by Ed Gorman
I can hold my liquor better than you can, and I can’t hold my liquor at all.”
A knock. I turned to see her
mom in the door. I stood up, kissed Mary on the forehead.
“I like the way you kissed me earlier a lot better,” she said.
“So did I but I don’t want to shock your mother.”
Her mom laughed. “Go ahead, Sam. Shock me.”
I glanced at my watch. “Actually, I have to be at my office in a few minutes.”
“What’re you working on now?” Mary asked.
“I’d say it’s a divorce case but the couple isn’t actually married yet.”
Mary smiled. “You’re so masculine when you’re incoherent.”
I got the lights on, the heat up, stopped the toilet from running, started heating up yesterday’s coffee, and officially retired my Captain Video notebook. It had done well by me.
But now the case was officially over, it was time to salute the Captain and put him away in the bottom drawer, along with notebooks from other cases.
I spent the next half hour getting the lie-detector rig set up. I still didn’t have any idea how to work it but I got it so the lights went on and the arm skittered across the rolling paper and the motor made a most impressive humming noise.
I was just finishing up when Linda and Jeff arrived. I could tell they were still estranged. They both looked awkward, afraid to even brush up against each other.
“What the hell’s this all about, McCain?”
Jeff asked. “I’ve got two very sick dogs waiting on me.” Being a popular veterinarian was more than a full-time job.
“Well, there’s a very sick human being you need to see too.”
“Who?”
“Chip O’Donlon.”
“Chip O’Donlon?”
“You two get in that closet and stay there and shut up until I tell you to come out.”
“I don’t like this,” Linda said.
“Well, I don’t especially like
baby-sitting you two, either.”
I was just lighting a Lucky when the knock came, a jaunty top-of-the-world-man
knock. One of the rulers of the cosmos had arrived in the humble form of Chip O’Donlon. I shushed them and hurried them into the closet and closed the door. Then I went to greet my favorite narcissist.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, as he walked in and gave my office his usual condescending lookover. “You got quite a pad here.”
He wore a tan cashmere jacket, no
less, a yellow V-neck sweater, white shirt, chocolate-colored slacks, desert boots. With his tousled hair and imposingly handsome face, he was his own Dreamboat Alert.
“I thought you didn’t have any money,” I said.
“I don’t.”
“Then where the hell’d you come up with a cashmere jacket?”
“I got friends, man.” He gave me his best pretty-boy grin. “Lady friends. They buy me stuff.”
The hell of it was, he was probably telling the truth.
“Sit down over there.”
He glared at me. He didn’t like being told what to do. “What’s that?”
“Lie detector.”
“You aren’t putting me on that thing.”
I had to switch tones, to the
reasoning-with-an-ape voice I have to take with about a fourth of my clients. “I have to try this out on somebody I know, Chip. Just to see if it works.”
“Not me.”
“The Ryker job?”
“What about it?”
“Now, I know you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Damned right I didn’t.”
It was one of the few things Cliffie had accused him of that Chip actually didn’t do. “That’s the kind of question I’ll be asking. Things I already know the answer to. Simple things.”
He watched me suspiciously. “How come you’re doing this, anyway?”
“The Judge wants me to get it rigged up before next week. She wants the District Attorney to interview a witness while the machine’s running.”
“I don’t want to do it, man.”
“I’ll cancel your debt, remember?”
I’d hooked him again. That would have
made me suspicious: a lawyer willing to cancel a bill—even though he knew he’d probably never be paid anyway—j to try out a lie detector set. I knew then that one town suspicion wasn’t true. Chip O’Donlon wasn’t Albert Einstein’s illegitimate son.
“The whole thing?”
“Every penny.”
“Wow. No more of those bullshit bills from you, man? You know it’s embarrassing when the landlady sees that Deadbeat thing next to my name on the outside of your envelopes.”
“A little personal touch of mine.”
He looked the machine over. “It won’t give off electricity or anything?”
“Chip, it’s not the electric chair. It’s a lie detector. A harmless lie detector.”
“Like on Dragnet?”
“Just like on Dragnet.”
“It might be cool to get hooked up to it.
They say if you’re smart enough, you can fake it out.”
I resisted the easy retort. I had to get him on my side. “I’ll even take your picture, if you want me to.”
“Hey!” he said. “That’d be cool, Dad!
Strapped up to a lie detector! The chicks’ll flip, man! They really will!”
A noise. In the closet.
Chip looked over. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise?”
“Oh, you must mean the mice.”
“Mice? How big are they?”
“They go down to the feed mill to fill themselves up, and then they come back here to sleep.”
“Man, they must really chow down.”
“You wouldn’t want to hear them eat, believe me. You can hear them smacking their lips for blocks.”
Chip sat in the chair and looked the lie detector over, his brain, such as it was, no doubt filled with images of himself looking just like John Garfield wired to the machine. He’d probably carry autographed glossies around and hand them out at the supermarket.
“You’ll really take my picture with this thing on?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your camera?” I showed him.
“That thing work?”
“You bet.”
“How old is it?”
“Not that old. Now c’mon. Let’s get you hooked up.”
I got the cuff on him and then sat down across from him. I’d spent a minute looking for my clipboard—a person never looks more serious and professional than when he’s got a clipboard —but I couldn’t find it so I had to settle for my notebook.
“Is that Captain Video?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I hate that show. Everything looks fake.”
“Let’s get on with it, all right?”
“Especially the robot.”
“What?”
“Especially that robot, Tobor. Shit, I could build something better than that in my garage.”
“Did you know that Tobor is robot spelled backward?” I figured I ought to annoy him a little more, the way he was annoying me.
“I can’t believe you’ve got a Captain Video notebook. You don’t take that thing to court, do you?”
“Not so far. Now, how about getting to work?”
“I want a cigarette in my mouth, you know, when you take the picture.”
“Of course.”
I got the arm working. I said, “Here we go.”
“Your name?”
“You know my name.”
“It’s for the machine. So it’ll know when you’re telling the truth.”
“What a stupid machine.”
“Your name.”
He sighed. “Chip O’Donlon.”
“Age.”
“Twenty-one.”
And so on.
He
sighed a lot, he shifted in his chair a lot, he scratched his head, his nose, his ass.
He smoked and he didn’t smoke. He
glowered, he grimaced, he groused.
“When do we take my picture?”
“Just a few more questions.”
“This is a stupid machine.”
“Yes, I believe you’ve made that point several times.” Then I said, “Now, so
far, you’ve told the truth.”
An arrogant smile only the Chip
O’Donlons of the world can offer us. “Or maybe I beat the machine.”
“I’m glad you said that.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Because I think a guy of your intelligence—I think that’s just what you’ve done.
I think you answered falsely a couple of times.
But I don’t think the machine got it.”
He beamed, he preened.
“So I’m going to ask you just two more questions.”
The smirk. “I’m ready, Daddy-O. Any time you are.”
I looked at my notebook as if Moses himself had left a message for me to read. “The Harrison Auto Parts store robbery last March. You have anything to do with that?”
It stopped him, as I hoped it would. The eyes narrowed; the teeth lost some of their gleam; the jaw muscles started to bunch.
“How’d you know about that?”
“It’s just a question I made up is all.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know shit about it.”
I looked over at the arm of the detector.
“You’re good, O’Donlon. You’re very good.”
He looked down at the arm too. Looked up. The smirk was back. He was under the impression he’d beaten the machine again.
“All right, one final question.”
“When do we take my picture?”
“Right after this question.”
“I want time to comb my hair.”
“Don’t worry.”
He glared at the machine. “This thing’s a joke. A moron could beat this thing.”
Yes, I thought uncharitably, and a moron just has.
“All right. Here’s the big question. You ready?”
“God, you make it sound like The $64eajjj Question or something.”
I studied my notebook again and raised my eyes slowly. “Have you ever slept with Linda Granger?”
“What the hell kinda question is that?”
“It just popped into my mind. And you’ve been telling everybody you have. So I thought I’d just ask.”
“Of course I did. She came to me.
Spent the whole night at my apartment.”
“Then you actually made love to her?”
“I actually made love to her. The same way I do to all the broads. What’s so special about her? She’s nobody, believe me. Nobody. And the jerk she goes with. What a loser!”
I half expected Jeff to come piling out of the closet, but there was silence.
And then the arm on the machine started to move. The fact that I nudged the machine with my knee may have had something to do with it.
“Look,” I said. He looked down.
The arm was still bouncing all over the page. The markings were violent, wild strokes.
“What the hell’s that mean?”
“It means you were lying and it caught you.”
“Bullshit I was lying.”
“It means you’ve been going all over town telling people you slept with her when you didn’t.”
“The hell if I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Well, the machine says otherwise.”
“The machine is stupid.”
Now I played outraged prosecutor. I jumped up and went over to him as he started to get up. I shoved him back into his chair.
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“What the hell are you gettin’ so hopped up about?” He looked intimidated. Pretty, he might be; tough, he wasn’t.
“Because you shouldn’t say things that aren’t the truth.”
“She’s nobody. Who gives a shit?”
I walked to the desk. Pointed to the phone.
“You know who I’m going to call?”
“Who?”
“Cliff Sykes.”
“The police chief?”
“Yeah.”
“For what?”
“To tell him about the Harrison Auto Parts robbery.”
“Tell him what?”
“That you were the one who did it.”
“Bullshit I did it.”
“Bullshit you didn’t. Frankie Hayes told me all about it. He’s a client of mine and he tells me everything.”
“That little prick.”
“So you tell me the truth about Linda Granger or I call Cliffie and tell him what you and Frankie did.
Frankie’s underage. They’ll try him as a juvenile. But for you this could be real bad. First time you do a serious crime, and you screw it up and get caught.”
He slouched back insolently in his chair and sighed. “All right, so I didn’t screw her.
So what?”
“But you’ve been telling people you screwed her.”
“So I exaggerated a little. Big deal. Every guy exaggerates.”
I sat on the edge of my desk, like Perry Mason does on Saturday night. “What happened that night?”
The deep sigh again. “Some bare tit. A little dry humping. And then she was crying and wailing about how much she missed Jeff and how she’d only come over to make him jealous. Then she puked all over my couch and I threw her in my bed so she could sleep it off. Bitch slept till practically eleven the next morning. She didn’t even help me clean up the couch. Said she was too hung over and in too much trouble with her folks.”
“Bare tit and a little dry humping and that was it?”
“That was it.” Then: “Frankie really told you about the Harrison job?”
I shook my head. “No, but it sure sounded like you two. I just took my best guess.”
Then the closet door burst open.
Jeff went right over to O’Donlon. “You ruined her reputation with a lie, you bastard!”
“What the hell were you doin’ in the closet?”
Then Linda came out. She too went for O’Donlon and slapped him hard across the face.
“That’s for calling me a nobody!”
I could see Jeff was about to swing on him so I stepped between them.
“I want t’take him outside.”
“Forget it, Jeff. You got what you want.”
Linda put her arm through his. Pulled him away from O’Donlon. “Thanks, McCain.”
“My pleasure.”
“I really owe you one,” Jeff said.
“I didn’t even get my picture taken,”
O’Donlon said.
I made O’Donlon leave first.
While they waited, Jeff said, “I’m sorry, Linda. I would’ve married you anyway.
I really would’ve.”
He said it magnanimously, which was a
mistake.
“Don’t do me any favors,” she said.
He looked at me, then back at her. “I love you, Linda. And I want to marry you.” This time it came from the heart.
And then they were kissing and I was trying not to pay any attention.
When I said good-bye to them I planned to go home, open a can of Falstaff, pick up a paperback, and relax. I’d earned a good rest and I planned to take it.
Nineteen
I was just locking the door when I heard a car sweep up behind me in the two-car parking space.
A voice behind me said, “Hold it right there, counselor.”
Cliffie.
I came down the stairs. Turned my collar up. There was a mist that would soon be rain. Cold drops of it pattered in the leaves. The air smelled fresh and clean. There was an odd, quiet excitement about the first true night of fall. Time to haul out my bunny jammies with the feet in them. I alrea
dy had a Captain Video notebook, why the hell not go all the way?
“You hear the news?” he asked. He’d left his motor running, lights on. He was silhouetted in the beams. The motor, which needed a tune-up, throbbed. I smelled car oil and gasoline.
“What news?”
He shook his head. “The sumbitch did it, all right.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Keys. You said he did it and he did.
Judge Whitney is probably sitting out in her mansion right now, gloating.”
Which she probably was, in fact.
“You interrogate him?”
“Not hardly,” he said. “Nobody’ll be puttin’ that head back together. Not even the funeral-home fellas.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“He blew his damned head off is what I’m talkin’ about.”
“When was this?”
“One of my men found him about an hour ago.
In the park. Down near the boat dock.
He’d put a gun in his mouth. I seen it myself.
A stinkin’ mess is what it is.”
“Oh, God.”
“What’s that for? He killed them people, didn’t he? Even left a note sayin’ he did.”
“He was a decent guy.”
“Yeah, McCain. Most decent guys I
know go around killin’ people.”
“So he’s in the morgue?”
“Yeah. Novotny’s comin’ over after supper to do the autopsy.” He laughed. “Way that sumbitch eats, might be tomorrow by the time he gets there.”
I felt empty. “Guess I’ll go
home.”
“I just wanted to warn you about next time.”
“Next time?”
“Yeah, next time there’s a murder. I catch you interferin’ with the investigation again, counselor, I’m gonna throw your ass in jail. Get me?”
“Yeah.” I was too drained to argue. “Got it.”
“And remember it.”
“I’ll remember.”
“And tell the Judge. I’ll throw her ass in jail too.”
I could just see Judge Whitney in a cell, running the jail staff into exhaustion with her orders.
He got in the car and drove off.
I couldn’t help it. I felt sorry for Keys. What Cliffie said was indisputably true. Good men don’t go around murdering people. But sometimes bad people are good people too. Or good people can do bad things. Life is like that sometimes.
I took a shortcut home, passing Dick Keys’s car dealership. Life went on. Even on a misty night like this one, people were out looking at the new and used cars. The Edsel was still drawing crowds.