The Case of the Lazy Lover

13

Mason waited until the officer and Fleetwood had entered police headquarters, and then he, himself, entered the building and found a telephone booth, dialed the number of Paul Drake’s office and said to Drake’s night secretary, “Perry Mason talking. I have to get in touch with Paul immediately. Where can I locate him?”

“He’s home, getting some shut-eye,” she said.

“Okay. I’ll call him there.”

Mason hung up, dialed the number of Drake’s apartment, and after a few moments heard Drake’s voice, thick with sleep, on the wire.

“Wake up, Paul,” Mason said. “We’re in the middle of a mess!”

“Oh, Lord,” Drake groaned. “I should have known it. You spend all day sleeping in Gertie’s apartment, and then...”

“Sleeping, hell!” Mason interrupted. “Playing cards, trying to keep awake sitting in a chair, and dozing. A more unsatisfactory day’s sleep I’ve never had!”

“All right, all right!” Drake said. “What’s wrong now?”

“We got Fleetwood,” Mason said. “I got him to police headquarters. He didn’t know who I was. Then I suddenly sprung it on him in front of some witnesses. That trapped him. He started cussing me for being Mrs. Allred’s lawyer, and then realized he’d trapped himself into a betrayal of the amnesia business. So he clapped his hand to his head and said his memory had come back with a rush.”

“Good stuff!” Drake said.

“A lot depends on what happens in the next sixty minutes,” Mason said. “Have you got someone you can use here at headquarters to...”

“That’s easy,” Drake said. “One of the men I use is accredited as a special correspondent and has the privileges of the pressroom. Unless there’s quite a hush-hush...”

“Get him on the job quick,” Mason said. “I’m going to need some co-operation. And get dressed and get up to your office, Paul. We’re going to have to do something fast.”

“How come?”

“I think this fellow, Fleetwood, may be half smart,” Mason said, “and we may either win or lose this case, as far as my client is concerned, within the next sixty minutes.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “I’ll get my man on the job and have him up there. Anything else?”

“That’s all for now,” Mason said. “Well, wait a minute! This rancher, Overbrook, looks like a big, good-natured, rugged individual, but I’d like to find out something about him.”

“Didn’t you talk with him, Perry?”

“Sure, but I couldn’t talk with him the way I wanted to because of Fleetwood being there and because I had to pretend Fleetwood was Gertie’s husband.”

“I see. Okay, I’ll try and get everything I can lined up. I’ll start working on the telephone from here, and then I’ll be up at the office in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “I’ll be seeing you there.”

Mason left the phone booth, walked to the office of the homicide squad, said to the officer who was at the switchboard, “How about Lieutenant Tragg? Is he in?”

“Fortunately, he is,” the man said. “A big break in the Allred case found Tragg in his office.”

“Tell him Perry Mason wants to see him.”

“He won’t see anyone for a while. He’s interviewing a witness and...”

“You get the word to him that Perry Mason is out here and wants to see him for about two minutes. Tell him it may make a difference in the way he questions Fleetwood.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him,” the officer said, got up from the switchboard, and walked down to Tragg’s private office.

A minute later he came out and said, “Stick around for a few minutes, Mr. Mason. Tragg will come out just as soon as he gets a chance.”

Mason nodded, took a cigarette and settled back in one of the uncushioned oak chairs.

The cigarette was half gone when the door was pushed open explosively, and Lieutenant Tragg came bustling out.

“Hello, Mason. What’s on your mind?”

Mason walked over, took Tragg’s arm, led him to one corner of the room, said, “You’re always telling me I don’t co-operate. This is one you can put on the credit side of the ledger.”

“Damned if it isn’t!” Tragg said. “How did you find him?”

“I knew he was supposed to be suffering from amnesia.”

“Okay. What’s the rest of it?”

Mason said, “He didn’t get his memory back until just before he entered headquarters.”

“That’s what the traffic officer was telling me.”

Mason said, “As soon as he got his memory back, of course he forgot everything that had happened during the time he had amnesia. He remembers walking along a hedge in the Allred patio, and then something hit him, he went blooey, and he doesn’t know a thing until he came to in front of headquarters.”

“I’m wrestling with this amnesia business,” Tragg said grimly, “and I think I’m going to cure it.”

Mason said, “Perhaps I can help you on that. You see, we know pretty much what happened to him during the last two or three days.”

“Okay, what was it?”

“There’s a price for it.”

“The hell there is!”

“That’s right.”

“What?”

“I want to see Mrs. Allred now.”

“This is no time for visitors.”

Mason said, “Phooey. In the first place, I’m her attorney, and in the second place, you haven’t put her under formal arrest and charged her with anything. You’ve simply placed her where you can hold her.”

Tragg said, “I should have known there was a catch in this thing somewhere.”

“What the hell,” Mason told him. “Do you want to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

“You’re damn right, I do!” Tragg said. “Any time you give me a horse, I’m going to look in his mouth.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Go ahead and look in his mouth if you want to. All you’ll find will be his teeth. He won’t talk and tell you how old he is. Play it my way and the horse will do the talking.”

“He might do the laughing,” Tragg said suspiciously.

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s going to happen after you see Mrs. Allred?”

“Then,” Mason said, “she’s going to make a statement to you. She’s going to tell you her story, exactly what happened.”

Tragg scribbled out a pass. “Okay, take this to the matron,” he said.

“And you can phone her,” Mason pointed out. “That will facilitate matters. They’ll have Mrs. Allred all dressed and...”

“Okay, okay,” Tragg said, but then added, “she’s going to have to talk, though. Remember that!”

“She’ll talk,” Mason said.

“When?”

“At eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Not before?”

“Not before.”

“Why the delay?”

“I want her to have her breakfast,” Mason said. “It might give her ulcers to talk on an empty stomach.”

“All right, how about your dope on Fleetwood?”

“I’ll be back before you talk with Mrs. Allred, and I’ll give you ammunition that’ll crack his amnesia stall wide open.”

“That’s a promise?”

“That,” Mason said grimly, “is a promise. He was with a rancher named Overbrook. He walked in and said he had no idea who he was. I’m going to give you a chance to bust that story wide open. I’ll give you the ammunition. You can shoot it.”

“Okay, I’ll telephone the matron. Go on over and see Mrs. Allred.”

Mason took the pass Lieutenant Tragg scribbled, and went over to the detention ward. After a ten minute wait, he was taken in to see Mrs. Allred, who had quite evidently been aroused from a sound sleep and had had no opportunity to put on her make-up.

“We’ve found Fleetwood,” Mason said.

“Where?”

“A rancher by the name of Overbrook — does that name mean anything to you?”

She shook her head.

“Within five miles of the place where the car went off the grade,” he said. “The story is that Fleetwood had walked up to Overbrook’s house Monday night, suffering from amnesia. Any suggestions?”

She shook her head.

Mason said, “I want to give you one last chance to think over your story.”

“What about it?”

“Is it the truth?”

“Yes.”

Mason said, “Somehow, I think Fleetwood is going to try to hang one on you.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how,” Mason said. “I do know that this amnesia business of his is just a gag. I trapped him into betraying himself just before I took him to police headquarters.”

“Then he’ll tell them everything?”

Mason shook his head. “He’ll tell them everything up to the time he received a blow on the head. After that he doesn’t know what happened. He can’t remember.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” Mason said. “He has to adopt that position because a victim of true amnesia can’t remember anything that happened during his periods of amnesia.”

“But does Fleetwood know that?”

“You’re damn right he knows it,” Mason said, and added with a grin, “I took particular pains to tell him.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Now then,” Mason said, “here’s the point. As long as we could have you keep quiet, Tragg didn’t dare to go ahead and put a murder charge against you, or do too much talking for the newspapers — not on the evidence he had. He was afraid he might have to back up after he’d caught Fleetwood.

“Now then that situation is ended. I think Fleetwood’s going to try to hang it on you. My strategy is to start hanging it on Fleetwood.”

“What do you mean?”

Mason said with a grin, “I mean I’m going to pin it on him if I can.”

“Why?”

“In order to save you.”

“You mean you’d frame him for murder?”

Mason said, “I’ll frame him until I get him in such a position that the heat proves too much for him, then he’ll begin to start squirming. Understand, he’s taken advantage of this amnesia business. He’s hiding behind a wall of blank memory.

“That puts him in a particularly vulnerable position, because while he can’t be questioned by the police about the things that happened after he was hit on the head, he naturally can’t deny anything. Therefore, I can make even the wildest accusations against him, and he isn’t in a position to deny them. He has to take them with a bowed head and the simple statement that he can’t remember.

“I’m going to keep piling on the straws until I break the camel’s back.”

“But then suppose his story is — well, suppose by that time he’s had a chance to think up a story that—”

“That’s exactly it,” Mason said. “I’m going to try and push him into something before he’s had a chance to think up a story.

“Now then, when he does crack, he’s going to try to pin it on you. He’ll swear to anything he has to. So far, there are just two people who could have killed your husband and put the body in your car. You are one and Fleetwood is the other.

“In a case of this sort, public sympathy is a big thing. If you refuse to make any statement after the police really and truly turn on the heat, that fact will be spread all over the pages of the newspapers and will be a suspicious circumstance that will alienate the sympathies of the newspaper readers.

“Tomorrow morning Tragg is going to interview you. You’re going to talk with him freely and frankly. You’re going to try and talk your way out of a murder rap. It isn’t going to be easy. If you’re telling the truth, you can do it. If you’re not telling the truth, you’d better do a lot of revising...”

“I’m telling the truth, Mr. Mason.”

“Then,” Mason told her, “that’s all there is to it.”

“And I’m to talk to Lieutenant Tragg?”

“Sing like a skylark,” Mason told her. “Bare your soul to him. Pose for pictures in the newspapers. Tell everybody everything. Have nothing to conceal. Only be sure that it’s the truth, because if you try to lie, you’ll get caught, and if they catch you in a lie it’ll mean life imprisonment, perhaps the death penalty.”

“What I told you is the truth, Mr. Mason.”

“Okay. At eight o’clock tomorrow morning start broadcasting.”

“And you think you can make Fleetwood talk before tomorrow morning?”

Mason said, “I’m going to be a busy little boy, and when I get done I’m going to put so much heat on Bob Fleetwood that the varnish will begin to crack.”

“I think you’re very, very nice, Mr. Mason,” she said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Mason said, grinning. “Incidentally, while it’s all right for you to tell them about Patricia clipping the corner of the hedge, and about finding Fleetwood lying there unconscious, be careful to emphasize the fact that Patricia didn’t think she had hit anyone.”

“But doesn’t that make it worse? In other words, shouldn’t Pat have known it?”

“Sure, she should have known it. You don’t think for a minute she hit him, do you?”

“Why, Mr. Mason... I... She must have!”

“Phooey!” Mason said. “Your husband planted his car in such a position that Patricia would have to cut the corner of the hedge. Your husband was the one who discovered Fleetwood lying there.”

Her eyes were wide with the sudden realization of what must have happened. “You mean then, that it was all a plant that...”

“Sure it was a plant,” Mason said. “Your husband cracked Fleetwood on the head. He thought he’d killed him. He had a corpse to dispose of with a nice little head injury. The best way he could dispose of it was by letting Patricia think she’d hit him with her automobile, and letting her take the rap.”

Mrs. Allred pressed her knuckles against her lips.

“Think it over,” Mason said. “Don’t emphasize it. Let Lieutenant Tragg uncover it, then it’ll be his baby.”

And Mason walked out, leaving her sitting there.