging by the time she got home, four hours after her shift officially ended, bone-tired but still keyed up. She halfway hoped Holland would be waiting at her building, but he wasn’t. Upstairs, she checked her answering machine; no messages.

  She made herself a drink. A long shower left her feeling a little better, but she was still having trouble winding down. She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator—but she wasn’t hungry; the undigested cardboard sandwich lay like a lump in her stomach. She thought about having another drink but didn’t want one; Kelly Ingram had once told her she wasn’t really a very good drinker. She picked up a book, opened it, stared at the page without seeing the words. She turned on the television and immediately turned it off again.

  This was the sort of time that deep-breathi
ng exercises to aid relaxation would help, but Marian didn’t know any. She took a few experimental deep breaths. She tried holding her breath but quit as soon as it began to feel like a headache starting.

  Then she turned out the lights in her living room and sat at the window, watching the street below. Wet snow was falling. Traffic was light and no pedestrians were visible on the one side of the street that Marian could see from her vantage point. She felt cooped up, trapped, imprisoned … but she’d been home less than an hour. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet.

  After five fidgety minutes she gave up staring out the window and went to the phone. When he answered, she said simply, “Come over.”

  “Yes,” he replied, and hung up.

  It took him almost half an hour to drive crosstown and down to the less fashionable neighborhood where Marian lived. He was still ringing the bell when she opened the door.

  He announced loudly, “Holland Rent-a-Stud, at your service.”

  She was too fatigued to rise to the bait. “Come in.” He was carrying a small leather travel kit, the sort of thing women give men for Christmas when they don’t know what else to buy. “What’s that?”

  “Necessaries. When I am summoned in the middle of the night, I expect to be offered the courtesy of a night’s lodging.” He held up the kit. “Toothbrush and razor.”

  Their lovemaking was rough and frenetic … just the way Marian wanted it. When they lay exhausted side by side on the rumpled bed, she began to tell him about Robin Muller and the murder-for-a-price organization that had been operating for god-knows-how-many years without the police’s even catching a whiff of it. She told him about Virgil, and the paymaster, and the man with the hooked nose and thin lips. She told him about Robin Muller’s probable involvement with the ring.

  She said she’d thought they were through with those Murder, Incorporated, type of melodramatics. There’d always be hit men for hire, yes—but a well-organized, businesslike operation? She thought they’d stamped out that particular entrepreneurial activity for good now. They had new laws covering it. She thought she’d seen the end of that kind of stuff. Old-timey gangsterism. We kill anything for a price! Weekend specials! Group discounts!