Power Plays (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  Instinctively, I’d been standing bent low over my revolver, straining against some unseen danger. Now, slowly, I straightened, holstered my revolver and stepped closer to the cool air coming through the open door.

  “This one is yours, Canelli,” I said. “I’m going to have dinner, and go home. Then I’m going to take a shower and put on my pajamas and bathrobe, and watch TV. When you’ve got it sorted out, you can call me. But not after eleven.”

  I’d just turned the channel selector for the eleven o’clock news when the phone rang.

  “It’s Canelli, Lieutenant. I meant to call you before this, but I’ve been bogged down. I mean, really bogged down.”

  “Bogged down?”

  “Right,” he answered fervently. “Bogged down. In about a hundred little pissy-assed details and complaints and God knows what all. Honest to God, Lieutenant, I don’t know how you do it. Keep track of everything, I mean, and answer questions, and still not blow your stack. Especially at reporters.”

  “It’s what Lieutenant Friedman calls the ‘gift of command,’” I answered dryly. “What’ve you got?”

  “Well, I got a couple of things, I guess. But, Jeeze, when I think of all the crap I put up with, trying to keep everything on track here, I—”

  “Canelli. Please. I’m missing the eleven o’clock news.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, Lieutenant. Well—” He drew a deep, heavy breath. “Well, let’s see. First, I got independent confirmation of what Culligan said the bartender told him—that Ricco and this girl came in about three P.M., or so. Her name is Margaret Rath, and she’s a B-girl, the way I get it. She worked at the same place Ricco does, down in the Tenderloin.”

  “Kelley’s, you mean.”

  “Yeah. Right. So, anyhow, they came into the Wayfarer about three, like I said, and they had a couple of drinks, and then they went out in the back. Apparently this happens once or twice a month, according to what I understand. Ricco’s already living with someone, like I told you earlier. So, whenever he wants to shack up he uses the Wayfarer. Which is a pretty nice little thing he’s got going. Or, rather, had going.”

  “What happened then, Canelli?” I prodded gently.

  “Well, the two of them disappeared, like I said. Out in back. That was about three-thirty, by the time they had their drinks, and everything. So then—” He paused for breath. “So then, about fifteen minutes later, the bartender says, this guy came in, and had a drink. And, sure as hell, the guy was Annunzio.”

  “Did you show the bartender his picture?”

  “Yeah. And I turned up a couple of other people, who were in the place between three-thirty and four. And they identified him, too. The only problem is, I didn’t have any other pictures, to give them a choice. You know, according to the book. But—”

  “Never mind that. What happened next?”

  “Well, this guy—Annunzio—he had a drink. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. He just had a drink, that’s all. So then he put a dollar on the bar, and thanked the bartender, real polite, according to the bartender. And then he went out the back door, like he was going to the can. And that was all.”

  “What’d you mean, ‘that was all’?” I asked irritably.

  “I mean that about fifteen minutes or so later the bartender apparently figured out that Annunzio wasn’t coming back. Or maybe it was a half hour later. He got busy, he says, and he isn’t sure. So, anyhow, he went to the men’s room, and checked. It was empty. So he opened the fire door and saw that the outside service door to the sidewalk was unbolted. So he figured that the guy went out that way—which happens sometimes, he says. Especially if the fire door isn’t barred. Which it wasn’t, because of Ricco and his girlfriend, Margaret.”

  “Didn’t the bartender hear anything? Any shots?”

  “No,” Canelli answered. “Nobody else did either, that I could find. And I bet I know why they didn’t.”

  I decided not to ask him why.

  “I guess it won’t be official, until the M.E. digs out the bullets,” Canelli continued, “but the holes in the victims’ foreheads look like .22 holes. Which makes sense, if Annunzio was the one. I mean, you keep hearing about how those Mafia hit men are using high-speed .22 hollow points because they can be silenced, and there’s no ballistic markings when the bullets self-destruct. So I figured that—”

  My front-door buzzer sounded. “What’s that?” Canelli asked.

  “Someone’s at the door.”

  “At this time of night?”

  “Apparently,” I answered. “Is there anything else, Canelli?”

  “Not really, Lieutenant. I’m still trying to find someone who saw Annunzio leave by way of the sidewalk door. But so far, no luck.”

  The buzzer sounded again—a longer, more decisive buzzing. “I’d better answer the door. I’ll see you at the Hall tomorrow morning. You don’t mind coming in on Saturday, do you?”

  “I don’t mind, Lieutenant,” he answered cheerfully.

  “Good. Thanks. Goodnight, Canelli.”

  “Good night, Lieutenant. And thank you. For putting me in charge, and everything. I mean, what I said before—about being bugged by the reporters, and everything—I didn’t mean that to sound like—”

  For the third time the buzzer sounded—angrier, longer.

  “Goodnight, Canelli.”

  I hung up the phone, gathered my bathrobe around me and walked barefooted down the hallway to my front door. I switched on the outside light and put my eye to the peephole. I saw a stranger’s face: a middle-aged, well-groomed man wearing a white shirt, an old school tie, an expensive-looking gabardine topcoat and an establishment felt hat. His face, too, was establishment: thin and ascetic-looking, with a long, pinched nose, a severe mouth and disapproving eyes behind noncommittal tortoise-shell glasses. He wore a small, neatly trimmed gray mustache.

  As I watched, the stranger moved aside to reveal another man: Charles Brautigan, the FBI’s local agent-in-charge. Reluctantly, I opened the door. I’d never liked Brautigan, and he’d never liked me—or any municipal cop, I suspected.

  “Hello, Lieutenant.” Brautigan offered an indifferent hand. “Sorry to bother you at this hour, but something’s come up. Something important.” He gestured to the man beside him. “This is Calvin Forbes. He’s out from Headquarters, in D.C. We’ve just come from the airport, in fact.” Brautigan’s thin, reedy voice was clipped, pitched to a brisk, impersonal note. He’d gone to Yale, and affected an Ivy League accent. He was a tall, improbably handsome man with clear blue eyes and thick, theatrically waved gray hair. Presumably to reinforce his Ivy League image, Brautigan never wore anything but tweed suits, button-down shirts and old school ties. His shoes, he’d once revealed, were custom-made.

  When Forbes didn’t offer his hand, I turned and led the way into my living room. I normally kept the room picked up. Tonight, though, I’d been going through newspapers I hadn’t read for three days. The room was hopelessly littered with papers, an empty cup and glass, and the remnants of a dinner I’d eaten in front of the TV. I switched off the TV, scooped newspapers from the sofa and gestured them to sit down. As I sat in my easy chair, I saw Brautigan staring at my bare feet. Suddenly my feet felt cold.

  “This won’t take long,” Brautigan said. “At least, I hope it won’t take long. We wanted to catch you now, instead of talking to you tomorrow, at the Hall. For reasons that’ll be obvious.”

  Forbes had been trying unsuccessfully to fit his impeccably creased felt hat on the small lamp table beside him. Now he moved the lamp precariously close to the edge of the table, settled his hat to his satisfaction and turned to face me.

  “It’s about the Murdock murder,” Forbes said. Predictably, his voice was dry and precise, subtly condescending. His gaze was fixed on a point that seemed to lie just above my left shoulder. “As soon as I got the details, I decided to come out immediately.”

  “Calvin is a deputy director of the Bureau,” Brautigan intoned. As he spoke I sa
w Forbes’s mouth tighten under the precisely trimmed mustache. Disapproval flickered in his eyes. I wondered whether Brautigan had ever before called Forbes by his first name—or whether he would ever do it again.

  “I understand,” Forbes said, “that you and Barbara Murdock found Eliot Murdock’s notes. I also understand that the notes were, ah, substantive.”

  “Would you excuse me for just a minute?” I rose and walked down the hallway to my bedroom. My slippers were beside the bureau. Xeroxed copies of Murdock’s notes and the affidavits were inside the bureau, under my shirts. I put on the slippers and returned to the living room, explaining, “My feet were cold. Sorry.”

  Both men projected lofty tolerance as Forbes allowed a calculated moment of silence to pass before he said, “The notes, we understand, are substantive, as I said. So, just as soon as possible, we’d like to have copies of them. The affidavits, too. Especially, the affidavits.”

  “Are you investigating Murdock’s murder?”

  “No. Not directly. But, tangentially, we’re investigating it—as part of another investigation we’ve been conducting.”

  “Does your investigation concern the Pentagon?”

  Forbes and Brautigan exchanged a quick, inscrutable look before Forbes said quietly, “You have seen them, then. The notes and the affidavits. You admit you found them.”

  Aware that I was suddenly enjoying an unaccustomed sensation of superiority, I slowly, deliberately nodded. “Yes, we found them. They were in the safe at the Beresford Hotel. Now they’re at the Hall, in the evidence room.”

  “Did you read them?”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I answered cautiously. “Yes, I read them.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s pretty heavy stuff,” I answered. “It’s so heavy, in fact, that I don’t have the authority to turn over copies to you. Not without getting clearance.”

  Behind the tortoise-shell glasses, Forbes’s eyes hardened. “I don’t think you understand, Lieutenant—” Edging the “Lieutenant” with calm malice, he managed to express all the smooth, subtle contempt that FBI agents could level against men who began their careers in uniform, wearing a gun and a badge. “We’re working different sides of the street, you and I. You’re concerned with Murdock’s murder. I’m not concerned with Murdock. At least, not directly. I’m concerned with—other things.”

  Again, the patronizing accent on the last two words clearly suggested the disdain Forbes felt.

  Even though I knew it was a mistake, I couldn’t resist saying, “You mean that you’re concerned with Baxter Wardell.”

  Forbes looked at me for one long, spiteful moment before he picked up his hat and rose to his feet. He didn’t move the lamp back to the center of the end table.

  “I didn’t come three thousand miles to fence with you, Lieutenant.”

  I decided not to reply. Still seated, uncomfortable in my bathrobe and bare legs, I suddenly felt like a schoolboy being disciplined by the principal. But I knew that I would feel even more inadequate, scrambling to my feet to face him.

  “Mr. Brautigan said you’d understand why it’s desirable for us to keep this—uncomplicated. I hope, for all our sakes, that he’s right.” Forbes let a beat pass before he continued. “You say you need ‘clearance.’ I doubt it—but I’m not inclined to press the point. Besides, I need sleep. So we’ll defer this until tomorrow morning. Mr. Brautigan will call you at ten o’clock, to find out whether you’ve gotten your clearance. Then we’ll—” Another bullying beat passed before he said, “We’ll decide on appropriate action.”

  Without looking back, he walked down the hallway to the front door. “Get the goddamn clearance, Hastings,” Brautigan muttered. “Get it, or it’s your ass.”

  At the door, Forbes had stopped to put on his hat, carefully settling it on his beautifully barbered head. Forsaking dignity, Brautigan loped to the front door, opened it and gestured for Forbes to precede him.

  Sixteen

  PLACIDLY PUFFING HIS CIGAR, Friedman glanced at the clock. The time was nine-thirty. On a Saturday morning only Friedman, Canelli, Culligan and myself were manning the Homicide detail. Out in the squad room Culligan was catching the incoming calls. Canelli had gone to the coroner’s office, waiting for the Ricco autopsy to furnish us with the bullets that had killed Ricco. In my office Friedman and I looked at each other across a desk strewn with Xeroxed copies of Murdock’s notes.

  “Actually,” Friedman said, gesturing to the copies, “there isn’t a whole hell of a lot of substance there. As I read them, the affidavits are all pretty vague. And the notes aren’t much more than shorthand.”

  “I thought the affidavits would be more explicit. It seems as though everyone’s trying to screw the other guy without getting screwed himself.”

  “Exactly. Only the one guy—Simpson, whoever he is—seems to have a handle on anything he’s willing to talk about. And, for all we know, Simpson could be the janitor.”

  “Janitors empty wastebaskets, you know.”

  Shrugging, Friedman blew a long, lazy plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “I wonder if Calvin Forbes is after Wardell,” he mused. He aimed his cigar at the affidavits. “There’s no mention of Wardell in those. And sure as hell, Murdock’s notes won’t constitute evidence. Especially against a big fish like Wardell.”

  “If Wardell’s involved, he’s working through intermediaries.”

  Friedman nodded. “Several intermediaries, probably.” He considered a moment, then said thoughtfully, “I wonder whether Wardell’s in favor with the current administration in Washington.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “If he’s fallen out of favor, they might be trying to nail him for past transgressions. It happens.”

  “Maybe Barbara Murdock would know.”

  “Maybe.”

  Now I looked at the clock. In twenty minutes Brautigan would call. “I still think,” I said, “that we’ll be taking a big chance, turning those copies over to the FBI without getting clearance from Dwyer. Especially after the Blake and Ricco murders. This is the time to cooperate with Dwyer, not play games with him.”

  Friedman raised a pudgy, placating palm. “We aren’t going to just turn them over. We’re going to do a little horse-trading. We’re going to show a profit on the transaction.”

  “You’re going to do a little horse-trading. I’m going to hold your coat.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “No one diddles the FBI better than I diddle the FBI.”

  “Or enjoys it more,” I answered.

  “Or enjoys it more. Right. I—”

  My phone rang.

  “Remember,” said Friedman, sotto voce, “if it’s Forbes or Brautigan, get a meeting on neutral ground. The FBI loves that cloak-and-dagger stuff. The spookier the better.” As he spoke he lifted a “listen only” extension phone.

  I lifted my own phone to hear: “It’s Canelli, Lieutenant.”

  “Oh.”

  “Expecting someone else, huh? Want me to hang up?”

  “It’s all right. What’ve you got?”

  “I’m over at the coroner’s. And, sure enough, the bullets in Ricco were .22 hollow points, just like I figured. Which is a bummer because there’s no ballistics. But the good news is the lab lifted a sharp, clear print from the door of the men’s room at the Wayfarer. Maybe Annunzio went in there to put on gloves, before he did the job. Because that’s whose print it was. Annunzio’s.”

  “Great. Now all we have to do is find Annunzio.”

  “Yeah,” he answered ruefully. “Right.” Then: “Is there anything else, Lieutenant?”

  “Not really—except to keep looking for Annunzio.”

  “What about Walter Frazer? Want me to spend a little time on him?” I looked questioningly at Friedman, still holding the receiver to his ear. He shrugged, then nodded.

  “Give it a try,” I answered. “But keep in touch with Culligan. Lieutenant Friedman and I are going out in a few minutes.”

>   “Yes, sir. Wish me luck.”

  To myself, I smiled. Aside from looking and acting like anything but a detective, Canelli’s greatest professional asset was an incredibly long-running streak of innocent good luck. With every policeman in San Francisco searching for a mass murderer, Canelli would answer his doorbell to find the killer on his doorstep, asking directions to his next victim’s house.

  “Good luck, Canelli,” I said, breaking the connection.

  “What would our lives be without Canelli?” Friedman said. “What would we do for our chuckle a day?” When I didn’t reply he said, “Incidentally, did you see the Sentinel this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Your friend Barbara Murdock has been giving press conferences.”

  “Press conferences?”

  “Right. As I predicted day before yesterday, the news-hounds are closing ranks around their fallen comrade, air-brushing in a determined jaw and fearless eyes and a cape flung over his shoulders, and like that. And Barbara, apparently, is using the opportunity to put the heat on.”

  “How do you mean, ‘put the heat on’?”

  “She’s saying that her father was onto something very big and very wicked in Washington—that he was getting so close to some very important people that he was shut up.”

  “All of which may be true.”

  “Granted. But the part I didn’t much like was the part about how she implies that those same VIPs are seeing to it that Murdock’s murderer goes unpunished.”

  “Does she mention Wardell by name?”

  “Of course not. She doesn’t even imply that she’s talking about Wardell. Tactically, that’s smart. She implies that she knows a lot more than she’s telling. Which she does, in fact. But, still, she shouldn’t be doing it. Because she’s making us look bad. She’s making us look like we’re taking a dive, because of political pressure. Which, of course, happens to be the truth, at least as far as Dwyer is concerned. Except that we’re getting tarred with the same brush. You and me.”