The Long Saturday Night Part 12

"I don't know your definition of the word," I said, "but to the best of my knowledge I've been making statements ever since I was dragged in here. Apparently they go in one corner of your head, reverberate, and flow out the other, without causing a ripple-"

Seven-thirty-nine.

"How long are you going to hold out?"

"As long as I'm breathing. I've told you what happened."

"You're the only one in town who knew your wife was home. How could somebody else have killed her?"

"She called him. The minute I left the house with Mulholland."

"So she could get her head broken with an andiron? Now, that makes sense."

I explained about the fight. "Maybe she even thought I'd I'd killed Roberts, from the way I was acting and from the fact I had the cigarette lighter, the one Doris told you about. It was a new one she'd ordered, but she didn't know that. Anyway, she had to get away-get away from me, and out of reach before you could question her about Roberts. But she didn't have any money left, and couldn't very well ask me for any, the way I was raving and breaking down doors, so she called this man, whoever he was." killed Roberts, from the way I was acting and from the fact I had the cigarette lighter, the one Doris told you about. It was a new one she'd ordered, but she didn't know that. Anyway, she had to get away-get away from me, and out of reach before you could question her about Roberts. But she didn't have any money left, and couldn't very well ask me for any, the way I was raving and breaking down doors, so she called this man, whoever he was."

"But why would he kill her, if she was leaving town anyway? She couldn't spill anything."

"Because he didn't trust her, for one thing; she was too reckless and unreliable. You read her record. She'd be picked up somewhere. Also, he hated her. You saw what he did to her face."

Seven-forty-four.

My hands, manacled together, lay on the edge of the desk. I could see the watch without moving my face. It had been nine minutes now . . . ten. . . .

The telephone rang, the sudden sound of it like an explosion in the room. If he doesn't scream now, and start across the ceiling, I thought, he has no nerves in his body at all. Or he's innocent. I glanced toward him. His face was utterly calm, as though he hadn't even heard it. No, he had turned slightly and was watching Scanlon as he picked up the receiver.

"Sheriff's office. Scanlon speaking-"

It didn't mean anything. Everybody was watching Scanlon.

"Yes, yes, I know," he said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George take out a cigarette. Then he realized he already had one burning in the tray, and put it back.

". . . but, dammit, honey, I can't get away. I realize I haven't had any breakfast. Or any sleep. I sometimes notice things like that, without help. But I'm not going to leave here till we crack this thing."

If it were me, I thought, they'd have heard the sigh of relief in Memphis. Nothing showed. Absolutely nothing.

Scanlon hung up. Then he sighed, and said, "All right, let's get on with it."

George glanced at his watch. "Speaking of breakfast-how long do you think it'll be, Sheriff, before I'll be able to talk to Duke?"

"Not for hours, at this rate," Scanlon said disgustedly.

George stood up. "Well, I think I'll run over to Fuller's and have a bite." He turned to me. "There's nothing I can do at the moment, Duke, and I'll be back in twenty minutes or so. You don't mind?"

"No," I said. I managed a sickly grin. "I'll try to hold off the wolves till you get back."

"Could I have Fuller's send you over something?"

"No, thanks. I couldn't eat anything."

He went out. There was a long moment's silence after the door closed behind him. Scanlon and Mulholland exchanged a glance. Scanlon jerked his head. Mulholland went out, and almost at the same instant Barbara came back in. She must have been in another room across the corridor. She came on around the desk and sat down on my right Scanlon spoke to Brill. "Get that line open to the radio room."

Brill stepped inside Scanlon's private office, leaving the door open. The three of us remained where we were, staring at the telephone on the desk between us.

Scanlon looked at Barbara, the gray eyes flinty. "I never thought I'd use the sheriff's office for a routine like this. If I didn't have a dirty hunch you could be right, I'd lock you up."

She made no reply. She glanced at me and tried to smile, but it didn't quite come off. A minute went by. At this hour on Sunday morning you could drive anywhere in town in less than three minutes. It had to be before then. Two minutes. The silence began to roar in my ears. The room was swollen and bulging with it, like some dark and suffocating pressure. Three minutes. I stared at the telephone, and then away, and back at it again. Barbara had lowered her head, and I saw her eyes were closed. Her elbows rested on the desk, and she was raising and lowering her fists, so tightly clenched the knuckles were white, b.u.mping the heels of them gently against the wood in some rhythmic and supplicant cadence she apparently wasn't aware of or didn't know how to stop. The telephone rang. I saw her gulp. Her shoulders shook, and she groped for her handkerchief and pressed it against her mouth.

Scanlon picked it up. He listened for a moment, said, "Thank you, operator," and called out to Brill, "Phone booth at Millard's Texaco Station, corner of Clebourne and Mason." She slid slowly down onto the desk with her head on her arms.

I heard Brill repeat the location into the other line for the radio dispatcher. Scanlon went on listening. Brill came back, picked up the phone on the adjoining desk, and listened also. In a moment Scanlon gestured toward the instrument, and pointed to me. Brill moved it over and gave me the receiver, motioning for me to keep quiet.

A man was speaking. ". . . don't really believe it's there, do you?" It was George's voice.

"Well, I'm not sure," another man's voice replied. "As I say, I was just leaving now to go down to the office and look."

"I'm almost certain it wouldn't be there after all this time. Are you by any chance a betting man, Mr. Denman?"

"Well, I've been known to take a little flyer now and then, when the odds are right. Why?"

"I'd be willing to make a pretty substantial wager that when you get down there you won't find it."

"Hmmm. And what's your definition of substantial, on an average Sunday?"

"Say two thousand dollars?"

"Now, wait a minute, Mr. Randall. I understand that's a pretty heavy situation up there, and destroying evidence-"

"Who said anything about destroying evidence? You're just going down there to look for something the chances are you threw away five days ago. Suppose we make it four thousand you don't find it?"

"Five."

"All right. But understand, I'll never pay any more-"

There was something sounding like a scuffle then, and another voice came on the line. "I've got him." It was Mulholland.

"Good. Bring him in," Scanlon said. Then he added, "Thanks, Denman."

Denman chuckled. "Oh, you can tell Mrs. Ryan she'll get a bill. And Academy Award performances like that come high."

Scanlon hung up. Brill took the receiver out of my hand, put it down, and unlocked the handcuffs. I couldn't say anything. I reached over and put a hand on Barbara's shoulder.

She pushed herself erect, and looked at me. Her chin quivered, and tears were running down her face. "You nuh-nun-nuh-you nun-need a shave," she said. "You look awful." Then she was up, and gone out the door.

She came back in a minute or two, apparently from the washroom down the corridor, with the tearstains erased and her lipstick on straight. She smiled and shook her head. "Sorry I went hysterical on you. But I guess I'm not built for that kind of pressure."

"Well, I'd had about all I could take, myself," I said.

"But it's all over?"

Scanlon reached wearily for another cigar. "It's all over for you two, but just starting for me. You don't think that nut's going to be an easy one to crack, do you?"

We were going down the courthouse steps when he came up, handcuffed to Mulholland's wrist. He seemed as erect and controlled as ever, but his eyes wavered and he turned away as we went past. I started to turn and look after him, but checked myself, and didn't.

It seemed strange to be on the street in daylight, with people around me. We went over and got in Barbara's car, and just sat there for a moment. She reached over, flipped open the door to the glove compartment, and wordlessly pulled out the bottle of whiskey. I nodded. She unscrewed the cap of the thermos bottle, poured it half full, and held it out.

"That's yours," I said, and took the bottle.

She sloshed the whiskey around in the cup. "Fine way to greet the brave new Sabbath."

"Isn't it? Look, there's no point in my even mentioning anything as futile as trying to thank you."

"Well, you could take me to Fuller's and buy me some breakfast. And give me Monday off; I'd like to send my nerves out and have them re-strung."

"Right. As soon as we have our drink. But I wonder if you'd answer a question for me? Why did you do it?"

She hesitated. Then the old cynical grin overran the tiredness on her face. "Well, it was Sat.u.r.day night. And I'd seen the movie." She raised the cup. "Cheers."

We made it to a booth at the rear of Fuller's and ordered ham and eggs, and after awhile the crowd thinned out enough so we could talk.

"I'm sorry about throwing you that change-up pitch," she said. "I mean, over the phone, there in Roberts' apartment."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well, the first idea didn't work out so well. I thought, in my simple girlish way, that if I just went to Scanlon and told him I knew where you were, I'd be in a bargaining position-that is, I'd tell him, if he'd promise to go along with this thing about Denman and the envelope. But it seems that when you have information as to the whereabouts of a dangerous criminal Scanlon's looking for, you don't sell it to him-you give it to him, or they, run up and start sticking bars in front of your face. So I had to come up real fast with this old routine from the prison-break movies; if he'd let me call you, maybe I could talk you into giving up-think of the lives it would save. Actually, I'm not too sure he bought that either, but maybe by this time he was more than half convinced I could be right about Clement, so he agreed."

"What did you tell him to account for the fact you knew where I was? You didn't tell him we'd been together?"

"No, I said you'd called me from there to ask me some questions about Clement, because I used to work for him. You'd told me everything you suspected, and then after you'd hung up I'd decided the only thing to do was tell them where you were before somebody got hurt."

I looked at her admiringly, and shook my head. "All I can say is I'm glad you were on my side. But what gave you this idea of trying to bluff George with the envelope?"

"It was something you said. That he was too clever to leave anything to chance. The odds were, of course, that the envelope had gone into the New Orleans incinerator four or five days ago, but why settle for even a 100-to-l probability when you could make it a certainty? And Denman could take the bribe without any risk, because there'd be no question as to his having destroyed the envelope; he just found he'd already thrown it away. The door was wide open."

I nodded. "You really baited it, all right. But I think the thing that finally broke his nerve was the wording. That indefinite deadline-the next half hour or so. He couldn't walk out right after you'd tossed this bomb on the table-that might look suspicious-so he had to sit there waiting for that phone to ring. Then, to top it all, it did ring. That did it. It was just Mrs. Scanlon, trying to get Scanlon to come home for breakfast."

She shook her head. "That was me."

"What?"

"It was part of it. As salesmen say, the clincher. I thought if he could just hear the phone once-"

I sighed. "Will you do me one more favor? If you ever decide to turn criminal, give me two or three hours' notice. I'll be out of the country,"

She grinned. "You know, Scanlon said the same thing."

Scanlon was right; Clement didn't crack easily. They had to do it the hard way, with long hours of plodding police work, putting the case together bit by bit. They had to go all the way back to Florida, armed with photographs, and run down the Miami Beach hotel where the two of them had spent a week together when George met her while on that fis.h.i.+ng trip. They sifted a mountain of checks and bank statements and other financial details to run down the money he'd given her to open the dress shop and the sums he'd been paying Roberts, through her. It was over three weeks before he broke.

Clement had searched Roberts' apartment, but he hadn't found the clippings either. They were in a safe-deposit box at the bank, and the key was in Roberts' wallet when he was killed. The wallet, of course, had been held in the Sheriff's office for Roberts' next of kin, so George was as much in the dark as I was as to where the clippings could be. They got a court order to open the box, and discovered close to $3,000 in cash in addition to the news items his Los Angeles girl friend had scissored from old newspapers, apparently in some library. The clippings contained her picture and the story of her disappearance after the Las Vegas episode. They never were certain what had made Roberts suspicious of her in the first place, but they did learn he'd been on the Coast himself at that time, October, 1958, on his vacation, just before he'd been suspended from the Houston police force. Probably he'd seen the story and the picture and remembered them-or at least, the picture. She was beautiful enough to stick in the mind.

It was Clement, of course, who'd tried to call her at the hotel in New Orleans the afternoon she checked out and came home. He had Denman's report, and was afraid she was going to be identified and picked up by the police before she could lose all her money and have to come home. He must have been scared blue.

It's been ten months now, and the memory of it is beginning to fade. Ernie took over the Sport Shop and is making a success of it. We threw out the furnis.h.i.+ngs of the apartment in the rear, and he's fitted it out as a first-cla.s.s gunsmith's shop. Barbara is still out there in the office, but not for long. We're going to be married in January.

I sold the house and moved into an apartment, but about three months ago I bought a new building site, and a New Orleans architect is working on the plans now for the house. The lot-it's close to two acres-is up there on the brow of that hill overlooking the town just north of the city limits, the spot where Barbara and I parked that night-that long Sat.u.r.day night neither of us will ever forget. It's a good location, with a fine view.

Barbara agrees; she said I couldn't have made a better choice.

This afternoon we were in a back booth at Fuller's having coffee, with a tentative landscaping plan spread out on the table when Scanlon came in. He saw us and came back, and pulled a chair over to the end of the table. He ordered coffee too, took out a cigar, bit the end off it, and said thoughtfully, "You know, I always wanted to be a best man at a wedding, but somehow I never did make it. Now, unless you've got somebody else in mind-"

Barbara's eyes lighted up. "I think that'd be wonderful, don't you, Duke?"

"Sure," I said. "It's great."

"Well, that was easy." He struck a match, and held it in front of his cigar. "Here I was all prepared for a lot of maneuvering, and maybe having to bring a little pressure to bear."

"Pressure?" Barbara asked innocently.

"On the bride." He blew out the match, studied it for a moment, and dropped it in the ashtray. "I was just looking up the statute of limitations on a few minor peccadillos like harboring a fugitive, obstructing justice, and blackmailing a peace officer, not that I'd even dream of using anything like that if I didn't have to, you understand."

Barbara grinned. "No, of course not."

"Especially after the way you talked Duke into throwing down his guns and coming out of there that night. I'll always look back on that as one of the great inspirational moments of my career. I mean, when a peace officer can command that type of support and cooperation from the citizens, well, it gives you a warm feeling about the whole thing."

"Well," she said modestly, "I thought it was worth a try."

He nodded. "Yes, I gathered that."

He drank his coffee, and looked at the plan, which was almost unrecognizable now with penciled alterations. "What's all this?"

"The landscaping," I told him. "We've got it all just about settled except for this area here in back of the bedroom wing. I'm in favor of a swimming pool, with the rest of it in flagstone, but Barbara thinks the pool will be more trouble than it's worth, and that a simple expanse of lawn looks better anyway."

"I see." He looked at his watch, and stood up. "I've got to get back to work; you go ahead and thresh it out. But at least I've got an idea for the wedding present."

"What's that?" I asked.

"A lawn mower," he said.