Carny kill

7

The storm trooper who had tipped me the dirty look in the arcade the day before was standing like a sentry in front of the Admiral Benbow door. He warned me away from the area with another dirty look.

I didn't give a damn. I didn't want any tea.

The luckboy Jerry fell in with me when I reached Pioneer Town. He looked very reserved and lawyerish, until he winked and showed me a pair of handcuffs.

"Off that john?" I asked. "Why, for godsake?"

"I don't like cops that are all fatassed with selfimportance," Jerry said. "I was merely strolling by the tearoom and he says to me 'Keep moving, pimp." He shook his head emphatically.

"That's just begging for it, you know? I'll wait a bit, then I'll put Eddy on to his badge. Later on I'll put another boy on his Roscoe."

"Well, it doesn't matter to me," I said. "You can clean him down to his tobacco-stained shorts for all I care. But what's the big deal in the Admiral Benbow?"

"The law, my son," Jerry said in his judicial voice, "has blundered upon what is known in the jargon as a clue." He dropped the W C. Fields manner and became himself.

"That's it, baby. They figure they've found X marks the spot where Cochrane got it."

"In the Admiral Benbow?"

"Yeah. They found a splotch of blood on the floor and it matches Cochrane's type. Nobody noticed it till last night because a teatable had been set over it. One of the rummies swamping out the joint found bingo after the lot closed at midnight."

"Huh," I said. "Just like Billy Bones."

Jerry looked at me. "How'sit?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just an association of ideas."

I had no sooner got my stand set up and had started my spiel when a handsome young plainclothes dick came at me like Mercury the god and said, "Mr. Thaxton?"

"Yeah?"

"Please come with me. Lieutenant Ferris wants to see you."

"What's the bitch now?"

The naughty word did not make a hit with him. He looked annoyed.

"Lieutenant Ferris will inform you in due time."

Talk about an officious little snot-even if he was six-one. I made a pass with the walnut shells.

"Care to try your luck, son? Win a nice orchid for your little old mother?"

He drew himself up to a shade over six-one and said, "Mr. Thaxton, I'll have to ask you to accompany me without any nonsense."

I swept up my shells and pea and pocketed them.

"Shall I take your arm or will you take mine?" I asked. Then, with a polite little bow, I offered him back his wallet.

"You dropped this, I think. Mustn't lose it. It contains your little tin badge."

"I don't want to have to resort to force, sir," he said, stiff as starch. "It would be very embarrassing to both of us."

"You're right. I haven't been spanked in twenty years."

Bill Duff was all eyes over on his bally. He was probably hoping the law would let me have the book. I gave him the well-known finger salute and fell in with the New Breed type of dick.

Gabby edged down to one end of his counter and looked at me. Funny about carny people. If they're square they'll do anything for each other. All he was waiting for was a highsign from me. Then he would create some kind of phony commotion, to give me a running chance. I shook my head at him.

This new breeder didn't take me to the Admiral Benbow. He marched me to hell and gone beyond the Watusi Village to the bunkhouse. It wasn't much-a long, low, tarpaper shack with a row of surplus army cots and a table and and couple of benches. It had that sour rummy smell of stale booze and sweat and vomit.

Ferris was sitting on one side of the table. He looked at me and his eyes were as opaque as two paving stones.

"You goddam liar, Thaxton," he said.

I stared back at him for a count of three. Then I nodded at young Adonis.

"Will I have the boy from Yale on me too, if I go for you?"

"Just save the goddam tough talk for the tourists," Ferris snapped. "You ain't about to fight me or anybody. Sit down."

I sat down at the table. The young dick stood over me like an MP. Ferris didn't seem to like him much better than I did. It was hard to be yourself around a big self-righteous kid like that.

"All right, Larry," Ferris said to the stern youngster. "Wait outside, huh?"

The kid tramped away like a good soldier and I looked at Ferris.

"Some politician's son?" I suggested.

"Near enough," Ferris admitted in a grumble. "The DA's nephew. Jesus," he added.

"I think you called me a liar," I reminded him.

"You're goddam right I did, smart ass. We've done a little enquiing on the wire since I last talked to you. Why'd you hold back on me about you and Mrs. Cochrane?"

"A sin of omission isn't a lie," I said. "You didn't ask me about my past marital mistakes."

"Jesus," he said. "Carny people. Never volunteer anything, huh? Look, Thaxton. If you had admitted to me that she used to be your wife you could just as well have told me that she also used to be a pro knife-thrower. And you goddam well could have told me that the shiv we found in Cochrane was one of hers!"

I said nothing. I dug out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers. Ferris thumbnailed a match and held it out to me.

"You aren't as simple-minded as you make out, Thaxton," he said. "What's the first thing a dick looks for in a murder case?"

I shrugged. "Motive?"

"Bet your sweet butt! First and last. And now here's another toughy for you. What one outstanding person has the motive in this case?"

"How would I know? Am I God?"

Ferris looked at me. He looked sick. He said Jesus again.

"Thaxton-be good to me, huh. I'm working for the city. I'm working on a salary for a pension. I have the commissioner and the DA on my back. I don't have all day to play patty-cake."

"Look," I said, "if you mean that May inherits the gold, say so. I don't know. I haven't been shown Cochrane's will."

"Well, I have!" He didn't quite shout it at me.

"What's wrong? Did he leave you out of it?"

Ferris ignored my funny. He hunched over the table. "Your ex-wife picks up the full packet. Got any idea what it's worth?"

"Should be a fair sized bundle."

"Yeah. I'll drop you a little hint. This place grossed thirty mill last year."

Now it was my turn to say it. "Jesus," I said.

"You like the motive? It catches your eye?"

"Eye, ear and nose too. Money has a nice smell. But that doesn't prove she killed him."

"Come on," he said. "Come on."

"No, I'm serious. Maybe she loved her husband."

"Ummm, sure. A cool, sexy article like that. And him only twentyfive years older than her. Sure, nuts about him."

"Well, maybe she simply liked him then. He was a likable guy."

"Why sweat it?" Ferris asked. "You can't ignore that knife. It was hers. And here's another little item for your consideration. My boys found a jade earring on the mudbank where Cochrane's body was. Guess who owns the matching earring."

"My ex-wife?"

"Your ex-wife. And another point. She was here on the lot the night he was murdered. She claims she was up in her suite asleep, but she has no witnesses."

"I should hope not," I said, but my mind was on something not so flippant. It looked bad for May. It had looked bad for her right from the time I found her knife in her husband. The thing was though, it was starting to look a little _too bad_. Or too much. And I got the feeling that maybe Ferris was thinking the same thing. He didn't really look as pleased with his case as he should have.

"It's a nice little case," I said.

He didn't say anything. He watched me with a somber expression. So I went on and said what I thought might be in both our minds.

"Beautiful, hard-hearted ex-knife-thrower marries kindly rich old coot. Whole world shakes its head knowingly. Gold digger strikes lush pocket. Everybody says so. Nobody likes bitchy wife except maybe rich old husband and a few young lovers. Rich old husband gets murdered with knife that so obviously belongs to gold-digging wife that it runs out and bites you in the leg to attract attention. Wife's jade earring is found near corpse. Wife was in locality at time of murder. Wife can't produce alibi."

I lit another cigarette. "Strike you the same way it does me?"

Ferris tucked in his mouth and looked unhappy.

"All right," he said. "So it has the smell of a frame."

"The framework is downright stinking when you start to push at it. Sure-as soon as I saw the body and the weapon I put two and two together and what they made wants to be the widow queen of Neverland. But then I had another look at that knife. The blow that killed Cochrane was a downward thrust. A knife-thrower strikes from a distance. He or she doesn't stab. True, a knife's a woman's weapon, but a woman will usually give it to you in the back, won't she. Cochrane was a pretty tough old Irishman. I don't think May could have stabbed him from the front, unless he'd been asleep, and then the angle's still wrong."

Ferris lit a cigarette. He said nothing.

"And here's another weak beam in the frame," I said. "Aside from the fact that there's no valid reason why the body should have been moved from the Admiral Benbow to the Swamp Ride-how the hell would a woman haul a big heavy body like that? Even if she had used one of those boats, how did she get the stiff from the tearoom to the Swamp Ride dock? And why in God's name would she leave that shiv in him when it practically stands up and shouts 'This murder weapon belongs to May Cochrane!' ".

Ferris studied the ashy tip on his cigarette.

"Maybe she had help with moving the body."

I had an idea what was coming next. He looked at me.

"Funny," he said, "when you think about the timing. You show up, Cochrane gives you a job, you go see his wife- yeah, I know about your little visit with your ex-wife-and a few hours later Cochrane gets kified and your ex-wife ends up with the gold."

"If you'd checked back far enough," I said, "you'd have found out that May divorced me because she hated my guts. It was coincidence I ended up at her present husband's lot. It wasn't planned that way."

He didn't really want to smoke his cigarette. He mashed it out.

"I did check back far enough," he said quietly. "And I turned up an interesting little item with your name on it."

This time I damn well knew what was coming next. It was my little blue ribbon that followed me wherever I went.

"Teenage rape is a messy item in any man's language." His voice was casual, very casual. I let out my breath.

"All right," I said. "You want to hear what happened, or you just want to build a case against me out of a lot of fiveyear-old hysteria reports?"

"You tell me."

"This hot little thing used to come on the lot every night when I was spieling for my wife with Brody's carny," I told him. "When I say hot, I mean kayriced almighty she made you think of instant bedroom. She'd hang around my bally stand and give me the eye while I was making with the words. Whenever I'd have a lull, I'd shoot the breeze with her. You know, playful sex-talk that tells you whether you're going to be in or not. I was in.

"May and I hadn't been getting on for a couple of years. It had turned into a marriage in name only. In short, I wasn't getting my share. So I was ripe when this little sexpot gave me a tumble. She went for me. Funny thing is, I went for her. I don't mean just her body. I liked her.

"We went to a hotel. Everything was fine. We went again. I think she was in love with me, or thought she was. I-"

"Back up a minute," Ferris interrupted. "You knew her age when you took her to the motel?"

"Let me tell it my way, huh? I like to do it story style. No, I didn't know her age. She told me she was nineteen and she looked it. But I figured her for eighteen just to be on the safe side. The truth was she was only seventeen and I was on the bad news side. But I didn't find it out until after the world turned over. You see, we had started to talk about me getting a divorce and us getting married." I blew my breath again.

"Then her old lady found out. Jesus. It was something. The old lady is having a screaming fit. The old man is trying to get at me with a stick. The local law is trying to hold him back and give me a roughing up at the same time. Brody is yelling he'll have me blacklisted on every lot in the land. My wife is calling me all the nice names she'd picked from her whory mother. The seventeen-year-old is bawling. Nobody will listen to me. Nobody will let me explain. I'm standing there like a bewildered asshole."

Ferris started to chuckle and I shook my head in disgust.

"God," I said. "So the seventeen-year-old panics. It's my fault, she says. I seduced her. I got her drunk. She didn't know what she was doing. No, she didn't know I was married. No, I never had said anything about marrying her. Well-" I shrugged.

"So anyhow, her old lady was afraid of the scandal. Her brother was the mayor's brother-in-law or something like that, and the whole mess was covered up. Brody fired me, the law ran me out of the state, and my wife happily sued for divorce. End." I mashed out my cigarette.

"You were lucky, you know?" Ferris said. "Because the law says a seventeen-year-old girl doesn't know what she's doing and it damn well means rape."

I gave him a sick look. "Will you stop it?" I said. "Doesn't know what she's doing, shi-"

"No, I mean it. As long as she's under eighteen the entire blame goes up your chute. Even if she pulls off all her clothes and climbs in your bed and gives consent, the law still states she doesn't know what she's doing."

"All right. But it's a goddam stupid law and you know it. So don't look so self-righteous. You would have done just what I did, if you'd had the chance."

He cocked an eye. "Me? At my age?"

"Yes, you at your age. And you're probably happily married and have a couple of grown kids and you're a cop, and yet if a sexy little seventeen-year-old were to come waggling her behind in here and throw it at you, and if there was nobody around and you were damn well certain that you could get away with it-you'd do it. Any normal man would."

He thought about it for a moment and I could see the truth in his eyes. Any man.

"Well," he said, "I guess that's why they made the law."

"I guess," I said. "Look, before we started with the saga of my sex life, you were trying to make me think that you thought I had something to do with Cochrane's death."

"Did you?"

"Kind of silly supposition, isn't it? I mean when you think about it? My ex-wife says to me 'Help me knock off my hubby and I'll inherit the bundle and give you halvies.' So to prove my brilliance of mind I take one of her special knives and I kill the old gentleman and put him where half the world will see him the first thing in the morning, and then-just to make certain everybody will know my ex-wife had a hand in it-I leave one of her earrings with the body. That way she's bound to get caught, and she'll squeal on me, and I'll end up with nothing but a free ticket on the electric chair ride."

"It's just possible that your ex-wife had nothing to do with this murder," Ferris said in his casual voice.

"I take it you're working on a brand new supposition. I'm listening avidly with all three ears."

"It's just possible the motive wasn't money."

"Meaning?"

"Revenge."

"Oh," I said. "I can put up my hand now. I know the answer to that one. Me. My revenge against my bitchy exwife. I'm down and out. I come here and get a twobit job from Cochrane. I discover that his wife is my ex-wife who once raked me over the coals. Now she's sitting on a bundle of greenbacks and I don't have a pot to piss in. I'm jealous.! go mad. I knife the old gentleman and frame it around my ex-wife. I'm happy. I live happily ever after spieling for the spider lady in the sideshow. Something like that, huh?"

Ferris grinned at me. "Something like it, yeah."

He got up to take a stroll around the room. I'd been wondering when he was going to start that. But then this case was slowing him down physically. He'd been staying up nights working out suppositions. He wandered back to the table, looking at me.

"You'll admit it has possibilities?" His manner was politely inquiring, but I could damn near hear the wheels go round in his head. He had given the possibility some heavy thought.

"Bet your butt it does," I said. "And I'll give you another butt-betting possibility. It's name is Bill Duff."

In an earlier context I mentioned that carny people clam up when a crime is committed in their territory. But I didn't mind sicking the law on Duff. I loved him like he loved me. And a rather obvious possibility had just crossed my mind. Maybe Ferris hadn't made his inquiries on the wire. Maybe Bill Duff-that snide sonofabitch-had put him wise about my past.

Ferris nodded. "I'm still giving that one some consideration. We know that this Duff and your ex-wife used to be like that." He crossed his index over his forefinger to show me.

"That's Duff on the bottom." I pointed at his lower finger. "May always liked it that way."

Ferris actually laughed.

"Thaxton, you have a dirty dirty mind. Get the hell out of here now, huh? I've got other people to see."

I got out of there. When I looked back through the screendoor Ferris was doing what he had done the last time I'd walked away from him-standing still and staring at the floor. But I had the feeling that this time he was thinking about me.