Columbo: Grassy Knoll

  Columbo: The Grassy Knoll

  William Harrington

  A Tom Docherty Associates Book

  Contents

  Also by William Harrington

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  “Columbo is a wonderful character, a triumph of human low-tech—smarts and persistence—in a high-tech world. I love Columbo.”

  —Barbara D’Amato, author of

  HARD LUCK and HARD TACK

  * * *

  “O ye of little faith! That rumpled raincoat is as convincing in the mind’s eye as it is one the small screen. Everybody’s favorite police detective catches the squeal when an acerbic TV talk-show host is shot dead just inside his door. True to television form, we know from the outset that the killers are his ex and her love, a TV producer. Harrington manufactures a perfectly plausible connection between the slaying and the Kennedy assassination, which Columbo duly, deftly dopes out. And oh, just one more thing… Let there be a sequel.”

  —The New York Daily News

  Columbo mysteries by Tor Books

  * * *

  Columbo: The Grassy Knoll

  Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders*

  (*forthcoming)

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  COLUMBO: THE GRASSY KNOLL

  Copyright © 1993 by MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA Inc., all rights reserved. Based on the Universal Television Series COLUMBO, created by Richard Levinson and William Link.

  * * *

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  * * *

  Cover art by Dan Gonzalez

  * * *

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10010

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  ISBN: 0-812-53024-1

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 93-26555

  First edition: November 1993

  First mass market edition: July 1994

  Printed in the United States of America

  One

  1

  In spite of every effort to clean up the air in Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 2, was a smoggy day. No clouds diminished the force of the fierce bright sunlight on the smog layer. Down inside the smog, the white light was oppressive; dispersed by the smog it came from all directions; there was no shade and no turning away from glaring white light Sepulchral voices on every television channel warned of the health hazard and repeated endlessly what Angelenos should do: stay inside as much as possible, avoid exertion, leave cars at home, and so forth and so forth and so forth. All day people were irritated and irritable. Only in late afternoon did a wind off the Pacific rush in and dissipate the layer. By four o’clock or a little after, the sun became a point of fire in a blue sky, and Angelenos began to breathe.

  The irritation remained. People whose eyes, noses, and throats have burned all day do not become abruptly cheerful when the air clears. There was a statistical increase in automobile accidents that day—not because drivers could not see but because they were aggravated and aggressive. The number of street crimes increased also, as did the number of murders, beyond what was statistically likely to occur on any day.

  But the murder that would occur on Hollyridge Road that night was neither due to smog nor statistically predictable.

  At 6:30 the producer, assistant producer, and director of The Paul Drury Show were sitting around a table in a conference room at television station KWLF Los Angeles, themselves struggling to overcome a persistent peevishness. They had turned down the volume on the monitor hanging from the wall at one end of the long room, but the smog and street crime and accidents dominated the station’s evening news being fed live to the monitor.

  “Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy…” sighed Alicia Graham Drury.

  “Nobody asked me,” said Tim Edmonds.

  Tim Edmonds was the producer of The Paul Drury Show. Alicia Graham Drury was assistant producer. She had been assistant producer when she was Alicia Graham, continued during the two years of her marriage to Paul Drury, and remained assistant producer after the divorce. Tim Edmonds was the show’s second producer and had been with it three years.

  “I counted it up,” said Marvin Goldschmidt, the newly hired director. “This is the forty-eighth show Paul has done on the Kennedy assassination. I went through the book and counted. The forty-goddamn-eighth!”

  “Argue with Paul,” said Edmonds. “Argue with the ratings.”

  “All right,” said Goldschmidt, surrendering. “Who’s Blake Emory?”

  “He is an assassination researcher,” said Alicia. “What the hell is an assassination researcher?” asked Goldschmidt. This was his first month as director of The Paul Drury Show, and he had not yet picked up a full working knowledge of the vocabulary.

  “An assassination researcher,” said Tim, “can be anyone from a dogged detective who’s never given up the idea that he can solve the mystery of the Kennedy assassination and has spent years working on it—to some asshole who’s read three books about it.”

  “Which kind is Emory?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tim. “You can bet Paul knows.”

  “He’ll have Emory’s name in the computer,” said Alicia dryly.

  “Paul’s computer,” said Tim, “is the world’s largest collection of assassination minutiae.”

  “Of minutiae of every kind,” said Goldschmidt. “I couldn’t believe him last night, contradicting Tommy Lasorda on how many baseball players have ever hit .400—and then naming them.”

  “That’s not exactly an accident, Marv,” said Alicia. “It’s part of Paul’s technique to chase down a fact or statistic, then turn the conversation on the show toward an opportunity to use it.”

  “The form-u-la, the form-u-la,” sang Tim. “We must never tinker with the form-u-la.”

  “I know / wouldn’t dare,” said Goldschmidt.

  Marvin Goldschmidt was thirty-four years old. He had been hired by Paul Drury to replace a director who had been with the show eighteen months, because Drury had grown tired of the old director. “Got stale,” he’d said. Goldschmidt had impressed him by his work on a Los Angeles morning game show, and Drury had surprised everyone by calling in the director of a local game show to be director of a syndicated news-interview show.

  Goldschmidt was a balding, diminutive young man, awed by Drury and deferential to him. He wore dark-framed spectacles. At first he had worn suits on the set. Then, seeing how everyone else dressed, he had begun to come to work in blue jeans and sweatshirts. Drury had given him a gray sweatshirt with bold black lettering—director—and usually he wore that, as he did today.

  Alicia Graham Drury was a handsome woman, six feet tall or maybe a little more. Her dark brows arched over arresting brown eyes that were her most striking feature—she could fix them on another person’s eyes with the cold concentration of a snake. Forty-three years old, she had been married twice, once to Paul Drury, and had never borne a child. She was known in the television industry as capable and dedicated: a weather girl
at first, then a street correspondent, briefly a Los Angeles news anchor, finally an assistant producer. She had moved around, from one station to another, one show to another, as was routine in the industry. For six years she had worked at KABC, and so had network affiliation. She had come to The Paul Drury Show at its inception, and had been with it longer than anyone but the star himself.

  Tim Edmonds was forty-five years old. His blond hair was slowly turning white. He had played football for UCLA in the sixties and still had the muscular, broad-shouldered body of a defensive back. He had not been drafted by a professional team, so had gone on to a graduate degree in television production. He inherited a small fortune shortly after he gained his master’s degree and used it to establish Tim Edmonds Productions.

  TEP, as it was called, had produced several successful shows, especially sports shows concentrating on sports like soccer, softball, volleyball, and billiards, which were not dominated by the networks. The Paul Drury Show was not a TEP show but a Wulf Network show. Tim was producer by virtue of a contract between TEP and Wulf.

  “Who besides this Blake Emory?” asked Goldschmidt.

  “There’s a man who will defend the Warren Commission Report,” said Alicia, “Professor John Trabue of the University of Texas. He takes the position that Oswald was the sole assassin and that’s that. Then there’s Jackson McGinnis, who claims he witnessed the assassination and saw a man on the Grassy Knoll shoot Kennedy.”

  “Any deviation from the formula?” asked the director.

  “No,” said Tim. “Paul will do the show. Paul is the show. See that the cameras catch his reactions. No matter what a guest is saying, it is not as important to the viewer as seeing Paul’s eyebrows go up or the comers of his mouth turn down. Watch him for the signal.”

  Everyone who worked on the show knew the signal. When Paul Drury was offscreen and touched his left earlobe with his left index finger, the director was to cut to the camera focused on him, immediately. Seeing himself on the monitor, Drury would then lift his eyebrows, turn down the comers of his mouth, nod or shake his head skeptically, and so on.

  He had another signal. When he touched his chin with his right index finger, the volume on a guest’s microphone was to be turned down, because Drury was about to override him. The guest’s microphone was never cut off, but his volume was turned so low that anything Drury wanted to say would be heard over him.

  The same was true of the volume on incoming telephone calls.

  The Paul Drury Show was meant to suggest a free exchange of ideas, but there was never an instant when Paul Drury was not in total control of what was said—even though the show was seen live in the East. He was a master at concealing his control. He appeared to allow others to talk and to respect their ideas. Actually, his entire attention was fixed on what he would say next and how he would interject it.

  Goldschmidt looked up at the monitor. The evening news was over. The cameras in the newsroom remained live, and in the conference room the screen showed workmen dismantling the news set and bringing in the set for The Paul Drury Show.

  They had an hour and a half before they went on the air, but Goldschmidt said, “Well, I suppose I better get out there and start kicking butt.” He was a meticulous director and would find plenty to occupy him until airtime.

  When the door closed and Alicia was alone with Tim, she shook her head. “Forty-eight. Forty-nine. Fifty. Sooner or later—”

  “Not tonight,” said Tim. “This isn’t the night.” She got up and went to the window, looking out on La Cienega Boulevard. “Or maybe it is,” she said. “Actually, this is the night.”

  “Yes…”

  He stood and came up behind her. He was shorter than she was, but he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. She put her arms around him and welcomed his kiss.

  2

  The last hour and a half before airtime was Paul Drury’s private time, spent in his locked office, where he would not take telephone calls. Most of his staff thought he took naps. Alicia knew better. Having been his wife, she knew he spent that time reviewing material from his files, phrasing and rephrasing questions and comments he would make on the air, and psyching himself up. He used the time to prepare himself for something that was by no means easy: being Paul Drury—that is, being the public persona of Paul Drury and making it look natural and easy.

  This evening he inserted a videotape into his VCR. He turned off the sound. He didn’t want to hear the narration. He knew what he would see on the screen. He had seen it hundreds of times. It never failed to move him. What it showed in all-too-vivid color was something that could not have happened, that was impossible—yet, had happened. He watched his own taped copy of the Abraham Zapruder film taken in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

  The film was on his tape twice: once at its normal speed, which ran in about twenty seconds, then one frame at a time, each frame on the screen for a full second.

  * * *

  The Lincoln limousine moved slowly along Elm Street. The young President grinned and waved from the open rear seat of the limousine. His thick brown hair moved in the wind. The longer hair of the young and beautiful Jacqueline Kennedy moved more, below her pink hat. The couple were pleasantly surprised to receive so cordial a welcome in Dallas, and their elation was plain on their faces.

  President Kennedy’s grin disappeared abruptly, and he grabbed at his throat with both hands. As the car moved, street signs intervened between the limousine and the Zapruder camera, but the sequence was all too plain.

  Mrs. Kennedy realized something was wrong. She turned toward her husband, her smile gone, replaced by a horrified stare. The President slumped toward her. Then suddenly the President’s head jerked convulsively, and a part of it exploded away.

  * * *

  It was impossible. It couldn’t have happened. Ten thousand theories had been advanced to explain it, but it remained impossible. It couldn’t have happened. It was a nightmare from which he, Paul Drury, would awaken. It was a nightmare from which the nation would awaken. President Kennedy was alive! He was in Washington! He was—

  Thirty years, almost. Almost thirty years.

  Drury switched off the tape as the one-second frames continued. He tipped his chair back and stared at the ceiling, taking a minute to adjust his emotions. Then he sat up and began to tap on the keys of his computer keyboard. An idea… He wanted to see if his files contained anything more…

  He was tired, though. Dammit, he was tired! Soon he would be fifty years old. He’d bought success—and paid a high price for it.

  3

  The studio audience for The Paul Drury Show didn’t get a warm-up. No one came out and told them jokes to fill the thirty minutes before airtime that they sat in the studio. They had nothing to look at but one another and the busy technicians moving cameras about on the floor as if they had never done this show before, tugging cables, moving lights. For those who had never seen it before it was fascinating, but the fascination did not endure. When they’d seen one camera moved they’d seen them all, and by broadcast time the audience was restive, touchy.

  Then—

  “Ladies and gentlemen! KWLF Los Angeles and the Wulf Network proudly present the one thousand one hundred sixteenth edition of The Paul Drury Show! And now, ladies and gentlemen, PAUL DRURY!”

  A black curtain parted, and Paul Drury stepped out into the glare of a spotlight. He stood there for a quarter of a minute or so, bowing in response to the applause of the studio audience, then strode to his right and took his seat in a high-backed black-leather armchair facing a black-leather couch on which his three guests would sit. As the applause continued, Alicia Drury came forward and clipped a microphone to the lapel of his slim double-breasted dark gray suit. This was an element of the form-u-la: that the technology of broadcasting was to be fully visible on the screen. The audience would see microphones clipped on the guests. The applause light came on, and they applauded the statuesque Alicia, recognizing her
as the former wife and longtime friend and associate of the host. She brought out his microphone and no other. He raised his right hand, and she hit it lightly with a fist, both of them grinning—another bit of the form-u-la.

  A tall glass stood on a small round table beside the armchair. It was an open secret, meant to be known to the audience, that the glass really did contain Scotch and soda, not ginger ale or iced tea. The guests too would have their drinks, on the low table before their couch. Attendants would walk onto the set and replace any glass that became empty—not during commercial breaks but during the show.

  On a twenty-six-inch-high pedestal lectern in front of Drury’s chair a ring binder lay open. Lying on the white pages was a pair of half glasses: reading glasses.

  Paul Drury was six feet five inches tall. An important element of his success was that he was a commanding figure and personality. His light brown hair was darkened by a hairdresser. The studio makeup artist darkened his eyebrows before he went on camera.

  A camera focused on Drury’s face. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in the low, mellifluous voice that was said to be another element of his success. “Welcome to the eleven hundred sixteenth show. We’re coming up on five years of five-nights-a-week shows shortly—which is four years and eleven months more than anybody ever thought we’d last.”