Hell Has No Fury

Chapter One

Hal Decker sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The bed was really just a shelf, hinged to the stone wall. High above it, sunlight lanced through a narrow opening and fell across the floor in four parallel segments, divided by the shadows of bars.

When the heavy grill clanged shut behind me, Hal lifted his head from his hands, his dull eyes mirroring for a moment a trace of a smile that had the nervous character and brevity of a tic.

“Sol,” he said. “Solomon Burr. Sorry to have to get you into this mess, boy.”

I sat down on the bed beside him. It was no kind of bed to induce sleep in a guy who probably wasn’t sleeping well at best.

“Sorry, hell,” I said. “In my office, a client’s a client, and it’s a long way between.”

The tic-smile flickered again. “Hard times? In that case, how are you going to like working for free?”

I shrugged. “It’s practice, anyhow.”

“Sure. Thanks, Sol. Funny, isn’t it. How things turn out, I mean. Few years ago, we were cracking law books and drinking short beers together — just friends. Now everything’s changed. Now we’re lawyer and client, all mixed up in a big, beautiful murder case.”

“We’re still friends, Hal. You know that.”

“Yeah, I guess I counted on your feeling that way, Sol. Not that you can do much. A guy charged with murder has to have a lawyer, that’s all. It’s strictly a dry run.”

“You haven’t been convicted yet.”

His laugh was short and ugly. “No, not yet. But I’ve been framed for a conviction, and it’ll come in time. I’ve been framed by an expert, Sol. All that’s left to do is to hang me on the wall.”

I found a pack of cigarettes and shook one out for him. “Maybe you’d better brief me,” I said.

He drew smoke deeply into his lungs, letting it ride out on a long, quivering sigh. The smoke rose heavily in the still air, drifting and thinning in the shaft of sunlight.

“Funny,” he said again. “Funny how the little things never have any significance, until you’re about to lose them — like a cigarette.” He pulled himself up short, repeating his humorless laugh. “This case won’t do you any good, Sol. This one you’ve already lost.”

“That’s what you said before. Just for exercise, suppose you let me go through the motions of being a lawyer, anyhow.”

He stood up, moving into the slanting projection of the sun and lifting his head to look up along its angle to the distant patch of sky beyond. I was sorry to see him like that, looking up through bars into the rationed light of day. We’d been good cronies once, we’d had good times over those beers. Even now, we hadn’t seen much of each other since, memories of the past stirred and came alive again.

Hal was primarily muscular; he’d never really had the cut of a lawyer. After we’d gotten out of law school, while I was hanging out a shingle, he’d gone into enforcement. The metropolitan police department was crying for law students at the time; the idea being that the best way to eliminate inefficiency and corruption was to get top grade personnel. It was one of those movements that the old timers get prodded into now and then by a temporarily-aroused public.

After a while, when the public goes back to business as usual, the reform dies quietly, ignored by, the veterans in office. The lure was fast promotion in a field that has an appeal for a certain type. Hal was the type, and he’d gone in. But he hadn’t stayed long. In one way or another, he fouled up and he’d landed outside fast, education and efficiency be damned.

Maybe, now, he read my thoughts. Moving out of the sunlight; and returning to the shadows, he said, “You ever hear why I was bounced off the force?”

“No.”

“I thought not. It was hushed up at the time, but it makes a good story. Career of an educated copper — Dick Tracy with a degree.” His voice sank to a low level of bitterness. “One night we were cruising out East Market, Old Finnegan and I. We were working double-harness. He was breaking me in, getting me started on that nice career everyone was talking about. We got a call to stop, at a place over on Forest, a few blocks away. Seems a gang of kids were raising hell in an apartment over there. Well, they were raising hell, all right.

“We walked right into the middle of a flowering tea party — reefer smoke as thick as fog. One of the young guys cut up rough, and I had to put him to sleep. When we booked them, it turned out that this kid was the mayor’s nephew, the nephew of handsome Danny Devore himself. That’s it — story of a career boy — the end.”

“You sure that’s all? I hear you made a threat. To be precise, I hear you promised to kill Danny and eat him for breakfast.”

His shoulders sagged, and his head fell a little forward. He pressed the heel of his right hand against his forehead. “I got a little drunk. A guy says crazy things when he’s drunk.”

I sat watching him, thinking of the mayor he had threatened to kill. A threat to kill doesn’t usually mean much before the fact. After the fact, it takes on significance. And this was after the fact, because the mayor was dead. Charming Danny Devore, the bachelor, glamour boy, the smooth idol of metropolitan politics. Hard as it was to realize, he was dead from the slugs of a .38.

“How about the gun?” I said. “Your gun was found in the study by the body, and it had your prints on it.”

“Does a man commit murder and leave the gun behind?”

“Who knows? Murderers do idiotic things sometimes. Besides, one question doesn’t answer another. How did the gun get there?”

“I’ve already said — I’ve said a thousand times — it was stolen from my room. It had to be, I hadn’t even looked at it for weeks.”

“You never even missed it?”

“No.”

“Okay, let it go. How about the witness? This guy Richert happened to be passing Danny’s place about the time of the murder. He saw you come out the front door and go down the drive. To make it practically perfect, he just happens to be one of the district attorney’s special investigators.”

Hal shook his head, and began to pound his clenched fist into his palm. His voice, paced to the pounding said, “He didn’t see me, Sol. He couldn’t have seen me, because I wasn’t there.”

“You think he’s lying?”

“Not necessarily. Look. He saw this guy from a distance, and in bad light. Maybe he really thinks it was me, but you know how those things are. If there’s other evidence, like the gun, it’s easy to go along with it. It would be easy for Richert to convince himself that I was the guy.”

“True enough. Now, tell me where you were that night, if you weren’t out there shooting Danny Devore.”

His clenched fist relaxed, the fingers falling open. “I was with a girl,” he said.

“At the time of the murder?”

“I was with her all night.”

“Then why the hell haven’t you said so? What’s this girl’s name?”

He shook his head, tiredly. “I can’t tell you, Sol.”

“Why the hell not? Listen, you’re on a short road to the hot seat, and you haven’t got time for chivalry.”

He just shook his head again, turned away from me and looked blankly into a corner of the cell.

“You got an idea of protecting her honor? You actually got a corny idea like that? Listen to me, Hal. So you were with the gal. Who cares? These days they’re doing it in headlines all over the world. You get everything but photographs.”

He laughed his short, ugly laugh. “You’re not thinking well for a lawyer. Like I said, I’m in a frame. It was built by an expert. I’m in it because someone wants me in it, and he wants me to stay there. What do you think would happen if he learned there was a witness who could get me out?”

“She’d get protection,” I said.

“Protection? From that outfit out there?”

“You’re making it tough for me, Hal.”

He lifted his shoulders, still staring at the corner. “I’m sorry, Sol. I told you right at the start that it’s a dry run.”

I went over to the grill and rattled the bars. Behind me, Hal continued to look into the corner. Maybe, in his mind, it was a symbol of the tight one he was in.

“Thanks for coming, anyhow, Sol.”

“Save it,” I said. “And don’t go contacting any other lawyer. It’s the first real case I’ve had in a century, and I’m damned if I’ll be cut out.”

I went down the long hall and out into the free air. For a minute I stood on the curb, breathing deeply. Then I crawled into my car and drove back to my office.

The office was in a building where the rents were possible for a youngish lawyer with the soft dew of college hardly dry behind his ears. It was on the second floor. If you wanted to get up there, you walked because there was no elevator. Down the hall, you found a door with a pane of frosted glass. And on the glass, in imitation gold leaf, you read the words: Solomon Burr, Attorney-at-Law.

If you pushed the door open and walked in, you were met by the rapid-fire clatter of a second-hand typewriter bouncing under the agile digits of a gal who was by no means second-hand. Her name was Kitty Troop, and she was my secretary. She presented, among other things, the impression of bustling activity under the pressure of many cases pending in court. This was a ruse. Actually, she saw your shadow on the glass and had her novel dog-eared in the likely event that you were a false alarm. Being a clever gal, she kept a clean sheet in the machine at all times, ready for the act at the first sign of any stray character who might turn into a client. If you looked over her shoulder, you saw that she was typing The sly, quick fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

But you didn’t look over her shoulder. You were busy looking at other things. She showed you first some nice teeth in a smile between the merest hints of dimples. Then she stood up, and you saw a figure that made you forget all your troubles. When you got your breath back and asked if Mr. Burr was in, she replied in a voice that was as soft as a fog that Mr. Burr just happened to be free at the moment and would give you a few minutes. Then she walked over to Mr. Burr’s private door, giving you a reverse view from seams to ash-blond bun. By that time, you didn’t give a damn if Mr. Burr was the lousiest shyster in town, with the highest fees on record. You were ready to give him your case, just so you could come back for the scenery.

If Kitty was on her toes, she knocked on the door and counted slowly to five. Then, when she opened the door, you saw an alert, clean-cut guy busy as hell with a lot of legal papers and stuff. If she forgot and opened the door without knocking, chances are you got a brace of elevated shoes and a pretty good view of a fairly standard profile. It was profile because this guy was watching the spider who lived in a web up by the ceiling. The spider’s name was Oliver Wendell Holmes. The guy’s name was Solomon Burr.

This was all on a slow day, which most of them were. As yet, no one had mistaken me for a revised edition of Clarence Darrow. Though there were those exceptional months, I found myself unable to meet with any consistency the world’s constant demand for cash. Catch me toward the first, and I could be had for the rent. How Kitty paid her rent, I don’t know, since she was paid herself only now and then.

Today, when I walked in with the stale air of the municipal dungeons still in my nostrils, the small reception office was crowded. That is, there was one other person besides Kitty in it. A girl. She sat on the edge of a chair so straight and stiff that she managed to give the impression of being coiled like a spring. Dark red hair between a tiny hat and a face that retained its prettiness under strain; dark green suit, attractively filled.

“This is Miss Wanda Henderson,” Kitty said. “She wants to see you.”

“How do you do, Miss Henderson,” I said. “Come right in.”

I pushed open the door to my inner sanctum, and she did a tricky job of uncoiling while rising on the perpendicular, preceded me into the office, and sat down on the edge of my fancy chair for clients with a rigidly balanced bending. She sat with knees and ankles clapped tightly together, hands clutching a green leather purse in her lap. She seemed afraid to relax for an instant. Wanda Henderson was no scarecrow, far from it. As I said, not even the distortions of strain destroyed the basic lines of her face, not even the deep shadow of fear in her eyes.

I offered her a cigarette, thinking it might loosen, her up a little. After a slight hesitation, she accepted it and a light gratefully.

“Apparently Hal’s never mentioned me,” she said.

I’d guessed her identity, of course, from the moment I’d walked in.

“Until this afternoon,” I said, “I hadn’t seen Hal for a long time. He probably has a lot of friends I’ve never heard of.”

She leaned forward stiffly, clutching the edge of the desk. “You’ve seen him?”

“I just came from the municipal prison.”

“How is he?”

I shrugged and lit a cigarette of my own, taking my time, answering her through smoke. “Licked,” I said. “Ready to quit. I’m supposed to be his lawyer, but it’s just for looks.”

“He didn’t mention me at all?”

“Not by name. He said he spent the night of the murder with a girl. That you?”

Delicate color flushed her cheeks. “Yes.”

“It’s an air-tight alibi, honey. You could save his hide with a dozen words in the right place.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“This isn’t the right place. If you speak up, Hal won’t even need a lawyer. All you have to do, is see the district attorney.”

“I’ve seen him.”

In his corner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, with no problems, slumbered quietly in his web. The office seemed filled, of a sudden, with a poised and breathless menace.

“Yes? What did he tell you?”

“He told me it was a nice try and that he admired me for the attempt, but said he had a witness of his own who contradicted my testimony. His witness was one of his own investigators. He told me to go home and forget it, otherwise I’d find myself involved in a perjury charge.”

Her voice had sunk to a whisper of bitterness. I got up and moved over to a window that looked down into the narrow chasm of a dreary alley.

After a while, I turned back into the room. She still sat on the edge of her chair, the ineffectual cigarette burning forgotten between her fingers. A thin line of smoke ascended past her face. Her eyes met mine, fear swimming darkly.

I said quietly, “You know anyone out of town? Anyone you could visit for a while?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. You ought to take a nice trip. You ought to take a quick trip to a far place. You got a job?”

“Yes.”

“Get sick. Give me time to figure something out. In the meantime, go home and lock your door. For your sake and Hal’s, take care of yourself.”

She jerked erect. “I’ll be all right. Will you call me when you need me?”

“I’ll call you. Leave your address with my secretary.”

She went to the door and stood there with one hand on the knob. “Why?” she asked. “He’s just one of the little guys. He isn’t big enough to rate a top bracket frame.”

I was suddenly wishing I had never known Hal Decker and that this girl was a thousand miles away. I wasn’t proud of the feeling, and I said softly, “There’s nothing personal about it. Any guy would have done. It’s just that someone needs a patsy... it’s just that Hal pointed at himself with his big mouth... it’s just that he made himself logical.”

She continued to stand there for a few seconds, her eyes fixed in a blind stare of intense absorption. And then, saying nothing, she went out.

I leaned back to study the wall beside the door. Outside in the reception office, the voices of Kitty and Wanda Henderson were engaged in a brief exchange. Then the hall door opened, closed, and silence descended.

Suddenly, beyond my door, Kitty’s typewriter began a furious clattering. Shadow on the glass, I thought. The clattering ended abruptly, and Kitty’s voice rose brightly. Almost immediately, my door swung open, and my reflexes had me reaching for a stack of paper, while I thought unkindly of Kitty’s negligence in forgetting to cue me in. But I didn’t complete the action. I knew, somehow, that the two guys who entered would not be susceptible to the routine.

One of them leaned against the door. The other moved in on my desk, with a cordial smile on his face. He even removed his hat, placing if carefully on a corner of the desk. His hair was light brown and clipped close to a skull. He was tall, topping six feet, with heavyweight shoulders that moved in easy co-ordination with his legs. A pretty nice-looking guy, really, except that his light tan eyes were cold and shining with conditioned wariness. There was about him the delicate and indefinable scent of violence and death.

“You Solomon Burr?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Yes,” I said. “Have a chair.”

The cordial smile spread a trifle. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed a thick, green packet. He fanned the edge of it with a thumbnail and laid it on the desk among the legal papers.

“No, thanks. We won’t stay. The girl who was just here — Wanda Henderson — this will pay you to forget her.”

It was a lot of money, a hell of a lot of money for a lawyer with a relatively new shingle. I looked at the packet, and my palms were itching.

“Go to hell,” I said.

The guy with tan eyes kept smiling. He picked up the money and returned it to his pocket. Leaning across the desk, as if he were going to argue the point, he slashed the horny edge of his hand across my mouth. My chair teetered, crashing over backward, not so much from the blow as from my effort to get away from it. The guy came around the desk and kicked me. I tried to move away, but all my muscles were drawn in a kind of excruciating contraction. I felt myself hoisted, jammed against the desk. Stony knuckles raked my face and the pleasant voice, spaced precisely between blows, reached me faintly on a rising wave of thunderous nausea.

“You could have made a nice bundle, just for turning down a job. Now you’ll turn it down without the bundle, just because I ask it. You hear me, counsellor? You hear me real plain?”

I heard him, but I didn’t answer. I slipped away under cover of night and descended in soft and sweeping gyrations a thousand sickening miles to the blessed sanctuary of the floor.