The Bigger They Come

Chapter 12

The bed in the jail was hard. The mattress was thin. The night had turned bitterly cold, as so frequently happens in the desert during the early spring. I lay shivering and waiting.

Somewhere a drunk was talking to himself, a thick-tongued soliloquy which ran on and on and on aimlessly, monotonously, and unintelligibly. An automobile thief in the next cell was snoring peacefully. I figured it must be midnight. I tried to think of how hot it had been coming across the desert. My thoughts couldn’t keep me warm. I thought of Alma.

I heard bolts in the jail door slide back, then I heard the sound of low voices and shuffling feet. Down in the office room, there was the scraping of chair legs along the cement floor. I could hear the scratching of matches and the hum of low-voiced conversation. A door closed and shut out all the noise.

Four or five minutes later, I heard steps coming down the long corridor. The jailer said, ‘Wake up, Lam. They want you downstairs.’

‘I want to sleep.’

‘Well, come on downstairs just the same.’

I got up out of bed. It had been too cold to take my clothes off. The jailer said, ‘Come on. Don’t keep them waiting. Shake a leg.’

I followed him down to the office. The district attorney, the sheriff, the deputy district attorney, a shorthand reporter, and two Los Angeles policemen were waiting in the room. A chair had been reserved for me facing a bright light. The sheriff said, ‘Sit down over in that chair, Donald.’

‘The light hurts my eyes.’

‘You’ll get accustomed to it after a minute. We want to be where we can see you.’

‘Well, you don’t need to put my eyes out looking at me.’

The sheriff said, ‘If you tell the truth, Donald, we won’t have to study your facial expressions to find out when you’re lying. If you keep on lying, we’re going to have to watch you more closely.’

‘What makes you think I haven’t told the truth?’

He laughed and said, ‘You’ve told just enough of the truth, Donald, to convince us that you know what we want to know; but you’ve stopped a long ways short of telling the truth.’

He moved the light a little so that the glare wasn’t directly in my eyes.

‘Now, Donald,’ the sheriff said. ‘These gentlemen are from Los Angeles. They’ve come all the way across the desert to hear your story. They know enough to know that you’ve been lying, but some of what you said is true. Now we want the rest of it.’

He talked with the fatherly tone one uses in dealing with a half idiot. Cops usually use that approach in talking with crooks — and the crooks usually fall for it.

I pretended to fall for it, too.

‘That’s all I know,’ I said sullenly. ‘What I told you today.’

The light switched up so that the glare struck me full in my aching eyes. The sheriff said, ‘I’m afraid, Donald, I’m going to have to go over this with you bit by bit, and watch your facial expressions.’

‘To hell with that stuff!’ I said. ‘That’s the old hooey. You’re giving me the third degree.’

‘No, we’re not giving you any third degree, Donald — that is, I’m not. But this is a serious matter, and we want to get the truth.’

‘What’s wrong with my story?’ I asked.

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘In the first place, you weren’t there in that room, Donald. Some of the things you said about Cunweather are true but not all of them. You didn’t shoot Morgan. The girl shot Morgan. You gave her the gun. She dropped the gun and ran out. She called you from the telephone booth downstairs. A tenant in the building gave her a dime with which to put through the call. Your landlady had to get you up out of bed― Now then, Donald, we want the truth.’

I said, ‘Oh, all right. Turn that damn light out of my eyes and I’ll tell you everything.’

The district attorney cleared his throat. ‘Take this,’ he said to the shorthand reporter. ‘Now, Donald, as I understand it, you’re going to make a voluntary statement or confession. This is the result of pour own volition. No promises or inducements have been made to you; nor have any threats been made. You’re going to make a statement simply because you want to tell the truth and make a clean breast of the entire situation. Is that right?’

‘Have it your own way,’ I said.

‘That doesn’t answer my question, Donald.’

‘Oh, hell,’ I said, ‘you’ve got me. What’s the use?’

He turned to the shorthand reporter. ‘The answer is yes,’ he said. ‘Take it down. That’s right, isn’t it, Donald?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go ahead,’ the sheriff said. ‘Let’s hear the truth, Donald. But remember, we don’t want any more lying.’

He deflected the light so that my tortured eyeballs had a rest. ‘Go ahead, Donald.’

‘I killed him,’ I said, ‘but Alma Hunter doesn’t know it. And I didn’t do it because I was guarding Alma Hunter. I did it because I was told to.’

‘Who told you to?’

‘Bill Cunweather.’

The sheriff said, ‘Now, Donald, we don’t want any more’ lies.’

‘You’re getting the real low-down now.’

‘All right. Go ahead.’

‘Do you want it from the beginning?’ I asked.

‘Yes, from the beginning.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I used to know the Cunweather outfit in Kansas City. I’m not going to tell you a thing about who I really am because my father and mother are living, and I’m not going to break their hearts. But you can take it from me that I’ve batted around. But I didn’t have nothing to do with that Kansas City job. I was in California when that job was pulled, and I can prove it.

‘Well, here’s the low-down. Cunweather was the head of the slot-machine racket. Naturally, there was a pay-off. I don’t know all the dope on that, but it ran into quite a wad of dough. Morgan Birks was the pay-off man.

‘Well, things ran along pretty smooth until the grand jury started investigating. A citizens’ vice committee had some undercover men out and they uncovered the whole racket. They knew the names of some of the guys who were getting the dough. They didn’t know the higher-ups, but they knew some of the contact men and they knew how much those men were getting.

‘Well, that was where things began to get interesting, because there was a leak from the grand jury; and we found that the undercover men for the citizens’ committee reported that the pay-off was just about half of what Cunweather thought it was. In other words, every time Morgan Birks would collect ten thousand dollars to pay off to the big shots, he’d salt five grand and pass on only half of what he’d collected as the real pay-off.

‘Los Angeles is a tough city to do business in, and Morgan Birks had specified that if anything was going to be done, he had to have the exclusive handling of the whole business. Morgan Birks had been with Cunweather for some time, and the chief — that’s figured he was absolutely on the up-and-up.

‘Well, when this blow-off came, Morgan Birks took it on the lam, the idea being that he was hiding out from the grand jury. He wasn’t. He was hiding out from the chief because he was afraid the chief was going to rub him out.

‘Morgan Birks had been pretty smart. He’d cached most of the swag in safety deposit boxes, and these safety deposit boxes were in his wife’s name. Well, it happened that that was the particular time his wife chose to start a divorce action, knowing that she had him over a barrel. She’d been laying for a break like that because she’d been stepping and Morgan had the goods on her.

‘That raised merry hell with Morgan Birks. He couldn’t go into court to fight the divorce action. She had all of the stuff where she could get at it and he couldn’t. He had to take things lying down. So he reached an agreement with her — the best he could get — which wasn’t much. He had the deadwood on her, but he couldn’t use it because of what she had on him and because the chief would have taken him for a ride if he’d stuck his head out of cover.’

‘Where was Morgan Birks?’ the district attorney asked.

‘I’m coming to that,’ I said. ‘You said you wanted it from the beginning.’

‘All right. Go ahead and give it to me.’

‘Well, the chief found out that Sandra Birks was going to hire the Cool Detective Agency to serve the papers. So the chief planted me to get a job with the Cool Detective Agency, figuring that we’d find Morgan that way. I got the job and was assigned to serve the papers. Sandra Birks naturally wanted the thing cleaned up.’

‘Now, Sandra was protecting Morgan Birks, but we didn’t know it at the time. She had a man in the house who was supposed to be her brother. It wasn’t her brother at all. It was Morgan. But Morgan was watching her like a hawk. He was afraid she was going to two-time him all the way along the line and skip out with all the money from the safety deposit boxes instead of the cut that they’d agreed on.

‘Well, as soon as I’d get any information from Sandra Birks and Alma Hunter I’d relay it on to the chief. And in that way, we found out where Morgan Birks was hiding ― that is, we found out the man who was supposed to be Sandra’s brother was really the man we wanted.’

‘But how could he pose as her brother when you already knew him?’ the sheriff asked.

‘Because he’d pretended he was in an automobile accident, and they’d taped a lot of stuff over his nose, and the tape had pulled his face all out of shape. He was combing his hair differently, and he’d put on some padding under his coat, enough to fill him out. After I bumped Morgan off, I rolled that padding up into a bundle and dropped it in an ashcan in front of the apartment house. You can check on that.’

‘Go ahead,’ the sheriff said.

‘Well, I passed all this information on to the chief. So the chief had a pug by the name of Fred — I never did know his last name. And he sent Fred out to bring Morgan Birks to time.

‘Well, here’s the funny thing. Sandra had already been down and looted the lock boxes. She was lousy with coin. Morgan Birks found it out, and made up his mind he’d kill her, get the dough, and skip out. But Sandra was playing around with a boy friend, and she didn’t want Morgan to know anything about it. So she talked Alma Hunter into sleeping in her bed. She told her husband she was going to be sleeping in one of the twin beds in the room with Alma — and he wasn’t to come in because he was supposed to be her brother.

‘Her husband had his keys. Along in the middle of the night he slipped into the apartment, tiptoed over to the twin bed, groped around in the dark, and started to choke Alma Hunter, thinking it was Sandra. Alma kicked him in the stomach a couple of times and broke loose his hold. She started to scream, and Morgan beat it. That was the day before I bumped Morgan Off.

‘Well, when the chief got the dope on Morgan, naturally Morgan was on the spot. Morgan confessed to everything and agreed to return the dough. But he couldn’t return the dough until he got it back from his wife. So the chief told him to go get it.

‘But get this — the chief wasn’t trusting Morgan Birks any more, and Morgan knew too much. With the grand jury business coming up and Sandra Birks turning against him and all of that stuff, Morgan represented a pretty bad liability.

‘Now, I’d taken a shine to Alma Hunter. She was a good kid, and when I found out that Morgan had been at work on her throat, I slipped her the rod and told her to protect herself in case anything else happened.

‘Well, Morgan met me at a drug store where the chief had staked me out, and we were going up to get the dough from Sandra. Morgan told me Alma Hunter was out with a boy friend and wouldn’t be in all evening. Do you get the sketch? Sandra Birks had the chief’s dough. We wanted it. We knew it was going to be a rough party. Sandra had passed a stall on to Morgan. He’d fallen for it, and passed it on to me. Morgan figured I’d tap her over the head and get the dough she was supposed to be wearing in a money belt under her nightgown right next to the skin.

‘I fell for it. We went up to the apartment. Morgan Birks opened it with his key, and went into the bedroom. It was dark. I had a flashlight, but Morgan said his wife always woke up when there was a light in the room and for me to feel my way. I’d asked him just before we went in if there was anyone except his wife in the place, and he said no, his wife was the only one there.

‘I fumbled my way along through the dark. I could hear her breathing there on the bed. I decided I’d clap my hand over her mouth and then grab the money belt. Morgan Birks was over near the foot of the bed somewhere. I couldn’t see just where, but I could hear him breathing, too. I reached out, trying to get my hand where I could clamp it over her mouth all at once. I wanted to get it where I could feel from her breathing that it was right over her nose. I stuck it out there in the dark and kept moving it around until I could feel her breath on the palm of my hand — well, then she woke up.

‘And I swear to heaven, gentlemen, that I never had a chance. She was quicker than a cat. That rod came around and blazed off in my face before I could do a thing about it. I’d made a grab for her, but she’d moved and all I got was a handful of pillow. And then this gun went off right under my nose, and then she jumped out of bed and made for the door. And as soon as I heard that scream, I knew it was Alma and not Sandra.

‘Well, we stood there for a minute until we heard the outer door slam, and then I turned on my flash. Morgan Birks said, “You dirty bungler. You’ve ranked the job!” ’

‘I didn’t say anything. I was looking at the rod on the floor. I knew it was the gun I’d given Alma Hunter. She’d shot and then dropped it when she’d beat it for the door. Morgan Birks was still cussing me. I reached down and picked up the gun. I said, “Birks, you can’t shoot square even when it’s a showdown, can you?” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “You know damn well what I mean. You planted Alma Hunter on me and said it was Sandra.” ’

‘I think he read what was going to happen then in my eyes. He ran past me and tried to get to the door. Well, he never made it, I shot him through the back of the head. Then I dropped the gun on the floor and had to move the body back in order to open the door. I went out to the corridor, down the back stairs, out through the alley door, took a taxicab, went home, and went to bed.’

‘Did you report to Cunweather?’

‘Not then. I figured that was the way the chief would like to have things and there was no use getting all excited about it.’

‘Did you go to sleep?’

‘I was just getting to sleep when Alma Hunter called me on the telephone. I hadn’t expected she’d do that— Well, you know the rest. I put on an act about being sleepy so that the landlady had to call me three or four times.’

The sheriff said, ‘By God, I believe you, Lam.’

The district attorney said, ‘Wait a minute. That would mean the gun was fired twice.’

‘Sure, it was fired twice,’ I said.

‘What became of the first bullet?’

‘How the hell do I know? It’s stuck in something.’

‘The gun couldn’t have been fired twice,’ one of the Los Angeles officers said. ‘The magazine holds seven shells. There were six shells in the gun when the boys from Homicide found it.’

I said, ‘I’m telling the truth. I can prove it. I loaded that gun myself. I put seven shells in the magazine, then I jacked one up into the barrel. Then I took the magazine out again, and put an extra shell in. That made eight shells. You get the box of shells in the bureau drawer of room 620 in the Perkins Hotel, and you’ll find there are eight shells gone from the box.’

The sheriff said, ‘He’s right. That accounts for that extra empty cartridge they found in the room.’

The two men from California got up. ‘Well, Donald,’ one of them said, ‘you’re going back with us. Get your things, and we’ll start now.’

‘I don’t want to start now,’ I said. ‘And I don’t have to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m in Arizona,’ I told him. ‘I don’t like California. It’s too damn hot going across the desert. I’m getting along fine here. I like the jail, and I like the treatment. You give me the dose here and I’ll take it.’

‘Surely, Donald, you aren’t going to make us go to the bother of getting extradition, are you?’

‘I’m not going to leave here.’

One of the cops moved forward belligerently. ‘Why, you dirty—’ The sheriff put a hand on his arm. ‘Not here, buddy,’ he said in a slow drawl that packed plenty of authority.

The district attorney said to the jailor, ‘Take him back to his cell. We’ve got some telephoning to do.’

‘I want a paper and a pen,’ I said.

They exchanged glances, then the sheriff nodded. ‘The jailor will bring them to you.’

I went back to my cell. It was so cold I could hardly keep my knees from knocking together, but I sat there with chattering teeth and wrote by the dim light of a jail incandescent.

After an hour they came back for me. The sheriff said, ‘The stenographer has written out the confession you made. We want to read it to you, and if it’s correct, we want you to sign it.’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I’ll sign it, but here’s something that I want filed.’

‘What is it?’ he asked, looking at the scrawled pages.

‘That,’ I said, ‘is the application of Donald Lam, also known as Peter B. Smith, for a writ of habeas corpus.’

The sheriff said, ‘Donald, you must be crazy. You’ve confessed to cold-blooded, deliberate, premeditated murder.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I killed a rat. Are you going to file this application for habeas corpus, or do I refuse to sign the confession?’

‘I’ll file it,’ he said. ‘I thought you were just a stir-crazy punk. Now I know you’re nuts.’