The Eighth Circle

by Stanley Ellin

  “Now will you talk, Eddie?” Murray asked.

  Eddie talked.

  They waited in Murray’s car—Murray and Harlingen—across the street from the Gothic pile where the Millers lived, and shortly before nine they saw Wykoff enter the building. A few minutes later a cab pulled up and disgorged LoScalzo. He paid the driver, pulled himself through the door the way a swollen cork is drawn from a bottle, and walked into the building. He was hatless, and his overcoat was thrown over his shoulders like a cape.

  “Always the ham,” Murray said, and then as Harlingen was about to push open the car door he said, “No, wait a minute. Let them get settled upstairs first. It’ll run smoother that way.” He patted the tape recorder on his lap. “You sure you know how to handle this thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know how the stuff in the briefcase is arranged. It’s all in order.”

  “I know that,” Harlingen said. “Look, will you stop worrying about me? I told you once that when I had something to work with I knew what to do with it. Now I’ve got something to work with.”

  “Yes, but it won’t be like any courtroom you ever saw,” Murray warned. “There’s no ground rules, nobody presiding, nobody to appeal to. And there’re three characters up there—”

  Harlingen laughed. “Let’s go,” he said, “before you convince me.”

  The Valkyrie opened the apartment door, and did not seem surprised to see them there. “Here is more,” she announced over her shoulder, and Pearl Miller behind her said, “Oh, how nice! It’s like a party, isn’t it? And Ira never told me a thing about it.”

  She trotted ahead of them into the living room. “Ira, dear,” she said anxiously, “here’s more company, but you never told me anything about it, and there’s nothing in the house for them. What am I going to do?”

  “Do?” said Miller, and the expression on his face intrigued Murray. There was no surprise in it—of course, Wykoff would have passed along a warning about this encounter at the first opportunity—but only a polite gravity, a frowning concern at this invasion of his household. It was a look Murray recognized from his previous visit here. The look of a man who had hoped to settle down for the evening with a good book and a well-worn brier, and who finds, instead, that he must play host to some well-meaning but uninvited guests. “There’s nothing to do, Pearlie,” he said cheerfully, and patted her shoulder. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  “But coffee?” Pearl Miller looked around at the assemblage in the room. “You would like some, wouldn’t you? And I do make such good coffee.” She put her fingertips to her mouth, and when her sleeve fell back Murray saw that the bandage was gone from her wrist. “I do make good coffee, don’t I, Ira?” she asked uncertainly.

  “The best.” He steered her toward the door, an arm around her waist. “Now you go in the kitchen and Hilda will help you make it. And tell her to keep the dog in there. You know George doesn’t like him around.”

  Through all this, LoScalzo had sat sunk in the deepest armchair in the room, his big body relaxed, his eyes veiled and watchful. In his own way, Murray surmised, LoScalzo was as good a poker player as Miller. He knew that something was going on, and he was willing to sit and study his cards with an expressionless face until he knew what. Then he would be ready to get into the game.

  Harlingen walked over to the piano which stood at the far end of the room. He placed the tape recorder on the piano bench and laid the briefcase next to it. He looked, Murray thought with concern, like a college instructor warming up for a lecture. And when he introduced himself his voice had a staid professorial quality. “And now,” he said, “let’s get down to cases. My client, Patrolman Arnold Lundeen—”

  LoScalzo came to attention. “Hold it, counselor. I’ve already warned your man here—” he glowered at Murray “—against any intimidation of my witnesses, and I now repeat that warning to you. Don’t let zeal get the best of you. Whatever song and dance you want to display, bring it before the bench.”

  “Mr. LoScalzo,” said Harlingen imperturbably, “I have now been warned. In return, let me say that if I were to bring my information before the bench you would wind up looking like the biggest damn fool in town. To save yourself from that, let me put on my song and dance first, and reserve judgment until afterward. This whole thing will take ten minutes, and I assure you that I won’t make one statement during that time which isn’t backed up by evidence I will place in your hands here and now. Is that fair enough?”

  He had roused LoScalzo’s curiosity, Murray saw, and then wisely he did not allow LoScalzo time to put curiosity aside. Without waiting for an answer, Harlingen drew the binder of Wykoff’s records from the briefcase, and Wykoff’s eyes were instantly riveted on them. “First,” said Harlingen, “I’d like to establish the identity of one Charles Pirozy, whose name is in these records I hold here. But because the records are confidential, I will waive showing them publicly and ask Mr. Wykoff to identify the party in question. Would you do that, Mr. Wykoff?”

  “Sure,” said Wykoff. “He was my accountant. A very high-class person, believe me.” His fingers twitched for the binder, and Harlingen handed it to him.

  “There’s a copy of this, too,” Wykoff said. “A film, it should be. Where is it?”

  Harlingen looked apologetic. “I’m afraid it’s in the bottom of this bag,” he said blandly, “but I’m sure we’ll find it when we get everything else cleared up.”

  Wykoff looked daggers at Murray, but Harlingen gave him no more time to enter a demurrer than he had LoScalzo. “And now that we know who Charles Pirozy is,” he said quickly, “let’s hear some statements about him from an interested party.”

  He pressed the switch on the tape recorder. There was a faint humming, and then Eddie Schrade’s voice emerged loud and panicky.

  “George,” it said, “you got to be reasonable. You hear me, George? This is Eddie Schrade, and you got to listen. It was Pirozy and Ira worked that swindle on you. I swear it was. I didn’t want any part of it. I even said to Ira—”

  “Shut that off!” It was Ira Miller, now without the aplomb. He was on his feet shouting, his face twisted with fury. “Where do you come off to try a trick like this? Who do you think you—!”

  And it was George Wykoff who restored order with a small gesture. He snapped his ringers as one would to bring a dog to attention. “Shut up, you,” he said.

  “But, George, do you mean you’d listen to that? It’s not even Eddie! I know Eddie’s voice, and I tell you—”

  “I said to shut up. It’s Eddie, and he’s talking to me. Me personally, y’understand? Shut up so I can hear what he says.”

  “It worked like this, George,” said Eddie Schrade’s voice out of the silence that followed: “Pirozy said Ira stood in good with you, so they could make it look like a losing book and get away with a lot of dough. Especially if Pirozy covered up for Ira. So they did it. They made it look like a lot of bets had to be paid off all the time, and they also fixed it so it looked like the cops were getting a lot of ice they weren’t really getting. Then Pirozy really got his hooks in Ira, because Ira dropped such a pile on his show—”

  Harlingen switched the recorder off. “The show referred to,” he said to LoScalzo, “was a play called Time Out of Hand, which had a run of four performances three years ago. Here is a copy of the Wall Street Journal showing the incorporation of the play company, and the amount invested by Ira Miller, the largest shareholder. It amounted to $52,000, all of which he lost. He was then in serious financial difficulties.”

  He turned on the machine again. “—he would do anything to make it back. So they took you for more and more, George, but I never got a dime from it. I swear, not a dime. Not even chicken feed. You got to believe that, George. You know I’m a small-timer. What would I have to do with such big money?

  “And then when Ira got scared and wanted to back out, Pirozy wouldn’t let him. He said he would tell you about it, and you would kill Ira, but that
he would get off, because he knew how to get around you. He would say to Ira, ‘I need a hundred’ or ‘I need a couple of hundred,’ it didn’t matter how much, and Ira always had to shell out, and then make it look like a pay-off to the cops.”

  Murray’s voice cut in. And Murray, hearing it, felt the curious embarrassment he always did in listening to playbacks of himself. “How about Lundeen?” his voice asked. “What happened to him that day, Eddie?”

  “Ah, he never got a nickel from Ira, the dumb cop. It was a real arrest, strictly on the level, only Ira marked down he paid a thousand dollars to Lundeen, so he and Pirozy could split the money. Pirozy wanted the arrest, because he had to show George on the books how many cops in the district were collecting big graft, and how much ice it cost to keep operating. Only Ira didn’t want to take the arrest himself, because he had too many already—you know, arrests on his record—so he paid me a couple of bucks to go out and take some bets and be the pigeon for him. He said if I wouldn’t do it he’d get somebody else to run Songster for him, so what could I do?”

  “But what about Lundeen? Why was he the one to be framed?”

  Schrade’s voice was a fine mixture of surprise and sarcasm. “Why him? Because he was the one who came along that side of the street right then! Why else?”

  Harlingen shut off the machine with finality, and LoScalzo lurched forward in his chair. “That’s interesting, counselor,” LoScalzo said, “but it happens to be the unsubstantiated statement of one man. What about this Pirozy? Can you produce him?”

  “No,” said Harlingen, “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Wykoff had been staring at Miller like a man watching a monster take form before him. He turned the same expression on Harlingen now. “Sure you can’t, you four-flusher,” he said coldly. “Pirozy was killed in an auto accident a month ago. So how about that?”

  “Plenty,” said Harlingen. “Because even after the grand-jury investigation closed down your shop, Pirozy kept his hooks in Miller. He still blackmailed him regularly, and still threatened exposure to you if he failed to pay on demand. And what ended that was Pirozy’s death—not by an accident, but by murder.”

  “Murder?” echoed Wykoff dazedly. “That’s a terrible thing to say. It was an accident, I tell you. I know all about it.”

  “You do?” said Harlingen. “Then I’ve got news for you. On Thanksgiving night here in the city, Charles Pirozy was deliberately run down and killed by a car which was today impounded by the New York State Police.” He reached into the briefcase. “Here is the original police report on the accident, so called, and here is the memorandum of a phone conversation I had with Lieutenant Baker of the State Police confirming his action. This was not another hit-run accident. Not when the car—the murder weapon, in fact—has been identified as the property of Ira Miller.”

  They looked at Miller then, LoScalzo and Wykoff did, but Miller did not reel and fall and grovel. By some magic, Murray saw, he had been restored to himself. He was once again the self-possessed Miller of yore.

  “That accident happened Thanksgiving night?” he demanded of Harlingen.

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s this all about?” Miller said hotly. “That whole night I was up at the Acres, and I didn’t get back to the city until eight the next morning after I got a call that my wife was in bad shape. The man who gave me a lift back to town will tell you that. A thousand guests up at the Acres will tell you that. So why drag me into this? Why smear me with a charge that won’t hold up for a minute!”

  LoScalzo was evidently someone who not only hated loopholes, but also the people who clumsily left them open. “In that case—” he said angrily to Harlingen, but Harlingen shook his head regretfully.

  “I did not charge that Ira Miller drove the car that killed Pirozy,” he said. “He did not. But there was someone else—someone whose every interest was bound up with his, who knew every facet of his life, who knew all about the hold Pirozy had on him, and, most tragically, who decided out of absolute and unquestioning love that the one way to ever break that hold was to run down and kill Charles Pirozy.”

  There was a crash. Pearl Miller stood at the door, an empty tray in her hands, shattered cups and saucers at her feet, a dark stain of coffee creeping outward in the rug beneath them. Then the tray clattered to the floor, and she clapped her hands over her ears as if to shut out what she had heard and all comprehension of it.

  “Ira,” she cried out, and all the agony of the ultimate betrayal was in her voice, “you said you’d never tell! You said you’d never tell!”

  And her answer was not in anything Miller said, but in the look on his face then. Whatever the man was, Murray saw, whatever he had been or would be, there would always be a place for him in Purgatory and a chance for the long climb out of it.

  Ira Miller was a man completely in love with his wife.

  5

  Near Broadway was an Automat still open, and while Harlingen went off in search of its phone booths Murray deposited coins in various slots. He was already on his second sandwich when Harlingen returned.

  “Mission accomplished,” said Harlingen, and then looked at the array of plates on the table. “Say, you must be hungry.”

  “I am. First time today I’ve thought of eating, thanks to your friend Arnold. What did he have to say?”

  Harlingen sat down and placed his hat on the chair next to him. “Oh, he wasn’t too coherent about it, but that’s natural, I guess. Just kept saying, “That’s wonderful, that’s wonderful,’ and then something about being glad to get away from those so-and-so frying pans. He’s told me a few times how he hates being a short-order cook. He probably quit the job the minute he hung up the phone.”

  “Why not?” said Murray. “He’s got a bright future ahead of him. No departmental trial to worry about now, all that back pay coming to him from the force, and Helene waiting. What could be sweeter?”

  “Yes,” Harlingen said, “but as far as Helene goes—”

  “And you can’t go any further than that.”

  “You know what I mean, Murray. She put him in a very bad spot, and he knows that now. He may feel differently about her after what he went through.”

  “He may, but I don’t think she feels differently about him. And a woman who’s enough in love with a man can be pretty unpredictable. Any time you have doubts about that just think of Pearl Miller.”

  “I’d rather not,” Harlingen said with a depth of feeling. “God, what an experience! The way that poor soul—”

  “I know. Ralph, do you intend to keep on practicing criminal law?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then brace yourself, because you’re going to see a lot of tears before you’re done. That’s what criminal law comes down to—women sitting in back of a courtroom and crying their hearts out for all the worthless men in their lives. In view of that, do you still feel that this is the job for you?”

  “Yes, but why are you so concerned about it? What are you getting at, Murray?”

  “A proposition.”

  “What kind?”

  “A partnership. You and me. Harlingen and Kirk, if you want it in alphabetical order.”

  “A partnership?” Harlingen knit his brow trying to understand. “But your agency—I mean, you’d be in a peculiar position, wouldn’t you?”

  “No, because I’m selling the agency. I’ve had an offer to sell a percentage of it, but I’m selling the whole works. I don’t know what kind of deal it’ll amount to, but under any conditions I’m walking out. And I think you and I would make a good team.”

  “We might at that,” Harlingen said, and then said with good-natured malice, “didn’t you once remark that with your brains behind someone else’s mellow voice—?”

  Murray shook his head. “Let me tell you something, Ralph. I got you into Ira Miller’s apartment tonight, but that’s all. You had no right to be there, no right to present anything in evidence there, no right to talk to those
people the way you did. But you did it, and you got away with it, because, as they say around my office, you were always on top of the case. I gave you some papers and a tape, but you had to be the one to use them against that cageful of tigers. And no one could have done it better. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have brought up this proposition in the first place. I couldn’t work with someone I didn’t respect.”

  “I know that, Murray, and I appreciate the compliment, but there are other things to consider, aren’t there? Your attitudes and mine don’t always match. Wouldn’t that make trouble?”

  “It might. But we’ll push and pull a little and manage to come up with the right answers together. That’s how it is in law. Get two people doing it and you’ve got a partnership. Get nine people doing it, and you’ve got the Supreme Court. See what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Harlingen said, “I see what you mean.”

  “Then is it a deal? You’ll have to decide quickly, Ralph. If I sleep on this I may wake up with a different point of view, but right now, judging from the way the world looks to me, I’m your man.”

  “But why?” Harlingen asked. “If you think you’re going to do better financially—”

  “No, I don’t. In fact, I know I won’t do anywhere near as well financially. But it comes down to something you said, Ralph. Do you remember telling me I didn’t make a good cynic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you were wrong. I made a damn good cynic, because it never entered my mind for one little minute that Lundeen was innocent, and that’s about as far as you can go in that direction. It was a blind spot in me that the agency made. It was the way Frank Conmy would have thought and felt. And I don’t want to be another Frank Conmy, Ralph; it scares me to think of winding up like that. The agency poisoned him with suspicion of everybody and everything in this world, and I can’t let that happen to me. But it will if I stay with the agency. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? You’re the kind of person who should. That’s why I’m telling you that if you say the word I’m your man.”