Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  “Now, Mr. Hastings,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry to inconvenience you, but you must understand we are dealing with two murders here. And I have this slight problem. The photographs. The ones which you allegedly took from the Photomat. The detective from the Minton Agency who left them there happens to be one Joseph T. Steerwell, who was murdered yesterday afternoon. Therefore, you can understand our interest in them.”

  I said nothing.

  “Now,” Barnes said, “if I remember correctly, you stated that you could not discuss your employer’s business relating to the very important case of one—” He referred to his notebook. “One Floyd Watson, who fell down a flight of stairs. I don’t recall your mentioning that case having anything to do with Joseph T. Steerwell. Therefore, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t tell us what you know.”

  He looked at me expectantly. I still said nothing.

  Barnes smiled. “I hate to seem insistent, but I would like to know your connection with Joseph T. Steerwell.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ,” came a voice.

  I looked. It was Sergeant Preston, standing in the doorway, still playing bad cop. He looked pretty bad standing in that doorway. After all, his head was almost touching the top of the frame.

  “Just listen to this guy,” he said. “ ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’ What the hell does he think this is, a game or something? This is a murder investigation.”

  “I’m sure he’s aware of that, Sergeant,” Barnes said.

  “Of course he’s aware of it. He’s damn well aware of it.” Preston crossed in to the table. “You know what his connection is with Steerwell? I’ll tell you. He probably killed him.”

  Barnes smiled. “I don’t think Mr. Hastings would do anything like that.”

  “Oh, no? Then why ain’t he talkin’? This is a murder case. If he’s clean, what’s he got to hide?”

  “I assume he has nothing to hide.”

  “Then why ain’t he talkin’?”

  Barnes turned to me. “My partner is a little impetuous, but he does have a point. If you’re not involved in this murder, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t tell us everything you know.”

  I’d been listening to their conversation, and I must say I found it almost comforting. For one thing, they were talking to each other and not to me, which was a relief. For another, they were playing good cop/bad cop, which was a routine I understood. And understanding the routine made me feel that I could deal with it.

  I was about to make some noncommittal response when I had an inspiration.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Perhaps I don’t understand something here. You see, I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t understand all the nuances of the situation. But, you see, I thought the matter was settled. With regard to Joseph T. Steerwell, I mean. If those really were his pictures. I’ve been indicted on charges of grand larceny, and released pending trial. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it would seem to me that with a criminal matter pending, I am under no obligation to discuss the matter further, and moreover, your attempts to make me do so are a violation of my constitutional rights.”

  There was a sickening silence.

  Barnes looked at Preston. “Well, what do we do now?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do now. Whaddya say we drive him to the border, arrest him attempting to leave the jurisdiction of the court, haul him in for jumping bail, rescind it, and put him on ice?”

  Barnes smiled ruefully and shook his head. “He doesn’t mean that,” he told me. “He just gets carried away at times.”

  “Yeah,” Preston said, disgustedly. He turned and walked out the door.

  Leaving me alone with good cop. Part of the technique.

  “You’ll have to excuse Sergeant Preston,” Barnes said. “He’s a good cop. Double homicides just make him grouchy.”

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  “Then you can understand his point of view. Murder is not a game. Someone killed two people. And they shouldn’t get away with it.”

  “I’m with you there.”

  “Are you? Good. Then let’s discuss it. Now I’m a reasonable man. But this bullshit about violating your rights and all—’cause that’s what it is, bullshit—that just doesn’t sit well. No one wants to violate your rights. All we’re concerned with is the murder. Now as far as these pictures are concerned, they’re relatively unimportant. As far as we know, they have no connection with the murder. Therefore, as far as the charge of grand larceny goes, if we could clear this murder up, I’m sure that charge could just quietly disappear.”

  I said nothing.

  “So,” Barnes said. “You have everything to gain and nothing to lose in telling us everything you know. Unless, of course, those pictures are connected with the murder. Therefore, if you continue to remain silent, I’m forced to conclude that they are.”

  I shifted my position in the chair. It was a good argument—if you keep quiet you’re confirming our suspicions and proving your guilt. I really felt impelled to say something. To at least make a denial. I felt very proud of myself that I didn’t.

  Barnes sat there, silently, for what seemed like a good minute. Then he sighed.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll have to draw our own conclusions.”

  He got up and walked out the door.

  I’d just had time to realize that he’d left me alone and unhandcuffed when Preston came in and chained me to the wall again. He wasn’t exactly rough about it. Just abrupt. He managed to convey the impression that it could have been rough, had he wanted it to be.

  He performed the operation without a word and went out the door again. It occurred to me that he must have been outside the door all the time, listening while Barnes was talking to me, to have come in on cue. I liked that. I mean, I liked the idea that I realized that. It meant that I was still on to their game. Still hip to what they were trying to do.

  I started thinking back over the conversation, trying to judge my performance, see how well I was doing. I kind of liked that whole bit I came up with about not being able to discuss the case now that it was pending trial. That had been a pretty good one.

  I thought about it some more and I immediately started having doubts. That happens to me a lot. Every time I think I’ve done something smart, I immediately think, “Wait a minute. Did you really?” ’Cause I’m basically insecure and I always have doubts.

  In this case, the doubts came thick and fast. Yeah, suppose I can’t talk to ’em since I’m released pending trial. But the thing is, who put me in that position? Barnes and Preston. And they’d done it by means of a middle-of-the-night star-chamber session that was highly irregular to say the least. And they’d had me released on my own recognizance. They hadn’t had to do that. They hadn’t had to charge me at all. Having charged me, they were under no compulsion to whisk me right before a judge. And then when the judge bound me over for trial, they hadn’t had to release me. They could have asked for a stiff bail and clapped me in jail. But they hadn’t done that. So what was this about Preston saying he wanted to violate my bail and send me back to jail? That was bullshit, of course. They could have done that in the first place. They didn’t want me in jail. They wanted me with them. Well, they had me with them to begin with. They didn’t have to go through all that shit, just to get back where they started. So it was all part of the game. But what was the game? What were they getting at? Why had they done this?

  I realized for all my understanding of the game, I had no idea why it was being played.

  I tried to think logically. After all, I taught math once—I’d dealt with logic problems. What was the logic of this situation?

  Well, to understand why a person performs an action, consider the consequences of that action. What did they gain?

  In this case, what Barnes and Preston had gained was getting me booked for grand larceny. Big deal. What did it get ’em?

  I had no idea. />
  The door opened and Barnes and Preston came in again. They were both drinking coffee. Barnes looked tired. Preston looked tall.

  Without a word, Preston unlocked the handcuffs and sat me down at the table. Barnes and Preston sat down on either side. Barnes sipped his coffee, leaned back in his chair.

  “Well,” he said. “We got the report back from the lab.”

  That startled me. I blurted, “Lab?”

  “Yeah,” Preston said. “We’re not the only guys you’ve been keeping up all night. There’s people all over New Jersey sipping coffee and cursing you.”

  “That’s hardly fair, Preston,” Barnes said.

  “Oh, yeah? You know what my wife’s gonna say when I get home?”

  “Sure: Shit! It’s my husband! Get your pants on and hop out the window!”

  “That’s what your wife says. Remember when we were up all night on the Melbourne case?”

  “I don’t even remember the Melbourne case.”

  “How could you forget the Melbourne case? That was the nymphomaniac kept claiming she’d been raped.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I remember I got home five in the morning, my wife hops out of bed, says, ‘Where the hell you been?’ I said, ‘Shit, honey, I been up all night with a nymphomaniac.’ She says, ‘Don’t lie to me. You’ve been playing poker with the boys again.’“

  Jesus Christ. They’d stopped playing good cop/bad cop and were doing vaudeville routines. And I knew why they were doing it. They’d aroused my curiosity with that crack about the lab, and now they were letting me stew.

  The thing was, it was working.

  “What about the lab?” I asked.

  “Hey!” Preston said. “Look at this. The clam wants to talk.”

  “Is that right?” Barnes said. “Did you have something to say?”

  “I just thought you boys came in here to tell me something. Or did you just want me to play Mr. Interlocutor?”

  Barnes grinned. “You know, Preston, the guy’s got a sense of humor.”

  “It’s probably his only virtue,” Preston said.

  I was damned if I was gonna ask ’em again.

  “Any chance of me getting a cup of that coffee?” I said.

  Barnes and Preston looked at each other.

  “Sure,” Preston said. “Let’s get him a cup of coffee.”

  Barnes and Preston got up and walked out.

  I sat there like a fool. I probably could have figured everything out there and then—about the lab, I mean—if I hadn’t been so dazed, so bewildered by what was going on. Jesus Christ, it was as if I were an audience of one, watching the Barnes and Preston Show. At any moment now, they’d come tap-dancing through the door with straw hats and canes. Or perhaps they’d have gone through another metamorphosis. Barnes would come in dribbling a basketball and pass it to Preston who’d slam-dunk it down my throat.

  They didn’t. They came back with a paper cup full of coffee. Preston handed it to me and the cops sat down. We all sat there drinking coffee. No one said a word. We just sat and waited for someone to do something.

  I did.

  I began to fidget.

  Barnes noticed. “He’s fidgeting,” he said.

  “I noticed that,” Preston said.

  “All right, damn it,” I said. “What about the lab?”

  “Ah, the lab,” Barnes said. “You tell him, Preston. You took the call.”

  Preston pulled a notebook out of his pocket.

  “Well, after we booked you, we sent your fingerprints down to the lab, to the guys doing the workup on Frederick Nubar. And you know what they found? Your fingerprints are all over the Nubar house. They’re on the front doorknob. They’re on the rail of the front porch, where someone puked in the bushes. They’re on the coffee table in the living room, right next to where the body was found.”

  Preston looked up from his notes. “And—and this is the one I like—there’s a print of your right thumb and index finger on Nubar’s wallet. The wallet that was in the hip pocket of the dead man’s trousers.”

  20.

  NOW YOU KNOW WHY I am not the world’s greatest detective. I have a tendency to lose my head in pressure situations and not think rationally. I mean, come on, what is the most elemental element of any detective story? Fingerprints. But I hadn’t thought of that. Couldn’t even figure it out when they mentioned the lab.

  All right, so I was rattled. It was my second murder of the day. And being overfull of self affairs, my mind did lose it. Who said that? Theseus? Oberon? Shit. I wonder if English lit teachers get into this much trouble. Perhaps I should consider a change of occupation.

  “… If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.” Preston finished up the drone. “God, I hate saying that. But we gotta, you see. It’s the law.”

  “Right,” Barnes said. “It’s the law. And the law must not be broken. You understand that, don’t you, Mr. Hastings? Now, as Mr. Preston so aptly says, you have the right to an attorney. You work for an attorney. Maybe you’d like to get him on the phone. Maybe while you have him on the phone, you might explain to him how you’re refusing to answer our questions on the grounds that they might pertain to his business. Specifically, his business with one Frederick Nubar. It might be interesting to find out what he advises you to do with regard to that. So, would you like to call him?”

  I considered how Richard would feel about being called at four in the morning. I realized he’d actually love it. You see, Richard has this dream of defending a client in a hopeless murder case. Preferably a guilty one. Richard might be a terrible pain in the ass when I was just a douche-bag investigator dealing with his business, but cast me in the role of a murder suspect, and he’d be a prince.

  Yeah. Richard wouldn’t have minded a bit.

  But I would.

  The thing was, I was still protecting Barbara and Harold. Trying to keep them out of it. And I was still trying to keep MacAullif out of it, whether he’d held out on me or not. So, all things considered, I didn’t want to talk to Richard any more than I wanted to talk to Barnes and Preston.

  Maybe even less.

  “Not at the present time,” I told Barnes.

  “Fine,” Barnes said. “Please make a note of that, Preston. Suspect was offered an opportunity to contact his attorney, and declined. Now,” he said to me, “having also been duly warned that you don’t have to talk to us, I would like to point out that now might be an excellent time for you to do so. Particularly with regard to explaining the presence of your fingerprints on Nubar’s wallet. Do you have anything to say?”

  I wondered what would happen if I said no. I also wondered what would happen if I tried to explain. I had no idea. But I had a feeling in either case, whatever happened wouldn’t be pleasant.

  I’d like to have you think that it was my iron will and steel resolve that kept me from cracking then. But actually, it was simply that faced with the two unpleasant alternatives, saying no seemed by far the easiest.

  “I have nothing to say,” I told him.

  Barnes nodded, as if that were exactly the answer he had been expecting. They got up, chained me to the wall again, and walked out.

  After that, Barnes and Preston went through another incarnation. They became Greek Furies, flying in the door every now and then to torment the tragic hero, chained to the post.

  “Floyd Watson,” Preston said, poking his head in the door.

  “What about him?”

  “We checked up in the log of Aided Accidents, and it’s just as you said. The guy fell down the flight of stairs in the casino.”

  “There you are,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. You told us you came down to Atlantic City because Floyd Watson fell down the stairs, and damned if he didn’t fall down the stairs.”

  “I told you so.”

  “Yeah. Only thing is, the date of the accident. Floyd Watson fell down the flight of stairs the day after you got here. So, we’re wonderin
g how you knew this guy was going to fall down the stairs.”

  Preston grinned at me and ducked out.

  Barnes ducked in a short while later.

  “Julie Blessing,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The secretary at Nubar’s. She identifies you as the man who called on Nubar at the office yesterday.”

  I stared at him. “Identifies?” I said. “What do you mean, identifies? No one’s been in to see me. How the hell could she identify me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Barnes said, “but, you see, we have no facilities for line-ups here at Major Crimes, so we do it with pictures. Miss Blessing picked your mug shot from out of a group of six.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Barnes said. “She says you came in, gave the improbable name Phil Collins and then decided not to wait.”

  “Oh.”

  Barnes smiled, innocently. “She said you must have decided to see him later,” he said and ducked out.

  Preston was next.

  “Felicia Holt.”

  “Who?”

  “Receptionist at Minton’s Detective Agency. She I.D.’s you as the man who came in twice looking for Joseph T. Steerwell, the last time on the day of the murder.”

  “Oh.”

  “She says you came to the agency for the first time, three days ago, spoke to Minton and hired Steerwell to do a job for you.”

  “She what!?” I blurted.

  “She I.D.’s you as the guy who hired Steerwell. She assumes it had something to do with the pictures.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I said.

  “Anything the matter?” Barnes said, coming in the door.

  “I don’t know,” Preston said. “I was just telling him how the Holt woman identified him as the guy who hired Steerwell, and he went bananas.”

  “They do that sometimes when they get I.D.’d. It’s ’cause they realize they’re caught.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “That goddamn woman is full of prunes. I never hired Steerwell. I—”

  I realized I was blowing it. I stopped myself.

  “Too bad,” Preston said. “I thought he was going to tell us something.”