Judas Cat (24 page)

“I don’t think you’re going to get it, Whitie. They’re doing this up like experts, smear a little here, bully a little there. A little bribery—not out in the open, you know, nothing you could really call ‘bribery,’ but a smooth, slick job that’ll flatten you out like a steam roller went over you.”

“Thanks,” Alex said.

“I’m just telling you, kid. I’m pulling for you, but I’m telling you Waterman and you don’t have a minnow’s chance in a trout stream.”

Three of the six council members had already arrived. They mounted the steps like guests of honor and stood together under the portico talking importantly. Frank Fabry was blustering, as he always did when unsure of the situation. Matt Sanders was there. He was the oldest council member. He’d been in the plumbing and heating business since before Alex’s father had started the
Sentinel.
Recently he added the word “contractor” on his shop window. Arleen Baldwin was the only woman on the council, and the only woman who had ever served on it. She was cashier in the bank. Just then her laugh rang out over the whole crowd and hushed them for a moment. It started at a gurgle and moved up the whole range of the noon siren.

Will Withrow, the Whiting’s next-door neighbor, edged through the crowd. He owned a building and loan office but made most of his money selling insurance. He poked Alex in the ribs as he passed him.

“Cheer up, kid. It can’t be that bad.”

Alex straightened up. To hell with them, he said to himself, but knowing that was no help. Joe Hershel went up the steps next. How he had changed his tune! He stopped only a second to speak to the other members and then went inside. He wouldn’t be caught dead standing next to Mrs. Baldwin. She was a good five-foot nine and built along the lines of a large carrot. Next to her Joe looked like a radish. Alex glanced back over the crowd. A youngster was trying to get through to return his library books.

“It ain’t open, sonny,” somebody said to him. “See, there’s the librarian.”

Alex followed the gesture. Miss Woods was talking with the Dwight sisters, little old ladies who ran a tea room opposite the theatre. They were friends of Mabel’s. He remembered one of them on her porch the day Andy was found. Miss Woods was probably telling them about the painting, he thought disconsolately. The mayor was looking out at the crowd from the chamber windows. Only Sorenson had not arrived. He ran the Hillside Inn, and would resent the mid-morning meeting more than any of them. Sam was a reasonable man, and in the last election he had opposed Altman in the primaries.

Mr. Whiting drove up then. Barnard was with him, and at the same time, Alex saw Doctor Jacobs park his car across the street. As soon as his father was half way up the walk Alex went around to the station. They would not start the meeting without his knowing it.

Waterman was hunched over his desk when Alex entered. He did not look up. Gilbert was about his morning chore of polishing his automatic. “Hi,” he said.

Alex nodded and sat down on the chair next to the chief’s desk. “You look like I feel,” he said.

Waterman pushed the crumpled paper he had taken from Andy’s place over to him. “I found this in Mattson’s stove,” he said. “Take it to the light, Alex, and then compare it with this writing of Mabel’s.” He watched him until he had examined the papers. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, Chief. It looks like the same writing, but it’s different, too.”

“Mabel writes easy-like,” Waterman said. “Whoever wrote that signature of hers was pressing hard.”

“Andy was practicing Mabel’s signature,” Alex said after a moment. “Is that what you think?”

“That’s how I figure it. On that letter Gautier had, he wrote kind of bold, didn’t you say?”

Alex nodded. “But he could still draw mighty thin lines on some of those toy diagrams.”

“Sure. But if he was practicing, and being farsighted like that, he’d lean hard till he got the hang of it. But don’t ask me why. I just don’t know.” He unlocked his desk drawer and drew a telegram from it. “Here’s the one to gag on.”

CONFIDENTIAL. MICHAEL TURNSBY COMMITTED STATE INSTITUTE FOR CRIMINALLY INSANE 1925. COMPLAINANT HENRY ADDISON. TURNSBY DIED THERE NEXT YEAR. STILL CHECKING WALTER TURNSBY. WILL INFORM.

Alex gave the telegram back to Waterman. “So that’s it,” he said. “Strange, something like that wouldn’t get out, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. It took me by surprise like it would anybody else in Hillside. I was right here in 1925. It just didn’t get out, Alex. It couldn’t have been in the papers any place.”

“The way Mabel has clamped up every time we mention Mike Turnsby, I’d say she knows.”

“Yes,” Waterman said, “and that’s what was eating the Barnards.”

The town clock was striking nine. “That’s it,” Alex said.

“I’m kind of losing heart on this thing,” Waterman said slowly. “I feel real dirty about it, like I’d been digging in a graveyard. We don’t let any of these things out, Alex. It wouldn’t be right.”

The feeling of defeat was pressing tighter about Alex, and his doubts were multiplying. “Do you suppose we’re in the wrong pasture altogether, Chief?”

Waterman eased himself out of the chair, leaning on his desk wearily. “No, not altogether,” he said, “but remember this, Alex. Mattson’s autopsy report. We need a confession of guilt. Guilt to what, I don’t know. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, for being a policeman so long.”

Through the station window, Alex could see the rim of the crowd. Something was going on, for people were straining to see the portico steps. “A couple of things I didn’t mention, Chief. That fellow I saw at Barnard’s yesterday—he was at the dance last night, and across the street watching our office this morning. It turns out he used to be chauffeur and sort of a bodyguard for old Addison. And who should show up in the office this morning but the tramp that saw me take the cat from behind the morgue. He says somebody hired him to assist in the smashup of Barnard’s place.”

“Couldn’t he tell you who?” said Waterman.

“I don’t know if he could or not. He wanted police protection, but just as we were starting for here, he caught sight of the chauffeur and ran like a scared rabbit.”

“That’s in the bucket with all our luck,” the chief said. “The only stuff we get solid we can’t use. Try telling Altman about the tramp and him disappearing. He’d say we dreamed it. Is the chauffeur fellow here now?”

Alex pointed him out. “I’m wondering if he’s still working for the Addisons.”

“So am I,” the chief said.

“I got a call from Gautier this morning. I’m going up there after this. On those items Andy had from the Jackson papers—it looks as though Addison kept the stuff off the market until he was damned good and ready to cash in on them.”

Waterman looked at him keenly. “I’d want legal advice before monkeying around with that story,” he said. “It’ll just have to wait. Come on, boy, the band’s tuned up by this time.”

The crowd was shifting toward the front of the fire department as Alex and the chief went outdoors. The firemen were moving the two trucks to the street and the people parted to let them through. Someone tugged at Alex’s sleeve. “Did you find anything on the letter, Alex?” It was Dan Casey, his letter bag bulging at his side.

“Not yet, Dan.”

“Ah, that’s a dirty shame the way you won’t have a chance now.”

“I’ll have a chance if I hang for it,” Alex said.

“Ha,” said Casey. “I knew it. I knew it. I says to the missus at breakfast, there’ll be a fight for it. That kid’s got the gumption of his old man, says I.”

Alex and Waterman pushed on. The sight of his father on the hall steps spirited Alex. His white head was bobbing in and out among the people he knew, as he made his feelings known. “We brought them into the open anyway,” Mr. Whiting said when Alex reached him. “But oh, dear Lord, we’re in for it. If I was on the council itself. But no, I had to retire this year. I’ll not retire again till they bury me.”

Barnard looked ill, Alex thought. In two days the lines seemed to have deepened all the way from his eyes to the corners of his mouth, as though he had been tightening the muscles of his face against pain. “Doc, we know one of the fellows that smashed your lab. He slipped away from us, but we’ll find him.”

Mayor Altman was banging his gavel on a table that had seen no more serious business than a pinochle game for many years. The council members around the table looked self-conscious, except for Matt Sanders. As the years went by, his face seemed to settle more and more into the mold of a cigar store Indian. He stared straight ahead of him, his arms folded across his chest and his legs spread apart. Mrs. Baldwin was caught at the top of a giggle with the falling of the gavel, and her voice lingered hysterically above the silence for a second. Sorenson, Hershel, Fabry and Withrow, and the mayor’s vote in case of a tie, Alex thought.

“It’s a heart-warming show of civic spirit for all of you to come out on a scorcher like this,” Altman began, “and on a work day. It certainly proves the crisis we have reached here in Hillside. Indeed, I wouldn’t have called this meeting if I did not consider it a crisis myself. We have agreed to hold the meeting where the most of you can hear the issues, but on condition that you don’t interrupt unless in an orderly fashion, as do the members of the council. It is not a wedding we are attending. It is more in the nature of a wake.”

The mayor cleared his throat. The crowd was so quiet that he could be heard by the man at the end of the square if he were listening.

“Last Wednesday Andrew Mattson died in Hillside at the age of ninety-two. I wonder who among us will live that long? …”

Alex’s eyes met his father’s for a moment. This would have been prejudice before a jury. But this was no jury, and these prejudices would not be undone.

“In just three days our small town has become a place of terror and suspicion. With every hour it grows worse. Sins forgotten and forgiven long ago and paraded like a dirty wash in a Rinso ad …”

There was a titter among the crowd. Altman had prepared to the last word. Politics was his business.

“No, I don’t want to seem frivolous about this. It’s no laughing matter. I have seven separate complaints of slander, and last night, because I knew no other way to stop it, I called the state’s attorney for Riverdale county and asked for advice. The upshot of it was that I have here a restraining order which I am empowered to serve on the perpetrators of this dissent. I am putting it before the council whether or not I shall serve the order.

“In all fairness to the people involved, I must say that I don’t think the original intent was dissension in our community. I think they acted in good faith. But I think you will agree with me that their zeal exceeded their discretion …”

Alex could feel what little hope he had drain out of him. Waterman was filling his pipe, not looking at the mayor or anyone else. His shoulders were stooped, but the corners of his mouth were tense with a grim determination. Mr. Whiting’s eyes were focused on Altman’s face, as though he were trying to look through the easy confidence of the man, to see what really motivated him.

“… Mr. Waterman has been chief of police in Hillside for thirty years. During that time he has had no more serious arrests than parking violations for the most part. But he has been a good and faithful servant, as the Bible says. He has applied for a pension, and I suppose it’s only natural that he should want to convince us that he has earned it …”

“That’s dirty,” Alex said aloud. His father caught his arm. Altman had heard him, however, and turned.

“I think we’ll want to hear from you in due time, Alex …”

Sam Sorenson twisted in his chair. “Let’s get to the point, Altman. Our business doesn’t stop with gossip.”

“That’s my point exactly, Sam. It does stop with gossip. But, as you say, let’s get to the point. When Mattson died, at the age of ninety-two, our police chief did what was expected of him. He called in the county coroner and sheriff. An autopsy was duly performed by competent men, and the report of a natural death was given. So that you won’t have to take my word for it, I’ve asked Dr. Jacobs to tell us about it and I don’t think anybody could accuse Dr. Jacobs of prejudice in favor of the coroner’s office. Isn’t that so, Jake?”

Dr. Jacobs took his time getting to the meeting table. He looked as crabbed as an old apple, Alex thought.

“I haven’t just found religion, Mr. Mayor, so don’t treat me to that brethren stuff,” the doctor said curtly. He continued as though he were reading: “As examining physician on the death of Andrew Mattson, I can certify that death was due to the infirmities of age, precipitated by some sort of shock, conjectured to be the unexpected attack of his pet cat.”

“There was no evidence of physical violence?”

“You saw the report,” Jacobs snapped.

“Would you care to venture an opinion beyond the findings of the autopsy?”

“As a physician or as a citizen?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“All right, Mr. Altman. I do have an opinion. I’ve heard the gossip you talk about. I guess it’s the same thing, though I can’t count to seven on it. I think somebody’s kicking up a hell of a lot of dust and I’ll say it to your face, so if it’s gossip you’ll know where it came from. I don’t think this restraining order you’re getting out does one damn bit of good. It doesn’t do anything to get to the bottom of the trouble. Maybe the coroner’s report don’t show it, but there’s real shenanigans somewhere. I don’t think you should use all this oil of yours till you get the whole story before these people.” He looked from one council member to another, rather like a scolding grackle, and then stomped back to the edge of the crowd.

“Thank you, Jake,” Altman said, smiling. “I think the doctor illustrates our whole trouble here. We’ve had every ancient grudge called up to mitigate against an unbiased view. The doctor, for example, holds the coroner’s office in low esteem. He traces his grievance to me, because I nominated him for the office. And I did it because I knew him to be competent …”

Jacobs interrupted. “How I hold the coroner’s office has no business here, Mr. Altman. I didn’t bring it up. Neither should you.”