Payoff for the Banker (9 page)

They waited, because she paused then.

“This has something to do with the rest of it,” she said. “It's not—not just reminiscence.”

They accepted her statement without words. She went on.

It had been that spring—the spring she was nineteen—that she had really met Joshua Merle. She accented the word “really” and explained. It was not, really—she smiled slightly at her repetition of the word—not really the first time she had met him. She must have met him a dozen times when they were both growing up, he a few years ahead of her in the process. The families had known each other—casually. “Or I thought casually,” she said. “Now I don't know. Because Dad and Mr. Merle had some sort of business contact.”

She shook her head and said she was sorry.

“That's all I know,” she said. “I didn't think much about things like that. I didn't know anything about it at the time. The Merles were just people who—oh, who went to the same church Mother and Dad did and who had a lot of money and a big place, and who sent the best flowers when the church was decorated. That didn't mean much one way or the other, to me, because the church didn't. I guess it didn't to Dad, either, but it did to Mother.”

Pam started to say something, but Jerry shook his head at her. The girl did not notice.

She had met Joshua Merle at a dance at the country club on a Saturday night. As she remembered it—as she remembered something—her face changed and her eyes changed. They had met in a big way. The words were hers. “We met in a big way,” she said. “We didn't know where we had been all our lives—all one another's life—how ought I to say it, Mrs. North?”

“It doesn't matter,” Mrs. North said. “The way you said it was perfectly clear.” Pam looked at Jerry. “Perfectly clear,” she repeated.

“At least as clear as—” Jerry said, and stopped. Pam slightly made a face at him.

“Josh—it's because of his grandfather,” the girl explained. “The name is. Josh had been down from Princeton for the weekend. During the rest of the spring he was down for other weekends, and after he was graduated he was home.

“And we met a lot,” she said. “An awful lot—we went riding and played tennis and danced and went swimming and—oh, all the things you do in summer.” She paused. “Including falling in love,” she said. “Which is something you do mostly in summer, I guess. Josh was—he was sweet.”

She paused for a longer moment; it seemed that she was not going on.

“And something happened?” Mrs. North said, finally.

The girl looked at her.

“I—” she said. She stopped. “We were going to get married,” she said. “We decided to get married. Before the war started. Because everybody knew it was going to start. But—.” She swallowed and shook her head, so that the short blond hair was ruffled. When she continued it was with an effort to make her voice impersonal; it was with what seemed to be an effort to wipe out of her mind the knowledge that she was telling the story to anyone. She spoke as if speaking to herself.

“It was like—oh, like a melodrama,” she said. “Some kind of a bad play. Josh took me to their place one afternoon and we were going to have a swim and a drink and then go on to dinner with some other people. And Mr. Merle sent word out to me by one of the servants that he would like me to come to his study. And I went. I was wearing a white play suit. I didn't feel grown up at all.”

George Merle had been very formidable at a desk—a heavy desk with a sheet of plate glass over the top. He had sat behind the desk and he had said, “Sit down, Miss Thorgson.” She had sat down and he had sat for a long minute looking at her and not saying anything. “And knowing what he was doing to me,” the girl said. Then he had begun to talk.

He said that he was afraid she and Joshua were getting unfortunate notions about each other, and that he did not want her to make any mistake. He said this coldly and evenly, and without any particular inflection. He had sat behind the heavy desk and looked at the slight blond girl in a white play suit which made her—there, with him looking at her—feel helplessly like a child, and he had spoken evenly and without any friendliness in his voice.

“You think,” he had said, “that Joshua has a great deal of money, or will have. No doubt your father thinks so too.”

“My father?” the girl had said. “I don't know what you mean, Mr. Merle.”

Merle had said that she knew well enough. That her father knew well enough. But he had no objection to putting it into words.

“You think that Joshua is worth marrying,” he said. “No doubt your father thinks that is a good way to get it back. You can tell him for me it won't work.”

The girl said that she hadn't understood. “I told him I didn't understand what he meant,” she said.

“What I mean is,” he said, “that you are planning to marry Joshua for his money—my money. Your father put you up to it, I imagine. But it isn't going to work. Because if he marries you he won't have any money. Now or in the future. He won't have his allowance. He won't get any money when I die.” He had paused, then, thinking it over. “At least,” he said, “he won't if I can help it. The way the courts are now, no sane man can say what they'll rule. But it would take him years—and for years he wouldn't have any money. You can tell your father that, Miss Thorgson.”

The girl still hadn't understood.

“Even now,” she said, “I don't know what he meant. But I think he hated Dad. It must have been something—something to do with business—that they were in together. I think it had something to do with Dad not having as much money as he used to have—suddenly not having as much money. But I don't know. I never asked Dad—I never told him anything about it. I couldn't. And then he died, that fall.”

Then, before the implacable man behind the heavy desk, she had merely stood up, feeling white. “I must have been white,” she said. “I felt so—so gone. And I said a very strange thing.”

She paused, not hesitantly, but as if she were remembering anew.

“I said, ‘You're horrible. You ought to die,'” the girl said. “I said ‘You ought to die.' And this afternoon I came home and—and he was dead.”

Her voice was distant; it had the distance of an echo.

6

T
UESDAY
, 9:40
P.M.
TO
10:15
P.M.

The surgeon worked under a bright light beating down on what had been Mr. George Merle. His instruments glittered a little under the light; he reached in with forceps and drew out what he had been looking for. He held it up under the light and examined it and dropped it into a basin, sloshing it. He picked it out with the forceps and looked at it again and nodded approvingly.

One slug which had terminated Mr. Merle had been much harder than Mr. Merle and was much less damaged. It would come in handy, Dr. Mayhew, Assistant Medical Examiner, decided. The ballistics men would not be provoked, as they sometimes were, by getting a battered slug from a battered cadaver. This one would please them; the marks of the rifling—yes, and the imprint of the firing pin—would show up nicely under their microscopes. All they needed now was another slug to go with it, which was no business of Dr. Mayhew.

It was almost ten o'clock at night, and the surroundings were unbeautiful. Dr. Mayhew sliced deftly at a pectoral muscle and whistled “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” He sliced on. He dictated to an assistant, perched on a revolving stool, using a laboratory table for his notebook.

“Well nourished,” Dr. Mayhew reported. “Did very well by himself, this one did. Had a couple of drinks before he got it. Had a couple of drinks every now and then, possibly.” He whistled “I've got a beautiful feeling—”

“Late fifties,” he announced, breaking off. “Could have done with more exercise, probably. Nothing the matter with his heart.” He paused and looked at his work. “Except for the bullet in it,” he added. “Cause of death—hmmm. Destruction of the left ventricle; gunshot wound. Second gunshot wound in right breast. Punctured lung. Third gunshot wound three inches below second. Deflected by rib—and seems to have lodged in the spine. Probably pretty badly mashed up—the slug. The spine too, as a matter of fact. Thirty-eight calibre—the slug, not the spine …” He whistled several bars of “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” His assistant listened morosely.

“Hell,” he said. “It don't go like that. It goes like this.” He demonstrated.

“Usual appendicitis scar,” Dr. Mayhew said, with increased firmness. “Weight 160. Height five feet, ten. The man, not the scar. Very good manicure, by the way. And he didn't use his hands much.”

“Hell, no,” the assistant said, jotting. “He was a banker.”

“Was he?” Dr. Mayhew said, not much interested. He had another shot at “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” “That way?” he asked.

“George Merle,” the assistant said. “Banker
and
philanthropist. Fund chairman. Committee chairman. Board of Directors chairman.
President
of a bank. Come back to you, Doc?”

“I,” said Dr. Mayhew, “am an assistant medical examiner. I don't get around—not with the live ones.” He stood up and looked at his work, which had been thorough.

He dropped his tools in a basin.

“All right,” he said, “you can tell the boys he's ready to go.”

“Every available detective is working on the case,” Acting Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley said firmly. “Every available detective.”

Inspector O'Malley sat firmly behind his desk and looked at the reporters with honest eyes. The reporters looked back at him with skepticism.

“Listen, Inspector,” the man from the
News
said. “This isn't just some stiff who got himself conked. This is George Merle. You know who he is?”

“Certainly,” said the inspector. “We are fully aware—”

“What we want to know,” the man from the
Herald Tribune
said with great patience, “is where you're getting. Have you got any line on it?”

“Oh, yes,” the inspector said. “We're making definite progress. We expect—”

“Look,” the
Mirror
man said, “we write it that way, Inspector. You just tell us—we'll write it. Are you getting anywhere? Did he go to see the girl? Were they that way? Love nest?”

“You're damned r—” the inspector said, and remembered suddenly. “We are investigating all angles,” he said, with enhanced firmness. He looked slightly harassed. He changed slightly.

“Listen, boys,” he said, and he was a boy among boys. “There ain't—there isn't a thing I can tell you. Not for the record. You know that.”

“What we want to know,” the
Times
man pointed out, “is—do you
know
anything.” He waited, as if for the inspector to understand. “You see,” he said, “Mr. Merle was a very important man, Inspector. The public is interested in him because he was a very important man. They want to know what the police are doing about his murder.”

Inspector O'Malley looked at them all, and his gaze grew slightly baleful. He looked hard at Sergeant Mullins, present as an emissary from Lieutenant Weigand, and Mullins, who seldom shrank, shrank perceptibly. Mullins was glad at the moment that he was not Lieutenant Weigand; he would have been reasonably contented not to be Sergeant Mullins. He felt like a buffer state.

“Our best men are working on the case,” Inspector O'Malley said, mollified by the shrinkage of Mullins. “Look, boys—I'm working on it myself.”

It had the form of an impressive announcement. But it did not have the effect of an impressive announcement. The
Times
looked at the
Tribune
. The
Tribune
raised eyebrows.

“How about Weigand?” the
Tribune
inquired.

“Weigand—the sergeant here—everybody,” O'Malley told him. “Under my direction—my
personal
direction.”

The
News
said, “Oh.” The
News
used a falling inflection.

“Look, Inspector,” the
Mirror
said. “How's about seeing Weigand?”

The inspector was about to answer, when the door opened. A uniformed patrolman said, “Here's a guy from
PM
, Inspector.” Everybody looked at the guy from
PM
, who was rather small but very certain. He looked only at the inspector.

“Inspector,” he said, “we hear that you've got two Negroes locked up in a precinct house charged with killing Merle. We hear you're beating the hell out of them. How about it?”

“We—” said Inspector O'Malley. “You—”

“You don't know,” the guy from
PM
told him. “That isn't good enough for
PM
, Inspector. What are you doing to find out?”

“There isn't a—” the inspector said. “We haven't got—”

“‘No comment',” the guy from
PM
said, with great sarcasm. “The good old ‘No comment.' You can't get away with that, Inspector. Not with
PM
you can't. Frankly, my story won't let you get away with the ‘No comment' gag, Inspector. Frankly.”

The inspector stood up behind his desk.

“You,” he said, “get the hell out of here!”

He said it with vigor. Mullins jumped slightly. The guy from
PM
backed away from him.

“Don't try it,” he said. “Don't try it!” He spoke hurriedly. “Not with
PM
. I'll—”

He kept an eye on Mullins and edged toward the door. He reached it and put a hand on the knob.

“So,” he said. “That's the police answer. You ask a civil question—as a citizen, as a reporter—and what happens?” He pulled the door toward him. “You get thrown out!” he said. He spoke bitterly. “You—”