The Murder Megapack

by Talmage Powell

I told him that I would call back at three o’clock, news or no news, and that Janet would give him her interview with the widow in time for the final home edition.

  About that, I was quite wrong. Five minutes after Hawley hung up, Janet was on the line to me at the station with tears in her voice.

  “Mrs. Marston won’t talk,” she said in a mournful, little girl voice.

  “Then you have to persuade her,” I said. “Get her started on a female discussion of her garden, or the Ladies’ Aid Society, or something.”

  “She won’t let me in,” Janet replied.

  I exploded. “What the hell! Can’t your big, burly boy friend, the sergeant, even get you past the door?”

  “He tried,” said Janet, “but Mrs. Marston is standing on her constitutional rights.”

  I groaned. “All right,” I said curtly, “get over to the Times and see if you can get those pictures. Better ask a man; you don’t seem to do so well with women.”

  It was a nasty crack, and I knew Janet was crying when she hung up, but I was disgusted. More disgusted than the situation warranted, I can see now. We could get along without an interview with the widow. I guess I was just galled because the kid had fallen down on her first assignment.

  I went back to the chief’s office, and found Harrity on the telephone. When he finished the call, he swung around toward me with a big smile on his moon-like face.

  “First break, Dawson,” he said. “Turner had a bank account in Chicago with $14,000 in it.”

  “Where does that get you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but I gotta hunch it will get me some place. People have been killed for a lot less dough than that. I’m checking now to see if he’s got any heirs. Meantime, I want to talk to Lemay and the widow again.”

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly two.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Call the widow in first.”

  He did, but it took a threat of arrest as a material witness to get her to budge.

  She was a dark, chunky woman, carefully corseted and neatly dressed. Her deep-set, brown eyes were filled with fear and suspicion.

  “This is outrageous,” she said to Harrity. “I have told the police all I know.”

  “Sit down, Mrs. Marston,” the chief said. “There’s been a new development. Do you know whether Mr. Turner had relatives in Chicago?”

  ”No.” The reply came in a flat, dead voice.

  “Business connections?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever go to Chicago?”

  “Yes—I think so, once in awhile.”

  “Did you ever go with him?”

  Mrs. Marston rose in dignified indignation.

  “I don’t have to submit to insults,” she said.

  Harrity was suddenly very firm.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Marston,” he said, emphatically. “We can find out these things without your help, but if you’re really cooperating with the police, you’ll tell us. Now, did you ever go to Chicago with Mr. Turner?”

  Mrs. Marston wilted.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “a few times.”

  But she wouldn’t admit anything else. She had gone to Chicago to visit her sister, and had merely accepted Turner’s offer to ride with him in his car. She didn’t know what he did there. She had never seen him go near a bank. He had never mentioned relatives or business connections, although he always went “on business.”

  “And, of course,” Harrity said, “it was on business that you went to see him last night.”

  “I told you,” she replied, “that my house is up for sale and Frank—Mr. Turner—was handling the deal.”

  “So you did,” the chief said, thoughtfully. “We’ll keep in touch with you, Mrs. Marston.

  With the heat off, she seemed to deflate and her shoulders sagged, but she made a real try at keeping her head up as she walked out.

  “A born liar,” Harrity said. “But I really haven’t got a damned thing on her. You haven’t got any idea where I can find the gun that killed Turner, have you?”

  “You’re a born comedian,” I said, and walked out to the desk to use a telephone. I called the office and got Hawley again.

  “Here’s Janet’s interview with the widow,” I told him. “I’m calling it in because she had to go after pictures.”

  When I hung up, the chief was standing behind me. He placed his big mitt on my shoulder, and chuckled.

  “Got it bad, haven’t you, boy?” he said. “Well—can’t say I blame you. She’s mighty handsome.”

  I could feel my ears turning purple. “Nuts!” I said. “What shall we do or have a drink while we wait for Lemay?”

  We returned to Harrity’s office and finished off his Bourbon. It hit me a little. I hadn’t had any lunch, and did not seem to want any, especially after the whiskey began to glow.

  Lemay was even less helpful than Mrs. Marston had been, although he seemed to be trying harder. He was a roly-poly little keg of a man, with almost no hair and an obsequious manner. He knew Turner had driven to Chicago for an occasional weekend, but professed not to know why.

  “None of my business,” he said, virtuously.

  “You were his partner, weren’t you?” Harrity asked.

  “We let each other alone.” The tone of voice was almost a whimper.

  “You didn’t let him alone last night.”

  “That was just a—discussion over a deal.”

  “And it turned into a fight, maybe?”

  “Oh, no, sir. A fight, no. A little argument, maybe. But we never fight.”

  The chief had been doodling with a pencil. He whirled away from the desk suddenly and faced Lemay.

  “Did you ever own a .38 pistol?” he asked.

  The little guy cringed, but he didn’t give.

  “Not me, no, SIR!” he said. “I never had a gun in my life.”

  There were more questions, but they developed no more information. Lemay waddled out of the station, resisting an obvious inclination to run like hell, and the chief leaned back in his swivel chair.

  “Well,” he said, “I can wait. Eventually, one of them is going to get tied up with that Chicago bank account. That dough was deposited by Mr. Turner in person, and in cash, usually in $1,000 chunks—and there have been very few withdrawals. The dicks are checking all the angles on that. Have you got a story?”

  “Not much of a one,” I said. Such as it was, I gave it to Hawley, and told him not to be too optimistic about any sensational breaks right away.

  “The Old Man is crying for blood,” Hawley reported.

  “Let him cry,” I said. “I can’t conjure up killers out of the atmosphere.”

  “However, that’s what he expects of the great Dawson.”

  “Go pound your typewriter,” I said, and hung up. A great dissatisfaction with the whole damned affair was creeping over me. I went back to see Harrity.

  “Chief,” I said, “if you will lead me to your favorite taproom, I’ll gladly buy you a drink.”

  “No, my boy,” he replied. “The chief of police cannot drink in saloons. However—” He reached back into the bottom drawer of his desk and found another bottle.

  Harrity seemed as bright as a button when I left him at five o’clock, but I was both woozy and depressed when I got to the hotel. The cocktail lounge was well filled, smoky and noisy, but there was no sign of Janet. I sat down at a little table for two, and ordered a Scotch and soda.

  “I’ve often wondered how that would mix with straight Bourbon,” I said to myself. The waiter brought some popcorn and potato chips with the drink, and I devoured the plateful before I knew I was eating.

  After that, the Scotch seemed to go all right; so I ordered another one. This was about half gone when I saw Janet come into the lobby. She had a large package under one arm, and a brisk young man in a checked suit was hanging onto the other. They stopped before they reached the lounge entrance, and their conversation was punctuated with smiles. The young man finally left, afte
r patting Janet’s hand, arm and shoulder enthusiastically about a dozen times, and she came on into the lounge.

  I made only a token effort to rise as she reached my table and sat down, placing the package on the floor beside her chair.

  “The pictures are in there,” she said. “I had quite a time rounding them all up.”

  “I’m glad you got something.”

  “Do you have to be so nasty?” she asked. Her eyes were moist, but she was being as defiant as possible. I took a drink, and switched the subject.

  “Did you have any lunch?”

  “Yes—Art bought me a sandwich and a beer.”

  “And who in hell is Art?” I shouted.

  I had not intended to raise my voice, but I could hear it booming around the place, and several people looked over at us. Janet flushed, but she answered the question.

  “Arthur Russell, city editor of the Times. He brought me over here. He—he was very helpful about the pictures.”

  “I’ll bet he was,” I said. “So that’s the jerk I saw giving you the feel treatment in the lobby! You really get a going-over from the boys, don’t you? You walk out of the station with Sergeant Herrick and come into the hotel with this kid city editor pawing you. Even Dooley Williams was playing knees-y with you in the car. You’re the kind of dame who invites passes; if you didn’t, you wouldn’t get so many.”

  My voice had risen again, and the whole lounge seemed to be giving us the eye. Janet grabbed her package and stood up, her face white with fury and embarrassment. She leaned over the table and talked right down my throat.

  “You’re a second-class brute, George Dawson,” she said in an impassioned whisper. “I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with you. I’m sorry I ever saw you. I—I’m sorry. I called Hawley this afternoon and gave him a new angle for your story.”

  It was my turn to be nonplussed. “You—what?” I asked.

  “Art Russell called the police station and found out Turner had a big bank account in Chicago. It was too late to waste time calling you, so I called the office direct. Hawley seemed very pleased.” She was quite triumphant.

  “I’ll bet he did!” I said grimly. “Why you—you fake sob sister, you imitation campus reporter, I was in on that angle the second it developed. Hawley had it from me long before you heard about it. For God’s sake, why don’t you stick to necking and leave reporting to those that know a something about it? No wonder the staff thinks you’re trading on Tad Gordon’s name, you—”

  I was half out of my chair, with the highball glass in my hand, and Janet was scurrying out of the lounge as fast as her pretty legs could carry her. As she disappeared, I brought the glass down hard and it smashed against the table, flying into countless pieces. I pulled my hand away from a jagged fragment, and noticed blood on my index finger. I was staring at it stupidly when a waiter rushed up with a towel and started mopping up the mess. He was followed by Dooley Williams, red of face and more jovial than usual.

  “Well,” he said, “what goes on? First, I find the little lady running through the lobby with tears in her eyes, and now I come across the great reporter with a broken glass in his hand. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Sit down, Dooley,” I said, “and have a drink.” For the first time in my life, I was glad to see the fat crook.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Dooley, “although I’ve already had a couple with the boys upstairs. I just can’t get through one of these civic uplift things without a little libation.”

  The waiter eyed me dubiously, but he brought a couple of Scotches at Dooley’s request. The rest of the customers finally quit looking at me, and went back to their drinking.

  “Dooley,” I said, “I like women. I can even stand ’em in a newspaper office. But a dame on a murder story is—murder. Especially a dame—oh, hell, let’s have a drink.”

  “Here’s to male reporters,” said Dooley, lifting his glass.

  We were in fairly mellow shape by the time we went upstairs, but the dinner was good and the pheasant plentiful and by the time it was over I was more sleepy than anything else. To my surprise, Janet showed up. She was wearing a dark-blue dress which set off her blondness very effectively, and she had obliterated all traces of tears. She spoke quite charmingly to Dooley, but looked right through me without a word.

  During dinner I noticed that she was placed down the table, between a baldish gent with gold teeth and a spruce young man in an oxford gray pin stripe. She appeared to be giving both earnest and affable attention. The president of the Civic Betterment League, seated at my right, called my attention to a hawk-faced woman across the table from Jane.

  “If looks could kill, the girl would be dead now,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “That’s her husband on the other side of Miss Gordon. She’s very jealous.”

  “I should think,” I said, “that the wife of the guy on the other side would have more cause.”

  “He has no wife. He’s the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, and one of our most eligible young men.”

  For a moment, I had a lot of sympathy for Mrs. Hawk-Face. Harrity had accused me of being jealous, and I was beginning to see how right he was. And I was jealous of the damnedest people, too.

  With fewer fumes in my head, I realized what an ass I had made of myself in the cocktail lounge. Then I began to argue with myself. As a reporter, she stinks. She had no right to call the office without consulting me. But I had no right to lose my temper. But she—and so on, until the remains of the baked Alaska had been taken away. I never knew how it tasted.

  The program began with the usual address of welcome from the president, a report on progress; etc., and a plea for money “to carry on our great work.” Dooley Williams was the piece de resistance, and he was never more eloquent.

  “Our administration,” he said, “your administration is being attacked by the vested interests because it is trying to do something for you, the people of this great state. Because we have taxed the swollen profits of greedy corporations to provide for your safety and your well-being, we are vilified by the kept press, the press that bows down before its masters, the corporations.”

  He paused to take a drink of water, and looked right at me with a big smile on his face.

  “Our plan for highway improvement,” he said, “is essential to the growth of our great state, to the development of your commerce and industry—to the safety of your children, whom you love so well. More than seven hundred persons were killed on our inadequate highways last year, and thousands more injured. We must build better highways, and safer highways.

  “In your own great city of Littleton, you have an outstanding example of human sacrifice to the greed of Mammon. Four people killed at the intersection of the Littleton-Wabena highways before your city council saw fit to provide money for a warning blinker. And that blinker—what a beautiful beacon of safety and civic progress it is, as it lights up the word STOP in red and gold at night. How heart-warming it is to me to see it blazing there as a symbol of the progressiveness of you good citizens of Littleton.

  “You have recognized your responsibility to your children and your fellow man. The state must do likewise. All over this great state, we must make our intersections safe, our highways broad and modern, etc., etc.”

  I had heard most of it before, and the words buzzed in and out of my ears as I tried to shake off the drowsiness induced by too many drinks and too much food. I remember thinking:

  “Even if we could print a picture of Dooley taking money from a lobbyist, these people wouldn’t believe it. He’s so plausible and sounds so righteous that he’s got them sewed up in his pants pocket.”

  They confirmed the thought with the applause they gave him. It woke me up completely.

  After the meeting adjourned, all kinds of people crowded around Dooley to shake his hand and tell him what a fine speech he’d made. I even told him so, myself.

  Then I tried to find Janet. Much as I dislike crow,
I had decided that she had an apology coming. But Janet was gone, and no amount of searching turned up any trace of her. The baldish gent she had been sitting with, who turned out to be Mr. Gerond, a hardware merchant, said she had excused herself at the conclusion of Dooley’s speech and he hadn’t seen her since.

  “Quite a dish, isn’t she?” he tittered.

  I thought for a minute she had gone out with the Chamber of Commerce glamour boy, but I ran him down in a corner, surrounded by women, and he likewise reported no knowledge of her whereabouts. Dooley Williams didn’t know, either.

  “I hope she comes back,” he said. “I wanted to dance with her.”

  “You go leer at your beloved citizenry,” I said. “I’ll try to find Janet.”

  When I found she wasn’t in her own room, or any of the hotel’s public rooms, I gave up and went back to the ballroom. Janet had not returned, but the dance was on and Dooley was whirling with an ironclad matron. What I saw there held no interest. I went to the lobby for my key, bought the local paper and a couple of magazines, and took the elevator to my floor. I half expected—or hoped—to find Janet hiding behind the door of my room, but she wasn’t there—or under the bed, either. I called Harrity and asked him if there was anything new.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I’ll call you when there is.”

  I was asleep almost before I could get into my pajamas. In my dreams, Janet, clad only in a pale blue nightgown, ran down a broad, paved highway pursued by a great crowd of men, all reaching out their hands for her. I was chasing them, but the men seemed to be getting farther and farther away from me, and closer and closer to Janet. When the telephone awakened me, I said “Janet!” out loud before I lifted the receiver.

  Harrity, not Janet, was on the other end. “Better get over here to the station, Dawson,” he said. “Things are cracking on this case.”

  “What things?” I asked sleepily.

  “I can’t tell you on the telephone. Wake up, and get over here.”

  I got up, with the aid of a chilly shower and a glass of cold water. It was shortly after midnight.

  There was no sign of taxicab life, or much of any other kind, on Littleton’s deserted streets, so I walked around to the hotel garage and took my car out. The chill morning air made me shiver, and brought me out of my torpor. In spite of a rigid personal rule against smoking before breakfast, I lighted a cigarette, in a confused hope that the smoke might clear some of the fuzz out of my mouth. It seemed only to accentuate the odor of stale whiskey that I couldn’t shake off.