Time to Murder and Create

He had to be Prager's boy. It just had to add up that way. Either he had somehow missed the news that Prager was dead and out of the picture, or he was tied in close to Prager and wanted me dead out of spite. Or he had been hired through an intermediary, somehow, and didn't know that Prager was a part of it.

Something, anything, because otherwise—

I didn't want to think about the otherwise.

I had been telling Birnbaum the truth. I had a hunch, and the more I thought about it the more I believed in it, and at the same time I kept wanting to be wrong.

So I sat around the station house and read newspapers and drank endless cups of weak coffee and tried not to think about all of the things I couldn't possibly avoid thinking about. Somewhere along the line Birnbaum went home, after he'd briefed another detective named Guzik, and around nine thirty Guzik came over to me and said they had a make from Washington.

He read it off the teletype sheet. "Lundgren, John Michael. Date of birth fourteen March 'forty-three.

Place of birth San Bernardino, California. Whole trail of arrests here, Matt.

Living off immoral earnings, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, grand larceny. He did local bits all up and down the West Coast, pulled some hard time in Quentin."

"He pulled a one-to-five in Folsom," I said. "I don't know whether they called it extortion or larceny.

That would have been fairly recent."

He looked up at me. "I thought you didn't know him."

"I don't. He was working a badger game. Arrested in San Diego, and his partner turned state's evidence and got off. Sentence suspended."

"That's more detail than I've got here."

I asked him if he had a cigarette. He said he didn't smoke. He turned to ask if anybody had a cigarette, but I told him to forget it. "Get somebody with a steno pad," I said. "There's a lot to tell."

I gave them everything I could think of. How Beverly Ethridge had worked her way in and out of the world of crime. How she had married well and turned herself back into the society type she had been in the first place. How Spinner Jablon had pieced it all together on the strength of a newspaper photo and turned it into a neat little blackmail operation.

"I guess she stalled him for a while," I said. "But it kept being expensive, and he kept pushing for bigger money. Then her old boyfriend Lundgren came east and showed her a way out. Why pay blackmail when it's so much easier to kill the blackmailer? Lundgren was a pro as a criminal but an amateur as a killer. He tried a couple of different methods on Spinner. Tried to get him with a car, then wound up hitting him over the head and putting him in the East River. Then he tried for me with the car."

"And then with the knife."

"That's right."

"How did you get into it?"

I explained, leaving out the names of Spinner's other blackmail victims.

They didn't like that much, but there wasn't anything much they could do about it. I told them how I had staked myself out as a target and how Lundgren had taken the bait.

Guzik kept interrupting to tell me I should have given everything to the cops right off, and I kept telling him it was something I had not been willing to do.

"We'd've handled it right, Matt. Jesus, you talk about Lundgren's an amateur, shit, you ran around like an amateur yourself and almost got your ass in the wringer. You wound up going up against a knife with nothing but your hands, and it's dumb luck you're alive this minute. The hell, you ought to know better, you were a cop fifteen years, and you act like you don't know what the department's all about."

"How about the people who didn't kill Spinner? What happens to them if I hand you the whole thing right off the bat?"

"That's their lookout, isn't it? They come into it with dirty hands. They got something to hide, that shouldn't be getting in the way of a murder investigation."

"But there was no investigation. Nobody gave a shit about Spinner."

"Because you were withholding evidence."

I shook my head. "That's horseshit," I said. "I didn't have evidence that anybody killed Spinner. I had evidence that he was blackmailing several people.

That was evidence against Spinner, but he was dead, and I didn't think you were particularly anxious to take him out of the morgue and throw him in a cell. The minute I had murder evidence I put it in your hand. Look, we could argue all day.

Why don't you put out a pickup order on Beverly Ethridge?"

"And charge her with what?"

"Two counts of conspiracy to murder."

"You've got the blackmail evidence?"

"In a safe place. A safe-deposit box. I can bring it here in an hour."

"I think I'll come along with you and get it."

I looked at him.

"Maybe I want to see just what's in the envelope, Scudder."