Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  “Guess not,” Barnes said.

  They turned and headed for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  They stopped.

  “Yes,” Barnes said.

  “This guy who hired Steerwell. Did he talk to anyone else at the agency?”

  “Oh, sure,” Barnes said. “According to the secretary, you spoke to Minton himself. Then Minton passed you along to Steerwell.”

  “Well, there you are,” I said. “Why don’t you ask Minton if I hired him?”

  “He’s in Las Vegas,” Preston said. “When he gets back, we certainly will.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I groaned. “Great.”

  The Furies smiled at me and went out the door.

  I sat there, cursing my fate. Ordinarily being mistaken for a thirty year old would have been flattering, but not now. All right, both Harold Dunleavy and I had dark hair and blue eyes and were about the same height and weight. And maybe he looked a little older than he was, and maybe I always do feel I look a little younger.

  But Jesus Christ.

  That damn fool woman.

  I was still thinking this when my Furies returned. They came in together this time, so it must have been something good. I braced myself.

  “Priscilla Martin,” Barnes said.

  “Who?”

  “Steerwell’s next door neighbor.”

  “Oh.”

  That would be Miss Busybody. I’d been wondering when they’d get around to her.

  “Miss Martin,” Barnes said, “identifies you as the gentleman she saw at Steerwell’s house on the day of the murder.”

  No surprise there. I’d been sure that she would.

  “Yeah,” Preston said. “She says you were the man she saw running in and out of the house just before she saw the woman come out with the gun.”

  21.

  RICHARD HIT TOWN like a tornado. Also like a high roller. The first inkling I got of his arrival was hearing a buzz of voices from the outer room, in which the only identifiable word was stretch-limo. I later found out Richard had also taken a helicopter and a Lear jet. With all of that, he probably shaved a good fifteen minutes off the time it would have taken him just to drive down.

  I’d called Richard right after Barnes dropped the bomb about Miss Busybody. Call me a coward if you will, but somehow that was just more than I could take. The thing was, the thought flashed through my mind: “New Jersey doesn’t have the death penalty, does it?” And I figured if I was thinking along those lines, maybe it was time to call a lawyer.

  I had trouble getting through. Wendy/Cheryl wasn’t too keen on connecting me, what with me missing calling in and all. But after she’d bawled me out a good bit, Richard got on the phone to bawl me out too.

  “I got arrested,” I said.

  That calmed him right down. “What’s the charge?”

  “I’ve been indicted for grand larceny.”

  “Oh,” Richard said, and I could hear the interest oozing out of him. “I’m really rather busy at the moment, and—”

  “And now I’m being held on suspicion of murder.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  He was, too. It seemed an eternity to me, but that wasn’t because of any failing on Richard’s part. Everything that could have been done, he’d done. For a man who begrudged me every roll of film on my expense account, he’d certainly gone all out.

  Right after the stretch-limo murmur, I heard a door slam and then a familiar, high-pitched nasal bark, after a few minutes of which, Richard strode into the room, followed by a rather dazed-looking Barnes and Preston.

  Richard took one look at me and stopped dead. He wheeled on the officers.

  “Chained?” Richard said, with an inflection I couldn’t even begin to imitate. “Chained to the wall?”

  “Well, you see,” Barnes said. “We have no holding cells here, so—”

  Richard wasn’t about to listen.

  “I need to confer with my client,” he snapped. “I need to confer with him alone. You will provide a room. I hereby serve notice that if that room is bugged, or if one word of that conversation is overheard in any way, it will constitute a violation of my client’s rights, and he will walk on any charge whatsoever, up to and including murder.”

  The thing about Richard is, I don’t think he really knows that much law, I think a lot of what he says is bullshit, but when he says it, people listen. Two minutes later we were sitting in a small room with a closed door.

  “All right,” Richard said. “What’s the story?”

  “You gotta understand,” I told him. “I’m protecting someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Clients.”

  “You work for me.”

  “Yeah, but I’m on vacation and I got some clients, and that’s who I’m protecting.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I’m your lawyer.”

  “I know that.”

  “And you’re in deep shit.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “So this is not the time to play button-button-who’s-got-the-button. What’s the story?”

  I told him. I told him the whole thing. I just didn’t give him Harold and Barbara’s names. I didn’t mention MacAullif at all.

  Richard listened without interruption until I was finished. Then he blinked and said, “That’s incredible.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, I mean it. It’s really incredible. You have two clients, the man and the wife, who are not acting together. In fact, part of your job is trying to protect the wife from the husband. They are both murder suspects, and one of the two of ’em probably did it. And these are the people you’re protecting.”

  “That’s right.”

  Richard leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “This,” he said, “is why I confine my practice to litigation.”

  “If you’d prefer me to call another lawyer—”

  “No, no, no,” Richard said. “I can handle it. I can’t follow it, but I can handle it. You see, any situation can be resolved by proper analysis. For instance, my analysis of this situation leads to one inescapable conclusion: the man and the wife may be your clients, but it is obvious neither one of them hired you.”

  “This is true.”

  “So who did?”

  “No one.”

  “What?”

  “No one hired me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m doing this as a favor for a friend.”

  Richard cocked his head at me. “Do you mean to tell me that this whole deplorable situation is the result of you doing a favor for a friend?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Richard shook his head. “I was right. You’re a total moron.”

  “Thank you.”

  Richard sighed. “All right. Setting aside for the moment the fact that the entire situation is utterly absurd, let’s examine it rationally for a moment.”

  “You’re welcome to try.”

  “Thank you. Aside from the grand larceny charge, of which you have the advantage of actually being guilty, your problem is simply a case of mistaken identity. Which, incidentally, would help me immensely if I really wanted to find out who your clients were. I’d just look around town for a married couple where the husband was a fortyish douche-bag with dark hair and a goony-looking expression.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t mention it. At any rate your problem is simple. Or as simple as it can be, seeing as how you didn’t kill either of these people. The only thing that ties you to Nubar is the fingerprints on the wallet. And the fact you made inquiries about him. The fingerprints mean nothing. They’re not dated. They could have been made at any time. I’d have fun arguing the point. They’re damaging, I’ll admit, but they’re not enough to hold you on. And the nice thing is, they have a much better case against you for kill
ing Steerwell.”

  “That’s a nice thing?”

  “Absolutely. Because that makes it the main case. The one they concentrate on. The one they try to build on. So if we can knock it down, their whole theory about the two murders collapses.”

  “I see,” I said. I didn’t really, but Richard had paused there, and was looking at me, and I realized that was what I was supposed to say.

  “Now, let’s look at the case they have against you for killing Steerwell. The damaging witness is the one you call Miss Busybody. That’s the one who says she saw you run in and out of Steerwell’s house at about the time of the murder.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The guy who actually did go in and out—she get a good look at this guy?”

  “Obviously not. She’d seen me up close earlier in the day. Then she saw this guy run in and out. She didn’t get a good look, but she assumed it was me.”

  Richard nodded. “She shouldn’t be too hard to break on cross-examination if it came to that. What kind of car does this guy drive?”

  “Why? You trying to find my client through his automobile?”

  “No. I’m trying to break down the identification. What kind of car do you drive?”

  “A Toyota.”

  “This other guy drive a Toyota or anything like it?”

  “Not even close.”

  “See, that should do it right there. If this witness had really been paying attention to this guy, she’d have seen what car he got in. Then I could show it wasn’t yours. How could she have made that mistake, by the way? If as she says, she was so interested in this guy, she’d have watched him till he drove off.”

  I thought a minute. “When I was there, Steerwell wasn’t home. There was no car in the driveway, so she could have seen my car just fine. When the other guy was there, Steerwell’s car was in the driveway. So if the guy parked in the street, slightly beyond it, Steerwell’s car would have blocked it from view.”

  Richard nodded. “Still, she should have seen it, and I’ll bet I can crucify her with it. That’s all well and good. But it’s only useful if the thing comes to trial. And that’s what we are attempting to avoid.”

  I felt that was a less than completely sincere statement. Richard would have loved to go to trial.

  “So,” Richard said. “The other witness, from the Minton Agency. How well did she see you?”

  “Barely at all. Both times I was in there she was typing. The first time she glanced up once briefly just to tell me to get lost. The second time she never looked up at all.”

  “But she swears you were the guy who was in there the day before, talked to Minton and hired Steerwell?”

  “Right.”

  “Then the situation is simple,” Richard said.

  He smiled, got up and walked out of the room.

  I sat and waited.

  About an hour later the door opened again. I looked up expectantly, but it wasn’t Richard. It was Barnes and Preston.

  “Where’s my lawyer?” I said.

  Preston shrugged. “He went back to New York.”

  My heart sank. “What?”

  “He had business to attend to, and he’d already wasted half a day. He’s on his way home. He asked us to make his apologies.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Richard quitting just like that. It was just another in the string of emotional shocks I’d been getting lately.

  I got another.

  Barnes said, “You can go.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “You’re free to go.”

  One thing about me is, besides being a coward, I am not really emotionally stable. I hold together as long as I can, and then I crack up. And in this case, I was way overdue.

  I started giggling. I couldn’t stop. I just sat there, giggling uncontrollably.

  Barnes and Preston just stood there staring at me. Neither said a word. They both looked as if they were observing some totally weird phenomenon, which, I guess, they were.

  Finally I got control. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Are you all right?” Barnes asked.

  “No, but I’m as all right as I’m going to be. I’m sorry. I just don’t quite understand.”

  “Well,” Barnes said. “Your attorney—this Rosenberg—is quite a character, if you don’t mind my saying so. And he makes a very interesting case. He implies, without actually saying so, that your silence in this matter is not because of any guilt on your part, but because you are protecting some unnamed client. It’s good he implies that rather than states it, because frankly, we wouldn’t like that at all. But setting that aside, here’s the situation.

  “Your attorney claims that it is possible that you had some dealings with Frederick Nubar—which he is not willing to admit—which would account for your fingerprints on his wallet. However he categorically denies that you killed him. He claims that this whole situation is a result of mistaken identity. That apparently you and the man who hired Steerwell and who ran in and out of his house are somewhat similar in appearance. He dismisses the fact that both witnesses picked your photo out of the line-ups. He claims that had the photo of the other man been in there, both witnesses would have unerringly picked him.”

  Barnes grinned. “And here’s where it gets interesting. I must say this guy has a flair. He says since we’re in Atlantic City and gambling’s legal and all, he’ll bet his whole case on the fact that when this Minton, who was the only one who had a good look at the guy, gets back from Vegas, he’ll say it wasn’t you.”

  “And,” Preston said, “then he says, ‘Charge him or release him.’ And he points out if we charge you, and then this guy Minton comes back from Vegas and blows the identification, we are going to look like the two stupidest cops in New Jersey.”

  “Not that that bothers us any,” Barnes put in quickly. “We are concerned with upholding the law, not how we look in the press.”

  “Naturally,” Preston said.

  “So,” Barnes said. “Your attorney says if we hold off charging you till this Minton gets back, you will be not only willing but eager to participate in clearing up the matter of the identification.”

  “I see,” I said. It was all I seemed to ever get to say in this damn case, in which I didn’t see a thing.

  “So,” Barnes said. “You’re free to go.”

  I took a breath. “You’re telling me I can walk out of here?”

  “Sure. We’ve even arranged a ride for you back to your hotel.”

  “I see,” I said again.

  But I didn’t get up.

  “Is anything wrong?” Barnes asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But everything’s happening very fast. This is all a little much. I hate to seem so stupid, but I want to be sure I understand this. You’re telling me that there are no charges against me other than the grand larceny one that’s already been brought, and that I’m free to walk out of here right now?”

  “That’s right,” Barnes said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Then let’s talk.”

  22.

  AFTER ALL THEY’D put me through, I must say I was pretty pleased with myself at that moment. Because Barnes and Preston were stunned. They stood there, gaping, looking just as stupid as I’d been looking before.

  It was wonderful.

  Preston recovered first. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. “The revenge of the clam!”

  “Well, what do you know,” Barnes said.

  “Why don’t you boys sit down,” I suggested.

  Barnes and Preston looked at each other.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Barnes said. “But I’m willing to ride along. Shall we?”

  Barnes and Preston pulled out chairs and sat down.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Now, gentlemen, I’m very tired, as are we all, and I would very much like to go home, but before I go I would like to clear up one or two points.”

  “Certainly,” Barnes said. He and Preston were still regarding m
e as if I were from another planet, but they were being very polite.

  “All right,” I said. “Now look. I’m mighty happy with being released and all that, and you’re mighty nice guys and all that, and Richard’s one hell of a lawyer and all that, but just between you and me, I think it’s bullshit. What you just told me, I mean. About why you’re letting me go.

  “Now, I’ll tell you what I think. I think the reason you’re letting me go is, you know you’re not going to get anything out of me, so you’re hoping I’ll lead you to those pictures. Or to whoever it is I’m protecting. And what I wanted to say is, don’t. Don’t put me under surveillance. I don’t like people looking over my shoulder, I’m not going to lead you to anything. It’s gonna be a big waste of time and manpower and a major pain in the ass.”

  Preston looked at Barnes. “Jesus, look at the balls on this guy.”

  “No,” Barnes said. “Let him talk. Go ahead. I presume what you want to do now is explain why putting you under surveillance would do no good.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Now, as you know, officially I have nothing to say about this investigation. Having said that, if you guys would like to talk hypothetically and off the record, I see no reason why we couldn’t discuss the case.”

  “Hypothetically and off the record is how we usually talk,” Barnes said.

  “Then, hypothetically and off the record, let me say this. If I were protecting a client, I would feel obligated to that client, and I sure wouldn’t do anything that would tell you about him or lead you to him. So if I’m placed under surveillance, it will do no good.

  “On the other hand, I don’t believe in murder. And if it should turn out that someone I was protecting was guilty of murder, I’d stop protecting them.

  “However, there would be no way for me to find out if this person was guilty if you had me under surveillance and I couldn’t contact him.”

  “I see,” Barnes said. I was delighted to have someone say that besides me.

  “Good,” I said. “Now then, with regard to your murders, while I don’t know what was actually going on, I’d be delighted to make some suppositions.”

  “Feel free,” Barnes said.

  “There were two guns.”