The Woman Who Knew Too Much

by Thomas Gifford

  It was bigger than the Pentagon Papers. Bigger than Watergate … No wonder people were getting killed.

  He put the manuscript back into the ravaged briefcase, took the elevator down to the lobby, and went to a nearby coffee shop for breakfast. He kept the briefcase tight beside him on the booth’s seat, hidden by newspapers. He ordered an omelette and fries and a Danish and coffee, and when it came he couldn’t eat it. His stomach wouldn’t let him. His belly felt like it had been hot-wired.

  So far as he could tell from his reading, the book would destroy the presidency of the sitting incumbent, leave the careers of a great many cabinet members, senators, and representatives in flaming ruins, demolish the intelligence community as we knew it … while making Jesse Lefferts, if he managed to live through it, the hottest editor of the year. The book would finance Pegasus House’s entire list, and sure as hell would have the book clubs kicking themselves around the block in the competition to get it. The paperback advance would be astronomical. The serial rights, the foreign rights … and the ecstasy at the new ownership, the Omega/Conclave Group, would be unprecedented. And Jesse Lefferts would be golden.

  He paid the bill and went back to the office. He refused to look in the men’s room mirror. It would be awful and he would lose his nerve, and doubts as to his course of action would set in. Instead he took a deep breath and called the office at the top of the tower, where Admiral Arthur T. Malfaison, USN (ret.), served as the chairman and chief executive officer of Pegasus. He had been on the job less than a year but his impact on company morale had been enormous. Admiral Malfaison, fifty-nine years old, had given Pegasus a strong new presence in the world of publishing. Which meant he was a go-getter; he went-and-got with the heaviest of the heavyweights. Gloria Vanderbilt, Prince, Michael Korda, George Steinbrenner, Richard Gere, Jack Kemp, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, George Bush, Ed Koch—the Admiral was everywhere. He was also customarily in his office by seven-thirty. He was a party-goer and a party-giver, and he lunched with Marvin Davis at “21” and was always in the columns, devoting his presence to one worthy charitable cause or another, and sometimes seen standing next to a Guest or a Whitney or Jackie O. in the society-page photos. He had grasped the publishing world by the throat, shaken loose and gathered several hugely successful authors whose contracts had run their courses with other houses. He had resurrected the career of a faded movie starlet with a workout book, rescued another from oblivion with her tome on breast enlargement through self-hypnosis, and had seen to the publication of Tripe, the trashiest and hottest selling novel/miniseries deal of the year. In an acquisitive firm, the Admiral led by example. He saw, he liked to say, his duty to the public and stockholders and Omega/Conclave, and he did it as best he could. He was going to be amazed at what Jesse Lefferts had for him this dark, dreary morning.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MASON WATCHED GREEN DRINKING coffee from the Styrofoam cup. Mason was sitting behind the wheel of the Chevy, holding his own cup to warm his hands. The coffee Green had fetched on command from a coffee shop on Sixth Avenue was scalding, impossible—in Mason’s view—to drink as yet. But somehow Green was slurping it down. How did he do it? Mason watched the unconcerned Green and decided there was something wrong with him. Maybe he was impervious to pain. That was frightening. It was all right to be resistant to pain. You were supposed to resist it, master it. But nobody was impervious. Impervious was crazy.

  It was a dirty, dishwatery, dispiriting morning, if you were prey to such fluctuations in the weather. Fortunately Mason wasn’t. But the rain was steady, washing muck out of the atmosphere, and Mason didn’t have an umbrella. Which was another reason why Green had to go get the coffee. That, and because Mason was senior.

  Neither of them seemed to need much sleep. Green had been all pumped up when he’d come back to the car after killing the man who’d walked in on him at Cunningham’s place. He had wanted to sleep. His motor had been racing when he told Mason what had happened. Mason had calmed him down, thinking to himself that Green seemed to have enjoyed the killing too much. Some guys got off on killing people, said it was better than the best lay of their lives. Mason thought maybe Green was one of those guys. That was crazy too. Mason was pretty uninvolved when it came to killing somebody. If you had to do it, you did it and forgot about it. He’d even regretted it once, when he’d had to do a job for the IRS. He’d killed a man who had too much inside dope on an IRS operation involving heavy skimming by a couple of top regional collection people tied back into Washington. Mason hadn’t wanted to do it. He hated the IRS more than he’d have believed he could have hated anything. As far as he was concerned, they were the only really bad guys.

  Green smacked his lips noisily and turned his gaze on Mason. “Good coffee. Don’t you want yours?”

  “Yes. I want it.”

  Mason wondered about Cunningham’s absurd departure from Miss Blandings’s apartment. Something horrible seemed to have happened to the man, but Mason couldn’t tell what. He’d looked like a threshing machine had driven over him.

  Greco’s arrival had taken him by surprise. Who was this guy with the eye patch? When he didn’t come out, though he’d passed across the front windows of her apartment, Mason decided he must be her lover. Maybe she’d stay in bed with him all day and forget about the Director. It would be so much easier that way. All Mason wanted to do was keep her out of the picture without revealing himself. He tried to recall the last time things had gone easily. He couldn’t.

  The woman in the raincoat. She meant nothing to Mason. And when she eventually left, he hadn’t been sure she’d even visited the Blandings apartment, though he thought she’d pressed that button.

  Once Miss Blandings and Eyepatch left, Green said: “Shouldn’t we follow them?”

  “The apartment must be empty now,” Mason mused.

  “Weren’t we supposed to keep an eye on her? Keep her out of this?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s my hindquarters, not yours. The Director’s right where he should be, everything’s fine.”

  “I don’t know,” Green said doubtfully.

  “I do, Greenie. Relax.”

  “I guess you’re the boss.”

  “Nice you remember that. Now let’s go take a look in there.”

  “What for?”

  “Maybe you’ll find somebody to shoot.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe we’ll find the manuscript the General’s afraid might be floating around. Maybe she wrote it. Maybe the guy with the eye patch wrote it. Let’s just go see, Greenie.”

  A few minutes later Mason was staring into the cold eye of a very large bird who had ostentatiously stalked into his cage and slipped the bolt into place when the two men had entered the room. Mason regarded the beak and thought, There is a bird with one hell of an edge.

  “Polly want a cracker?” Green said softly.

  The bird stared hard at him, then relieved himself on the newspaper in the bottom of the cage.

  Mason spoke to the bird. “Manners, manners.” The bird cocked an eye at him and came closer, recognizing a kindred spirit.

  Green was looking through cardboard boxes full of what might be the manuscript in question. He was kneeling beside them when the front door swung open again. Mason heard the clicking of the latch and turned to see who’d come in.

  Two men came quickly into the room. One of them already had a pistol out of his pocket. There was a clunky, tubular silencer on the barrel. He heard the puffing sound and the slug digging into the plastered wall behind him. The big bird started squawking. Mason hit the deck, rolled behind the bulk of the pool table.

  Green was very good with a gun. So was Mason, but there was a difference. Green was the fastest with a gun Mason had ever seen.

  The man who had missed Mason with the first shot had done all the shooting he was going to do.

  Green was still on his knees but had the nine-millimeter Baretta out. There were three quick puffing sounds, whoof-whoof-whoof,
and Mason peered around the massive carved leg of the pool table to see one man fall sideways into a stereo cabinet, knocking a lamp onto the floor. The other man sagged back into the hallway, dying as he squeezed off a final shot that took a chunk out of the ceiling above the pool table. The sprinkling of plaster drifted down on Mason’s hair and glasses and made him sneeze. He had finally gotten his gun out of the shoulder holster, and there was almost no one left to shoot.

  Green stood up. He wasn’t even shaking. One of the men he’d shot made a dying noise from behind the couch.

  Green looked at Mason and smiled.

  “You’re a dangerous man, Greenie.”

  “Yeah.”

  Green’s smile broadened.

  Mason raised his gun and shot Greenie square in the middle of his smile.

  Chapter Twenty

  TEDDY BIRNEY WAS A short fat man in a sportcoat that looked like last night’s leftovers. He walked fast, talked fast, thought fast, and bounded into Costello’s at a breakneck clip. He looked around with slow, circular eyes that missed nothing, and saw Greco waving from one of the booths in back. Herbie, New York’s most famous and worst waiter, gave Teddy a dirty look. Teddy brushed him away and settled into the booth beside Greco.

  Greco introduced him to Celia as the Daily News’s top crime reporter. Teddy blushed as he always did when confronted by a pretty woman, and sucked the foam from a beer Greco had waiting for him. Teddy had a column that all the research said was money in the bank.

  “So how’s the underworld, Teddy?” Greco asked.

  “Same old stuff. You got your Satanic cult killers, you got your slasher who’s in love with little old ladies, you got your wealthy wife in a permanent coma while hubby is chasing skirts through the after-hours scene, you got your seventy-year-old choirmaster diddling the boy sopranos in the organ loft, and you got your shopping-mall ghoul leaving pieces of cheerleaders in trash cans. Same old stuff.” He sounded like the winner of a fast-talking contest. His face was getting redder. “How are your sunset years?”

  “Soothing, Teddy, very quiet and soothing.”

  “So what’s on your mind? You hawking a tip or what? The Police Commish is a secret child molester? Old news, old news.” He lit a cigarette and coughed something wet and thick in his throat.

  “No, nothing like that. I need to pick your brains—”

  “Good luck. If you find anything, let me be the first to know.” He grinned at Celia and drank some more beer.

  “I got a name. Strikes me as somebody I’ve heard of before, but I’ll be damned if I can place him. Friborg. Irwin Friborg.”

  Teddy Birney pulled his lower lip like a rubber band and let it snap back into place. He dribbled ash onto the table. “Why? What’d he do?”

  “He died.”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “Do you know the name?”

  “I’m thinking. How did he depart this vale of tears?”

  “A woman shot him.”

  “The woman in the case. You don’t sound retired.”

  “Who was Friborg?”

  “I’m working on it. Who’s the woman?”

  “This is off the record, Teddy—”

  “Whatever you say, sport. Who is she?”

  “Lady’s name is Zoe Bassinetti.”

  “No kidding? She the wife of that think tank character? Eduardo … whatever his name is?”

  “Emilio. Yeah, she is.”

  “Murder, I take it?”

  “Maybe self-defense. Friborg offed her dog—”

  “Doggie defense? That’s novel—”

  “Who was Friborg?”

  “Hey, you oughta remember Friborg. He was the liaison in the old days between the Commish and Internal Affairs. That’s where you must of come across his name, back in your fink days. Maybe even met him—”

  Greco shook his head. “I don’t think I ever met him, but you’re right, that’s where I heard the name. So Zoe killed a cop—”

  “No, he’s not a cop anymore, not the NYPD, anyway.” Teddy lit another cigarette off the first, sucked until he got it going. “I don’t know where he is now.” He pulled his lip again, revealing a set of yellow-stained teeth.

  “Try and remember,” Celia urged him. “You look like a man who’s got a computer bank in his head.”

  “Well, I am pretty good, come to think of it. Let’s see, he left New York, but where the hell did he go? When did the lady kill him?”

  “Last night,” Celia said.

  “Where?”

  “Her home. Sutton Place—”

  “So why haven’t I heard about it?”

  “Come on, Teddy,” Greco interrupted. “We don’t know. I saw the body. She and her boyfriend must have stashed him somewhere. We just want to know who Friborg was working for.”

  “Well, seems to me I heard Mr. Friborg went to Washington a few years back. I could be wrong, so don’t hold me to this. But I’d say he went down there and hired on with the CIA, the FBI, maybe even the IRS. He had a nasty streak, did Irwin. Oughta been right at home down there. Some enforcement agency or other. That’s the best I can do, Pete.” He finished his beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Make any sense?”

  “If it does, it’s bad. I hope to hell you’re wrong.”

  “Whatever. Quid pro quo. Tell me what’s going on. Just background me and I’ll take it from there. Your name never comes up. You know damn well you can trust me. You trusted me with your life once upon a time.”

  “Okay, Teddy. But this story is just the tip of a big mean iceberg, you read me?”

  Greco stood in the rain staring at the Le Baron, which had a wet ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. He’d left it by the fire hydrant. Now he grabbed the ticket, crumpled it up, and jammed it into his Yankee jacket pocket.

  “Give it to me,” Celia said. “Please. You came here for my sake. The least I can do is pay the ticket.”

  “Can it, Slats,” he growled. “I’m not mad at the ticket, I’m mad at what Teddy had to say. Forget it. Let’s just get outa here.”

  “We’re going to Palisades right now?”

  “Sooner the better.”

  “Do you think they’ll just let us see him?”

  “Gotta be resourceful. Think like this Linda Thurston of yours. She’d think of something. We’ll just have to make them understand it’s a matter of life and death, that’s all. But,” he cautioned her, “once we warn him, we’re out of it, understand? If people like Friborg are involved, then the serious side of the Washington bunch is involved, and that’s where you and I had better bail out. Got that?”

  “I’m not going to run away, Peter.”

  He sighed and unlocked the door for her, and she got in. When he was behind the wheel he reached under the dashboard. She heard a metallic thud, and he pulled his hand out with a gun in it.

  “Oh, God, Peter! What’s that for?”

  “It’s a Walther PPK for intimidating people—”

  “Isn’t that a little melodramatic?” She blinked. “I hope—”

  “Look, I found a dead man last night and got half brained for my trouble. That may not rile up your blood, but it sure as hell does mine—”

  “Okay, okay. Look, before we go, I think I’d better use the bathroom. I don’t want to make you start looking for a gas station at the crucial moment—”

  “Right, go then. Hurry up. I’ll wait down here and shoot anybody who tries to tow me away.”

  He was smiling to himself, watching her bound up the stairs from the sidewalk. She wore a yellow slicker jacket and jeans. She had long legs and a high, firm rear end, and it was fine by him. He wondered about the men in her life, who they were and where they might be. She hadn’t mentioned anyone in the slightly more than twenty-four hours he’d known her. He remembered the smell of her hair as he’d fallen asleep last night … or rather this morning. She smelled just fine, and he was wondering if he was about to commence making a fool of himself.

  Then
he heard her screaming.

  The sound pierced the closed doors and windows of the brownstone, and he knew it was Celia. He was out of the car with the Walther in his hand and up the steps, where he was stopped by the locked door. He began pushing the buzzer through the wall, finally heard the answering buzz and was through the door, hurling himself up the narrow staircase, knowing he was making himself a hell of a target, knowing he had to get to Celia.

  She was standing outside her doorway and the screaming had stopped. She was staring at him, her wide mouth open and her large dark eyes full of fright. She was pointing into the apartment, shocked into silence. At just that moment, in one of those crazily inappropriate mind tricks, she looked like Mary Tyler Moore doing a very long take.

  The top half of a man extended through the doorway onto the hall carpet runner. He was staring the walleyed stare of the dead. His face was terribly pale, showing a thick black overnight growth of beard, and looked like he’d seen a ghost and died of fright. But Greco knew there had to be a bullet hole or two somewhere. Even as he looked quickly at the corpse, he was thinking ahead, recognizing a full-blown nightmare when he saw one.

  He stepped across the man and went into the apartment with his Walther ready to go to work.

  Another man was stretched out behind the couch. A lamp with its ceramic base shattered lay beside him. Some records had been swept off the stereo cabinet as he fell. An eyelid flickered, the eye came into view like a bloodshot marble.

  Greco knelt, felt for a pulse in the throat. Celia gasped behind him, covered her mouth with one hand. There was faint throbbing in the man’s throat. The eyes were halfway into eternity and had given up any hope of getting back to shore. He’d lost a lot of blood from a chest wound. His white shirt was soaked with it. He was almost gone, bubbles of pink saliva expanding, bursting on his gray lips.

  Greco leaned down. “What is it, man? Who did this? Why were you here?” He put his ear close to the lips and felt the last frail breaths.

  “Pete … for chrissake …”