Dead Letter (12 page)

"No."

"What, then?"

"My lawyer is going to post bond this afternoon.
Unless I can convince Les that I had nothing to do with what happened
last night, he’ll kill me."

"You want me to act as a bodyguard?"

Sarah shook her head. "I want you to tell Les
that it was your fault, that I had nothing to do with the bust."

I laughed hollowly, pushed back my chair, and got to
my feet.

Sarah looked up in confusion. "Where are you
going?"

"Where do you think? I heard what you wanted to
say and I’m not interested."

"Just what are you interested in? Oh, but why
ask?"

She sat back in her chair and stared at me with fresh
assurance. "You’re a fascinating type, Mr. Stoner, in a
ghoulish way. A man without loyalty, without honor, without
friendship. A man who lives like a parasite in the creases of
society, feeding on age, disease, and unhappiness. I once told you
that I thought you were intelligent. I know now how wrong I was. It’s
all instinct with you, isn’t it? All smell." She leaned
forward and looked indifferently at the tabletop. "How much?"
she said under her breath. "How much do you want?"

I did a foolish thing. I got angry. "Twenty
thousand," I said.

She started as if she’d been slapped. "You’re
joking?"

"Hell, no," I said. "You understand my
type and janissaries come high this year, Miss Lovingwell. I want
twenty thousand dollars."

"I don’t know if I have that much," she
said nervously.

"Sure you do. You’ve got all of Daddy’s
money coming to you."

"I have money of my own," she said quickly.

"From where?"

"That’s none of your business."

"You’re wrong, Sarah. If I work for you,
everything about you is my business." I sat back down at the
table. "Why’d you do it, Sarah? Why’d you kill him? It
wasn’t for money—that’s below your character. That’s more in
my line, right? So why’d you do it? Revenge? To get back for
Momma?"

Sarah groaned as if I’d punched her squarely in the
gut. "What do you know about Mother?" she said.

"I know that you blamed your father for her
death. Is that why you killed him?"

"I didn’t kill him."

"Sure you did. The police have a witness who can
place you on the scene at the time of the murder. And when I get
through telling them why your father hired me, they’ll have a
motive, too."

"Don’t tell them that!" she said shrilly.
"I have to get out of here. If you tell them that, they’ll
never let me go. I’1l give you the money you want."

I shook my head. "I don’t want to play any
more, Sarah. Not for money or honor or fun."

"You’re going to tell them?"

"I don’t have a choice. McMasters knows I lied
to him about your alibi. He knows I’m withholding evidence about
your father’s death. I’m just not going to risk my neck for you
any longer. Because I think you are lying. I think you did kill your
father."

"I swear I didn’t do it," she whispered.
All of the outrage and assurance had left her face.

"For what it’s worth, I didn’t betray you,"
I said.

"Your friend O’Hara told the police that the
alibi was a phoney. But before you start thinking up some category to
stuff him into, you ought to know that he was beaten up before he
confessed."

"I don’t believe you," Sarah said.

"It’s not in the dialectic, huh? Well, Marx
notwithstanding, that’s the truth."

Sarah stared forlornly at the mirror behind me. "I
need your help," she said in a small, tired voice. "I’m
in trouble and I need your help."

It was as if she had pulled a plug inside me. I felt
all the anger drain away, and in its place a weak and dangerous pity
was sloshing about. I looked away from her and down at the hard
grooved rubber inlay of the table-top. "Talking to Grimes isn’t
going to help you," I said. "If he thinks I’m a cop,
nothing I say is going to change his mind. He’ll kill me, Sarah.
And why should I risk my neck for you? I heard all that crap about
loyalty and friendship and honor. But you haven’t trusted me since
we met. Why should I trust you? If I did what you asked me to, I’d
just be playing another hunch, a sucker play, which is all I’ve
been doing since your father hired me on Monday." I shook my
head. "I’m sorry. But I’m not going to play in the dark any 
more."

Sarah wiped her eyes and got up from her chair. "Then
there’s nothing more to say."

She reached for the buzzer by the door, to signal the
guard that our conversation was finished.
And
then I did another foolish thing. I called her back.

"Hold it," I said.

She turned at the door and looked back at me with
just the trace of a smile on her face. I nodded at her disgustedly.

"So I’m not a janissary," I said. "You
don’t have to crow over it."

"I’m hardly crowing," she said. But her
smile broadened, and she looked at me with something like gratitude.

"I’ve waited for two days, I don’t suppose
another day will hurt. But understand, Sarah, you’ve got to
convince me that you didn’t kill your father. You’ve got to
convince me that he was, in fact, the man you’ve made him out to
be. I don’t see any middle way. One of you has to be a liar. And
remember, if I’m not convinced, I’1l tell the police what they
want to know."

"I’ll convince you," she said.
 

11

Sid McMasters was waiting in the ante-room with two
burly desk sergeants when I walked back out the door.

"Did you get everything settled, Harry?" he
asked.

"What’s the matter, Sid'? Did the mirror fog
up or did the microphone go dead?"

"Sure. Make jokes. We heard what you said."

"That’s against the law!" I said to him.

"Funny man," one of the desk cops grumbled.

"Let’s talk, Harry," McMasters said.
"Just the four of us."

"O.K." I sat down on the waiting room
bench.

"Not here." McMasters shook his head.
"Downstairs."

"How far downstairs, Sid?" I asked him.

"That depends, Harry. On how much you tell us."

"I want to talk to a lawyer."

"You’re not under arrest," McMasters said
innocently.

"You’re just cooperating with the police, like
every good citizen should."

"I’m not going down to the basement, Sid. If
you want to talk, we can talk right here."

McMasters nodded to the other cops, and they walked
over and hoisted me to my feet.

"You can’t pull this shit. I’ve got a legal
right to keep silent. What Sarah Lovingwell told me is privileged
information."
 

McMasters pretended to chew it over. "Let’s
talk about it downstairs," he said agreeably.

With the two desk sergeants propping me up, we took
the service elevator down to the lobby. The floor numbers were
printed in block letters at the verge of each floor, and I counted
them off as nervously as if I were descending the levels of Hell.
When ONE flashed by and the elevator didn’t slow down, I knew I was
headed for the nth circle—the frozen one—and that McMasters was
going to push this thing right over the edge of humor, of practical
joking, into a place where kidding becomes a prelude to violence. If
it came to that, I’d have to give him something; and I’d have to
give it up after a struggle, to convince him that it had been worth
waiting for. And that something couldn’t be Sarah.

Out of sympathy or lunacy or plain old curiosity I’d
given her a reprieve. Just how that was going to work I didn’t
know. There was no reason to assume that she’d start telling me the
truth once she’d gotten what she wanted—which was out of jail.
She might go underground, like her friend Grimes; or she just might
put a bullet through my head. Didn’t think of that one, did you,
Harry? I said to myself. But I had thought of it; I just hadn’t
thought much of it. I simply couldn’t believe she was a killer. And
in spite of all the parables on appearances and all the hard
practical lessons I’d learned in better than ten years of detective
work, I’d never yet been that wrong about a client. Of course, I
had to be wrong about one of them, father or daughter. But when it
comes to a choice between the testimony of a man like Bidwell and
that of a woman like Mrs. Weinberg, I always go with the Rose
Weinbergs of this world. Perhaps because it’s flattering when
someone takes detective work seriously, when someone pauses to
consider just how much detection goes into knowing anyone at all.

So I couldn’t give McMasters Sarah or the document
or the reason why her father had hired me. What I could give him was
Grimes. Sarah wouldn’t like it; but it was the best way, maybe the
only way, to keep both of us from ending up dead. Because I was no
match for a psychotic ex-Marine with the instincts of a killer. I
knew his type from domesticated versions—the men who wall their
rooms with rifles, machine guns, and dummy grenades. Who, if you get
on their good side, will take you out back and let you fire off a
burst or two from an illegally operative Thompson. And who,
invariably, when loaded or sentimental, will let you in on their
secret plans, their maelstrom defenses. For they’re all Seventh Day
Adventists, these gun nuts; they’re all millenarians, saving up for
that day when apocalypse comes. They’re all prepared. They’ve got
the fire lines worked out; they’ve calculated ammunition like a
quartermaster. They’ve built redoubts and shelters and, secretly,
they probably know who’s going to go first—which member of the
family they’ll sacrifice in a pinch. It’s the most heartless
brand of sentimentality you can run up against; and if you believe
the shit put out by the gun lobby, it’s what makes America great.

Grimes—who probably sat in his rented rooms with a
P rifle in his lap, trailing straggling school kids and strange
Negroes with the barrel propped out the bedroom window, squeezing off
imaginary rounds in lightening-like bursts—was a wilder and less
predictable case. But he’d have that same sentimental
streak—killing is kindness—and a helluva lot more expertise. I’d
have to do some research on him. Talk to some ex-Marines like Larry
Soldi, Bullet’s hired man, who could fill me in on just how to
defend against a man still fighting wars. Armed with that kind of
knowledge and with Sid’s help, Grimes could be handled. And
handling Grimes would please Sid. Dropping a cop-killer was just
about the richest pleasure in
his world.

As the elevator pulled to a stop, I tried to
calculate exactly how much abuse I ought to take before handing
McMasters what he wanted. I half wished I’d had the chance to stop
in a john, so I could have stuffed a cushion of toilet tissue in my
nose and around my gums. But that would have taken half the fun out
of it for Sid, and all of the surprise.

When we got out of the elevator, we walked down a dim
hallway into a large empty cellroom. The whole basement had once been
used as a keep; now the cells were used as storerooms. Except for the
one in which we were standing. The room was absolutely bare—no
chairs, no furniture. Just stone walls, gas and water pipes overhead,
and a single lamp dangling down like the big white-light lamps hung
above the lawn of pool tables. While I was looking around, Sid took
off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. The other cops drifted
into the shadows outside the pale of the overhead light. There was a
stack of phone books in one corner of the room. And one of the desk
sergeants walked very deliberately over to them and leaned up against
that section of the wall. It was all a little like No drama—each
gesture calculated to produce its incremental effect. A ritualistic
first act, like the unsheathing and wiping of a sacrificial blade.
The phone books were a nice touch. No phone, just the books. That was
the way they did it nowadays. Leaded saps and rubber hoses were out.
They left marks and, in the heat of the moment, they could do mortal
injury. The phone books were an antic compromise. Every criminal
knows that he’s allowed one phone call and, under the guise of
allowing the criminal his rights, the cops kept the phone books on
the floor of the interrogation room. If I pushed McMasters hard
enough, I’d get a chance to see what they were really used for.

The two desk sergeants would pin my arms back, and
Sid would take a phone book and slam me over the head with it until
blood ran out of my ears. After ten good shots, my spine would
compress and every nerve center would start signaling pain. My legs
would throb, my arms would burn. My back would feel as if the
vertebrae were cracked. I’d lose control of my bladder, of my
bowels. The cops would make me strip, unless Sid was in a really
vicious mood, unless he wanted to make me stand ankle-deep in my own
waste. I’d seen it happen. Sid knew I’d seen it happen. And he
watched me with the cold assurance that I was getting the point. In
the white light he looked black-Irish tough—a big, barrel-chested
man with red hair, a pasty complexion, and heartless blue eyes. He
was enjoying it. I’ve never known a cop who didn’t enjoy making
his mark squirm.