Payoff for the Banker

by Frances

  “You sound like the morals squad,” she said. “Or something. Who says Ozzie isn’t my husband?”

  “Ozzie,” Weigand told her.

  She twisted her lips down; then she twisted them up, making it a smile—a derisive smile.

  “Trust a man,” she said. “Trust them not to be worth trusting. Ozzie’s a heel.”

  Weigand had no comment.

  “All right,” she said. “The apartment I used to live in. As Mrs. Murdock—without being Mrs. Murdock. And Merle was killed there. So I suppose I killed him.”

  People jumped to conclusions, Weigand thought. His voice was tired.

  “I haven’t supposed you killed him, Mrs. Murdock,” he said. “Did you?”

  “Make it Burke,” she said. “Miss Burke. No. Why should I?”

  “Laurel Burke,” Weigand said, not as an answer. “Laurel—beginning with L.”

  “The man can spell,” Laurel remarked to the room, in a tone of wonderment.

  “And,” Weigand said, “somebody with the initials O.M. wrote Merle a note telling him that somebody with the initial L would be at the apartment at about five. To get a check. And Merle went and was killed.”

  She looked at him for rather a long time before she answered. She drew in a deep breath and her breasts rose pointedly against the silk of her pajamas.

  She moistened her lips before she spoke, and when she spoke her voice was less low pitched.

  “No, damn it,” she said. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t anywhere near there. He didn’t bring me the check. He—” She broke off. She started over.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “What do you want me to say?”

  What she had said was all right, Weigand told her. If true.

  “I’ll swear it’s true,” she said. “Anywhere I’ll swear it’s true.”

  “All right,” Weigand said. “You weren’t at the apartment. You didn’t meet Merle—or shoot him. You didn’t take the check.”

  “No,” she said. She said it dully. “No.”

  “Somebody did,” Bill Weigand told her. “Somebody met Mr. Merle there and shot him. Somebody took the check. If he brought a check. How well did you know Mr. Merle, Miss Burke?”

  She shook her head; for a moment she seemed a long way off. Weigand repeated. “How well did you know Mr. Merle, Miss Burke?”

  “Just through Ozzie,” she said. She moved slightly. “He came to the apartment a few times to see Ozzie. He knew about Ozzie and me.”

  She was not speaking dully now. She was speaking carefully—slowly, as if she were thinking it out.

  Bill Weigand waited a moment after she had finished. Then he shook his head.

  “That’s not good enough,” he said. “You don’t seem to get the situation, Miss Burke. I can take you in as it is—as it is right now. On the basis of the letter. And let you try to work your way out of it. Unless you sell me a better story.”

  “That’s the way it was,” the girl said. “Really.”

  “No,” Bill said. “Not unless Ozzie is lying. He says Merle was never at the apartment.”

  “He—” the girl said. “I don’t believe he said that.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “You don’t believe he said it. I do. We can take you both down. You can ask him. If you get a chance. We can say you and he were in it together.”

  Her eyes widened. She stood up suddenly and her voice, too, went up.

  “We weren’t in anything together,” she said. She almost screamed it. “Not in anything. You can’t make that stick.”

  Weigand did not meet her mood. His voice was level, casual. He said they could try.

  “If Ozzie said that,” she said, “it was—it was because he didn’t know. He—”

  “Didn’t know what?” Weigand said. “That Merle was visiting you? While he was paying your apartment rent—while Ozzie was? Is that what Murdock didn’t know?”

  The girl looked at him and now her eyes were narrow—speculative. She raised her hands and pushed back her hair, which fell in curves around her face. The movement rounded the silk against her body. She let her hands drop and suddenly she shrugged just perceptibly. She sat down again. Her voice regained its studied depth as she spoke.

  “Suppose it was,” she said. “Suppose—what you want to suppose. Why would I kill him? Suppose I was crossing Ozzie up.”

  “You were?” Bill said.

  “Suppose I was,” she said. “Suppose the old boy thought I was—well, thought I was something he wanted. Suppose he made a good bid and I decided a girl’s got to live. Would I tell Ozzie everything?”

  “Not if Mr. Merle was satisfied with things that way,” Bill said. “Was he?”

  “He was—suppose he was scared as hell,” she said. “Scared people would find out if he—if he got me an honest-to-God place to live. Suppose he wanted me to go on with Ozzie as—as a way to cover up. Suppose he came through with enough—”

  “To make it worth your while not to hold out for an honest-to-God place to live. And the rest of it,” Bill finished. “Are you saying that was the way it was? A dirty trick on Ozzie?”

  “What the hell,” the girl said. “You only live once. Is it any of your business?”

  “Not that part of it,” Bill Weigand told her. “Unless you killed Merle.”

  “Why would I?” she said. “With things that way I wouldn’t have any reason. I’d want to keep him alive. But Ozzie—”

  “But Ozzie wouldn’t,” Weigand said. He looked at her. She was something to look at; but he was no longer even speculatively carnivorous. “So you want to throw us Murdock,” he said.

  “I’m not throwing you anybody,” she told him. “I’m just telling you the way things could have been. Nobody’s going to hang it on me. I’ve got to look after myself.”

  “You seem to,” Weigand told her.

  “What the hell,” the girl said, “who doesn’t?”

  Bill Weigand could think of a lot of people who didn’t; he could think of casualty lists. But there was no point to it.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “So this is your story.”

  He sketched it for her, and as he did so he admitted to himself that it fitted well enough—fitted with the few pieces of the puzzle he had so far found—with Merle’s interest in antiques, for example, counting that interest as another cautious blind; it fitted, perhaps, with Merle’s character, assuming—as more or less Weigand did assume—that Merle’s public austerity was privately superficial. If he had been aroused by Laurel Burke, however frostily, he would go to lengths to keep it quiet. He would, perhaps, accept a situation which might have depressed a more forthright man. And it was, at least in theory, possible that Oscar Murdock, if he found out about it, might not be so complacent. That was so far only a theory, unsupported by facts.

  “I don’t say Ozzie shot him,” the girl said, when Weigand finished. “I just say he might have had a reason—if he found out about us. He never said he found out.”

  “But if he found out, you think he might have done it?” Weigand said. He looked at her after he had spoken.

  “You don’t think I’m worth it?” she said, unexpectedly. Consciously, she raised her arms, clasping her hands behind her head. She looked back at Weigand. Her look was a challenge.

  Bill Weigand smiled, without amusement.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I really wouldn’t know.” He looked into her challenging eyes. “And, baby, I’m not going to try to find out,” he added. “So you can quit stretching.”

  Without violence, Laurel Burke told Weigand what he was. When she had finished, he laughed at her. She started up and then, as quickly, dropped back on the sofa.

  “What the hell,” she said. “You wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”

  Weigand sat for a moment, looking at her. Then he stood up.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “whether I’m going to buy your story or not. It’s a very pretty little story. I can still think of other little stori
es—not so pretty. Or just about as pretty. So I wouldn’t try to go anywhere, if I were you.”

  “You’ll be back, Lieutenant?” she said.

  Somebody would be back, he promised her. He would be—or someone else would be.

  “So just wait around,” he suggested. “Just wait around.”

  7

  TUESDAY, 10:15 P.M. TO 10:45 P.M.

  Pam and Jerry North had had a story to tell Bill Weigand and no Weigand to tell it to. Weigand was not at his office; Mullins had been dispirited on the telephone. He had even been plaintive.

  “Yeah,” Mullins said. “Yeah. I know. Sure, Mr. North. All I can say is, you oughta of heard the inspector.” Mullins sighed, remembering. “I tell you how it is, Mr. North,” Mullins went on, his sigh completed. “The inspector knows who did it, like he always does. The loot don’t know so easy, like he usually don’t. The inspector thinks that’s because of you and Mrs. North. And all I can say is, you oughta of heard him.”

  “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.”