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Authors: Robert Traver

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BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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“Well,” Maida said, “there're half a dozen stories on that: one, that Barney was half-crazed with drink, again that Laura Manion had led him on that night and even before, then again that this rape routine was just an old trick of Barney's with summer tourists. Then there's the school of scandal in reverse that claims he didn't even rape or touch Laura Manion at all—although all agree that he was a ravening wolf.” Maida paused. “On this wolf business I even suspect that the girl who worked on me knew personally whereof she spoke. I seemed to detect a note of wistfulness.”
“Will the Voice of Experience please proceed?” I said.
“The most persistent story I heard was that Barney had simply blown his stack over the thought of losing Mary Pilant—that she somehow, in some way, triggered the whole explosion.” Maida paused and lowered her voice. “Here comes the waitress!” she hissed, as artfully as Mata Hari herself.
I waited impatiently for the waitress to take our order and depart.
“What do you mean—about Barney losing her, about her triggering any explosion?”
“The story is that Mary Pilant had recently taken up with some young Army officer with Lieutenant Manion's outfit—a second-louie called Loftus, Sonny Loftus they called him—and that Barney had tried to break it off. One version is that Barney had offered to marry her, another to also give her this hotel—but that she had refused to stop seeing the young officer and was even about to leave or had threatened to do so. It's all gossip, of course, but I guess in these real small towns you can't even yawn in decent privacy. And here I thought Chippewa was bad enough.” She paused and smiled slyly. “And I do manage to yawn there occasionally … .”
“Go on,” I said. “Leave us not pause now to hear the diverting story of your secret love life. Remember, the trial is next month.”
“You make a point, Boss,” Maida amiably agreed. “All the stories seem to agree that Barney had lately started to drink heavily—it seems the man could always carry a tremendous load—right up until the night Laura Manion had wandered into the bar to play pinball.”
“But why—why did he do this?” I said, more to myself than to Maida. “How does he keep—or win back—the lovely Mary by doing such a spectacularly evil thing?”
“That's the burning mystery,” Maida said. “That's what's got everybody baffled.” She shook her head. “It beats me, Boss.”
“Perhaps Barney was really the one that needed a psychiatrist,” I said, half to myself.
Parnell spoke slowly, “In a way it seems—It almost seems as though the Manions wandered onto the stage of a Greek drama in which they had no part, indeed a drama upon which the curtain had already nearly fallen.”
Shrewd old Parnell, I thought. “Well said, Parn,” I agreed, as he beamed with pleasure. “It looks more and more like the Manions may have been mere innocently casual pawns in some bigger, more mysterious game. It's up to us to try to find out about the game. It may hold the solution.”
Yet I wondered what all this had to do with the defense to this murder charge. Assuming we learned all, so what? And why was Mary Pilant so apparently bent on shielding Barney? Or
was
it to shield Barney? Was it rather to make sure that the will was not upset, that she would ultimately get all the swag for herself? I shook my head dubiously. Such avid and calculated avarice somehow didn't seem
to fit this lovely feminine creature, it simply didn't signify. But there was much in this case that didn't signify. Why had she even been working for such a man? “Watch out, Biegler,” I thought. “Don't go seeing shimmering brunette mirages, don't go getting soft over a passing vision of dark velvet loveliness. Remember, comrade, ‘A rag, a bone …' And whatever the lady's motives may be, your sole motive now is to get at the truth!”
“
Jiggers!
” Maida warned.
The waitress appeared and took our dessert orders while Maida chattered disarmingly on about the lovely pines, the gorgeous weather, the priceless view, her eyes glowing and dancing with the excitement of her new role. “
Magnifique!
” I said, when the waitress had departed. “By all means we must send you to Moscow to spy on the Moujiks.”
“To think,” Maida said, “just to think that I have been pounding a typewriter all these years when—when there's work like this to be done. Work my eye, absorbing play—
“Dusting a typewriter, you mean,” I said, “at least since I got in this damned case. And as for this being fun, I'll still take the hay. And remember, lawyers don't often get bizarre cases like this to work on. Most criminal cases are duller than contract bridge. In fact, during my hundred and ten years as prosecutor there were few I can offhand remember that could even hold a candle to it.”
Parnell turned to me. “Suppose you bring us up to date, Polly.”
“Yes,” Maida breathed, “I can't wait. This is like working on a Chinese puzzle. Even Mickey Spillane has nothing on this—and we've only got
one
murder.” She shook her head in wonder. “It doesn't seem possible—
only one murder!”
 
The dessert had been served and we were on our third cup of coffee before I described how I had discovered the gun shelf under the bar. And I hit only the high spots. I told them my theory about the bartender serving as lookout, about the bulletin board, about the lovable bartender finally clamming up, about the abrupt summons of the desk clerk to the dining room to have his gag adjusted. It was well after two o'clock when I was done.
“You mean,” Maida said wonderingly, spreading her hands, “you mean Mary Pilant gets all this loot anyway—even when she was stepping out with another man? Wouldn't you know. And I can't get one lone male to take me out to dinner—even when I pay.”
“At least you've got two tottering old badgers taking you out to
lunch,” I comforted her. “You got to play it cool, Maida, play it cool.” I turned to the silent Parnell. “Well, Parn, I guess it's your turn. You not only look like a cat that has just swallowed a mouse, but even like a mouse that has just swallowed a cat. Purge yourself, my friend.”
Parnell had had a busy morning; in fact, as he unfolded the story of his activities that forenoon I marveled that such an arthritic and ailing old man could have accomplished even half so much in so short a time. Few professional detectives could have covered so much ground, I felt, and none, I was certain, could have done so to better purpose. The old boy was a born detective: shrewd, resourceful, and always keeping his eye on the main chance, and as he talked on I stared at him with increasing admiration.
He had got off to a slow start; the only people in the first tavern had been a “stupendously drunken” Indian and the proprietor—“a great purple-nosed bladder-faced individual with the eyes of a cod, to which he was obviously related, and who, with equal obviousness, had joyously dedicated his life to the consumption of his own wares.” The moment Parnell had brought up the subject of the fatal shooting this charming man had clammed up and fled to the back room.
“It was plain that this numbed and sodden intellectual pygmy was not being evasive or cute,” Parnell explained. “I swear rather that in his addled alcoholic mind he had worked out the notion that, since his tavern was the closest to Barney's, he was next on the list to be shot and I had come to shoot him.” Parnell shook his head. “‘Killer' McCarthy,” he said. “The Lord save us, an' me not knowin' which end of a gun to shoot.”
Parnell had covered every tavern in town—there were seven—and had doggedly consumed at least one bottle of pop in each. “I never drank so much of the vile stuff since I left law school,” he explained. Fortunately in all the other taverns—which were patronized largely by locals or by truck drivers or pulp cutters from the surrounding logging camps—they were all either already talking about the shooting or were more than willing to resume their favorite topic. He had learned a lot about the life and times of the late Barney Quill, hunter and fisherman and expert shot who had failed only once … .
“I shall not pause now and recount just where and from whom I learned what I learned,” Parnell went on, “but by the time I got to the last tavern several things had clearly emerged regarding the character and reputation of the deceased.”
“Let's have 'em, Parn,” I said.
“First and foremost he was perhaps the most thoroughly disliked person in town,” Parnell said. “The general air of rejoicing over his
demise was as shocking as it was obvious. To borrow one of your inelegant but colorful phrases, Paul, most people simply ‘hated his guts,' his insufferable affectation of superior virtue, his apparently illy disguised cock-of-the-walk attitude that he was a sort of superman who could outshoot, outfight, outlove, out-anything any three men in town.”
“There is some evidence, you know, Parn, that he may not have been too far wrong,” I said.
“I had not proceeded far before I discovered that this vast dislike was also mingled with fear,” Parnell went on, “and a fear that appeared pretty well grounded.” He paused. “It seems that the reports were pretty much all the truth: he
could
outhunt, outshoot, outfight and out all the rest just about any one man, if not three, in all of Thunder Bay. Not to mention the sylvan environs, which I shall presently get to. Apparently the man not only
thought
he was good, he
was
good. He wanted to be Mr. Big of Thunder Bay and Mastodon Township and by God he was. And in his pursuit of this dubious distinction he seems to have known no personal fear. A truly amazin' character, that he was.”
“Can you give us an example?” I said. “It might be important, you know.”
“Well,” Parnell went on, tolerantly overlooking my interruption, “take the time he almost kilt the husky young truck driver who came to beat him up.” Parnell paused thoughtfully and pursed his lips. “Yes, that's a moderately good illustration. There are many others.”
“Oh, lovely, lovely,” Maida said, leaning forward.
“It seems that before this Mary Pilant young lady came to work for Barney—” Parnell's eyes seemed to soften at her name—“Barney's hotel and bar, particularly the bar, had been pretty much a rendezvous for roistering lumberjacks and truck drivers and the various seedy and besotted local gentry, slaves all to strong drink. But when Miss Mary came on the scene all that abruptly changed; she evidently sold Barney on the notion that he was wastin' his time and talents; that the real money was to be made from the tourists. But the local characters would first have to be sent on their way. Anyway, and whatever happened, the welcome mat was suddenly removed—the local characters were one day told by Barney to get the hell out and stay out.”
“You mean there wasn't any fight after all?” Maida said, seeming on the verge of tears. “They went like sheep?”
“Patience, my dove,” Parnell said. “There were fights indeed, fisticuffs and eye-gougings and broken heads beyond the wildest dreams of even your literary hero. The local gentry resented bitterly losing their happy drinking home to the tourists; they had been there first; and so they still insisted on coming back to Barney's.” Parnell paused. “Alas, the results were inevitable.”
“How do you mean?” Maida breathlessly put in.
“As fast as they came in the door Barney threw them out, with a sort of monotonous abstracted regularity, like a bored Keystone cop flailing his constituents with his night stick. It got so the tourists would gather, particularly on Saturday nights, to watch the mighty evacuation. For a time it became a sort of tourist feature of Thunder Bay, like watching the bears at the garbage dump—Barney was again house-cleanin' his bar.”
“Lovely,” Maida murmured, blinking her eyes.
“If the interlopers wanted to box, Barney boxed ‘em; if they wanted to wrassle, he wrassled 'em; and if they wanted to play dirty, he cheerfully obliged ‘em. It seems that among his many other attainments he excelled in the dark arts of Judo or jujitsu or whatever it's called. Really an amazin' fellow he was, a sort of Ben Franklin of the world of physical attainment and violence. Why, one night three 'jacks rushed Barney—all of them younger than he—and when the smoke cleared away one was knocked cold on the floor and had to be assisted away, the other had fled into the night, and the third was moaning and holding a broken wrist. Nobody is yet quite sure how it happened. In any event it was a clear case of an irresistible force colliding with
three
highly removable objects.”
“Lieutenant Manion should have been awarded the Congressional Medal for daring to face him,” I said. “And here they want to send the poor man to prison.”
“Don't forget the husky young truck driver,” Maida reminded Parnell, her appetite whetted. “Remember, you promised.”
“Presently, my dear, presently,” Parnell said, smiling benevolently. “After that last fracas things understandably calmed down, and for an interval the tourists inherited the Thunder Bay Inn undisturbed —that is, until this husky young truck driver came to town, or rather to one of the nearby lumber camps.”
“Who was he, where was he from?” Maida begged.
“No matter, but it appears that he was not only nearly twice the size of Barney, who was evidently not an unusually large man, but
also less than half his age. Moreover he had been an amateur pugilist of no mean attainments and had, it seemed, reached the semi-finals in those—those Diamond Glove contests sponsored by that shyly self-admitted world's greatest newspaper, the Chicago
Tribune.”
“
Golden
Gloves you mean, Parn,” I said, hoping to keep him off
that
subject. “It's the annual Golden Gloves Tournaments.”
“Ah yes, golden,” Parn said. “But no matter, no matter, golden or tin—the fight's the thing.”
“Aye, the fight, the fight—let's have the fight!” the avid Maida chimed in.
“When the men at this young boxer's camp learned of his prowess in fisticuffs, the very next Saturday night they came to town and marched in a body into Barney's, with this stout young gladiator at their head, and demanded drinks for the house from Barney.”
“What happened?” I said.
“Don't interrupt!” Maida said, plucking my sleeve.
“Well, Barney and the young man fought, of course. They fought their fight with their fists. They fought by the bar, they fought behind the bar, they fought on the dance floor, they fought on the stairs, they once fought out in the street. They fought for an hour and seven minutes by the clock—the men who told me were there and saw it—until—until this Barney, himself like his adversary all tattered and bloody and nearly done in, suddenly executed a quick feint with his left”—In his excitement Parnell had arisen and now flailed out with his pudgy arms—“and brought over a sizzling right—
wham!
—and the youthful pride of the lumberjacks toppled and crashed like a tall Norway pine.”
“
Timber!
” Maida yelped with delight. “You—you mean Barney knocked him cold?”
, “Rather extensively,” Parnell replied dryly. “Barney stowed him away in a deep freeze. The fight was over. His comrades shouldered their fallen hero and silently took him away. One of the men who told me the story said it was so bad that he had to drive the young boxer's truck back to camp. The next morning the vanquished young gladiator hobbled to the paymaster and drew his time and quit the camp.” Parnell paused and sighed, as though reluctant to be done with his yarn. “And that was the last visitation of the local lumberjacks and unwanted barflies upon the hallowed premises of the Thunder Bay Inn.”
“Good God, Parn,” I said, horrified at the thought. “All this must
have happened while I was still prosecutor. Where were the police? the Sheriff? I never heard a whisper about any of this. It seems incredible.”
“Perhaps the gendarmes thought Barney was himself a sufficient if unwitting force for law and order. Or perhaps it was a case of discretion being the better part of valor. The only deputy sheriff in town was the kindly little old man who is the caretaker of the trailer park—the same man that our Lieutenant gave himself up to the night he shot Barney.”
“Better raise the ante to
two
Congressional Medals, Boss,” Maida put in. “My God, I should have known this Barney person. What a man, what a man … .”
A waitress appeared and hovered expectantly over our still littered table. I glanced at my watch. “It's getting late,” I said. “Let's get out of here and finish our talk in the car.”
“I can't wait,” Maida said, busily putting her face together.
BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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