Night My Friend (7 page)

Johnny smiled slightly and decided he’d come at the right moment. “Get Congressman Yorkman in here.”

“For what?”

Johnny leaned against the wall and took out a cigarette. “If you want to get out of this thing in one piece, you’ll do as I say.”

“I don’t take orders from any hack songwriter.”

Johnny Nocturne smiled. “That’s not what you were saying about my music a little earlier in the day.”

“Get to the point, Nocturne. I’m busy.”

“I don’t talk until you get Yorkman in here.”

Cotton Cravess sighed and pushed a button on his desk. An intercom squeaked into life and he bellowed, “Find Jim Yorkman.”

Johnny lit the cigarette. “Thanks.”

Cravess studied him for a moment. “When this is all over, I’m going to take special pleasure in running you out of River City.”

“We’ll see.”

The office door opened and Jim Yorkman emerged from the outer bedlam. “Hello, Johnny,” he said.

“Hi, Jim. I thought you’d want to be in on this.”

“Oh, what?”

Johnny Nocturne walked over to Cotton’s desk and ground out his cigarette. “Cravess, I know how you’ve been running honest politicians like Jim Yorkman here. I know how you got them elected and then thought you could control every vote that they cast.”

Cotton Cravess rose from behind his desk. “You seem to forget that you’re addressing the next governor of the state.”

Johnny Nocturne laughed.

It was then that Blinky moved in behind him and caught him with a rabbit punch to the back of the neck. Johnny felt himself falling forward, unable to catch himself on the desk.

Dimly, he heard Nancy screaming, and then, as he hit the floor and rolled over, he saw Jim Yorkman going into action. The Congressman grabbed Blinky by his shirt and yanked him forward.

“Cravess, we just dissolved our partnership,” he said, as he hit Blinky a crushing right to the jaw. The gambler toppled backward and crashed into the desk.

Cotton Cravess groped for buttons on his desk. “I’ll see you in hell, Yorkman!”

The door of the office opened and two or three men crowded in. “What’s up, Cotton?”

Cravess waved his arm. “Throw these bums out.”

But Johnny struggled to his feet. “Cravess, call them off if you don’t want to face a grand jury on a murder charge.”

“I don’t know anything about that cop killing.”

“But you’ll burn for it, Cravess.”

Cotton Cravess dropped back into his chair. “Leave us alone for five minutes. Then toss them out.”

“Right, Cotton.”

Blinky started to get to his feet and Jim Yorkman shoved him into their waiting arms. “Take this with you.”

When the door had closed again Johnny walked over and sat on the arm of Nancy’s chair. “I can get you out of the murder charge, Cravess, in return for two things. First, you give up all connections with Jim Yorkman and anyone else you helped to elect. And second, you withdraw from the race for governor.”

“What? Withdraw?”

“You heard me.”

“I’ll never withdraw.”

“Cravess, I hardly think the people of this state would elect a man under suspicion of killing a policeman and raping a girl.”

“I didn’t rape any girl and I didn’t kill any policeman.”

“But try and tell the voters that.”

“Damn you.”

“You’ve got your choice. Bow out now and the party still has the better part of three weeks to build up a replacement. Keep fighting and you’ll either be tossed out by the party or by the voters.”

“And if I agree?”

“If you agree you can still save something of your reputation and also escape a possible murder charge.”

Cotton Cravess looked around him like a man suddenly trapped by the press of events. He sought the eyes of Jim Yorkman and asked, “Jim, what do you think?”

Yorkman sighed. “Either way, I’m through with you. You’ve run my life for too long a time. If it means leaving Congress, I’m ready to do that, too.”

“Well?” Johnny Nocturne asked.

The door opened again and the men were back. “Should we throw them out, Cotton?”

“No,” he answered quietly. “Get out.”

They retreated once more, and Johnny, Nancy and Jim Yorkman faced the man behind the desk, now grown suddenly old. After a moment’s silence he picked up the telephone and spoke into it.

“Arrange for me to go on radio and television at once. I have a statement to make.”

He dropped the phone into its cradle and looked up at Johnny Nocturne. “Now how are you going to clear me of this murder?”

“You’re giving up?”

Cotton Cravess nodded. “I’m giving up…”

Twenty minutes later they were grouped together in the studios downstairs, watching as the television camera rolled in for a close-up of Cotton Cravess.

“Friends and supporters,” he began, “it is not easy for me to come before you tonight…”

Jim Yorkman tugged at Johnny’s arm.

“What’s up, Jim?”

“The killer of Harvey Backus just confessed.”

Johnny frowned. “Keep it quiet till after the speech. That could ruin everything right now.”

And they stood in silence and listened to the words of Cotton Cravess. “…and so it is that I feel it to be in the best interests of the party that I withdraw from the race at once, to devote all my time to silencing these false rumors against my name. I feel sure that the party will be able to…”

“That’s it,” Johnny said.

Nancy sighed with relief. “I still don’t know just how you did it.”

“Come back to the apartment and I’ll explain,” he said. “Right now I can think better with a piano under me…”

The night shadows had lengthened, conquering the world of glowing neon and blinking lights. Now it was the world of Nocturne, of deep, dreamy mood that slipped across the sleeping city.

And Johnny ran his fingers lightly over the piano keys and thought about how great it was to be alive. Jim Yorkman was gone now, but Nancy was still with him, curled up on the couch as his fingers moved lightly over the keys.

“Tell
me,
tell me how it is…”

“Johnny, the Congressman said someone confessed to the murder.”

“Yes…”

“Who?”

“That policeman we saw this afternoon. Tom Harper.”

“Tom Harper! But why?”

“Why? …The eternal question.” His fingers searched among the keys and his gaze was far away, in the night. And in the dimness of the apartment there were only the two of them.

“Why?” he repeated. “Because Tom Harper was a loyal man, so loyal that he couldn’t bear to see a young cop being bribed. It was too much for him, and when he confronted Backus in the garage there was nothing left to do but to kill him. Backus had sold out the whole police force, and in Harper’s eyes he had to pay for this.”

“But how did you know? How did you know it wasn’t Cravess?”

The music drifted around them, and the darkness clothed them like a warm friend. “There were many things showing it wasn’t Cravess or his men. He was already in enough trouble without chancing a cop killing. And, anyway, Backus had accepted the bribe. They certainly wouldn’t have killed him. Besides which, the murder was committed in the police garage, when Backus was going off duty. Why kill him in the very shadow of Police Headquarters when he would have been out in the street on his way home in another minute? The answer of course was that the killer wasn’t a hired gunman. He was another policeman.”

“Why Tom Harper, though?”

“Because if Backus did accept the bribe and said nothing, only Harper could have known about it. Harper himself didn’t report that incident till morning, so only he—and Cotton’s men—knew that Backus had accepted the bribe.”

“But that’s mostly guesswork, Johnny.”

“It was guesswork until I talked to Harper in the garage and asked him if Backus had taken the bribe. He just looked at me, and said that Backus had been very young, and I knew. Harper’s eyes told me everything.”

“Would you have turned him in?”

“I suppose so. Though I knew his confession wouldn’t be long in coming. A man who murders for the honor of the police force can’t hide his crime for long. The very motivation of the murder told me that Harper would confess the whole thing very soon.”

“And you used that knowledge to deal with Cravess. Why, Johnny?”

His fingers moved again over the keys, and a song of the night came drifting to them. “Partly to save my own skin, since I was one of those who heard the girl’s dying words. But I guess mostly it was our discussion of Joan of Arc that did it. I saw that if someone like her could rise above the evil around her, possibly people like Jim Yorkman could, too. Why don’t you write a book about that?”

She walked over and slid on to the piano bench next to him, and said, very quietly, “Maybe some day I will.”

And then the night closed in around them, and there was only the song of the friendly darkness to comfort their thoughts.

T
HE PLANE, A SILVER BIRD
dipping its wings to the far-off dawn, came in low over Jason Lean’s farmland. Too low, he remembered thinking, for he’d seen so many hundreds on the airport approach that he almost at times felt he could fly one. Too low, with the rising sun in the pilot’s eyes and the double row of power lines crossing the tip of the hill. He shouted something, to be heard only by the field birds and the indifferent cows, then screwed his face in a sort of horror as the great plane touched the unseen wires.

There was a crackle of blue flame, no more than that of a match lit and suddenly dying, but it was enough to spell death to an airliner. The entire hillside seemed to explode as the plane twisted into the ground, boring deep like some hibernating animal, spewing flames that might have told you the animal was a dragon.

Jason Lean watched until the first flash of flame had died, and then began the short trek across the valley to the wreckage on the hillside. Others would have seen the crash too, he knew, and already it would be tapping out on the news tickers of the world. How many dead—fifty, sixty? Those big planes carried a lot of people these days. He shook his head sadly at the thought, but did not increase his pace. He already knew he would find nothing alive when he reached the smoldering wreckage.

Now here and there a tree was burning, and there ahead he could see the tail section of the plane itself, a great silver thing that sat silent now as a giant tombstone. Padded seats, so comfortable with their bodies still strapped sitting—grotesque, but all too real. And strewn across the landscape, wreckage, flesh, baggage, mail pouches, fallen trees, dangerously dangling wires. As if a giant hand—a flaming devil’s hand—had written its signature on the hillside. All dead, all.

He walked among them, terrified, remembering somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind a time when very young he’d walked through a country graveyard at night. He took in all the details of grief and tragedy, the spilled suitcases, the child’s toys, the scorched and splintered packing cases… and then his eyes fell on one suitcase, resting apart from the others, its leather hide barely marked by the smoke.

It was a large bag, of pale pebbled pigskin, with two tough straps around it to reinforce the lock. It was the only one he saw that had neither burned nor tumbled open to spread its contents over the landscape. Jason Lean stood for some moments staring at the bag, as if it held some strange sort of fascination for him. Then, in an instant of certainty, he stooped and grasped the plastic handle, lifting the suitcase from the ground. He turned once to look over his shoulder, to make certain that none of the blackened corpses moved in accusation. Then he hurried back down the hillside, through the smoky haze of destruction, carrying his treasure like some traveler only just returned from a world tour.

“A plane crash,” Martha said when he returned. “What a terrible thing!”

“Terrible,” Jason agreed. He always agreed with his wife. “I was over there, looking at the wreckage. They’re all dead.” Already, on the distant ridge, they could see men moving like ants. Police, ambulances, morgue wagons, reporters—all converging now on the scene of disaster. Making their way carefully around the fallen wires and the blackened wreckage. Hoping, then feeling hope die as they saw what Jason Lean had seen.

“What’s that you’ve got?” she asked, noticing the suitcase for the first time.

“I found it up by the wreckage. It’s not burned or anything. Must have been thrown clear.”

“And you took it?”
She made the words into something terrible, and for the first time he realized just what he had done. “You took it? From the dead?”

“I… I thought it might have something valuable in it. They’re all dead. It belongs to no one.” But even as he spoke the words he knew he would never convince her.

“That’s looting! It’s like robbing graves, but even worse. Jason, you have to take it back this minute, leave it where you found it.”

“Don’t be silly—how could I do that when the hill’s swarming with people?” It was the first time he had ever raised his voice to her, and he regretted it at once. “I’ll get rid of it, just as soon as I open it up and look inside.”

“Jason, you’re not opening that suitcase! I can’t imagine anything more horrible than pawing about in the belongings of some poor dead creature who was so much alive just an hour ago.”

“But… but there might be something valuable inside, Martha. It’s an expensive suitcase, you can see that. Suppose it contains fancy clothes, or an expensive camera, or important papers. Or even money!”

“Jason, either you return that suitcase this minute, or you take it out behind the barn and bury it. I’m not going to have it here. I’m not going to have you opening it and going through it. I don’t want the man’s ghost coming and haunting us for your awful crime!”

He knew it was useless when she got in one of those moods. And yet his will was torn between her commanding words and the questioning suitcase that rested now on the floor between his feet. “Martha…”

“Bury it! Get it out of my sight, Jason!”

“All right.” He went out with bowed head, carrying the heavy suitcase beyond the faded red barn to the little animal graveyard. While Martha watched from a distance he dug a shallow hole and buried the pigskin bag between the old cow and last year’s cat. “All right. It’s done.”