Power Plays (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “And is that what happened? He went to Los Angeles? And quit drinking?”

  Slowly, somberly, she nodded. “Yes,” she answered gravely, “that’s what happened. He finally quit drinking. And—finally—he started writing newscasts, for third-rate radio stations. After a year, though, he had his own program. Another year, and he was back on TV, on a local Los Angeles station. But—” She sighed regretfully. “But he’d always had Potomac fever. He’d had power once, and he wanted it again. That’s what Potomac fever is—an obsession with power. It’s an addiction. You never get over it.” She paused. I saw the shadow of an exhausted smile cross her face—then twist into a bitter spasm. “I guess it killed him finally.”

  I decided not to respond. I knew that soon her strength would fail. The reality of death was beginning to numb her. I didn’t want her to waste even one word, responding to a meaningless expression of condolence from me.

  When she began speaking again, her voice was hardly more than a hoarse whisper: “About three months ago,” she said, “he got a tip from someone in Washington. I don’t know the details. He’s always been—” She broke off, blinked, drew a sharp, hard breath. Momentarily her eyes blanked as she forced herself for the first time to make the stark, terrible correction: “He was always very secretive about his stories—especially the big stories. But, at the same time, he’d test my reactions, sometimes. So I pieced some of it together.”

  “That’s the story he was working on, in Washington?”

  She nodded. “I’m almost sure of it.”

  “What did the story involve?”

  Wryly, she smiled. “The usual. Influence peddling. Cover-ups. Graft in high places. In Washington, no cocktail party is complete without the rumors. Usually they all evaporate. But this time, apparently, Dad was on to something big. As I say, he couldn’t resist telling me some of it. He had someone important in his pocket. He told me that much. He had someone who knew where the bodies were buried, and who was willing to talk about it.”

  “Was one of the bodies buried in San Francisco?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I really don’t have any idea. But I’m almost sure that he came here to run down part of the story.”

  “Where’d he stay, in Washington?”

  “At the Hilton.”

  “How many times had he gone to Washington, working on the story?”

  “Twice. Once a month ago, and once about three months ago.”

  “Did he always stay at the Hilton?”

  “Yes. If you’re in the media business, free-lancing, you’ve got to stay in the right hotels. You’ve got to eat in the right restaurants, too. Especially in Washington.”

  “Do you work in the media, too, Miss Murdock?”

  Wearily, she shrugged. “It depends on what you mean by the media. I’m a script supervisor at MGM. I free-lance, too. And I’ve also written a couple of TV scripts.”

  I smiled at her. “I’m impressed.”

  She tried to return the smile—but failed. As if the effort had cost her too much, she slumped back in the chair, momentarily closing her eyes. She’d suddenly come to the end of her strength. I rose, locked my desk and quietly suggested that we go to the morgue.

  Eight

  “DID YOU SEE THIS?” Friedman tossed a copy of the Sentinel on my desk before he sank into my visitors’ chair. “It’s on the front page, in a box at the bottom.”

  “Commentator Slain in North Beach Murder,” the headline read. Quickly, I skimmed the story, continued on the back page of the main news section. Revealing neither too much nor too little, the details of the murder were almost exactly as I’d given them to the Sentinel’s police reporter earlier in the day. Making a mental note to thank the reporter, I continued to read. Eliot Murdock, I learned, had started his career in Los Angeles, beginning as a general-assignment reporter. During World War II he’d been a war correspondent in Europe and had been wounded in Normandy. After the war he’d gone to Washington, working as press secretary for a California congressman. Later he’d moved up to administrative assistant. When the congressman was defeated at the polls, Murdock parlayed his congressional connections into a “long-running inside-Washington column.” The article dealt briefly with Murdock’s career and finished with a reference to his daughter, a “fast-rising Hollywood screen writer.” Nothing was said about Murdock’s comeback try, or about his possible reasons for being in San Francisco.

  “I’ll give even money,” Friedman said, “that this is only the first of many, many articles on Eliot Murdock.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Two reasons—” He raised a thick forefinger. “First, there’s nothing the press does better than eulogize one of its own, especially if the dead Indian died more or less in the line of duty. It’s one of those unwritten laws. And, second—” Another finger joined the first. “Second, if there’s anything to this Washington scandal story—anything at all—it’s going to sell many, many newspapers. Believe it.”

  “I believe it.”

  “So you’d better start wearing clean shirts to the office,” Friedman said. “Because you might make the Walter Cronkite show. Who knows?”

  I didn’t reply. But secretly, I hoped he was right.

  “And then we’ve also got the hired hit-man angle,” Friedman said. “That’s always good copy.”

  “What hired hit man?”

  “Thorson,” he answered casually. “I’ll bet you a five-dollar lunch, right now, that Thorson—or whatever his name is—was imported for this job. I’ll bet he was paid a fat fee and flown in from somewhere else. Is it a bet?”

  “Where’re you getting all these theories? I thought you were on that Hunter’s Point thing.”

  “I am. But Hunter’s Point is just your normal, grisly, big-city-type drunken, psychotic, week-in-and-week-out, spur-of-the-moment homicide. Murdock is a different matter altogether. Is it a bet?”

  “What makes you so sure Thorson’s a professional?”

  “That compress, mostly,” he answered promptly. “The ice pick, we all know about. It’s neat—no muss, no fuss. Which is why the Mafia, to drop a name, favors ice picks. But that compress—” Friedman nodded emphatic approval. “That’s fastidious. And besides being fastidious, it also shows planning—right down to the last drop of blood.”

  “Maybe there’s more than fastidiousness involved.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Let’s suppose that it was a carefully planned hit, which seems likely. And let’s assume that Thorson picked up the car, which he apparently did, and hired a wheelman, which he apparently did, and proceeded to kill Murdock for a fat fee—which he probably did. Now, if that’s the way it went, then why was he so careful about the blood?”

  Friedman’s thick eyebrows drew together in an elaborate frown. I knew why he was frowning. Friedman liked to ask the questions, not answer them. Finally, grudgingly, he said, “I give up. Why?”

  “Maybe the car wasn’t really stolen,” I said, not without a small, secret sense of smug satisfaction. “Maybe he intended to return the car.”

  Approvingly, Friedman nodded. “That I like,” he announced. “That’s a twist with class. Are you going to pursue it?”

  “I’ll have Canelli and Culligan check Walter Frazer out. I was going to do it anyhow. Some of his reactions didn’t quite add up.”

  “Good. Keep me posted. Well—” Ponderously, he heaved his two hundred thirty pounds out of the chair. “Back to the Hunter’s Point Murder Case. In a couple of hours, though, I should have it all tied up and dropped on the D.A.’s desk. So I’ll be able to lend a hand.”

  “Good.”

  When he’d gone, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. The time was almost four o’clock. So far, it had been a fruitless, frustrating day. I’d spent almost two full hours with Barbara Murdock, time I could ill afford to lose. After she’d identified her father’s body, Barbara had decided to stay in San Francisco until she could take
possession of the body. When she learned that her father had stayed at the Beresford, she wanted to stay in the same hotel. I had no choice but to drive her to the Beresford and get her settled.

  During our two hours together I began to realize that Barbara Murdock was a remarkable woman. She was intelligent and determined—and tough, too, with a quiet, stubborn courage. At the morgue they’d shown us into a small, sterile viewing room. I began explaining the identification procedure, but Barbara already knew. She’d once worked on a documentary called Death in the City, she’d said. She walked directly to the large, heavily curtained window—and waited. Almost angrily, she shook off the touch of my hand on her arm. “He was all I had,” she’d whispered fiercely. “There wasn’t anyone else. Leave me alone.”

  After she’d made the identification she turned her back on me and surrendered to a spasm of dry, wracking sobs. She stood with shoulders hunched in pain, arms clasped across her stomach, leaning her forehead against the pale green wall. Between sobs she gasped out a vow of vengeance. She would discover who had killed him, she said, and she would see them dead. When I promised to help her, she hardly seemed to hear me.

  Finally she’d pushed herself away from the wall, turned, and asked me for a handkerchief. Driving to the Beresford, composed, she asked me how we intended to find her father’s killer. I’d tried to be honest with her—tried to explain that it takes time and work and luck to catch a murderer—and patience, too. Both of us, I said, must be patient.

  It had been a mistake. After she signed the Beresford’s guest register, she turned to me. “I don’t want to be patient, Lieutenant,” she said softly. “I want to find out who killed my father. And I will find out. Believe me, I’ll find out.” Then she’d politely thanked me for everything I’d done, turned away and walked to the elevators. Her stride had been firm, her back straight, her head high.

  She would do it, I realized wearily. She would try to find out who murdered her father.

  I was about to dial Communications, trying to get through to Canelli, when the receptionist called to announce Mr. Jeffrey Sheppard, “inquiring about the Murdock homicide.” From the tone of the receptionist’s voice, it seemed that Jeffrey Sheppard was someone important—and someone in a hurry.

  I was right. Jeffrey Sheppard snapped down an embossed business card on my desk and took a seat without being asked. He was a big, impressive-looking man with broad shoulders, a thick neck and the broadly sculpted head of a Roman centurion. His age was about forty-five. He was expensively dressed in a tweed jacket, cavalry twill trousers and a soft wool turtleneck shirt. As he sat hunched truculently in his chair, he reminded me of a big, tough, bull-shouldered linebacker sitting on the bench, straining to get back into the mayhem of a football game.

  Glancing down at the card, I read: Jeffrey Sheppard, Managing Editor, Tempo magazine. It was a Park Avenue address.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Sheppard?”

  “I have—had—Eliot Murdock under contract,” he answered, speaking in a deep, rich, melodious voice. As he spoke, the linebacker image faded—replaced by that of the board chairman, dominating a directors’ meeting.

  “Tempo has exclusive rights to the material Murdock developed,” he said. “I’m having copies of the contracts flown out from New York to verify the point. I’ve also retained a local lawyer.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at, Mr. Sheppard. What’s the lawyer for?”

  Impatiently, he sighed: a sudden sharp, contemptuous exhalation. The message was clear. Jeffrey Sheppard didn’t have time for inferiors who asked obtuse questions. “For the past three months,” he said, “Murdock has been working on a story of high-level graft at the Pentagon.” He paused, eyed me for a moment, then added, “That’s in Washington.”

  “I know where it is.”

  As if he hadn’t heard me, he continued speaking in the same deep, resonant voice: “Our contract with him entitles us to all the material he’s developed during his inquiries. We paid an initial fee on signing the contract, with the balance due upon receipt of a satisfactory manuscript. That, obviously, we will never get—at least, not from Murdock. However, Murdock must have taken notes on everything he discovered—every interview, every bit of research. He probably had those notes with him when he arrived here in San Francisco. Under the terms of the contract, those notes are ours. That’s why I’m here.”

  I looked down at his card. “Did you come from New York?”

  “No. Of course not,” he answered sharply. “I was in Los Angeles when I heard the news of Murdock’s death. I flew up. Just now.”

  “Have you been in touch with Murdock’s daughter?”

  “His daughter?” Sheppard’s eyes narrowed. “Is she here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she have the notes?”

  “As far as I know, Mr. Sheppard, there aren’t any notes. There weren’t any notes on Murdock’s body or in the car where he was murdered. And there weren’t any notes in his luggage, either.”

  “Was his murderer captured? Could he have them?”

  “Before I answer that, I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Sheppard. If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” But the edge to his voice and the impatient shift of his shoulders contradicted his words.

  “First, how’d you learn of Murdock’s death?”

  “It was on the AP wire, this morning. It came into our office in Los Angeles. Of course, I was informed immediately.” He flicked back his sleeve and looked at his watch.

  “The next question is, how much can you tell me about the story Murdock was working on?”

  As I asked the question I saw his expression change. He eyed me for a brief, shrewd moment before he said, “At the moment, Lieutenant, I’m not prepared to respond to that point. I want to see the notes first.”

  Again, the message was clear. If he didn’t get the notes, I wouldn’t get the information I needed.

  “We may never find those notes, Mr. Sheppard. In the meantime, I’ve got a murderer to catch. And it’s possible that Murdock’s death was connected to the story he was doing for you. So I need all the information I can get about the investigation Murdock was conducting. The sooner the better.”

  For a moment he eyed me with calm, cold calculation. Then: “We’ve got different stakes in this, Lieutenant. You’re trying to catch a murderer. I’m trying to put together what could be the biggest news story of the year. I’ve got to protect that story. I can’t afford any leaks.”

  I felt myself becoming angry. “You’re telling me that you refuse to give me the information. Is that right?”

  “I’m telling you that it’s my responsibility to protect my news sources—and to protect the independence of the press.” He spoke calmly and superciliously, as if he were explaining a simple problem to a slow learner.

  “And I’m telling you that I want that information.”

  He didn’t bother to reply; his silence was eloquent. For another long, hostile moment we stared at each other. Finally, speaking slowly and distinctly, I said, “From all you’ve said, Mr. Sheppard, I gather that you’re a very busy man. Your time is valuable. Is that right?”

  Deliberately—insolently—he nodded. “That’s right, Lieutenant.” He watched me intently—as a fighter watches his opponent between flurries.

  “Well, then,” I said, “you should realize that you could have a problem.”

  “A problem?” It was an amused response. His broad, expressive mouth twitched in a patronizing smile. So far, he’d found me an inferior antagonist.

  “Right. A problem. You admit you have information that’s vital to my investigation. That makes you a material witness. If you refuse to divulge that information, I can place you in custody for the purpose of protecting that information.”

  The patronizing smile took a slow, ugly twist. “I think that would be a very brave thing for you to do, Lieutenant. Brave, but foolhardy. Because you’d be startin
g something you couldn’t finish.”

  Realizing that I couldn’t afford to lose my temper, I drew a long, deep breath. “You may be right, Mr. Sheppard. I’ve got a better idea.” I pointed to the phone. “If you continue to refuse cooperation, I’m going to call the D.A.’s office and recommend that you be charged with withholding information in a murder investigation. Obstructing justice, in other words. If the D.A. goes along with me—and I think he will—you’ll be indicted and brought to trial.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.” His voice was silkily malicious; his eyes gleamed with the pleasure of combat—and the anticipation of certain victory.

  “We’ll see.” I locked my eyes with his—and waited. It was all I could do: wait, and hope he didn’t challenge me to pick up the phone.

  “If I had the time,” he said, “I’d enjoy seeing the D.A.’s reaction to this little charade of yours. I’d like to see him slap your wrist. Publicly.”

  I didn’t reply. Having committed myself to silence, I had no choice—no more options. And finally, I thought I saw a shadow of hesitation flicker deep in his eyes. “If I had the time,” he’d said. Possible meaning: he might be giving himself a face-saving way out.

  “I’d like to try you, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “If I didn’t have to be in New York tomorrow night, I’d like to try you. I really would.”

  I decided not to respond—not to goad him. If he needed a way out, I would oblige him. If he chose to taunt me with his boardroom sneer, I was willing to take it.

  I saw him glance one last time at his watch. It was the final move in the silent, savage little game we were playing. All that remained was a small, contemptuous curling of his lip, signifying that I was an opponent unworthy of his best blows. When I offered no dissent, he began speaking with offhand scorn: “The fact is—the truth is—that I really don’t know much about Murdock’s story. Which is precisely why I want his notes. All I know is that he came to see me a little more than three months ago, in New York. He said that he’d been in contact with a middle-level Pentagon official. I gathered that the official was about to be either fired or demoted. In any case, the official was bitter. Very bitter. He’d known Eliot for years—since boyhood, I gather. So he contacted Eliot and said he had information on a kickback scheme that could go all the way to the top.”