Authors: Hugh Pentecost
“ ‘I’d like it fine,’ I said, ‘if I’m qualified. But surely you have some old-line firm taking care of you.’
“ ‘They’ve been stealing me blind,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’d steal from me, Madison. Do you know why? It would be bad public relations for the Negro cause.’
“ ‘Maybe you are a stinker,’ I said, not really hurt because she was trying to be honest.
“ ‘It crossed my mind that that’s why I want you to take the job,’ she said. ‘I had to tell you. I hope I want you because I’m impressed with you as a human being.’
“So that’s how I came to be her lawyer,” Madison concluded. “She’s come to New York three or four times in the two years I’ve worked for her. Our relationship has been strictly business, with a pleasant overlay of sociability. I’ve done a good job for her. She’s repaid me by trusting me. Do you know what she said when I walked in on her yesterday afternoon? ‘It was the luckiest day of my life when I hired you, Madison. Now that I’m in a real jam I know that I have someone I can trust to help me! There’s no one else, Madison. No one!’ ”
“That seems to make it clear why Teague is so anxious to get you out of the picture,” Chambrun said. “I think we must make certain that doesn’t happen.”
The Law which descended on us moments later wasn’t represented by Lieutenant Hardy. His job was homicide, and he was up to his neck in it. John Naylor, the assistant D. A., led the charge, along with a captain named Pritchard from the local precinct house, and Mr. Wallace Harmon, Teague’s lawyer friend.
Naylor, as I’ve said, was bald as an egg, with a hard, perpetually angry face, and bright-black little shoebutton eyes. You hated him on sight, but I knew he was a good man at his job. Pritchard was one of those cops who would play it very tough with the helpless, and very cagey with the influential. His paunch suggested he was getting near the retirement age, and I had a feeling he didn’t want to make any mistakes. Harmon was tall, skinny, and perpetually in need of leaning against something. He was, I thought, deceptively genial to everyone.
“This isn’t my job,” Naylor said, in a harsh, impatient voice after he’d introduced Harmon and Pritchard all around. “Miss Towers has preferred rape charges against you, Madison. Captain Pritchard will take you down to the precinct house and book you, and being a lawyer, you’ll know what the next steps are.”
“A question,” Chambrun said, in a cold voice. “What is Mr. Harmon doing here?”
“He’s Miss Towers’ attorney,” Naylor said.
“You got yourself in a peck of trouble, boy,” Harmon said to Madison.
I felt the small hairs rise on the back of my neck. The lawyer spoke with a slow Southern drawl.
“He seems an ideal choice,” Chambrun said. “But before you go any further with this, Naylor, I think you should know exactly where you stand.”
“I don’t stand anywhere,” Naylor said. “My only interest in this is that Miss Standing refuses to cooperate with me and Hardy without advice of counsel. Mr. Madison is her counsel. If he’s unable to act for her, Mr. Harmon assures me that he will be her representative.”
“I don’t see any reason why Madison won’t be able to act for Miss Standing,” Chambrun said. “He’ll be out on bail in a short time.”
“It’ll be high bail, Mr. Chambrun,” Harmon said, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t imagine any ordinary bail bondsman will want to risk it. Black man and white girl.”
“I, personally, will make sure of the bail,” Chambrun said. “Do you care to know why I interest myself in this, Mr. Harmon?”
“It would interest me quite a lot,” Harmon said.
“Because the charge against Madison is a fake and a fraud. We used to call it the badger game in the old days.”
“That’s a pretty serious charge,” Harmon said.
“You bet it is,” Chambrun said, briskly. “In the end, Miss Towers will be faced with charges of false arrest, perjury, and God knows what else. I promise you I’ll press it to the limit because she used my hotel as a base of operations.”
“You have to be kidding,” Harmon said. “You take this colored man’s word against Miss Towers’?”
“Yes, sir,” Chambrun said. “Since eight o’clock this morning, Miss Towers’ phone has been monitored—along with Teague’s, Maxwell’s, and Delaney’s. I know, for instance, exactly when you were called this morning, Harmon. I know exactly what took place on each phone call made to and from Miss Towers’ room.”
The lawyer’s face was suddenly an unreadable mask. “It’s strictly illegal—this monitoring,” he said.
“I think not,” Chambrun said. “There’s a murderer loose in this hotel. Lieutenant Hardy asked for the full cooperation of my staff. It seemed that Miss Towers and her friends were in danger. We had to try to stay one step ahead—to protect them. We hadn’t anticipated
they
would be found guilty of anything.” He smiled.
“And what do you think you have that proves Miss Towers is lying?” Harmon asked.
“That, Mr. Harmon, you will discover when you bring charges against Mr. Madison.”
Boy, what a bluff! He had absolutely nothing. But Harmon was clearly hooked. You could almost see the wheels going round in his head. He was asking himself what kind of indiscretion Bobby Towers had committed. Had she talked to Teague, or Delaney, or Maxwell about the frameup, on the phone? I knew she hadn’t, but he didn’t.
“I simply don’t believe it,” Harmon said, but it was a mechanical statement. He turned the mask on Captain Pritchard. “Under the circumstances, I think I should have a chat with my client, Captain, before you make the actual arrest. I don’t imagine Mr. Madison can give us the slip. He’s pretty well known.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Madison said. “I’ll be right here, protecting the interests of Miss Standing.”
Harmon gave each of us, except Madison, a courtly little bow, and left. Pritchard, looking relieved, followed him out.
Naylor let out his breath like a whale coming up for air. “I didn’t like the smell of it from the start,” he said. “This Teague bunch are just plain hell.”
Madison was blotting at his face with a handkerchief. “Why didn’t you tell me from the start you had proof?” he asked Chambrun.
“Because I don’t,” Chambrun said cheerfully. “The Towers girl told a small lie on the phone when she said to Atterbury that your office had told her you were here at the hotel. Your office hadn’t told her anything because she hadn’t made an out call. But there was nothing else. Harmon’s faith in his client is rather touching, though, don’t you think?”
For the first time since I’d known him I saw Naylor laugh. It was so nearly uncontrollable that he had to get himself a drink of water to stop it.
T
HE DAY MOVED ON.
In midafternoon a report from ballistics showed that the same gun had been used to kill Slade and Jerningham. But there was no trace of the gun itself. Hardy was going round in circles. He could work up a motive for Doris. He could work up a motive for Gary Craig. He could place Doris at the scene of Slade’s murder, but that was all. She couldn’t be positively placed on the tenth floor at Jerningham’s door. Craig couldn’t positively be placed on either scene. It was possible for either or both of them to have been at both places, but not provable. Under our system Hardy had to do the proving, not the suspects. Without the gun he had no way of making a charge stick.
Late in the afternoon I know the lieutenant had a long session with Chambrun. He’d been dealing with theories of his own all day without being able to make them check out. I guess he was willing to listen to Chambrun then, without too much protesting. He was stuck for a lead.
The telephones in the rooms of Teague and Company were curiously quiet all afternoon. Harmon had evidently scared the daylights out of them. The lawyer either did or didn’t believe what Bobby Towers told him. She must have sworn she’d said nothing incriminating over the phone. But since they all knew it was a frameup, they must have decided they’d better let the whole matter drop. Madison had unexpected allies.
About cocktail time the lid blew off again. As a result of Lieutenant Hardy’s conversation with Chambrun, five very large men who obviously could never be mistaken for guests of the Beaumont, took up stations outside the rooms of Teague and Company. They were Hardy’s men. Teague was the first to discover the watchdog outside his door. He was told that he was being protected. He didn’t want protection! Well, he had it, whether he wanted it or not. He would complain to the commissioner! That was up to him. Where was Hardy? In Mr. Chambrun’s office.
Teague went down there under a head of steam, followed by his guardian.
Lieutenant Hardy was a very tired man. He’d had little or no sleep in the last twenty-four hours—from the time he’d been called in to investigate Jeremy Slade’s death. He was no closer to a solution than he’d been when he first walked into Suite 9F. Frustration is an exhausting business in itself. He’d been pushed around by the facts and, I suspect, pushed around a little by Chambrun.
He was, in short, not ready to be cordial when Teague burst into Chambrun’s office at a few minutes past five. He was relaxing. Chambrun had gotten some food into him and he was having coffee, accompanied by a rare Biscuit Dubouché.
“You’re the man I want to see!” Teague said in a rasping voice, ignoring Chambrun who was over by the sideboard, replenishing his endless supply of Turkish coffee. The big plainclothesman loomed in the doorway.
Hardy, whose outward manner is usually deceptive—slightly puzzled, a shade deferential—wasn’t in the mood for pretense.
“So you found me,” he said.
“I could go to the commissioner, but I thought I’d try you first,” Teague said.
“So try me,” Hardy said.
“What is the reason for this—this elephant—trailing me around the hotel, standing outside my door? Why are my friends being subjected to the same stupid surveillance?”
“You’re being protected,” Hardy said.
“I haven’t asked you for protection. I don’t want it,” Teague said. “I demand that these goons be taken off our backs now—at once.”
Chambrun told me later there was something very close to hysteria under Teague’s fancy surface.
“I’m not in the mood for demands, Mr. Teague,” Hardy said. “Let me make it quite simple for you. Two of your friends have been murdered. We think perhaps all of you are in danger. While you’re in my jurisdiction, we’re going to see to it that nothing happens to you.”
“There’s going to be hell to pay in this place,” Teague said. The little amber eyes suddenly blazed at Chambrun. “An illegal and unwarranted monitoring of phone calls, and now our freedom curtailed. If it’s the last thing I ever do, you two birds are going to have your feathers plucked, but good!”
“Your freedom hasn’t been curtailed,” Hardy said, sipping his brandy. “You’re free to go anywhere you choose, at any time you choose. You can check out of the Beaumont. You’re your own man, Teague. But while you’re in the city of New York, you’re going to be guarded. Preventing crime is as much a part of the police job as making arrests after the fact. And I suggest you don’t waste time calling the commissioner. He’s already given complete approval of my actions.”
Teague’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that I’m at last free to see my friend, Doris Standing?”
“You can see Miss Standing,” Hardy said. “Of course your bodyguard and hers will be on hand. And I suspect her lawyer will be with her.”
“She’s free to leave the hotel?” Teague asked.
“Carefully guarded—if she chooses. I understand, though, she’s rather annoyed at the snow job you tried to pull on her lawyer. It could be she doesn’t want to see you, and in that case you won’t be able to force yourself on her.”
Teague controlled his voice with difficulty. “I’ve never encountered a situation to equal this,” he said. “You’ve accused Miss Towers of framing Madison. You and your monitored phone calls. You and I both know there weren’t any such calls.”
“Then why hasn’t Madison been arrested and booked?” Chambrun asked.
“Because the frameup is on your side and you know it, Chambrun. Every employee in this hotel will do exactly as he’s told. If you want to present phony calls in defense of Madison, I know there’ll be half a dozen people to testify to them. We’re playing against a stacked deck. Be sure, Chambrun, we’ll take care of you and Madison in our own way and in our own time.”
“You could save yourself and all of us a lot of trouble and inconvenience, Teague,” Chambrun said, “by telling us exactly what happened on the night of February twenty-fifth.”
They said afterwards that Teague’s face turned a yellowish green. He looked like a man who’d been struck a mortal blow. He actually took a step backwards.
“Doris has come out of her trance?” he asked, in a husky voice. “That stupid bitch!”
And then he realized his mistake. Doris couldn’t have talked or they wouldn’t be asking him. He made a super-human effort to get himself under control.
“It was a waste of time coming here,” he said. “I’m a man who holds grudges a long, long time, Chambrun. I’m an expert at squaring accounts. Don’t either of you forget it.”
He turned and walked out of the office, followed by his bodyguard.
Hardy emptied his brandy glass. “You hit a bull’s-eye with that February twenty-fifth crack,” he said.
“The trouble is, the target is in the dark,” Chambrun said. “I don’t know what I hit.”
While all of this was going on, I’d been finishing up the day’s ordinary routines in my office, having a hard time concentrating. I’d sent Shelda home with the promise that I’d call her if anything new happened. When I’d finally finished the paper work, I went down the hall to my quarters, to find one of Hardy’s men parked outside my door.
“What cooks?” I asked him.
“I’m assigned to Gary Craig,” he said. “He’s inside.”
Craig was lying on the twin bed in my bedroom, hands locked behind his head, eyes closed. He looked gray from fatigue.
“You look like you’d had it,” I said.
He drew a deep breath. “I begin to understand why people confess to crimes they haven’t committed,” he said. “No rough stuff, you understand. Just Hardy and Naylor going over and over and over the same ground. One of them could rest while the other had at me. I damn near caved in just to get rid of them. Then, unexpectedly, they gave up. Jesus!”