Violence Is My Business

by Stephen Marlowe

  Jefferson Lee Jowett’s opening speech set the stage. He didn’t get to Jerry and me at all. He wouldn’t get to us until much later. He phased us all in on the history of the private detective in America, starting all the way back with Wells Fargo and the Pinkerton guards, letting us know how important private investigations were in a free society, pointing out that our obligations to society were as important as society’s debt of gratitude to us, and making us all feel, by the time he finished, that any private detective who deviated one atom from the high standards set by Wells Fargo and the Pinkerton guards was a disgrace to the profession and a menace to free society, a mad dog who had to be muzzled and restrained.

  After that, but only after that, they got down to business.

  Early in the morning, I’d climbed into the dark-blue suit Jack Morley had brought down for me. It was a pretty good fit. Jack and I had breakfast in the John Marshall Coffee Shop, where Jack said:

  “I did some G-twoing for you, Chet. Got a friend over at U.S.N.A.” U.S.N.A. was the United States News Agency.

  “What he say?”

  Jack sipped from his second cup of black coffee. “Well, here it is. You won’t like it. As long as Duncan Hadley Lord was alive and kicking, Judson Bonner had the agency over a barrel. But—”

  “Judson Bonner!” I gasped.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Bohner’s our boy.”

  “He must be sixty-five years old if he’s a day. I thought he retired years ago.”

  “He did, Chet. But he’s got money and he’s got some pretty strong convictions. Like, for example, any American dollar spent east of the Statue of Liberty and west of the Golden Gate Bridge is being thrown down a bottomless well with the stink of corruption in it.”

  “Guys like him play right into the Reds’ hands. Doesn’t he know there’s a cold war going on? Doesn’t he know if we don’t get the American point of view across the Reds will get across their version of it?”

  “Don’t I know it. Doesn’t U.S.N.A. know it. That’s their function, and I don’t have to tell you how important they are. But Judson Bonner doesn’t know it. Anyhow, once Lord killed himself, the whole picture changed. The one thing U.S.N.A. never wanted, for understandable reasons, was a bad press. With Lord alive, Bonner was going to see they got one. Either that, or he was going to be the piper to the tune they sung. But Lord died before his tie-in with the Agency was official. That didn’t leave Bonner with much of a case against them.”

  “Well, at least that’s a good deal,” I said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Bonner’s a bulldog, and he’s still digging. But to get back to your hearing. With guys like Bonner around, sensitive agencies like U.S.N.A. fear adverse publicity morbidly. On the other hand, with a case that kind of blew up in his face, Bonner wouldn’t exactly jump for joy if the kind of digging and snooping he makes a practice of got much play. You begin to see it?”

  I made a face.

  “Well, don’t draw the wrong conclusions about the Agency. I know a lot of the boys up there, and they’re a good bunch. But they don’t know you from a hole in the wall, and the circumstantial evidence does make it look as if you were Bonner’s paid assistant, and they’d like to just get the hell off the hook. Besides, in a way they think they’re doing you a favor.”

  “A what?”

  “A favor. Sure. I don’t have to tell you the Attorney General has an option of bringing charges against you two ways. Civil charges, in which case if found guilty you lose your license. Or criminal charges, in which case they truck you off to the hoosegow. The charges will be merely civil if it can be shown you violated the confidences of a client—say, for ideological reasons. But if it can be shown you took money to do it, the charges are criminal and you go to jail.”

  “They’re rationalizing themselves up a tree,” I said. Then I added: “Jack, you haven’t exactly been letting any moss grow. Thanks.”

  “Anyway, from where I sit it looks like a deal. Bonner doesn’t get mentioned and Bonner doesn’t show up. The agency had an anonymous informant. You, or an unknown intermediary. The only one who gets hurt is you, and you don’t get hurt as much as you would if they drag in everything and show you took money.”

  “What about Dygert?”

  “Who? Oh, the private eye you mentioned yesterday. Far as I can see, he doesn’t fit into the picture at all. Hell, how could he? If he gets dragged in, then Bonner gets dragged in.”

  “What am I supposed to do, sit quietly by and let them railroad me?”

  “My God, Chet, what can you do? If I hadn’t mentioned Bonner you’d never have tied him in.”

  “There’s Dygert.”

  “Yeah, there’s Dygert. But Dygert could claim, if you get nasty, that he paid you to do a job for him in all innocence. That he thought it his patriotic duty to expose Lord’s lack of moral judgment. That he never knew you’d been hired by Mrs. Lord. That would leave friend Dygert in the clear—and you facing a criminal charge. Then what?”

  I finished my coffee. I looked at Jack through the smoke of my cigarette. “I guess,” I said after a while, “the State of Virginia collects my license.”

  “It’s worse than that, Chet. My boy over at the Agency said the District Licensing Board got wind of it. They’re sending a man down. My guess is if you lose your license here they’ll hit it in D.C. too.”

  We paid our check and left the coffee shop. Jerry still hadn’t showed up at the hotel, so I drove over to the Capitol with Jack in a taxi.

  Caucus room C was in the basement under the Old Hall of the House of Delegates, where Aaron Burr was tried for treason a hundred and fifty years ago. I knew a little of how old Aaron had felt.

  Then we went into Caucus room C and took our seats and listened to Jefferson Lee Jowett’s opening speech.

  THE rest of it was short and savagely precise. Jack had done remarkably well guessing some of it, but he hadn’t guessed all of it. So we both sat with our jaws hanging and listened to the neatest frame ever put around the head of a man who spells his name S-u-c-k-e-r. Even, old man Euclid would have approved.

  An elderly lawyer named Stapp, who had a corduroy forehead and wore his glasses on a ribbon, spoke up for U.S.N.A. Yes, he said in answer to Jefferson Lee Jowett’s question, U.S.N.A. had received an anonymous tip on the moral shortcomings of Duncan Hadley Lord. Would he hazard a guess as to the sender of the tip? No, he did not feel qualified to do so. Expediently, no one thought to ask for the letter which the U.S.N.A. director must have received. I kept my mouth shut: if I aired the dirty linens I’d find myself on the wrong end of a criminal indictment. But don’t get it wrong. U.S.N.A. was understandably acting in its own best interests. They weren’t part of the frame.

  Neither was Professor McQuade, who testified as to why he had felt compelled to hire me. All through his testimony he stared at me with cold hatred. When he was through, they called Mrs. Duncan Hadley Lord. She wore black and spoke in a voice choked with emotion, verifying McQuade’s testimony. Then Jefferson Lee Jowett asked:

  “Did Mr. Drum contact you in any way after your husband’s death?”

  Answer: “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  Q. To say that his report on your husband’s activities was ready?

  A. Well, yes.

  Q. Anything-else?

  A. Yes, there was something else.

  Q. Could you tell the board about it?

  A. Mr. Drum asked if I wanted him to destroy the report.

  The four board members went into a huddle. They broke it up when Jowett asked another question.

  Q. Have you any idea, Mrs. Lord, why he asked you this?

  A. He said that since my husband was dead he thought I might want to forget about the whole thing. Something like that.

  Q. But you told him …

  A. That I wanted to see the report, of course.

  Q. What would you say was his reaction to that? Would you say he was glad?

  A. No. He definitely was not glad.

  Q
. He would have preferred to destroy it?

  A. Well, yes. I think so.

  That hadn’t nailed up the frame, either. Mrs. Lord was testifying to the truth as she saw it and if opinions were asked for and accepted in evidence, you have to remember this was a hearing before a board from the Attorney General’s office, not a court of law.

  It was Jefferson Lee Jowett’s next witness who brought the frame into Caucus room C with him. Jowett said: “The State Board now calls Mr. Gerald Trowbridge,” and Jerry, who had been sitting across the large room from me and not meeting my eye, went up there. He looked young, earnest, troubled. He seemed to be fighting a great battle with himself. He was a reasonable facsimile of Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Compared to him, with my bruised face and the swollen gash stitched over my eye, I was a charter member of Murder, Inc.

  Q. Mr. Trowbridge, coulds you state precisely your relationship with Chester Drum?

  A. I worked for him as a private detective.

  Q. Licensed where?

  A. In Washington, D.C., sir.

  Q. But not here in the State of Virginia?

  A. No, sir.

  Q. Didn’t that strike you as strange?

  A. I don’t think I get what you mean.

  Q. Why didn’t Drum apply for a Virginia license for you?

  A. I was bonded to him in Virginia. He said it was the same thing.

  Q. Because he wanted tp have at least one member of his agency immune from just the sort of thing which is going on here today?

  Before Jerry could answer, one of the board members suggested that that was purely supposition. Jowett shrugged and let it ride.

  Q. You did the leg work for Drum on the Duncan Hadley Lord case?

  A. That’s right.

  Q. Did Drum say who he was working for?

  A. For Mrs. Lord. I saw her myself. But—well, I don’t know if I should say this.

  Q. Go ahead, please. That’s what you’re here for.

  A. Well [reluctantly], the more information. I brought in on Duncan Lord, the more agitated Chester got.

  Q. Agitated?

  A. Well, like he was mad at Lord. You know.

  Q. For ideological reasons, perhaps?

  A. You mean, that he thought a man in Duncan Hadley Lord’s position shouldn’t be carrying on the way he was?

  Q. I’m asking the questions, young man. You’re supposed to answer them. [Laughter] I asked, was he angry for ideological reasons?

  A. Maybe. I can’t be sure. Chef’s a patriotic American. There’s nothing wrong with that.

  Q. No. Of course not. Unless he allowed his patriotism to blind him to the ethics of his profession. You were with Drum when he asked Mrs. Lord if she wanted the report on her husband’s activities destroyed?

  A. Yes, sir. I was.

  Q. It was in a telephone conversation that he did this?

  A. Yes. I—I listened in on the extension phone.

  Q. Was Drum aware of this?

  A. No.

  I wanted to get up and shout that that was a lie, but nothing could have made a worse impression since Jerry looked so earnest and troubled. Jack Morley wisely gripped my arm until he felt the muscles relax.

  Q. Can you remember how the conversation went?

  A. No, I don’t think so.

  Q. But Drum did urge Mrs. Lord to permit him to destroy the report?

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. Eloquently?

  A. Sure, but …

  Q. With more eloquence, perhaps; than the occasion demanded?

  A. I never thought of that.

  Q. What would you say Drum’s reaction was when she refused?

  A. He was angry.

  Q. Very angry?

  A. Yes, sir. [Sadly] I guess so.

  SHERIFF LONEGRAN, who didn’t like Jerry but who liked me even less, finished the job. He testified that Jerry seemed terribly upset the night Duncan Hadley Lord jumped, so upset that they had to restrain him from going up there after the professor. He also testified that, in the trouble which followed, I set the pace and Jerry merely followed it obediently. His parting shot got a laugh, but some sober looks too. He said, “In Prince Charles County we got jails for guys like Drum. And we got plenty of room.”

  After that, I was asked to testify. I told the story pretty straight but left out Ernie Dygert and Judson Bonner. I knew I had to: the only kind of evidence I had against Dygert was purely circumstantial—the fight in Hamling’s Bar and Grill. I testified that the first time I’d heard the taped recording of the report on Duncan Hadley Lord was after he had jumped. I looked around the room. Stone faces looked back at me.

  I saw a fight once in the Washington Arena. It was an over-the-weight match between a clean-cut, unmarked welterweight and a stocky, almost gnarled middleweight who was older, whose face was masked with scar tissue and who plodded around the ring with the heavy tread of an old warhorse. The clean-cut young welter had a way of tearing up the book of rules, gouging, thumbing, hitting on the break, rabbit-punching. Somehow he got away with it. The hulking middleweight fought a clean fight, but the kid was a skilled technician: he made the bigger man look bad, look dirty. Three rounds which should have been taken away from the welter were taken away from the bigger man, and the welter won a split decision. The welter danced around the ring, light on his feet, happy, very sporting after the decision. He even went over and shook the bigger man’s hand. They gave him a standing ovation. The middleweight plodded from the ring with a police guard keeping the angry crowd away from him. It was a little like Beauty and the Beast minus sexual overtones. It was clean-limbed, clean-living David slaying the giant Goliath.

  I had ten long, hard years on Jerry. Ernie Dygert and a police doctor with small pink hands and Sheriff Lonegran had temporarily changed the patterns of my face. If I smiled, it would look like a gargoyle’s mask. I didn’t smile. I took my swollen face and sat down. My neck was still very painful where Lonegran had rabbit-punched me.

  Jack Morley got up and spoke for about fifteen minutes. What he said impressed the hell out of me, not because of what he said or the way he said it but because he had taken the trouble to dig. He had all of it and I guess it sounded pretty good—my combat service during the war, my good record with the F.B.I., the few times in my P.I. career I’d helped the State Department overseas, particularly that business in India which I’d closed up a few months back. Then Jack finished with a few personal references, ending on a little joke which fell as flat as a blow-out on the rear wheel of a two-ton car. He said: “Drum’s the only private eye I’ve ever known who I’d let babysit with my kid.”

  It was my battered face, of course. The way I looked in Caucus room C, I’d have scared any kid who walked into the room. All they had to do was look at me and look at Jerry. Jerry was the Lone Ranger with his mask off.

  The board took fifteen minutes. Then the chairman, a slat-thin lawyer named MacReady, spoke. “This isn’t a court of law,” he said. “We do not admit evidence here on the basis in which it is admitted before the bar of justice. But we have a certain obligation to society, and this obligation is made doubly important due to the nature of the accused’s profession. To put it another way, a reasonable doubt in a court of law is sufficient to merit acquittal. But a reasonable doubt before this board is, and must be, sufficient to merit conviction. The board unanimously believes that a reasonable doubt exists as to the defendant’s innocence. The board must therefore rule that the license under which Chester Drum has been permitted to practice private investigation in the State of Virginia shall be declared null and void this day and until another such board, meeting under the direction of the Attorney General of the State of Virginia, with the power vested in it by the Attorney General, shall rule otherwise. The office of the Attorney General, Mr. Jowett, is so instructed.”

  Jefferson Lee Jowett thanked the members of the board. Jerry left in a hurry as soon as the verdict was handed down. I was told a man from the Virginia Attorney General’s office wo
uld call at my office in the near future for the original of my Virginia license.

  The representative of the District of Columbia board, who had sat through it all taking notes furiously, left without a word. I didn’t like the look on his face.

  Outside, Jack told me, “My God, what a raw deal you got. What are you going to do, appeal it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The only way I know that might work.”

  “How’s that?”

  We walked across Capitol Square together in the bright sunshine. Lawyers with bulging briefcases hurried by. A big car pulled to the curb on Capitol Street and a woman got out the back. Flashbulbs popped as press photographers took her picture. Then a covey of reporters clustered around her, hiding her from view.

  “I’m going to see Judson Bonner,” I said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I RETURNED to Prince Charles County with a gun and a gadget, because that’s where Judson Bonner lived. The gadget was a pocket recorder that had a tie-clip mike and worked on batteries. The recording unit, which fit with the batteries in a case not much bigger than a breast-pocket billfold, was a tight spool of wire that could run for two hours. I had received it through the mail about a year ago along with a covering letter which congratulated me for being one of a dozen private detectives in a dozen cities receiving a complimentary model. Until now it had stayed put in the deep drawer of the desk keeping the office Dottle of Jack Daniels company because that isn’t the kind of detective work I do. I had to give it a trial run to check the batteries out, but they were okay.