The Long Night (5 page)

The three of us made a cosy little party—Sullivan, Cooke and me. Among other things, the one-time cell was shy on furniture. All it possessed was three chairs in a row. Mine was the middle one. Where I sat I could see the barred door and a length of stone corridor and another barred door with a big naked light above it. I could've picked better scenery.

We had a big light, too. But ours was a shaded light—shaded so that it shone down on me like I was giving my face an artificial sun-tan. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness.

By the end of that first half-hour the air was thick enough to stuff with currants and sell for Christmas pudding. But the place was still cold. Or else I felt shivery because I was tired and my circulation had slowed down. I only know the stone floor struck chill through the soles of my shoes and my toes went dead after a while.

Soon's the quiz session started, I said I wanted a lawyer. And Sullivan hitched his chair back so he was outside the pool of light and he asked me where I thought I'd find a lawyer at five o'clock in the morning. I guess I must've brought the subject up once or twice later because the next time I remember
he said six o'clock and the time after that seven o'clock.

Anyway. . . . The first time, I said I was entitled to have a lawyer if I were being booked. And he said he didn't want no law lessons and who'd told me I was being booked? And I said unless he was going to, he'd no right to hold me. So he said he knew what was right and what was wrong and he wasn't holding me—yet. All he was doing was asking me a few questions and all I had to do was pipe-down and answer them.

Thing was, they weren't real questions; they were incomplete statements. And they started with the unvarying premise that I'd strangled Judith Walker and didn't I realise what a dumbkopf I was trying to deny it?

We got nowhere. I kept falling asleep and he kept shaking me awake again. He was never tough with me—just persistent. But that kind of persistence can drive a guy nuts if it goes on long enough.

If I could've had a cigarette it might not have been so bad. But he said there was a no smoking rule because of the risk of fire. And I said what kind of fire could there be with three chairs in the middle of a stone-built cell and hadn't anyone told him third degree went out with Capone?

I guess it must've been around seven when I stopped the conversational cut-and-thrust and told him I demanded to be medically examined before we went any further.

He said, “In your position, you've one helluva gall thinking you can demand anything. But I'll ride along with you so far as to ask why you want to see the doc.”

“To check the amount of alcohol in my blood-stream,” I said.

“Don't make me laugh.” He stood up and turned his chair round and sat down astride it. With the fringe of light glinting on his assorted teeth, he said, “You got it the wrong way round, bud. Don't you mean the amount of blood in your alcohol-stream?”

“Very funny,” I said. “I'm busting a gut laughing . . . do I get to see the doctor?”

He stopped clowning abruptly. “No, you don't. What would it prove?”

“That I hadn't made myself pie-eyed with rye: that the
liquor was all on the outside: that someone emptied the bottle over me when I was making like the linoleum.”

“All that from a blood test, eh?” He rocked the chair backwards and forwards on two legs without coming into the cone of light. His sallow face had a shine like he was sweating. “You must think you can play me for a sucker,” he said. “We all know you ain't shikker no more; your blood's got rid of it. The time to have a check-up was a couple of hours ago—as you knew only too darn well . . . didn't you?”

“I've only just thought of it,” I said. Saying it was a waste of time if ever anything was.

Not far behind me, Cooke said, “If the whole thing was as you say, why didn't you call the police soon's you walked into the apartment and found her?”

I said, “How many times have I got to explain that?”

“Only once,” he said. “But you don't seem to have got round to it yet. And I'm asking you again—why didn't you?”

“Because I'd a hunch I might be grilled by a moron like your pal Sullivan. That's one thing I'd always rather have anything else but.”

Sullivan must've moved pretty fast at that. I was taking a quick glance at Cooke over my shoulder when I shipped an open-handed slap in the puss that pitched me on to the floor. As I landed, I bumped my head on the painful spot where I'd been sapped and it knocked me as dizzy as a blonde on a flying jenny. Through the fog in my mind, I heard Sullivan say, “Guess he must still be a bit loaded at that or he wouldn't go and fall off his chair. . . .”

A hand fastened itself on the back of my collar and I came up from the floor like a salmon in a landing net. Sullivan said, “You oughta be more careful. You could've hurt yourself . . . couldn't he, Cooky?”

He was grinning with one side of his mouth and his face was very near mine.
Dizzy
or not
dizzy
, I couldn't pass up the chance. With a completely dead pan like I didn't know what day it was, I tucked my chin into my chest and I fell forward against him.

That was the one bright spot in a long, tough night. I felt my head smack into his nose before he could get out of the
way and I heard him catch his breath. His hand let go of my collar. Then the pain and the shock registered properly and he loosed a squeal that started 'way down in his boots and gathered pitch as it climbed out of his gaping mouth.

I rolled back out of his reach and I said, “Sorry . . . I oughta be more careful. Hope I haven't——”

Cooke said, “He'll kill you for that. And I've a good mind to let him.”

“The day you've got a good mind,” I said, “that'll be the day. And I've got a double-finn that says he won't kill me . . . will you, Sullivan?”

With both hands covering his nose and mouth, Sullivan shed a bucket of tears and went on groaning. In between the groans, he was calling me a lot of things I'd never been called before.

Cooke said, “Let's take a look at it. . . .” And Sullivan took his hands away from his face reluctantly like he was afraid he'd lose it.

His flat nose had gone all puffy and there was an angry red mark on the bridge. Blood was trickling from one nostril. But he didn't know he was bleeding until he looked down at his hands.

For a second or two, I thought he'd blow a gasket. Then, in a muffled voice, he said, “I'll go and bathe this . . . and I'll be back. Don't go any place, Bowman. I'll be back.” With a drop-dead look in his mean eyes, he went out.

When the barred door at the end of the corridor had clanged shut after him, Cooke said, “You shouldn't have done that.”

“He's lucky,” I said. “He's still got his teeth. You know what I promised I'd do if he played rough again. Why don't you stop him acting like this was Chicago 1930?”

“You stop him,” Cooke said. “I got my own worries. One of them is to find out why you're lying about what happened in the Walker dame's apartment when you arrived there.”

I said, “If I were lying, don't you think I could've cooked up a better story than the one I've given you?”

“Sure. That's my second worry. You're not crazy but your story is. Why?”

“If I knew any more of the answers, don't you think I'd get myself out from under by telling you?”

“Unless the whole thing happened the way Sullivan said it did . . . that's the simplest explanation.”

“Are you asking me to lie myself into the death house just so's to provide you with a simple explanation?” I brought out my cigarettes and lit one and offered the pack to Cooke. He shook his head but he didn't try to stop me smoking. And he didn't seem in a hurry to argue when I added, “If the truth makes things difficult for you, what do you think it does for me?”

With a frown on his chubby face he stood cracking his knuckles and looking at me from under his brows while he thought about it. Then he said, “If I had a buck for every two-bit crook who's howled that he's been framed, I'd be the richest guy in town. How'd you like to give me something tangible that might indicate you didn't do it?”

“Whose side are you on now?”

“Nobody's. I've got a job to do. Most times it's a dirty job—like this one. Right now, it's my business to put the finger on the guy who rubbed out Judith Walker . . .'s all.” He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “With me, personalities don't enter into it. But it helps when I get a little co-operation. How about it?”

“You and Sullivan make a good team,” I said. “He provides the iron fist you supply the velvet glove.”

“Which d'you prefer?”

“Which of you has got the bloody nose?” I said.

He nodded and a grin touched the corners of his mouth. “Don't ride your luck too hard, Bowman. Sullivan doesn't forget easy. But his ways aren't necessarily my ways. Tell me why you couldn't have killed Judith Walker.”

“I wasn't drunk,” I said. “However corny it sounds, I was framed. When I'd been put down for the count, the rye was poured over me. I didn't harm her in any way; I never even saw the belt she was strangled with.”

“What if your prints are on it?”

“I'll be surprised if they aren't. And on the bottle, too. But I only handled the glass that was lying on the bed beside her.”

“To go on repeating that you weren't drunk won't get you very far,” Cooke said. “I've only got your word against all the facts.”

“Not all the facts,” I said. “There's one you don't know. Did you find a stock of liquor in the apartment?”

“A few bottles. Why?”

“Any bourbon?”

“Yeah . . . if I remember right, there was a whole bottle and the remains of a split.” He screwed up his face again. “What're you leading up to?”

“I don't drink rye,” I said. “Not when there's any bourbon around. A dozen honest citizens will be willing to testify to that effect. What's more, care to make a little side bet that my prints aren't on the split of bourbon?”

He did some heavy thinking. Very slowly, he started to say, “Supposing you anticipated . . . no . . . no . . . I can't see that. . . .” Then he closed his mouth tightly like he was afraid of saying too much.

“Of course you can't,” I said. “If I'd anticipated what happened to Judith, would I have been crazy enough to get stinko so Homicide would find me in the apartment with her body?”

“No. But that's kinda negative evidence. What else have you got?”

“These.” I held out my hands palm downwards in the hard white light of the lamp. “I'm usually fussy about my nails,” I said. “Right now, they're not too clean. Check?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“So you get somebody here to give me a manicure,” I said. “And you put what you find under my nails through a lab test. If it comes up with traces of Judith Walker's skin”—I dropped my stub on the nice scrubbed floor and put my heel on it—“I'll sign a confession and plead guilty at the trial. Would you be willing to go along with that?”

Cooke studied my nails for a long minute before he looked up and said, “It could be suggested that you'd used a nail-file before——”

“—before I filled my guts with rye and lay down on the floor all nice and ready to be picked up by a homicide squad? Would you get any jury to believe that?” I went back to my chair and sat down and put my hands on my knees where he could keep an eye on them. I said, “Do you believe it yourself?”

He came into the cone of light and stood staring down at me.
His eyes were dark sockets where the shadows lay like he had two empty holes in his face. He said, “What I believe or don't believe is immaterial. You're going to be asked why anyone should want to frame you: why we found the door locked: why Judith Walker should've set herself up as a sacrifice so you could be framed: why someone should've taken such a roundabout way to kill her when all he had to do was——” Cooke chopped off the rest as if he had tired of waiting for me to interrupt. With resentment darkening his pink baby face, he said, “Can you think of any reason . . .? No, I didn't imagine you could. What beats me is why it took you more than two hours to lay your egg.”

“My mind doesn't work so good in the middle of the night,” I said. “Especially after I've been slugged with a blunt instrument. But the night's over now. I'll get you the answer to all your questions—if I'm let out of the bastille. And one answer to start with is there's a fire-escape.”

“Might not be so easy to turn you loose. Got anyone to stand bond for you?”

“I guess so. Is there a phone near here?”

“Who d'you want to call?”

“The D.A. Any objections?”

“No-o-o. . . . First time I ever heard of a guy asking the D.A. to spring him from jail, but I'm always willing to learn. And before you make any phone calls”—Cooke took the smooth, baby look off his face—“we'll fix up your manicure.”

“No one's asking him to spring me. I just want a piece of advice.”

“I'll give you mine for free,” Cooke said. He was suddenly as cold and tough as the brick walls beyond the circle of light. “Better get yourself a smart lawyer—just in case this nail test goes sour on you. Many a guy's dug his own grave, but not with his fingernails. You might be, what they call, breaking new ground . . . eh?”

He was laughing without any pretence of humour as he went out and locked the door behind him.

Mr. District Attorney Webster was out of town on a trip to Washington. His housekeeper said he was due back in two-three
days . . . yes, she'd tell him I'd called . . . was there any message . . .?

I said I'd contact him at his office and she said very good and we both said good-bye at the same time and hung up. I wouldn't have said the conversation had made me feel on top of the world.