Departure Delayed, page 15
“Yes. They told me. You were an undercover operative, you might call it.”
“You might not call it. I lived in China. I was part of that life. I could mingle in their world unobtrusively. That was my value to Curtis. That was why he asked me to work for him. Because I could touch parts of the Chinese world—of Asia-most white men couldn’t reach.”
I hesitated. “If you stayed in the background, then he might have—”
“No!” He boomed it out. “I’d have heard. Captain Curtis was known in too many circles in the East. It would have been impossible for him to have a secret romance. Not out there. Not in those days.”
“So you rule Edna out entirely?”
“From the way she sounds, she is very much like so many other maiden aunts. Traveling. Stopping always at the best hotel. Dining in the best restaurants. Usually learning nothing whatever about the worlds they visit.”
He didn't have her in the proper file. It was the way she sounded on the surface. But she wouldn't be just another tourist. She was too much of an individualist, there was too sharp a mind behind that grand lady front.
“I'm sorry,” he informed me. “I wish—to tell you the truth, I had rather hoped—you would have real information.”
The phone rang. The jangling broke into his words. He walked over and picked up the receiver.
“Yes . . . oh . . . yes. . . .”
It sounded like a man's voice at the other end. But it wasn't loud enough for me to hear.
“Quite right,” Farr was saying. “Yes ... I will do that, of course. . . . No, don't concern yourself. . . . Take all the time you need. . . .”
He hung up. He was smiling as he faced me again. “I was saying,” he went on, “that I really hoped you had something important. Something that might prove I'd been wrong. But your idea about this woman—”
I said, “Sorry. Perhaps I'm grasping at any possibility. Any straw. But you have to understand. . . .”
He smiled. “Like a moth twisting on the pin.”
He walked to the large chair and sat down. He puffed on his pipe with a contemplative expression.
“It's all right,” he said softly. “Your trying to track it down like this. The fact that there is such confusion in the evidence, that there are so many possibilities, is in your favor.”
“I don't want it that way. I want it straight.”
"So do we all. But you got yourself into this. Nobody else.” "That's what I want to be sure about.”
"The evidence looks sure. Damn sure.”
His certainty was unmistakable. Earlier in the interview he had seemed willing to explore possibilities, to give me the benefit of doubt. Now, since the phone call, his attitude had shifted back.
There was no doubt, no further question.
"You've contacted your parents, of course?”
"No. I don't want to. Not until this thing is settled, one way or—”
"You ought to call them, you know.”
This didn't make sense. It had no bearing on the question of the two deaths. It sounded more like an effort at making conversation. He didn't want to talk about the case itself, or my role in it.
I stood up. I told him I was sorry I had troubled him this way. "I'm afraid it hasn't helped too much to solve anything,” I said. "But I appreciate—”
"It may have helped more than you imagine.”
There was a knocking at the door. Farr called out, "Come in, please.”
The door pushed open. Five men trooped into the room. I knew they were detectives. Three in plainclothes and two in uniform.
Farr said calmly, "Well—here he is.”
I looked at them and back to him. He had known they were coming, that was the call he got. I said, "What's the joke? They could arrest me any time. I didn't make any attempt to-”
"No attempt to break from us,” Farr said. "Except once— when you gave our men the slip in the subway. That was when you went over to Grand Central Station.”
"You knew all about that?”
"Yamada informed us. He also presented us with that gun you picked up.”
The detectives and policemen were crowding around me. One policeman had drawn his automatic from the holster.
I said, “You can put the gun up. fm not armed and Im not planning to put up any resistance. I just don't get the point of this. Why they should rush over here—"
“That phone call,” Farr said. “Yamada told them at Headquarters that you were here. They were checking to make sure you didn't try to get away—early.”
“But why? What reason, all of a sudden—”
One of the detectives said, “No point in not telling him. It's that gun you had in the shoe box, Marshall. Serial numbers been burned off it with acid. But you had it. You turned it over to Yamada with some cock-and-bull story.”
“Sure I gave him the gun myself. Do you think I'd be stupid enough to do that if I had—”
“Why you done it—that's your business. And it don’t matter. You gave it to Yamada and he turned it over to us. Our ballistics bureau don't make mistakes. It happens to be the weapon that killed Captain Curtis.”
Farr was standing by the easy chair. His large, heavy figure was silhouetted against the window. He towered there like a giant looking down at me. I couldn't see his face. But I knew his thoughts.
The gun I had—the gun that had been in my possession— was the death gun. They didn't need any more evidence now. They had their case cold.
It wasn't really news. I had known it was the gun. Known it instinctively the moment I had seen it.
Spike had said he wouldn't turn it in. Not yet, anyway, he'd promised. Spike would hold it in his own possession, until the thing was clearer. But he hadn't. He'd lied. He'd turned it over to McCormick.
I’d put my trust in Spike. I’d had to. There wasn’t anyone else to whom I could turn. It was the gamble you took because there wasn't any other play to make.
It was a sucker’s game. You were sold out before you put down your chips.
Two cops had their hands on my arms. A plainclothes man said, “Let's get going. We got to book him down at Headquarters. Somebody must have tipped off the reporters. They’re waiting there already.” He grinned at me. “Anyway —you’ll get your picture in the paper.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I heard the clacking footsteps of the guard in the corridor outside.
For three hours I’d been alone in that cell. This time they weren’t holding me on suspicion. The charge was first degree murder. They’d brought me over from Headquarters to the New Tombs in a patrol car, under guard.
“They’ll leave you alone for tonight,” one officer said. “Give you time to mull it over.”
Time to think. The silent treatment. Leave him be. No questions. No pressure. Let the silence start beating against him. That’s how you make him talk.
You lose. You know that now. The story smeared all over the papers. Those reporters at Headquarters shouting at you. How about Carol? What’s the stuff about you not remembering you married her?
So you lose. You’re caught in quicksands. The more you squirm, the more it sucks you down. You killed a man. You don’t remember, but it was your own hands. . . .
The clacking footsteps stopped. The guard was standing at the door. He had a silly grin.
“You got somebody to see you, Marshall.”
“Reporter? Wants to write my life story? All about how it feels to be a killer?”
“Not this time. Just a dame. Claims she’s your wife. You got a wife?”
Claims shes your wife. The guard had a smirk on his lips.
I felt my hands close into fists. But it wasn’t any good to lose your temper. I said, “Sure—why not? Even guys like me get married. I think—”
He laughed. “Can’t nobody be sure but you. She’s outside in the visitor’s room. It’s past regular visiting hours. She got special permission.”
He was unlocking the door.
She was waiting there, seated on the other side of the table, with the steel wire mesh between us. She was wearing the floppy gray hat and the gray suit. When I came in she looked up. Her face was pale and her blue eyes wide.
“Hello, Johnny.”
I sat down opposite her. I wished she wasn’t so lovely. I said, “What did you come here for, Carol? Why are you trying to mix into it?”
“I talked to Lieutenant Yamada. He gave me—told me— everything that’s happened.”
“Spike called you?”
“Spike? Oh—yes. He came to see me. He said he’d taken a gamble you wouldn’t understand. Said he’d turned that gun into the ballistics bureau because he’d been convinced it would prove not to be the gun that killed Curtis.”
“That’s a hot explanation!”
“Johnny—that’s the truth. They were only supposed to make a checkup and make their report to him. They didn’t. They turned it over to Lieutenant McCormick.”
“Sounds like a neat bit of buck passing.”
“But it isn’t. He—your friend Spike—he didn’t even know about it until they called him today to find out where you were. He told them you were over talking to a man named Farr.”
If she was right—if it were the truth—then it hadn’t been a double cross.
Spike had been working for me, trying to prove that automatic wasn’t the death gun. He’d have had tangible evidence that the case against me was a frame. Only it didn’t work out that way.
He’d been trying to help. That was what she said. Maybe. Even if he were trying, he couldn’t help. I’d found that out. The facts themselves trampled you down.
“He sent you here, didn’t he? Sent you to explain?”
“He asked me to tell you about it. But that wasn’t why I came here.”
“It couldn’t be—anything personal?”
“No. There’s nothing personal between us now, Johnny. It just isn’t that way. We’re like two people who never knew each other.”
“He said it was your duty, didn’t he? Told you it was your responsibility? I’ll bet on that one.”
“In a way, yes. I feel—”
“I know what you feel, Carol. You didn’t ask for any of this. You’re not really a part of it. But you don’t want it on your conscience that you ran out—that you didn’t even try to help.”
“That’s a harsh way of putting it. But I suppose you're right.”
I said, “I appreciate it. Appreciate your making the try. But it’s no go. You’re getting the marriage canceled. You’ll be finished with it. That’s the way it should be.”
“I didn’t come just to make a try at cheering you up. I had another reason.”
“About this case?”
“It was something I forgot. Just forgot completely until today when I talked to Spike. Then it popped back into my thoughts. It was one night—at the apartment.”
“Your apartment?”
“You were pacing up and down in the drawing room. I came into the room. I heard you say something. I didn’t understand. It was something like, T saw him before. I saw him out there. I saw him—’ ”
“I said that to you?”
“To yourself, Johnny. You didn't even know I was there. Then you saw me and stopped. When I asked what it was about you laughed and said for me to forget it.”
I didn't know what it could mean. Somebody I’d seen over there—whom I knew out there. It could be a lead. But the chances were it was another of those dead end roads Spike talked about.
I tried to thank her. “It may be important, Carol. Or it may mean nothing at all. I don’t know. I have to think it out. But I’m glad you told me. I’m glad of this chance to talk with you. Only now—”
"You want me to keep clear. The way you warned me that day in the apartment/'
"When the thing began, Carol, I was willing to try anything. I thought I could fight it through. Now I think different.”
"You think you're licked, don't you? Beaten.”
"There's a blight on it,” I said angrily. "A kind of curse. Whatever I touch withers. I got you into this. I want you out of it. There's enough wreckage.”
"We're not the same people we were,” she said. "Not the same two who ran off and got married and talked about a lot of crazy things. We could be two strangers meeting on the street. But you need help. I'm just an accident, you might say. It just happens.”
"Forget it. It's wrong. It's no good. You have to understand that.”
She was drawing on the gray gloves. "I think I do understand.”
I said, "I want you to know one thing. I hate the guy they called Johnny Wilson. But I know why he fell for you. I'm sorry—do you see? I'm not that guy. That's why it's better if you stay clear.”
"I know.” She tried to smile. "Aunt Edna told me that too. She won't even talk about it any more. You and she are both right. Of course, you're right. It's better. . . .”
She was standing, looking at me. She said, "If there is ever anything, let me know, Johnny.”
I said, "Sure. Thanks. Thanks a million.”
For an instant the blue eyes looked into mine. Then she turned and started through the door.
McCormick paid me a call that night. Dropped in for a little talk. He tossed his coat and hat on the bunk and sat down.
He was tired. The buoyancy was gone. He said, "This time it's a little different. The case is pretty well tied up.”
"Tied up enough,” I said. "What do you want now?”
“You could still make things easier for yourself, Marshall. Also for us.”
“I see. I'm supposed to pour out a full confession.”
“That's right. Why not try playing ball v/ith us? Spill the stuff out. It might mean better treatment. You gain nothing taking the rap alone.”
“You don't even admit the possibility I might be telling the truth. That my mind did crack up. That I actually don't remember what happened.”
“Fortunately, now we have the evidence we need. Proof that the man was killed by an automatic. That you were at the scene at the time of the crime. That the death gun was in your possession.”
“You mean you’ve got somebody to pin it on. That’s all that counts. You’re not interested in what lies behind it—in getting the full story.”
“But we are. In fact, I came over here hoping you were ready to tell it to me. A number of answers we haven’t found. We know there are other persons involved. Some kind of dope ring. Still—”
“Why not start hunting them down? You must have the local cookies pretty well tagged.”
“We’ve made arrests. Got some weird stories. But facts about this case—no. They shut up tight.”
“But they must know. Some of them—”
“They’re not talking. They’re frightened.” He paused. “Again, to be frank, we’re not sure about motive. Captain Curtis was known as a taciturn man. Often he would conduct his investigations completely on his own, not telling anyone until he was ready to show his hand.”
“I never even knew him,” I said. “Never even saw him. It was only that letter I got—”
He had some reason for wanting to see you. We don’t know what it was. But it may have jeopardized you. That’s the most logical explanation. I admit, we’re not certain.”
“Apparently, you don't need motive to put a man on trial for his life.”
“Not with the physical evidence we already have. Reconstructing the case, we know there had to be some violent dispute between you and Captain Curtis in that room. You were carrying a loaded weapon—evidence of premeditation. You drew it, fired—”
I could see a district attorney playing that before a jury. Reconstruction of the crime by police experts. It would sound real and convincing.
"I talked to your parents a little while ago, Marshall.”
My parents. They’d be in it now. Their names smeared all over the papers. And it would drag on for weeks.
“Your mothers still sick. But they’re flying East. Tomorrow night or the morning after that. Soon as they can make arrangements. I tried to get them to delay it a few days, until the story dies down. Be easier for them. But—”
“They believe I’m guilty too?”
“You don’t deserve the kind of parents you’ve got, Marshall. They don’t know if you’re guilty or not. But they’re sticking with you. They’re coming East to get the best lawyer they can.”
They’d believe me. They’d fight for me. But I wished they’d stay out of it. There wasn’t anything they could do, any way they could help.
For some minutes he sat there, smoking in silence. His face was gaunt. I found myself wondering what he was thinking and feeling beneath that cold professional exterior.
“You think you’ve got the evidence you need,” I said. “But half of it is theory, half of it what you call reconstruction of the case. That’s supposition, even if it is by experts.”
“We’ve got the gun. And—I think I forgot to mention—we’ve got that sound recording, Marshall. Lieutenant Yamada turned that in too. He should have turned them both in immediately. However, since he finally—”
Spike had turned in that recording too. Turned both of them in. Just at the moment when it could do me most harm.
McCormick, watching me, shook his head. “You’re wrong. Yamada was actually trying to help you. He was sure the gun would prove not to be the death gun. And he told me he’d become convinced the recording was a fake. That it was proof they were trying to frame you.”
Spike trying to help. Trying to get me clear out from under by those two pieces of evidence. Convinced the gun wasn’t the murder gun. Convinced the film track was a phoney. Convinced they were both nothing more than plants.
Why hadn’t he told me he was doing it?
“You see he was wrong about the gun,” McCormick said. “About the sound film—I can’t say. It could be a fake. But it might not. In any event it is another piece of evidence we can offer when the case comes up.”
