Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky (18 page)

    “That’s easy! In order of importance: The network and their affiliate TV stations; Kenovarnie’s; Tunning’s Travel Tickets; and Monty Fairmont Productions. That’s just for starters. As for me, I’m actually way down the list with all the hundreds of thousands of enemies that Dune-Harrigan went out of his way to make during his lifetime. Making enemies was his hobby. To paraphrase Will Rogers: He never met a man he didn’t hate!”

    The look on poor old Borne’s face was a classic. He was obviously right out of his depth. Despite my anger, I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the poor bastard. I’d try to help him out, but I’d throw in a few jabs to mitigate my anger while I was about it.

    “Who benefits from the professor’s demise? The ratings – number one! Thanks to headlines in all the papers and prime coverage on all the TV and radio channels, the ratings tonight will go right through the roof.
80 Questions with Sedge Cornbeck
will knock every other show off the air.”

    Borne resumed his pacing. “Speaking collectively,” he mused, “you can’t lay the blame on a television network.”

    “Who benefits most? That’s what you asked. In order: Arthur ‘Boss’ Kent, owner and senior executive producer. Also Monty Fairmont and his partner, Ace Jellis, whose production company is producing the show. Monty won’t be sorry he missed out on Dune-Harrigan’s money. The bank will be begging him to quintuple his overdraft. Also Peter Tunning, whose Total Service Travel Plan will soon be a household word. Also Sedge Cornbeck and all the technicians who work on the show. Monty will sign them all up for long-term contracts. And that’s just a partial list of who benefits.”

    Borne stopped his pacing right in front of me. “Your answer surprises me,” he said. “I thought we’d now excluded your Monty Fairmont. Can’t you see there’s one person who benefits even more than Fairmont and all these others? One person, living literally from hand to mouth on a small pension plus a meager income from four or five popular but low-priced books. Suddenly that person has money in the bank, thanks to a well-paid, secure job with plenty of prestige and all that goes with it.”

    I didn’t lose my temper. I was wise to all the build-up. I felt like screaming that for God’s sake we’d already dealt with me and excluded me. “You haven’t heard the latest,” I smiled. “Sedge isn’t going on next week. Still in shock. Guess who Monty Fairmont asked to take his place?”

    Borne looked down at me. “I’m glad you’re being frank.”

    “That’s the way I was trained.”

    “In Miami?”

    “No, I started off in the military police.”

    “Why’d you leave?”

    “I was invalided out.”

    “My information is you threw yourself on a live grenade. You’re a hero.”

    Asking a question for which he already knew the answer was a typical police track, but I didn’t let it worry me. “Just a quick-acting fool,” I replied. “That’s the way I was trained: Act first, think later. Besides I’m not fat enough to smother any sort of a blast. I whipped the mattress off a bed, sheets, blankets and all, threw that lot on the grenade and then upended the bed itself while I dived down a laundry chute. I was pretty lucky at that. I don’t need to listen to any weather forecasts. They’re wrong half the time anyway.”

    Borne permitted himself a wan smile. He resumed his pacing. “Another two aspects of this murder puzzle me, Merryll. We’ve been checking the names of the previous contestants you gave us. Three of the addresses are false.”

    Now it was my turn to stare at
him
in surprise. “That isn’t possible. If you’re a chosen contestant, you’ll have received at least five letters. They don’t ring you up. And you don’t ring them except to confirm that you received the letters and are acting on their instructions. And while you can use your own car to get to the studio, the TV people prefer you use their taxi service, so that they know exactly where you are. So that’s five letters gone to each of three false addresses? Impossible!”

    “All the contestants turn up? No last-minute substitutions?”

    “That I wouldn’t know. You could check with Peter Tunning and Total Service. They give out travel vouchers to the unlucky contestants.”

    “We checked that. As you say, Tunning doesn’t give cash to non-winners, just discount vouchers. And way more than half of them have not been collected.”

    “I can understand that. A discount voucher is actually a request for money – admittedly less money that you might otherwise pay – but it’s no free ticket. In fact, just the opposite.”

    “How are you getting on with the missing tapes for these shows?”

    “I’ve got ads running now. Would you believe, although I made it quite clear that I was only interested in
80 Questions
, I’ve received offers for just about every TV quiz show but
80 Questions
. True, until now, I understand that
80 Questions
hasn’t been what you’d call a popular show. Everyone at the station is mighty close-lipped about it, but I’d be surprised if it attracted more than one per cent of the total viewers. And I know for a fact that until now, it’s been a mighty hard sell even to give free tickets away for our taping sessions.”

    “You won’t have any trouble now.”

    “But now we’re not taping it before a live audience! You just can’t win in the TV game. It’s just impossible.”

    “And how much is the quiz worth?” he asked.

    I blinked. He knew as well as I did. “Eighty thousand dollars.”

    “You know how much the average small-time crim makes in a year? Your average professional housebreaker?”

    “After paying fences, protection and lawyers, I’d say not more than two hundred a week.”

    “And you’ve got $80,000 up for grabs. Another thing that worries me is that both you and Mr. Tunning told me that Miss Williams had a current, steady boyfriend.”

    “That’s right.”

    “Well, where is he? Why hasn’t he come forward? Have you ever seen him?”

    “Only from a distance and wearing a cycle helmet, but his name is Gino and I’m sure you can get a full description from the guy who runs the markets in the same building that Tunning occupies.”

    “Where is this young blade now? That’s what I want to know. Where is he, and why hasn’t he come forward?”

    “That’s easy. He has a record. So, if I were you I’d go straight down to the markets and interview the manager – so long as you’re not afraid of heights.”

    “Maybe he’s just frightened?”

    “Or maybe he’s dead?” I suggested..

24

    “My friend and I would like to rent a stall,” I pretended to the nothing-over-two-dollars man. “Who do we see?”

    “No more spaces,” he grumbled.

    “Who’s asking you? Who’s the boss?”

    “Bill Avati.”

    “That’s good. Now where do we find him?”

    Pointing: “Up them stairs. It’s a long climb. And mind yer heads!” he chuckled.

    Two-dollars was right. The stairs finally led to a remarkably low-ceilinged walkway along which both Borne and I had to crouch like emus before finally ending up at a closed wooden door. Taking no notice of the red-chalked “Private”, we gave the door a peremptory rap, pushed it open and stomped into the room beyond.

    It was a room with the same low ceiling as its passageway, but no walls. No walls at all. Spread out way, way below were the crowded markets – rows upon rows of claustrophobic stalls, surrounded, besieged and intersected by hordes of scurrying, foraging bargain hunters.

    A swarthy Italian in a bright red shirt sat behind a rickety old card table. There was no room for a desk and how could you get it up the almost endless stairs anyway?

    Upon closer inspection, the Italian was playing solitaire with a stained, greasy, impossibly dog-eared deck of cards, his three-legged stool narrowly teetering on the brink of the bustling panorama way, way below.

    He didn’t bother glancing up from his cards. “Whatever you sell, I’m not buying.”

    I kneeled down on the flimsy wooden floor. “I’m a private detective.” I fished out my wallet to show him my nice, now-up-to-date license, but he wasn’t interested. He still didn’t look up. So I took out a $20 dollar bill and placed it on top of a greasy pile of kings. Quick as a flash, his hand conjured the note into his shirt pocket. Still, he didn’t look up.

    “Looking for a young man named Gino. Rides a Yamaha motorcycle. Black leather jacket. Says he works here.”

    “You, her dad?”

    “Yes.”

    “Gino get your girl into trouble?”

    “Yes.”

    Red shirt laughed so much, I thought he would fall off his stool. His teeth were incredibly ugly and misshapen. No wonder he didn’t want to show his face.

    “Where’s Gino?” I asked angrily.

    “You tell me,” he spluttered, “I want to know too.”

    “He works here?” I persisted.

    This innocent question set off another bout of shaking laughter, even more teeteringly dangerous than the first. “Gino works here is right,” he finally gasped. “Gino is a thief.”

    “A shoplifter?”

    Red shirt’s deep eyes opened wide in surprise.

    “He steals merchandise from the stalls?” I explained.

    “No,” he laughed.

    “A pickpocket?”

    More laughter. But this time accompanied by an emphatic shaking of the head (as well as the rest of his body).

    I had a few more suggestions, like skipped out on his rent and cheating at cards, but I’d grown weary of this game. “Tell me!”

    “He sells things he does not have. His time. His love. To the young ladies. They lend him money. He does not repay. Gino never pays. Gino take, but Gino never pays. He does not work here. We run him off. Ten time. Twenty time. Always he come back. This last time, we show him we mean what we say.” A knife suddenly flashed in his hand. He made a quick sideways stab and the knife vanished as miraculously as it had appeared. “We hope he is dead.”  

25

Friday, another conference in Mr. Kent’s office. Again, I was late. As I entered, Kent was in the middle of laying down the law to our sponsor, Peter Tunning. “Damn it all, Peter! When you and Monty came to me with this poltroon quiz, did I ask if you’d signed Jim Carrey or Molly Ringwald or one of our nation’s top sports identities as quizmaster? Did I even ask what sort of animal-vegetable-mineral of a quiz you had in your mongrel little minds? No! I asked only one simple question. One simple question:
What’s the prize?
That’s all I asked.”

    “That’s true,” Monty Fairmont agreed.

    “That’s
very
true,” piped up Ace Jellis.

    “It is bad for Total Service,” argued Peter Tunning.

    “There’s only one damn thing that’s bad for Total Service, Peter: No wrinkle-proof ratings. And that equals no service!”

    “All publicity is good publicity,” agreed Monty.

    “
All
publicity!” emphasized Ace Jellis.

    “I had a nice long talk with the Assistant Commissioner just this morning,” Kent bragged. “He believes as I do, namely the only way to serve Justice is to continue with our show.”

    “That’s dead right!” agreed Monty.

    “Dead
right
indeed!” supplied Ace Jellis,

    “Someone out there wants us to stop,” Kent continued, “but whoever he or she is, we’ll soldier on regardless – and maybe that will even drive him or her into the open.”

    “You want further killings?” gasped Peter.

    “Next time, we’ll be ready for him, won’t we, Merryll?”

    “We sure will, Mr. Kent!” It was nice to be drawn into the conversation, even if somewhat belatedly.

    “How can Merryll help?” argued Peter. “If he is on camera, he is on camera!”

    “Best place for him!” Kent declared.

    “And he is also a future contestant!”