Murder by the Book (12 page)

The inflection did not appear to disturb the narrow-shouldered man. All he said was, “Yes,” and he said that with no inflection at all.

“You were a lawyer in New York,” Jefferson said. “You knifed a man—a former client, wasn't it? Who thought you had sold him out?”

“A man,” Bradley said, “came at me with a knife. I defended myself. In a struggle over the knife he was stabbed.”

“And died of it. And the jury found you guilty of manslaughter.”

“Unfortunately,” Bradley said, “both things are true. Also, I am no longer a member of the bar. I'm an ex-convict. Deputy sheriffs can push me around.” He sighed, somewhat elaborately. “Sheriff,” he said, “there are charges—quite unprovable charges—against me in Miami, which is in Dade County. You're a Monroe County deputy. Are there charges against me here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Until about noon,” Bradley said, “I was enjoying the balmy air, the refreshing trade winds. Admiring the palms as they sway in the trades. As it says in the folders.”

“You,” Jefferson said, “are a very smart cooky.”

His tone was derisive. But there was no real derision in his mind to back it up. Jasper Bradley did look like being a smart cooky. He also, which was more disappointing, looked like being a confident cooky.

“Thank you, sheriff,” Bradley said, and smiled faintly.

“Where were you last night?”

“At a motel in Marathon.”

“Why?”

“I was,” Bradley said, “considering the purchase of a fishing boat. A charter boat.”

“Under the name of Worthington?”

“Yes.”

“You have a sidekick. Man named Ashley.”

“I have a friend named Ashley.”

“You work together.”

“Do we?”

“Ashley was in Marathon, registered as Worthington. To give you an alibi.”

“Was he? An alibi for what, sheriff?”

Jefferson let him wait for several seconds. He looked at him very directly; he hoped he looked at the thin, confident man with overmatching confidence.

“Murder,” Jefferson said. “The murder of a man named Piersal. Dr. Edmund Piersal.”

And the man's face did change. The muscles under his eyes twitched; his lips parted a little.

“Dr. Piersal,” Jefferson said, “was a police consultant in New York. An expert witness. At your trial—”

“I know who Piersal was,” Jasper Bradley said. His voice was quite steady; the muscles under his eyes no longer moved. “I did not know he was dead, sheriff.”

Ronald Jefferson felt large and clumsy. He realized he was beginning to feel angry, and that being angry would get him nowhere. He could wipe up the floor with this slight, confident man—this slight, confident crook—who was almost surely lying.

“He was killed about seven o'clock this morning,” Jefferson said, keeping anger out of his voice. “When you were having breakfast in Marathon. You say.”

“Killed in Marathon?”

“You know damn well—” Jefferson caught himself. “You know where he was killed,” Jefferson said. “Here. At The Coral Isles. At the end of the fishing pier.”

Bradley merely shook his head. He seemed a little bored.

“You hated him because of what he had done to you,” Jefferson said. “Thought that if it hadn't been for him you'd still be a lawyer in New York, not a small-time crook working tourists in a small town—small the way people like you think of towns. Maybe you followed him down here. Maybe you just happened to run into him. Saw a chance to get your own back.”

Bradley appeared to consider this. He shook his head.

“Wrong type for it,” he said. “I am. Not the emotional type.”

“Sure,” Jefferson said, and this time did get derision into his tone. “He gets you sent to jail. Raises hell with your life. So—you just shrug it off. Or—maybe you figured he just did what he had to do? Slapped you down because that was his duty?”

Ronald Jefferson got disbelief, ridicule, into every syllable. Jasper Bradley listened as if he found Jefferson reasonably interesting.

“No,” Bradley said, when Jefferson had finished; “I thought he was a bastard, sheriff. I had some quite—intemperate thoughts about him. Several years ago. When I was, as they say, up the river.” He considered. “In Sing Sing,” he said, being instructive for the illinformed, the yokel. “Sing Sing is up the Hudson from—”

“Damn it to hell,” Jefferson said. “Shut your damn mouth.”

Bradley did. He used it to smile with. “Wipe it off,” Jefferson said. Bradley wiped it off. But the smile was still in his eyes.

He got hold of himself. He was letting Bradley run things, set the pace.

“I'll send you up to Marathon,” he said. “Have Lem Hunter take a look at you. Hell—you're so smart about fingerprints. Somebody left prints there. When he registered as you. In the room. This man Ashley, probably. They won't be your prints, will they?”

“Mr. Hunter's motel is quite a busy place,” Bradley said. “Many coming and going—just shapes to him, probably.”

“And,” Jefferson said, “you and this man Ashley—you're the same shape, I suppose?”

“As a matter of fact,” Bradley said, “we are, rather. Yes, I think you can say we are, sheriff. It's been … commented on. No real resemblance but … yes, the same general shape. If Mr. Hunter scrutinized our faces—but I don't suppose he has much time for that, do you?”

“Your fingerprints won't be the same shape, Bradley.”

“Never are, are they?” Bradley said, in the tone of one who commends a bright student.

Jefferson looked at the slight man for several seconds, and the man looked back at him, the smile not on his lips, but in his eyes.

“You think you're getting away with something, don't you?” Jefferson said, and anger—and frustration—made his voice harsh.

“Do I?”

“This sidekick of yours—this Ashley—it'll be his prints there.”

“Will they?” Bradley said, and smiled pleasantly. (I could wipe the floor with him, Ronald Jefferson thought.)

“Sheriff,” Bradley said, and there was a certain kindliness in his voice, “I didn't kill Dr. Piersal. I hate to see you waste your time.”

Somehow, Ronald Jefferson heard another word, not spoken. “Son.” That would be the other word. Or, conceivably, “Sonny.”

“Get the hell out of here!” Jefferson said.

The confident, the infuriatingly confident, slight man turned on his chair and looked at the door—the locked door.

Jefferson picked up the telephone on the desk; picked it up with violence. He told the man who answered—told him loudly—to come in and get this so-and-so.

Jasper Bradley shook his head. He made a deprecatory sound with tongue and teeth.…

It was hot in the office assigned the Chief Deputy Sheriff, Monroe County. It seemed to Jefferson that it was hotter than it had been half an hour or so earlier, but that was not really true. Jefferson did not get cold with anger. He got hot with it. He was stewing in it now.

Bradley had killed Piersal, all right. He thought he was going to get away with it; thought he'd fixed up an alibi for it. “Probably faked,” that Mrs. North had said, and had added that they almost always were. And how right she was! This one of Bradley's—well, by the time I get through with it, Ronald Jefferson told himself, I'll have a hole big enough to drive a truck through.

He answered the telephone before he realized he had heard it ring. He said, “Yeah?” and remembered to add, “County Sheriff's office.”

“Jeff? This is Paul Grogan.”

Ronald Jefferson got hold of himself. He said, “Yes, Mr. Grogan?”

“Thought you'd want to know,” Grogan said. “Mrs. Payne's back. In her room. Called the housekeeper to complain about its not having been done. You remember, you said no one—”

“I remember,” Jefferson said.

“A little embarrassing for us,” Grogan said. “Didn't like to say it was because the authorities—well, you see our position.”

“Yes,” Jefferson said. He sighed. “I'll come along and see her,” he said. “Soon as I can.”

He hung up. The telephone had been waiting for that, and rang back at him.

It was a message, left earlier by a Mrs. North. The message was a question: “Had Mr. Jefferson thought at all about Mrs. Coleman?”

For a few seconds that question meant nothing to Ronald Jefferson. He remembered, then. Rebecca Payne's mother. The one who had been bawled out and who had cracked up. And—so? What was he supposed to think about her? This Mrs. North was hard enough to understand when she was there, when you could hear her. Had he thought of Mrs. Coleman? He had other things to think about.

He was tempted to call Grogan back, to have him tell this Mrs. Payne that he'd wait to see her until morning. He reached toward the telephone and changed his mind. In the morning, first thing in the morning, he'd take that smart cooky up to Marathon—take him in handcuffs—and see what Lem Hunter said when he saw a man, not a picture of a man.

He stood up and put his light jacket on. He remembered he'd had nothing to eat, not for hours. He'd drive the long way around, loop Roosevelt Boulevard, and stop at Howard Johnson's for a hamburger and a glass of iced coffee. He'd cool off. Then he'd see what Mrs. Payne had to say for herself. It would be going through the motions. He had the man he wanted—would have him, the slick little shyster. Still …

10

Pam said, “Let's have a nightcap,” and Jerry looked at her in some surprise. The Norths are not night-cappers. “I,” Pam said, “am all keyed up.”

“You ought,” Jerry said, “to be sleepy. You've been up since the crack—”

He stopped with that, very suddenly. There was no point in reminding Pamela what she had been up since. He said, “Sure. We can both do with one,” and they went through the dining room—in which one couple and several waiters lingered; in which a waitress assiduously filled with water the already three-fourths full glasses of the two people who were keeping everybody up. They went down the short flight of stairs into the Penguin lounge, which was a quarter filled. Jerry, somewhat resolutely, did not look at the pictured penguins. They found a table, with their backs to penguins.

Dr. Upton was at the bar, with his back to them—at the bar alone, each line of his body speaking of his aloneness. He wore the dark suit which, almost as much as the attitude of his body, set him apart from the rest—from the men in white jackets and red jackets and, in some cases, lamentably plaid jackets. His fingers curved around a tall glass, but it seemed to Pam North that he had forgotten the glass. Why does he stay here? Pam thought. Surely they have done by now what—what has to be done. Surely there is nothing here for him to wait for.

“Crème de menthe frappé,” Pam said, on being asked. “Gin mist,” Jerry said and the waiter blinked. “Gin mist,” Jerry repeated, more firmly.

Mrs. Rebecca Payne, in a dark linen suit, stood at the head of the steps leading down to the lounge and looked around. Her black hair had been straight the day before; it curled now—impertinently curled, almost gayly curled. That and something—of course, Pam thought. Lipstick—applied with care—had changed the dark girl. “For heaven's sake,” Pam said softly, for Jerry's nearer ear. “Mrs. Payne,” she said, her voice not too much raised, but raised enough.

Rebecca Payne looked toward them. Pam beckoned. The dark girl hesitated; then she smiled; then she came down the few steps and across the room toward them. Jerry stood up.

“You're sure I won't be …” Rebecca Payne said and Jerry, sounding a little hearty to himself, said, “Of course we're sure,” and pulled the table from the wall. The dark girl sat beside Pam, and Jerry sat opposite. He wasn't at all sure. He wondered what Pam was up to. Lame dog over stile? Only now the “dog” didn't seem quite so—

“Had to get out of the maid's way,” Rebecca Payne said. “I'll have one of those,” she said, to the waiter, and pointed toward Pam's glass. “It's aggravating. The whole day to do it in, and my room not touched. Bed not made. No towels. Nothing. And dust all over everything.”

“Some sort of slip-up, probably,” Pam said. “Something happened to one of the maids and …” She let it trail off.

“I suppose that was all,” Rebecca Payne said. There was doubt in her voice. “But …” She shrugged her shoulders. “I'm sorry about yesterday,” she said. “Walking off that way. I was—I suppose really I was mad at myself. When you and Dr. Piersal had been so nice to—to ask me at all. I've been—well, worrying about it. It was so ungracious.”

Jerry felt faintly baffled. To have been—he assumed that was what the dark girl meant—worrying about abrupt departure from a tennis court when—well, in view of everything.

“It was nothing,” Pam said. “Not worth a second—”

“I know,” Rebecca said. “Oh, I do know. How—what the three of you must have thought of me. And how I—well, how I made too much of it. As if it were important. Or as if you and the doctor did give it a second thought. Only—” She stopped. “I'm tired,” she said. “You mustn't let me run on this way.”

Her drink came. She drank nervously of a mint frappé meant to be sipped.

“I make too much of things,” she said. “Of everything. You don't have to tell me.”

Jerry's feeling of bafflement did not diminish. Still, he thought, so much about so little. She had been abrupt at the tennis court. So, she had been abrupt at the tennis court. She was not, except by Pam's invitation to join them, being encouraged to “run on.” But to “run on” she was, Jerry thought, clearly determined.

There are, of course, people who must explain themselves, even to those whose interest is minimal. Explain themselves to themselves, with audience. There is a little of that in all of us, Jerry thought. Except, he qualified, in Pam. If you don't get Pam the first time—