by Ed Gorman
The Judge said, “Get out, McCain. I’m busy. I need to read these papers. Go home and pace or something.” She’d been scanning the legal brief that Pamela brought her. She looked up. “I’d like the case solved by dinnertime tonight. I’m having a judge from the sixth district in, and I’d like to brag a little about how I uncovered the murderer.”
“That would be so unlike you, Judge,” I said.
A dramatic ingestion of Gauloise smoke and then the wave of a languid hand. “Now get the hell out of here. I’m busy.” Then: “Oh, that envelope you wanted me to check on?”
“Yes.”
“Those two initials in the corner were the initials of the clerk who sent it.”
“What did they send?”
“A birth certificate.”
“I’m losing my mind,” Linda Granger said. “And so is Jeff. God, McCain, isn’t there something you can do?”
“Well, he could always grow up.”
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I told her when to be at my office. Then I called Chip O’Donlon. “Hey, Dad.” And told him when to be at my office.
Then the phone rang.
She was crying. I couldn’t understand what she said.
“Slow down, Ellie. Slow down.”
“Cliffie was here. He made me tell him where my dad went. To that line shack. Then he ran out the door. There were two other cars there.
Men with rifles and shotguns. They’re going after him.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll leave for the line shack right now.”
By the time I got there, Cliffie had his men fanned out, encircling a weatherbeaten board shack that looked more like a large doghouse than a railroad storage shed. It was up on the side of a steep autumn-blazed hill, just below a railroad track that climbed ever higher into the limestone cliffs. It was a perfect autumn day for hiking or canoeing or picking out pumpkins to carve into bogeyman faces. Butterflies and grasshoppers and leaf smoke and all that other stuff.
The men wore their hunting gear. Pheasant season didn’t open for a while yet. This would be their dry run for trying out hats, caps, jackets, pants, duck calls, boots, shoes, and weapons. Lots of weapons. Enough weapons to start a small war.
Cliffie was strutting around with a. 45 in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. The way some folks are good with the violin or tuba, Cliffie was good with the bullhorn.
“There’s a very good chance that you can get off on an insanity charge, Mr. Chalmers!” He glanced over his shoulder and gave one of his cronies a big lurid wink. Chalmers didn’t have a prayer of beating a double murder charge on an insanity plea. Not with his criminal past. “So you come out here peaceful-like and we’ll drive you back to town in that brand-new patrol car of mine. It still smells new. You’ll like that, Mr. Chalmers, I promise!”
Cliffie’s police chief magazine mst’ve run an article on how to use psychology, because usually, instead of such awkward enticements as insanity pleas and new-car smells, Cliffie would have been threatening the guy with sure death.
“There’ll be a pizza tonight, Mr. Chalmers!
The boys always chip in and buy a big one delivered. It’s nice ‘n’ hot too. I’m sure they’ll give you some. Our boys’re nice to prisoners, despite what you might have heard to the contrary.”
Cliffie had the distinction of being cited three times in six years for “the worst-run jail” in the state. Endless numbers of prisoners emerged with black eyes, broken noses, missing teeth, snapped wrists, and badly bruised ankles.
As a gag, Cliffie once served up chili that he’d dumped half a pound of ground-up night crawlers in. This is one of those legends that is actually true. Everybody loves a clown.
“I’ll talk to him.”
He wasn’t happy to see me.
“I don’t believe I remember deputizing you, McCain.”
“I’m his lawyer.”
“You get all the important clients, huh?”
“He didn’t kill anybody.”
He stared at me. “She thinks she’s gonna beat me this time, don’t she? Show me up again?”
“This has nothing to do with Judge Whitney.”
“Oh, no? She don’t care if this man is guilty or not. Just as long as she makes me look bad. Well, I’ll tell you somethin’.
It ain’t gonna happen this time. I got the right man, and there ain’t a damned thing she can do about it.”
“Then you won’t mind if I go talk him into surrendering?”
He said, “Billy.”
Billy Wymer instantly stepped forward, the forty-seven-year-old juvenile delinquent who does a good share of Cliffie’s bidding.
“Cuff him.”
“My pleasure, Chief.”
“What the hell’re you doing?” I said.
Wymer’s a big guy with green stuff always in the corners of his dull blue eyes and a kind of moss on his stubby little teeth. His mouth is usually leaking too. When he laughs, which is frequently, especially when something cruel is taking place, he does so without sound: his mouth wide open, his mossy teeth on display, and no sound whatsoever. Like a silent movie scene.
He snapped the cuffs on me. “Got ‘im, Chief.”
“Good goin’, Billy!” As if he’d just accomplished something major, like discovering a cancer cure or finding a new planet in the solar system. Then Cliffie smiled at me. “I tried psychology on this pecker, McCain. You heard me yerself.”
“I sure did. That new-car-smell stuff would certainly have made me surrender. They could’ve used you when Dillinger was around.”
He raised his bullhorn and aimed it at the shack. “Ninety seconds is what you got, Chalmers! You give yourself up or we open fire!”
“You can’t threaten him like that,” I said.
“I can’t, counselor?” His eyes scanned the men. “You men get ready.”
Rifles and shotguns glinted and gleamed in the fall sunlight. A lot of the men were grinning.
“This is McCain, Chalmers! Give yourself up right away!” Now that I understood Cliffie probably wasn’t bluffing, it was important to haul Chalmers out of there pronto.
“Scared the shit out of you, didn’t I, counselor?” Big grin on his stupid face.
“Sure wish I had a photo of you just now.
Sure wish I did.”
“C’mon out, Chalmers!” I shouted again.
He cried back, “They’ll shoot me!”
“They’ll shoot you if you don’t come out, Chalmers!”
“Forty-five seconds!” Cliffie said over the bullhorn.
“Chalmers, he’ll start shooting! He really will!”
“I didn’t kill those people!”
“I know you didn’t. But you have to come out before I can help you!”
“Twenty-five seconds!”
“Chalmers! For God’s sake! Get out of there!”
He came out. First he peeked around the door like a guilty kid. He had something in his hands.
It was sort of funny and sort of sad and sort of pathetic.
“What the hell is that?” Cliffie said.
From his fingers dangled a rosary.
“Don’t shoot me, all right?”
“Tell him you won’t shoot.”
He raised his bullhorn again. “You men put your weapons down!”
None of them looked happy about doing so.
Chalmers came slowly down from the cabin.
Arms stretched out for cuffs, black rosary beads hanging from his right hand.
When he reached me, he looked at my handcuffs and said, greatly disappointed, “How the hell you gonna help me, McCain? You’re handcuffed too.”
“Thanks for pointing that out,” I said.
Cliffie was magnanimous and let me drive myself back to town. Sans handcuffs.
Cliffie double-parked out front so everybody’d be sure to see him bringing in Chalmers. Just in case anybody was too dense to miss all his subtle machinatio
ns, he stood in the middle of the street with his bullhorn. He wanted an audience and got one immediately: decent folk in faded housedresses and work-worn factory pants and shirts and little kids squinting into the sun to see what dangerous specimen the chief had brought in this time.
He could have pulled up behind the building, of course, and nobody would have seen him.
“Stand back, everybody,” he said. “We’re bringing in a desperate criminal.”
Even the old ladies giggled about that one.
Desperate criminal. Cliffie loved melodrama almost as much as a keynote speaker on the Fourth of July.
He repeated himself: “Stand back, everybody.”
Then he handed the bullhorn to Billy, yanked his own sawed-off from the front seat, opened the back door, and said, “You take it nice and easy now.
You try anything, and your teeth are gonna be chewin’ lead.”
I hadn’t heard the “chewin’ lead” one before.
I hoped I didn’t have to hear it ever again.
Chalmers, pale, forlorn, about as dangerous as a ground squirrel, got out of the patrol car with his head hung low. Embarrassed.
Cliffie gave him a hard shove. Chalmers turned to glare at him. Cliffie shoved him again.
I grabbed his elbow. “What’s your problem?”
“He ain’t movin’ fast enough, counselor.
That’s my problem. Now take your hands off me.” And with that he gave me a shove too. I knew better than to push back. He had an audience. He’d love to put on a show with me as the foil.
Inside the police station, there was a lot of noise as shoes scuffled down the narrow, dusty hallway to the interrogation room. Keys jangled. Sam Brownes creaked. Men coughed.
Prisoners in the back shouted, wanting to know what was going on. The door to the cells was ajar. They wanted some kind of diversion. Cliffie wouldn’t let them have radios or magazines or books.
“How about opening a window?” I said.
“I’m sorry it don’t smell better for you, counselor,” Cliffie said.
It smelled of sweat, puke, and tobacco. It was a dingy little place not much bigger than a coffin.
There was a single overhead light and a card table with a wire Webcor tape recorder on it. There were also signed black-and-white publicity stills of Norman Vincent Peale and Richard Nixon.
Cliffie pushed the still-handcuffed Chalmers in a chair and sat next to the card table. He got the recorder turned on and rolling, and said, “I’m recording every word you’re going to say, Chalmers.
You understand?”
Chalmers looked at me. I nodded. Then he looked at Cliffie and nodded.
It was what you might expect. Cliffie came up with twenty different ways to ask the same question which was, basically, Why’d you kill them?
He was doing a terrible job. The County Attorney’s crew would have to interrogate Chalmers themselves.
He blubbered on.
It was forty-seven minutes exactly before Cliffie needed to go to the can. I needed to talk to Chalmers.
“I’ll be back,” Cliffie said. “Don’t you touch nothin’, counselor.”
We exchanged unfrly glances and he left.
I leaned over and whispered in Chalmers’s ear, “Who sends you the check every month?”
He looked surprised and shook his head.
“It’s important,” I said.
“No it’s not.”
That’s what I’d been trying to remember: the curious monthly check.
“It don’t have nothin’ to do with any of this.” He was whispering too.
“I think it does. Ellie isn’t your daughter.”
“Who told you that?”
I nodded to the machine.
He whispered again, “Who told you that?”
“I figured it out. Now I need to know where your check comes from.”
He looked as if he was considering telling me when Cliffie came back in.
“You didn’t try ‘n’ erase that machine, did you?”
“Cliffie, I wouldn’t try and erase the machine. I’d try and erase the tape.”
“You goddamned college boys.”
“Yeah, we’re taking over the world.”
“Shut up, now. We’re going back to the questions.”
Another thrilling half hour. Cliffie’d verbally lunge at Chalmers and I’d object; Cliffie’d lunge again, I’d object again. It was a dull little legal dance.
“You’re gonna need a lawyer, bub.”
“I got a lawyer,” Chalmers said.
“I mean a real one.”
“This is the comedy part of his act,” I said.
A knock at the door. A cop leaned in.
“The mayor says he needs to talk to you, Chief.”
“He say about what?”
“He never does, Chief.”
Cliffie sighed. “I finally start gettin’ somewhere with this killer I got here and the mayor calls.”
“Life’s tough,” I said, “when you’re a celebrity.”
“Someday I’ll celebrity you, McCain,”
Cliffie said, standing up, which is no easy task when you weigh what he does. “And don’t try and erase that”-he caught himself in time-? tape, either.”
“I’m proud of you, Cliffie.”
Another exchange of scowls and Cliffie was gone.
I started whispering again. “Who sends you the checks every month?”
“I don’t know. They’re just in my mailbox.” He looked angry. “It doesn’t have anything to do with these murders. You know what would happen to that kid if this town ever figured out who her real old man was?”
“Believe it or not, I think she’d like to know for herself. I think she could put up with anyone who made fun of her. And anyway, you’re underestimating people here. They’d be good to her. They’d understand.”
“I know a few who wouldn’t.”
“A few. But not many.”
He sighed and started to raise his hands to wipe his face. He’d forgotten about the handcuffs. “These damned things.”
“Tell me before Cliffie comes back,” I whispered. “Who sends you the checks?”
Footsteps in the hall. Cliffie’s steps, thunderous. Door being flung open.
And then, in that millisecond, Chalmers leaned close and told me.
Seventeen
For all the mixed reviews the Edsel had been getting, there sure were a lot of gawkers when I got over to Dick Keys’s that afternoon: farmers and townspeople alike, the farmers still raw red from summer sun, the townspeople wearing the kind of tans you only get on beaches.
Three salesmen were giving the same spiel at once, each a few sentences behind the other. They sounded like a ragged chorus.
I spent a few minutes looking one over, a convertible with enough horsepower to outrun any car the highway patrol put down on the pavement. The gadgetry got me. If I ever bought a new car, I’d want a Corvette or a
Thunderbird, stripped and ready for action. The interior control panel of the Edsel, with all its chrome gimmicks, was sort of comic.
“Dick around?” I asked one of the mechanics.
The guy streaked his white coverall with greasy fingers, yanked out a Cavalier, and torched a Zippo. In the middle of exhaling and coughing, he said, “He’ll be right back. He ran over to Uptown Auto to get Gil a new part.” He shook his head. “Best boss I ever had, except for the Navy. He ain’t afraid to pitch in, you know what I mean? Somethin’ needs to be done, he don’t care if he’s boss or not, he’ll do it.”
I went in the waiting room and read an ancient Tv Guide. There was an article on James Arness of Gunsmoke and how he’d played the monster in The Thing, and how this new guy Ernie Kovacs was ushering in a new era of “hip” Tv, and then a piece on the family life of Lucy and Desi and how they really were just as lovey-dovey as they appeared on the air.
I was trying not to think about what I’d come here for.
Dick Keys was
one of the town’s best. He’d been around since before I was born, hawking cars and boosting the town. He was a decent guy.
He came in and said, “Rick said you were looking for me, Sam. How about you wait in my office?
You want some coffee?”
“I thought maybe you’d take me for a ride.”
“A ride? You serious?”
“Sure. Try out the Edsel.”
He looked at me. “You? In an Edsel?
C’mon. You can’t shit a shitter.”
“I just want to talk a little, Dick.”
“Talk?”
He watched me carefully, as if I were holding something secret and suspicious behind my back.
“Yeah. Just a little talk is all.”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Talk.
Sure. Why not? Well, you go pick out the beast you wanna ride in and I’ll meet you on the lot.”
“Appreciate it.”
He started to leave the reception area and then stopped. “I heard Cliff found Chalmers.”
“Yeah.”
“Arrested him and charged him, huh?”
“That’s the story.”
“A lot of people are going to breathe easier now.”
“I sure will,” I said.
He smiled. “I still can’t see you in an Edsel, Sam.”
I picked out a lemon-and-lime one.
Two-door. Not only could you make love on the seats, you could raise a family inside the plush confines of the thing.
Keys saw me and waved. He disappeared back inside, returning moments later with a pair of keys.
When he got in the driver’s seat, he said, “Believe it or not, they’re starting to sell.
Got a call from my buddy over in Des Moines. He said that on Saturday people acted kind’ve funny around them. Didn’t know how to react. But he said by Sunday they started buying them. That’s been my experience too. Sold three this morning, including a station wagon. Top of the line.”
We were already out in traffic. Sunny Friday noon hour. We passed the library. I wanted to be sixteen again and sitting on the steps in the warmth and light and reading a science-fiction magazine-y know, the kind you have to keep the cover turned over because it always shows a half-naked girl being felt up by a purple guy with six very busy hands.
