Vintage Crime

by Martin Edwards

  The sergeant smiled. “She was a cute little thing, name of Marylou Mason, and she blushes, which tells me nearly all I want to know right there, but she speaks her piece all right, and says, yes, they were together all night, so I say thank you, Miss Marylou Mason, and I come away and write up my report.”

  “Is that it?” asked the rookie, finally, when the sergeant took time out to drink some beer.

  “No,” the sergeant said. “We keep on at the thing, but we can’t get a hold on Buddy Canoli on account of no solid forensic evidence and no ID from friend Samuels, the near sighted diamond king, and so the case stays open. We’re stuck, we have to move on to other things, and gradually the subject fades away, so to speak.”

  “Gee,” said the rookie. “That was interesting.” His voice was bleak with disappointment.

  “I ain’t finished yet,” the sergeant growled.

  “Sorry.” The rookie brightened again.

  “Right. So a few months later, we got to do another line-up, and we pull in some guys from the street as usual – this was, I think, maybe November now. And guess who is third from the right?”

  “Whitney?”

  “No, Samuels, dumbo. But seeing him reminds me of the case, so to speak. Nobody IDs him for robbery, though. Damn shame, would have served him right. Point is, because the whole thing comes back to me, my mind is aware, you know? And the next thing is, I spot Whitney in a restaurant a few days later. Only he’s thinner, so I don’t recognise him at first. Especially wearing a five-hundred-dollar suit, when before it was thirty-seven-buck numbers off the rack. Well, he spots me and suddenly lunch is over. I say hello, Mr. Whitney, to him, as he goes by, being a friendly type. He gives me the fish eye and goes out of the place like his ass was on fire.”

  “Aha!” the rookie pounced on this as evidence of something sinister. He was nearly chewing hunks out of the beer glass, trying to second-guess the story. The sergeant sighed. Where do they get all this energy, he wondered, and pressed on.

  “Well, he goes off so fast, he forgets his coat, see? I notice the waiter pick it up and take it to the manager, so, being a swell guy, as you know, I decide to take it around to Whitney’s office for him, as it’s only around the corner. But it’s not his office any more, I discover. He’s moved uptown, they tell me. So, uptown I go, ’cause I’m now stuck with this damned coat, and sure enough, there he is. Set up in some fancy office with a new secretary and all very nifty. He makes like he didn’t see me in the restaurant, acts all surprised, very nervous, too, wants me to get out of sight. I don’t like to be put out of sight, you know? I got my pride.”

  “You bet.”

  “So I look around, I get like, expansive, you know, just to needle the stuck-up bastard. I say, business must be good, this is nice. He says yes. You must have some pretty fancy clients, now, I say, not like the old days. Yes, he says, and no, he says. He obviously wants me gone, so I figure what the hell. I say here’s your coat and he says thank you, and that’s it and goodbye.”

  The rookie’s eyes showed disappointment again. “Is this going to be another one of your stories about how no matter how hard you work on something it never comes right?” he asked, suspiciously. “Are you just building me up for the big let-down?”

  “Would I do that?” the sergeant asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “You did last week, said it was a salutary lesson,” the rookie grumbled. “You got it in for me, I sometimes think. I’m not as dumb as I look.” He caught the sergeant’s eye, and grinned. “I know, I know – I couldn’t be. OK, go on.”

  “Right.” The sergeant leaned back. “I thought to myself about this new office business, and the new suit, and the new secretary, even classier than the one before, and how it all must have cost him an arm and a leg, so I ask around, and what do you think? Seems that Whitney suddenly has a lot of money to spend a few months back. And this new money of his makes an appearance right after the Excelsior robbery. Hey! I begin to think, maybe – just maybe – that little weasel Samuels made the right identification after all! Maybe it wasn’t Canoli who ripped off the Excelsior, but Whitney, instead.”

  “Son of a bitch,” the rookie breathed.

  “I tell all this to the Captain and he says follow it up, things being what they were and him not liking a big case dangling unfinished like it was. So I go around to Whitney’s bank and say what about all this money in August? And they say what about it? And I say was it cash? And they say, no, it comes by cheque from some insurance outfit in Chicago, which stops me, cold. What can I say? Oh, I say. They tell me he’s got three accounts now, one personal with his wife, one for the business, and one for what’s left of this big lump of money, which ain’t much, but they don’t let me look at no details because I ain’t got no court order, only nosiness and my badge.”

  “Bastards,” the rookie growled.

  “You got to go by the rules,” the sergeant said, pointedly, then relented. “But that doesn’t mean you have to go by the main road, either.” The rookie lit up. He knew the sergeant wasn’t going to give up now.

  The sergeant let his halo glitter for a moment, then went on. “I went around to Whitney’s apartment, which was as new and fancy as his office. I ask to speak to his wife. The guy on the Security desk, who happens to be an old cop I know, tells me Whitney’s wife has left him, and I say, again? And he says as far as he knows this is the first time she goes, and now Whitney, the bastard, leads the life of Riley with a new girl every week. He doesn’t seem to think too much of Walter Whitney, and I decide maybe I should push this button a little. Well, I say, I don’t blame Whitney for kicking up his heels after having a wife that looks like a bad-tempered anteater, and this is the right tack because my old friend gets real mad, all of a sudden, and I wonder what’s going on, here? Mrs. Whitney is a lovely girl, he tells me in a loud voice, and who should he proceed to describe to me but Marylou Mason, Whitney’s old secretary.”

  “No!” said the rookie, with highly satisfactory surprise.

  “Yeah. My old friend gets pretty excited about it – I guess sitting at a security desk in the lobby of some fancy building all day is kind of boring, at that – and bangs his fist, even. He didn’t deserve her, he says. Turns out she was nice to my old buddy, and looked a little like his granddaughter, you know? This kind of thing is a big help when you’re pushing a witness, believe me. Anyway, he gives me her new address, which is a little dump on Nineteenth. I think maybe I’m lucky at last, and I go over there. Sure enough, it’s little Marylou, and boy, is she sour on Whitney. I ask her about the alibi she gave Whitney for the night of the Excelsior job and eventually she breaks down and says it was all a lie.”

  “Got him cold!” said the rookie, banging his own fist down on the table top and nearly knocking over his empty beer glass.

  “Jesus,” said the sergeant. “Don’t do that, you’ll give me a heart attack one of these days.”

  “Sorry,” said the rookie, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. One had – the new girl from Records who was sitting in the corner with some other clerks. She was laughing at him. He turned his attention back to the sergeant and tried to look as if they were on to something big. “Go on.”

  The sergeant, who had seen the girl in the mirror at the back, and knew how the rookie felt about her, went on. “So tell me the truth, I says to Marylou, all braced to hear about the robbery. ‘He wasn’t with me,’ she says. ‘He went to St. Louis to meet someone he told me would mean big money. I got the feeling it was some kind of fast deal with this “insurance business” he was getting into.’

  “‘What kind of business is that?’ I asked her.

  “‘I don’t know, but there were some very funny people involved. He wouldn’t let me stay in the office when he talked to them. I think they must have been criminals or something. He thought I was stupid, but I’m not. He was always talking big, like he was so tough and
knew what was what. He said when he got back we could get married, and we would be on Easy Street. He always bragged about the important people he knew, but I never met any.’ You could see he’d cut her up pretty bad, emotionally, you know? Poor kid. I hate guys like that.”

  “Me, too,” said the rookie.

  “But I had to go on. Was it like he promised, I asked her, and she says yes and no. The money showed up, all right, and he married her quick enough, and put her into that fancy apartment, but that was it. Like he had her where he wanted her and so he wasn’t interested any more. He never talked to her, never took her anywhere or introduced her to anyone, expected her to stay home alone all day. She’d only lied for him because she thought he loved her, but now it seemed to her like the lie had been all he’d really wanted her for. Seemed to me, too. After a while, she says, there started to be other women and she couldn’t stand that, so she ups and leaves. Didn’t take anything with her, either, but what she stood up in. Marylou was a real nice girl. She’s a grandmother, now, would you believe? I put her on to another retired cop I know ran a security firm and she married his son. Anyway, back then I ask her will she tell the truth about Whitney in court, and she says, sure, as far as she’s concerned he’s a rat and we can have him.”

  “But a wife can’t testify against her husband…” interrupted the rookie.

  “Sure, she can, if she wants to,” the sergeant said. “The law says that a wife can’t be forced to testify against her husband. That’s a big difference.”

  “And had Whitney gone to St. Louis that night?” the rookie asked, feeling this foray into jurisprudence wasn’t getting them anywhere.

  “Yeah, just like she said. She’d booked the ticket herself, using the name Mason, and drove him to the airport.”

  The rookie’s eyes lit up. “Ah,” he said, with great emphasis. “But did she actually see him get on to the plane?”

  The sergeant’s expression was a patient one. “Yeah,” he said. “She did.”

  “Oh,” said the rookie. “Damn. But why didn’t Whitney just say he’d gone to St. Louis the night of the robbery?”

  “I’m coming to that, dammit. She waved him bye-bye at around six that night, and as far as she was concerned, that was where he had been, St. Louis. That was what she had been lying for him about – going to St. Louis. If she couldn’t maintain the first lie for him, that they’d spent the night together say, because she was worried about her reputation or something, she could still give him an alibi because she’d seen him leave town, right? He had two alibis, one behind the other. He figured that was perfect.”

  “Right,” said the rookie, but he sounded dubious, which pleased the sergeant.

  “Yeah, right. How did he know he was going to need two alibis?”

  “I was just going to say that.”

  “I thought you were.” The sergeant smiled kindly. “Because you know and I know that planes not only fly into St. Louis – they also fly out of St. Louis. He had plenty of time to turn around and come back – the Excelsior job wasn’t pulled until around midnight.”

  “And did he take another plane out?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did. After I left Marylou, I called St. Louis and confirmed that ‘Mr. Mason’ took a flight out almost immediately after he got in. Bingo. A few days later, we arrest Whitney. I get a commendation, and that’s how the line-up can sometimes work for you, although not always the way you expect it will.”

  “So you broke the Excelsior case all on your own?” the rookie said, much impressed. “That’s real good.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “Hell, no. Deakins and Brady broke the Excelsior case, got Canoli cold through a fence that traded the information in exchange for a light sentence.”

  “But you said…”

  The sergeant leaned forward and tapped the table. “The trouble with you is, you don’t listen. Many careful steps make a case. I had to check Whitney out because of a false identification. He lied, so I had to go on checking. He told me he lied because he didn’t want to drag the girl into divorce proceedings. That was another lie. Marylou said he married her as soon as he got back from his trip to St. Louis. A trip in that was just a blind to cover another little trip out. He came into a lot of money very soon after this second little trip, which happened to take place the night of the Excelsior job, which is how he happened to come to my attention in the first place by getting identified in the line-up the next day.” He was beginning to wheeze, slightly. “I wouldn’t have had to check him out, otherwise, would I?” The sergeant leaned back, waved to the bartender for another two beers, then watched the rookie expectantly.

  The rookie was confused. “But you said he didn’t do the Excelsior job.”

  The sergeant sighed. “He didn’t. Walter Whitney had a third and even more perfect alibi for the Excelsior robbery. At the time the diamonds were being lifted, he was in Chicago – murdering his wife.”

  Cuckoo in the Wood

  Lesley Grant-Adamson

  A cuckoo in the wood. When the sound of the machinery stopped Tom could hear it across the fields. Every year the same, as long as he could remember. A cuckoo sang in the wood in the month of May. It had sung when…

  A shadow sloped across him as a fat man lumbered out of the bar and into the pub garden. Kear, it was, the one who’d been a policeman up at the town and retired to the village to be near his grandchildren.

  Tom saw Kear settle himself on a stout wooden bench and put his tankard carefully on the table. Tom was a cider drinker himself. He watched as the pint was raised and flecks of foam stayed on the former sergeant’s moustache. Then he slid his gaze away, up the hill beyond the elder hedge with its white parasols. Soon, when it suited him, he’d accept Kear’s presence and they’d grunt a greeting. In the past, they’d had long conversations but not pleasant ones, what with Kear in uniform and paid for suspicion. Tom didn’t like to think of that, it had been a bad time. Every year, though, the cuckoo brought it back to him.

  Thirty-something years ago it had begun, when that girl, Mary, had come to live with her sister in the cottage by the wood. Unwelcome, the memories returned.

  Tom had got ideas about Mary. Couldn’t help it at all. And no wonder, for Mary was always about the place, popping into the garden to the washing line or the chickens; stretching up to gather armsful of lilac, white and mauve; crossing the fields on a short cut to the village. And he was always there too, riding the tractor or ditching or whatever task his father set him to.

  Tom and Mary were always there, and her sister and brother-in-law were always out at work. Tom would sit in the shade of a May tree, open his cider jar, look down the hill to the cottage and make believe there was no other young man in the world but himself and no other girl but Mary. Occasionally she noticed him and waved, and how much he made of her distant wave! His dreams, his nonsense about her, carried him through her first season in the village. By the time the harvest was in, those dreams had grown into intention. He would have her for himself.

  Tom did nothing about it, unless staring into the flames of the kitchen fire and conjuring a future can be called doing something. And then…

  Another shadow fell across him, another man entered the pub garden, glass in hand. Bullman, who’d run the village shop until his retirement. Tom hadn’t retired, not entirely. How did men retire on a family farm that was forever short-handed?

  “Hot day, Tom,” said Bullman, wiping a hand over tanned skin.

  “’Tis hot enough for I.” Tom no longer noticed his accent, the quirks of grammar and dialect. There’d been a time when they’d shamed him to his tender core.

  Bullman turned his head to Kear. A sheen of sweat prettified the fat man’s bald head. Bullman said to him, “Hot enough for you, Mr. Kear?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” said Kear. “Who needs to go to Spain when England’s got weather like this?” />
  Bullman went on. “The hottest May I can bring to mind. Not a time to be working out of doors, eh?” He waited for Tom’s response and Tom remarked on hotter Mays, disastrous harvests, droughts, and the hills above the village alight with spontaneous fires no one could douse.

  Kear attended to Tom, and Tom ignored him and spoke to Bullman. As Tom paused, the afternoon was filled with the heaviness of summer: damp grassy smells, bees fussing over yellow roses on the grey stone wall at his back, the excitement of small birds questing nest-building materials, and the call of the lonely cuckoo.

  “Cuckoo. Cuckoo.”

  Tom’s other memories occupied the pause too. Mary, that first autumn, wide-eyed, not exactly mocking but caught off balance by him asking her – if in fact he had asked her. What he said was oblique, confused. Later he’d seen that and smarted at his own waste of an opportunity, not at her mild rejection. He continued to look down on her, when the field he’d reaped was stubble and when the stubble was ploughed in. Christmas, he decided, he’d ask her again at Christmas.

  In November he spied her in the wood, in the arms of the salesman from the animal feed company. By spring she’d stopped walking over the farm to the village. When Tom met her in the lane one May afternoon the cuckoo punctuated their words.

  “Why does it sing for just a few weeks?” she asked.

  “’Tis calling for a mate,” he said and felt the blood rise to his wind-browned face.

  “Oh, yes.” She chanted the old rhyme. “The cuckoo comes in April, it sings its song in May, it lays its eggs in June and then it flies away.”

  “’Tis so, Mary.”

  She said, “I wonder where it flies to.”

  Tom didn’t know, but he knew that Mary was pregnant. He…

  Bullman was speaking to him. “Isn’t that so now, Tom? A bad bend, a very bad one.”