The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  “Alban was shot at about four thirty in the afternoon. The body was discovered a little after six, but that spot is so isolated, the time lag isn’t surprising. He was shot once, in the back of the head, with a thirty-eight-caliber bullet.”

  “You learn where he went after he dropped me off in Hill Acres?”

  “Yes. He was last seen picking up a fare in front of the Moreland Hotel.”

  “Who was the fare?”

  “We don’t know. The doorman looked and noted that Alban had reached the head of the line. He looked again and Alban was pulling away. He had the impression a man was in the back seat, but Alban took off so fast, he couldn’t be sure. He’s positive the passenger was a pedestrian, though. Not someone who walked out of the hotel.”

  “That’s just dandy. The Moreland—the one place Sam checked in several times each day at least to get messages from me. The place anyone could find him. The driver in the line behind Sam see anything?”

  “No. He was working a crossword puzzle. But before you jump to conclusions, there’s a chance the person who entered Alban’s cab in front of the Moreland was not Alban’s last fare. Alban’s trip tickets were missing, too. Alban could have left that person off and picked up someone else at a different location. Were issuing a plea in all the newspapers and on television for the person who entered the cab in front of the Moreland to come forward.”

  “Some chance of that. Your crime lab go over 444?”

  ‘They did. They picked up everything loose on the floor and under the back seat, too.”

  “For instance?”

  Doyle reached for a paper on his desk.

  “Well, the lab found seven hairpins, a box of condoms, two ball-point pens, a lipstick, a cigar in a cellophane wrapping, a pocketknife, a garter belt, fifty-seven cents in change, six empty matchbooks, and three matchbooks with matches still in them.”

  I had a thought.

  “Any of those matchbooks,” I asked, “from the Midtown National Bank?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. A new book with just two matches torn out. Why?”

  “No definable reason. Only if I were you, I’d tell my crime lab to pay particular attention to that matchbook.”

  “They’ll be thorough with everything. Do you happen to remember any of the Mexoil can locations on the list Alban showed you? If you don’t, we can canvass the drivers and reconstruct it.”

  “I’m afraid not. But Sam told me he spotted one of those Mexoil cans himself.”

  “In that case,” Doyle said, “we’ll probably never know who owned that can of Mexoil.”

  I telephoned Max Fuller from a booth in a cigar store. I woke him up at his home.

  “Mr. Kay, Max. I’d planned to come in and see you. But I wasn’t up to it.”

  “I understand. My sincerest condolences. I don’t trust this phone, give me your number…”

  “It doesn’t matter. Unless your efforts over the weekend were successful.”

  “They weren’t.”

  “Very well. I hereby terminate your services. Send me your final bill at your convenience. If anyone overhears that, I don’t imagine it’ll get you in trouble.”

  For a moment Fuller was silent. Then he said, “I wish it could be some other way. Especially after what happened to the cab driver.”

  “You think he was killed for helping me?”

  “I distrust any and all coincidences. First the baker’s daughter. Then the cab driver. Doyle’s no fool, he’s probably coming around to that conclusion too. Only he’d never admit to such a far-out theory until he’s collected the evidence to prove it.”

  “Speaking of coincidences—what kind of an outfit is the Midtown National Bank?”

  “Eminently successful. It’s not the biggest bank in town, but it’s well-located, across the street from the commodities exchange building. It’s also favored by lawyers, judges, and politicians because it’s a block from city hall and the county courthouse. On paydays you can find a lot of newspapermen there; the Journal, the Express, and the Beacon all draw paychecks on the Midtown. And the city’s biggest brokerage firm has its boardroom off the Midtown’s lobby. You might say that while the Midtown’s customers aren’t the wealthiest men in town, they make the most interesting conversationalists.”

  “Thanks. One last favor. I want you to learn where Sam Alban’s widow keeps a bank account, so I can add something to it without telling her until it’s done.”

  “Of course. Kolchak—my running out on you this way—it’s not going to stop you, is it?”

  “Hell no.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t want to be the man to do that. And while I’m not on your payroll any more, feel free to continue asking my assistance whenever you need doors opened. Any more Memphis Clubs or what have you. And never forget my advice. If secrecy is involved, always call from a public phone. Never go through a switchboard. That may strike you as melodramatic, but the layman doesn’t realize…”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, it may seem…”

  “Never mind. Thanks again, for everything.”

  I hung up. I stepped out of the booth, bumping into a man who had been waiting to get in. He scowled but I ignored him.

  Slowly I walked around the block. The sudden readjustment in my thinking was so massive that its full implications did not become apparent at first. Then I realized that only one conclusion was possible. The Master Plan had not failed me; I had failed it. But I was catching up fast now. Evidence should not be hard to find.

  I walked around the block a second time. The third time around, I stopped at a tavern.

  The bartender came over and said, “Look, buddy, I know you. You’re not gonna bother my customers…

  “Oh, shut up,” I snapped, “and bring me a beer. I wouldn’t waste a minute on the slobs in this place.”

  He brought the beer. I drank that and ordered another.

  I said, “And I thought I was on the run. They’re so scared, they panicked. But first, I’ll learn where the body is…”

  “What’s that?” the bartender inquired.

  “Nothing that would interest you. Where’s the phone?”

  I reached Bill Totten in the Beacon’s city room.

  “This is Kolchak, Bill. I wonder if you’d do something for me. I can’t explain why now, but I promise that when the time comes, you’ll get the story exclusively.”

  “Ask away.”

  “I’ve been following your expressway land scandal stories. I note you mention a lot of tracts along the route are held for unknown owners by bank trusts.”

  “That’s right. As a matter of fact, I’m working up a separate piece on that topic. How an abnormally high number of properties along the route were purchased by trusts during the last three years—more than during the previous fifty years.

  “Could you get me a list of every parcel along the route held in trust by the Midtown National Bank?”

  “I could, but it would take time. The route crosses several counties. Each county maintains its own land title records.”

  “Well, how about starting with the portion of the expressway route nearest to the Capitol Freeway?”

  “Okay. The expressway will intersect with the freeway in Boone County, where the River Road turnoff is now. The Boone County records will cover the route fourteen miles east and twenty miles west of the intersection point. I’ll phone our stringer correspondent at the Boone County Courthouse and have him compile the list for you. He should have it ready by early tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Swell.”

  I hung up. I made one more call, to an automobile rental agency. I reserved a four-door sedan for eleven o’clock the next morning.

  The car bounded up a country lane a mile south of River Road and two miles east of the old Flyways Airport. It was late after
noon. The land here was rocky and wooded: too barren for productive farming, too dreary and lacking in navigable water for resort property, and too far from arteries of transport to attract industry. This was scrubland, much of it going to waste. The suburbs had not reached here yet. No builder in his right mind would tie up his capital optioning unimproved acreage here in the faint hope of future development. And so the land lay cheap and unwanted—except by informed investors who knew in advance the route of the new expressway.

  I braked before a wooden gate in a barbed-wire fence. The faded letters on the rural mailbox said HOOTEN. I checked my list. A sixty-acre parcel owned by the August Hooten Estate had been sold twenty-six months earlier to the Midtown National Bank and Trust Company as Trustee, Trust No. 4683. The parcel lay seven miles from the intersection of River Road and the Capitol Freeway, and sixteen miles from the ravine where Ed’s possessions had been found. It was the third parcel on my list of eight. The first two had been vacant land in full view of River Road. The possibility of disposing of a body on either of those tracts had seemed remote, but I had searched them anyway.

  I turned off the engine and climbed out of the car. Beyond the gate, a the track, rut road wound out of sight into a clump of trees. The area between the gate and the trees had been meadow once. Now it was a ragged, untended field.

  A lock hung from the gate. While the gate was old and splintered, the lock was shiny and new.

  With both hands, I grabbed the gate and pulled myself over. I began hiking toward the trees. At every step I stirred hordes of crickets. A big cloud moved across the low sun. Ahead, birds signaled my approach. I reached the trees and moved into shadows.

  And then, beyond the trees, the cottage came into view. Unexpectedly it loomed on a rise about thirty yards distant. Small but of relatively recent construction, it seemed in good repair. The lawn had been cut, the shrubbery pruned. In front of the cottage, someone had parked a black, two-year-old Cadillac.

  I glanced to my left. Just beyond the trees, at the foot of the rise where it would not mar the view from the cottage, a pit had been dug. The occupant of the cottage dumped his trash and garbage there. The remains of a small fire still smoldered on top of the pit, which was loaded with ashes, rusted cans, charred paper, and dozens of empty liquor bottles. That’s how you disposed of trash this far out in the country. You burned it, and then buried it.

  I went on. The drapes on the cottage’s picture window had been pulled wide. I peered in, at a living room furnished cheaply but tastefully. Newspapers littered the floor. An empty glass lay overturned on a coffee table. An ash tray beside the glass overflowed with cigarette butts. On the wall, an ancient, double-barreled shotgun hung over a print of a hunting dog. From the room’s dimensions, I estimated that the cottage contained at least one bedroom in addition to a kitchen and bath.

  I reached for the doorbell. But a clinking sound from behind the cottage caused me to change my mind about pushing it. I turned and walked around the side of the cottage. The lawn muffled my footsteps.

  The land immediately behind the cottage had been equipped as a patio area. A few reclining canvas lawn chairs circled a barbecue pit. His back to me, a man sat in one of the chairs. He was leaning forward, pouring himself a drink. He set the bottle down on a metal table and raised his glass.

  I said: “Hi, Harry.”

  The lawyer twisted his neck and stared. He wore a sports shirt and rumpled slacks. He needed a shave. The hand holding the glass trembled. But his eyes seemed as canny as ever.

  “Hello, searcher. How in hell’d you find me? Bribed my secretary into telling you about this place, I suppose. You must be in real trouble to track me down way out here. What are you accused of this time? Or have you decided to pay the three hundred you owe?”

  I lit a cigarette, with another match from the Midtown National.

  I said, “I’m not in trouble, Harry. You are.” I glanced around. “Nice place. You come out here often?”

  “In summer. That’s what the previous owner built it for—a summer home. I bought it for investment.”

  “I was sure you bought something out this way. You were never known to pass up a sure thing before. And what could be surer than the expressway route?”

  Bagwell chuckled. “As a matter of fact, it develops that the parcel is rather well located. I’ve already entertained two offers. But I’ve discovered the place makes a nice retreat. Where I can get away from all those idiots in the city. I pay a farm kid to cut the lawn once a week during the season. But whatinhell you mean, I’m in trouble?”

  “I mean,” I said, “that you killed my brother Ed, slugged and raped Irma Bronson, and then murdered Sam Alban.”

  “I think you’ve flipped. You’ve been continent too long.” Bagwell tossed off a slug of bourbon. “What you need is a willing woman.”

  He said that, but the old fire wasn’t there. At the end, his hoarse voice broke and sort of faded away.

  I sat on a lawn chair. I stared at the attorney and said: “The last one was different, wasn’t it, Harry. You had to plan Sam Alban’s murder. You had to see him and talk to him, knowing that in a few minutes you’d kill him. Probably you were stone sober at the time, which is why you’re so busy keeping drunk now. You really don’t have the stomach for it. There’s still enough decency in you to make you recoil at the idea of premeditated homicide. I bet you drove right out here after the murder and have been trying to drown yourself in booze ever since.”

  Bagwell frowned. “You seem pretty sure of yourself.” He twirled his glass. “But hell, it’s too ridiculous to discuss. I had no motive for doing any of the things you’re accusing me of doing. And you have no evidence…”

  “When I tell the police what I think, they’ll collect evidence easily enough. Let’s take Sam Alban’s murder for a start. That was a hasty job. You were rattled and like most murderers, you made mistakes.” I held up my matchbook. “You dropped one of these. Matches from the Midtown Bank. Each time I see you I wind up with a packet of these matches in my pocket. You must leave ’em on tables and bars wherever you go.”

  “Sure, that’s my bank. I pick up matchbooks whenever I’m in there. But a million other people can get the same matches.”

  “Yeah. But I bet you don’t remember dropping the book in Sam’s cab. And maybe when the crime lab looks it over they’ll find particles on it, matching particles in one of your pockets. Or even a great big fingerprint. Who knows? And when the police search your apartment and this cottage, they might find the clothes you were wearing when you murdered Sam, with blood on them maybe. Or gloves, with traces of nitrate. Also, you’re a man of distinctive appearance. The trail is still young. The police or I will find someone, somewhere, who remembers seeing you the afternoon Alban was killed. Seeing you loitering in the park across the street from the Moreland, waiting for Sam’s cab to come along, or seeing you leave the neighborhood where the cab and the body were found. How about an alibi for your whereabouts Saturday? You got one?”

  Bagwell didn’t reply.

  “I thought not. I don’t understand you, Harry. A man with your background getting involved so deeply that you’d commit a premeditated homicide—a first degree. You, of all people, know the risks and the consequences. My brother’s murder must have been an impulse of the moment. The attack on Irma—you didn’t hit hard enough to kill, and knowing your filthy mind, I imagine you thought you were doing her a favor when you raped her. But Sam Alban—why in heaven’s name did you go through with that? Or was killing him Lorene’s idea?”

  Behind me, in a flat voice, Lorene said, “That’s right, Stephen. It was my idea.”

  Lorene stepped from the back door. Her hair was disheveled, her face fearful and determined. She wore sandals and a short blue lounging jacket that ended a few inches below her hips.

  In her hands she carried the shotgun I’d seen on the living-room wall. The barrels
were pointed at me.

  “Face front,” she ordered. “Lean back. Put your hands flat on the chair arms.”

  I obeyed. Sunk deep in the canvas chair, I wouldn’t be able to rise without giving plenty of warning.

  I glanced at Bagwell. “How’d she persuade you, Harry, to kill Sam?”

  Bagwell rose. He picked up his bottle and moved out of the line of fire. “Self-preservation,” he said heavily, “was a motive, of course. And Lorene knows my adolescent weakness for the flesh. I told her I’d murder your cab driver if she came out here and performed certain personal services for me. She didn’t like the idea—but I must say, she’s more than kept her word.” He gazed over my shoulder. “How much,” he asked Lorene, “did you hear just now?”

  “Enough.”

  “He’s got a point. My print could be on that matchbook. I dropped the gun down a sewer, but the clothes I wore when I shot Alban are still in my apartment. There’s blood on them. When I ran from Alban’s cab, I turned a corner and almost knocked over two small girls playing on the sidewalk. If the police ever consider me as a serious suspect, we could be in a jam.”

  “They won’t consider you,” Lorene said, “if Stephen doesn’t talk to them.”

  Bagwell shook his head. “I don’t know. Each time we commit a crime, our risk of detection increases. And the more crimes we commit, the more severe our punishment will be when we are detected.”

  “Are you chickening out, Harry?”

  “Oh, no.” Bagwell flashed a malicious grin. “But I’m not going to make the decision this time. This time, Lorene, well see if you are up to it. You’ve taken charge of our strategy. All right, pull the trigger yourself. After that, I’ll help you. But you’ll have to kill him if you can. So you’ll know how it feels to take a life in a calculated way.”

  “I’ll do it. You’ll see, I’m not afraid.” Lorene walked around me. She stopped in the shade of an oak tree. The shotgun was an indistinct, black object pointed at my midsection. But Lorene’s bare legs and intense features, taut with apprehension, were quite discernible.