Killed in Fringe Time Read online

  He stood in front of my desk and sized me up.

  “Nice haircut,” he said.

  I was starting to feel self-conscious. “What can I do for you, Mr. Bates?”

  “What can you do for me? I’m going stir crazy in that silken prison they call a hotel.”

  “I thought you were used to being by yourself. Sit down, by the way.”

  “What? Oh, sure.” He picked a chair and sat. “Hell, I like to be by myself, but I’m used to being able to walk thirty miles while I’m doing it. I’m not used to staring at four walls, no matter how much food they’ll bring me.”

  “Nobody’s stopping you from walking, Mr. Bates,” I said.

  “I thought you were gonna call me Clem,” he said. “Or was that only when I was gonna be a TV star?”

  Actually, I’d been hoping he’d forgotten. “Of course, not, Clem. But you can walk to your heart’s content.”

  “No I can’t. You say there’s nobody stopping me from walking, but the truth is, millions of people are stopping me. All of them, out there, all the ants on the New York anthill, they’re stopping me. I can barely get a good stride going, and there’s somebody cutting me off. I’m going nuts, and I thought that since you’re the one responsible for getting me out here—”

  “Hey,” I said, “I didn’t invite you to be on Bentyne’s show, and I didn’t send him the letter saying you’d do it.”

  “You picked me up at the dad-blamed airport.”

  I was silent. In the face of that kind of logic, words were powerless. Besides, he wasn’t done yet.

  “And don’t try to fob me off on the ‘Network.’ The Network don’t have a face, and your face is the only one I know.” He added, not quite under his breath, “Everything would have been fine, if Bentyne hadn’t been killed.”

  “I didn’t do that either,” I said.

  I was trying to think of a way to explain to him that I didn’t have the time to wet nurse him, no matter how insecure his years in the wilderness had made him among people.

  Then the phone rang, `and I grabbed for it like a man crawling across the Sahara would grab a Popsicle.

  “What is it, Jazz?”

  “A Ms. Vivian Pike, on line two.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Put her on, Jazz.”

  A click, and there she was. I gave her my best corporate phone style, a crisp, “Matt Cobb.”

  “Mr. Cobb, this is Vivian Pike. We met yesterday.”

  The last part of that could have been false modesty—I wasn’t likely to have forgotten anybody I’d met in connection with the Bentyne show yesterday—but it didn’t sound that way. Yesterday, I’d noticed how Vivian Pike’s voice seemed to be dead. Today it had some emotion in it. It was the voice of someone cringing against further blows.

  “I remember, Miss Pike. What can I do for you?”

  “I want to talk to you,” she said.

  That was convenient, I thought.

  “In person,” she added. “I—I don’t want to talk to you about this on the phone. I don’t trust phones.”

  “Do you want to meet somewhere?”

  “Oh,” she said. There was silence for a few seconds. Then she said, “I know this is a terrible imposition, but would you mind coming to me? I had such a time getting to—where I am without the press tracking me. Could you—”

  “I know where you are, Miss Pike. I’ll be with you in, oh, an hour or an hour an a half, depending on the traffic on 95.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I know you’ll have to tell the police what I have to tell you, but maybe you can handle it in some way that won’t be as terrible for me as I deserve. I don’t think I can handle anything anymore.”

  My God, I thought, she’s going to confess to murder.

  “Sit tight,” I said, “I’ll be right there.”

  She thanked me again. I hung up and started to brush off Bates, but he was having none of it.

  “Great,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “You can go wherever you want,” I told him, “but not with me.”

  “That’s what you think,” he told me. Then he told me I was going to Connecticut to see Vivian Pike. I’d mentioned her name, and I’d mentioned Route 95. Me and my big mouth. Then he told me he wanted to offer his condolences, and he hadn’t had a chance to. With a killer running around he wanted to importune the cops up there to give him back his gun.

  “And lastly,” he said, “up there they’ve got something that can pass for woods. Maybe I can breathe a little.”

  I had little difficulty resisting these arguments, but when he said if I ran out on him, he’d make a beeline for the nearest reporter, my only choice was to kill him, lock him up, or take him along.

  The first two had their attractions, but I reluctantly decided against them.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “... Ring! Ring! Your bell will ring,

  that’s my very special ring,

  and this is what I’ll bring ...”

  —RAY HEATHERTON

  The Merry Mailman (syndicated)

  15

  “WELL,” BATES SAID AS we approached the entrance to the house Richard Bentyne had for a short time called home, “she must be eager to see you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Ain’t that her in the road, waiting by the driveway?”

  I squinted a little and saw that it was. She was leaning against the mailbox with the sun beaming down on her straw-colored hair. She looked as slim and sad as a scarecrow.

  “Okay,” I said. “She’s not expecting you; she’s not going to want to deal with you. You stay in the car.”

  “Ha! I came out here to get a little uncitified air. Damned if I’m going to sit in a car. You take care of your business; I’ll wander around in the woods and commune with nature and breathe some semi-fresh air. You can tell her I’m here thinking of buying the house or something.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’ve got to sell it, don’t you? What’s the Network need with a house this far from the city? You sure aren’t going to get your next big star living here. Who wants to live in a murdered man’s house? So your Network is going to have to sell it to some idjit with more money than he knows what to do with. I’m not an idjit, of course, but I don’t mind pretending to be one, long as it’s in a good cause.”

  “Bates,” I said calmly, “she loved the guy. She lived with him. The body hasn’t even been released for burial. I am not going to give the poor woman the impression that the Network is about to sell the roof from over her head or the very chairs out from under her ass!”

  Bates shrugged. “Suit yourself. When I practiced it, business was business.”

  “Maybe everybody’s better off you like it up there on your mountaintop.”

  That cracked him up. If I ever chuck the Network job and go into stand-up comedy, I thought, I was going to have to bring this guy around with me as a one-man claque.

  “How did you know the Network owned the house?” I said.

  “The man lived with me for a month, remember? He told me things.”

  And that would have to do, because there we were. I got the nose of the Network car off the main road and onto the gravel of the driveway.

  Vivian Pike approached the car. I hit a power button and lowered the window, and the hot August air spilled into the air-conditioned car. Bates wanted to breathe this stuff? It was so thick and humid you could dish it out with a ladle.

  I unlocked the back door on her side and told her to hop in. She did so, and I got the AC locked safely in again.

  “I—I, uh, wasn’t expecting Mr. Bates.”

  “Don’t you worry, darlin’, I’ve got nothing to do with this except to offer my sincere condolences. Mr. Cobb’s just been kind enough to humor an old man with a ride in the country. I was going crazy in New York. Felt cooped up.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “I feel cooped up everywhere. The mail didn’t come till now”—she held u
p a half-dozen envelopes and a small paddled mailer for me to see in the rearview mirror—“but I’ve been down there a half-dozen times this morning. This last time, not only was the mail there but I saw one of the big, black Network-type cars coming, and I thought it must be you. I hung around to make sure. And it was you.”

  She committed an attempted smile. It was painful to see. She gave up, muttered, “I probably won’t even open the goddamn mail,” and spent the rest of the short trip staring out the window in silence.

  I kept expecting Bates to ask her when she was planning to move out so he could take over the place in time for prowler-hunting season or something. Miraculously, though, having said exactly the right thing off the bat, he continued the miracle by thereafter shutting up. Maybe he could stay down from the mountain, after all.

  We left Bates leaning against the car, taking deep lungfuls of disgusting, pollen-laden summer country air while Vivian Pike led me inside to the air-conditioned comforts of civilization. She dumped the mail on a table near the front door, said, “What the hell, it’s all for Richard anyway,” then asked me to sit down.

  I did. She kind of stood there, looking miserable. She was not acting like the high-powered producer of a Network TV show. She was a combination of a lost child and a bewildered senior citizen, though at the moment, she looked a lot more like the latter.

  Her face brightened with sudden inspiration.

  “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?”

  “Mineral water would be nice if you’ve got some. Seltzer, you know.”

  “Sure. Ice? Lime?”

  “Both, thanks.”

  “And what about Mr. Bates, he must be thirsty. I’ll just call him and ask him—”

  “He’ll be fine,” I cut in. “He came out for some isolation. If he gets thirsty, he chews tree bark.”

  She went and got a couple of seltzers. Or expensive mineral waters. I can tell Coke from Pepsi, but I can’t tell those apart.

  She folded her long legs and perched on the edge of a chair ready to jump. She took tiny little sips of her drink. Obviously, she was willing to sit there, staring and sipping, indefinitely.

  She needed a nudge.

  “There was something you wanted to tell me,” I said.

  “It’s hard.”

  “The harder it is to tell, the more trouble will build up between now and the time it gets found out. And have no doubt that whatever it is, it’ll be found out.”

  “I know. And that’s why I’m going to tell you. But I want you to work on this for me.”

  “I’m working on it already.”

  “No. Special Projects keeps embarrassing things from becoming known. I want to be your personal special project.”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “Why not? It’s your job, isn’t it?”

  “My job is protecting the Network. Look, suppose you were about to confess you killed Richard Bentyne. If I kept that quiet, not only would I be doing the Network a disservice I’d be putting myself in danger of spending a long, long time in a jail not of my choice.”

  She laughed. It wasn’t genuine laughter, and it wasn’t even hysteria, which, considering the state she was in, might have been a good idea—if anybody had ever been ready for a good emotional debauch, it was Vivian Pike. Unfortunately, this was a bitter little screech of hopeless irony with not an atom of humor or despair or anything human about it.

  “Killed Richard,” she sighed. “Oh, it would have been simpler if I had.”

  “Simpler?”

  “Sure. If I’d killed him, I could just confess and take my chances. You don’t know what my life was like. If there were enough women on the jury I might even get off.”

  She said, “Richard ...” and stopped.

  I thought she was going to go on and tell me what her life was like, another catalog, no doubt, of tabloid-ready atrocities—whips, chains, butterscotch pudding, that sort of thing.

  As I’d said, it would come out eventually. So I braced myself.

  But she surprised me. Whatever she’d been about to spill, she choked it off. Instead, she said, “No I didn’t kill Richard. He made me crazy, but I didn’t hate him. I even kind of still loved him.”

  “That’s not what you got me out here to tell me.”

  “No, of course it isn’t.” She took her eyes from mine and looked around. She noticed her drink as if it had just appeared in her hand by magic. She raised it to her mouth and took a good long swallow. “I’m just trying to explain,” she said.

  “I still don’t know what you’re trying to explain,” I said. “Or what you’re trying to explain about it.”

  “You’re right,” she said decisively. “You’re right, you’re right. Here’s what I’m trying to say.”

  Then she took another drink and I almost jumped on her and strangled her.

  Fortunately for both of us she went on before I could act on the impulse. I could feel the muscles in my legs relaxing.

  “If I’d killed him, I’d be in trouble. I’d be arrested, stand trial, maybe go to jail. Maybe for a long time.”

  “Probably,” I said, although I knew that the average convicted murderer in New York does nine years or less actual prison time.

  “There’s no doubt about it,” she said. “It would be a serious inconvenience.”

  I’m pretty good at knowing when I’m having my leg pulled, and this certainly sounded like one of those times, but Vivian Pike showed none of the signs, not in voice, face, or body language. I stared at her. I had to stare at someone who regarded a murder conviction, even a mere nine years’ worth of a murder conviction, as nothing more than a “serious inconvenience.”

  If my staring bothered her, she showed no sign of it. She went on without missing a beat.

  “—Definitely a serious inconvenience, but I could handle it, because it wouldn’t affect me where it really matters.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In the business. In the circles of power. You see, if I’d murdered Richard, I would have been a good producer who let personal things get to her. But if what I actually did gets out, I’ll be destroyed utterly. I won’t even leave a reputation behind. The very mention of my name will be forbidden.”

  At last we come to it, I thought. “What did you do?” I asked quietly.

  Silence. After about fifteen seconds, she said, “It’s hard.”

  I stood up. “Nope,” I said. “That’s where I got on this merry-go-round, and one time is enough. You’ll tell the cops. Thanks for the drink,” I said, and began to guzzle the rest of my seltzer.

  “I gave Richard the rhino horn,” she said softly.

  If there were ever a time for a Danny Thomas spit-take, this was it, but I heroically kept the seltzer inside my body, mainly by swallowing it in one frozen rush that sloshed like an iceberg into my stomach.

  I caught my breath, and tried to force my eyes from perfect circles into something like normal shape.

  “You gave him the rhino horn?”

  She nodded miserably. “Can’t you see why I need your help? If it get out I was mixed up with rhinoceros horn, I’ll be through in the business.”

  She sure would be, I thought. She’d had it sized up perfectly. Killing Bentyne would do her a tenth as much harm as this would.

  I refrained with difficulty from ruminating on the standards of a business wherein the murder of a human being is seen as a regrettable lapse of judgment, whereas fourth-or fifth-hand participation in the products of the death of a beast was an unforgivable sin. Not that I’m in favor of poaching rhinos, mind you. I just think human beings ought to count for just as much, somehow.

  “Why,” I said, “did you give it to him?”

  “It was an insult. I wanted to shame him. He’d just taken up with that little bitch Marcie Nast. Or rather I’d just found out about it. I was hurt, and I wanted to hurt him back. So I gave him the rhino horn, said he’d need it, because his new little playmate
wouldn’t be as patient with his sexual failings as I was.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said his sexual failings—as I called them—were all due to a lack of inspiration from me.”

  “So you spat in his face, kicked him in the nuts, told him to shove his show up his ass, and walked out on him, right?”

  The tears that had been hovering all afternoon decided to descend. “No,” she said. “You know I didn’t. Of course not. How could I? The show was just getting started. It was what we’d worked on for years. I couldn’t walk out on it then. I couldn’t even stop living with him—with the premiere coming up, I couldn’t have the press asking the wrong kind of questions, could I?”

  I was exasperated. “Does the phrase ‘self-respect’ mean anything to you?”

  “Huh? Yes, you know it does. That’s why I need your help now. What kind of self-respect can I have if this gets out?”

  Forget it, Matt, I told myself, just forget it. In a million years, you aren’t going to understand it.

  “I’ll ask,” I said, “an easier question. Where did you get the stuff to give it to him?”

  Mentally, I was already working angles. If the Network can help ... who? The EPA? The United Nations? The Sierra Club? Whoever. If we could help the people in charge of rhino protecting smash a poaching ring or something, that would go a long way toward lifting the stink the late Mr. Bentyne had dumped us into. Furthermore, if Vivian Pike got immunity as some sort of anonymous witness, she might hold on to whatever illusion she thought was self-respect.

  Then she said, “Oh, I had it.”

  This was too much. “You had it? You just had it? What, you bought it from the Avon lady and just hadn’t a chance to get around to using it before? How the hell do you just happen to have a half a pound of rhino horn knocking around the house?”

  “Oh, years ago, in L.A. I was a local news producer, and the network news was doing a big series on animal poaching in Africa, and we did a local tie-in. We worked contacts in the Asian community, and we bought the rhino horn, and a leopard skin, and some absolutely disgusting stuff from a bear’s gall bladder or something. We threw the bear stuff down the toilet, and the leopard skin we gave to a museum, but I didn’t know what to do with the powder. I just sort of ... had it.”