Lucky at Cards

12

From there on, it was everybody’s ball game. The whole town was busy for the next ten days. Murray found himself the best criminal lawyer in town, a man named Nester who handled most of the important cases in the area. He had two sets of clients—rich men in trouble, and hoods. Murray was a rich man, and he was sure as hell in trouble.

He hired Nester. Murray also hired the local agency of a national detective outfit. He drove the lawyer and the detectives out of their minds. According to what I learned through Joyce, both Nester and the detectives took it for granted that Murray was guilty. All Nester did was try to persuade Murray to level so a way could be found to break the case. Murray kept on shouting that it was all crazy, that some bastard was framing him. And the more the detectives dug around, the guiltier Murray appeared.

The district attorney was digging around, too. It was a colorful case—wealthy killer, shocked and pretty young wife, and enough elements of mystery to give the theory-builders a kick or two. The newspapers gave it a big play, one daily screaming for Murray’s head, and the other staying more on the solemn side.

It was the sort of case that a politically ambitious district attorney would be well advised to win. This public prosecutor was ambitious as hell.

Every joker had a different notion. Somebody suggested that Milani hadn’t been killed, that he was wounded and was biding his time in a gangland hideout, ready to wreak revenge on Murray as soon as he was released. Other geniuses insisted that Rogers hadn’t done the job himself at all, that he had hired professionals and that Milani was in the river wearing a cement overcoat. The music went round and round, and I sat back and tried not to listen.

The grand jury was to meet on Thursday, ten days after the arrest had been made. I was out with Barb Lambert Wednesday night. We had dinner and then went over to her place for records and conversation, and I was in a mood. She misread it as concern for a close friend. She asked me what would happen to Murray Rogers.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Will he—”

“Go to the electric chair?” I said.

She shuddered.

“No,” I said. “There’s not much chance of that. The prosecution has a good case, but the evidence is all circumstantial. It’s probably enough to send him to prison, but not enough to—to hang him. Or electrocute him.”

“But how can they call it murder? Don’t they need a corpus delicti?”

“They’ve got that.”

“You mean Milani’s body was found?”

“You don’t need a body for corpus delicti. All corpus delicti means is evidence that a particular crime was committed. And there’s plenty of that, body or no body.”

There was enough for the grand jury to return an indictment, at any rate. I was in the courtroom for the hearing, along with Joyce and a few of Murray’s other friends. The prosecution’s case sounded even more damning in a courtroom with a judge and jury and batteries of lawyers on either side.

If Murray had actually been guilty, he might have been in a position to make a better case for himself. By telling how Milani had been blackmailing him and bleeding him white, Murray could have built up a lot of sympathy, and by a little legal footwork he could have had the charge reduced all the way down to manslaughter, with a possible bid for temporary insanity or self-defense, the two traditional refuges for the accused having committed murder with extenuating circumstances.

But Murray couldn’t take any refuges even if he had wanted to. He couldn’t tell them what Milani had been blackmailing him for. Murray couldn’t locate the corpse. He could only stammer and scream about a frameup.

And nobody was listening.

The outcome was never really in doubt. The jury indicted Murray Rogers for murder in the first degree. The offense is not a bailable one. I sat there and watched the guards take him away, shoulders slumped and face drawn and eyes vacant. He passed a few feet from me and didn’t seem to see me at all. It was just as well. I couldn’t have met his eyes.

Friday night.

I sat in my bedroom alone and did card tricks in front of a mirror. My hands weren’t too nimble because I was tight. The bottle of Cutty Sark was on the dresser. Every now and then I took a swig and the whiskey went right down without my tasting it at all.

During the days I had been a machine. I had made the motions at the office, and the motions when I took prospects out to lunch or met them at their homes. Nothing had seemed to reach me. Once I had spent an hour with a prospect, had talked at length about everything under the sun, and had wound up selling him a nice bundle. And when I had left him and returned to the office to type out some forms, I hadn’t been able to remember his name. Everything had been automatic, mechanical, and nothing had made any impression at all.

The nights had been a little different. The nights had been solo ventures for the most part, with Barb on hand now and then, more often than I wanted her and less often than she would have preferred it. It had been funny because I was clear now. Joyce had let me off the hook, and I could court Barb and marry her if I wanted to. But things had changed since Murray’s arrest. Something very significant had taken place, and Barb’s version of what had happened did not mesh with mine because she did not know what I had done.

And I couldn’t tell her.

Which had made a difference. The little middle-class nook that had seemed so desirable included a wife with whom you could discuss everything—excluding your semi-annual infidelities, at least. And the more bits and pieces there were that I could not possibly tell Barb about, the less I could imagine myself spending the rest of my life with her.

So we had cooled off a little. I had never shared her bed after that one night. She hadn’t asked why. She may have written it off as mood, or she may have decided that I was an intensely moral person. Whatever, I had been spending most of the nights alone—after Murray’s arrest and indictment.

But the nights had been rarely spent sober. I had become blind drunk only once. That had been on the night after the indictment had been returned, and that night I had wound up getting tossed out of a wino hangout on Skid Row and crawling in the gutter while my insides had spilled out. Most of the time I just put a heavy edge on and sat around thinking. Maybe I was drinking to keep from dreaming, because without a good skinful I had some dreams that woke me up sweating and panting.

The hell with it.

It was Friday night, and I was doing card tricks poorly in front of a mirror, and I was about half in the bag, and the phone rang. I put down the cards and answered.

It was Joyce.

“You weren’t supposed to call,” I said. “We aren’t supposed to get in touch with each other.”

“I know.”

“So what’s it all about?”

“I have to see you, Wizard. There are some things I have to talk about with you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not on the phone. In person.”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “It’s no good if people see us together, find out we’re spending any time with each other. We’re not airtight, you know. All they have to do is start checking me and the fat’s in every fire in town.”

“You mean your background?” Joyce said.

“To hell with my background. Give that clerk at the Glade two looks at me and he’ll recognize me as Milani. We’re safe as long as they don’t check us. That’s all.”

“I know,” Joyce said. “But there’s nothing suspicious about a man’s good friend coming to see his wife in her hour of need. Sy and Harold were over yesterday. It would look even worse if you don’t come, you know. As though we were staying apart for a reason.”

That made strong sense. I straightened up my clothes and combed my hair. I hurried the Ford over to her house and parked in front. She opened the door before I could hit the bell. I started to say something but she motioned me inside, shut the door. She didn’t look good. Her face was drawn and her eyes were a little bloodshot, as though she had been drinking or as though she hadn’t slept much lately.

“Why, Bill,” she said. “It’s—nice of you to come. Can I get you anything to drink?”

There was a girl curled up in an armchair in front the television set. She was reading a book and ignoring the set. She glanced up at us and smiled.

“You’ve met Jenny,” Joyce said, “haven’t you?”

“I don’t believe I have.”

Joyce introduced me to the girl. Jenny was about seventeen, dark-haired and pretty. She had Murray’s features but they were softer on the female model.

“Daddy used to talk about you all the time, Mr. Maynard,” she said. “Gee, isn’t it awful?”

“It certainly is.”

She stood up from the chair, shaking her head bitterly. “Somebody must have framed Daddy,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”

“I guess so,” I said.

Her face clouded. “Because he couldn’t have—couldn’t have—killed somebody—”

She stopped talking. Her eyes closed, blinked, opened. She forced a smile to her lips, then shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I’ll let you and Joyce talk, Mr. Maynard. It’s been very nice meeting you.”

We stood there, silent, while she dejectedly quit the room. Her bedroom door closed with a bang. Joyce was shaking now and her eyes kept darting around aimlessly. I put a hand on her shoulder to steady her and she sagged against me, limp as a eunuch. I caught her, made her sit down.

“There’s a bottle of scotch in the bar,” she said, pointing. “I need some.”

“Ice?”

“Just scotch in a glass.”

I poured scotch into a glass and took it over to her. Joyce drank off half of it and put the glass down on the coffee table. I gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. She took two drags. Then she had some more of the scotch.

I said, “What’s it all about?”

“He’s coming home, Bill.”

“Murray?”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“His lawyer, Nester, was over here a few hours ago,” she said. “He was very pleased with himself. He managed to make a deal with the district attorney. The charge is being reduced to second-degree murder and Murray will be out on bail by Monday morning.”

“He’s copping a plea?”

“Not exactly. Murray will plead guilty by reason of temporary insanity. There will still be a trial. Nester thinks he can win it.”

I lit a cigarette. “I don’t understand,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know.”

“Because he can’t plead guilty, damn it! He can’t tell what tax fraud he’s guilty of and he can’t explain what he did with Milani’s body. I don’t get it at all.”

“That’s why I’m worried, Wizard.”

She started to say something else, then stopped short. A door opened somewhere in the rear of the house. We listened to footsteps, and Jenny stepped into the room. She looked as though she had been crying, but she had herself under control now. She had changed to a black skirt and sweater and she had a book under her arm.

“I was thinking of going out for a little while,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you, Joyce?”

Joyce said she didn’t mind. The girl said goodbye to us and left. I thought how hard it must have been on her. Her circle would be giving her a rough time now. And everything would be just wild confusion, a parade of frightening events that could make no sense at all to her.

“Wizard? I don’t think he’s going to plead guilty.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know Murray,” she said. “I think he went along with Nester because he wanted to get out of jail. Murray can’t expect to get by with a plea without answering a lot of questions that he can’t answer. I think he’s got something planned.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. He might want to leave the country. He’s not young, you know. Even if he got off with a few years in jail, that would be too much for him. I don’t think he’d be willing to settle for even a short prison sentence.”

“Where would he go?”

“South America, probably. You can buy citizenship down there if you have the money. And he could raise the money in a day. He could get out of jail on Monday and catch a plane Tuesday.”

She knew him better than I did. Maybe she was right. Maybe he would run like that, make a quick dash for freedom. It didn’t seem too logical to me, didn’t seem in character with what I knew of Murray. And yet he was in a bind—maybe running was the only way open.

“Suppose he does that,” Joyce said. “Where does that leave me?”

“Sitting pretty.”

“Why?”

“Because when you divorce a fugitive you get every cent he has.”

She shook her head impatiently. “You don’t understand. He’ll want me to go with him, me and the girls. I don’t want to spend my life with him in Brazil.”

“You might like Brazil, Joyce.”

“Damn it—”

“Easy,” I said. “It’s no problem. You tell him to go by himself. He travels faster who travels alone, that old bit. You can always join him later. They can’t hold you, you know. Once he’s out of the country, you just forget about joining him. It’s that simple.”

She didn’t answer me. There was something on her mind that struck deeper than her husband’s possible plans for leaving the country. I sat down next to her, took hold of her shoulder.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me what it’s all about.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Give, Joyce.”

“He’s having me followed,” she said.

The rest of it was blurted out. Men had been following her, she was sure; men had been watching the house and keeping tabs on her, and she was so worried she thought she was going to go out of her mind.

So maybe he wasn’t going to Brazil, I thought. Maybe he wanted to get out on bail so that he could do a little spadework on his own. Maybe he had it all figured out already and he was coming home to wring her neck for her.

And maybe he had me tied into the picture, as far as that went. Hell, if he were thinking it out, he would hit the possibility of my involvement sooner or later. Everything connected with Milani started after my arrival in town. He might not write that off as coincidence. He might put two and two together until he came up with something.

I tried to remember if anyone had been following me lately. If they had been, I hadn’t noticed them—not that I had been looking too hard. But I hadn’t done anything suspicious. I was clear enough.

“Listen,” I told her. “It’s only natural, for God’s sake. You and I and Murray are the only ones in the world who know he’s being framed. You and I know because we did it. He knows because it was done to him. He’s going to be suspicious all over the place. He may have you tailed, but nobody can dig up anything that will make you look bad. Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t help worrying, Wizard.”

I thought quickly. “He’s coming home Monday,” I said. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Can he have visitors?”

“Of course. I see him once a day.”

“Could I see him?”

“Certainly. I’m surprised you haven’t gone already. His other friends have been there. Most of them, anyway.”

“I think I’ll go, then. Tomorrow afternoon, say. I should be able to draw him out a little and find out what he’s planned. At least I can find out whether or not we’ve got anything to worry about.”

That seemed to reassure her a little. She asked me to make fresh drinks. I told her no, that if the house were being watched, it wouldn’t look good if I stuck around too long. A sympathy call was fine, but you couldn’t extend it for too long a period.

She came to me, wanting to be kissed. I didn’t want to kiss her. But she pressed herself against me and my arms circled her and our mouths met.

It was funny. I didn’t even like her anymore. She was my partner in a crime I was not proud of. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her. I wanted to finish things up, tie the ends neatly and never see her again.

But the electrical impulses still worked. The contact set us off again. Just as the contact had always done, and animal need came on like gangbusters. I fought with myself. And, for a change, I won. I pushed her away and left and strode quickly to the Ford. Once behind the wheel, I started the engine and pulled away. There were no cars with people in them parked on the block. If Murray were having her watched, it wasn’t on an around-the-clock basis.

Did Murray really suspect anything? I didn’t want to think about it. Joyce and I had one of those set-ups that was perfect until someone started to pick at it. As soon as anyone suspected us, we were through.

It was easier to agree that Murray was ready to run for Brazil, or that he was resigned to going to jail for the shortest time possible. I hoped Brazil was his answer. Jail would be bad for him. And despite all my previous attempts, I couldn’t make myself hate the guy, couldn’t even dislike him a little—even though he had irritated me with his smugness to begin with. But it’s no fun jobbing someone who has helped you. With luck you can make yourself despise your mark long enough to con him and get him out of the way.

But now the reverse was happening. The further the scene developed, the more I liked Murray Rogers.

And the less I liked myself.