Columbo: Grassy Knoll Read online

  “Mr. Emory—”

  “I don’t think there’s much doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was something different from what the Warren Commission thought he was. For example, when Oswald was a marine he contracted gonorrhea. The Marine Corps medical report on that says specifically that he contracted the disease in the line of duty and it wasn’t his fault. Now, what duty could he have possibly been performing that would cause him to catch a venereal disease? What else besides intelligence work? He was an intelligence agent, and it is possible he was ordered to assassinate President Kennedy.”

  “The Warren Commission,” said Drury, “specifically found that Oswald was not an intelligence agent.”

  “The commission overlooked a lot of evidence,” said Emory. “A lot has come out that wasn’t available to the Warren Commission.”

  “The Warren Commission didn’t want the evidence,” said McGinnis. “The Warren Commission was part of the cover-up. After all, who was Earl Warren, anyway? A com-symp, as everybody knows.”

  Drury flipped pages in his ring binder. A murmur went through the studio audience, most of whom knew that flipping those pages usually meant that Paul Drury was about to crush someone. “I wasn’t going to bring this up, Mr. McGinnis,” he said, “but the employment files of the City of Dallas indicate you were not employed in the Street Sanitation Department on November 22, 1963, indeed that you were not hired by that department until August 1965.”

  “They got that mixed up,” McGinnis snorted, but his complaint was drowned out by applause from the studio audience.

  In the control booth. Bell asked Alicia, “If he knows the guy wasn’t there, why’d he bring him on the show?”

  “Don’t you watch the shows much?” she asked. “It’s something audiences love. He sets up a patsy, then shoots him down. McGinnis makes a pretty crude patsy, but that’s his role. Paul let him say something absolutely outrageous… Then WHACK!”

  “Comic relief,” Bell suggested scornfully.

  “Emotional release,” said Alicia.

  * * *

  Calls kept coming in. Calls were one of the most popular parts of The Paul Drury Show. Ideas the show would not have dared to dignify with guest invitations came in on the telephone lines. How Drury handled them, and how his guests did, gave the show its special, off-the-wall, entertaining flavor.

  Toronto: “Look. Marilyn Monroe was worth a hundred million to the people who owned her contract. Kennedy had her killed. Anybody who lost that much money was going to blow away the guy who made him lose it.”

  Stamford, Connecticut: “Have you ever heard of the Society of the Illuminati? Nothing happens those guys don’t sanction. You ought to read up on it.”

  Tampa, Florida: “If Bobby Kennedy had been elected President of the United States in 1968, he’d have used the power of the office to find out who really killed his brother and who covered up— which is why he was murdered.”

  Charleston, West Virginia: “When you put together the power of the Mafia, Wall Street, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the defense industries, and Fidel Castro… They could kill anybody and get away with it.”

  The end of the hour approached, and Drury broke for commercials. Afterward he summed up—

  “Mr. Jackson McGinnis has brought us an interesting new insight into the assassination—which unfortunately doesn’t seem to hold up. As was said by a young American student studying for the priesthood in Rome, in a college where students were supposed to speak only Latin, 'Haec opinio non tenet acquam.’ Even so, we are grateful to Mr. McGinnis for appearing and giving us his stories and his views. Who knows? He may yet prove right.

  “Mr. Blake Emory’s extensive research is interesting as always, and we are grateful to him, as we are grateful to Professor John Trabue who always capably represents the orthodox view of the Kennedy assassination.

  “We ourselves have been working for a long time on a documentary show based on all we have learned from these forty-eight hour-long shows. We are using a computer to assimilate a vast body of material. I am looking toward the actual thirtieth anniversary of the assassination to do a different kind of show, with pictures and commentary, that may change forever the way we look at the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

  “Tomorrow night our topic will be cigarette smoking, whether it’s as bad as they say and what demands nonsmokers are entitled to make on people who like to smoke. Our guests will be the Surgeon General of the United States, Mr. Stuart Milliken of the Tobacco Institute, and Renee Laurentan, world-known authority on social behavior.

  “Until then… remember to… USE YOUR HEAD! Paul Drury… GOOD NIGHT!”

  Two

  1

  As soon as the light went off on the camera, Drury ripped off his microphone and was up from his chair, striding off the set without a nod or a backward glance at his guests or the crew. As he rushed out of the studio and along the concrete-paved hall toward his dressing room, he jerked off his necktie. Inside the dressing room he slammed the door and began to throw off his clothes. He kicked off his black Gucci loafers at the same time that he was shrugging out of his jacket. He tossed everything aside, on a couch, on the floor: suit, shirt, underpants, socks… naked, he grabbed open the glass doors of a shower. His body gleamed with sweat. It streamed down him. He waited impatiently for the water to warm up so he could adjust it to something short of ice-cold; and as soon as it was ready he stepped under the gushing stream and closed the glass doors.

  “Orrghh!” he blubbered into the water striking his face. “Jee-zuss! Shlooof! Orrghh!”

  The dressing-room door opened. A diminutive young woman entered, carrying a tall glass filled with ice and seltzer water, with only a touch of Scotch. She. went to the shower, opened the door, and handed Drury the glass. He took the drink in his left hand, seized her wrist with his right, and held her while he drew her halfway into the shower and kissed her on the mouth.

  “Karen! Oh, God!”

  When he let go of her, her clothes were wet, her hair was wet, and the floor under her feet was wet.

  Drury tipped back the glass and drank half its contents. He paused for a moment, then drank the rest of it and handed her the glass.

  She took the glass to his dressing table and put it down. She snatched a towel from a rack and dried her face and hair. That done, she began to gather up Drury’s clothes. She did it gingerly. Even the gray suit was damp with his sweat.

  Karen Bergman had an uncertain title and position in Paul Drury Productions. On the screen credits she was listed as “Assistant to Mr. Drury.” She was a sort of secretary and did a little typing. She ran endless errands. Her job, really, was to be around, within call, to do whatever he wanted done. When they were alone, she called him Paul; and when they were not she called him Mr. Drury.

  She was a drama graduate of UCLA and still hoped, at twenty-seven, to land a dramatic role, preferably in a series. Her only appearances on camera, though, had been walk-ons with no more than a line or two to speak. When Drury spotted her and offered her this job she had been working as a curtain-puller on a morning game show, where her function had been to dress in a tight black skirt and well-filled white blouse and wiggle onto the set on cue to pull the cord that opened a curtain and displayed what a contestant had won—this accompanied by a squeal of surprise and delight if the contestant did not squeal convincingly enough. She had called herself the third-string Vanna White. On The Paul Drury Show, she was the blond young woman who came out and clipped on the guests’ microphones. Also, she brought out his fresh Scotch and soda if he needed it. Occasionally he leaned over and brushed a quick kiss across her cheek, on camera. Audiences seemed to think that was a generous, paternal gesture.

  The black skirt and white blouse had followed her here. Drury liked the costume, and she wore it, with only minor variations, on the set and off. The skirt remained tight, but not so much that she had to walk unnaturally as she’d had to do on the game show. Her hair was artificially lightened. Her e
yes were blue, her face very regular, without a flaw. Her figure was of course stunning—compact, since she was not more than five feet four. Drury had told her once she would have succeeded better as an actress if there had been something—just anything— wrong with her.

  Marvin Goldschmidt knocked once and came in. “Magnifique!” he said.

  “There was too goddamn much light on McGinnis,” said Drury from the shower. “He looked like a light from heaven had descended on him and he was about to start climbing Jacob’s ladder.”

  “I thought so too,” said Goldschmidt, “but the light-level guy said no, and I must say it looked okay on the monitors. It went out on the air okay. Just looked like that in the studio.”

  “If you say so. Take a look at the tape. Be sure.”

  “Got it,” said Goldschmidt.

  Tim and Alicia came in, without knocking. “Looked good,” said Tim.

  Alicia sat down on the couch. She said nothing. She planted a hard, censorious stare for a moment on Karen’s wet blouse, which was transparent, showing her bra. Karen saw the stare and returned one of her own, defiantly.

  Drury threw back the shower door and stood wet and stark naked before his producer, assistant producer, director, and assistant. Karen handed him a towel, and he began to dry himself. “Guys and gals are working on that tobacco crap,” he said to Tim. “Right?”

  “Right,” said Tim.

  “Well, be damned sure they do. When I come in tomorrow afternoon, I want a full briefing, no shit, no shortcuts. I was on Dealey Plaza when Kennedy was shot, but I wasn’t with Sir Walter Raleigh when he discovered tobacco. That guy from the Institute will have his case researched and briefed, and he’ll be ready to field any question. I’ve gotta be in the same position. No sleep tonight.”

  “There’s a limit, Paul,” said Alicia.

  “They can go to bed when we go on the air tomorrow night,” said Drury, rubbing himself vigorously with his big white towel. “And sleep till Monday. Friday night’s the Shirley MacLaine thing, and I don’t need research for that. That’s personality stuff, and I can handle that without anything besides the minimum curriculum vitae on each guest, but tomorrow night has got to be meticulously prepared.”

  Karen handed him a pair of dark blue slingshot underpants, and he stepped into them and pulled them up. He dropped his towel into the water just outside the shower stall.

  “You committed to that show on the abortion pill?” Tim asked.

  “What’m I gonna do?” asked Drury. “Our business is to sort out fact from fiction. Let’s just be damned sure we’re neutral on the subject. Hey! On that show, don’t pencil in any dumb farts. Two guests, or four. Scientifically respectable. Evenly divided. Okay?”

  Tim nodded, and Alicia nodded.

  “So okay, guys. Gotta get a bite of din-din and some sleep. See ya tomorrow.”

  Karen handed Drury a pair of socks, and he sat down to pull them on.

  2

  In the hall outside, Tim and Alicia encountered Bell. He confronted them grimly.

  “Tonight.”

  Tim nodded. “Okay. Tonight. Tonight’s the plan. We’re ready to go.”

  “Except that the guy’s unpredictable,” said Alicia. “If he decides to sleep tonight in Karen’s apartment, the plan’s down the drain. Other than for something like that—”

  "Tonight!” grunted Bell. “We’ve put it off too goddamn long.”

  3

  Hollyridge Road is a rough-paved narrow twisting strip of asphalt running along a high ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains. It is bounded on both sides by expensive homes, one of which was the home of Paul Drury.

  When Tim Edmonds and Alicia Graham Drury arrived there a little before ten o’clock, they had walked almost a mile along the ridge from the last spot where they felt it was safe to park their car. Hollyridge Road was patrolled, not just by the LAPD but also by a private security force hired by the homeowners, and cars parked along the road were always investigated. So were people walking on the road, and every time they had seen head-

  lights they had scurried off into the cover of the brush that was encouraged to grow to anchor the soil and prevent landslides.

  They had rehearsed this walk and knew how long it would take. They had rehearsed, too, their means of entry into the house. Alicia had lived there for two years and knew the estate well. She knew the house was protected by an elaborate alarm system, but she also knew how to disable the system without setting off the alarm. Inside a steel box, disguised as a mailbox, was a machine something like the cash machines at banks. You could insert a plastic card with a magnetic code into a slot, then punch in a code number on the little round keypad below. That disabled the system for three minutes, time enough to get inside the house. Once you were in, you could turn the system off by using the card and a different number in a control box in the kitchen. But you didn’t have to do that. The system detected motion outside and any touching of the doors or windows. Once you were inside, you would normally leave the system active, since it didn’t detect motion inside the house.

  It was an expensive system, but it served Paul Drury’s requirements: sophisticated security coupled with easy access for his professional and household staff, plus a few of his friends. When Alicia left the house for good, she had handed her card to Paul, in the presence of his attorney. No one had guessed she had kept another card—which she had taken from his bureau drawer some time before, knowing he kept several on hand and did not keep exact count of how many he had. Paul had not bothered to change the code, which he could easily have done. After all, their divorce had been reasonably amicable.

  The only approach to the house was up a short stone driveway to the double doors of the garage. To the left was a wrought-iron gate which opened onto the lawn and to the swimming pool and cabana. The driveway was brightly lighted. It was visible, though, only from the windows above, not from neighboring houses. Alicia and Tim walked up the driveway, through the gate, and onto the lawn. Pulling on gloves before they touched anything, they went first to the side door of the garage, unlocked it by using the magnetic card in a slot, and looked in, to be sure Paul’s car was not there. They entered the garage and used a door inside as their entrance to the house.

  Paul’s taste in home furnishings was like his taste in office furnishings. He liked the clean-lined modem. He also liked space, and his living room would have been thought by some to be sparely furnished, that it might have contained twice as many couches and chairs as were there. If the lights had been on, they would have displayed his taste in paintings, which included some neorealistic nudes, male and female.

  They went first to Paul’s desk, at one end of the living room. The drawers were locked. Tim, who had been in the house many times and knew where things were kept, returned to the garage and pulled a small crowbar off its hook on the garage wall. He used it to pry open the desk. The bar shattered the frame and veneer of the handsome piece of furniture, and when he wrenched the center drawer open, bits of wood fell on the carpet.

  With gloved hands, Alicia began to pull files from the drawers and toss them on the floor.

  Tim interrupted her. He clutched her to him and kissed her. “I’ve never loved anyone half as much as I love you,” he said. “I didn’t know it could be like this.”

  She returned his kiss. “Neither did I, my own darling,” she whispered, then turned back to rifle through the drawer.

  “Have you found it? For God’s sake, have you found it?” he asked excitedly as she paused in her search.

  She handed him a tiny blue envelope of heavy paper.

  Tim stared at the envelope in the dim light, then opened it. “What bank? What bank?” '

  “What’s it say?”

  “It says ‘Mosley,’ which is the name of the company that made the damned vault! What bank? The key doesn’t do us any good if we don’t know what bank!”

  4

  Paul Drury was at dinner with Karen Bergman.

  S
he had changed out of her wet clothes. Sitting across a small table from him in La Felicita, she was wearing tight silver lame pants and a loose-woven white cotton sweater. Anyone who glanced at her more than casually could see through the open weave of the sweater that she wore nothing beneath it. The sweater was something else Paul liked, and she wore it when they went to reasonably private places.

  He was now wearing gray slacks and a classic blue blazer with monogrammed buttons, over a white Ralph Lauren golf shirt.

  They had all but finished their dinner. Both of them had had angel-hair pasta under a creamy sauce of shrimp and crab and lobster meat. They had all but finished their bottle of wine, too.

  “Will I be coming home with you?” she asked him.

  “Not tonight. I’m absolutely wrung out. That show exhausted me. I worked the formula, but— Well, it isn’t easy, you know.”

  “I know.”

  He clasped his hands under his chin, so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I’m having difficulty focusing on anything,” he said. “More and more. I’m dominated by the November special.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me the answer,” she said, “but do you really know who killed Kennedy?”

  Paul Drury sighed. “I’m not sure. I know somebody was hired to do it and was there and could have done it. That is, he could have fired a shot, maybe two. I don’t know that he did, not for sure.”

  “What about Lee Harvey Oswald?” she asked in a whisper.

  Drury shrugged. “I don’t think there is any doubt Oswald fired at least one shot, maybe two, maybe even three. And he may have hit Kennedy once. But there were more shots. That’s the point. There were more shots.” He flexed his shoulders and grunted. “If I only knew—”