The Ferguson Affair

chapter 3

I LEFT HIM TALKING to Wills in Broadman’s office cage, and took a cab back to the courthouse. I was eager to question Ella Barker again. But she wasn’t so eager to be questioned.

The girl didn’t raise her head when the matron let me into the visitors’ room. She sat with her thin arms resting on the edge of the table-a hunched and drooping figure like a bird which despaired of liberation. The afternoon sun fell through the bars behind her and striped her back with shadows.

“Snap out of it, Barker, the first day is always the hardest.” The matron touched the girl’s shoulder. Perhaps she meant to be kind, but she sounded patronizing, almost threatening. “Here’s your Mr. Gunnarson again. You don’t want him to see you moping.”

Ella pulled her shoulder away from the matron’s hand. “If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have to come here, now or ever.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” the matron said. “In the spot you’re in, you need a lawyer, whether you know it or not.”

“Leave me alone with her, will you, Mrs. Clement?”

“Whatever you say.” The matron went out, shaking her keys like melancholy castanets.

I sat down across the table from Ella Barker. “Hector Broadman is dead. Murdered.”

Her dark lashes curtained her eyes, and she wouldn’t look up. I thought I could smell her fear, like a faint sour fermentation in the air. Perhaps it was the odor of the jail.

“You knew Broadman, didn’t you?”

“I had him for a patient. I’ve looked after lots of patients in my life.”

“What was the matter with him?”

“He had a growth removed-a benign growth. That was way last summer.”

“But you’ve seen him since?”

“I went out with him, once,” she said in her steady monotone. “He took a liking to me, I guess, and I wasn’t exactly swamped with invitations.”

“What did you and Broadman talk about?”

“Him, mostly. He was an older man, a widower. He did a lot of talking about the Depression. He had some kind of business in the East. Him and his first wife lost it in the Depression. They lost everything they had.”

“He had more than one wife?”

“I didn’t say that.” She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were startled. “If you think I’d marry a fat old baldheaded man like Mr. Broadman, you’ve got another think coming. Not that I couldn’t have.”

“You mean he proposed? The first night?”

She hesitated. “I saw him a couple of times after that. You might say I took pity on him.”

“Where did he propose to you?”

“In his car. He’d had a couple of drinks, over at-” Her lips froze in an opened position for an instant, then came together tightly.

“Over where?”

“All over,” she said. “He took me for a drive. Around town. Up in the hills.”

“To meet his friends?”

“He didn’t have any friends,” she answered, too quickly.

“Where did he have those drinks the night he proposed? At his house?”

“He didn’t have a house. He ate in restaurants and slept in his store. I told him he couldn’t expect a girl to share that kind of a life with him. So he offered to move into my flat, furnish it for me.”

“That was generous of him.”

“Yeah, wasn’t it?” A smile pinched her mouth. “He had it all figured out. I guess I wasn’t very nice to him, that last night. He took it hard.” Her smile had turned slightly cruel.

“Where did you say he had those drinks?”

“I didn’t say. As a matter of fact, I gave him the drinks myself. I don’t drink, but I keep a bottle on hand for my friends.”

“Who are your friends, besides Broadman?”

“Nobody special. The girls at the hospital. I didn’t say he was a friend of mine.”

“He must have been a very good friend. He gave you a platinum watch.”

She sat up straight, neck taut, as if I’d tied a noose there and sprung a trap. “He certainly did not.”

“Who did?”

“Nobody did. If you think I accept expensive gifts from men-”

“The watch was found in your apartment today.”

She bit her lower lip. Beyond her head, I could see the courthouse tower. The sun had slipped down behind it. The shadow of the tower leaned on the window like a tangible bulk of darkness. Somewhere in the iron bowels of the building, pots and pans were clashing. It was half past five by the tower clock.

“It wasn’t Hector Broadman gave me the watch,” she said. “I didn’t know it was stolen. When a fellow gives a girl a watch or a ring, she doesn’t think of it being stolen.”

“It was a dirty trick to play on you,” I said. “I’d think you’d be eager to get back at the man who played it.”

She nodded, watching me over her fingers.

“Do you want to tell me all about it, Ella? It’s nearly suppertime, and they’ll be inviting me out of here pretty soon. If you wait until tomorrow or the next day, it may be too late.”

“Too late?” she said behind her hand.

“Too late for you. You have a chance to help the police put their hands on Broadman’s killer. I strongly advise you to take it. If you don’t, and he’s caught without your help, it won’t be good for our side.”

“What did he do to Hector Broadman?”

“Bashed in his head. You don’t want to sit here and let him get away.”

She fingered her own dark head. She was so preoccupied with the image in her mind that she rumpled her hair and failed to smooth it down.

“You don’t want it to happen to you, I know. Doesn’t that go for other people, too? You are a nurse, after all, and I’ll bet a darn good one.”

“You don’t have to flatter me, Mr. Gunnarson. I’m ready to tell you who gave me the watch and the ring.”

“Gus Donato?”

She didn’t react to the name. “No. His name is Larry Gaines.”

“And he’s the man from San Francisco?”

“He’s a lifeguard at the Foothill Club. There isn’t any man from San Francisco.”

This admission cost her more effort than any of the others. She was so drained that she couldn’t speak for a minute. I was content to wait, light a cigarette, and collect my thoughts. Cross-questioning is hard work at the best of times. The worst kind goes on outside of court, in private, when you have to ram your clients’ lies down their throats until they choke on them.

Ella had had enough of her lies. She told me the short and not so simple story of her affair with Larry Gaines.

She had met him through Hector Broadman. Broadman had taken her to Larry’s place the second time they were out together. Apparently he didn’t feel up to entertaining her all by himself. Larry was different-so different that she couldn’t understand how he and Broadman happened to be friends. He was good-looking, and polite, and only a few years older than she was herself. He lived in a house in a canyon outside the city limits.

It was an exciting evening, sitting between two men in Larry’s little house, drinking the Turkish coffee which Larry made, and listening to good records on his hi-fi. Comparing the two, she made up her mind that Hector Broadman was not for her.

The second evening the trio spent together, she began to dream that possibly Larry might be. He let her know that he liked her, in so many ways. They had a serious talk about life, for example, and he was very interested in her opinions. Broadman nursed a bottle in a corner.

That night she broke with Broadman. She hated men who drank, anyway. Larry waited for four days-the longest four days of Ella’s life-and then he phoned her. She was so grateful that she let him seduce her. She was a virgin, but he was so gentle and kind.

He didn’t turn on her, either, the way fellows are supposed to. He went right on being kind, and calling her just about every night of the week. He wanted to marry her, he said, but he had so little to offer her. They both knew in the long run a man with his brains and personality was bound to make his mark. But that took time, or a lucky break. While he was waiting for one, his salary at the club was barely enough to support him, even with tips added in. Those wealthy people at the Foothill Club were so tight, he said, you had to use a chisel to pry a thin dime off their palms.

What made it especially hard for him, he told her, was the fact that he came from a wealthy family himself: they lost all their money in the crash before he was born. It drove him crazy, scrounging for nickels and dimes while the members sat on their fat behinds and the money grew on trees for them.

He wanted a silver-dollar tree of his own, he said, and he had a plan for getting it. If it worked, they could marry before the year was out and live in comfort for the rest of their lives. But he was going to need her help in carrying out the plan. He needed someone in the hospital to supply him with the names of new patients, especially well-heeled ones in private suites.

“Did you help him, Ella?”

She shook her head emphatically. “I certainly did not.”

“Then how did you get the diamond ring and the watch?”

“He gave them to me before I broke off with him. I guess he thought it would change my mind. But after I found out about him, I didn’t want any part of him or his plans. A nurse who would take advantage of her patients like that should have her uniform torn right off her back.”

“But you didn’t tell the police about his plans.”

“I just couldn’t.” She hung her head. “I was stuck on him, I guess, for a long time after I broke with him. Larry was my first real crush. It made me do crazy things. Like last week-” She interrupted herself again.

“What happened last week?”

“I kept reading about these houses and stores being broken into in town. I couldn’t believe Larry was doing it. At the same time I knew he was mixed up in it. I had to do something, settle my mind one way or the other. I borrowed a car from a girl-friend and went out to Larry’s place. I intended to ask him outright if he was the burglar. He wouldn’t tell me the truth, probably, but I wanted to see the look on his face when I asked him. Then I’d know what to do.

“There was a light in the house. I left the car down the road and sneaked up on it, kind of. I could hear voices inside. He had a woman with him. I knocked on the door-I didn’t care what happened. I saw her when he opened the door. She was sitting on the studio couch, a blonde in a Japanese kimono-the same one I used to wear. It sort of set me off, and I called him a name.

“Larry stepped outside and closed the door on her. I never saw him mad before. He was so mad it made his teeth chatter. He said if I ever came there again, or bothered him in any way, that he would tell a friend of his to put a knife in my heart. I was scared. My knees were shaking so that I could hardly get back to the car.”

“Did he mention the friend’s name?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t Gus Donato?”

“I never heard of any Donato. All he said was a friend. Some friends he must have.”

“You should have gone to the police, Ella.”

“I know I should. You think I should talk to them now, don’t you?”

“Decidedly.”

“You honestly think they’ll let me go if I talk?”

“It won’t be quite as simple as that, I’m afraid. If you satisfy the District Attorney, he should consent to a lowering of your bail at least. It was set very high.”

“Yeah, five thousand dollars. I can’t raise that kind of money, and I haven’t got the five hundred to pay a bail bondsman. How low do you think you can get it down?”

“I won’t make any promises. It depends.”

“Depends on what?” she said impatiently.

“On whether or not you’ve told me the whole truth, and tell the same to the police and the prosecutor.”

“Don’t you believe this is the truth?”

“I’ll be frank with you, Miss Barker. One or two things about your story bother me. Why did you sell Broadman the ring that Larry gave you?”

“I wanted Larry to know what I thought of him and his lousy ring. Broadman was a friend of his, and I thought he’d probably tell him.”

“How would Broadman know where you got the ring?”

“I told him.”

“You told Broadman?”

“Yes.”

“He knew that Larry gave you the ring?”

“After I told him, he must have.”

We sat and looked at each other.

“You think Larry killed Broadman, don’t you?” the girl said.

“Or had him killed.”