Payoff for the Banker (7 page)

“Apparently not,” Weigand told him. “Where were you?”

“At a restaurant,” Merle said. “A place named Charles. Downtown. If it wasn't the police, who was it? I don't get it.”

“Neither do I,” Weigand said. He thought it over. He looked at Merle again. “Neither do I,” he repeated, in a different voice. Still looking at Merle, he picked up the telephone. His glance dropped to the dial long enough for a long finger to spin out a number he knew well enough. He talked for a moment, making no effort to lower his voice. He thanked Hugo at Charles and replaced the telephone.

“But,” he said, “somebody did call you. I don't know what he said. But somebody called you. A man.”

“He said what I told you,” Merle said, and his voice was hot again.

“Right,” Weigand said, without inflection.

He waited, but neither of the young men added anything. Physically different, they were alike again, looking at Weigand, waiting for him to go on. He went on. He said, but not as if it mattered to him, that the attitude was wrong—the attitude of young Merle. It was, he said, getting them nowhere. He was a policeman; he was trying to find out who killed Merle's father; he could use Merle's help. Granted a mystery in Mr. Merle's presence; granted something odd which needed looking into. The result was that Mr. Merle was there. They would find out why eventually.

“Somebody worked it,” Merle said. “For some purpose.”

“Obviously,” Weigand told him. “Obviously, Mr. Merle.” He started to explain something and decided not to. Under a case, until it was solved, there was always something moving—something in the dark, with purposes of its own; something that slipped away from under the hand; something with purposes as clear to it, and as mysterious to others, as the burrowings of a mole, as the twisting and turning of a mole's tunnel through the earth. If you knew the direction a mole was going and put your hand down in the path, the soil pressed up against your hand. Signifying mole at work. In an investigation, such a movement as surely signified murderer at work. But that was his problem, not Merle's—not Merle's if he was above ground, or Jameson's.

“For the time being,” Weigand said, instead of any of this—“for the time being, we'll skip that, Mr. Merle. Have you any idea what your father did today before he was killed?”

It took Merle longer to tell it than it would have taken him to tell it simply. But there was little to it. George Merle had left his home on Long Island about nine o'clock that morning and had been driven to the Long Island Railroad Station. He had caught the 9:25 to New York, and that had put him at the Pennsylvania Station about 10:20—10:18, if the train was on time. Part of this was guesswork on his son's part; he knew about when his father left; the car had returned at about the interval to be expected if George Merle made the train. There had been nothing said about his missing the train. And, anyway, he never missed trains.

Presumably thereafter George Merle went to the bank; that was to be checked at the bank. There was no reason to think he had not; if he had not gone to the bank, presumably the bank would sooner or later have telephoned to inquire about his absence. He had had lunch with his son.

“Yes?” Weigand said.

At about one fifteen, at the Yale Club. The luncheon had lasted around an hour and a half.

“Right,” Weigand said. “Was that customary? For you and your father to lunch together?”

There wasn't, Merle said, any custom about it. They lunched together occasionally, when he happened to be in town. He was not in town often—certainly not every day. But it was not unusual, either his being in town or his lunching with his father. And after lunch his father had, presumably, returned to his office.

“And you?” Weigand wanted to know.

The younger Merle had left the Long Island house in time to catch the 11:01 to New York. He had arrived, he supposed, at around 12. He had done various things—

“What things?” Weigand said.

Both young men looked at him with the appearance of surprised interest, and Merle looked as if he might challenge the question. But it seemed to Weigand as if something passed from Weldon Jameson to the taller, somewhat older man, and as if this something checked him.

“I walked across town,” Merle said. He paused and looked at Weigand. “I don't walk fast any more,” he said. “I looked in some windows. I stopped and bought a couple of ties.”

“At?” Weigand said.

At Saks, Merle told him. He had still had time to kill—it was about a quarter to one. He walked over to Madison and down a little way and into a news-reel theater. He stayed there until it was time to meet his father at the club.

He had planned to go back to Long Island after lunch, but when it was time to catch the train he decided he was not interested in going back to Long Island. Instead he had stayed on at the club, having a drink or two, looking over newspapers. He had tried to call a girl in town and failed to get her.

“She'd moved,” Merle said. “They said they didn't know where.”

He had met a man he knew slightly at the club and had a drink or two with him, and suddenly grown bored with him. He had remembered an engagement—“a phoney engagement,” Merle said—and had gone out into the summer afternoon still without purpose. He had wandered about the city for a while, looking in windows, killing time. Then he had telephoned Jameson at the Long Island house.

“Without getting me,” Jameson said. “I'd taken the 2:13 in. Do you want to know what
I
did, Lieutenant?”

Weigand didn't, particularly, so far as he knew.

“Anyway,” he said, “one thing at a time.”

Merle hadn't, it appeared, done much of anything with most of his afternoon in town. He had tried to ring up another girl, and she was out of town. He had stopped in at another bar or two and had another drink or two, and then gone down to Charles. He had had several drinks at the bar there and then dinner and then whoever it was called him on the telephone, and told him his father had been murdered. He had started out and had met Jameson just coming in. They had come to the station house. They were still at the station house.

“And where,” he inquired, “does it get you, Lieutenant? Do you think I killed Dad?”

“I don't know,” Weigand said. His voice was mild. “I shouldn't think so. I hadn't thought so, particularly. Did you, Mr. Merle?”

Merle made a remark. It was a truculent remark. He added a single word—“Snafu.” Weigand nodded slowly, agreeing it was all of that. It occurred to him that Joshua Merle was younger than he seemed—younger than the twenty-six or twenty-seven Weigand would have guessed—younger, anyway, in emotions. Jameson, Bill Weigand thought, was looking at his friend with concern.

“Take it easy, fella,” Jameson said. He turned to Bill Weigand. “You can't accuse a guy of killing his own father, Lieutenant,” he said.

Weigand thought of saying that it was not unheard of and decided not to say it. Instead, in the most matter of fact of tones, he said that he had made no such accusation, even by implication.

“Mr. Merle came here voluntarily,” Bill explained. “And not at my invitation, whatever someone may have wanted him to think. I haven't, at the moment, any suspicion of anyone. And I haven't any more questions to ask either of you, at the moment.”

Having said that, he waited.

“Dad—the body—” Merle said. “Do you want me to—?”

Weigand shook his head. At the moment the body would be—not available—for identification. Bill saw no reason for explaining why. He would want formal identification from a member of the family, but tomorrow would do. He would want to talk to other members of the family. For that, also, tomorrow would do. At the moment—.

“Come on, Jamie,” Merle said. “Let's get out of here.” He moved, limping, toward the door. Jameson followed him, his limp as pronounced, but different. At the door, Merle stopped suddenly, and turned.

“I didn't mean to—to get tough, or anything, Lieutenant,” he said. “It was a jolt. O.K.?”

It was, Bill told him, perfectly O.K. He watched the two young men go out the door. He wondered what had happened to them—physically and more than physically. Eventually, no doubt, he would find out. You found out so much when you were investigating murders. Particularly so much that did you no good.

Weigand went out of the dusty room and pulled the door to after him. At the desk he checked again. Still there was no record that anyone had telephoned young Merle at Charles to tell him about the death of his father. That was another thing that would have to be found out about, eventually. He started out and the telephone rang behind him. The desk sergeant called him back. Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley, in charge of the Homicide Squad, was on the wire. The sergeant looked at Bill Weigand with a certain expression and Bill, curbing himself, looked back with no expression at all. He picked up the telephone and Inspector O'Malley rumbled at him.

Where the hell, O'Malley wanted to know, did Weigand think he was. The question was evidently rhetorical, and O'Malley did not wait for an answer. What the hell did Weigand think he was doing?

“Working on the Merle killing,” Bill told him, in a reasonable tone.

“Well,” O'Malley said, “what about it?”

“I don't know,” Bill said. “Not yet.”

O'Malley's rumble gained in volume, but did not grow more articulate. It was distant thunder on the telephone. Bill waited, making soothing sounds. The rumble subsided somewhat; the voice became almost plaintive.

“Listen, Bill,” O'Malley said. “For God's sake, listen. This guy Merle wasn't just anybody. He was—hell, he was
George
Merle. He ran a
bank.”

“I know, Inspector,” Bill said. “It's one of those things.”

It damned well was, O'Malley told him. And ever since the slip went out the boys had been driving him nuts. “On account of it's
George
Merle,” he explained. “The
Times
and the
Herald Trib
particularly. Even if there is a war on, the
Times
says, it's still
George
Merle. You know that guy Hardy.”

Weigand grinned into the telephone, but kept the grin out of his voice. He did know Hardy, and that Inspector O'Malley was not really a match for him. Hardy was a good man at his business, which was finding things out whether O'Malley wanted them found out or wanted them kept in, or didn't—as was often the case—know precisely what they were.

“Yes, Inspector,” Weigand agreed. “I know Hardy. Did you tell him that we had a dragnet out?”

“Have we?” O'Malley said, evidently before he thought.

“Well,” Bill said, “I don't know that we could call it a dragnet, exactly.”

“All right,” O'Malley said. “What the hell are you doing? What are we going to tell the newspaper guys?”

“We might just tell them that we're investigating,” Weigand said. “That Mr. Merle was killed less than four hours ago. That at the moment we haven't any idea—not even the lousiest little idea—who knocked him off.”

O'Malley told him for God's sake not to try to be funny. He pointed out that the tabloids had already gone in and that the
Times
and
Trib
—and the tabs too, for their later editions—had to have something. He wanted to know whether Bill didn't know a story when he saw one. He wanted to know whether Bill hadn't ever heard of
George
Merle.

“They're good enough guys,” Bill said. “Just tell them the way things are, Inspector. Tell them we're—oh, tell them we are questioning several associates of the late bank president.”

“Yeah,” O'Malley said. “I did. They wanted to know what kind of associates. Banking? Or.”

“Or?” Bill Weigand repeated, when O'Malley stopped.

“Just ‘or',” O'Malley said. “You know what they meant. It was that guy from the
Mirror.”

“What did you say?” Weigand wanted to know.

“I said there were a lotta angles,” O'Malley said. “I told them we were looking into all of them. Why don't you arrest the girl?”

Weigand wanted to know for what. O'Malley suggested murder.

“What the hell,” he said. “She was there, wasn't she? He'd come to see her, hadn't he? What more do you want?”

“Evidence,” Bill Weigand suggested.

O'Malley began to rumble again. Weigand spoke before he thought, to check the rumble short of thunder.

“I'm keeping an eye on her, Inspector,” he said hurriedly—too hurriedly. “The Norths have—” He stopped. But had not stopped soon enough.

“Do you mean to stand there and tell me the Norths are in it?” O'Malley wanted to know. “Is that what you mean to do, Lieutenant?”

It hadn't been. But there was no point in insisting on discreet intentions. Weigand listened, dutifully, while the thunder rolled. After some time he was permitted to hang up, on the understanding that he had to solve the murder of
George
Merle within minutes—fifteen at the outside—get Mary Hunter away from Mr. and Mrs. North and Mr. and Mrs. North out of the case, and send Sergeant Mullins immediately downtown with a report of progress for the press. Weigand looked at the telephone for a moment after he replaced it and sighed. In some ways, he thought, Inspector O'Malley was getting to be altogether too much like the elder Clarence Day. Life with O'Malley was something, too.

He got Mullins out of the detectives' room and sent him south, into the jaws of the inspector. He went in search of Laurel Burke, known sometimes as Mrs. Oscar Murdock. It would be interesting if George Merle, when he made his last visit to anyone, had thought he was visiting Mr. and Mrs. Murdock. It would be, perhaps, even more interesting if he had thought he was visiting only Mrs. Murdock, whose first initial was “L” for Laurel.