She didn’t need to learn, so brutally, that the man she loved had murdered her father by way of a cold-blooded staged suicide. And there was always the possibility that Borensen, faced with my knowledge of his wrongdoing, might go for a gun, giving me the pleasure of blowing the insides of his head all over some very expensive shelved books, though their leather bindings should clean off nicely.
No, none of it was anything I wanted Gwen to see. I’m just too considerate a guy for that.
“Business talk bores me,” she said, hand on the knob. “So I’ll leave you two to it. Let me just check on Leif and make sure he’s not in the middle of anything.”
She slipped into the study, leaving the door ajar, and perhaps three seconds later came the scream.
High-pitched and bloodcurdling, turning sharp and shrill as it resounded off the high ceiling of the library-like room.
I went in fast, with my .45 in my fist. But almost immediately I stuffed the weapon back under my arm, because it wouldn’t be needed.
At a small writing desk in the far corner, Leif Borensen, in a brown terry-cloth bathrobe, sat slumped with his head to one side, in a pool of congealing blood, displaying the small powder-burned hole in his temple, his hand, palm up, limply near a small .22 handgun — a Smith and Wesson Escort.
Chapter Ten
Pat stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the death scene, close enough to tap Borensen on his shoulder. I was sitting across the big book-lined room on one of the comfortable brown-leather chairs where I’d first spoken with my late client. I had an ankle on a knee and was smoking a cigarette. I’d already had my own good close look, waiting for Pat to get here.
I figured correctly that he’d be home by now, so the way I called the crime in was to phone him at his apartment. I knew he wouldn’t want any other homicide dick catching this one. As it was, he’d beat everybody else here, but now a small army of NYPD lab boys awaited access in the vast hallway, as well as a photographer and three plainclothes guys from the Homicide Division. Uniforms were here and there, standing just outside the study and posted variously, in the waterfall entry area by the elevators for example, and downstairs keeping the liveried doorman company. A policewoman, plainclothes, was sitting with the distraught Gwen in the kitchen.
Pat turned and frowned at me. “Bored, Mike?”
For a guy who’d probably collapsed on his couch a few hours ago after one of his longer days, he looked pretty fresh. Crisp blue suit and blue-and-red tie, freshly shaved, hair brushed back. And from where I sat, you couldn’t see his bloodshot eyes.
“No,” I said. “I just know when somebody is telling me to go screw myself.”
He frowned at that and walked over to the central area of chairs on the Oriental rug. “You shouldn’t smoke.”
“Yeah, that’s what Velda says.”
“No, I mean at a crime scene. Put it out.”
I put it out on an ashtray on the glass-topped coffee table that displayed Playbills from various Martin Foster productions. Pat sat opposite me with that coffee table between us. He was frowning, staring at me with his gray-blue eyes. Bloodshot gray-blue eyes.
“Mind explaining,” he said, “why you think someone is telling you to go screw yourself?”
I shrugged. I felt nicely comfortable in the over-stuffed chair. “It’s not just me being told that. You’re getting the big ‘up yours,’ too.”
“Tell me.”
“You want me to spell it out?”
“Yes.”
“That’s no suicide.”
“You make it as phony.”
“And so do you, Pat.”
“So what is it, then?”
“Well, it’s homicide, of course. But a cute one — a replication of another phony suicide. The killer staged this not in order to fool anybody, but to laugh his ass off at us. The body is positioned just like Foster’s. The wound is identical — that same ninety-degree angle that has the bullet going straight through one temple and out the other. The weapon is not only the same caliber but the identical make and model. No suicide note. Informal attire, in Foster’s case pajamas, in Borensen’s a bathrobe. He isn’t even wearing slippers.”
“Why would a killer do this?”
Some edge colored my tone. “You aren’t listening, Pat. Maybe you hear me, but you are not goddamn listening. The killer is thumbing his nose at us.”
His voice had grown very quiet. “And you know who that killer is?”
“I do. I can’t give you his name and his address or even his description, but I know who and what we’re dealing with here.”
He shifted in his comfy chair. “Are you trying to tell me we’ve been looking at the wrong suspect? That Borensen didn’t drive that hit-and-run vehicle? That he didn’t hire your contract killing?”
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t work such long hours, buddy. It’s softening your skull. Borensen was guilty of all those things, and Foster’s rigged suicide. There’s some question as to whether he did the latter himself or hired it done, but otherwise... Pat, I can’t do any more of your thinking for you on this unless you’re prepared to put me on the city payroll.”
He put an elbow on a knee and ran a hand over his face. The poor bastard was exhausted. He was caught up in a case so confusing and convoluted, it was getting to him. All the way.
Then his hand dropped away and his expression said he got the drift. Belatedly, but I knew that detective’s mind of his was in there somewhere.
“This is your late-night caller,” he said, eyes wide, a fist chest high. “This is the work of the hitman Borensen hired, only now that we’re really digging into the case, he’s tying off loose ends.”
“Give the man a cigar,” I said. “Of course, it’s tough to go after a contract killer when the brains of the guy who hired him are splattered on a desk.”
“It’s more than tying off loose ends, though.” Pat’s eyes may have been bloodshot, but they were alive with thought now. “This is part of his crazy desire to pit himself against you, Mike. It’s his sick game, a contest, killer against killer. And going to the trouble of handling Borensen’s ‘suicide’ in a way that shouts that it’s been staged is... man, it’s crazy.”
“But with method in the madness,” I said.
Pat sat forward and the eyes were cold now, hard. “And you’re right, Mike, he’s telling us both to go screw ourselves. I’m sure you’ll deal with it in some colorful and quasi-legal fashion, but me? I’m treating this as a homicide scene. Our big shot assassin will have screwed up somewhere, and we’ll nail him.”
I got to my feet. Shortly I would not be wanted here.
“I’m not so sure he screwed up anywhere, old buddy,” I told him. “This one is a pro among pros — a bat-shit crazy one, maybe, but a pro.”
And as for nailing him, that was Hammer’s job.
I joined Gwen in the kitchen, which was white with black touches, modern as tomorrow, and predictably spacious. She sat at a Formica gray-topped table for four, which I figured she and her father (and later her fiancé) had rarely if ever used. An informal dining room adjacent was surely where rich people in an apartment like this would take their meals.
The policewoman, with the build of a prison guard but a pleasant face that conveyed sympathy, was seated next to Gwen. In front of both were coffee cups, their dark liquid untouched.
I sat down, giving the policewoman a look and head toss that said I wanted some privacy with the girl. The policewoman, who knew I was Captain Chambers’ crony, merely nodded back and stepped outside the kitchen.