The Neon Haystack

by James Michael Ullman

  “If the police come,” Lorene said, “they’ll think you just looked around and went back to the city. None of the natives saw us. I’ll clean this place up before we go.” She licked her lips. Her lower jaw trembled slightly. “Stephen—when you found us here, you didn’t seem in the least surprised.”

  “I wasn’t. Finding you was an unexpected bonus. I was looking for evidence my brother’s body is here, so I’d have something tangible to present to Doyle. But I knew if anyone was out here, it would be one or both of you.”

  “I want you to tell me how you knew. You do that, Stephen, and we’ll tell you what happened to your brother. And you’ll die on your brother’s grave. That way, at least, your search will be ended.”

  CHAPTER 17.

  Bagwell appeared shocked at the callousness of Lorene’s proposal. Intently he gazed at her. Then he tipped his bottle and drank deep.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” I said, “so maybe you’ll realize it’s just a matter of time before Doyle or Max Fuller or someone else reaches the same conclusions. When I came to this city, I had a Master Plan. I’d be the front-line troops, so to speak. I’d make myself conspicuous on Clay Street, questioning everyone I met. But I really didn’t expect many good answers. That was part of the act. My Master Plan was—if I nosed around long enough, sooner or later, the people who knew what had happened to my brother would get curious about my activities. They’d be dying to know what, if anything, I had learned. And one way or another, they’d try to find out. I figured if Max Fuller, my secret service, checked everyone who displayed even a remote interest in me, sooner or later I’d have a file on the killers. And if I kept studying those files, a pattern would emerge. And I’d be near the truth.”

  “I thought that was it,” Bagwell said.

  “Sure. And my plan worked. Actually, I should have seen the pattern months ago. But Lorene dazzled me. No man can be entirely objective about an attractive woman when he thinks she’s falling in love with him. And so I didn’t see the pattern until yesterday, when Fuller reminded me about his telephone precautions. Then I remembered, I’d observed his precautions on important outgoing calls, but not on some incoming calls. One, in particular. The call Irma Bronson made to my apartment, to set up our last date. I told her I’d treat her to a stroganoff dinner. Nobody but Irma and me knew in advance we’d made that date. The only way anyone else could have known was by tapping the phone. Now, Harry Bagwell knew all about arranging for tapped phones. He’d been involved in a wiretap scandal, for which he’d nearly been disbarred. And when I thought of you in that light, Harry, things began to fall into place. You, your relationship to Lorene and The Dugout, and all the rest of it.”

  “Actually,” Bagwell said, “the tap was in a closet in Lorene’s office. A tape recorder was activated whenever you picked up your phone. Your apartment was bugged, too. We couldn’t have been more overjoyed when you accepted Lorene’s invitation to move upstairs.”

  “No doubt. It occurred to me yesterday that Lorene’s interest in me was out of character. Until I came along, she’d never warmed to any man except her late husband. Lorene the Iceberg, the Jaycees called her. Could she have been attracted by my good looks? My vast wealth? Hardly. Lorene kidded me and I’d kidded myself. It also occurred to me that The Dugout prospered mightily just after my brother disappeared. In walks Harry Bagwell with a party of friends. A total stranger, who samples some stroganoff and then runs off to find investors for a costly restaurant venture. Or so the story goes—and I’m sure you staged that visit, Harry, to explain your sudden interest in the place. I suspect The Dugout was mostly your investment, with the other guys in for peanuts.”

  Blandly Bagwell nodded. “I own nearly ninety percent.”

  “Right. But backing The Dugout wasn’t in your character as an investor. Opening an expensive restaurant on Clay Street is like shooting craps. All your past investments had been sure things. Real estate where you knew values would go up. Stocks where you possessed inside information. And your new restaurant wasn’t doing so hot. Week nights, it was half empty. Lorene had to rig a full house for Jerry Gourmet. Moreover, Lorene wasn’t the best of restaurant managers. She made more goulash and chop suey than necessary. Her father began drinking on the job, sure suicide for a restaurant greeter. But you kept pouring money into The Dugout nevertheless. All in all, it smelled of a payoff. A payoff for what? Almost certainly, if you were tapping my phone, for concealing the facts about my brother’s death. And if you were paying off, Harry, it meant you killed my brother.”

  Bagwell looked away. But Lorene’s eyes never left me.

  “It would have happened,” I went on, “in the old Dugout. A clean, quiet little bar, two blocks from Clay and Jackson. The sort of spot where my brother would stop first, to ask questions about the new town. At the hour he probably arrived, on a cold week night, the cook and waitress would have gone home. And it was also the sort of spot where Harry Bagwell might stray on one of his lone, nocturnal wanderings. Bagwell the lecher, in a foul mood because he’d just lost a case. Bagwell the bully, the insulter, who when drunk flew into rages and once blackened a bar girl’s eye. My brother couldn’t stand seeing people pushed around. If you tried something when he was present, he’d call you on it. And I think that’s what happened. Somehow Bagwell, in a rage, killed Ed. And the weapon Bagwell used to kill Ed is the key to what happened later. Harry, I think you did it with the bayoneted World War I rifle Lorene’s father had hanging on the wall.”

  The silence proved I’d been right.

  “Ed was bayoneted to death. That’s why Lorene dropped a tray of glasses the first time she saw me. She thought I was staring at the bayonet, not the portrait under it. And that’s why Ed’s body had to disappear. Because if it were found, any journeyman pathologist could have recognized a bayonet wound. And Doyle or any other detective in the Clay Street Precinct would recall a bayoneted rifle hanging in a bar two blocks from where Ed was last seen.”

  I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. “After that—Bagwell, you persuaded Lorene and her father to help you get rid of Ed’s body. In return, you backed the new restaurant. Ed’s pockets were emptied in The Dugout. You drove the body here and stripped it. Even if you didn’t dispose of it right away, it would be safe on your property for a few days. Going back, you detoured at the ravine, twenty minutes distant, to drop off Ed’s clothes and ring. You probably knew about the ravine because you defended a maniac who killed two teenagers there once, the sort of front-page case you love.”

  Bagwell nodded. “Stanley Witkowski. A vastly misunderstood boy.”

  “Yeah. The ground was frozen and you didn’t do a good job of burying Ed’s clothes. But that was okay. The main thing was—years later, if anyone found what was left of Ed near the cottage, they wouldn’t find any personal effects to make an identification. Not even a button. And if Ed’s stuff was found in the ravine, the police would waste weeks looking for a body that wasn’t nearby. So you were all set until I came along and found the watch at Bronson’s Bakery right off. Who dropped the watch, Lorene? You or Jackie?”

  “Jackie,” Lorene said. “He attended a private school then, two blocks from there. Pop gave him the watch without telling me. But it seemed ordinary enough, and I didn’t have the heart to take it away…”

  “I think I know the school. I used to meet Irma in front of it. And of course when you saw the sign the Bronsons put up, you were afraid to claim the watch. You knew Ed’s name would be inside; you probably never entered the bakery again. But let’s go on, to the first time we met. To cover your panic at seeing me stare at the rifle, you threw me out as a Clay Street bum. But that gave you an excuse to invite me back later, to learn as much about my activities as you could without seeming to try. It was easy. Hardly anyone else in the city had been nice to me. You were doubly nice. When I needed a place to live, you provided one—with built-in telephone taps. The morning I awoke
and found you beside my bed, you weren’t there because of concern for me. You were prowling my apartment. And one day your telephone tap really paid off. You heard Irma agree to stake out Clay Street with me. Then Irma and I made that last date. You knew I’d take her to The Dugout afterward, which would have been disaster. You might not be there, Lorene, but Irma would see your picture on the wall. And recognize you as an old customer.”

  “Lorene,” Bagwell said, eyes on the ground, “hinted I should kill the girl. But I told Lorene I knew another way to discourage her.”

  “Didn’t you, though. If you’d been tapping the phone, you knew about our security precautions. We worked them out on the phone. What did you do, Harry? Rent an office down the hall and then wait until Irma was alone?”

  “Not down the hall—across the hall. In the name of a little land company I own. And if I failed in stopping the girl, Lorene’s father was set to take the picture down, on grounds that vandals had defaced it. You’re wrong about one thing. I’m not proud of what I did to Irma Bronson. But the incident served its purpose.”

  “Yes, you scared Irma off. And you spilled booze around and tossed dirty pictures into the wastebasket. Just enough details to make sure I’d be held for questioning. In the process, I’d be tarred in the newspapers, so Phil Amber would feel free to bar me from his joints. And you could pop up later as my attorney, to learn firsthand what was in my mind. But you didn’t know Amber had his own spy system. Nor that Schell would order Captain Ware to raid my apartment. The bad publicity I got from that worked in your favor. But Schell forced me to move out of The Dugout. You couldn’t tap my telephone any more; Lorene’s insistence that I remain was quite sincere. And there was another unhappy development. Lorene’s father suffered a heart attack. He’d been cracking all along, that’s why he started drinking so much. The assault on Irma finished him.”

  “He’s old,” Lorene said. “He won’t fight any more…”

  “Perhaps. So what happened? I left The Dugout and kept plugging. And now you were so curious to know what I was up to that Lorene asked me to her home. To meet Jackie, she implied. But actually to establish a basis for later, more intimate meetings, where my confidences would be complete. Now, when I arrived at the house in Hill Acres, Sam dropped me off in front. Then he pulled into the driveway. The garage door was open, the lads ran out. Sam paused there, a good ten or fifteen seconds before he backed into the street. Why? He’d been looking all over town for Mexoil cans. And I think he saw one or more in that garage.”

  “There were four,” Lorene admitted. “On a shelf. Holding bolts and things.”

  “One can or four, Sam would have no trouble spotting them. The Aztec design stands out like a neon sign. After Sam left, I told you about Mexoil. You realized why Sam drove by the house so slowly. He was about to add your name to his list. So you sent me out to broil hamburgers. You hid the cans Sam had seen. You called Harry Bagwell and persuaded him to murder Sam. Later that afternoon, you made sure I didn’t get bored with a kid birthday party. That gave Harry plenty of time to find Sam before I returned to the city. It was a convincing performance, Lorene…”

  “That’s enough.” Lorene looked at Harry. “The police would find evidence if he ever told them what he told us. Even if Pop didn’t crack under questioning, and he would. But nobody suspects us yet. So you see why it’s necessary.”

  “I told you before. It’s your decision.”

  Lorene looked back at me.

  “Stephen, you’ll never understand. I never loved you. But I grew to like you. I don’t want to kill you. But I absolutely must…”

  “Just one thing,” I said. “What did happen to my brother?”

  Bagwell said, “I guess you’re entitled to that.” He tipped his bottle and drank again. “Like you figured, I was drunk and mean, the only customer in the place. Then your brother came in. Heineman was out back. I hollered for a drink and Lorene brought it. She was so damn frosty and superior, I couldn’t help getting fresh. She slapped me. I knocked her down. Your brother tried to interfere. He shoved me against the wall, then kneeled to see if Lorene was all right. I reached up and tore that rifle from its mountings. Like every ex-Marine, I knew about bayonet fighting. I lunged. I realized immediately I’d gone too far, but I was too off-balance to stop. Your brother was still on one knee, turning to face me, when I ran him through. If it’s any consolation, he died almost instantly.”

  “It is.”

  “I understood then that my moment of drunken rage could ruin me forever. I couldn’t fix this mess by bribing the victim. Lorene was still on the floor, staring at me. Her father returned, took one look, and started for the phone. I said, ‘For God’s sake, before you call the police, hear me out. I’m a wealthy man. Help me get the body away, and I’ll reward you.’ Lorene’s father wasn’t interested. But Lorene was. She made me show her my wallet. She took my cash and said, ‘All right, Mr. Bagwell. I’ll make you a sporting proposition. You put up the money for a first-class restaurant here. If I can make it succeed, you give me the restaurant when your investment is paid out. If it fails, you absorb the losses and my father and I go on collecting nice salaries. Is it a deal?’ It was. We dragged the body into the kitchen. Lorene ran a mop over the floor. Her father cleaned the bayonet and put the rifle back on the wall. All this took just a minute. When the next customer walked in, John was behind the bar as usual. Out back, Lorene and I emptied your brother’s pockets—that was her idea, she wanted the money in his wallet too—and loaded the body into the trunk of her car. I drove Lorene home first so Jackie’s sitter wouldn’t get suspicious. Then I drove here, stripped the body, and covered it with brush. It would keep until the weekend. On the way back I dropped the clothes and jewelry at the ravine. I parked near Lorene’s apartment and caught a bus home.”

  “The body, Harry. How did you dispose of it?”

  “Over the weekend, I dumped it in the garbage pit. I covered it with junk, doused the pile with gasoline, and put a match to it. What was left, I buried down there. No crime lab could tell anything, except it had been a man once.”

  “So now you know,” Lorene said to me. “Stand up. Let’s get going.”

  Slowly, I walked down the rise. Lorene trailed about five yards to my rear. Bottle in hand, Bagwell trailed Lorene.

  The attorney, I began to realize, was not going to lift a finger to help me. His earlier disquiet had evaporated. He seemed entirely satisfied now with the way things were working out.

  We reached the garbage pit. It was nearly dark. A few embers still glowed. Ed’s bones were under those ashes somewhere. At least I’d learned what I’d come to learn. I knew what had happened to Ed, and who had done it to him.

  “Turn around,” Lorene ordered.

  I turned. Lorene stood several yards from me. Bagwell was far to my right, walking slowly, still holding his bottle. Thoughtfully he viewed Lorene.

  “Lorene,” I said, “I’m not pleading. I’m just telling you. Go through with this, and they’ll get you for sure. Give yourself up, and you’ll still have a chance to live.”

  “I’ll risk it.” Lorene raised the shotgun to her shoulder. Her eyes were wet but unblinking. “Stephen, I wish you hadn’t interfered. But nobody is going to interfere. Not the baker’s daughter, not the cab driver, not even you…”

  I tried to make a break then. I thought that if I rolled away and she missed with the first barrel, I could reach cover before she could aim and fire the second.

  But I never had a chance. As I threw myself to my right, she pivoted, keeping me in her sights. She delayed just a second, weighing my life in her mind for the last time.

  Then her finger tightened on the trigger. The gun detonated. The booming report crashed against my eardrums.

  Pellets tore into my legs. But incredibly, the weapon had exploded not so much at me as in Lorene’s face. Shrapnel flew in all directions. The main force
of the blast was directed backward.

  Lorene was knocked sprawling.

  She lay still.

  I crawled to Lorene. A fragment of the gun’s action had been driven into her skull. For Lorene, it had been a lucky fragment. Her face had been cut to a pulp. And had she lived, she’d most certainly have been blinded.

  Bagwell limped to my side. He sat down.

  “Lorene’s husband,” he observed moodily, “may have taught her to load, aim, and shoot, but he didn’t teach her much about guns. That weapon was an antique. It hasn’t been fired in more than forty years. It was made for relatively mild black-powder loads. The barrels were fouled, rusted, and full of obstructions. Almost any shell would have blown up in the chamber. And the shells Lorene inserted—they’re tailor-made, high-powered loads, designed for a weapon that cost me four hundred dollars, which I keep in town unless I’m going hunting.”

  The lawyer took a final swig of his bourbon.

  “I was going to tell her,” he added, “but I changed my mind. When you found me here today, I’d already given up. I understood, even if Lorene didn’t, that our deception was doomed. Doyle would get us if you failed. But until now I’d done all the dirty work. I killed your brother, raped the girl, and murdered Alban. The state would ask the chair for me. Lorene, though, she could claim I was behind everything and get off with no more than a few years. This despite the fact that from the moment she got off the floor in The Dugout and stared at your brother’s body, she ran the whole show. So I thought: Let’s see, Lorene, if your greed has so warped you that you’ll commit your own murder. If it has, you’ll squeeze that trigger and get your punishment. If it hasn’t, you’ll put the gun down and surrender, in which case a few years in prison and lifelong heartache for yourself and Jackie will be punishment enough. That’s real justice, Kolchak. She was her own executioner. As for you—I knew you’d be hurt some. But with her aim thrown off and the pellets dispersed by an explosion in a bad gun, I was reasonably sure you’d survive. And I feared that if I warned her, she wouldn’t have believed me anyhow. She’d just have fired at me first.”