Edge of Panic Page 7

  “What?”

  “He saw her standing at a window—the adjustment window. There—down there, at the travel agency.”

  “Oh, no—”

  “He fought through, but she was gone. He chased her, found her outside, turned her to him—of course, it wasn’t she. Then there were others, he saw others—do you understand, Alice?”

  “No, no, no.”

  “That’s when he knew there was something wrong with him. That’s when he came here, walking through the rain, wet all through.”

  She shook her head. “No. No. John—it’s Harry, our Harry. He’s not—I know him, I know his mind. I’ve lived with him for six years. I know him, all of him, what’s inside, everything, what he’s made of. He couldn’t—it’s wrong. It’s mixed up.”

  “Take it easy, girl.”

  He went to the bedroom, looked in on Harry, came back. He took his pipe off the desk, re-lit it. She hadn’t moved, hands linked, knees tight.

  He sat in the big chair near the coffee table. “Ethically, as a lawyer, it’s censurable holding him overnight. I’ll take that chance. Maybe, as you say, we’re all wrong. I hope so. You’ll find out, I’m sure. The fact that you’re down there, inquiring, will, of course, inform them that you know about it, and, most probably, that you know where he is. For a while, I’m sure, they’ll work with you, hoping that you’ll lead them to him. If there is anything you think I should know—I’ll be here.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost eleven-thirty.”

  She stood up, looked in a mirror, touched her hands to her hair. She went into the bedroom, leaving the door open. She put her hand on his face, lightly. He turned, groaned. She went out, closing the door.

  “Will you get my coat, please?”

  He brought her coat.

  “Thanks, John, so far, for everything. Be careful with him.”

  “I’m sorry. This whole damn business—I’m trying to be tough, and hard, and sensible—I hate it—I wish—”

  “I know.” She took his hand, lifted it, kissed it quickly. Then she buttoned her coat, thrust both hands into the pockets, turned her face up to him, shoulders stiff. “I can’t accept it. I won’t accept it unless I’m forced to, unless it’s proven to me, unless there’s absolutely nothing else to think. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “All we have is his story. Even if we do accept it, there are blanks. He didn’t say he killed her. Did he? Did he?”

  “No. He didn’t say he killed her.”

  “He said they fought—then he passed out. When he came to, she was dead.”

  “Alice, we mustn’t kid ourselves—for his sake—we must be prepared—”

  “There’s a blank. There’s a possibility. I won’t believe that Harry murdered anybody unless there is nothing else to believe. I won’t believe it until I’m compelled to. I won’t believe it then—”

  “I hope—from the bottom of my heart—” He smiled, for the first time, leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I hope you can come up with something. Anything—anything at all, any little chink, any possibility—let me know, and we’ll work it out. In the meantime, at least for now, don’t worry about him. I’ll be with him every minute.”

  She went down the stairs slowly, out into the night, wind blowing rain in gusts, the streets empty. She started the car, switched on the lights, drove south on Madison. The wipers beat clumsily, steam fogged the windows. Her head ached and her throat was full. She sighed once, sobbed, reached for her bag which she had left on the seat. She heard the long rising blare of a siren, screaming in the rain, muted by the closed windows. She thought, for an instant, it was an ambulance, glancing up at the mirror. A black car cut in front of her. She twisted the wheel, swerving, pushing her foot for the brake, feeling the jar as the car jumped the curb, stopping askew. A man opened her door. “Out,” he said. “Out, lady.” He had a gun in his hand. “Hurry up. Out.”

  She got out, holding her coat tight at the neck. “What is it? What—?”

  Another man thrust a flashlight into the car. “Nothing,” he called. “Except her pocketbook.”

  “Okay, lady. You get in first. I’ll take the wheel.”

  “Now, just a—”

  “It’s cops, lady.” He took a leather wallet from his coat pocket, broke it open with his left hand, showed her the badge. “Please get in.”

  She climbed in, pushing past the steering-wheel to the far corner. He got in beside her, slamming the door. The door on her side opened. The other man dropped her bag into her lap. “No weapon, sir.”

  “All right,” the man beside her said. “We’re cluttering the road, Mac. I’ll straighten out this heap. You get ours lined up. Then come on back in here.”

  The car had stalled. He started it, backed off the sidewalk, back up for more room, swung it parallel to the curb, turned off the key. The other car moved up in front of it. The man came out, ran through the rain, got in back, panting. The man in front said, “I’ll put the pistol away. Okay, lady?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He opened his jacket; she could see the strap-holster. He put the gun away, sighed noisily, pushed back his hat. “What’s your name?”

  “Why? I mean—”

  “Like this, lady. There’s a call out for a car with this license number. A call out of Homicide. Only, it’s a man they’re interested in. So we chop-chop a couple seconds, then we go downtown. What’s your name?”

  “Alice Martin.”

  “Any relation to one Harry A. Martin?”

  “I’m his wife.”

  “Swell. You heading somewhere in particular, Mrs. Martin?”

  “I was going to Police Headquarters.”

  “You hear that, Mac?”

  “I hear,” Mac said.

  “Were you really, lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. So now you got a chauffeur. Okay, lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “Swell.” He turned the key, started the car. “Just so there won’t be no funny business, you know, like the lady grabbing at the wheel, or making with dirty words, or something—you stay with us, Mac. When it’s murder, it’s important. That’s the way they taught me. Our heap shut up, Mac?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Run out and close it. Hurry up, huh?”

  He came back and they rolled, driving quickly through the wet streets, not stopping for lights. Once the man in front said, “Any idea where your husband might be, lady?” She didn’t answer. Nobody else said anything. The man in back smoked cigarettes, coughing slightly. They went down Fourth Avenue, to Lafayette, to Centre Street, driving in through the enclosure to Police Headquarters. He pulled up the brake, twisted the key, took her pocketbook from her lap, went around to her side, opened the door. “Let’s go, lady.”

  They went into the building, one on each side of her. In the elevator the man, Mac, said, “Homicide. Brophy in?”

  “Ain’t he always?”

  They led her down a corridor, knocked on a door.

  “Come in.”

  It was the barest room she had ever seen. There was an oak bench and four oak chairs and an oak desk with nothing on it except an ash tray and a telephone and an inter-office enunciator. There was a man slumped deep in a swivel chair behind the desk, his back to them, seemingly staring out of the curtainless window. His neck was thick, wrinkled, white, rising out of wide hunched shoulders, one crease running across the nape.

  “Captain Brophy,” the man with the pocketbook said.

  He didn’t turn around. The crease in his neck deepened.

  “Hello, Phil. What have you got?”

  “We got here Mrs. Alice Martin, wife of Harry Martin. We picked her up in the car that flash was sent out on. There was nothing in the car, except her and this pocketbook here. When we asked her, she said she was on her way down to Headquarters. That’s what she said. She didn’t say anything else. The car’s downstairs.”

  “Where’s yours?”

/>   “We left it uptown, where we picked her up, Twenty-Fourth and Madison. I figured we’d stay with her, the two of us, just in case.”

  “Good enough. How you, Mac?”

  “Very well, sir.”

  He hadn’t turned around. He didn’t move. The crease in his neck remained the same rigid scrawl. “Thank you, boys. Go back to work. Stop in at radio, and get that call off the air. Have somebody give that car a going over. Thank you.”

  They started to go.

  “Phil,” he called. “Maybe you ought to leave that pocketbook here, huh?”

  Phil glanced at Mac, smiled sheepishly, looked at the pocketbook in his hand, brought it to the desk, said, “Sorry, sir,” left it on the desk, saluted, turned, and went out with Mac. She remained where she was, standing in the middle of the room, the tick of a pulse scratching at her throat, frightened, witless, thinking importantly of the absurdity of a man saluting the motionless back of another man, concentrating on that, and on the man in the chair, and wondering what it was—

  He had no hair, that was it. His big head was tightly bald, round and smooth, merging with the thick neck, ears flared. He turned suddenly, swinging around in the chair, grinning with small ridged teeth. He stood up, kicking back the swivel chair, bowed stiffly, curtly, his arms straight at his sides. He came out from behind the desk, the grin going away, his face drooping in many folds. He was very old, an immense man, fat in shapeless clothes. Now he smiled again, the blue pebbles of his eyes receding into the sandy fat seamed face. He had a small red mouth and a sweet, almost effeminate smile.

  “Not bad, eh?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “It’s effective, when I get a customer. Knocks them off balance. Nothing to it. Got a piece of sky fronting my window. At night, simple, it’s a mirror, a black mirror, even the rain doesn’t interfere. So, when I get a chance, I sit like that, backward to the audience. It wows them. Won’t you sit down, ma’am?”

  She didn’t move. He turned from her to the desk, opened the pocketbook, dumped its contents. He looked into the bag, scraped a hand around it, put it aside. He looked at each object on the desk. He read her driver’s license. He looked into her wallet, counted her money, touched everything. Then he put it all back, carefully, picked up her handkerchief, smelled it, turned his head to her, lifting his eyebrows, smiled, put it into the bag. He closed the bag and brought it to her.

  “Please be seated, ma’am.”

  He took her arm, leading her to the chair nearest the desk. He moved it closer, waiting above her until she sat. “There,” he said. “That’s better.” He went around to the swivel chair, sitting, his hands loose on his great stomach. “The man said you were on your way down here. Fact?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Please don’t call me Captain.” He had a mild, monotonous, soft voice. “I don’t like titles. I don’t like a pharmacist being called Doc. I don’t like a two-week magistrate being called Judge. I don’t like walking up to some broken-down blue-blooded bum and calling him Prince. To me, it’s mister. Good enough for me. In the Department, well—it’s a form of discipline. Call it a quirk. Let’s call it a quirk, huh? I’m an old man. I’m entitled to my quirks. The name’s Brophy. All right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Brophy.”

  “Fine. Were you?”

  “What?”

  “On your way down here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She moved back in the chair. She crossed her legs. She rubbed her hands together. She remembered, for a moment, the bunched sleeping figure in the maroon bathrobe on the bed. “I—I heard there was some trouble. That my husband might be involved—”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I didn’t believe, I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know—until those men picked me up. I don’t know, sir, I don’t know.” She opened her bag, covered her eyes with her handkerchief.

  He waited until she looked up. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He sighed. “Mrs. Martin, I’ve been around a long time. Forty-four years, I’ve been with Homicide. I want to retire. They won’t let me. They keep appealing to me. They like the way I work, what I’ve produced over the years. So I stick around. I don’t like it, I never liked it, but it’s my business. Please don’t make it tougher for me. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know he murdered a woman?”

  “I—No, no, no.”

  “Would you like to see her?”

  “See her?”

  “Would you like to see her?”

  She sat up high in the chair, her head moving forward, swallowing, a vein showing in her neck. “Yes, Yes, I would.”

  “Can you take it?”

  “Yes—if you please—yes.”

  “All right.” He touched the key on the inter-office communicator. “Send in Carlin.” He clicked it off. “The purpose,” he said, “is to soften you up. It’s a method. I don’t like to do it to you, but it’s a method.”

  A young man in uniform knocked, came in, saluted.

  Brophy said, “I’d like this lady to see my new case, huh? Joyce Anderson.”

  “Joyce Anderson, Captain?”

  “Don’t you hear good?”

  “Sorry, sir.” He stood up tall, saluted again, said, “Please come with me, lady.”

  Brophy watched them go, sighed, shoved back out of the chair. He leaned his forehead against the window and looked out on the rain.

  She came back, stiff-kneed and slowly, her mouth moving, her hands limp, leaning on the young man who held her elbow. He led her to the chair by the desk, saw her sit, unbent, saluted.

  Brophy said, “Thanks, Carlin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brophy waited until he went out, tilting the swivel chair, up and back, rocking. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You asked for it.”

  She looked up at him, her mouth slack, shaking her head as though she were saying no, unable to control the muscles in her neck. “He didn’t—” she said. “He couldn’t—”

  He pulled open the deep bottom desk drawer. He put a bottle of brandy on the desk and two tumblers. “Say when, ma’am.” He poured. She didn’t speak. He filled a fifth of the glass, reached over and handed it to her. “Please drink it.” She took it automatically, drank it all, quickly.

  “It’s not exactly the way to drink brandy,” Brophy said. “And damn good brandy, at that. Right now, I suppose, it’s proper.” He smiled his sweet sad smile, gurgled brandy into his glass, almost to the top. “Would you like another, ma’am?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Say when.”

  He poured and she stopped him, lifting her hand. He gave it to her and she gulped it.

  “Where is he?” Brophy said.

  She looked at him, directly into the small blue tired eyes, as he sipped brandy from the tumbler, savoring, wet lip rubbing wet lip, sipping.

  “How do you know, sir—who she is? I mean that that is who it is. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.”

  “How, sir?”

  “Did you see the incisions on her stomach?”

  “No, no.” Her eyes moved wildly to the glass. He added more brandy and she swallowed it in a jolt, her hand trembling as she put the glass back on the desk.

  “She was operated upon twice last year. Three incisions on her stomach. There is also a small scar on her left arm from an old automobile accident and her bridgework was retrieved from the mess of her face, smashed but identified. We had the surgeon in and we had the dentist. Brophy’s an old hand, Mrs. Martin, and Brophy’s thorough. There is no doubt it is Joyce Anderson, no doubt at all. The formal over-all identification was made by her brother.”

  “Brother?”

  “Brother, and sole heir, but don’t start getting ideas. There are no ideas in this one. The guy is clean as a whistle. He’s been in Washington all day, which is fully corroborated, no questio
n. Fact is, we met his plane, maybe an hour ago.”

  “Brother—could he tell you—?”

  “He couldn’t tell us a thing we didn’t know. Right now, at our request, he’s back where he belongs, at a night club he owns, the Casa Rouge, available if we need him. Anything else you’d like to know? Brophy’s a patient man.”

  “No.”

  “Where is he, Mrs. Martin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Now, look.” He drank most of the brandy in the tumbler, set the glass down on the desk with a bang, stood up and came out to her. “You say you were on your way down here because you’d heard there was trouble. All right, let’s get down to cases. There’s nobody knows about this trouble, except the people involved—the police, the family, which consists of her brother, and the guy that done it—Harry Martin. Not even the newspapers. We hoped to clean it up tonight, present a solved case to the public in the morning. It’s better like that. All right, when did he tell you?”

  “He called me.”

  “Where?”

  “At home. He called me, and he told me. He had a business appointment with her for five o’clock. When he came there, he found her like that. He had nothing to do with it.”

  He made a despairing sucking sound, cheek against gums, a corner of his mouth raised and crooked. “I see. A man finds a dead woman at five o’clock. He has nothing to do with it. So he doesn’t call the police, he calls his wife, and she shows up six and a half hours later. Good, isn’t it?”

  Silently she pushed up out of the chair. He touched her shoulder and she sat back.

  “He calls on her at five o’clock to keep a business appointment. So she gets up, dead, her face mashed into little pieces. She opens the door for him, and then she goes back and stretches out in a bloody bedroom—”

  “Stop it. Please stop it.”

  “When did he tell you, Mrs. Martin? And what did he tell you?”

  “He called me. He told me he wouldn’t be home. He told me he had had trouble, with a woman, Joyce Anderson. He didn’t tell me what. I knew it was bad, from the way he sounded. It was bad. He wasn’t coming home. I decided to come here, and ask, and try to find out—somehow—without involving him.”

  “When did he call?”