Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

“Michael, everyone in the business believes you’re happily married. If you tout Laura to Hiller, he’ll think it’s strictly business. If I did it, some damn gossip columnist might just make me a headline in all the supermarket trash heaps. I don’t want people prying into my private life.”

  Worthington stared down at his shoes and said, “Hiller will still want her to audition.”

  “All I want is for her to have a shot at the part. I’ll see that she’s ready for any audition.”

  He reached out and took her hand. “I guess I owe you a favor or two.”

  She smiled demurely. “I guess so.”

  “Only for you, dear Jessica, would I praise Miss Steward’s considerable acting talents to our producer.”

  Jessica kissed his cheek in gratitude, and was surprised by the flushed warmth of his skin. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just that I’m not used to being kissed by other women.”

  It was 4:18 when Vinda parked the department car on East Forty-third Street and walked up the grade into the quadrangle. Just inside, he stopped when he saw Worthington and Merrill engrossed in their conversation. A sudden surge of cop adrenaline told him that he had just stumbled onto something important. He ducked into a doorway to watch them. Worthington appeared to be giving her instructions, and she sat there shaking her head without saying much. After about eight minutes they got up off the bench and walked out of the park.

  Stepping out of the doorway, he waved to them.

  Worthington saw him first and quickly said something to her, and they both waved back to him. “Hello,” Worthington called out.

  “Hi,” Vinda said, waiting for them on the curb. He had seen no police bodyguards shepherding Merrill, so he asked, “Where’s your protection?”

  “I insisted they be removed. I can’t live with guards around me day and night.”

  “That, Miss Merrill, just might prove to have been a mistake.”

  Worthington nodded in agreement and said, “My sentiments exactly, Lieutenant. But she will not listen to me.”

  “Oh, hush, Michael,” she said softly.

  Vinda said, “I’m glad I found you together.” Holding up the composite sketch of the killer, he added, “This is not the man we’re looking for.”

  A perplexed Worthington said, “It isn’t?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Vinda said dryly.

  “But that’s impossible,” Worthington insisted. “That is the man I saw near those dressing rooms.”

  “Maybe it is. But he’s not the killer I’m looking for,” Vinda said.

  “How can you be so positive?” Merrill demanded.

  “Because the man I want murdered a nun this morning, and during the course of his escape he killed a policeman. The dead cop’s partner got a good look at him. She got a real good look at him,” Vinda said grimly. “When you see your partner killed, you don’t forget the face of the person who did it, no matter how much pain you’re experiencing.” He held the sketch up in front of Worthington. “Are you positive this is the man you saw?”

  “Yes. I. Am.” Worthington said.

  Trying to gauge the sincerity of his words and expression, Vinda looked hard at the actor, then turned his attention to Merrill and said, “I never understood how you didn’t see anyone near those dressing rooms.”

  “Because I didn’t,” she snapped, asking, “Is this going to take long? It’s below zero standing here.”

  “Why don’t we duck inside?” Worthington said, leading them into the apartment building’s lobby.

  The plaque above the white plaster fireplace bore a blue coat of arms. Logs crackled in the fireplace. “Did you ever consider, Lieutenant, that your killer might wear a disguise?” Merrill asked.

  Vinda answered, “We’ve thought about that possibility.” He suppressed a temptation to ask her about her part in the movie Thin Lies, and to query her about the two stuntmen in the same movie, Griffin and Holman. He didn’t because cops hold their cards close to the vest, real close.

  Worthington’s attention had drifted to the ribbons of flame lapping upward inside the hearth. His calm exterior hid his inner turmoil: Vinda is their leader, their Lucifer. He wants to destroy our Trinity. Well, my ol’ friend Dinny’O knows how to deal with the likes of him.

  Agueda and Hagstrom walked out of the beaux arts lobby of 1514 Broadway. They had just come from the offices of SAG—the Screen Actors Guild—where they had retrieved glossy photographs of Frank Griffin and Otto Holman from the inactive stuntmen’s file.

  Agueda looked across the street at the short line of people outside the discount theater-ticket booth on Forty-sixth Street. It was six-fifteen on a Wednesday evening, and usually hundreds of people snaked around Duffy Square, waiting their turns to purchase half-price tickets for that evening’s performance.

  Duffy Square was almost empty. Hagstrom looked back at her partner and asked, “A cup of tea?”

  They walked about ten feet to the open-fronted sandwich shop and ordered. The counterman set down steaming cups in front of them, and pushed off to take care of another customer. Dunking her bag into the water, Agueda asked, “What’s happening with you and Tony?”

  Hagstrom grinned sheepishly. “Tony Marsella is your average married man with a congenital predisposition toward infidelity. I only keep him around to take the edge off until I can meet someone who is available, and mature enough to want a meaningful relationship.”

  “I never did understand when a relationship becomes meaningful.”

  “When it becomes uncomfortable.”

  They laughed.

  Agueda moved close to ask confidentially, “Is he good?”

  “He’s a selfish lover. He doesn’t play all the instruments.”

  Agueda sipped tea, whispered over the rim of her cup, “Perhaps you should teach him how?”

  “I stopped playing teacher a long time ago.” Hagstrom pulled the bag out of her cup and set it in a dirty ashtray. Looking down into the dark liquid, she asked, “What’s going to happen with you and the boss, now that—”

  “I don’t know,” Agueda blurted before Hagstrom could finish her question. She reached into her pocketbook, slapped down a dollar on the counter, and walked off without finishing her tea.

  Hagstrom followed her, feeling dumb for having asked a dumb question.

  They had gone only a short way down the street when both their beepers went off.

  David Pollack pushed his Stetson back and plopped down on a straight-backed chair in Vinda’s office. He leaned the seat back on its two rear legs, looked up at Vinda, and said, “I just got done with Ted Benet, our movie reviewer.”

  He unfolded a sheet of paper and read, “Jessica Merrill, real name Jessica Ramenki, age thirty-four to thirty-six, depending on which bio you believe. Thrice married, currently divorced. Doesn’t drink, smoke, or drug. Stage trained. Born in Camden, New Jersey, and knocked around doing the whole nine yards until her break in Mora Flats.”

  “Private life.”

  “Nobody knows much about her offscreen.” He looked at Vinda, adding, “My guy also told me that she and Worthington have the same agent, Marshall Hawthorn, in real life one Morty Hymowitz, a sleazebag originally from Flatbush who gets off on playing the wise guy, and wants everyone to call him Vinny.”

  “And Worthington?”

  “An unusual Hollywood success story. No training, knocked around at odd jobs doing this and that before he landed a small part as a judge in a movie called Deadly Verdict. That part mushroomed into a movie career. Worthington is his real name; according to his bio, he’s fifty-eight.”

  Carefully pinching his chin between his thumb and fingers, Vinda said aloud, “I wonder how he landed that part in Deadly Verdict.”

  “Word is that J. B. King, the producer, was searching for some actor to play the part, and someone whispered Worthington’s name to him. Worthington was tested for the part, and the rest is history.” His voice honeyed, “Would you like to know who h
is rabbi was?”

  “You know damn well I would.”

  “Jessica Merrill.”

  Vinda did some fast calculations: Valarie Griffin DOA in ’79; Merrill’s break in Mora Flats in ’80; Merrill and Worthington work together in Deadly Verdict in ’85; Mary Lucas’s father gets himself blown up on the parkway in ’86; Thelma Johnston and Mary Lucas are homicides in ’91. Ninety-one seems to be this guy’s out-of-the-closet year.

  “What else can you tell me about Worthington?”

  “Very professional. Always comes on the set prepared. Never difficult, except when other actors are late or unprepared. He doesn’t drink, drug, or smoke, and keeps his schmuck in his pants. Lives in Manhattan with his one and only wife, Valarie.”

  Again Vinda felt the sudden surge of adrenaline through his body. Valarie Griffin and Valarie Worthington. I wonder, I just wonder, he mused to himself, remembering Sister Mary Margaret telling him how paranoids drew people into their own belief systems. “Will you find out whatever there is to find out about Morty Hymowitz?”

  “I know that guy from way back. He used to be in the porn flick business. Word was that the smart guys put up the money and he put up the know-how. He took a fall for kiddy porn, did three and a half to five.”

  Vinda thanked the newspaperman for his help, again promising Pollack the inside exclusive on the story once the case was broken. Pollack left the office a few minutes before Moose and Marsella returned, responding to his 10:2, Report Back Forthwith.

  Agueda and Hagstrom walked in behind Moose and Marsella. “What’s up?” Agueda asked the Whip.

  “Did you get the photos from SAG?” Vinda asked her.

  Handing him the envelope, Agueda said, “Holman and Griffin hadn’t paid SAG dues in over five years. We were lucky they still had their photos on file.”

  Vinda slid out Holman’s photograph, and saw that he wore his extreme military haircut even back then. He slid that picture back into the envelope and took out the other one. His eyes widened when he looked at Griffin for the first time and saw how ugly he was.

  Griffin’s lower jaw was ludicrously counterpoised below a markedly enlarged upper jaw with fiercely bucked teeth. His teeth were not only protrusive, but the jaw itself was enlarged so that he couldn’t even close his lower lip over the widely spaced teeth. He had a real horse face.

  Vinda turned the photograph around to make sure they had the right guy. The name on the back said FRANK GRIFFIN, STUNTS AND PYROTECHNICS. “This guy doesn’t look anything like the face in our composite.”

  “We know,” Hagstrom said.

  “I’m beginning to think our victims were not all the subjects of random homicides. Lucas, Johnston, their fathers, and Adelaide Webster are all connected, in some way, to Frank Griffin,” Vinda said.

  “How is Adelaide Webster connected?” Moose asked.

  Vinda said, “Her father produced a movie in which Griffin worked as a stuntman.”

  “’At’s pretty slim, Lou,” Moose said.

  “Not so slim,” Vinda disagreed. “Merrill also worked in movies produced by Webster, ditto our bomb salesman, Otto Holman.”

  Looking at Griffin’s deformed face, Vinda told Agueda and Hagstrom, “Go back to SAG and get a photo of Worthington—then get it over to Kings County and show it to Lucy Seaver. Then I want you to pair off, boy, girl, boy, girl, and canvass Worthington’s neighborhood. Find out if anyone there knows his wife. I want to know if she really exists. And be cool. I don’t want him knowing we’re checking on him.”

  Hagstrom good-naturedly took hold of Marsella’s arm and said, “Come on, handsome, I’ll show you how to be a real detective.”

  Corregidor was crowded. A new police commissioner brings new players into the arena, new faces beaming with the joy that comes with newly acquired power.

  Agent Orange, his voice booze-sad, stood with his clique at the end of the bar. Most of the ex-C-of-P loyalists would now retire rather than suffer the indignity of being dumped out of the Big Building into the street.

  Tim Eberhart was loudly bewailing the demise of the good old days, while those around him vainly hid their gloom behind stoic countenances. The soon-to-be ex-chief spied Vinda entering and gestured in a drunken fashion, “Lou, come over and have one with us.”

  “Later, Chief,” Vinda called back, plunging into the crowd in search of Malcolm Webster, who had telephoned him a short while ago and asked to meet him. Something urgent, he’d told Vinda. He spotted him ensconced behind one of the alcove’s cocktail tables, keenly observing the shenanigans out at the bar.

  “This place reminds me of the executive dining room at RJR/Nabisco during the leverage takeover war.”

  Pulling a chair away from the table, Vinda said, “You were part of that bloodbath?”

  Webster smiled smugly. “Avarice, Lieutenant, is the American way.” Gesturing to Agent Orange and his supporters, he added, “I assume they are the outs.”

  Vinda made a gesture of indifference and said, “They hitched their wagons to the wrong star.”

  Webster slid an envelope out of his pocket and carefully placed it on the table in front of him, folding his hands on top of it. “Adelaide’s mother died three years ago in France. We’d been divorced many years, but had remained good friends. We loved our daughter very, very much. And now, with our daughter gone, I have no one, not one single person on the face of this planet, who cares for me, the man, the person. I want the son of a bitch who murdered my daughter.”

  “So do I.”

  They fell silent, their eyes locked in a moment of intense empathy and shared loss. Webster suddenly looked terribly old to Vinda; the dim light could not hide his utterly forlorn expression. Webster’s shoulders sagged; he sighed and pushed the envelope across to Vinda.

  A photocopied spreadsheet inside it listed the payroll records for Thin Lies. Computerized columns listed salaries, per diem expenses, taxes withheld, social security numbers, and deductions. Looking up for a moment, Vinda saw Gus White, the FBI liaison, sharing a belly laugh with the new chief of detectives at the bar. Scanning the first column of the payroll record, Vinda found the names of Jessica Merrill, Frank Griffin, and Otto Holman. Taking a cocktail napkin from the pile, he wrote down the names alongside their social security numbers and tucked the napkin into his breast pocket. Vinda took out the photograph of Frank Griffin. “Is this the Frank Griffin who worked for you as a stuntman?”

  “Ugly, isn’t he?”

  “I guess handsome is not a requirement for taking dives out of windows and off bridges.”

  “No, it certainly isn’t,” Webster said, shaking his glass at the waiter, ordering another. “Want something?”

  “No, thank you,” Vinda said, holding up Otto Holman’s picture.

  “Yes, he worked on the movie too. He was the stunt coordinator. He hired all the stuntmen.”

  “What else do you have for me?” Vinda asked.

  “I found something else while I was searching through those old production records. But before I give it to you, I’d like to ask a question.”

  “Ask.”

  “Did Griffin or Holman murder my daughter?”

  “The best I can give you is a maybe.”

  “A maybe on who, Griffin or Holman—or both of them?”

  Vinda leaned back indolently in his chair, staring at the man across from him, prolonging the awkward silence.

  Webster seemed to recover some of his usual forceful presence. “I’m not a man to be fucked with.”

  “Neither am I.” Vinda got up and walked out to the bar. Shouldering his way over to Gus White, he made a nod of respect to the C-of-D and asked, “Mind if I borrow Mr. FBI for a minute, Chief?”

  “Don’t keep him too long. The next round’s his.”

  “I won’t, Chief.”

  White trailed Vinda out of the crowd. Leaning up against the dark burnished paneling, Vinda looked at White and said, “I see you’re hard at work cementing relations with the new C-of-D.�
�

  “It’s all in the stroking, John. Nice and easy, like sighting in a hair and squeezing one off.”

  Vinda took the cocktail napkin out of his pocket and tucked it into White’s suit pocket, assumed the hand-blocking-lips position, and said, “I need work histories on those social security numbers.”

  Pretending indignation before himself making the lip-blocking gesture, White protested, “Those records are sacrosanct. Your department and mine have elaborate procedures that must be adhered to in order to obtain those records.”

  “Gus, stop pulling my chain and give those numbers to one of your sacrosanct agents assigned to social security. And, Gus, I need it fast.”

  “Bartender,” White called as he plunged back into the crowd, “a Gibson, up, cold, dry, and stirred, not shaken.”

  Turning to walk away, Vinda found Webster blocking his way. The former movie producer was proffering a business form. Vinda looked down at the form and said without even trying to read it, “Your price is too high.”

  “Take it anyway. We’ll negotiate after you catch him.” Vinda took it and walked back to the alcove. He unfolded it and saw that it was an insurance policy.

  “Production companies take out policies on their crews and equipment in order to protect their investments,” Webster said, walking beside the policeman.

  Vinda sifted through the policy’s legalese until he got down to the primary beneficiary, and asked, “Who is Harrison Bode?”

  “Frank Griffin’s teacher at the Cincinnati Boys’ School in Dayton, Ohio. I had my people check. Bode is retired, and in his seventies. He’s living in Woodstock, New York. A bachelor. He’s a graduate of the Yale Law School.”

  “What about this Cincinnati Boys’ School?”

  “An institution operated by private funds for orphaned and abandoned boys. Griffin was raised there. And it appears that this Harrison Bode befriended him.”

  Vinda told him that he would need a few more favors, and went on to tell him what he wanted.

  Webster told him he’d take care of it, and wrote a name and phone number on the back of a business card. “Call him when you’re ready,” he said, giving Vinda the card.