Payoff for the Banker (11 page)

“He,” Jerry said, “oughta to hear us. Or Bill ought. All I want to know, Sergeant, is—where's Bill.”

“You'll send me to Staten Island,” Mullins said. “Or Rockaway. On foot.”

“Do you know where he is?” Jerry wanted to know.

Mullins sighed.

“Well,” he said, “in a manner of speaking. I don't know where he is now, Mr. North. I know where he was. He was talking to a dame named Laurel Burke, who he thinks maybe killed Merle. He's going to talk to a guy who maybe killed Merle if Laurel didn't. He just called in. When he called in he was in a drug store.”

“I—” said Jerry. “All right, Pam. You try.”

“Listen, Mr. North,” Mullins said. “Listen!”

“Sergeant,” Mrs. North said, “we want to know where Bill is. It's important.”

“Staten Island,” Mullins said. “Or Rockaway. Or even Jamaica. Listen, Mrs. North.”

“If you don't you certainly will,” Mrs. North said. “Because you'll be obstructing justice. Anyway, in its early stages. And anyway, Jerry can get you a job. Jerry, don't! He's nudging me, Sergeant. But really he would, instead of a place like Jamaica. So you may as well tell us.”

“Listen,” Mullins said. “I can't do that, Mrs. North. The inspector wouldn't like it. If the loot's going to see this guy Murdock at the Hotel Main on account of maybe he shot the old boy, the inspector don't want you in on it. That's what the inspector says. He says you make it screwy.”

“Main?” Pam said. “M-A-I-N?”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “The inspector wants you to stay away from there.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Pam said.

“Absolutely,” Mullins said. “Like I was telling the inspector's secretary, who just came in, I can't tell you where Weigand is. And wouldn't if I could, Mrs. North.”

“Of course not, Mullins,” Mrs. North said. “I wouldn't want you to.”

Mr. and Mrs. North caught a taxicab almost at once. They got Murdock's room number by the simple device of asking for it on the Main's house phone and they went up unannounced because, as Mrs. North said, the police department was acting rather odd about them at the moment and it was really important to tell Bill about Mary Hunter, née Thorgson. And since the door of Murdock's room was already a little ajar, Pam, who was ahead, knocked on it only as a formality before she opened it.

It opened on a tiny hallway, with a bath on one side and a closet on the other, and Pam spoke as she preceded Jerry through the hallway into the room. She said: “Bill?”

Nobody answered and, before Jerry was far enough along to see what she saw, she said, “Oh” in a strange voice and drew back against him—drew back into his arms. When he saw what she was looking at, he held her there a moment.

Even if his name had been Bill, instead of Oscar Murdock, the man would not have answered Pam. He was sitting in a chair facing them, and he had slid down in the chair and his right arm dangled. Almost mathematically in the middle of his forehead there was an ugly blur of blood. Blood had run down over his face and down his neck to his shirt. And it was still running.

Under his relaxed right hand a revolver lay on the floor.

They were still looking at the body of Oscar Murdock, who had done confidential work for George Merle and might now be assumed to have hastened after his late employer, when the telephone in the room rang. It rang sharply, hurriedly. At the sound, Pam started convulsively in Jerry's arms.

“O.K., child,” Jerry said. “Hold it.”

“Answer it, Jerry,” Pam said. “It's a clue. It's always a clue when the phone rings.”

Jerry hesitated only a moment. Then he stepped around Pam, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket. He picked up the telephone in the handkerchief and said, “Hello?”

He listened a moment, said, “Yes,” once, and then said, again: “Hello? Hello?” He put the telephone back in its stand.

“Well,” he said.

“Was it a clue?” Pam wanted to know.

Jerry thought a moment and nodded. Probably, he said, it was a clue.

“It was somebody named Laurel,” he said. “A girl named Laurel. She said: ‘Ozzie! This is Laurel. There's a detective coming over. I had to tell him about Merle but I didn't—' and then she seemed to realize there was something wrong with my voice—that it wasn't Ozzie's. Because she said: ‘Ozzie! Is there something—Ozzie!' I said ‘Yes' and she made a funny sort of sound and hung up. Does it sound like a clue to you?”

Pam was looking at the body.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. Or anyway it would but—well, I don't know what we'll do with it, do you? Now that Mr. Murdock's killed himself. I suppose because he killed Mr. Merle. So now we've got a solution and we don't need a clue.”

They were thinking about that, and Jerry had an arm protectively about Pam's shoulders, when Bill Weigand opened the door behind them. Bill looked at them and at the body.

“It looks,” Bill said, “as if I was a little late. Quite a little late.”

Bill Weigand went on into the room and bent over the body, not touching it.

“About fifteen minutes late,” he said. He looked at Pam and Jerry and raised polite eyebrows. “And you?” he said.

“About twelve minutes,” Jerry North told him. “But in time to get a telephone call.”

Bill said, “Um-m-m?” and waited. Jerry told him about the call. Bill's eyebrows went up again.

“Laurel Burke,” he said. “She sells him out. Then she warns him. Or tries to. ‘I had to tell him about Merle but I didn't—'” He shook his head. “And that was all?” he said. Jerry nodded.

“But she didn't tell me something else,” Bill said, thinking about it. “About several other things.” He looked at the body. “However,” he said in a different tone. It was a final tone.

“Apparently,” Pam said, “he didn't need a warning, Bill. Were you coming to—to pick him up?”

Bill shook his head, abstractedly. As a matter of fact, he said, he hadn't been. He had still been a good way from that. He had a few questions to ask Murdock—a few new questions. He looked at the body again and shook his head.

“To be honest,” he said, “I didn't think he was—it. He knew something. The Burke girl pushed him at me—and gave him a motive. All for the love of Laurel Burke, she had it.”

“Of course,” Pam said, “you realize you don't make sense. Not to us.”

“Well,” Bill said. “Sauce for the goose. The Burke girl says her heart belonged to Mr. Merle and that poor Ozzie was just camouflage. She suggests Ozzie found out and didn't like the setup. Whereupon, bang! Do you like it?”

“Not terribly,” Jerry North said. “Nice and simple, however. And—” He gestured toward the body of Oscar Murdock. Weigand nodded.

“Right,” he said. “Whether we like it or not. There it is—all nice and clear for us. Murdock killed Merle. He decided he wasn't going to get away with it. Maybe I scared him earlier. So he decided to finish the story himself—in private. Instead of in a bright room, with a lot of witnesses. Neater, he probably thought.”

Pam said, with something like a shudder, that “neat” was an odd word for it. Bill pointed out that Murdock hadn't been thinking about people who came in afterward. For him, it was neat enough. One shot in the forehead and—. Bill shrugged without finishing. He picked up the telephone, not bothering to cover it against prints. He called the number of the Homicide office; asked curtly for Inspector O'Malley. He outlined the story briefly. He listened, said, “Yes, Inspector,” and “No, Inspector,” half a dozen times and hung up. He turned from the telephone and said the boys would be along. To take care of formalities.

Pam was looking at the body, fixedly. Bill stepped between her and the body just as Jerry put a hand on her shoulder.

“Forget it, kid,” Jerry said. “You'll be dreaming about it.”

Pam shook her head.

“It isn't that,” she said. “But isn't it a funny place? Awkward? The wound, I mean.”

Bill turned and looked at the body and turned back, shaking his head a little.

“Not particularly,” he said. “You mean it ought to be in the side of the head?”

Pam nodded.

“There's no rule about it,” Bill Weigand said. “I see what you mean, but there's no rule about it. There are—different ways.”

“Still,” Pam insisted, “it would be awkward. You'd have to hold the gun out in front of you and turn it in and—. It would be awkward.”

“You could turn your head to meet the gun,” Jerry pointed out. “Or—or pull the trigger with your thumb. It wouldn't be particularly difficult.”

Pam nodded, but without conviction.

“I know,” she said. “I see how it could be done. I don't mean it isn't possible—or even that it would be terribly hard. But I'd think that—that you'd want to do it as easily as possible. Mechanically, I mean. With as little wrestling around and—”

She was still looking at the body when she stopped speaking. She was looking at it with a new intentness.

“Particularly,” she said, “if you had a wrist like Murdock's. A wrist which wouldn't bend easily. Look at it.”

Bill stepped forward and squatted to look closely at the dangling right hand. After a moment, he touched it lightly. He stood up, unconsciously wiping his fingers on his handkerchief. He looked puzzled.

“Would it?” Pam said.

Slowly, Bill shook his head.

“Some time or other,” he said, “Murdock had a broken wrist. It wasn't set quite properly—it's what they call a silver-fork deformity. He had practically full use of it, probably, and the malformation isn't very visible. But—”

“But,” Pam said, “he couldn't bend it the normal distance forward, could he, Bill?” She turned to Jerry quickly. “You remember Cousin Willard, Jerry?”

“Vividly,” Jerry said.

“All right,” Pam said. “Anyway you like—at the moment. He had a wrist like that. He broke it cranking a car. A Chevrolet. The battery didn't work. And he couldn't make it go forward properly.”

“Not even by crank—” Jerry began and stopped. “Oh,” he said. “I see what you mean. The wrist. Not the Chevrolet.”

Pam said, “Of course.

“And,” she said, “to hold a revolver up against the middle of your forehead the way Murdock did, you'd have to have your wrist go forward—your hand go forward, I mean. At right angles to your arm. And Willard's wouldn't.”

The two men looked at each other. After a moment, Jerry half smiled.

“Even if you moved your head toward the gun,” he said. “It would be possible, I suppose. But it would be—well, Pam's word fits, Bill. Awkward.”

Bill nodded slowly.

“Damned awkward,” he said. He smiled, not cheerfully. “In more ways than one,” he said. “I just told the inspector Murdock had finished himself off and saved us the trouble. He won't like it if Murdock didn't. Particularly if—.”

He reached quickly for the telephone; talked quickly into it. Then he talked more slowly and listened longer. A rumbling noise, to which the Norths paid careful inattention, came from the receiver. After a considerable time, and as there was a firm knock on the door, Weigand put the telephone back in its cradle.

“He's already told the reporters,” Bill said, sadly. “He doesn't like it at all. All right, boys.”

The boys came. They came with cameras and fingerprint blanks and a general air of competence. A hospital intern came with them, looked at the body from a distance, said, “D.O.A.,” and wrote the same in a notebook and went away. The men of the Homicide Squad moved around the room, not touching the body. Flashbulbs flared and cameras peered down at angles on the body of Oscar Murdock. An assistant medical examiner came with a black bag, looked the body over without opening the bag, said they could send it along.

“Looks like suicide,” he said, contentedly.

“Doesn't it?” Bill Weigand said, without content.

The Homicide fingerprint men took over the body. They rolled the fingers one by one on a pad and on numbered slips of paper.

“Of course,” Jerry said, “he could have used his thumb. Or his left hand.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Or his big toe. If he used his left hand, why did he drop the gun with his right? And the prints aren't going to show he used his thumb.”

Bill Weigand was morose.

“Look, Bill,” Pam North said. “It isn't—well, conclusive. He
could
have done it.”

“Right,” Bill said. “He
could
have done it—just like that. And somebody could have done it for him—held the revolver close to his head and pulled the trigger; bent his hand around the gun after wiping it. Not noticing Murdock's wrist. And when we catch him,
he'll
say Murdock
could
have done it, wrist or no wrist, and the doctors will have to say sure, he could have—it wasn't physically impossible. It just wasn't likely. And the jury will probably decide that that means a reasonable doubt and—the hell with it!”

“Look, Bill,” Pam said. “You make it sound awful. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—to—what does Mullins say? Make it screwy. I just happened to notice.”

Bill grinned at her.

“Oh,” he said, “the truth above everything, Pam. Even if inconvenient. Only I wish you'd happened to notice before I called Art—Inspector O'Malley. However.”

There was a pause, while they watched the busy men from Homicide.

“Now what?” Pam said.

“Now,” Jerry said, “you and I go home. Bill—what do you do, Bill?”

Bill shook his head, abstractedly.

“I,” he said, “spread it out and look at it. At home, I think.” He paused. “Tell you,” he said, “why don't you and Pam drop around. We'll give you a drink. We'll put your little minds to work, too, probably. And we won't tell the inspector, huh?”