Killed in Fringe Time Page 10

  Not loony enough? Okay let’s go further out. Barbara Bentyne Anapole. Sure, she might get violent if somehow the reality about her “son” was ever brought home to her. But how had she gotten at the chicken? Jarmy swore it was never out of his sight until he handed it to Gambrelli, and I knew for a fact that she hadn’t been anywhere around the studio that morning.

  Not good enough? Okay, let’s go really far out, as far out as Montana. Clement Bates loomed large in the last weekend plus of Richard Bentyne’s life, though come to think about it, I didn’t believe they ever had managed to come face to face.

  Was Bates that nuts? Sure he was. I’m a strong believer in live and let live, but I’m sorry. Sane people do not turn their backs on hundred-million-dollar fortunes and go live like hermits.

  But I had to face it—the very form of his nutsiness let him off the hook in my estimation. Even though he could have pranced unnoticed throughout the studio and poisoned everybody, what the hell was the motive? Delayed revenge on Bentyne for eating too much of Clem’s bear meat and pemmican or whatever the hell Bates sustained himself on? Bates was the only person involved who was actually richer than Bentyne himself.

  Then I thought of suicide. Not for myself. I mean that I thought of the possibility that Bentyne had committed suicide. It was a little hard to credit that somebody planning suicide would, in the first place, use arsenic, which is very nasty, when there are so many quicker and less painful poisons around, and in the second place, use the arsenic to dose up a batch of chicken, then sit there and munch away at, oh, judging by the bones I saw, two and a half pieces of it until he started to feel the effects.

  I’d have to watch somebody doing that before I’d believe it.

  So there I was. Nobody had killed Bentyne. He was fine; all this was just the biggest put-on of all.

  I sighed, and watched Spot chasing the Frisbee. I noticed that wherever he was when he caught it, he always brought it back to the girl.

  There was a chirp in my pocket. The cellular phone. I had forgotten to ditch it back at the apartment the way I’d intended to.

  I took it out of my pocket and looked at it just as it chirped again. I was sorely tempted to chuck the thing into the pond and drown it, but duty overcame all, and I answered it.

  “Cobb, this is Rivetz.”

  “How’d you get this number?”

  “I’m a cop. I asked your office. They want you to check in.”

  “I’ll bet they do. What’s up?”

  “I don’t know if I ought to tell you. People can eavesdrop on these things.”

  “Not this one, it’s one of the new digital systems.”

  “Like that’s supposed to mean something, right? Anyhow we heard from the lab.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re all great detectives. Arsenic. Not from flypaper. Specifically a commercial preparation called Deth-on-Ratz, with a d-e-t-h and an r-a-t-z. Obtainable anywhere in the country. Untraceable. Not that we expected anything better. But the kicker is the white powder.”

  “What was it? Not a drug, right?”

  “Depends what you mean. What it was, was powdered rhino horn. Can you imagine? I thought that was for old guys in Hong Kong.”

  “Rhino horn,” I said.

  “Yep. The lieutenant wants you to let him know if you think of anything.”

  “Sure,” I said. But I was already thinking about things. Plenty of them. I called Spot. He barked and ran happily to me.

  “Let’s get moving,” I told him.

  “This is the old redhead,

  out chere at the big ballpark.”

  —RED BARBER

  New York Yankee Baseball, WPIX-TV, New York

  12

  THREE AND A HALF hours later, I was back in Central Park, about twenty blocks to the north, on one knee in the dirt with a metal mask on my face, looking past the hairless armpit of a guy named Wolf.

  It had been a busy few hours. First, I’d gone back to the office to take my medicine with Falzet. He wasn’t pleased with the murder, but he went ballistic when I told him about the rhino horn.

  “That bastard!” he shouted. “That son of a bitch!”

  That was unprecedented. Tom Falzet could buzz like a hornet when he got angry, or get hissy like a snake, but he never shouted and never swore.

  “By Christ” (he never took the Name of the Lord in vain, either), “if he wasn’t already dead I’d kill him myself.”

  He began to line out exactly why he was so upset, but I’d already been there ahead of him. This was the ultimate public relations nightmare.

  Richard Bentyne was sleeping around? The public would shrug it off. That’s what those show-biz types do, isn’t it, Martha? Taking drugs? Tsk, tsk, an addictive personality. A couple of weeks at the Betty Ford Clinic is what he needs, and right away.

  But powdered rhino horn? Taken from the recently butchered carcass of an endangered species? Not only was it disgusting (which it was, no argument there), but it was also ungreen.

  I have probably said at some point in this story that Bentyne made fun of everything people had strong principles and beliefs about. If I did, I was wrong. He never joked about the two holy causes—AIDS or the environment.

  These causes were hip as well as worthy. Half of Bentyne’s audience probably mocked fur-coat wearers on the street. The rest had “Save the Whales” stickers on their cars.

  But now, to find out he was using this ... stuff would not only make him (with the Network as accessory) a despoiler of the wild, it would also make this genius of mockery, this high priest of hip, out to be just as gullible an asshole as the old men in the East who took the stuff convinced it would help them keep their virility. Worse. A thousand years or more of their culture tell them their belief is true. Bentyne’s culture made him nothing but a pathetic idiot.

  “Is there any way we could keep this quiet?” Falzet demanded.

  I coughed. “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I’m trying not to laugh in your face.”

  “Why not? They’re your friends, aren’t they?”

  “Lieutenant Martin is a second father to me.”

  “Well?”

  “Mr. Falzet, if I were Lieutenant Martin’s only begotten son of flesh and blood, if I were his clone, he wouldn’t sit on this story for me.”

  “Surely, there must be some way to persuade him.”

  “Sir, if you’re talking about bribes or favors, here, I’m walking out.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” he hissed. “Bribes or favors. What do you take me for, Cobb?”

  I let the question pass. Instead I said, “Look at it from the cops’ point of view. What is the cops’ biggest obstacle in a case like this?”

  “I dislike guessing games.”

  “Then I’ll just tell you. It’s us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yeah. Us. The Network. The media in general. Publicity and pressure.”

  He got very stiff. “Our stations are licensed to operate in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. We have our job to do.”

  “Of course we do, and I’m all for it. But we’re looking at this from their point of view. Their job is to find out what scurries out when they lift the rocks. That can be difficult with a spotlight over your shoulder.

  “And remember, they’re only human. Nobody wants to wake up in the morning to read in the newspaper what an idiot he must be. ‘If the murder of a prominent and influential citizen such as this remains unsolved, how much less secure must the average person feel,’ and bla and bla and bla.”

  “What does this have to do with powdered rhinoceros horn?”

  “It’s a diversion. A gift from God, the way they see it. Now, instead of ‘Why don’t the police do something?’ the media will be full of Bentyne and what a hypocritical sleazeball he was, and how stupid we were to have paid him forty-five million bucks with which he could subsidize the destruction of this magnificent beast, the gentle giant of the veldt, or wherever the hell it lives, w
ho eats plants and only charges when attacked, and the rest of the National Geographic Specials spiel.”

  Falzet had his hand up. “Stop. Please stop.”

  “You get the idea.”

  Of course, all this speculation was based on the totally unproven and possibly baseless assumption that the rhino horn was actually Bentyne’s, that it wasn’t planted there by somebody else. After all, if somebody could get at Bentyne’s chicken to poison it, they could get to his Groucho cookie jar, too. Might have done it at any time since they’d moved into the theater.

  I didn’t mention it, because it didn’t matter. Falzet hadn’t thought of it, and neither would ninety-nine and a big fraction percent of the public. When it comes to celebrity scandals, nobody’s in the mood to let facts stand in the way of the fun.

  “I have always,” he said, “had the idea. I only wondered whether our stockholders and viewers could be prevented from getting the same idea. Apparently not.”

  “No, sir. It’s like throwing the baby to the wolves,” I said, although National Geographic would probably have corrections to make on that one, too.

  “Precisely,” Falzet said. Now that we had put it in terms of babies and wolves, we had reached a level he could understand, and even approve. I said he was an honest businessman. I never said he was a gentle one.

  “Actually, considering the stink that’s going to attach itself to Bentyne, probably the best thing for us to do, from the publicity angle, is put it out we killed him ourselves.”

  “Do you find this situation funny, Cobb?”

  “No, sir. It’s bravado. I always laugh in the face of catastrophe.”

  For a few seconds, I thought he was going to throw a paperweight at me, and so did he. He grabbed it, an abstract sculpture in jade, and gripped it so hard, his fingers turned white. His lips were white, too, from being pressed tight together. It was as if he didn’t want to let the words out, as if what was in his mind to call me would scorch his mouth.

  When he finally said anything, his voice was a whisper.

  “Get out!” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Actually, what you said before about them doing us a favor, I think they’ve already done us one.”

  He was bitter. “From their point of view, of course.”

  “Naturally. But it’s something. I checked back with them just before I came in here, and Lieutenant Martin told me they’d break the story in a press release tomorrow morning at eleven.”

  “So?”

  “So he didn’t make me promise to keep quiet about it. I can go down and have a word or two in the newsroom, and they can break the story at eleven. Then we can be the first ones to kick Bentyne’s corpse, as it were. Take some of the curse off our financing—indirectly—the obliteration of the rhino.”

  “And that, I suppose, is the best we’re going to do.”

  “You could help it along with a statement disassociating the Network from anti-environmental practices etcetera, etcetera. The line about your killing Bentyne if he were still alive is possibly a bit much.”

  “I’ve already talked to Public Relations. I’ll get them back in here.”

  I could tell from the expression on his face that he would have liked to have killed me, but I had brought Spot along for protection. Falzet had a lot of respect for Spot. I had had him growl at the man once.

  “Cobb,” he said, “fix this.”

  I was tempted to tell Spot to eat him. What did he expect me to do?

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “I’ll hop the next plane to Africa and personally save a rhino from a poacher, after which I’ll paint the Network logo on his hide so the world will know he’s under our protection.”

  Falzet closed his eyes. “More bravado, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir. With a leavening of pique. We can do a lot of things at Special Projects, but we can’t unring a bell or uncrack an egg.”

  “You have imagination. Think of something. Create a diversion. Do what the police did—get the media interested in something other than the Network. We’re not too far from the launch of the fall season, and beyond that lies the November sweeps. Something has to be done!”

  And there you have it, I thought, Tom Falzet’s saving grace as a businessman and as a human being. He really cared about the Network and about the work he did, and tried to do it as well and as nobly as a crabbed little soul could.

  “Well,” I suggested, “how about if I find the killer? Would that be okay?”

  He thought it over. Seriously. The man was unkiddable; I don’t know why I kept trying. Something about him made it irresistible. It occurred to me that I had fallen into the habit of treating Falzet the way Bentyne and Alf Kriecz and the rest of them treated the world. I resolved to stop.

  Finally, Falzet said, “That would do it, if you can find the killer soon enough. Be as quick as you can.”

  It was apparent he wasn’t going to make stopping easy. Still, I was a hero, and told him I’d get on it right away, and left.

  My next two stops were still in the Tower of Babble, but many floors below. I went down to local news on the sixth floor and stayed awhile to have my brain picked. Then I told them that Lieutenant Martin and Mr. Falzet would both probably have statements for them.

  Then it was back to the elevators and up two floors to the videotape library. All vertical movement in NetHQ is done via the stainless-steel elevators. If there were horizontal ones, we’d use them, too. God help us if there’s ever a fire. I’m sure a good half the employees don’t even know where the fire stairs are.

  Bill Bevacqua, does though, because Bill knows everything. Bill is Network News’s chief videotape librarian, and sees it all—what we put on the air, what we don’t put on the air, stuff we’ve shot but wouldn’t dare put on the air—everything.

  Not only watches it but studies it, classifies it, and enters it into the computer retrieval system under as many headings as he thinks will be necessary.

  You’d think a guy who spent his life in a windowless room doing this stuff would be a leech-white, one-eyed hunchbacked gnome, but Bill is ruddy-faced, slight but sturdy and straight, with a twinkle in the blue eyes behind the glasses. I must admit his hair is prematurely white, but he’s still one of the healthier-looking off-the-air specimens we have around the place, especially in the technical department.

  “Got a minute, Bill?” I asked.

  “No. Come in. Good to see you, Matthew, even if I am busier than a one-armed paperhanger with piles. I bet I know why you’re here.”

  “I bet you don’t.”

  “You don’t want to see the beautiful obit we’re going to run on Richard Bentyne on the six-thirty feed of the Evening News?”

  “What did you do, chroma-key in a halo?”

  “You’re casting aspersions on our journalistic objectivity again. We didn’t make him all that saintly. Besides, all I did was pull up the bits and pieces of tape. Assistant producer put the thing together. Can I help it if she was a big fan?”

  “Made him look real good?”

  “Pretty good. After all, he was our boy. Wasn’t he?”

  “Nope. He was a viper infiltrating our bosom. The assistant producer and whoever voiced it are going to be down here begging you to accidentally erase that tape.”

  “So this tape is an embarrassment. But that’s not the one you want to see.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, what do you want to see?”

  “Rhinos.”

  “Rhinos? As in rhinoceri?”

  “I think it’s rhinoceroses, actually.”

  “Never mind that. Big ugly animals with horns on their faces, and they live in Africa?”

  “Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but yeah, that’s what I want. Don’t you have it?”

  “I have everything. I’m just trying to think of some connection.”

  “I’ll give you a hint. I predict local news will be calling you very soon, asking for this very same stuff.”

  “That’
s no help,” he said.

  “All will become clear,” I promised, “but not from me. Not only do I lack sufficient time to tell you, but going over it all again would depress the hell out of me.”

  “Oh, all right, be mysterious, if you have to.” He punched a few buttons on his computer console, went back into a shelf, and came back with a big blue plastic tape-reel container.

  “Next year we switch to disk,” he said. “It’ll increase our capacity tenfold.” Then he found me an editing carrel and a technician to run the machines for me so I wouldn’t get in trouble with the union.

  Then I sat down and watched it. Not all of it. Would you imagine the Network had accumulated like three hours of news footage on rhinos? Me neither, until I watched the first forty minutes of it or so and learned more about rhinos than I ever wanted to know.

  I felt like the guy in the Ogden Nash poem, who ends up by wanting to look at something less “prepoceros.” I thanked the techy, waved a thanks to Bill, and left.

  As I was walking out the door, I heard his phone chirp. I listened for a few seconds as Bill said, “What? Yeah, I’ve got them. Yeah, right here in my hand.” He put the tape down, placed the hand in question over the mouthpiece, and said to me, “You are a witch.”

  I laughed and walked out.

  Now that I was fully armed with information, I had nobody to use it on. Naturally, The Richard Bentyne Show had not taped that evening, and when the cops were done, people went their own ways. Vivian Pike, my sources told, was in seclusion with a friend who “lived someplace in the Village.”

  There are five boroughs in New York City, and Greenwich Village is only a small part of one of them, but its narrow, convoluted streets seem to hide more someplaces than the rest of the city combined, so I’d save her until tomorrow.