Malice in Wonderland

by Rufus King

  “You did.”

  “So now he gives his watchdog the slip and chokes to death the last hurdle to his happiness. How long does it take to choke, Chief?”

  “Depends. Usually less than a few minutes, from the effects of asphyxia, cerebral anemia, and shock.”

  “No kidding! I had it taped as simply lack of wind.”

  “A lush, if he’s hitting it, gets it quicker and with less bother. With mugging, the victim can kick off at any time from shock while struggling, even before asphyxia is complete.”

  “I wouldn’t line Mrs. Dean up as a lush, would you?”

  “No, I’d figure her for a good stiff fight. I want you to get the scrapings from her fingernails and give them to Sibley. He’ll know what to do with them.”

  “You figure she raked him?”

  “Probably. May have gouged the wrists, backs of the hands. Usually there’s a sign.” Duggan sheered abruptly, “What do you know about the lifeguard? Jergson? Bjorgsen?”

  “Oscar?”

  “Yes, Oscar.”

  “He is hell on skirts. Right now he’s playing a blond number from Vero Beach who’s curb-hopping at Hank’s drive-in and—”

  “—and her husband is sending him mash notes from the Ku Klux Klan.”

  “Gee, Chief, how did you know?”

  “I get around. And I’m not interested in his love life. What I want to know is can you depend on him? Can he keep his trap shut?”

  “About his morals, Chief, I wouldn’t know.”

  “No matter. I’ll find out myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Got a job I want him to do.” They drew up in the motels parking lot. “I’m going to turn the routine over to you. Stick in the Dean apartment and, when the boys come, roll it.”

  “Where will you be, Chief?”

  “I’ll be around.”

  * * * *

  After looking at the body and implanting in his mind a photographic impression of the living room and other quarters of the apartment, which occupied him little more than a matter of minutes, Duggan left Day in charge and then joined Miss Fernandez in the patio.

  The wind had tapered to a stiffish breeze and stars were developing in the sky. The entrance light was on, and its glow washed yellowly over the bougainvillea and the trimmed hibiscus hedge that separated the unit’s patio from the patio of the Spangs. It touched with saffron the high complexion of Miss Fernandez’s dusky cheeks and added an almost catlike glow to her somber brown eyes.

  “What was it really caused you to come over here?” he asked.

  “As I announced in our initial brevity, the lights. They went out. No others came on.”

  “This premonition of”—Duggan sought the word she had used—“of amissness, was there nothing more definite?”

  “What would one wish? The lights in a salon go out. The lights in a boudoir do not turn on. No lights turn on. No person departs. Not, one says, by the front door. One specifies a door in the rear to the beach, left open when the killer in a frenzy fled.” “Miss Fernandez, I don’t want to force the point, but I want you to think back during that half hour when you told me you were watching. Was there nothing, no incident, no matter how trifling, that you can remember?”

  A slight quiver skimmed the expanses of her body as the fact struck home that Duggan, deliberately and with considerable obviousness, had winked. There was no doubt about it. Miss Fernandez clutched back through her memory of U.S. crime procedure as she had culled it from the paperback translations. More than once a smart detective had tipped a witness that their conversation was being overheard, usually by some mechanical device concealed behind a picture or in a potted plant. Was this deliberate wink such a tip?

  She thought it was. Her gaze traveled casually about the patio, dwelt less casually on the hibiscus hedge on the other side of which was the patio of Mrs. Spang, the desperate mother who was making her last stand.

  The significance of the wink became plainer still. It not alone indicated the probability of eavesdropping ears, but it invited co-operation as well. Surely an affirmation of the question Duggan had just asked. Being both at heart and by national temperament a plotter of great aplomb, she seized on this role of undercover conspirator with a pleasurable gusto.

  There was a standardized pattern for the setup, and she followed it.

  “All, now that I reflect—”

  A brief smile assured her that she was on the right track.

  She continued, “It is—how can I express it to you? A something delicate as a shadow—”

  Duggan suggested helpfully, “In a mist?”

  “A mist, yes. Very black. Right now this thing eludes, but it will come back. Perhaps the subconscious while I repose. Perhaps by dawning.”

  “Perhaps like yesterday morning around daybreak, when you make a practice of taking a dip and picking up shells?”

  “But of course! Always it is at dawning when thoughts are best.” She added darkly and apparently just for the hell of it, “When the waters cool.”

  Duggan cut her short, having gained his point. At least he hoped he had, felt pretty sure of it. He couldn’t come right out and say: Set yourself up as a sitting duck. But that was what he meant, and he believed that Miss Fernandez understood. If he had judged her correctly she would go through with the job with stubborn courage.

  “I’m going to the bar,” he said. “I want to try and locate young Dean.”

  He walked away, out of the yellow light and into the dark with its descending wind. Miss Fernandez moved close to the hibiscus hedge and said softly, experimentally, “Madame Spang?”

  Something like a whimper answered. Then the faded face of Mrs. Spang was rising like a cobweb moon across the hedge and saying, “I’m worried stiff. She shouldn’t have gone off that way.”

  “One does not select the manner of one’s ultimate departure.”

  “I don’t mean Mrs. Dean. I mean Jenny. Quite a while ago—several hours ago. She said she was running over to the cocktail lounge for a while to watch television. I finally got so worried I went in search of her. Jimmy and Francine both said she hadn’t been there at all. She’s gone. Just gone.”

  Miss Fernandez asked quietly, “How is it that you are aware of Mrs. Dean’s death?”

  “It’s because I’ve been sitting here worrying and I saw you come over and go in and light the light. I looked in through a jalousie, and it was ghastly—horrible. And now on top of it, Jenny.”

  “Madame, you have my sympathy. Do not concern yourself about that lovely child. She goes with God.”

  “It’s all very well for you to say so. But I tell you I’m weak. Just sick and weak.”

  “A drink?”

  “Yes. You’ll come with me?”

  “That is a certainty, Madame Spang.”

  * * * *

  “I’m telling you,” Jimmy said to Duggan, “that’s all I know. Dean and Jackson shoved off for Mario’s about nine to try and get even, and they haven’t been back here again. Mrs. Spang tottered in around an hour ago and buzzed Francine and me.

  Did we know where dear Jenny was? Had we—Say, get a load of who’s just coming in, Bill. Old Faithful Jackson and with no sonny boy in tow. He looks like an uncooked pancake.”

  Jackson rather did, with his deep tan drained by tiredness or worry into a pasty gray. He came directly over to the bar and to Duggan and said, “I lost him.”

  “At Mario’s?”

  “Yes. Is it true what that guy outside said? She’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Choked?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Not long,” Duggan said.

  “I ought to take three whiskies as fast as I can put them away.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not good. That’s why.”

  “When did Dean skip?”

  “Maybe around ten. He went up to Mario’s office to get him to cash a check. Mario did and left him there finishing a dr
ink. When he got back, Ernest was gone, and Mario figured he was down bucking the wheel.”

  “Ten was almost four hours ago, Jackson.”

  “I know it.”

  “It’s a long time to look.”

  “It’s a long town, beach, and county. I covered every joint we’ve ever been to.”

  “In what?”

  “What do you mean in what?”

  “Didn’t he take his car? I should have thought he would.”

  “No. I figure he high-tailed it with some digger or new-found buddy-buddy or took a cab. He’s been lifting them all day, and believe me it’s been one tough day.”

  “Of course you checked back here?”

  “You think I’m crazy, Chief? Would I want Mrs. Dean to know I’d let him get slopped up and give me the slip? He’s so fouled up you can’t tell what he’ll do.”

  “One thing I guess we can bank on. Sons just don’t kill their mothers.”

  Jimmy leaned further across the bar and stuck in an interested oar. “But,” he informed them, “sometimes they do kill their wives.”

  “That tramp?” Jackson said disgustedly. “You’re in a cloud, brother. Ernest wouldn’t kill a fly. It’s just that at times he blacks out and could maybe start swimming to China for all we’d know. You going to check with Mario, Chief?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you can get something out of him. When I kept pestering him he gave me the baby-blue-eyes runaround. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I have no idea what could have happened to Mr. Dean. Why don’t you earn your dough and go look?’ Then actually he titters. The clammy jerk.”

  Miss Fernandez and Mrs. Spang came into the lounge, and Mrs. Spang spotted Bert Jackson. The two women headed toward them, and Duggan eased away, giving Miss Fernandez the faint lowering of a left eyelid and getting a jolt to find her giving him back the same.

  Lights were on in Oscar Bjorgsen’s quarters of the beach-wear shop. Duggan knocked and, being called to come in, found himself facing a typical Norse giant, currently attired in a lime shanting sport shirt and dark gray slacks.

  “Bjorgsen?”

  “Yes. You’re Chief Duggan?”

  “Yes. I want to use the phone booth for a few minutes, then I’d like a talk.”

  Bjorgsen looked at an expensive wrist watch that told, to his constant bewilderment, the day, the month, and the phases of the moon as bonuses to the time. It was a gift from an appreciative coal baroness from Pittsburgh.

  “Glad to, Chief. She’ll wait.”

  “Vero Beach?”

  “That’s right. What do we talk about? Sangford? Mrs. Dean?”

  “In a way.”

  “Boy, is this crib getting loused up with stiffs.”

  Duggan agreed and, going to the outside phone booth, shut himself in, looked up a private number in a small notebook, and dialed.

  A pleasant young woman’s voice said, “Mario’s Club Continental.”

  “Duggan speaking. Police chief, Halycon.”

  “Oh yes, Chief?”

  “I’d like to talk with Mario. About young Dean. His mother has just been killed.”

  “Oh no! I mean it’s so terrible always, you just never can get used to it. Please wait a minute, Chief.”

  Duggan waited.

  A well-polished voice said, “Chief Duggan? I am Mario. Did I get it straight about Mrs. Dean?”

  “Yes. Strangled.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe an hour ago. Maybe more or less.”

  “Then that is okay.”

  “An alibi for Dean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re dead sure?”

  “Nobody can be dead sure, Chief. If so, I would be out of business. I do know Dean called me up around that time and said he was keeping the car all night. He said he was calling from Palm Beach.”

  “What about this car?”

  “I will tell you. He came to my office around ten. I cashed a check for a thousand. I keep some on hand for the convenience of my guests. He asked to borrow a car for several hours.”

  “Why didn’t he use his own?”

  “It was his wish to evade Mr. Jackson.”

  “Why?”

  “He did not say. He told me very little. In fact, he told me nothing, and I did not inquire. He asked me to clam up about the car, so when Mr. Jackson blew his top I made with the old double. Mr. Dean is too valuable a customer.”

  “This car—a Caddy convertible, ’58, I suppose?”

  Mario laughed agreeably. “What else would you expect? Black, white-walls, and a lemon top. No neon lights.”

  “Would you have the license number?”

  Mario consulted a notebook containing the club’s less vital statistics and gave Duggan a number.

  “There was also this,” he said. “No matter what he was up to, I figured the kid needed a break. That mother of his was keeping him in Alcatraz and, speaking impersonally, I am glad that she is cooked.”

  Duggan thanked Mario and hung up. He put through several calls arranging for a state-wide general on the car for all patrols and the several night disk jockeys, requesting that Ernest Dean be in turn requested to contact Chief Duggan at Blacks. The nature of the request: Urgent.

  He dialed Tropical. He asked to be connected with Dr. Sibley.

  Sibley said shortly, “Bill?”

  “Yes, Frank. Any luck?”

  “Plenty. Mr. Gettler’s test is all done, and successfully too. You were absolutely right. And to that fact, under oath, will I so testify in court. What makes you so smart?”

  “I just happen to know floaters, that’s all. I was a lifeguard for a while.”

  “Even so. That might account for your build but not for your brains.”

  “You’ve got the boys all wrong,” Duggan said. “Catch one with clothes on, and he’ll slap a Phi Beta Kappa key in your face. Anything yet on Mrs. Dean?”

  “Haven’t started. But those fingernail scrapings—courtesy of Officer Day—I’ve examined them microscopically. Not chemically as yet. No flesh. No blood. Just some rubber.”

  “Rubber?”

  “That’s right, Bill. Red rubber. Like from rubber gloves such, I suggest to your eagle-hawk mind, as women use when they dye their hair.”

  “What’s an eagle hawk?”

  “Do we care?”

  “No.”

  “Did Mrs. Dean dye her hair?” Sibley asked. “I’ve yet to look.”

  “Sure she did, but with her dough she didn’t do it in rubber gloves. It was done in a box seat at some Emile’s or Antoine’s.” But, Duggan thought reflectively, the down-to-her-last-nickel Mrs. Spang would do her own hair dyeing.

  “I told you you were a bright boy,” Sibley said. “When do you ring up the curtain on the final act?”

  “Maybe around daybreak. Maybe.”

  “Well, good hunting to you.”

  “Thanks, Frank. I’ll save the fox’s tail for your handle bars.”

  Duggan hung up. Good-by, he thought, to any scratches on the strangler’s hands and wrists. Rubber gloves came well up on the forearm. For a short while he stood watching the pale line of combers crash and cream, hissing, on the sand. They had movement in the circumscribed arena of this private world where nothing else moved at all. Only the wind, which you could hear and feel but could not see.

  In his mind’s eye he projected a picture of the coming daybreak, of a lone figure in her swim suit of flamingo, bravely defenseless in all this emptiness, with eyes cast sandward in a search for shells. And then, from the lips of the murderer, the casual invitation for a mutual swim.

  He returned to Bjorgsen’s quarters.

  He said, “Look, Bjorgsen. Here’s what I’d like for us to do.”

  He outlined his plan and thus set in motion one of the most unpredictable boners of his official existence.

  The motel slept, and the slow minutes paced on. The units were dark in this sleep with the exception of the living-room jalousies of the Deans’.


  Duggan went in and was pleased to notice that the body had been taken away. He gave a moment of audience appreciation to the duet of gurgles and snores that were being broadcast from Station Day, who slouched almost flat in a lounge chair, and from the room where Bert Jackson lay entirely flat on his bed.

  Careful not to alarm the watchdogs by barking and waking them up, Duggan quietly cased the room in greater detail than he had before. This careful search disclosed an all but unnoticeable tip of metal projecting from under the front fringe of the lounge. It was a funnel, and, with respectful regard for fingerprints, he placed it on the coffee table.

  The thing was incongruous, especially its location from having rolled or been kicked beneath the lounge, and the incongruous always intrigued him. What was the funnel used for? To pour something into something through the neck of a bottle. Duggan, he congratulated himself, you are quick as a whippet. The funnels size seemed about right for a beer bottle or one for soft drinks.

  He pursued the puzzle into the service pantry. Apparently no answer there. He rooted around and found a plastic vegetable bag, got the funnel, bagged it, and stashed it behind china on the shelf of a wall cabinet. He went on with his casing against the continued mood music of snores.

  * * * *

  The hours rolled, and the wind sank from stiff to breeze, and the anger went hugely out of the ocean, and its movement, with the exception of an occasional mutinous kickup, grew smooth, like a strong sleeper’s chest.

  The night still held, but the feel of dawn was in the air, and Miss Fernandez prepared. She deliberately advertised her awakening by turning on both bedroom and living-room lights. Then she knelt and said her morning prayers. They included a request that God, through the offices of Chief Duggan, would so arrange her prospects that she might view again her beloved San Juan, her beloved fishing villages on the south coast and little mountain hamlets in the heart of Puerto Rico’s coffee country, and her favorite “out-on-the-island” spots of Ponce, Parguera, Mayaguez, and Coamo.

  Having finished up this comprehensive Cook’s Tour, she exchanged her nightdress for the flamingo swim suit. From the cutlery drawer in the service pantry she selected a small paring knife and satisfied herself as to its point and cutting edge. She was, with knives, in the nature of a connoisseur. She dropped it into the bag she carried for shells.