Murder Straight Up
- Автор: Горман Эд
- Серия: Jack Dwyer #3
- Год: 1986
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Press
- ISBN: 978-0-312-55325-8
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Murder Straight Up». Краткое содержание книги:
Murder Straight Up is an intense, gritty crime thriller that pits Dwyer against both the glittery world of television journalism and a sleazy, dangerous criminal underworld — with an innocent boy’s life hanging in the balance.
Who really engineered the death of the anchorman? Was it Kelly Ford, Channel 3’s aging, less-than-beloved news consultant? Or maybe her boss, Robert Fitzgerald, owner of a station whose ratings have declined almost to the point of bankruptcy? What about Mike Perry, pro-football player turned sports announcer, whose sturdy good looks help him hide a secret the victim knew all too well. Where does grizzly old Dev Roberts, Curtis’s co-anchor, fit in? Or Bill Hanratty, the singing weatherman?
Dwyer knows there’s a terrible secret haunting the news team. What is it? And what will all this mean to the ratings?
“Clone.”
“Yeah, like looking at a clone.”
“But he never said anything about them directly?”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention anything to you about a tape?”
“What kind of tape?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe an audiotape.”
An unlikely and beautiful grin parted her lips suddenly. “Audiotape. Oh, yeah. He was always talking about his tapes. That’s right.”
“What kind of tapes?”
“He said he wanted to be a writer someday but he didn’t know how to type very good, so he’d just put everything down on tape. He always got real high marks in English composition and stuff, especially when he wrote about his life. The teachers were always telling him he should keep on writing about himself because he was so good at it.”
I was beginning to see why Ross had been interested in the tapes — not the videotapes of Curtis’s interview with Stephen Chandler, but audiotapes that Chandler had kept as a diary. “Do you know where he kept his tapes?”
“In his room, I suppose.”
“I imagine by now they’ve moved his stuff.”
“Yeah. It’s probably in the basement.”
“Why would it be there?”
“That’s where Karl moved Stephen’s clothes and stuff. He was going to give them all away but I talked him out of it. It’s kind of nice for some reason, having them around I mean.”
God, I liked her. “How about taking me to the basement?”
“Sure. You think Karl will mind?”
“Probably. But let’s go anyway.”
The grin again.
The basement was divided into sections with pine board and chicken wire. It smelled of dust and dampness, but not unpleasantly so. When you grew up in basements like this, you find yourself missing them in this era of ranch-style houses.
Stephen Chandler’s clothes took up one small corner. Just touching the clothes — the suede jackets and pants, the silky shirts — I saw why it was so odd that Stephen should have had things like this. There was no way he could have afforded them. Legally anyway. I wondered if he hadn’t been helping the twins do something that got to be too much for him, like dealing drugs maybe, and then killed himself when guilt and fear overtook him. Stephen had clearly never been very stable.
She found a box of tapes in the back, a neat stack of cassettes in a shoe box. She handed them over sadly and with reverence. “God, don’t lose these, okay?”
“Don’t worry.” I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “When this is all over, I’m going to take you and Mitch out to a great dinner.”
“You really think Mitch is going to get out?”
“You bet he is.”
Fifteen minutes later, a familiar voice on the other end of the phone was saying, “Good morning, Ad World.”
“Good morning yourself. I’ve been thinking about you,” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about you, too. I’m going to do us both a favor and really resolve this thing one way or another with my ex-husband and to hell with Rex.”
“To hell with Rex?” I said.
“Yeah. I think all his theorizing — not to mention his subtle little sexual advances — is just messing me up all the more.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“Were you ever jealous of Rex?”
“All the time.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Jeeze, you really are a jealous person, aren’t you?”
“It’s because I’m so insecure.”
“What are you insecure about?”
“You want to start with the As and work through the alphabet?”
She laughed. “Dwyer, you are really a fine man, you really are.”
“Thank you. Now I want to ask you for some help.” I told her about the tapes I’d just found, and I told her about where they might lead us.
“God,” she said.
“So could you spend the rest of the day listening to them? I’ve got too many appointments.”
“Sure. I didn’t have much to do anyway.”
“Good. I’ll drop them by.”
“Thanks for asking me.” She sounded as if she’d just won an Academy Award.
“Thanks yourself,” I said.
20
Media Associates was housed in a three-story red-brick building that had been refurbished into a rather trendy showplace. Volvos, BMWs and Audis disguised as Mercedeses filled the lot that took up three sides. Among Ross’s files on the Channel 3 people I’d found some very interesting documents. I brought them with me in a briefcase.
A sneering guard in a military-type security uniform checked me in with a trace of pity in his eyes for the ten-year-old Harris Tweed jacket I wore. The military ambience continued with a stern-looking receptionist, who forced me to sign in and wear a little plastic badge with visitor stamped on it. She escorted me down a long hall to Kelly Ford’s office.
On the way we passed maybe a dozen young men in look-alike three-piece suits. They exuded that arrogance that comes to people who spend their lives at superficial tasks for far too much reward. They protected their secrets by wearing corporate camouflage — didn’t any of these fuckers get their shoes scuffed? — and saving their passion not for bed or art but for advancement. They were toadies, and the worst thing of all was that they didn’t realize they were toadies.
When I appeared in her doorway, Kelly Ford was working at a big IBM electric typewriter with the skill of a champion secretary. When she heard me say “Hi” and turned my way, there was a sad little smile pulling at her mouth. She was embarrassed. “Well, hi,” she said far too effusively. She even got up and shot out her hand for me to shake. “Why don’t you sit down and let me finish this letter? Would you mind?”
What could I say? As I sat there looking around her small but very well-appointed office — just once I’d like to see one of the big corporations hang silk paintings of dogs and Elvis and stuff like that — I realized she’d hurt my feelings. What we’d done last night had been a little understandable grudge fucking. I was feeling sorry for myself about Donna Harris, she was feeling sorry for herself about Robert Fitzgerald. Our respective griefs should have bound us together in at least a tenuous way. But all she had for me this morning was remorse disguised as officiousness.
She was rolling along and I couldn’t resist. “How you doing?”
She stopped typing and looked up. “Me?”
“Sure. You.”
“I’m doing just fine. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing fine, too.”
She looked perplexed and irritated. “Well, that’s nice.” Then she went back to her typing.
It was a lovely way to spend ten minutes, and by the time she paid attention to me again, I felt as badly about last night as she did. We’d grudge fucked, all right, except by the dawn’s early light the guy she had a grudge against was me.
She turned around and took a big corporate smile from the drawer and fitted it expertly over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, nodding to the typewriter. “Just had a little work I needed to finish up.”