The Wycherly Woman (22 page)

She moved through the people like a bright-headed shadow passing among shadows. Men’s eyes trailed her. Keeping my distance, I followed her to the newsstand and saw her buy a magazine with an anguished female face on the cover. She settled down on a bench with it, crossing her legs. She was wearing high-heeled shoes and stockings, and under her coat a low-cut black dress that looked like a party dress.

I bought a
Chronicle
and sat down on the far side of the newsstand. Ben Merriman’s picture, the same one he used on his blotters, was on the third page. The accompanying story told me nothing I didn’t already know. It concluded with a statement from Captain Lamar Royal of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office, to the effect that his department was co-operating closely with local law-enforcement agencies in tracking down the hoodlums responsible for the brutal killing, and arrests were expected momentarily.

I glanced over the edge of the paper at Jessie. She was reading her confession mag with avid intensity, as if it was telling her the story of her next ten years. The roar of planes taking off below the windows, the hubbub of passengers coming and going around her, made no impression on her. From time to time she looked up at the clock.

The minutes went by so slowly that time itself seemed to be running down. Jessie began to get restless. She looked up at the clock again, stood up and scanned the whole enormous room, sat down again tapping her toe on the floor. She fumbled a cigarette out of her coat pocket and inserted it between her lips.

A dark man in a form-fitting overcoat froze like a bird dog near her, looked at her feet and body, swarmed in on her with clicking lighter. She twitched her cigarette away from the flame. I didn’t catch the look she gave him, but it sent him scurrying. She lit her cigarette and went back to her magazine.

This time it failed to hold her. She consulted the clock four
or five times before she finished her cigarette. She threw down the butt and ground it under her shoe, standing up as she did so. She began to circle the newsstand, peering at all the waiting faces on the benches. I hid my face with the newspaper until she went by.

She returned to her place on the bench and put in some time crossing and recrossing her legs. The place was warm enough, but she looked cold. She wrapped her coat around her, plunging her hands in the pockets. She lay back stiffly with her head against the back of the bench and watched the clock like somebody on salary. The minutes were dribbling out as slowly as molasses in January.

It was an hour and a half since Stanley had telephoned her. We had been sitting in the terminal for over an hour. I’d read my way through the paper to the classified ads. An anonymous benefactor at a Grant Street address was offering the only authenticated photograph of Jesus Christ for sale or rent. I was so bored I felt like getting in touch with him.

I was on the point of approaching Jessie when she gave up. She threw a final furious glance at the clock, as if it had betrayed her, and took an elevator down to the ground floor. I caught up with her at the cab-rank outside:

“Don’t waste money on taxis, Jessie. I’ll drive you where you want to go.”

She backed away from me with her fist at her chin. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Waiting for Godot.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Tragicomic. Where do you want to go?”

She concentrated on this problem, slipping one knuckle in between her teeth. With a slight wrench, she removed it. “Back to the apartment, I guess. I was supposed to meet somebody. Their plane was delayed, I guess.”

“Is Godot travelling by plane these days?”

“Har dee har,” she said.

“My car’s parked on the other side. Do you want me to get the bags?”

“What bags?” She overacted, exaggerating her natural stupidity.

“The brown bag and the white bag you checked an hour ago. It looks as though you won’t be needing them.”

Her pentup anger burst out on me. She came up close to me shaking and whispering, calling me various names. “You’ve been spying on me.”

“A little. Give me the checks and I’ll go and collect the bags. You can wait in the car.”

“The hell I will.”

But when I gave her my arm she came along quietly. She was a girl who needed an arm, any arm. I made sure the key wasn’t in the ignition and left her sitting in the front seat while I reclaimed her baggage.

The bags were surprisingly light. Neither of them was locked. I opened them on a bench inside the entrance. The brown one held several men’s sports shirts, a dark blue suit on the verge of shabbiness, a set of the “trail clothes” affected by sports-car drivers: white ducks and black wool sweater; an electric razor, and a pair of military brushes in a pigskin case which had Stanley’s initials engraved on it in gold.

The other bag smelled of Jessie. Her meager wardrobe was wadded into it: sweaters and slacks and underwear with her initials on it, a couple of gaudy dresses, a little collection of toilet articles, a carton of cigarettes, and her typescript. It began: “I was always wild from the time my mother’s currant love siezed me in a passionate embrace on my twelfth birthday.” With my hands in the flotsam of her life, I was oddly relieved that the trip with Stanley hadn’t taken place. It would have been a trip to nowhere anyway.

I closed the bags and carried them out to my car. Jessie said when I got in:

“Stanley stood me up. I guess you figured that out for yourself.”

“Where were you supposed to be going?”

“Away, he said. That suited me. I’ve had enough of this place.” She looked around at the great lighted buildings.

“You were going to take a plane?”

“No, we were going to travel by oxcart. That’s why he told me to meet him at the airport.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“His store, maybe. I heard music behind him.”

“He could still be there.”

“Yeah.” Her voice brightened. “Maybe he got held up by something.”

I put the car in gear. Bayshore took us up in its rush and disgorged us in San Carlos a few minutes later. I drove across the town to the shopping center on Camino Real. The parking space around it was almost deserted. Not quite. Stanley’s red sports car was parked in front of his shop. There was a light inside, and the sound of music.

Jessie took hold of my shoulder with both hands. “You stay out of it. Please? Just set the suitcases out and blow. He’ll hit me again if he sees me with you.”

“I won’t let him.”

It sounded like a commitment, the way it came out. Her hands became more conscious of my shoulder; they lingered there with something like possessiveness. Her breast came up against me:

“You’re sort of sweet.”

“I always thought so.”

“Conceited, too,” she said indulgently.

She kissed me lightly. I think she was trying to nail me down just long enough to see if she still had Stanley. She climbed out of the car, and I handed her the suitcases. With one in each hand, like a German wife, she marched up to the front door of Stanley’s shop.

I heard the surge of music when she opened it. It was musical-comedy music, loud and insistently happy. I followed her in under cover of the music. It burbled out of the glass-walled listening room at the rear of the store.

Stanley was sitting in the glass room with his back to me. He was listening very intently to the music. I couldn’t see Jessie, but the two suitcases were standing outside the door of the cubicle. I took out my gun and approached the open door.

Jessie was down on her knees behind the door. She was picking up money like a red-headed chick in a corn bin. Hundred-dollar bills spilled from a black leather satchel onto the floor. Jessie was stuffing them into the pockets of her coat.

Stanley was paying no attention to her. He was sprawled in his chair with a bullet hole in his forehead, listening to the happy music with dead and dreamy eyes.

It was the perfect time for the law to arrive. It arrived.

A
BAD HOUR LATER
the case was all wrapped up and I was discussing it with Captain Royal on the second floor of the Hall of Justice and Records in Redwood City. The case was all wrapped up in wet tissue paper. I suggested this fact to Royal, more than once, but he was not impressed by my criticisms. My status in his clean, well-lighted office was somewhere between witness and suspect, veering towards the latter.

It was Captain Royal’s theory, to put it in the nutshell where it belonged, that Stanley Quillan had murdered Ben Merriman for the fifty thousand dollars, that Jessie Drake had murdered Stanley Quillan for the fifty thousand dollars, and that I had knowledge, probably guilty knowledge, of both crimes.

“This isn’t an open-and-shut case,” I told him for the second or third time. “Even if Quillan killed Merriman, which I very strongly doubt—”

“He very strongly doubts it,” Royal said to an invisible poltergeist beside his desk. To me he said: “Do you have evidence that you’re suppressing?”

“No,” I lied. “But I do know Quillan and Merriman were partners.”

“Thieves fall out. They both wanted the fifty grand. They both wanted the Drake woman. She admitted that herself.”

“But she also said she wanted no part of Merriman. She had her chance at Merriman and the money.”

“You believe that?” Royal gave me a pitying look and a smile which resembled a crack in granite.

“I believe it. In any case, she couldn’t have shot Quillan. I was at their apartment with her when he phoned from his store. Since then I’ve had her under constant surveillance.”

“So you tell me,” Royal said blandly.

“You can check it out. I’ll give you a complete account of her movements and you can match it with her story. That is, if you want to go to the trouble. I realize it’s a lot less trouble sitting here on your can think-talking.”

Royal’s granite smile didn’t change, but his eyes glinted like mica. “I’m a patient man. Don’t take advantage of it.”

“Or you’ll throw me in a cell along with Jessie Drake, no doubt.”

“A different cell,” he said equably, “on a different floor. How do you know it was Quillan who phoned the apartment?”

“I have no reason to doubt it.”

“He has no reason to doubt it,” Royal said to his poltergeist. “It could have been somebody else. Quillan was dead already, maybe, and maybe the redhead was using you for a patsy.”

“It’s possible,” I admitted against my will.

“There are other possibilities. I’m not throwing any of them out. Just how well do you know this Drake woman?”

“I met her today.”

“Pickup?”

“You can call it that if you want to.”

“I want to call it what it was. What was your business with her?”

“I had some questions to ask her about a case I’m on.”

He leaned across his desk in a confidential way. “Tell me about the case you’re on.”

“I prefer not to.”

“You have no preference in the matter, mister. You’re a private detective, not a lawyer, and you have no right of privilege. You’re obliged to co-operate with the properly constituted authorities. Me.”

“I’m obliged to answer questions in court. Your case against Jessie Drake will never get that far.”

“We’ll see.” The Captain’s face was very close to mine. I examined it with all the interest of a rock-hound who had just discovered a mineral specimen resembling human flesh. “Did you know she has a record?”

“I’ll lay odds it isn’t a violent one.”

“Narcotics and prostitution. They often lead to violence. In the long run they nearly always do.”

“Come off it, Captain. Jessie Drake didn’t shoot Quillan. He phoned the apartment while I was there. After that she was hardly out of my sight.”

“She was out of your sight long enough to shoot him, according to both your accounts.”

“When?”

“When she walked into his store.”

“I would have heard the shot.”

“Maybe.” Royal leaned back in his chair. “Deputy Snider said the music was turned up loud—it’s what attracted him to the scene. You have to admit Drake had an opportunity to shoot him. She certainly had a motive. All that money.”

“But no gun.”

“You were carrying a gun,” Royal said mildly.

“It hasn’t been fired since I had it out on the range three weeks ago Sunday. Incidentally, I want it back. I have a permit to carry it, and I need it in my business.”

“Sure you do. You’ll get it back when our ballistics men are through with it—provided that the tests turn out in your favor.”

“You know that gun wasn’t fired tonight.”

“Do I? You could have cleaned it and loaded it right there in the store.”

“I had no time.”

“So you tell me. I don’t know how long you were in there. I don’t know
you
. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about this case you say you’re on. Where did all those hundred-dollar bills come from?”

“I’ve been trying to find that out.” I was on shaky ground, and I decided to bolster it up with a little truth: “Merriman evidently made some kind of a deal.”

“With anyone you know?”

I avoided a direct answer. “I believe it was some kind of a real-estate deal involving several people. Have you been through his office records, the contents of his safe?”

“No. Have you?”

“I’m not in a position to get a search warrant.”

Royal got up cumbrously out of his chair. I stood up, too. He was taller than I was, broader, a little older, perhaps a little stupider. “What would you look for if you had a warrant to search Merriman’s office premises?”

“Whatever I found.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Not so very. You made an accusation which amounts to murder. You don’t believe in your lousy accusation. You’re simply trying to use it for leverage. I’m not playing.”

Royal shook his head at me in a disappointed way. “I don’t know how the people down South deal with people like you.
Maybe you got a pull in Southland enforcement circles. Up here you don’t have the pull of a broken elastic. Think about it.”

“I’ve thought about it. And I’m not playing. You can book me, or let me go.”