“Has Joan told you where I fit into this thing?” I asked.
“She hasn’t told me anything. She just said not to worry and that her lawyer, that Duncan man, had told her not to talk to anyone. Surely Mr. Duncan didn’t mean she couldn’t talk to her own mother. How she got hold of him anyway, I don’t know. He isn’t our lawyer.”
“I hired him. I’m investigating the case for your daughter. That’s why I came to see you. I need answers to some questions.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help,” she said.
“Fine. You can start by telling me what you were doing in the hall near Randall’s office a few minutes after the murder.”
She turned rigid and the color slowly disappeared from her face. Her hands stopped working and lay upright and still in her lap. Her recovery was slow, but complete.
“I wasn’t there.” Her voice was wary, but calm.
“Mrs. Garson, perhaps it hasn’t penetrated that your daughter is accused of murder. The police think she’s guilty, the papers think she’s guilty, the grand jury is going to think she’s guilty, and as things stand she’s going to be convicted. They gas murderers in this state. If you want your daughter to end in the gas chamber, keep right on lying to me. I saw you in the hall right after the murder.”
She paled again, but otherwise kept control of herself.
“It wouldn’t help to tell you,” she murmured. “Nothing can help.”
Her eyes looked hopelessly straight into mine and I suddenly comprehended.
“You think Joan committed the murder!” I said.
Her unchanged expression was an answer.
“Do you want your daughter to die?” I asked.
“Of course not!”
“What would you do for an outside chance of saving her?”
“Anything!”
“All right. Tell me the truth.”
“It wouldn’t help,” she repeated stubbornly.
I got mad then. “I don’t think your daughter killed Randall,” I said. “If you cooperate, I may be able to prove she didn’t. But if you keep sitting on your dead spine saying, ‘It wouldn’t help,’ she’ll die whether guilty or not. Now come across and come across fast!”
For a moment her eyes lighted. “You don’t think she’s guilty?”
“No, I don’t.”
The light in her eyes burned out and they turned dull again.
“I’ve tried to think of that. I’ve thought of how else it could have happened, but I always come back to Joan. If I tell what I know, it will only make things worse.”
“Let me judge that. I’m not a policeman, and I don’t have to pass on information that will hurt Joan.”
She looked down at her hands, her brow puckered with indecision. I let her wrestle it out in her mind.
“All right,” she said finally. “But before I tell you about yesterday, I had better go back to when my husband died. It’s all part of the story.”
She started to talk in a low, toneless voice, as though recounting a story she had heard about someone else in which she had not been concerned, nor was much interested. She told of her husband’s death and the dissipation of his fortune to avert scandal, of the checks she had signed as I.O.U.s, and the pressure Randall had put on her to steer friends to El Patio.
She half smiled at this point, without embarrassment, remembering her attempt on me. Generally it was the same story Joan had told, but I let her talk on as though I had never heard it before in order to see how much truth she was unfolding. She omitted nothing.
“When I learned Joan was going to see Mr. Randall, I was frantic,” she went on. “I feared he would work some kind of hold over her. You can’t visualize the sort of beast he was, Mr. Moon. He used to gloat over being able to make me do as he ordered. I didn’t want Joan involved with him in any way, but I knew it useless to forbid her. Up to the minute she left to see him I couldn’t think what to do. Then in desperation I called a taxi and tried to get there first, so I could beg him not to see her.
“I didn’t want Joan to know I was there, so I went in the back way. But I was too late. Just as I turned into the little corridor which leads to the back door of Mr. Randall’s office, the door opened and Joan came out. The nearest place I could hide was the men’s room across the corridor entrance and I was so rattled I burst in without even thinking. A man stood there smoking a cigarette.
“I mumbled something about being sorry, that I thought it was a powder room. I’m not sure what I said, I was so embarrassed. He said nothing, but made no move to leave, and I couldn’t leave either until Joan was out of sight. We just stood looking at each other until I turned my back on him.
“The upper part of the door was glass, the kind you can see through one way, but not the other. I saw Joan turn the corner toward the elevators and then the man said, ‘Pardon me,’ and went by me out into the hall. He turned the opposite way Joan had, and disappeared through a fire door where the hall ended.
“I stayed there about five minutes more, trying to calm myself enough to walk to the elevator. I had just pushed the down button when someone came around the corner behind me. Now I realize it must have been you, but at the time I feared it might be the man from the men’s room and was too embarrassed to look.”
“You had a rough experience,” I said, and couldn’t stop my grin from spilling all over my face.
“But don’t you see what it means?” She said despairingly. “No one went in or out of that door after Joan left until you came through it! And according to the papers, no one went in the other way. She had to do it!”
The first real doubts of Joan’s innocence were working about in my mind when I left the Garson home. If Mrs. Garson had told the truth, the possibilities virtually narrowed to the murderer being either Joan or me. I knew I was innocent, which left Joan.
But I still could not psychologically reconcile the act of calmly keeping a beauty appointment immediately after committing a murder. My feeling about it added nothing to her defense, but I could not visualize her as a killer. I have known criminals who, before being caught, seemed constitutionally incapable of crime. But even they followed a consistent pattern of behavior. If I believed Joan guilty, I had to believe her so cold-blooded that murder did not even disturb her usual routine.
Yet, if she had committed the crime, all evidence indicated she had thrust the knife in fury and on impulse of the moment. A murderer’s logical reaction after a hot-blooded killing is to get away as fast and as far as possible, or at least to run home and hide under the bed. Joan had acted exactly as though unaware a crime had been committed, which would get her nowhere with a jury, but before Mrs. Garson’s testimony placed doubts in my mind, her actions had thoroughly convinced me of her innocence.
Assuming Mrs. Garson’s statement true, I could see but two possibilities. Someone had got into Randall’s office and out again without using either door, or Joan was guilty. I had no reason to believe Joan’s mother had lied, unless she herself had done the killing. But even then it was hardly likely she would make up a story to convict her own daughter.
I decided the stone ledge below Randall’s window required a second examination…
* * * *
Joan’s cell in the women’s section was clean and airy. She looked worn out, but summoned enough energy for a smile when the matron opened her barred door for me.
“How do you feel?” I said.
“All right.” Her voice was listless.
Locking me in, the female guard moved ten paces away and stopped where she could keep us in sight.
“So far everything I turn up makes it look worse for you,” I said. “Did you kill that guy?”
Her eyes, deep and tired, looked directly into mine without surprise.
“No. Honest I didn’t.”
“If you were a man, or even an ugly w
oman, I’d throw you to the wolves. But every time I turn up something that clinches the case tighter, I think nobody with legs like yours could kill. So I go on ferreting out more evidence. Why didn’t you tell me you’d been engaged to Alvin Christopher?”
Her eyes widened. “What difference does that make?”
“None, except that you didn’t tell me. I have to know everything about you to break this case.”
“It was long ago, in college. We broke up during our senior year. Alvin was silly about it for a time. He dramatized himself as the wounded lover and started showing up at school dances drunk. Months after we stopped going together he cut me at a dance and ranted about how I had ruined his life by making him a drunkard and gambler. He was drunk at the time. It was so silly and childish. Two weeks later he had forgotten all about me and was going with a blonde.”
On my way out I stopped at Warren Day’s office. He was dictating to a pert blonde, apparently a new employee, as I had never seen her before.
“Don’t you believe in knocking?” he greeted me.
“Not when I call on old friends.” I helped myself to a cigar and a soft chair. “Who’s the dish?”
The blonde raised her nose and got up as though to leave.
“Sit down,” Day said. “I’m not through.” To me he said, “Make it snappy. I’ve got work.”
“You have a file on Louie Bagnell?”
“Why?”
“How about a peek?”
“In the first place,” Day started sanctimoniously, “we don’t maintain files on people without criminal records.”
I emitted a short horse laugh.
“In the second place,” he roared, “you got the devil of a nerve asking to look at secret police files!”
“Watch your blood pressure,” I said. “All I want is the inside dope on the Randall-Bagnell relationship.”
“That case is closed.”
“Let’s open it again. Were Randall and Bagnell equal partners in El Patio?”
“Get out of here,” the Inspector snarled. “And stay out of my hair.”
I stood up. “Okay. But when I hand the real murderer to the Dispatch instead of you, don’t gripe because you lose credit for solving the crime.”
He made an impolite noise. I winked at the blonde just to see her nose tilt, and left…
In the four hours before my date with Fausta I had work to do. From a neighborhood tavern I phoned a flop-house number and asked for Jackie Morgan. In a few minutes a cautious voice answered.
“Moon,” I said. “You busy?”
“Not for you. Who you want slugged?”
“Nobody. It’s your other talent I need. How soon can you be at Grand and Olive?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Fine. Bring your kit.”
CHAPTER VIII
A Little Matter of Safe-Breaking
Jackie Morgan claimed to be the best picklock in the country. He may have been. I don’t know them all. He also claimed to be tough, but he wasn’t. His affection for me had its origin in a saloon brawl during which I had slammed around a couple of people who were slamming him around, he, with his hundred and twenty pounds and pipestem arms being fairly easy to slam. It was not much, but he thought so and dropped everything else for me on the rare occasions I needed his help.
After seven o’clock the University Building was empty except for a watchman who slept in the basement. Jackie’s technique with burglar alarms got us in without trouble. The really difficult part was climbing stairs. Starting the elevators would have brought the watchman from the basement at a dead run, and fourteen flights takes a lot of walking. When we reached Randall’s office we sat on the floor in the dim hall with our backs against the wall until our breath returned.
The second key Jackie tried opened the office’s main door. I waited until he blacked out the Venetian blinds before switching on the lights and leading the way to the inner office.
I pointed to the safe.
“Can you open that without breaking it?”
Jackie cocked his head to study it. “Fifteen minutes,” he decided.
While he worked on the safe, I swiftly went through Randall’s desk, but found nothing of interest. I tried Christopher’s desk in the outer office, which consumed more time, but netted no more than Randall’s. As I started back to check on Jackie’s progress, the buzzer on Alvin’s desk sounded and nearly made me leap from my shoes. I pushed down the intercom switch.
“Stop scaring my pants off,” I said.
Jackie Morgan’s voice came through clearly. “It’s open.”
The safe contained two hundred dollars in cash and a dozen file folders. Laying the folders on Randall’s desk, I went through them one at a time. Half were files on legitimate, but confidential law cases. Five others contained nothing but undated checks in various amounts signed by prominent people. It seemed that Mrs. Garson was not the only socialite Randall had used as a procurer for El Patio.
The last folder held photostatic copies of two I.O.U.s for five thousand dollars each signed by Gerald McDonald. They were amazing I.O.U.s. They read:
I.O.U. for money lost at gambling, $5,000.
That, the date and signature, was all.
I leaned back with my feet propped on Randall’s desk and gazed at the ceiling, trying to reconstruct the story behind the photostats. Gerald McDonald, the son of a local banker, had just been elected City Excise Commissioner, the first job he had ever held.
For years Gerald had been a lad about town, not a bad boy, but not a good one either. He spent his time in night clubs, living on an allowance from his indulgent father, and seemingly content to play away his life. When his party had put him up for excise commissioner, he had been voted in partly on his father’s reputation and partly because there was nothing against him. I was not surprised to learn he had gone in debt gambling.
Nonetheless I was puzzled. I tried visualizing either Randall or Bagnell handing out ten thousand dollars for two scraps of paper, but the picture came out blank. As a lawyer, Randall would have known gambling debts were uncollectable in court, yet these I.O.U.s went out of their way to show what the debt was for.
For fifteen minutes I shuffled thoughts around in my head. I was wondering why photostats, and what happened to the originals, when light broke. This was the solution to the money controversy between Randall and Bagnell!
I tried to reconstruct what might have happened. Never missing a blackmail opportunity, Randall would have waited until just before election time and threatened to make public the I.O.U.s. People are touchy about who collects taxes for their city and the I.O.U.s would have cooked McDonald’s political goose. Probably Randall had approached the father rather than the son, knowing that all revenue in the family stemmed from the senior McDonald. Gerald’s father, seeing the only job his cherished son had ever come close to about to be snatched away, must have bought back the I.O.U.s at Randall’s figure, and I guessed that figure to be fifty thousand dollars more than their face value.
If my theory was correct, this was the cause of friction between Bagnell and Randall. As a partner, Bagnell must have demanded half the profit and Randall refused to split. And on top of blackmail and cheating his partner, Randall had made photostatic copies before turning over the original I.O.U.s, probably with the intention of using the photostats for future blackmail.
The deeper I delved into this case, the more it looked as though the murderer were a public benefactor. Nearly everyone Randall had come in contact with had a motive for murder. I wondered if it would not be more just to reward the killer than execute him.
Returning everything to the safe just as I found it, I had Jackie close it again. Then I shut off the lights, raised the center shade and window and leaned out into the moonlight. The night’s dimness made the six-inch ledge below the windows appear even less secure
than by daylight. To my left it ran to the corner of the building with no intervening windows above it.
I tried to visualize the fourteenth story’s floor plan and decided that after turning the corner, the first window the coping would run under would be that of the men’s room with the freak glass door. Immediately I thought of Caramand, took another look at the building’s edge, and rejected the possibility. Even an acrobat could never have navigated that corner.
In the other direction the ledge ran beneath the windows of the reception room. Having been seated there myself when the crime was committed, I was certain no one had passed through that room, climbed out a window and balanced on the ledge unnoticed by either Alvin or me. I filed the problem.
Twenty minutes later we were back at Grand and Olive. I folded a twenty into Jackie’s hand.
“Buy yourself a drink.”
“Naw,” he protested. “That wasn’t nothing.”
“If it weren’t worth it,” I said, “I wouldn’t pay you. Who ever told you I give money away?”
He took it…
* * * *
I arrived at the Paris Club twelve minutes late, and in a spirit of atonement bought a gardenia for Fausta from the flower girl in the foyer. From the top of four steps leading to the dance floor, I stared out over the crowd in a vain attempt to locate Fausta. An alto squeal above the waltz music turned my eyes to a dim corner. Fausta violently waved a napkin in signal as I worked my way across the packed floor to where she waited at a table for two.
“You terrible late,” she scolded.
“I stopped for flowers.”
“You sweet,” she said, pinning the gardenia to virtually nothing on her shoulder. Then her eyes narrowed. “You buy this in lobby. That not make you late.”
I grinned. “Caught again. I had to see a man.”
“Business again,” she said disdainfully. “You dance with me, I forgive you.”
“Sorry. I haven’t yet taught my new leg. This floor is too crowded for initiation.”
The Juarez Knife Page 5
