CHAPTER ELEVEN
N
O ONE TALKED MUCH
as I drove the car to the main highway, turned into the automobile court, and switched off the lights and motor. I got out and started to open the door on the other side, then saw a car I hadn’t seen before, and got a glimpse at an E embedded in a diamond on the license plate.
I didn’t say a word to the others, but walked directly toward my own cabin.
Two men stepped out of the shadows. One of them said, “Your name Lam?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Donald Lam?”
“Yes.”
“Come on in. We want to talk with you. We have telegraphic instructions to pick you up.”
I was hoping that Ashbury and Alta would have sense enough to keep out of it. They got out of the car and stood by the door. Alta’s face was white in the moonlight.
“Who are these folks?” the officer asked, indicating Ashbury and his daughter with a jerk of his head.
“They picked me up down the road a piece and asked me if I wanted a ride.”
One of the officers wore the uniform of the state highway patrol, and the other, I gathered, was a local officer.
“What do you want?”
“Didn’t you leave rather suddenly?”
“I’m working.”
“On what?”
“I’d prefer not to make any statements.”
“Did you know a man named Ringold?”
“I read in the paper about his murder.”
“Know anything about it?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“Weren’t you in the hotel the night he was killed? Didn’t you talk with a blonde at the cigar stand, and again with a clerk, trying to pump them about Ringold?”
“Gosh, no!” I said, backing away a step or two and staring at them as though I thought they were mad. “Say, wait a minute. Who
are
you birds, anyway? Are you officers?”
“Of course we’re officers.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Now listen, buddy. Don’t go getting hard, see? And don’t start playing wise guy. Right now we’re asking questions. That’s all.”
“What do you want to know?”
“According to the D.A., you could have had an interest in Ringold.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, buddy, it’s this way. Jed Ringold was working for the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company, see? And that company has a bunch of land up here near Valleydale. Now the president of the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company— Cripes, it tangles my tongue to say the damn thing. What did they want to get a name like that for? Well, anyway, the president is a guy named Tindle, and you’ve been out living with him and taking orders from him.”
I said, “You’re nuts. I’ve been visiting out at Ashbury’s house. Tindle is Henry Ashbury’s stepson.”
“You ain’t been workin’ for him?”
“Hell, no. I’ve been taking some fat off Ashbury. I’m giving him jujitsu lessons.”
“That’s what
you
say. Tindle’s got interests up here. Ringold is working for Tindle. Somebody goes into the hotel and bumps Ringold off. This guy has a description that’s a helluva lot like yours, and—”
I moved forward to stare at him. “Is
that
what’s eating you?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
“All right, when I get back, I’ll go call the cops and tell them how crazy they are. There were a couple of people who saw the guy that went into the hotel, weren’t there? Seems to me, I remember reading about it in the papers.”
“That’s right, buddy.”
“All right, I’ll be back in a couple of days, and we’ll clean it up.”
“Well, now, suppose you ain’t the guy that was in the hotel?”
“I’m not.”
“You’d like to get it cleaned up, wouldn’t you?”
“Not particularly. It’s so absurd I’m not even bothering about it.”
“But suppose you
are
the guy? Then something might happen, and you just wouldn’t remember about going back.”
“Well, you’re not going to take me back just because I happen to know the president of this corporation, are you?”
“No, but the D.A.’s office got hold of a photo of you, Lam, and showed it to the clerk at the hotel, and the hotel clerk says, ‘That’s the guy you want.’ So
now
what?”
Ashbury and his daughter had taken the hint. Instead of going on into their cabin, they’d got back into the car and turned it around. Ashbury rolled down the window on the driver’s side, leaned out, and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, my friend? Are you in any trouble?”
“Nothing,” I said, “just a private matter. Good night, and thanks for the lift.”
“You’re entirely welcome,” Ashbury said and slid the car into gear and whisked out of the auto court.
“Well?” the officer who had been doing the talking asked.
I said, “There’s only one answer to that. We’re going back. I’ll make that damn clerk get down on his knees and eat those words—every one of ’em. The guy’s just plain nuts.”
“Now that’s the sensible way to look at it. You know we could
take
you back, but we’d have a lot of notoriety which wouldn’t do anybody any good. If it’s a mistake, the less said about it the better. You know how it is, buddy. It’s kind of hard to identify people from a photograph. We drag you back and get a lot of newspaper publicity that the clerk’s positively identified you as the guy. Then he takes a look at your mug and says he ain’t so certain. Then a while later the real bird turns up. He looks something like you, but not too much, and the clerk says, ‘Sure. That’s the guy.’ But you know what some shyster lawyer would do? He’d make that clerk look like two bits on the witness stand because he’d identified somebody else first.”
“Sure,” I said. “The fool clerk makes a false identification and puts me to a lot of trouble, but it’s the shyster lawyer for the defendant that’s to blame.”
The cop looked at me for a minute. “Say, buddy, you ain’t trying to kid me, are you?”
“How do we go?” I asked.
“We drive you down the road about a hundred miles. There’s an airport there and a special officer that telephoned us to go pick you up. He’s waiting with a plane. If it’s all a mistake, he’ll bring you back, and you can take a stage from the airport right back here.”
“And I won’t be out anything except stage fare and a day’s time,” I said sarcastically.
They didn’t say anything.
I did a little thinking. “Well, I won’t travel on a plane at night for anyone. I’ll drive down with you. I’ll go to a hotel with the officer. I won’t leave until tomorrow morning. I’ve got some irons in the fire I can’t shove to one side—”
“Kinda independent, ain’t you, buddy?”
I looked him in the eyes and said, “You’re damn right. If you want me to go voluntarily, that’s the way I’ll go. If you want to advertise it in the newspapers that the clerk has made a bum identification, you can take me.”
“Okay,” the man said. “Get in. We’re taking you.”
The special investigator for the district attorney’s office who was waiting at the airport wasn’t entirely easy in his mind. My attitude made him a lot less easy, but he was good and sore at the idea that I was going to stay overnight in a hotel and wouldn’t travel by plane at night. He kept trying to argue with me. I told him simply that I was afraid to travel by air at night.
The officer couldn’t figure it out. “Now, listen, Lam, if you want to get back on the job, this is the way to do it. I’ve got this plane here, and it’s chartered. I can put you under arrest and take you back if I have to and—”
“You can if you put a charge against me.”
“I don’t want to put a charge against you.”
“All right, then, we leave in the morning.”
After a while he said to the officers who had brought me down, “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to put through a telephone call.”
He went into a booth and put through a long-distance call. It took him about twenty minutes. The highway patrol and I sat in the lobby of the hotel. They tried to sell me on the idea of going back and getting it over with.
The special investigator came back from the telephone booth and said, “All right, buddy. You asked for it. We’re going back.”
“Going to charge me?”
“I’m going to arrest you on suspicion.”
“Got a warrant?”
“No.”
“I’m going to call a lawyer.”
“That won’t do you any good.”
“The hell it won’t. I’m going to call a lawyer.”
“We haven’t time to wait for a telephone right now. The aviator is ready to take off.”
I said, “I have a right to call a lawyer,” and started for the telephone booth.
They stopped me so fast my head jerked. One of them grabbed one shoulder. The other grabbed the other shoulder. The clerk in the lobby looked at me curiously. A couple of loungers got up and moved away. The investigator from the D.A.’s office said, “Okay, boys, let’s go.” They gave me the bum’s rush out to the automobile, cut loose with the siren, and got out to the airport in nothing flat. A cabin plane was there with the motors all warmed, and they pushed me inside. The man from the D.A.’s office said, “Since you’re asking for it the hard way, buddy, I’ll just see that you don’t get any funny ideas while the plane’s up in the air and try to start anything.” He slipped a handcuff around my wrist and handcuffed
the
other loop to the arm of the chair.
“Fasten your seat belts,” the pilot said.
The deputy fastened my seat belt. “It would have been a lot better if you’d done it the easy way,” he said.
I didn’t say. anything.
“Now, when we get down there, you’re not going to make a kick about going to the hotel where this clerk can take a look at you, are you?”
I said, “Brother,
you’re
the one that’s doing it the hard way. I told you I’d go down tomorrow morning, walk into the hotel or any place you wanted, and let the fellow take a look at me. You got hard—I’m not going to any hotel. If you take me down, you put me in jail, and I tell my story to the newspaper boys. If you want anybody to identify me, you put me in a line-up, and have the identification made that way.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”
“It’s like that.”
“Now, I’m damn sure you’re the one who went in the hotel.”
“You’re just knocking your case higher than a kite,” I said. “The newspapers are going to play it up that you charged me with murder, that the hotel clerk made an identification from a photograph—”
“A tentative identification,” the officer corrected.
“Call it whatever you want to,” I said. “When he tries to identify the real man, there’s going to be hell to pay— And you’re going to catch it.”
He got sore then, and I thought he was going to paste me one, but he changed his mind, went over, and sat down. The pilot looked back, made certain our seat belts were fastened, gunned the motors, took the plane down the field, turned, came up into the wind, and took off.
It was smooth flying. I leaned back against the cushions. Occasional air beacons leered up at me with red eyes that blinked ominously. At intervals, clustered lights marked the location of little towns. I’d look down and think how people, snuggled in warm beds, would hear the roaring beat of the motor echoing back from the roof, roll over sleepily, and say, “There goes the mail,” without realizing it was a plane taking a man on a death gamble, with the cards stacked against him.
The pilot turned around and made signs to us when we started over the mountains. I gathered he meant it was going to be rough. He did. We went way up to try and get over it, but instead of going over it, we went through it. I felt like a wet dishrag when we came slanting down to the airport.
The pilot landed at the far end. The D.A.’s man got up, came over, and unfastened one end of the handcuffs. He said ominously, “Now, listen, Lam, you’re going to get into a car, and you’re going to that hotel. There isn’t going to be any fuss about it, and no publicity.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “If you’re arresting me, go ahead and book me.”
“I’m not arresting you.”
“Then you had no right to bring me down here.”
He grinned, and said, “You’re here, ain’t you?”
The plane turned and taxied up to the hangars. I heard the sound of a siren, and a car came up. A red spotlight blazed its beam to a focus right on the door of the plane.
The man from the D.A.’s office jabbed me in the small of the back. “Don’t act rough now,” he said. “It would be a shame to have an argument. You’ve been a nice little man so far. Just keep on going.”
They turned the spotlight into my eyes so it would blind me. The deputy pushed me out. Hands grabbed me, and shoved me forward, then I heard Bertha Cool’s voice saying, “What are you doing with this man?”
Somebody said, “Beat it, lady. This guy’s under arrest.”
“What’s he charged with?”
“None of your damn business.”
Bertha Cool said, “All right,” to somebody who was just a shadowy figure in the darkness, and the man stepped forward and said, “I’ll make it my business. I’m an attorney. I’m representing this man.”
“Beat it,” the officer told him, “before something happens to your face.”
“All right, I’ll beat it, but first let me give you this nice little folded paper. That’s a writ of habeas corpus issued by a superior judge ordering you to produce this man in court. This other paper is a written demand that you take him immediately and forthwith before the nearest and most accessible magistrate for the purpose of fixing bail. In case you’re interested, the nearest and most accessible magistrate happens to be a justice of the peace in this township. He’s sitting in his office right now, with the lights on and his court open waiting to fix the bail.”
“We don’t have to take him to no magistrate,” the man said.
“Where are you going to take him?”
“To jail.”
“I wouldn’t advise you to go anywhere without stopping to see the nearest and most accessible magistrate,” the lawyer said.
Bertha Cool said, “Now listen, you, this man’s working for me. I’m running a respectable detective agency. He was working. You yanked him off the job and chased him down here. Don’t think for a minute you’re going to pull this stuff and get away with it.”
The man from the district attorney’s office said, “Just a minute, boys. Stick around.” He said to the lawyer Bertha Cool had, “Let’s talk things over a minute.”