Columbo: The Hoover Files Page 3

  ‘You? You, the goddam angel of the FBI, the Director’s fairhaired boy! You wanta blow somebody away?”

  “Me. I’ve got a good reason.”

  “They always have a good reason. I never knew anybody who wanted to blow somebody away that didn’t have a good reason.”

  “Well, you’ve got a good reason. If I don’t make a call in the next twenty minutes, you’re going to have BATF agents in here looking for chemicals.”

  It was a lie, and Harry Lehman was shrewd enough to know it was a lie; but that didn’t make any difference. “What do you have in mind, Mr. Kloss?”

  “Your specialty, Harry. RDX.”

  “Cyclonite,” said Lehman. “Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine. In a polymeric binder. Plastique. You don’t want to send a letter bomb, hmm? You want a big son of a bitch.”

  “The kind you used to blow away Shondor Birns in Cleveland.”

  “I didn’t do that job, Mr. Kloss.”

  “You made the bomb. The boys in Cleveland knew where to find the expert. You made it, even if you didn’t plant it.”

  “Mr. Kloss—I never planted a bomb in my life. I’m a chemist. Explosions and fires. You want fire? Or just a big old blast?”

  “I want a powerful bomb that can be delivered in a package the size of a ream of paper.”

  “It doesn’t take that much to bring down a 747. Thank god I was in the joint when the plane exploded over Lockerbie. Hey! That one had what you call my signature on it, didn’t it, Mr. Kloss?”

  “Your signature, Harry. Yeah, your signature. I wondered if it wasn’t a student of yours.”

  “How do you want to detonate the thing, Mr. Kloss?”

  “Not with a timer. I have to have control.”

  “Good enough.”

  “When can you have it ready, Harry?”

  “Well… Day after tomorrow is Christmas, after all. My son and his wife will be here, with their children, some of the time. What do you say to Monday?”

  “The twenty-eighth. Deal. I’ll be earlier than I was today. I want to drive back to L.A.”

  “Stayin’ in Vegas tonight?”

  “Right.”

  “Let me call my son. He can get you a good price on a good room at the Piping Rock.”

  Monday, December 28—11:35 A.M.

  On December 28 Fritz returned to Harry Lehman’s little apartment in Las Vegas.

  “It’s ready, Mr. Kloss. I see you brought an attaché case. The stuff will fit into that very nicely. With battery and all. Let’s look at it.”

  The plastic explosive was wrapped in newspaper. Lehman unwrapped it. The material was wrapped in newspaper. It was beige colored, faintly shiny, in the shape of a flat loaf. A blasting cap stuck out of it, with two wires exposed.

  “You need a battery. And a control that separates the battery from the cap. Be careful of it, Mr. Kloss. Once the circuit is closed, the cap goes off and the whole schmear goes off. If you make a mistake, they’ll have to scrape you off the ceiling—only there won’t be any ceiling.”

  Fritz nodded. “I understand. There’s enough stuff here to—”

  “Blow a car to bits. Bring down an airplane. Or—You mentioned a house. Enough to blow a house to splinters.”

  “Very good.”

  “Yes. Now, Mr. Kloss. We did not mention my fee. I assume you have brought money.”

  “Your fee is that I don’t send you to Marion for the rest of your life.”

  “Oh, well, you know—”

  “I expected this. Pour us a drink, Harry. I favor gin. I do have something for you, in the briefcase.”

  Harry Lehman grinned, went to the kitchen, and in a moment returned with a glass of gin on the rocks. “I don’t use the stuff anymore,” he said. “Twenty-two years without it, you learn to live without it. I figure I’ll live longer.”

  Fritz raised the glass and took a sip of the gin. He snapped open the catches on the briefcase and raised the lid toward Lehman, who could not see what was inside. What was inside was a nine-millimeter Beretta equipped with a silencer. Fritz smiled faintly as he raised the pistol and fired two quick shots into Lehman’s chest. When the man was down he finished him with a shot to the head.

  He finished the gin and put the glass—the only thing in the apartment with his fingerprints on it—in the attache case. Then he put in the bomb. He snapped the case shut and shoved the pistol down into the waistband of his pants, under his suit jacket. He wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and opened the door.

  Tuesday, December 29—7:28 A.M.

  In the garage of his house on Las Virgence Road, Fritz climbed a ladder toward the ceiling. Using a screwdriver and pliers, he took the case off one of the two garage-door openers—the one that opened the right-hand door, the side of the garage where his late wife had parked her car. This opener had been disconnected for years, so he wouldn’t open both doors every time he pressed the button on his controller. He had reconnected it this morning, to see if it still worked. It did.

  He removed the innards from it and took them down. He replaced the case.

  The opener was a simple mechanism. When the little radio receiver detected a signal from the controller, it closed a switch that sent current to the electric motor that raised the door. That switch could just as readily send current to the detonator in the bomb.

  The only problem was to find power for the receiver. That problem was easily enough solved for anyone who knew anything about electronics. The unit was powered by the 110 house current—which, however, was first reduced by a transformer to twelve volts, then run through a rectifier to change the alternating current to direct current. All Fritz had to do was apply the probes of a multimeter to the connections to find the point where the receiver took in its direct current. Sending in battery current right there activated the receiver. In fact, the battery that would explode the detonator could also power the receiver.

  He worked most of the day, soldering connections, testing, testing, testing. When he was satisfied, he could press the button on the garage-door controller and watch the needle shoot across the face of the multimeter, one hundred percent reliably. It had to be that way: one-hundred-percent reliable. So far, so good.

  Wednesday, December 30—11:42 A.M.

  On Wednesday he took the transmitter to West Santa Monica Boulevard, parked across the street from the whore’s house, and pressed the button.

  Her door did not open. Good. Her garage-door opener operated on a different frequency. She would not detonate his bomb when she opened her garage door.

  But—Uh-oh. A garage door down the street went up. What if the neighbor used his transmitter to open his garage door when the bomb was waiting for the whore?

  He had a cure for the problem. The antenna on a garage-door opener, this vintage, consisted of a piece of wire. With a long antenna, the door would open if the transmitter sent a signal from a hundred yards away. With a shorter antenna, it would open the door only if the signal came from a hundred feet away. When he had first bought a radio-controlled garage-door opener, he had stretched an antenna so long that he could open his door from the moment he pulled into his street. Later, having learned that the long antenna would pick up a lot of stray signals, he cut the antenna short.

  He experimented with this one. He didn’t want the whore’s neighbor detonating his bomb. He adjusted the antenna on the bomb to receive signals from two hundred feet—far enough away to put him beyond the range of the blast, too far away for the neighbor’s opener to set off the bomb.

  In the afternoon he stopped by a FedEx office and picked up a box and an airbill.

  New Year's Eve —7:19 P.M.

  New Year’s Eve. He’d bet the whore was going to go out and get drunk, maybe laid. He himself had accepted an invitation from Meredith Nelson to go to a New Year’s Eve party. The party began at nine, and he’d told her he’d pick her up at her house at eight-thirty.

  The call from Meredith had not been entirely a surprise. Fritz prided himself on still being attractive to women, in his seventies. He had not bedded her the night of the whore’s party, but he could be sure he would tonight. He had pretended he was greatly pleased to hear from her, thanked her for the invitation, and bought a bottle of champagne for her—which he hoped they would open in her apartment sometime after midnight, after they had celebrated the New Year at the party.

  After sunset—which was of course very early at that time of year—he drove to the whore’s house on West Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Luck was with him. Of course it didn’t have to be: he could come back as often as necessary. But it was with him tonight. The house was dark except for the lights she always left on. The whore was not home.

  He parked at a distance down the street. He left his car and carried the bomb to her doorstep. It was in the distinctive box of Federal Express, and he had slipped into the transparent envelope attached the recipient’s copy of an airbill saying that the package came from a New York publisher.

  He went back to his car and sat down to wait.

  The whore arrived about 7:30.

  Fritz left his car and walked closer.

  She switched on lights and drove into her garage. All but certainly she had noticed the FedEx package on her doorstep.

  He watched the lights coming on inside. She opened the front door and picked up the FedEx package. Fritz waited for her to carry it well inside the house—with any luck, into her office. He was patient. He waited, watching for the light to come on in the room off the living room, her office. She had been inside the house maybe four minutes before he saw that light come on. Only then did he press the button.

  The controller sent a radio signal to the receiver. The receiver closed the switch that sent a current to the detonator cap. A shock wave ble
w out the walls of the house, sent the upper floor and the roof into the air, and collapsed walls of the two houses adjoining.

  Fritz could not smile. He stared and nodded. The whore was dead. With any luck, her slanderous computer disks had been destroyed.

  New Year's Eve —8:34 P.M.

  When he arrived at Meredith Nelson’s house to take her to the party, she asked him if he was really all that interested in the New Year’s Eve party, or would he rather stay here and have their own party. He wasn’t entirely surprised and readily agreed.

  She’d known he would. She had hors d’oeuvres laid out on a tray, bottles set out, ice in a bucket, and a bottle of champagne for midnight. But when he tried to kiss her, she ducked away. First she wanted a promise. She wanted him to promise he would not leave but would stay all night, would stay in fact long enough to watch the parades on New Year’s Day. He promised. She took him by the arm and led him straight to her bedroom. She was no girl; she was a strapping big voluptuous woman; and she brought a straightforward approach to what they were going to do—no feigned naivete, no coyness, no kidding around.

  After half an hour or so she got up and went to pour them fresh drinks. “Well,” she said when she returned, “how about staying for the football games, lover?”

  “Hell, I’ll stay for the World Series.”

  She chuckled. “Let’s see what’s on the tube.” She began to press buttons on the clicker.

  Fritz went in the bathroom and was there several minutes. “Fritz!”

  “What?”

  “Jesus H. Christ! Looka this!”

  “Looka wha’?”

  “My god! Betsy’s been murdered! Betsy Clendenin! Looka! Looka! Somebody blew her away!”

  Fritz shook his head as he stared at the television image of the shattered houses on West Santa Monica Boulevard. “Well, I… I guess you gotta figure a number of people might want to do that.”

  “Yeah, well—Somebody’s gonna wish they didn’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look who’s on the job!”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “That guy there. That guy in the raincoat. That’s Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD. He never misses. He’ll get whoever did it. If I was the guy that blew up Betsy, I’d be shakin’ in my shoes.”

  Two

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Columbo, but I’m afraid my job is just to stay out here and keep people from ducking under the tape.”

  “I s’pose. Well, whatever the lord gives you to do, do it with all your might—or somethin’ like that—whatever it is they say.”

  * * *

  “One of those new guys that just graduated from the FBI Academy is a pinhead! Get rid of him!”

  —John Edgar Hoover

  New Year's Eve —9:01 P.M.

  In all his years as a policeman, Columbo had never seen anything like what he saw when he turned into the block on West Santa Monica Boulevard. The fire department was still spraying water onto tangled debris that was not even recognizable as the ruins of a house. They had spread huge tarpaulins over the broken walls of the adjoining houses and were keeping the roofs and tarps wet. The heaped debris and the two adjoining houses were lighted by glaring floodlights. Otherwise, everything was dark; the electricity had been switched off for the whole block.

  Red and blue strobe lights flashed on fire, police, and medical vehicles. Crisp voices crackled on radios, piercing the rumble of the diesel engines that powered the fire-engine pumps and the generators that supplied power for the floodlights.

  He knew all the activity was purposeful and organized, but Columbo could see no organization or purpose; everyone seemed to be scurrying at random, all over the place.

  “Y’ can’t leave that car there, Mac.”

  “B’lieve I can,” he said to the young uniformed officer who strode purposefully toward him. “Columbo. LAPD Homicide.”

  “Yeah? Well, let me see some ID.”

  Columbo shifted his cigar from his hand to his mouth and reached inside his jacket. “There y’ go,” he said, thrusting under the cop’s nose his shield and photo ID card.

  The young patrolman was not much impressed. “Okay,” he said grudgingly. “But I suppose you’ll agree, you don’t look like a police detective, Lieutenant.”

  Columbo pulled the cigar from his mouth. “That may be the secret of my success, son,” he said.

  The young policeman frowned. “I suggest you wear your shield on your raincoat, Sir,” he said. “Lot of nervous people around here.”

  “Most of them know me. Who’s in charge?”

  “Lieutenant Lawrence, the watch commander.”

  Columbo shook his head. “Pat’s gonna love it that this one came up on his tour.”

  “The detective in charge right now is Sergeant Zimmer, Sir.”

  “Martha. She’s a fine detective. You keep an eye on how she works, and you’ll see how it’s done.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Columbo, but I’m afraid my job is just to stay out here and keep people from ducking under the yellow tape.”

  “I s’pose. Well, whatever the lord gives you to do, do it with all your might—or somethin’ like that—whatever it is they say. Wanta lift that tape for me?”

  He spotted Martha Zimmer. She was on the street, not inside the house. There wasn’t any house.

  “I tried to get you out of this one, Columbo,” she said.

  “Yeah. Mrs. Columbo’s awful ticked. “We’ve got people comin’ for a party tonight. She’s bought paper hats and all that jazz, an’—Well, I gotta take a look at this and get home. Sure gotta be there before midnight.”

  “It’s another celebrity case, Columbo. That’s why Captain Sczciegel insisted it had to be you.”

  Columbo looked at his cigar. It had gone out. He pinched it a little to be sure there was no fire in it, then dropped it in his raincoat pocket. “What’s the story, Martha?”

  Martha Zimmer was a very professional detective. She reached into a pocket of her navy-blue blazer and pulled out a small notebook. She was professional, though she looked like anything but a detective and had to carry her badge in a leather holder that folded out of her breast pocket, so people would see it and understand she was an officer of LAPD. She was short and heavy, the mother of three children and pregnant with a fourth. Her dark hair was curly and short, and she had pudgy apple cheeks. Columbo had worked with her often and had a lot of respect for her. They were friends, too. She had confided to him that she was pregnant again, though she didn’t want the Department to know it yet.

  “Okay. The woman who lived here was named Betsy Clendenin. She was a professional writer, specialized in juicy exposes. About seven-thirty—”

  “Was she home when—?”

  “Afraid so. Anyway, somebody was home, some woman.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  Martha pointed to a small square of plastic lying on the street pavement, covering something, guarded by a uniformed policewoman. “That’s her head, Columbo. I haven’t looked at it. The guys who have are feeling kinda sick.”

  “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “No. Fortunately, the people in the houses on both sides had gone out to parties. There’s not a window within two hundred yards in all directions that’s not broken, but nobody was hit by flying glass.”

  Columbo walked toward the wreckage. “Crime Scene?” he asked.

  “Jean Pavlov’s here.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He walked over to an attractive young woman in a sweatshirt and blue jeans, wearing her shield on the sweatshirt. She was a technician with the Crime Scene Unit. He had worked with her before. “Hiya, Pavlov. Got ya workin’ on New Year’s Eve, I see.”

  “My regular tour,” she said. “I got Christmas off.”

  “Whatta ya figure here?”

  “One hell of a bomb, Lieutenant. “Cyclonite, I’d guess. The lab tests will tell us for sure.”

  “Couldn’t be a gas explosion?”

  “The house was heated with oil.”

  “The body?”

  “We may never find all of it,” she said. “The trunk is mangled but essentially intact. Odd thing about explosions—Sometimes the worst damage doesn’t happen right at the center, so we’ve got a crushed but intact trunk. It’s in a body bag in the ambulance, incidentally. The fire guys brought it out so it wouldn’t get burned. The head’s out there on the street. We’re leaving it till we can get an exact measurement of its position and get some photos. Arms and legs—” She shrugged.