The Thin Man (21 page)

“There’s nothing like a little logic-sticking to ward off insomnia. It’s like—”

“Don’t be so damned patronizing. Your performance so far has been a little less than dazzling.”

“I didn’t mean no harm,” I said and kissed her. “That a new dress?”

“Ah! Changing the subject, you coward.”

I went to see Guild early in the afternoon and went to work on him as soon as we had shaken hands. “I didn’t bring my lawyer along. I thought it looked better if I came by myself.”

He wrinkled his forehead and shook his head as if I had hurt him. “Now it was nothing like that,” he said patiently.

“It was too much like that.”

He sighed. “I wouldn’t’ve thought you’d make the mistake that a lot of people make thinking just because we— You know we got to look at every angle, Mr. Charles.”

“That sounds familiar. Well, what do you want to know?”

“All I want to know is who killed her—and him.”

“Try asking Gilbert,” I suggested.

Guild pursed his lips. “Why him exactly?”

“He told his sister he knew who did it, told her he got it from Wynant.”

“You mean he’s been seeing the old man?”

“So she says he said. I haven’t had a chance to ask him about it.”

He squinted his watery eyes at me. “Just what is that layout over there, Mr. Charles?”

“The Jorgensen family? You probably know as much about it as I do.”

“I don’t,” he said, “and that’s a fact. I just can’t size them up at all. This Mrs. Jorgensen, now, what is she?”

“A blonde.”

He nodded gloomily. “Uh-huh, and that’s all I know. But look, you’ve known them a long time and from what she says you and her—”

“And me and her daughter,” I said, “and me and Julia Wolf and me and Mrs. Astor. I’m hell with the women.”

He held up a hand. “I’m not saying I believe everything she says, and there’s nothing to get sore about. You’re taking the wrong attitude, if you don’t mind me saying it. You’re acting like you thought we were out to get you, and that’s all wrong, absolutely all wrong.”

“Maybe, but you’ve been talking double to me ever since last—”

He looked at me with steady pale eyes and said calmly: “I’m a copper and I got my work to do.”

“That’s reasonable enough. You told me to come in today. What do you want?”

“I didn’t tell you to come in, I asked you.”

“All right. What do you want?”

“I don’t want this,” he said. “I don’t want anything like this. We’ve been talking man to man up to this time and I’d kind of like to go on thataway.”

“You made the change.”

“I don’t think that’s a fact. Look here, Mr. Charles, would you take your oath, or even just tell me straight out, that you’ve been emptying your pockets to me right along?”

There was no use saying yes—he would not have believed me. I said: “Practically.”

“Practically, yes,” he grumbled. “Everybody’s been telling me practically the whole truth. What I want’s some impractical son of a gun that’ll shoot the works.”

I could sympathize with him: I knew how he felt. I said: “Maybe nobody you’ve found knows the whole truth.”

He made an unpleasant face. “That’s very likely, ain’t it? Listen, Mr. Charles, I’ve talked to everybody I could find. If you can find any more for me, I’ll talk to them too. You mean Wynant? Don’t you suppose we got every facility the department’s got working night and day trying to turn him up?”

“There’s his son,” I suggested.

“There’s his son,” he agreed. He called in Andy and a swarthy bow-legged man named Kline. “Get me that Wynant kid—the punk—I want to talk to him.” They went out. He said: “See, I want people to talk to.”

I said: “Your nerves are in pretty bad shape this afternoon, aren’t they? Are you bringing Jorgensen down from Boston?”

He shrugged his big shoulders. “His story listens all right to me. I don’t know. Want to tell me what you think of it?”

“Sure.”

“I’m kind of jumpy this afternoon, for a fact,” he said. “I didn’t get a single solitary wink of sleep last night. It’s a hell of a life. I don’t know why I stick at it. A fellow can get a piece of land and some wire fencing and a few head of silver fox and— Well, anyways, when you people scared Jorgensen off back in ’25, he says he lit out for Germany, leaving his wife in the lurch—though he don’t say much about that—and changing his name to give you more trouble finding him, and on the same account he’s afraid to work at his regular job—he calls himself some kind of a technician or something—so pickings are kind of slim. He says he worked at one thing and another, whatever he could get, but near as I can figure out he was mostly gigoloing, if you know what I mean, and not finding too many heavy-money dames. Well, along about ’27 or ’28 he’s in Milan—that’s a city in Italy—and he sees in the Paris
Herald
where this Mimi, recently divorced wife of Clyde Miller Wynant, has arrived in Paris. He don’t know her personally and she don’t know him, but he knows she’s a dizzy blonde that likes men and fun and hasn’t got much sense. He figures a bunch of Wynant’s dough must’ve
come to her with the divorce and, the way he looks at it, any of it he could take away from her wouldn’t be any more than what Wynant had gypped him out of—he’d only be getting some of what belonged to him. So he scrapes up the fare to Paris and goes up there. All right so far?”

“Sounds all right.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, he don’t have any trouble getting to know her in Paris—either picking her up or getting somebody to introduce him or whatever happened—and the rest of it’s just as easy. She goes for him in a big way—bing, according to him—right off the bat, and the first thing you know she’s one jump ahead of him, she’s thinking about marrying him. Naturally he don’t try to talk her out of that. She’d gotten a lump sum—two hundred thousand berries, by God!—out of Wynant instead of alimony, so her marrying again wasn’t stopping any payments, and it’ll put him right in the middle of the cash-drawer. So they do it. According to him, it was a trick marriage up in some mountains he says are between Spain and France and was done by a Spanish priest on what was really French soil, which don’t make it legal, but I figure he’s just trying to discourage a bigamy rap. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other. The point is he got his hands on the dough and kept them on it till there wasn’t any more dough. And all this time, understand, he says she didn’t know he was anybody but Christian Jorgensen, a fellow she met in Paris, and still didn’t know it up to the time we grabbed him in Boston. Still sound all right?”

“Still sounds all right,” I said, “except, as you say, about the marriage, and even that could be all right.”

“Uh-huh, and what difference does it make anyways? So comes the winter and the bank-roll’s getting skinny and he’s getting ready to take a run-out on her with the last of it, and then she says maybe they could come back to America and tap Wynant for some more. He thinks that’s fair enough if it can be done, and she thinks it can be done, so they get on a boat and—”

“That story cracks a little there,” I said.

“What makes you think so? He’s not figuring on going to
Boston, where he knows his first wife is, and he’s figuring on keeping out of the way of the few people that know him, including especially Wynant, and somebody’s told him there’s a statute of limitation making everything just lovely after seven years. He don’t figure he’s running much risk. They ain’t even going to stay here long.”

“I still don’t like that part of his story,” I insisted, “but go ahead.”

“Well, the second day he’s here—while they’re still trying to find Wynant—he gets a bad break. He runs into a friend of his first wife’s—this Olga Fenton—on the street and she recognizes him. He tries to talk her out of tipping off the first wife and does manage to stall her along a couple days with a moving-picture story he makes up—what an imagination that guy’s got!—but he don’t fool her long, and she goes to her parson and tells him about it and asks him what she ought to do and he says she ought to tell the first wife, and so she does, and the next time she sees Jorgensen she tells him what she’d done, and he lights out for Boston to try to keep his wife from kicking up trouble and we pick him up there.”

“How about his visit to the hock-shop?” I asked.

“That was part of it. He says there was a train for Boston leaving in a few minutes and he didn’t have any dough with him and didn’t have time to go home for some—besides not being anxious to face the second wife till he had the first one quieted down—and the banks were closed, so he soaked his watch. It checks up.”

“Did you see the watch?”

“I can. Why?”

“I was wondering. You don’t think it was once on the other end of that piece of chain Mimi turned over to you?”

He sat up straight. “By God!” Then he squinted at me suspiciously and asked: “Do you know anything about it or are you—”

“No. I was just wondering. What does he say about the murders now? Who does he think did them?”

“Wynant. He admits for a while he thought Mimi might’ve, but he says she convinced him different. He claims she wouldn’t tell him what she had on Wynant. He might be just trying to cover
himself up on that. I don’t guess there’s any doubt about them meaning to use it to shake him down for that money they wanted.”

“Then you don’t think she planted the knife and chain?”

Guild pulled down the ends of his mouth. “She could’ve planted them to shake him down with. What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s a little complicated for a fellow like me,” I said. “Find out if Face Peppler’s still in the Ohio pen?”

“Uh-huh. He gets out next week. That accounts for the diamond ring. He had a pal of his on the outside send it to her for him. Seems they were planning to get married and go straight together after he got out, or some such. Anyways, the warden says he saw letters passing between them reading like that. This Peppier won’t tell the warden that he knows anything that’ll help us, and the warden don’t call to mind anything that was in their letters that’s any good to us. Of course, even this much helps some, with the motive. Say Wynant’s jealous and she’s wearing this other guy’s ring and getting ready to go away with him. That’ll—” He broke off to answer his telephone. “Yes,” he said into it. “Yes…. What? … Sure…. Sure, but leave somebody there…. That’s right.” He pushed the telephone aside. “Another bum steer on that West Twenty-ninth Street killing yesterday.”

“Oh,” I said, “I thought I heard Wynant’s name. You know how some telephone voices carry.”

He blushed, cleared his throat. “Maybe something sounded like it—
why not,
I guess. Uh-huh, that could sound like it—
why not.
I almost forgot: we looked up that fellow Sparrow for you.”

“What’d you find out?”

“It looks like there’s nothing there for us. His name’s Jim Brophy. It figures out that he was making a play for that girl of Nunheim’s and she was sore at you and he was just drunk enough to think he could put himself in solid with her by taking a poke at you.”

“A nice idea,” I said. “I hope you didn’t make any trouble for Studsy.”

“A friend of yours? He’s an ex-con, you know, with a record as long as your arm.”

“Sure. I sent him over once.” I started to gather up my hat and overcoat. “You’re busy. I’ll run along and—”

“No, no,” he said. “Stick around if you got the time. I got a couple things coming in that’ll maybe interest you, and you can give me a hand with that Wynant kid, too, maybe.” I sat down again.

“Maybe you’d like a drink,” he suggested, opening a drawer of his desk, but I had never had much luck with policemen’s liquor, so I said: “No, thanks.”

His telephone rang again and he said into it: “Yes…. Yes…. That’s all right. Come on in.” This time no words leaked out to me.

He rocked back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. “Listen, I’m on the level about that silver fox farming and I want to ask you what you think of California for a place.”

I was trying to decide whether to tell him about the lion and ostrich farms in the lower part of the state when the door opened and a fat red-haired man brought Gilbert Wynant in. One of Gilbert’s eyes was completely shut by swollen flesh around it and his left knee showed through a tear in his pants-leg.