by Clark Howard
“Why don’t you give me a rundown on it,” the Chief suggested, “and we’ll see.”
“All right.” Devlin settled in the chair and lighted a cigarette. “The missing man, as you know, is J. Walter Keyes. He’s the confidential business manager for a number of movie stars; even married to one, as a matter of fact: Jennifer Jordan. Everett Simmons is his lawyer; do you know him?”
“Not directly,” the Chief said, “but I’ve heard of him through the mayor and others. He carries some weight, I know.”
“So I gathered. He made a point of emphasizing that last night; in a subtle way, of course. He was very adamant about limiting the scope of our investigation to keep it out of the newspapers.”
The Chief Prosecutor nodded thoughtfully. “That’s all right, up to a point. I don’t believe in treading on anyone’s privacy unless it becomes necessary. Did you and Simmons resolve just what our position in this will be, in the absence of a formal complaint?”
“We covered all the possibilities,” Devlin told him, “from being drunk somewhere right down to the old improbable amnesia attack. We finally decided that Keyes had been kidnapped for ransom.”
“Well, that gives us an easy way to get off the hook,” the Chief Prosecutor smiled, “We can always turn it over to the F.B.I. What’s your personal opinion of the thing?”
“The nearest I can figure,” Devlin said, “is that it’s some kind of blackmail scheme. This Keyes apparently has an inside view of the personal lives of all these clients of his; undoubtedly there are some skeletons in a few closets here and there. It’s just possible that Keyes has been grabbed by someone who wants a payoff for not opening the closet doors.”
“Did you discuss that theory with Simmons?” the Chief wanted to know. Devlin shook his head.
“No, I’m afraid he wouldn’t have bought it. Simmons paints a picture of Keyes that makes him a cross between the Good Samaritan and Honest Abe Lincoln. To hear him tell it, Keyes hasn’t an enemy in the world. An attitude like that would preclude him from admitting that Keyes could be involved in anything on the shady side, even for one of his clients.
“What’s your opinion of Keyes,” the Chief asked, “from what you’ve gathered so far?”
“I’ll have to assume for the present that he’s as pure as the driven snow,” Devlin said. “There’s no indication to the contrary.” He leaned over and crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the Chief’s desk. Once again he thought briefly of Jennifer Jordan; the way the light had caught in her hair, making it look blood red. “Do you want me to handle the matter?” he asked.
The Chief pursed his lips in thought for a moment.
“I promised the Attorney General I’d use you only as a rackets man, on the organized stuff that affects the entire state—
“He made you promise that,” Devlin said, smiling, “only because I asked him to.”
“Well, in that case, I guess it’s really up to you then, isn’t it?” the Chief said. “You can keep it or drop it, your choice.”
“I think I’ll keep it,” Devlin told him. “It might be interesting.”
“Good.” The Chief rubbed his hands together briskly, obviously glad to be relieved of the problem. “Where do you intend to start?”
“I think I’ll go on the blackmail possibility first. Do the local banks keep a central index of accounts?”
“Yes, they do.”
“I’d like to know at which bank Keyes has his account, and I’d like a search warrant to look at it.”
“All right. You can see McClain in the Intelligence Squad downstairs; he’ll check the central index for you. When you get the information, have my secretary type up a warrant for you. You can dictate your preliminary investigation report to her also, and a brief narrative prognosis. Later on this morning I’ll walk over to Judge Wilke’s chambers with you and we’ll get him to sign the warrant for us. Good enough?”
“Good enough,” said Devlin.
He left the Chief Prosecutor’s office and returned downstairs to look for McClain of the Intelligence Squad.
Later that morning, Devlin accompanied the Chief Prosecutor across the street to the courthouse to get the search warrant signed.
“Have you ever met Judge Wilke?” the Chief Prosecutor asked as they climbed the broad concrete steps outside the building.
“Once,” Devlin said, “very briefly one evening at Chief Justice Sundean’s house.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten, you do know the Chief Justice, don’t you. I’ve never met him myself; Sundean, that is. But Judge Harold Wilke I know like a book.” They reached the top of the steps, entered the building and walked down a wide, shining corridor to the elevator bank. The Chief Prosecutor pressed the call button.
“I lost my very first case in Wilke’s courtroom,” he continued, “when I was an assistant D.A. nearly twenty-five years ago. Lost a lot more of them in there since then, too. When I got appointed to this job and found out that old Wilke had been assigned to Master Calendar and would be passing on all of my office’s warrants, I nearly resigned right then and there. He’s about the most oppositional man I’ve ever seen on the bench.”
“They say he’s pretty fair,” Devlin commented.
“That’s an understatement,” the Chief Prosecutor grunted. “He’s equitable almost to a fault.”
“Is that possible?” Devlin asked casually.
“Huh?”
“Here’s the elevator,” Devlin said.
They entered and rode to the fourth floor where the Master Calendar courtroom was located. The huge gallery was empty, it being late in the week and all its morning cases already assigned. An ancient bailiff sat at his rolltop desk just below the bench, catching up on the day’s paperwork.
“Morning, George,” the Chief Prosecutor greeted him. “The judge busy?”
“We’re always busy in this place,” the bailiff grumbled, “him and me. But you can go in, I suppose, being as you’re the one we get most of the business from.”
“Thanks, George,” the Chief said, winking at Devlin. He led the way around the raised bench to the door of the judge’s chambers behind the courtroom. Devlin glanced back at the old bailiff and smiled fondly, remembering how his grandfather had looked hunched over that same kind of antiquated desk in a corner of his little foundry back in Pittsburgh. The shoulders of strong men, he thought, always hunch at a desk. He wondered why.
“Morning, Your Honor,” the Chief Prosecutor said, having knocked and opened the door to the judge’s chambers. Devlin followed him inside. “Judge,” The Chief said, “I believe you’ve already met—”
“Devlin, yes,” the judge said, pushing his frail, lean body up to shake hands across the desk.
“You’ve got a good memory, Your Honor,” Devlin said, impressed by the elderly gentleman’s quick recall.
“I remembered the scar,” Judge Wilke said frankly. He sat back down, adjusting a spotless white carnation in the lapel of his coat. The carnation was the aging jurist’s trademark; he had put a fresh one in his buttonhole every morning since the day he ascended the bar of justice more than forty years previously. “We met at Justice Sundean’s house,” he said to Devlin, “year or so ago, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, I believe it was.”
“Thought so.” He turned to the Chief Prosecutor. “What’s the crisis this morning, young fellow?”
The Chief, who was past fifty, winced as he drew the typed warrant and formal request for signature from his pocket.
“No crisis, really, Judge,” he said. “Devlin here is on loan from the attorney general’s office to give us a hand with the rackets investigation. He’s working on a local missing person case—strictly a temporary thing—and I thought I’d save him a couple of hours by walking this search warrant over for your signature instead of sending it through channels.”
Judge Wilke accepted the papers and sat back to read them. The Chief Prosecutor and Devlin remained in front of his desk until he fina
lly realized that they were still standing.
“Sit, sit,” he said absently, waving the warrant at them. He scrutinized the request for his official signature, his rheumy eyes darting swiftly across the lines and down the page as his extraordinarily alert legal mind devoured the preliminary investigation report and the prognosis of the case.
“No formal complaint?” he said, isolating almost immediately the weakest point of the request.
“Not yet, Your Honor,” the Chief said quickly. “This is a special request for an informal investigation. There’s a strong possibility that the matter will be turned over to the federal authorities very shortly if the missing man isn’t located. In the meantime we’ve been asked to conduct a more or less routine undercover inquiry to determine if it actually is an enforcement matter—”
“How’d you happen to get hold of the case?” Judge Wilke asked bluntly.
“Well, uh, through one of the mayor’s aides, actually,” the Chief admitted. “It was brought to the mayor’s attention by an attorney named Everett Simmons, who is the missing man’s counsel—”
“I know Simmons,” the judge interjected. “Had him in my courtroom a dozen times or so. Handles a lot of divorce actions for the entertainment people. Usually gets exhorbitant fees, if I remember correctly. He the one who wants a nice, quiet investigation?”
“Uh, yes, Your Honor,” the Chief said in a somewhat uneasy voice. Devlin, watching him, contained a smile. It might well have still been twenty-five years ago, he thought, and the Chief Prosecutor still an assistant district attorney, the way Judge Wilke kept him on edge. Devlin wondered if the Chief was sweating very badly at that moment. He decided that he must be.
“Well,” Judge Wilke said at last, “I suppose I could be arbitrary about the matter and insist on a formal complaint. If this Keyes fellow suddenly turns up all right and complains that you’ve been invading his privacy with my official consent, I’ll probably end up with another slap on the wrist from the State Supreme Court—” He took a pen from its holder on the desk and deftly scrawled his signature across the warrant. “Not that the Supreme Court’s wrath impresses me that much, you understand; I stopped being afraid of those fellows quite a while back, after I’d been on the bench thirty years and found out how much it would cost the state to retire me.” Blotting his signature, he handed the warrant not to the Chief but to Devlin. “Main reason I’m not being adamant about a formal complaint in this instance, young man,” he said to Devlin, “is that I am not unaware of your reputation in the state capitol. You have, I’m told, the complete confidence of a number of our highest ranking government officers, among whom are several men whose judgment and integrity I vastly admire. I want you to be advised that I’ve signed this warrant only for that reason.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Devlin said. “I’ll look after your signature as if it were my own.”
“Good,” the old jurist replied. He fingered the carnation in his buttonhole again and looked down at the assorted papers on his desk. “Now if you gentlemen will excuse me—”
Devlin turned to go, and this time the Chief Prosecutor followed him.
The operations officer at the bank studied the warrant Devlin had presented him, raised his eyes to study Devlin himself for a moment, then pressed a button on his intercom and said, “Miss Rowles, will you please bring me the master card on J. Walter Keyes, spelled K-E-Y-E-S.”
A moment later a girl came into the office and handed him a numbered file card. The operations officer scanned it quickly.
“Mr. Keyes has three accounts,” he said. “Which one were you interested in?”
“All of them,” said Devlin.
“The warrant says ‘account’,” the banker hedged. “That’s singular, isn’t it? Means one.”
“All right,” Devlin said, smiling, deciding to play the man’s game. “Give me whichever one you like. I’ll have the other two subpoenaed and you can bring them downtown for us to look at.”
The operations officer sighed, defeated before he could begin. “Okay, forget it. I’ll let you see all of them now.” He glanced at the file card again. “Mr. Keyes pays for a special bank service that photostats every check he writes and stores them for seven-year periods; tax purposes, you know. How far back do you want to go?”
“Seven years,” Devlin said blandly. That will teach you, he thought.
The banker spoke to his secretary again and told her to get the current file on the three Keyes accounts, and to have one of the tellers bring the stored Keyes files up from the basement. Then he led Devlin to one of the loan counseling rooms that was not occupied and told him he could use it as a temporary office.
The current files were brought to him first. He opened the manila folder of each and placed them in a row on the bare desk. He read the headings of each:
J. WALTER KEYES and JENNIFER J. KEYES
Joint Account
J. WALTER KEYES/J. WALTER KEYES ENTERPRISES
Business Account
J. WALTER KEYES
Personal Account
Thumbing quickly through the photostats in the joint account, he found checks written by both Keyes and his wife for the usual household and personal expenses: mortgage payments, servants’ salaries, miscellaneous charge accounts, gardening service, laundry service, utility bills and others.
In the business account, which he looked at more closely, there were checks, many of them sizeable, to professional entertainers’ associations, brokerage firms, real estate agents, accountants, tax services, and a multitude of other people and firms apparently connected with Keyes’ business enterprise. In addition, there were checks for office rent, office utilities, and employee salary checks. Devlin looked through all of them, back to the beginning of the year. There was nothing, as far as he could see, out of the ordinary.
He turned his attention to Keyes’ personal account. Here the file was smaller, much less complicated than the other two, and did not, he saw at once, have any particular pattern to it. There was a check for thirteen dollars to a local liquor store; one to a New York luggage shop for a hundred and fifty; one to a large department store for sixteen. There were several written to various jewelry stores in amounts from six to sixty dollars, one made out to a Dr. Blake Holmes for five hundred dollars, and one to a woman named Shirley Dean—which, Devlin noted, had been deposited in a New York bank—for a hundred.
Going farther back into the year, he found another check, for eighteen dollars, to the same liquor store; one to a suburban motel for twenty-two; and one to a local furrier for two-hundred forty. One, written to an Abigail Daniels for a hundred dollars, caused Devlin to frown slightly; he kept one finger next to it while he continued on through the file and the mechanics of his mind began working to tell him why he had frowned.
The door to the tiny office opened and a secretary pushed in a portable file tub stacked with labeled manila envelopes containing the Keyes records for the preceding six years. Devlin paused to smile and thank her, and waited until she had left before resuming his work.
Going back another month, he found several checks to florists in amounts from twelve to eighteen dollars, and still another to the same liquor store—
And then a second check to Abigail Daniels. For a hundred dollars again.
Devlin sat and stared at the name for a moment, forcing his brain to work faster for the solution he sought. Then it came to him and he shed out to pull Keyes’ business account file back to him. He skimmed through the photostats until he found what he had remembered: a payroll check for one hundred sixty three dollars and forty cents, dated three months earlier, made out to Abigail Daniels.
Quickly, Devlin checked back through the preceding month in the current file. He found bi-monthly payroll checks for Abigail Daniels in each month’s file. He then went into the envelope for the previous year and found checks for her in every month there also. Systematically he worked his way back through five years, back to the very first paycheck that had
been written to Abigail Daniels.
After making a notation of his findings relative to the business account, he turned his attention once again to Keyes’ personal account. Beginning there with the first check he had found written to Abigail Daniels, he methodically backtracked through the current year and three previous years. Once every week, like clockwork, Keyes had written her a personal check. The most current ones, over the past eighteen months, were for a hundred dollars; earlier ones were for eighty, sixty-five and fifty. Several in each year were for three, four and five hundred. The personal checks began slightly more than two years after Abigail Daniels’ payroll checks started. And they stopped three months previously, exactly when the payroll checks stopped.
Devlin made notes on all of them; copious notes, with dates, amounts, and place of deposit. Then he sat back in the chair and examined what he had found.
A pattern, he thought, very definitely a pattern. Abigail Daniels, whoever she was, began working for J. Walter Keyes five years ago. During her first two years in his employ, she received ordinary paychecks just like everyone else. Then, beginning in her third year, J. Walter Keyes started writing her a personal check every week, in addition to her regular salary. Both the paychecks and the personal checks increased in amount from time to time until three months previously; then both checks suddenly discontinued.
A pattern, Devlin thought again. But of what? Blackmail? Very possibly. Abigail Daniels, after two years in Keyes’ employ, might easily have acquired enough damaging information about some of Keyes’ clients to put her in a good position to subtly suggest that her confidence was worth more than her regular salary. And Keyes, even if he was as upstanding a person as Everett Simmons had described, might nevertheless have been forced to agree with her, particularly since his entire business was based in the confidential handling of his clients’ personal business matters. So Abigail would have had a good thing going for her from that time on—
But what, Devlin wondered, happened three months ago? Why did the checks suddenly stop? Several possibilities came to the surface of Devlin’s mind. Perhaps the information Abigail Daniels was holding over Keyes’ head became worthless with age. Or perhaps he just got tired of paying off and fired her, thinking to call her bluff. Or—much more interesting from Devlin’s point of view—maybe she left of her own accord. Maybe she grew dissatisfied with the weekly payoffs and made up her mind to grab a big bundle at once. Which, of course, opened up a number of tributary possibilities that with a minimum of imagination could easily implicate Abigail Daniels in the sudden disappearance of J. Walter Keyes.
