Who Has Wilma Lathrop? (14 page)

Lathrop made a mental note to send a substantial cheque to Mrs. Nielsen.

“And then?” Harris repeated.

“When they found I didn’t have the diamonds on or in my person, they were furious. But they figured they could force me to tell them where they were if they got me out of the house. So they forced me to put on a dress and a coat of Vilna’s that they’d brought with them and Burke took my key out of my purse and took my own clothes back upstairs and hung them up.”

“They, obviously, had planned for you to ‘disappear’.”

“They joked about it. And when Burke came back to the boiler room he had the nightdress I’d left on my bed and my slippers and a handful of bobby pins. And he threw them into the furnace. Then they took my ring off my finger and threw that in the furnace, too, along with some bones they had gotten from somewhere.”

Harris made a note on his pad. “You say they had your sister’s clothes with them when they came to your apartment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That proves their conspiracy to compound a crime was premeditated. They planned to pin your disappearance on Mr. Lathrop to take the heat off them. What happened then, Mrs. Lathrop?”

“They forced me out to a car they had parked in the alley.”

“You still didn’t cry out?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Wilma was patient with him. “I told you. I was afraid they would harm Jim.”

“What time was this?”

“I’d say about two-forty-five. Just before it began to snow.”

“They drove you directly to the Mercer Street address?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened there?”

“They slapped me, trying to make me tell them where I had hidden the diamonds. But I didn’t.”

Harris stacked the papers on his desk. “Well, that seems to cover most of what we want to know. The second attack on Lathrop and leaving him in his car in the Forest Preserve was just a further attempt to gain time and confuse us. If he had died, his alleged suicide would have been accepted as prima facie evidence he had killed you on learning of your past and then taken his own life in remorse for what he had done.” Harris looked at Lathrop. “Only one thing isn’t quite clear to me. That is, how you ever got out of that car. You didn’t by any chance fill up on black coffee before you drove out to Ramsey’s, did you?”

Lathrop thought of the three cups of coffee he’d had in the Chinese restaurant. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

Harris was pleased with his sagacity. “That’s probably it. I don’t know the exact chemical reaction but I do know that black coffee and carbon monoxide don’t mix.”

The detective looked at Vilna thoughtfully, and pleased by the attention the feeble-minded girl reached for the hem of her skirt.

The matron held her hands. “Now, be a good girl, Vilna.”

“You realize, Mrs. Lathrop,” Harris said, “that we will have to have your sister committed to a mental institution?”

Wilma resumed pleating her grey wool skirt. “I know. It should have happened years ago.”

Harris nodded to the matron. “Take Vilna upstairs, Mary.”

“Yes, sir,” the matron said.

She led Vilna out.

The door shut solidly behind them. Her cheeks flushed, Wilma sobbed silently. Lathrop started to attempt to console her and thought better of it.

Attorney Ramsey cleared his throat. “As Detective Harris pointed out, this isn’t the time or the place to make speeches. So I’m not going to pre-try any case you gentlemen may think you have against my client. But I would like some information.” He addressed Lieutenant O’Brien. “Might I ask, Lieutenant, just how the State of New York stands towards Mrs. Lathrop?”

Lieutenant O’Brien said, “The arrest and detain still holds. We’ll want her as a material witness. And in light of what has transpired, we’ll probably file a charge of receiving stolen goods.”

“And you, Detective Harris?”

Harris considered the matter. “We haven’t a thing against her except a material witness charge.”

“Are you gentlemen amenable to bail?”

“I am,” Lieutenant O’Brien said.

“Here, too,” Harris nodded. “It’s corny and it’s old but as far as this office is concerned Mrs. Lathrop has been more sinned against than sinning.”

Attorney Ramsey stood up and picked his overcoat from his chair. “How high are you able and willing to go?” he asked Lathrop.

“As far as I can,” Lathrop told him. “And I have a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house clear and twelve thousand in cash in the bank.”

Ramsey rested his hand on Lathrop’s shoulder. “In my book, she’s worth it. You and Mrs. Lathrop wait here. But don’t be impatient. It may take me a few hours.”

One of the detectives standing behind Gina and Burke asked, “How about these guys?”

“Lock them in separate cells,” Harris said. “Not that it matters much. From here on in they’re just marking time.” He repeated what Burke had said in the back yard of the three-flat. “They’re dead. They might just as well be lying on a slab with Vladimir.”

As the detectives led them away, Burke spat, “You lousy stinking copper.” Tugging Gina after him, he lurched at Harris and tried to strike the detective with his clenched right fist.

Lathrop was standing between them. He struck out instinctively and felt teeth give under his fist.

“Thanks,” Harris said.

“I enjoyed it,” Lathrop assured him.

It was still and quiet in the big office when all but the three of them had left the immediate vicinity of the desk. Harris cleaned up the last remaining point. “You wouldn’t make a bad cop, yourself. Or a lawyer for that matter. That was quite a talk you made over the phone. Anyway you sold me. But what gave you the idea that Mrs. Lathrop’s brother was mixed up in this and that Gina and Burke might be holding her at the Mercer Street address?”

“The high cost of living,” Lathrop told him soberly.

“The high cost of living?”

“That’s right. Wilma told me the rib roast she was cooking had cost ninety-eight cents a pound. And I learned from the counterman in that Chinese restaurant I mentioned that the same cut should retail for around seventy or seventy-five cents. So I knew she was padding her household accounts to give the money to someone. And the only one it could be was her brother.”

Harris finished the cold coffee in the container on his desk. “Sweet Jesus. And I bothered to go through the Police Institute. I even went to the F.B.I. school.”

IT WAS
almost one o’clock when Attorney Ramsey completed the arrangements for bail and all the papers had been signed. With Wilma sitting silent beside him, her hands folded in her lap, Lathrop drove back to Palmer Square through the maze of midday traffic.

The walks of the square were dotted with children returning to school after their noon-hour lunch. Still younger children, too young to go to school, were dragging sleds across the expanse of white snow and making snow men and throwing snowballs at each other.

Lathrop helped Wilma out of the car and walked with her back through the areaway. “I’d better check the boiler before we go up,” he suggested.

“Whatever you say,” she said meekly.

Lathrop checked the heating plant and left the basement as quickly as he could. He didn’t like to think of what had happened to Wilma in it. He wished he had hit Burke harder than he had.

Wilma preceded him up the back stairs. As they reached the first-floor porch Mrs. Metz opened her kitchen door. The full details of the story hadn’t reached the newsstands but they had been on the television and radio newscasts. Mrs. Metz’s plump lips firmed as she looked at Wilma. “Hmmm.” She sounded disapproving.

“Hmmm right back at you,” Lathrop said. “And if you don’t like it you can break your lease and move. And tell Mr. Metz I said so.”

They walked on up the stairs and he unlocked their kitchen door. “You shouldn’t have said that,” Wilma said.

Lathrop shrugged. “Tenants are a dime a dozen. One more hmmm out of her and I’ll raise their rent.”

Wilma stood just inside the door as if hesitant to enter. “Who washed the dishes?”

“Jenny,” Lathrop said. “Eddie Mandell’s girl.”

“Oh. Yes. Eddie Mandell,” Wilma said.

Lathrop closed and locked the door behind them. “It turns out she’s five months pregnant. That’s why Eddie robbed that drugstore. He’ll have to do some time but Judge Arnst is going to be as easy on him as he can. And he is going to marry them before Eddie is sent to Saint Charles.”

“That’s nice,” Wilma said.

She walked down the hall to the bedroom, touching various objects as she passed, her fingers lingering on them lightly.

Lathrop was glad to be home. He put his hat on the shelf and hung his overcoat in the front-room closet. The room was as he’d left it, the sofa still rumpled. But the scene had taken on a new meaning.

The thought excited Lathrop. He was a lucky guy. He walked down the hall to the bedroom. Wilma had laid a suitcase on her bed and was folding dresses in it. Her swollen face lined with fatigue, she looked very small and very tired and very fragile. Only her fierce will was keeping her on her feet.

Lathrop took the dress she was folding out of her hands. “Hey. What’s the big idea?”

She met his eyes. “You know what I am now. You’ve met my family.”

Lathrop hung the dress back in the closet and loosened the knot of his tie. “So what? I didn’t marry your family. I married you.”

“And you saw how Mrs. Metz acted. A lot of others will act the same way.”

“That for Mrs. Metz.”

“Then there’s your job.”

“What about it?”

“I doubt if the Board of Education will approve of a high-school teacher having a wife like me.”

Lathrop took off his coat and shirt and hung them over the back of a chair. “Teaching school isn’t the only thing I can do. Like Harris said, I wouldn’t make a bad lawyer, or a cop. Then, as it so happens, I do have a degree in engineering. And I think I might like building bridges and tunnels much better than trying to cope with the modern generation.” Lathrop was a bit impatient with her. “Now take off your things and go to bed. You’ve had a bad experience and you’re almost dead on your feet.”

“You mean you want me to stay?”

“You’re my wife.”

Wilma’s lower lip quivered. “But I married you under false pretences.”

“Sure,” Lathrop answered. “I thought you were just another pretty girl, a nice kid, but run-of-the-mill. I had no way of knowing the real you, a scared fifteen-year-old girl who, without much education or training, had to earn her living as best she could in this asphalt jungle we live in, but who still managed to keep sweet and fine and decent.” Lathrop lifted his hand. “And if you cry again, I’ll slap you.”

Wilma rested her hands on the footboard of the bed to steady herself. “I’m not going to cry. But they may send me away.”

Lathrop took her in his arms. “I doubt that. I doubt that very much. But if it should happen, I’ll see you as often as I can. And I’ll be waiting by the gate when they let you out. But, as Attorney Ramsey said, there come times in all of our lives when we face making a decision that is almost impossible to make. And unless they are nitwits any jury is bound to take that into consideration.”

“And you really want me to stay?”

For answer, Lathrop slipped the squirrel coat from her shoulders. He unbuttoned her dress and allowed it to lie where it fell. “Now sit down on the bed while I peel off your stockings.”

“Whatever you say,” Wilma said meekly.

Lathrop peeled off her stockings. “And stop being so damned meek. This is a partnership. And I’m proud to be a member of the firm.” He tossed her stockings over a chair and got a heavy flannelette nightgown from the dresser. When he turned, Wilma was standing beside the bed. “I’m still beautiful to you?”

“Still beautiful.”

“Even with this face?”

Lathrop kissed the tip of her nose. “Considering how you got it, even more so. Now hold up your arms so I can slip this over your head.”

Wilma did as she was told.

Lathrop dropped the heavy nightgown in place. “Now you crawl under those covers and get some sleep.” He unbuckled his belt, finished his own undressing and put on his pyjamas. “If we’ve missed anything, we’ll discuss it when we wake up.”

“Like about how you married a stranger?”

“And grew to love her even more than my wife.”

Wilma folded the covers. “Then don’t leave me, please. Even while I’m sleeping. Hold me in your arms. Prove you love me.”

Lathrop lay beside her, content just to hold her, listening to the normal noises of the day. Somehwere down the block a man was trying to start his car. The children screamed happily in the square. There was a constant procession of passing cars. In the rear of the building there was a clanging of cans as the ash man collected the ashes. Closer by, with a full head of steam in the heating plant, the radiators gurgled and spit and hissed. On the floor above, Mrs. Klein was running her vacuum cleaner.

Lathrop kissed the lips feeling for his. He felt slightly smug and superior. Lieutenant Jezierna had been wrong after all. You couldn’t compare marriage to buying a car. You were lucky or you weren’t. It either happened to you or it didn’t. So he hadn’t known Wilma’s family or her background. He probably wouldn’t have married her if he had. Still, he couldn’t know this girl any better or love her any more if he had seen her being born.

Wilma snuggled even closer. “There’s only one slight formality,” she whispered.

“What’s that?” Lathrop asked.

“Do I know you, Mister?”

“My name is Lathrop, Jim Lathrop.”

Wilma’s lips brushed his. The whispered words were a prayer and a promise. “I’m
so
pleased to meet you. You see, I’m Mrs. Jim Lathrop.”

Then the outside noises faded and of all of the millions of people in the world only the two of them mattered.

THE END

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