The Chill (26 page)

It was a hard question. I was spared having to answer it by a diversion. Two elderly ladies, one in serviceable black and one in fashionable green, looked in through the glass front door. They saw the waiting queue and turned away. The one in black was Mrs. Hoffman, Helen’s mother. The other was Luke Deloney’s widow.

I excused myself and went out after them. They had crossed the street in the middle of the block and were headed downtown, moving through light and shadow under the giant yuccas
that hedged the courthouse grounds. Though they seemed to keep up an incessant conversation, they walked together like strangers, out of step and out of sympathy. Mrs. Deloney was much the older, but she had a horsewoman’s stride. Mrs. Hoffman stubbed along on tired feet.

I stayed on the other side of the street and followed them at a distance. My heart was thudding. Mrs. Deloney’s arrival in California confirmed my belief that her husband’s murder and Helen’s were connected, and that she knew it.

They walked two blocks to the main street and went into the first restaurant they came to, a tourist trap with empty tables visible through its plate glass windows. There was an open-fronted cigar store diagonally across the street. I looked over its display of paperbacks, bought a pack of cigarettes, and smoked three or four which I lit at the old-fashioned gas flame, and eventually bought a book about ancient Greek philosophy. It had a chapter on Zeno which I read standing. The old ladies were a long time over lunch.

“Archer will never catch the old ladies,” I said.

The man behind the counter cupped his ear. “What was that?”

“I was thinking aloud.”

“It’s a free country. I like to talk to myself when I’m off work. In the store here it wouldn’t be appropriate.” He smiled over the word, and his gold teeth flashed like jewelry.

The old ladies came out of the restaurant and separated. Mrs. Hoffman limped south, toward her hotel. Mrs. Deloney strode in the opposite direction, moving rapidly now that she was unencumbered by her companion. From the distance you could have taken her for a young woman who had unaccountably bleached her hair white.

She turned off the main street in the direction of the courthouse, and halfway down the block disappeared into a modern concrete and glass building. “Law Offices of Stevens and Ogilvy,” said the brass sign beside the entrance. I walked on
to the next corner, sat on a bench at a bus stop, and read in my new book about Heraclitus. All things flow like a river, he said; nothing abides. Parmenides, on the other hand, believed that nothing ever changed, it only seemed to. Both views appealed to me.

A cab pulled up in front of the Stevens and Ogilvy office. Mrs. Deloney came out, and the cab took her away. I made a note of its license number before I went into the building.

It was a large office, and a working one. Typewriters were clacking in a row of cubicles behind the waiting room. A very junior attorney in a flannel suit was telling the middle-aged woman at the front desk how he wanted a brief set up on her typewriter.

He went away. Her steel-gray glance met mine, and we happened to smile at each other. She said:

“I was typing briefs when he was just a gleam in his daddy’s eye. Can I help you?”

“I’m very eager to see Mr. Gil Stevens. My name is Archer.”

She looked in her appointment book, and then at her watch. “Mr. Stevens is due for lunch in ten minutes. He won’t be coming back to the office today. I’m sorry.”

“It has to do with a murder case.”

“I see. I may be able to slip you in for five minutes if that will do any good.”

“It might.”

She talked to Stevens on the phone and waved me past the cubicles to an office at the end of the hall. It was large and sumptuous. Stevens sat on leather behind mahogany, flanked by a glass-faced cabinet of yachting trophies. He was lion-faced, with a big soft masterful mouth, a high brow overhung by broken wings of yellowish white hair, pale blue eyes that had seen everything at least once and were watching the second time around. He wore tweeds and a florid bow tie.

“Close the door behind you, Mr. Archer, and sit down.”

I parked myself on a leather settee and started to tell him what I was doing there. His heavy voice interrupted me:

“I have only a very few minutes. I know who you are, sir, and I believe I know what you have in mind. You want to discuss the McGee case with me.”

I threw him a curve: “And the Deloney case.”

His eyebrows went up, forcing the flesh above them into multiple corrugations. Sometimes you have to give away information on the chance of gaining other information. I told him what had happened to Luke Deloney.

He leaned forward in his chair. “You say this is connected in some way with the Haggerty murder?”

“It has to be. Helen Haggerty lived in Deloney’s apartment building. She said she knew a witness to Deloney’s murder.”

“Strange she didn’t mention it.” He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself about Mrs. Deloney. Then he remembered that I was there. “Why do you come to me with this?”

“I thought you’d be interested, since Mrs. Deloney is your client.”

“Is she?”

“I assumed she was.”

“You’re welcome to your assumptions. I suppose you followed her here.”

“I happened to see her come in. But I’ve wanted to get in touch with you for a couple of days.”

“Why?”

“You defended Tom McGee. His wife’s death was the second in a series of three related murders which started with Deloney and ended with Helen Haggerty. Now they’re trying to pin the Haggerty death on McGee or his daughter, or both of them. I believe McGee is innocent, and has been all along.”

“Twelve of his peers thought otherwise.”

“Why did they, Mr. Stevens?”

“I get no pleasure from discussing past mistakes.”

“This could be very relevant to the present. McGee’s daughter
admits she lied on the witness stand. She says she lied her father into prison.”

“Does she now? The admission comes a little belatedly. I should have borne down on her in cross, but McGee didn’t want me to. I made the mistake of respecting his wishes.”

“What was the motive behind them?”

“Who can say? Paternal love, perhaps, or his feeling that the child had been made to suffer enough. Ten years in prison is a big price to pay for such delicacies of feeling.”

“You’re convinced that McGee was innocent?”

“Oh, yes. The daughter’s admission that she was lying removes any possible doubt.” Stevens took a blotched green cigar out of a glass tube, clipped it and lit it. “I take it that is highly confidential advice.”

“On the contrary, I’d like to see it publicized. It might help to bring McGee in. He’s on the run, as you probably know.”

Stevens neither affirmed nor denied this. He sat like a mountain behind a blue haze of smoke.

“I’d like to ask him some questions,” I said.

‘What about’?”

“The other man, for one thing—the man Constance McGee was in love with. I understand he played some part in your case.”

“He was my hypothetical alternative.” Stevens’s face crumpled in a rueful smile. “But the judge wouldn’t let him in, except in my summing-up, unless I put McGee on the stand. Which didn’t seem advisable. That other man was a two-edged weapon. He was a motive for McGee, as well as an alternative suspect. I made the mistake of going for an outright acquittal.”

“I don’t quite follow.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s only history.” He waved his hand, and the smoke shifted around him like strata of time in an old man’s memory.

“Who was the other man?”

“Come now, Mr. Archer, you can’t expect to walk in off the street and pump me dry. I’ve been practicing law for forty years.”

“Why did you take McGee’s case?”

“Tom used to do some work on my boats. I rather liked him.”

“Aren’t you interested in clearing him?”

“Not at the expense of another innocent man.”

“You know who the other man is?”

“I know who he is, if Tom can be believed.” While he still sat solidly in his chair, he was withdrawing from me like a magician through dissolving mirrors. “I don’t divulge the secrets that come to me. I bury ’em, sir. That’s why they come to me.”

“It would be a hell of a thing if they put Tom back in San Quentin for the rest of his life, or gassed him.”

“It certainly would. But I suspect you’re trying to enlist me in your cause, rather than Tom’s.”

“We could certainly use you.”

“Who are we’?”

“McGee’s daughter Dolly and her husband Alex Kincaid, Jerry Marks and me.”

“And what
is
your cause?”

“The solution of those three murders.”

“You make it sound very simple and neat,” he said. “Life never is. Life always has loose ends, and it’s sometimes best to let them ravel out.”

“Is that what Mrs. Deloney wants?”

“I wasn’t speaking on behalf of Mrs. Deloney. I don’t expect to.” He worked a speck of tobacco onto the tip of his tongue, and spat it out.

“Did she come to you for information about the McGee case?”

“No comment.”

“That probably means yes. It’s a further indication that the McGee case and the Deloney killing are connected.”

“We won’t discuss it,” he said shortly. “As for your suggestion that I join forces with you, Jerry Marks had the same idea this morning. As I told him, I’ll think about it. In the meantime I want you and Jerry to think about something. Tom McGee and his daughter may be on opposite sides of this issue. They certainly were ten years ago.”

“She was a child then, manipulated by adults.”

“I know that.” He rose, bulking huge in his light tweed suit. “It’s been interesting talking to you but I’m overdue for a luncheon meeting.” He moved past me to the door, gesturing with his cigar. “Come along.”

I
WALKED DOWN
the main street to the Pacific Hotel and asked for Mrs. Hoffman. She had just checked out, leaving no forwarding address. The bellhop who handled her bag said she had ridden away in a taxi with another old lady wearing a green coat. I gave him five dollars and my motel address, and told him it would be worth another five to find out where they’d gone.

It was past two o’clock, and my instinct told me this was the crucial day. I felt cut off from what was happening in the private offices of the courthouse, in the shooting gallery and laboratory where the ballistics tests were being conducted, behind the locked door of the nursing home. Time was slipping away, flowing past me like Heraclitus’ river, while I was checking up on the vagaries of old ladies.

I went back to the telephone booths behind the hotel lobby
and called Godwin’s office. The doctor was with a patient, and wouldn’t be available until ten minutes to three. I tried Jerry Marks. His secretary told me he was still out.

I made a collect call to the Walters agency in Reno. Arnie answered the phone:

“Nice timing, Lew. I just got the word on your boy.”

“Which one? Bradshaw or Foley?”

“Both of them in a way. You wanted to know why Foley lost his job at the Solitaire Club. The answer is he used his position in the cashier’s cage to find out how much Bradshaw was worth.”

“How did he do that?”

“You know how the clubs check up on their customers when they open an account. They put in a query to the customer’s bank, get an approximate figure on his bank balance, and set a limit to his credit accordingly. ‘Low three’ means a three-figure bank balance on the low side, and maybe a limit of a couple of hundred. A ‘high four’ might be seven or eight thousand, and a ‘low five’ maybe twenty or thirty thousand. Which incidentally is Bradshaw’s bracket.”

“Is he a gambler?”

“He isn’t. That’s the point. He never opened an account at the Solitaire, or anywhere else that I know of, but Foley put in a query on him anyway. The club caught it, did a double check on Foley, and got him out of there fast.”

“It smells like possible blackmail, Arnie.”

“More than possible,” he said. “Foley admits to a bit of a record in that line.”

“What else does he admit?”

“Nothing else yet. He claims he got the information for a friend.”

“Helen Haggerty?”

“Foley isn’t saying. He’s holding back in the hope of making a deal.”

“Go ahead and deal with him. He got hurt worse than I did. I’m willing to drop charges.”

“It may not be necessary, Lew.”

“Deal with him. Assuming blackmail, which I do, the question is what makes Bradshaw blackmailable.”

“Could be his divorce,” Arnie said smoothly. “You were interested in what Bradshaw was doing in Reno between the middle of July and the end of August. The answer is on the court record. He was establishing residence for a divorce from a woman named Letitia O. Macready.”

“Letitia who?”

“Macready.” He spelled it out. “I haven’t been able to get any further information on the woman. According to the lawyer who handled the divorce, Bradshaw didn’t know where she lived. Her last known address was in Boston. The official notice of the proceedings came back from there with a ‘Gone—No Order’ stamp.”

“Is Bradshaw still at Tahoe?”

“He and his new wife checked out this morning. They were on their way back to Pacific Point. That makes him your baby.”

“Baby isn’t quite the word for Bradshaw. I wonder if his mother knows about the first marriage.”

“You could always ask her.”

I decided to try and talk to Bradshaw first. I got my car out of the courthouse lot and drove out to the college. The students on the mall and in the corridors, particularly the girls, wore subdued expressions. The threat of death and judgment had invaded the campus. I felt a little like its representative.

The blonde secretary in the Dean’s outer office looked tense, as if only her will was holding her, and the whole institution, together.

“Dean Bradshaw isn’t in”

“Not back from the weekend yet?”

“Of course he’s back.” She added in a defensive tone: “Dean Bradshaw was here this morning for over an hour.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. I guess he went home.”