Murder with a Past

10

David Tully had just finished his lonely breakfast when Ollie Hurst drove up. He came in wiping his cranium with a folded handkerchief. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

“How’s Norma, Ollie?”

“She had a bad night. Apparently this business of Ruth is somehow tied up in her mind with Emmie’s death. I finally got her under sedation and asleep, and she seems a lot better this morning.”

“I’m sorry as hell, Ollie—”

“Forget it,” the lawyer said abruptly. “If it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. How about some of that coffee I smell?”

“I’ve been keeping it hot for you.”

They went into the kitchen and Tully poured coffee into two fresh cups.

“No,” Ollie said, refusing the cream and sugar, which he usually used in immoderate proportions, “I need it straight this morning,” and he gulped a third of it and set his cup down and said, “Anything on Ruth yet?”

“No.”

“Dave.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know where she is? Are you hiding her?”

Tully glared into the lawyer’s crystal eyes. “No. No.”

“Okay, okay,” Hurst said. “I had to be sure. And you still haven’t heard from her?”

“No.”

“All right. Then let’s talk about the future.”

“The future of what?” Tully asked bitterly.

“The future of Ruth.”

“What future?”

“Oh, the hell with that defeatist talk,” Ollie Hurst snapped. “Look, Dave, I’m a lawyer, and I’m your and Ruth’s friend. If you want to wallow in hopelessness that’s your funeral — and incidentally it only makes my job tougher. Now what’s it going to be? Do I have to do this with you on my back, dead weight, or are we in this together?”

Tully stiffened.

“That’s right, hate my guts,” Ollie said. “I don’t mind. All right. Now I’ve got us a good criminal lawyer, I mean on tap. I’ve retained him tentatively, and I’ve talked the whole thing over with him as it stands. He agrees that there’s no point in his coming into this until Ruth turns up or is found. Do you want to know who he is?”

Tully shook his head.

“You mean you actually trust somebody besides yourself? I swan to Marthy! Anyway, his name is Vinzenti and he’s top dog upstate in trial work, especially murder cases. I’ve got to be frank with you, Dave. Vinzenti says that unless Ruth can come up with clear counter-evidence to refute the facts as they now seem to stand, we’ll have a real fight on our hands. He also said that the longer she remains in hiding the worse it’s going to look for her. That’s why I had to ask you again if you know where she is.”

“I told you I don’t.”

“I believe you, Dave,” the lawyer said soothingly. “I’m just outlining the situation. How about a refill?”

Tully replenished Hurst’s cup.

“You haven’t touched yours.”

Tully drank it.

“The circumstantial case against Ruth is strong,” Ollie Hurst went on. “The use of your gun, the testimony of a witness who overheard Cox call his woman-visitor Ruth — and especially Ruth’s disappearance after the shooting, add up to a pretty powerful prosecutor’s case, according to Vinzenti.

“Against this, he says — barring some unforeseeable explanation when Ruth turns up that automatically clears her — the defense will have to try to tear down the evidence. The typewritten unsigned letter, Vinzenti thinks, for instance, is inadmissible, unless the police have turned up an identifiable fingerprint of Ruth’s on it. Most of all Vinzenti seems to be counting on the human element. This may well turn out to be, he says, one of those cases in which the law and the evidence prove of less weight than the character of the people involved. The professional leech who preyed on women, the woman of refinement and good reputation who in panic and desperation turned on the beast who was trying to wreck her life — in a setup like that, juries always empathize with the woman, Vinzenti assured me.”

Tully laughed. The lawyer looked at him sharply.

“What was that for, Dave?”

“Nothing.” A woman of refinement and good reputation, Tully thought. Wait till the prosecution gets hold of that Lodge shack-up!

“The hell you say. Dave, if there’s something you’re holding back...”

Tully shook his head. He could not, he could not talk about Ruth and Cox and those three days at the Lodge two years before. Not now. Not yet.

Ollie Hurst continued to study him. Finally, he shrugged. “If you are, Dave, you’re being a very foolish guy. Well, we’ll have to trust your judgment. Isn’t there anything new you can tell me?”

“Yes,” Tully said. “We may find help in an unexpected place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve had a session with that witness — the woman, Maudie Blake. She told me something she didn’t tell Julian Smith.”

“Oh?”

“She and Crandall Cox were old buddy-buddies. He shacked up with her whenever he was on his uppers, or in trouble. The last time he was sick, he let her take care of him till he could get back on his feet, then he lifted some money she’d left around and took off for here. And she followed him. That’s how she came to be in the next room at the Hobby.”

“She told you all this?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” the lawyer said softly. “That’s interesting. How come she told you, Dave, and not the police?”

“They didn’t pay her. I did.”

“She asked you for money?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“A hundred dollars. I only had seventy-eight with me. She took it.”

The bald lawyer frowned. He got up and began to walk around the kitchen, pulling his nose, scratching his ear, frowning.

“I don’t know, Dave,” he said slowly. “That’s pretty valuable information to sell for seventy-eight dollars. Unless she’s stupid and cheap as hell—”

“She is.” Tully wondered what he would say if he knew what else Maudie Blake had sold for the same seventy-eight dollars.

“Did you tell this to Lieutenant Smith?”

“No. Anyway, she said if I told the police she’d simply deny the whole story and stand pat on her original testimony.”

Hurst kept shaking his head. “I still don’t like it. If she’s telling the truth she can deny her head off — the facts can be dug up. She can’t be that stupid. Dave, you’re not telling me the whole story.”

“All right, I’m not,” Tully burst out. “But don’t ask me to talk about the rest — not yet, Ollie. The point is, she can be bought. In fact, I was intending to see her again this morning after you left. I think she knows a hell of a lot more than she told even me.”

“You may be getting into something you can’t handle, Dave,” the lawyer said. “I’d better go with you.”

Tully hesitated.

“Maybe I ought to put it this way, Dave,” his friend said gently. “If I’m going to help you, I can’t do it in the dark, and I’m certainly not going to get a man with Vinzenti’s reputation into a case where the defendant’s husband is withholding information. Am I in, or out?”

Tully was quiet.

Then his shoulders drooped and he said, “All right, Ollie.”

They went in Ollie Hurst’s car. Ollie drove, and neither man uttered a sound all the way.

The lawyer parked in the lot beside Flynn’s Inn and they got out and went into the dust-dancing lobby.

The same seedy clerk was behind the desk, picking his teeth with a green plastic toothpick while he read a comic book called She-Cat of Venus.

“Miss Blake,” Tully said. “Maudie Blake?”

“So?” the clerk said.

“She in?”

“Mm-hm,” the clerk said, turning a page. “At least I ain’t seen her come down. She’s one of those afternoon getter-uppers, I guess.”

They walked up to the second floor. Tully led the way to the woman’s door and rapped. He rapped again.

“She must be sleeping off a drunk,” he said to Hurst. “She was tying one on last night when I saw her.” He rapped again, shook his head, tried the door. It was locked, and he rattled the knob. “Miss Blake? Maudie?”

“When she ties one on it stays tied, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe we’d better come back later, Ollie.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” the lawyer said grimly. He banged on the door with his fist. “Miss Blake!”

There was no response.

“How about asking the desk clerk to ring her room?” Tully suggested.

Ollie Hurst hurried downstairs. A moment later Tully heard the muffled ringing. It kept ringing. Finally it stopped.

Tully began to nurse an uneasy feeling. Ollie was coming back up the stairs with the clerk. They were arguing.

“But I ain’t supposed to do that, Mr. Hurst,” the clerk was protesting. Apparently Ollie had told the Venusian enthusiast who he was.

“She may be seriously ill,” Ollie said. “Suppose she’s in a coma or something?”

“Coma my eye,” the clerk grumbled; he had a key with him. “This broad’s been lappin’ it up like a camel since she got here. If I get into trouble over this, boy—”

“You won’t,” Tully said. “Open it up.”

The clerk unlocked the door, pushed it open a bit, and poked his head into the room.

“Miss Blake—?”

His head retracted like a turtle’s. He made a gagging sound and rushed down the stairs.

Tully kicked the door wide.

She was lying in an impossible position on the bed, twisted like a contortionist from the waist down, head hanging far over the side. She was wearing the skintight slimjims with the enormous pink rose design and the knit blouse, just as she had been dressed when he had seen her the day before. The only change was that her feet were bare; one shoe lay near the bed, the other was half under the radiator near the window. Apparently in an alcoholic collapse she had fallen across the bed, kicking her shoes off as she did so.

A three-quarters-empty bottle of whisky was lying on its side near her right hand. Only a little of it had soaked into the bed.

Neither man made a move to enter the room; they could see only too well from the doorway.

Her synthetic gold hair hung straight down, almost touching the floor; at the roots it was a dirty brown. There was a fish-belly gray-blueness about her stiffened face, a brownish crust at one corner of her open mouth. Her eyes were open, too, staring at infinity.

“That,” Tully said with a laugh, “is what you might call dead to the world. How lucky can I get?”

“Dave.” Ollie Hurst grasped his arm.

“Don’t worry. I have no intention of going in there.”

“Dave,” the lawyer said again. Tully stepped back and stood slackly in the hall. Hurst reached in, grasped the knob, and pulled the door to. “We’d better notify the police.”