by Craig Rice
I felt in his breast pocket for the package. The cigarettes were damp and spongy. The matches were too wet to ignite.
“You’ll have to smoke one of mine,” I said. “These are soaking wet.”
“Now you’re going to beef about that, I guess,” Biff said. “A guy can’t even sweat any more. His wife has hysterics all over Restful Grove, and a guy’s not supposed to sweat a little. Nice thing.”
His eyes were still on the road ahead and his chin still jutted out belligerently, but there was a satisfied half smile in his voice. I lit two cigarettes and handed him one. Over the bearing knock of the motor I heard him mumble thanks and then the radiator boiled over. A thin geyser of rusty water splattered on the cracked windshield, and Biff set the wiper in motion. I listened to the steady click-clack as the rubber flange raced back and forth in front of my eyes.
“Feel all right now?” Biff asked.
I didn’t answer him. It didn’t seem necessary.
“Well, then, we better get a couple things straightened out before we see the sheriff,” Biff said. “First of all, no jokes with him. Let him say his piece and don’t interrupt him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but the guy’s no dope. Don’t lose your temper with him. That’s when you say the wrong thing. Answer his questions, but don’t add anything but yes or no to ’em. Let him do the figuring. There’s a couple things I don’t like about this business. It doesn’t seem right to me that he should bundle Evangie up in the car and drive her away without checking her story with the rest of us. He’s got something up his sleeve, and I’ll be damned if I like it.”
“I tried to tell you he forced the confession from her,” I said.
“You were right outside the door,” Biff said patiently. “Evangie was in there for five minutes, no longer. How could anybody force anything out of her in five minutes? No, I got two way of looking at that confession. One is that she did it because she thought you killed the guys …”
“Me?”
“You don’t have to be so dumfounded about it. She’s got plenty of reasons for thinking that. The handkerchief had your name on it. So I know all about the laundry being sent out with your name, but the sheriff doesn’t know it. We told him, that’s all. She might wonder why you didn’t admit knowing Gus. You played the Burbank Theater. Gee Gee said he was around there all the time. Evangie knows what a sucker you are for a bargain, and there’s that guy selling stuff for nothing and you aren’t in on it. That alone looks bad. She knows how you are; hot or cold, if a thing’s cheap, you’ll go. The gun thing; she thought it was yours, so she tried to ditch it.”
“Well, the gun wasn’t mine. And if Mother would think that just because I’d played the Burbank I’d know Gus, then she’d think that all of us knew him. You played the Burbank, you didn’t know him. Corny played it, he didn’t know him. Dimples played it, she didn’t know him …”
“Yes, she did,” Biff said. “But that’s beside the point. I’ll get around to Dimples later. Right now I’m talking about you. The cops don’t know your sweet, sunny disposition. They want a murderer. Your mother gets frightened and gives ’em one. That’s the way it goes if she didn’t kill the guys herself, but you’ll have to admit that her killing ’em is the easiest thing to believe. Aside from great-great-grandmother with the human steaks and poor Uncle Louie with the tattoos. Evangie’s got the guts to kill a guy. She proved that when she buried the body. That wasn’t kid stuff, ya know. Think about the strange way she’s acted since San Diego. That could be explained if she knew the body was in the bathtub. You can’t act natural with a thing like that on your mind.
“Why didn’t she want us to call the cops? Why did she want to bury the body and drive away? She recognized the handkerchief with a quick glance. How? There’s only one way she could tell that that handkerchief was Corny’s. Gyp, I hate to say it, but I’ve got the damnedest feeling that she knew about the second corpse. I don’t say she killed him, mind you, but …”
“But you think she did.”
Biff leaned forward and turned off the windshield wiper. The sudden silence made me want to scream.
“You think she is a murderer,” I said.
Biff’s hand fell on my knee. I felt him shake me gently.
“No encores with the dramatic scene, Punkin,” he said. “Smoke the cigarette and take it easy. I’ll put it to you like this: What do you think Evangie would do if someone threatened her? Or you? What if someone tried to blackmail her, not about herself, but about you? Say a guy tells her that he knows something ugly. He say he’ll blab to the papers if she doesn’t pay up. Maybe he says he’ll blab anyway. Spite or something. I know what she’d do. What do you think?”
“I—I think she’d kill him,” I said. The smoke from my cigarette was curling up into my eyes. I opened the window a crack and let the cigarette fall.
Biff drove on silently, and I looked out the dusty window at the monotonous view ahead. I had thought the country was romantic when we first arrived in Texas. The yucca had been in blossom then and the splashes of red across the desert had looked like small bonfires. Now they were gone and there was nothing to relieve the parched, hot look of the sand. A breeze rolled a branch of sagebrush across the road. It seemed like a living thing, a living thing that couldn’t make up its mind which way to roll. It suddenly was tossed under the wheels of the truck and I could almost feel the pain of its being crushed.
“No,” I said. “Mother could shoot a man, I think, but she couldn’t stab him in the back. If she shot him, it could be in self-defense, but if she stabbed him it would …”
“It could still be self-defense,” Biff said. “At least to a jury.”
A jury! I hadn’t thought of that. Mother on trial for her life! The realization that this wasn’t just another of Mother’s difficult situations made my hands tremble. This wasn’t something that Mother could smile her way out of. It wasn’t a piece of stolen wardrobe or a steamed-open letter; it was murder. What if they found her guilty?
“She could have stabbed him in a moment of panic,” Biff said. His voice sounded strange to me, as though I had never heard it before.
“Just because the knife was in his back is no sign that she sneaked up on him or anything. He could have been reaching for a weapon even, and when he turned she …”
Biff stopped talking suddenly, I knew that he didn’t believe what he had been saying.
I watched the heat rise in small ripples on the road ahead of us. The radiator had begun to boil over again and almost unconsciously I leaned forward and started the wiper in motion. We passed a sign that read DIP, and Biff put out his arm to hold me as we reached the depression in the road. I wanted him to hold me closer; the tenseness of his muscles seemed to give me courage, but he released me and clutched the wheel again.
“It wouldn’t be hard for her to plead insanity, ya know,” Biff said slowly. “It might be better than self-defense at that.”
We had reached the outskirts of the town, and Biff slowed down. The traffic signs read: TWENTY MILES AN HOUR. DRIVE SLOW AND SEE OUR TOWN. DRIVE FAST AND SEE OUR JAIL.
Biff chuckled. “Fast or slow, it’s all the same with us.”
A second sign read: DRIVE SLOW, DEATH IS PERMANENT.
As we drove through town I noticed how small groups of men nudged each other as they followed our truck with their eyes. One man leaning against a signboard spat. The brown juice from his tobacco dripped down on his chin and he rubbed it away carelessly. It was an ordinary gesture, but it was done too deliberately. The man’s eyes were narrowed, and one hand fell significantly on the holster at his hip.
As Biff parked the car, the men who sat on the courthouse steps moved aside for us. They gave us too much room. Their eyes were hostile. They stopped talking when we approached them.
The two men who had been with the doctor when he examined the body were standing near the door. They looked at me for a moment, then let their eyes drop.
Biff opened the door
for me, and as I walked through I could hear scraps of interrupted conversation.
“Never saw a burleycue show myself, but I sure heard plenty about ’em.” The voice laughed obscenely.
“We had a troupe try to perform here once,” another said. “We run ’em out fast.” Under the slyness there was a hint of regret, I thought.
I turned around and faced the men.
“But you’ll let creep joints stay open,” I said loudly. “You don’t pay any attention to dives like …”
Biff held my arm and pushed me ahead of him. He slammed the door behind us.
“Remember what I told you about losing your temper,” he whispered. “They want to get you riled up. Don’t listen to ’em. And remember, let me do the talking.”
The sheriff’s voice boomed out.
“He’s right about that, all right.” He laughed loudly and hit the palm of his hand on the top of the desk.
The sheriff was alone. He sat behind his desk with his feet stretched out on the open drawer. An opened copy of Variety was tossed carelessly on the floor beside him. The scene was familiar, almost too familiar. Even the sun streaming in the window was part of a stage setting that I had worked in before.
The sheriff jumped to his feet and pulled over a chair for me. He pushed another toward Biff.
“Before we go into the complaints about the Chamber of Commerce,” the sheriff said, “we’ll have a little drink.”
He put the same bottle of liquor on the desk and next to it he placed three paper cups.
“Say when,” he said.
Biff frowned. Then he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
“When,” he said. I noticed that he waited until the cup was full.
The sheriff handed me another cup and then he sat down and leaned back in his swivel chair. He downed his drink and let his eyes travel from Biff to me.
I put down my cup without touching it to my mouth. “Where’s my mother?” I asked. “I demand a lawyer before she is questioned. If you have tried to make her admit something she didn’t do, I’ll—I’ll—well, it’s unconstitutional to question her without an attorney. She can swear that you tried to third-degree her or something. Even if she did do it, it s …”
Biff stood up and walked over to my chair. He grabbed my hand before I had a chance to pound it on the desk.
“Why don’t you keep your big throat closed?” he said. He spaced each word with deep breaths. “The sheriff isn’t giving free drinks to murderers’ daughters. The gentleman must have something on his mind that’s bothering him. Why don’t you give him a chance to speak his piece?”
Biff sat on the arm of my chair and let his hand rest lightly on my shoulder. He spoke to the sheriff.
“Now that I have my wife muzzled, give us the story from the beginning. I know Evangie well enough to know that she didn’t wait for any legal brain. She shot her bolt before she even got to this office. Right?”
The sheriff smiled. Then he nodded.
“Well,” he said cautiously, “she did tell us a few things while we were driving in from Restful Grove, but the details we filled in after she got more comfortable here in the office.”
He reached into the drawer and placed a sheaf of papers on the desk. He picked up the top one and read it to himself. Then he handed it to Biff.
“Recognize the handwriting?” he asked.
Biff glanced at the paper, then at the signature at the bottom.
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s your mother-in-law’s, isn’t it?” the sheriff said.
Biff nodded and the sheriff went on.
“It’s a signed confession to the murder of Gus Eglestrom, alias Happy Gus, alias George Murphy, alias—well, I won’t bother you with all of ’em.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I won’t give you the full text of the confession, either,” the sheriff went on. His eyes smiled as he looked over his desk at me.
“Your mother isn’t exactly a woman of few words, you know. It took her ten pages to tell us what anyone else could have told us in two. Seems your mother met Gus Grange, that’s another of the deceased’s aliases, in 1913. He was a chiropodist. Your mother married him, but just before you were born this corn doctor takes it into his head that he doesn’t like being a family man. He ups and leaves your mother. Then she meets the man you thought was your father. He asks her to marry him, but your mother can’t because she has no trace of this Gus Grange. She foolishly tells this other man that her husband was dead. Why, I don’t know.
“Anyway, a week before you’re born, she gets news that Grange really is dead. He was reported to have been killed in a saloon brawl in Sitka, Alaska. Your mother married the other man, and, when you were born, he gave you his name. Through all these years she kept this from you because she wanted you to remember the second man as your father. He loved you very much and it was his dying wish.”
The sheriff stopped for a moment. He cleared his throat experimentally. Then he reached for the bottle and poured himself a drink. As an afterthought he poured one for Biff. Noticing that I hadn’t touched mine, he told me to drink up.
I didn’t want the liquor, but something in the sheriff’s expression made me believe that it would be better to drink it. I couldn’t taste it as it burned my throat.
“When did Mother find out that Gus—my father, I mean—was still alive?” I asked.
“Not until you started making money,” the sheriff said. “Seems he recognized a picture in a newspaper, a picture of you and your mother. All of a sudden he decided that he still loves your mother very much. So much so, in fact, that he wants her to come back to him, with you and your salary, of course. He can’t understand why your mother doesn’t want you to know that your real father is an ex-convict, that he’s a cheap pickpocket, a fence, a dope peddler, and a panderer. He tells your mother that it’s your duty to contribute to the support of your loving father.
“Your mother says that she’d see him in hell first, and he reminds her of how the story would look in print. So she pays him money each week. That goes on for a while, and then Gus decides he ought to have more money. His daughter is in the movies now. She’s getting a bigger salary, and he naturally wants a bigger slice of it. He wants to live as he thinks the father of a movie actress should live. Your mother makes the mistake of ignoring his letters, so he follows you to San Diego.”
Suddenly, as though he couldn’t hold it in another minute, Biff said, “Then she did kill him in self-defense.”
The sheriff ignored him. He picked up the second sheaf of papers and flicked through the closely typewritten words. When he spoke his voice was husky.
“This is a signed confession to the murder of Captain Robinson, able-bodied seaman. The name captain is a complimentary title.”
“That’s the name of the captain who married Biff and me at …”
Biff grabbed my arm before I could finish. He walked over to the desk and looked at the paper the sheriff held.
The sheriff turned the pages back until he came to the last page. Then he showed Biff the signature. He held the paper up to me.
“Is that your mother’s signature?” he asked.
It was written with a shaky hand. There was a blot of ink at the corner of the paper, but it was my mother’s signature. I nodded.
Biff came over to my chair again and put his arm around my shoulder. His hand felt heavy, as though it were a detached thing.
“If he wasn’t a captain, that means that Punkin and I aren’t married.”
The sheriff went on, “Well, yes, I guess that would be right. But let me finish. This captain was a friend of your father’s. They’d been in a couple of scraps together and were in jail together for a while. The captain knows about Gus, your father, that is, blackmailing your mother. It was the captain who showed him the clipping about you getting married. Gus doesn’t like the idea of your getting married a little bit. He figured that once you had a husband he’d take care of the busines
s details, like collecting the salary and banking it and so on. It was easier, Gus thought, to keep on getting the money from your mother than having to do business with a man.
“When he reads that you and Biff intend marrying at sea, it’s a cinch for him to step in with his friend, the ctptain. He just followed you two around that night in San Pedro and when you ‘happened’ to meet a man who knew ‘just the captain,’ it was him. He even called the Port of Authority to ask if a marriage beyond the three-mile limit was legal. At least, that’s what he told you two.”
“He called the number,” Biff said quietly. “I spoke to the man in charge myself.”
“You spoke to a man, your mother says. You didn’t speak to the man.”
“And Mother knew all the time that our marriage was illegal?” I asked.
The sheriff nodded.
“She tried to have you leave Biff, didn’t she? She never left you alone with him for a minute, did she? Yes, according to her confession, she knew everything. Gus was the kind of man who bragged about his methods. It was during one of his more—aggressive moments that your mother …”
“That she shot him,” Biff said tonelessly.
“After Gus was dead,” the sheriff went on, “your mother thought the blackmailing was over. She didn’t reckon with Captain Williams. He took it up where Gus left off.”
The sheriff’s voice had become softer and softer. Finally I couldn’t hear it at all. I felt myself slipping from the hot leather chair, lights were before my eyes. Then Biff’s arms were holding me. The sheriff held a cup of liquor to my mouth. I must have swallowed some because I could feel the burning in my throat.
“… shouldn’t have told it like that,” I heard the sheriff say. “When you said you wanted the story from the beginning, I gave it to you like you wanted.”
The sheriff walked back and forth in the small room and spoke slowly. His boot spurs made a clanking sound as he walked. The bluebirds embroidered on the boot toes were covered with dust.
“That’s just the way your mother told the story. I had two people taking it down word for word. She read the confession through and then she signed it. She seemed calm enough and she asked for a cup of water. I gave it to her myself. Then a funny thing happened.
