The Dishonest Murderer (32 page)

“Play it my way, darling,” he said, and now he tried to come nearer her, tried to smile down at her. “It's the best way. There're reasons. I'll—we'll talk about it later. Tonight, some time. Now I'm going to take you home.”

She did not understand; she shook her head, puzzled, and tried to find in his face, in his eyes, some explanation. But there was nothing there she could decipher. In his face she saw only distant stillness, and what seemed a kind of harshness. His face, she thought, rejected her, and then she wanted only to run out of the place, away from all of it—away, for the moment, even from Brian himself, whose attitude now seemed so inexplicable. She turned and started toward the door and did not look back as she heard him following her.

Because he stopped at the outer door for some purpose, and she did not hesitate, she was some little distance down Kepp Street before he overtook her. And then she did not look at him, but merely walked beside him, numbly, to the end of the street.

“You don't understand,” he said. “Don't make up your mind about anything, Liza. I'll—I'll call you tonight.”

She did speak, then. “You know something,” she said. “You're shutting me out.”

“No,” Brian said, and then raised his voice and called to a passing cab. The cab stopped and they walked toward it. “I don't know anything,” he said, as he held the door open. “There are certain things I've—got to find out. And it's only that I don't want you mixed up in it.”

He started to get into the cab after her, but she shook her head.

“Go back,” she said. “I'll go to the apartment. I'll wait.”

“An hour or two,” he said. “A few hours. It depends partly on the police.” He did not repeat his effort to enter the cab.

“I'll wait,” she said again, and then ended it by giving the cab driver her address. As the cab started she looked back. He was standing unmoving, looking after the cab. Then he turned away and went back into West Kepp Street.

The cab had gone some blocks before she realized that she had left her sketch pad in Mr. Halder's shop.

3

Tuesday, 5:30
P
.
M
. to 7:20
P
.
M
.

“Jerry!” Pam North said, putting down her glass. “It's too strong. I can taste the vermouth.” She paused, took another sip. “Unless it's a different kind of gin,” she added, thoughtfully.

Jerry North tasted from his own glass. Sometimes, he told his wife, she baffled him. It was, he said, the same gin and the same vermouth. The proportions were unchanged.

“Then it's me,” Pam said, “but I still think it's the vermouth. Anyway, it's too strong.”

“Listen,” Jerry said. “If that were true, it would make it too
weak
. Too strong would be gin.”

“All I know is, it
tastes
strong,” Pam said. “Bitter. It could be the lemon peel, of course. They're new lemons.”

“What,” Jerry said, and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair, “has the newness of the lemons got to do with it?”

“For heaven's sake,” Pam said, “I was merely looking for an explanation. If it isn't the vermouth or a new kind of gin, it's the lemon peel, because it's just the same ice and what else is there?” She paused. “Except me,” she said. “And I'm just the same, far as I can tell.” But she looked reflective, as if this were a point needing further consideration. She sipped again and tasted, thoughtfully. “It isn't me,” she said, with more assurance. “You taste it.”

Jerry crossed to his wife's chair and tasted his wife's drink.

“See?” she said.

“I think it's you,” Jerry said. “It tastes just like mine.”

Pam got up, went to Jerry's chair, and tasted his drink.

“You mean,” she said, “you don't taste it?” She sounded entirely astonished. “It must be you, not me. Yours is just the same. Strong.”

“Darling,” Jerry said, sitting down in Pam's chair. “It isn't the vermouth makes them strong. Why do you keep on saying strong?”

“I think,” Pam said, tasting Jerry's drink again, “they need more gin. Usually, they're so perfect. And it can't be me, because I don't want pickles, and anyway I'd know.”

Jerry shook his head slightly to clear it, and finished Pam's drink. Then, cautiously, he said, “Pickles?”

“Babies,” Pam said. “If it would make you want pickles, it probably would make drinks taste funny.”

“Oh,” Jerry said. He looked at her suspiciously.

“No,” Pam said. “Of course not. They just need more gin.” She looked at the glass which had been Jerry's, and which now was empty. “Next time,” she said. “Jerry, I've got your chair! I—”

Then the telephone rang. Because Pamela North was in Jerry's chair, she was nearest the telephone.

“It'll be for—” she said. But Jerry, grinning, shook his head.

“Goes with the chair,” he told her, pleased.

Pam made a face at him and continued it into the telephone. Then she said, “Oh, Bill!” and then “What?”

“Look, Bill,” she said then, “it must be a bad connection. He says he's in a pet.” The last was to Jerry, who raised his eyebrows, who said, “How perfectly duck—” before Pam said, “Shhhh!”

“Oh,” she said then. “
Shop
. A pet
shop
. What on—”

But then, listening to Lieutenant William Weigand of Homicide, Manhattan West, she sobered very suddenly. She said “Oh” in a different tone and then, after another moment of listening, “Of course we will. Right away.” She listened again. “Of course not,” she said. “We're not doing anything.” She hesitated briefly. “Except martinis, of course,” she said. “We were just talking about vermouth.” She listened again. “Of course we can,” she said. “We live here. Jerry'll know.” And then she hung up, and stood up.

“You
do
know where West Kepp Street is, don't you?” she said to Jerry. “Because Bill's in a pet shop there and wants us to come to look at something. And the man who owns the shop was killed in a pen, or killed himself and got into a pen.” She listened to herself. “I don't mean that the way it sounds,” she said. “Do you, Jerry?”

“Approximately,” Jerry North said. “Opens off Christopher, or maybe Greenwich. No—wait. Isn't it that funny little street over by Commerce?”

“That's Gay Street,” Pam said.

But Jerry shook his head, because he was sure—almost sure—that Gay was the one off Christopher.

“Anyway,” Pam said, deciding it for them, “we won't find it here, and Bill doesn't want to leave because he's waiting for somebody, so come on.”

They went. It was not the one off Greenwich. It was not—they were in a cab by this time—the one off Commerce. For a time it looked as if it were not off anything, but then another cab driver—a very old and somewhat battered cab driver—directed theirs.

But there was no getting into West Kepp Street in the cab, even after they had found it. The cab, which had started to enter the street, confronted a policeman and stopped abruptly. The driver knocked his flag up, turned, and looked back at the Norths. “Looks like something's going on in here,” he told them.

It did. One sidewalk of West Kepp Street was almost filled with people, all looking in the same direction, looking across the narrow street. There were uniformed patrolmen in the middle of the street, and at both ends; along the curb opposite the people there were more cars than West Kepp could hold. Several of them were partly on the sidewalk. Small boys darted from the walk on which so many people stood, moved restlessly, and made for the cars, and policemen said, “Now, get back there. Get
back
there!” The little boys got back, but did not stay back; the sight of so many police cars was irresistible. Privileged, on the same side of the street as the center of interest, but not wandering, standing in a restless group, were several men with press cards in the bands of their hats.

“Can't come in here 'less you live here,” the patrolman who had stopped their cab said to the Norths, leaning in a window to look at them. “You live here?”

“Not exactly,” Pam North said, before Jerry could speak.

“Then you'll have to move along, lady,” the patrolman said. “Can't come in here 'less you live here.” He looked at Pam, and was moved to further speech. “Been trouble here,” he said.

“Look,” Jerry said, and reached for the door handle on the side opposite the policeman. “We—”

“Lieutenant Weigand,” Pam North said, at the same time, but more rapidly. “Sergeant Mullins. Inspector O'Malley.”

“Listen, lady,” the patrolman said. “I don't care who—”

“Look, officer,” Jerry said, and closed his free hand firmly on Pam North's wrist, “Lieutenant Weigand called us and asked us to come over. My name's North. Suppose you—”

“There he is!” Pam said. “
Mullins!
”

Everybody, Jerry thought—all the people on the sidewalk, all the men with press cards—looked at the cab from which Pam North's clear, bright voice emerged.

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. But then he too saw Mullins, large, reassuring, coming down the sidewalk toward them. The patrolman stepped back from the cab window and looked around the cab at Mullins. Now, everybody looked at Mullins. Anything that made a sound, anything that moved, was good enough.

“Mr.
and
Mrs. North,” Mullins said, when he was close enough. “O.K.,” he said to the patrolman, “the Loot says it's all right. He wants to see them.”

There was the faintest possible emphasis on the word “he.”

“Really, Mullins,” Pam said, as they got out, as she waited for Jerry to pay the cab driver, “you're so disassociative.”

“What?” Mullins said.

“Never mind,” Pam said. “But remember, we were asked.”

“It's only when I think of the inspector,” Mullins said. “You know how he acts, Mrs. North.” The three of them began to walk through West Kepp Street. “And it's already a screwy one,” Mullins said. “As soon as I saw the set-up, I says to myself, it's a screwy one, so—” He broke off.

“So the Norths will be in it,” Jerry said. “I know what you said.”

“Look, Mr. North,” Mullins said, earnestly, as they went down three steps to a shop door, as now, everybody looked at them, as there was a kind of expectant murmur from the crowd. “Look, it's just that the inspector—”

“You know,” Pam said, more or less to Jerry, “they all think we've been arrested. That we're being taken in to see—to see—”

But then the realization of what they probably were being taken in to see overcame Pam North, and the excitement died in her voice. “Oh,” she said, and went ahead of the two men into the shop and, as she entered it, looked around anxiously. Lieutenant William Weigand detached himself from a little group midway down the shop's length and came toward them, saying “hello,” saying he was sorry to have dragged them out. Then he looked at Pam's face and smiled faintly and shook his head.

“It's been taken away, Pam,” he said. “Don't look so—frightened. All that part of it's over. It's something else I want you to see. And probably—” He shrugged. “I'm playing a hunch.”

He started back toward the rear of the shop, and the Norths went with him.

“You see,” Bill Weigand told them, over his shoulder, “we got an anonymous squeal; one of those telephone things. ‘I want a policeman. I want to report a murder.' That sort of thing.”

He opened a door in the rear of the shop and motioned them into a smaller room, obviously a room in which somebody had lived—had slept, had eaten, had sat in a worn, deep old chair, to read by the light from a cheap bridge lamp.

“When the boys got here there was nobody,” he said. “The door was locked. Question whether they should have come in at all, but they did. Nobody here—except dogs and cats and a man named Halder. He was dead; been dead for hours. Crammed in one of the pens. Led Mullins to decide it was a screwy one; that the Norths would be in it. Well—then we found this.”

He picked up from the bed a loosely wrapped package, shucked off brown paper. And Pam North, faintly, gasped. Bill looked at her briefly and turned the blank first sheet of a drawing pad. He showed them the second sheet.

“I thought I recognized some friends,” Bill Weigand said. From half the page, enormous round eyes looked out of a dark, suspicious, furry face. From the other half, a hind leg waved in air, as a cat contorted for ablutions. Bill flicked the page over. There were more cats. “Right?” Bill Weigand said.

Pam nodded slowly. “I guess Mullins was,” she said. “Yes.” She turned to Jerry. “Anyway, they're good, aren't they?” she asked. “What you wanted?”

Jerry took the pad from Bill Weigand and leafed through it. Then he nodded.

“She'll do,” he said. “If—” He looked at Bill. “If she's available,” he said.

Bill Weigand only shrugged.

Brian had called at a few minutes after six.

He had spoken rapidly, strain evident in his voice. For a moment, when she answered, the strain apparent when he spoke first in greeting seemed to lessen, then at once it returned. He had called, he said, to see if she got home all right; to tell her that he could not, as he had hoped, come around. “To explain this mess,” he said. He had notified the police. “I didn't identify myself,” he said. “I—I haven't time now to answer a lot of questions. I've got to get things straightened out.”

“Brian!” she had said. “You've got to tell me what all this is.”

“Not yet,” he said. “I don't know myself. I've got to see—someone. So far I haven't. Anyway, you're out of it.”