Anatomy of a Murder (16 page)

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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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“You do.”
“Now are you sending your wife over to the new doctor?” There was a long pause, and I could picture the quick angry flush, the sipping of the tiny mustache, the biting of the lower lip. “I've been counting ten, Lieutenant, and I'm almost there.”
“Yes, damn it! I'll send her.”
“Ah, that's better. Now I can away to my fishing with a carefree heart.”
“I hope you fall in.”
“What's that!”
“I said, damn it, I hope you have good luck.”
“That's the old fight, Lieutenant. I heard you the first time. Now you're talking my language.”
“Will you be down tomorrow?”
I hadn't thought of it before, at least consciously, and my answer came out of a clear sky. “No, Lieutenant, I won't be down tomorrow. I've just decided it's time for me to visit the scene of this. business. Tomorrow I'm going to Thunder Bay.”
“When will I see you, then?”
“Probably the next day. But don't pin me down. I'll see you when I see you. Right now I'm going fishing.”
So I went fishing and my heart was carefree and gay. At dusk I snapped my leader on two trout of voting age and finally, just at dark, latched on to grandpa and the fight was on. “Come, come, sweet lover darlin',” I coaxed and wheedled. “Come to daddy, come to daddy.” Twenty minutes later I went into the familiar daisy hoop and slipped the net under him. “Ah … .” It was my biggest brook trout of the season. It looked like a dappled and dripping slice of sunset in the wavering light of my flashlight. But best of all, for twenty whole minutes I had managed to forget all about the Manion case.
When I got home from fishing I found old Pamell McCarthy dozing on the bench that the chiropractor across the hall had thoughtfully provided for the lame and halt who sought his services.
Parnell sat with his chubby hands locked across the front of his colorful Tattersall vest. I had picked the vest up for him, much to Maida's dismay, on one of my Canadian fishing trips; it was among his proudest possessions, perhaps something like a barber and his Cadillac; and it occurred to me that I'd never once seen him button his coat across this flaming garment since I'd presented it to him the year before. I secretly longed to wear such a vest myself, but, craven soul, somehow lacked the nerve.
Parnell rocked gently as he slumbered. “Whistler's delinquent little brother,” I thought wryly. The old man's series of chins rested gently on his chest and when he exhaled his puttering lips sounded faintly like a far-off motorboat. Well, not so far off, I thought judiciously; rather more like the blubbery trumpeting sounds that my father Oliver's horses used to make with their lips after I had watered them down for the night when I was a kid. I hadn't heard that sound in years. Pamell sighed and trumpeted away.
I stood looking down at my old friend. I leaned forward and smelled his breath. “Ah, apparently sober,” I concluded with relief. I sniffed again to make sure. Just then Parnell opened one eye and caught me at it.
“Ought to be ashamed of yourself, boy,” he rumbled, “sniffin' an' spyin' on an old gentleman just after taking his evenin' catnap—not
catnip
!” He lurched heavily to his feet. “Where in hell was you at? I nearly gave you up. Ah, fishin', I see by your outlandish and evil-smelling costume. What fetid malarial bog did you wallow through today? And must you get yourself up to look and smell like a beachcomber to catch a mere fish? You see, I can sniff, too, my fine laddie buck … . C'mon, let's get going, boy. There's work to be done. Come now—tell me the whole story, from B to bunghole. I'm fairly dyin' to hear it.”
I unlocked my office and brought in my fresh laundry which was resting against the door. I waved Parnell to a comfortable chair, put my fish on ice, got into my pajamas and an old bathrobe, lit a fire which thoughtful Maida had laid in the Franklin stove and turned out the lights. Then I sat and told Parnell the whole story, the good and the bad, my plans and hopes, all my fears and anxieties.
He sat quietly through the whole recital, for the most part silent and unblinking, at times looking variously, in the flickering firelight, like a statue of Judgment, an aging satyr, a seedy race-track tout, the Buddha himself, the late W. C. Fields, a bust of Socrates—and even that lovely old ad for Lash's Bitters. But mostly, thank goodness, he looked like good old shrewd old kindly old Parnell McCarthy.
Parnell interrupted me rarely and then only briefly, in such a way that I knew that his alert mind was racing, racing faster than the numbers and lights on a runaway pinball machine. It felt good just to have him there, and already some of the confusion and uncertainty that had oppressed me earlier in the day seemed magically to disappear in the simple act of telling.
Down across the deserted square the cracked bell of the clock in the city hall tower sounded one. I loved its wavering clangor. The bell had been cracked since November 11, 1918, and any city father that suggested replacing it courted swift political oblivion. The sound was more of a jarring thud than a knell; a prolonged metallic shudder, as though some giant armed with a sledge had struck a broken rail. At length the dissonant echo faded and died away.
“Well, Parnell,” I said, “what does the prosecuting attorney say? Does the defense have a Chinaman's chance? Don't spare my feelings. Give me both barrels, my friend.”
“I'm thinkin',” he said, closing his eyes and tugging at the grizzled slack of his throat.
This was our little game. During most of my time as prosecutor Parnell had acted as a sort of volunteer attorney for the defense. We had “tried” all my big tough cases in advance, sitting by the Franklin stove or across the top of Grandma Biegler's old dining-room table. Thus had Parnell hammered and tested—and frequently revised—the theory and strategy of my cases on the stout anvil of his mind. He was, as I had told Mister Cool, my legal whetstone.
This sagacious old man was in fact probably the biggest single reason I had run up, as D.A., the record of convictions of which he seemed so much prouder than I. I often wondered why he bothered and I sometimes sensed vaguely, as I sensed now, that to him I was a sort of what-might-have-been.
“Do I have a chance?” I repeated.
“Of course you've got a chance,” he began gruffly. He cleared his throat. “Don't talk that way, boy. Don't sell yourself short. It's poor psychology and, worse yet, in your case false modesty, too. It doesn't become you, boy. Let us please dispense with the chat of the bull.
You're good and you damn well know it.” He shook his head. “Quite a case, boy, quite a case indeed,” he said musingly. “I—I only wish I were in it.” He sighed. “It's been many a year since I've wished that about any case.”
This was the opening I had been waiting for. “You're going to be in it, Parnell,” I said quietly. “Right up to the hilt. All you got to do is say yes. What do you say?”
It grew silent. Parnell sat very still and I thought for a moment he had dozed off again. I leaned closer and saw that his eyes were open, wide open. In the dying fire glow I thought they glistened suspiciously, but I may have been mistaken. “You mean that, boy?” he said, barely above a whisper. “You really want me in your big murder case?”
“You heard me, Pam. I want you, I need you, and I mean it. I'm not being magnanimous, either. I simply and selfishly need your goddam help. You know what winning this case means to me, I don't have to tell you.”
“I—I'll do it, Paul,” he said, “but on one condition.”
“What's that, Parn?”
“That Parnell McCarthy stays behind the scenes, strictly in the background. You understand? Not even your client must know. Nobody but us—and Miss Maida, of course. There must be no leak.”
“Why, Parn?” I said. “Tell me why?” This was an interesting development.
Pamell snorted. “The sight of this bloated whisky-drinkin' red-nosed old man settin' at a counsel table would be enough to queer any case,” he went on. “Lord knows you got hurdles enough to get over without addin' me. And if anything went wrong—the ever unpredictable jury you know, boy—I wouldn't want that on my conscience or on yours. I—it's better that I do my sittin' beside you in spirit. I'll be close by in any case.” He paused. “And there's one other reason, boy.”
“Tell me, Parn?”
“When you win this case I want it to be solely
your victory.
You're already on the right track, boy, you know that, and you don't really need me. You won lots of your big cases before we ever became friends. I'll try to help in my own fumblin' way, of course, but it's enough for an old party like me to see you make the grade. Do you understand what I'm sayin?” He paused and, almost angrily, cleared his throat. “I—I—Oh, hell, give me one of those awful Eyetalian cigars. I'll smoke it out of self-defense—that abominable stinker of
yours is makin' me eyes smart. Lord help me, it smells like a Bermuda onion. Is it really an onion now, boy?”
“I understand, Pam,” I said, passing him a cigar. “Ill accept your terms on one condition.”
“Ah, what's that, now? You'd think we was after discussin' the terms of a goddam ninety-nine-year chain-store lease. Whatever is your fine condition now?”
“That we share whatever fee I get straight across the board,” I said. “I told you what it was and—and the chance I'm probably taking in ever getting it.”
Parnell blinked his eyes. “What you aimin' to do, Paul? Make an old man bawl? Is that what you're after tryin' to do?”
“I mean it, Parn, just like I meant asking you into the case,” I said gruffly. “We share the fee or no partnership in the case. That's only fair.”
“Bless you, boy, I'll do it. I'll do it to help you and humor your generous whim. Having said that it may be ungracious and commercial-soundin' of me to add that if you don't get paid before the trial you probably never will after, win or lose.” He laughed briefly. “I have to say that now so you won't think it's money I'm after, which God knows I ain't and never been. But you aren't either, Paul, you're a lawyer, too, not a misdirected shopkeeper who'd mistakenly gone to law school. I'm pleased and mighty proud that you would undertake to defend this lonely man with—without—”
“Look, Parn,” I broke in, “you know goddam well that the plight of Lieutenant Manion has got little or nothing to do with my taking this case. Don't give me that blarney. Please, Pam, please—don't try to build me up into a bleeding liberal. Now please lay off.”
“The role fits you more than you think, boy, more than you think,” Pamell went on. “Now you listen to me. You didn't consent to continue your man's case when that young Mitch fellow gave you the golden chance, did you? No you didn't. Now you could have sold that continuance to your client and you know damn well you could, still keepin' your hand in the case for all your other reasons, and still givin' yourself more time to pry some money out of him. And more time for your fishin'. All this you could have done. I say I'm proud of you, damn it. You wouldn't let the poor bastard lay in jail for another three or four months. Now let's hear no more bulldozin' about it. Poke up that fire and fetch me a bottle of beer.” He grimaced. “I'd just as lief drink mare's water but there's work to be done—and let's get down to business.”
I drew myself up proudly. “I'll have you understand, Mr. McCarthy, that I pay over five bucks a case for my beer. Every bottle is tested by virgins in rubber gloves. No finger touch. I've even seen Heinie the brewmaster on TV. Charming articulate fellow who talks through a permanent mist of sauerkraut, like my great-uncle Otto. ‘Mine goot friendts, dis malt, dese hops—da pest vat money can puy, ya!' Authentic, see, very Old World, and all done purely for love, like mother's bread. Perhaps you'd prefer some nice tepid tap water instead.”
“Get on wid you,” Pamell said, grinning and holding a match to his cigar, then archly cocking his head. “And who, pray tell—who tests them there virgins?”
Parnell took a sip of his beer. He swallowed, looked thoughtful, and then made a wry face, like a small boy distastefully eating his spinach. “The original diagnosis was correct,” he said. “Better you sue your goot friendt Heinie,
ya!”
“Very well, Mr. Prosecutor,” I said. “Quit slandering my hospitality. Let's have your reasons why my man should be convicted. It's getting late.”
He stared at me vacantly for a moment and then leaned fcrward, speaking earnestly. “If I were prosecutor, boy,” he began, “I would hammer relentlessly at this one big question: If the defendant Manion did not take a gun and go to Barney Quill's bar
solely
to kill him, why in hell else did he go there? ‘Members of the jury,' I would say, ‘here is a man who deliberately takes a loaded pistol, secretes it on his person, unerringly seeks out the man who had just raped his wife—and pumps him full of lead. Why, why, why—if it was not solely to kill the man, which is promptly what he did?'” Parnell paused, his gray eyes glowing and alight. “Does defense counsel concede any merit in this argument? How, my resourceful friend, do you propose to get around that?”
“Go on, Pam,” I said. “There's more, much more. Hit me with all of it and then I'll try to fight back.”
“Yes, there's more to it,” Parnell continued thoughtfully. “In connection with this same line of argument, and also to dispute your claim of insanity, I would keep harping on the fact that, immediately after the shooting, the defendant apparently threatened to shoot the bartender, who followed him from the place, and then returned to his trailer and gave himself up to the deputized caretaker of the trailer camp with these significant words: ‘I just shot Barney Quill.' In other words: ‘Take me in, Mister Policeman, my mission is accomplished; I went there to
get
Barney and by God I
got
him.' Are these the actions of a crazy man, of a man who didn't know what he was doing? Why, even his wife, who knew his jealous nature, predicted he would kill Barney—and I'm damned if that's what he didn't.”
“Objection, Pam,” I said. “No fair on that jealousy business. That's inside information I hope the prosecution doesn't and won't have. But otherwise you've been hitting me where it really hurts.”
“Objection overruled,” Parnell continued coolly. “This young Lodwick fellow is inexperienced and all, and perhaps no great heavyweight
as a prosecutor, at least yet, but he'll simply
smell
jealousy from her statement that your man would kill Barney
if.
… And if he doesn't smell it the jury probably will anyway.”
“I don't pretend to like that statement of hers, Parn,” I said. “You know it's got me worried. But I would argue back that here was a woman in a desperate plight—about to be raped—who seized at a straw, a last desperate deterrent stratagem, the threat of physical retaliation and punishment if Barney should rape her. What else could the poor woman do or say? And after all, how in hell could she know what her husband might do? Just how many other men can the People show he had killed for raping her? And think of how much worse it would be if
before
the shooting she'd told Manion what she'd told Barney.”
“Good boy, Polly,” Parnell said, nodding. “Yes, a fairly good answer, young man. Did you just think of it?”
“I guess I've been brooding about it all the time I was fishing today.” I shook my head gloomily. “But there's still a lot of work to be done. I've barely scratched the surface. For one thing, I've an enormous lot of law to look. I simply haven't had time to get at it. Anyway, I'd like to get all the facts first. All we want are the facts, ma'am.”
“
We've
got a lot of work to do,” Parnell said reprovingly. “
We've
got a lot of law to look. Remember, I'm in this case now, too, young man.”
“I sit corrected,” I said, smiling. “But right now you're the prosecutor. Proceed with your indictment, Mr. D.A.”
After that Parnell and I kicked the case around, planned strategies, rejected them, substituted others, pondered how we might get in evidence of the rape, how the prosecution might block it, how we might try to bring out at least the fact of Laura's lie-detector test … Parnell finally hauled out his silver watch.
“Lord help us, I haven't been up so late since Terence Cronin's wake. This is enough for tonight, lad. Now get along with you to bed. We've both got to keep our wits about us in this here case; it just reeks with lovely points of law. By the way, Judge Maitland will be sitting, I do hope.”
I shook my head. “No, Pam, I'm afraid not. He's still over at Mayo's and his condition isn't good.”
“Who then?”
“I haven't the foggiest notion. And if Mitch knows he isn't saying. I hope it isn't one of those dreary downstate political hacks—we're going
to need a real lawyer on this one. By the way, I'm driving up to Thunder Bay tomorrow to have a look around. Want to come along?”
“Bless you, of course I do. I been standin' here waitin' for you to ask me. And Maida, too?”
“Maida?” I said. “Why in hell Maida? She's just a dame that types letters and reads Mickey Spillane.”
“Maida,” Pam replied firmly. “There's detective work to be done. If there's some nice ripe skulduggery up there in Thunder Bay, a smart woman will nose it out. Maida is smart and she goes along. That's an order from senior counsel, young man.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. McCarthy,” I said meekly. “Please, sir, when do we leave?”
“Sharp at eight from your office.”
“But Maida doesn't get here till nine. And I haven't the heart to phone her at this ungodly hour. My God, it's after two.”
As Parnell walked to the door there seemed to be a sprightliness in his bearing I hadn't seen in years. “Set your clock and call her at seven, boy. Old Thomas Edison thrived for years on four hours rest. Does a young man like you want to rot in bed?” He waved his hand airily. “There's work to be done and we must up and away. We're leavin' here at eight.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Anything more, sir? And many thanks, Parn. You—you've already given me lots of food for ulcers.”
Parnell hooked his thumb through the armhole of his tattersall vest and grinned his irresistible melting Irish grin. “Good night, Polly, and God bless you. Tonight you've made me feel more like a real lawyer than I have in years and years.” He paused. “Now I—I must hurry away before I really break down and bawl. Good night, goddam it.”
“Good night, Pam,” I called softly after his plodding retreating figure.
I went to the phonograph and put on a recording of Debussy's haunting “The Blessed Damozel.” Then I sat in the darkness staring into the fire. Little unseen bellows seemed occasionally to fitfully fan the dying embers, making them glow and fade like tethered fireflies. I contemplated the eternal fascination and mystery of fire … . I sighed; I was tired, tired bodily and mentally. “So now, Biegler,” I mused, “you're about to become a private eye.” It was a new role for me and I wondered if I would do half as well as Parnell had in his new role as prosecutor.
The phonograph took over, the women's voices now murmurously
joining the orchestra, swelling, fading, soaring into ecstasies of moving and melancholy sound. I sat there covered with gooseflesh until the last strains had died away. The fire was out. I shivered and tottered my way to my bedroom, set the alarm clock, yawned prodigiously and flung my pajama bottoms in a corner—and fell on the bed, asleep instantly. I dreamt a dream, an interminable dream about a monster brook trout that seemed bent upon pulling me into the water. For a while it was touch and go. All that finally saved me from a watery grave was the hideous clatter of my alarm. I squinted one eye open; it was broad daylight; Detective Biegler must be up and at the keyhole.

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