The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels

by Charles Alverson

  “To begin with,” I told Fischer, “I have J. B. Carter’s statement that he saw you push Katie Pierce from the terrace of this building.”

  That set off another brush fire, but Fischer put it out with a sharp gesture. “Be quiet, all of you,” he said, without taking his eyes from my face. They were extraordinary eyes when applied like that. I had an uneasy feeling that they were reading my mind. It was as if Fischer sensed what I was up to, yet was letting me go on. That was interesting in itself.

  “Go ahead, Goodey,” he said. “Tell us all about it.”

  “As you know,” I said, “from the cliff up there in front of J.B.’s cave, he could look down on the terrace at the seaward side of the building.” I felt more like a student giving an oral report to a stern teacher than a man making an accusation of murder. Fischer nodded curtly as if to say: Get on with it, boy.

  “J.B.’s eyesight wasn’t so sharp, but he had a pretty good pair of binoculars, which he used to spy on you people down here.”

  “The nosy old bastard,” said Moffitt, but Fischer stifled him with a glance.

  “Last night,” I went on, “J.B. told me that at just about midnight on last December 20th he’d been having a last peep at the mansion before going to bed when he saw you and Katie come out onto the terrace. That was enough to make him stick around a while and watch, despite the bitter cold.”

  It was enough, too, to make Fred Crenshaw turn toward Fischer with a look of keen, if ambiguous, interest. I don’t know if I was convincing anyone, but I had their attention. Even Grenby had lost some of his doubtful look.

  “J.B. said that for some time you seemed to be doing most of the talking, and Katie was just listening, almost as if you had her hypnotized,” I told Fischer. “But then Katie suddenly stopped listening and started doing the talking—or, more likely, shouting. J.B. said it looked to him as if she were getting a bit hysterical, and then she shoved you away from her and ran toward the front of the terrace toward the sea.”

  Everyone was listening now, like small children hearing a fairy tale. I forged on before I lost them.

  “By this time,” I said, “Katie was at the edge of the terrace, with you right behind her. You sprang toward her and then…”

  “Stop!”

  It was a hell of a loud shout for such an apparently frail old man, and it stopped me cold. Pops Martin was on his feet looking like the ghost of Jimmy Cagney. His creased old face was straining at the seams, and he was trying to get my attention. The revolver in his right hand told me that. It was the same .38 police special I’d handed over to Fischer for safekeeping. And he had it pointed at me in a very determined manner. How he got it out of his flowing robes, I’ll never know.

  “If you say another word, I’ll blow your fucking head off,” he said. I believed him.

  Mike Grenby was on his way to his feet when Pops turned in his direction. Genie had her head down and was trying to crawl under her cushion.

  “Sit down, Mike,” Pops ordered, “and you won’t get hurt.” Grenby eased himself back down with wary grace. “You,” Pops said, giving me all his attention, “you think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  I know a rhetorical question when I hear one, so I kept my mouth shut. I allowed myself a slight shrug just so he wouldn’t think I was being unresponsive.

  “Well, you’re not,” Pops said to nobody’s surprise “You’re so dumb you make me sick. If you think—if you think this man,” he said, turning to look toward Fischer but keeping me under the gun, “could—”

  Pops was getting choked up, and the hand holding my gun was none too steady. He took a deep breath and started again. “If you think this man could kill anyone—could kill a young girl—you’re just—just—oh, damn you!” he nearly sobbed, raising the revolver and putting the sight between my eyes. “You fucking…”

  “Pops,” said Fischer quietly, but he didn’t move.

  Pops closed his pale eyes tightly as if trying to concentrate. His flaccid old chops went rigid from the strain. I thought about rushing him, but then his eyes opened again.

  “I don’t care what that loony old bastard said he saw,” Pops went on. “He didn’t see Hugo on the terrace with Katie that night. It was me!”

  “Pops,” Hugo said warningly. “Don’t—”

  The old man gestured with his free hand. “Don’t worry, Hugo,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ve got to do it. I’m just sorry that—” He put his hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry, Hugo, I really am. I—”

  “All right, old fellow,” Fischer said soothingly. “Take it easy.”

  “I’ve got to tell it, Hugo,” Pops continued. “I have to. I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest since—but now—I’ve got to tell it. I want you to know the truth.” Pops was talking to Fischer, but the gun told me that I hadn’t been forgotten.

  “Go ahead then, Pops,” Fischer said. “Tell it the way it happened. Take your time.” Fischer didn’t seem to mind that the revolver was pointed at my sternum, and I didn’t like to mention it. Pops turned back toward me with an angry face. “Don’t think you’ve got any credit coming, Goodey,” he said. “I would have had to cop out eventually. I couldn’t have held my mud forever. Not on something like this. Listen,” he said loudly, glaring around the room. “I want to make it clear that I didn’t murder anybody. Nobody!” He gave me a hard squint as if I were going to argue with him. No chance.

  Pops put his hand to his forehead again. His face was flushed with exertion. “Let me tell it just exactly like it happened,” he said, almost pleading.

  I was beginning to wonder if he ever would—before he shot me, that is.

  “I admit that I was hot for Katie,” Pops told us. “A lot of guys were.” He gave Mark Kinsey a look. “And she liked me, I know she did. But then things began to go wrong just after I asked her to marry me. She began to pull away from me, said she had to have more time to decide. Then she started hanging around more with that asshole Verrein. I got rid of him,” he said with some pride, “but things still weren’t right. It was almost as if she was running from me. I couldn’t even talk to her. But I tried. Christ, I loved her.

  “Finally,” he went on, “that night—it was after the Saturday night open house—I caught up with Katie. I had to have it out with her. I was going nuts. At last, she said she’d talk to me. That’s all I wanted to do—talk to her. Honest to God! After the guests left, we came up the stairs to the terrace. It was freezing out, so we had our heavy coats on. Maybe that’s why J.B. thought it was Hugo, but it wasn’t. It was me!”

  He shouted this last part at me, and I wasn’t going to disagree with him. It didn’t look like Fred Crenshaw was, either. He was watching Pops with more pity than anger on his face.

  “Anyway,” Pops continued, “Katie was very quiet, but I figured maybe she was just thinking. I don’t know what I thought. I was just trying to tell her that I loved her, that she shouldn’t be afraid of me. She wasn’t arguing, so I thought maybe…”

  Pops’ face had been almost calm, but there was pain in it as he went on. “But then she turned on me, real nasty like, and said: ‘All right, old man, what do you want?’ And suddenly, in the bright moonlight, I got a look at her eyes. Katie was loaded. Absolutely. Christ, I didn’t even suspect, and I can smell a doper a mile away. I didn’t know what she was using, but it was really messing with her mind. I only wanted—honest—” He shot a look at Fischer, “to get her off that damned terrace. I reached out to grab her, but she got scared and started running away from me. She was like a goddamned moth flitting all over the place.”

  He stopped for a moment and looked at Fred Crenshaw. “On my life,” he said, “I didn’t know what to do. I know now that I should have left her and got help, but—I said, ‘Katie, now be sensible, Katie. Let’s go downstairs.’ But she wouldn’t listen. Every time I took a step toward her, she backed away, getting wilder by the second. I stopped, but she kept backing toward the edge. Suddenly, she was right at the edge o
f the terrace, and she started to fall. She must have tripped. I reached out to grab for her, to pull her back. I got her coat, but she was twisting—she ripped right out of my hands—” his voice dropped—“and she was gone. Gone. She didn’t make a sound. It was so dark below, I couldn’t—she was gone.”

  Pops stopped, looked at Fred Crenshaw and then at Fischer. “God, Hugo,” he said softly, “I’m so sorry—so…”As if with a will of its own, the revolver swung up in his hand until his arm was doubled, and the barrel vas pointed toward his head. With a jerky motion, Pops shoved the muzzle into his mouth, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

  The snap of the hammer striking the empty chamber wasn’t loud, but it was the loudest sound in that room. Before Pops could pull the trigger again—if he’d planned to—Mike Grenby was up on his feet and had taken the revolver from his hand. Pops didn’t resist, just opened his eyes with surprise at finding himself still alive. I was glad that my first weapons instructor had advised me to always keep one empty chamber. Nobody likes to get splattered with blood, brains and bits of skull bone.

  Pops collapsed like a tired, old balloon, and Grenby had to catch him to keep him from falling. “Help Pops to his cushion, Mike,” Fischer said gently.

  “Give Goodey his gun, Mike,” Fischer said after Pops had been resettled. “He’s leaving now.”

  I took my revolver. There didn’t seem to be any place for it in my flowing robes, so I just let it dangle gracefully from one hand.

  Fischer turned from me as if I’d just vanished. “Well, Fred,” he said almost conversationally, “you’ve got what you wanted. We’re in your hands. You can destroy The Institute now—if that’s what you want to do.”

  He paused as if expecting an answer, but Crenshaw looked as though he were having too much trouble dealing with recent revelations to know how to respond. Fortunately, Fischer didn’t mind taking up the slack.

  “Yes,” he went on, “all you’ve got to do is tell Dominguez what you’ve heard in this room tonight, and we might as well close up our doors for good. Pops will most likely die in prison, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up there, too. Fortunately,” he added dryly, “I’ve been in prison before, so it won’t be much of a hardship. But it will be a hardship to many of my people if you throw them out on the street before they’re ready. Many will die. Is that what you want, Fred?”

  “No, but…”

  “You have every right to want somebody to pay for the senseless death of your granddaughter. I believe in vengeance. And if that’s what you want, I’m your man.” He held up his hands as if ready for the nails.

  I was willing to go get Crenshaw a hammer, but his troubled expression said that he was too busy dealing with the unexpected.

  “It’s not easy to admit,” Fischer went on, “but we failed Katie. I failed her.” Protests bubbled up around the circle, but Fischer wasn’t in the mood to share Crenshaw’s attention. “It’s true,” he said strongly, “and it’s about the greatest tragedy we’ve had here at The Institute. I’m going to do my best to see that it doesn’t happen to some other child. But you can do a lot more than I to make sure of that.”

  That roused Crenshaw from his trance, all right, and it interested me, too. I was watching Fischer as a batter does a good junk-ball pitcher, just to see what he’d come up with next. This was a change-up neither Crenshaw nor I had expected.

  “Oh, I don’t mean whether or not you blow the whistle to Dominguez,” Fischer continued. “I’m talking about what you decide to do with the three million dollars Katie left The Institute in her will.”

  “You know about that?” Crenshaw managed, but it was an ordeal.

  “Of course,” Fischer said modestly. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “But nobody’s ever said…” Crenshaw began in a puzzled voice.

  “No, and we never would have. As much as The Institute needs money, we wouldn’t want to get it that way.” Crenshaw looked as though he might want to believe Fischer, but I had my doubts. “Of course,” Fischer said, “my lawyers could bump heads with yours for a few years, and we might end up with some of the crumbs they leave, but that will never happen. Whether or not Katie wanted us to have her money, Fred, it’s all yours. We’ll never bring that will to the light of day.”

  To my coarse ear, this sounded like a bribe, but Crenshaw didn’t seem to be taking it that way. Fischer’s words seemed to sink into him without a trace. I couldn’t have told you what he was thinking.

  “But,” Fischer said, “I don’t mind telling you what we could have done with that money, Fred.” Here it comes, I thought, the old curve ball. “We could have started a whole new facet of The Institute, a program specifically for troubled youngsters like Katie. So that boys and girls like her would get the special care they need.” Fischer had Crenshaw’s whole attention then, and he dropped the bomb. “And I think it would have been fitting to have named that program after Katie’s father. He was Frederick M. Crenshaw, Jr., wasn’t he, Fred?”

  Fischer had to ask that like I needed to be reminded that Aristotle was a Greek. This was all getting a bit strong for me. “Wait a minute, Mr. Crenshaw,” I said. “Don’t let his…”

  Fischer turned his great head back toward me. “Get out of here, Goodey,” he said flatly. “You’ve done what you came here to do.”

  “Not quite, Mr. Fischer,” I said. “There is the little matter of where Katie Pierce got the barbiturates. Or don’t you think that’s important?”

  Before Fischer could answer, a voice came from a completely unexpected quarter: “I don’t think that matters very much anymore, Goodey,” said Fred Crenshaw. “Go back to San Francisco. I’ll send you a check for the rest of your fee.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” I asked. “Sure it matters. Pops would never have chased Katie off the terrace if she hadn’t been high on barbiturates. She got them here in this haven of mental health and clean living, and I can prove it. The pills that killed your granddaughter, Mr. Crenshaw, came from James Carey,” I said, pointing at him, “this wonderful organization’s own Dr. Feelgood.”

  I don’t know who was more surprised—Fischer or Carey.

  “Jim,” demanded Fischer angrily, “is there any truth in what he says?”

  “No!” Carey’s flush of indignation was genuine. “For Christ’s sake, Hugo. You know I’d never have given Katie—”

  “I didn’t say you gave the pills to Katie,” I cut in. “I just said that they came from you—by way of Tommy Carter.”

  The truth has a ring to it that can’t be ignored. It was as if I’d snapped my fingernail against the lip of a fine crystal goblet. “The fact is, Carey,” I said, pursuing my advantage, “that you have been keeping Tommy manageable by judicious—if not widely publicized—doses of barbiturates, isn’t that so?”

  “There’s nothing illegal about that,” Carey shot back, “I’m Tommy’s doctor. I—”

  “No, not illegal, Carey,” I said, “but it made it easy for Katie—when the pressure Pops was putting on her got too intense—to wheedle a bit of painkiller out of Tommy.” I turned back to Crenshaw. “I think that’s about all you’ll need, Mr. Crenshaw,” I said. “Whether or not Grenby can bring himself to put the county’s interests before The Institute’s wellbeing, I don’t know, but I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with them.”

  “I told you before that it doesn’t matter, Goodey,” Crenshaw said. “You can go now.”

  I got the distinct impression that I was being dismissed. Crenshaw was less than embarrassing with his gratitude, but that’s one thing a cop learns to live without. “All right,” I said. “Nice working for you.” Nobody stood in my way, but before I could get through the door, Crenshaw said something that stopped me like a sheet of plate glass.

  “Hugo,” I heard him say, “there is something I have to explain to you about the money due to you from Katie’s estate.”

  I spun faster than the average tight end. “You what?” I said, none too quietl
y.

  “I’m going to tell them what I’ve done with the three million dollars,” Crenshaw told me in a none-of-your-business tone of voice. He turned back toward Fischer as if I’d just left the room. “I—”

  “Wait a minute,” I insisted. “Just hold on.” Crenshaw turned toward me, but he didn’t do it gladly.

  “After all you’ve learned here tonight about Katie’s death,” I said, “you’re going to—” Then it dawned on me. “Hell, you’re going to give them that money, aren’t you, Mr. Crenshaw? With all that I found out for you, one of your good, crooked lawyers could tie that estate up for decades. But you, you’re going to make them a gift of it, aren’t you. I’ve just been wasting my time here.”

  “You’ll be paid in full,” Crenshaw said coldly. “The rest of it is none—”

  “Christ!” I said. “You’ve fallen for Fischer’s bullshit, too.” I shook my head. “Mr. Crenshaw—”

  Fischer cut in. “Jack—” Gillette materialized at my side. “Please show Mr. Goodey to his room to change and then escort him to his automobile.” There was triumph in his voice.

  Gillette moved through the open doorway and waited for me to follow. But I wasn’t quite ready. “Wait,” I said, and I turned back so that I could take in the entire group. They sat there in an unbroken circle, and I was on the outside. I noticed that one of the flunkies had even removed my cushion. Rachel and Aileen Moffitt had shifted closer together to fill the gap. Their eyes were turned in my direction, but nobody saw me. They were just waiting for the door to close. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Fuck it,” I said, and walked through the doorway. With the click of it shutting, I heard Fischer’s voice, faintly but distinctly, begin to welcome Crenshaw to the fold.

  20

  Gillette was walking half a step behind my right shoulder, ostentatiously just seeing me off the premises.