by Deaver Brown
Until very recently, Hull had had every reason to agree with him. But situations change, and wise men change with them. As soon as the Municipal Channel was behind him, Hull managed to snatch a few private moments on the phone. His first call was to NOBBY.
“. . . glad I caught you,” he said, pleasant and relaxed. “Say, congratulations on the audit . . . yeah, that’s sure putting the bad news behind. Listen, I’m tied up for the rest of the day, but I was wondering if we could get together soon. Maybe sometime tomorrow . . . great.”
With Sean Cushing, reestablishing contact was as easy as that. Only time would tell about Iona Perez.
Chapter 23.
Prosit!
That evening Detective Francis Perenna plodded from bar to bar in the East Fifties. Keeping a weather eye out for green awnings and red stools, he had a sheaf of photographs that had thus far failed to evoke any sign of recognition. Perenna, as the newest recruit to Homicide, expected to be assigned the really thankless tasks and this one certainly qualified. It had been an exceptionally warm day, a foretaste of heat waves to come, and now the vast bulks of masonry were radiating their heat into the night air. Running a finger around his sticky collar, Perenna entered his ninth establishment without high hopes. But if he was inexperienced in murder investigations, he was a longtime devotee of country music. No sooner was his foot over the threshold than he halted, listening intently to the bearded guitarist in a cowboy hat. After a moment’s hesitation he reversed in his tracks to regain the sidewalk and survey the immediate area. There, two doors down, was a restaurant.
Locating the maître d’hôtel was easy; questioning him was not.
“And do you know if you had a bunch of Germans in here that night?” Perenna asked after specifying the date.
The maître d’, who seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, had swung around to hiss something in Spanish at a harried waiter. The ensuing exchange featured an agitated justification from the waiter terminated by a crisp command. Then, a minatory gaze still fixed on his victim, the maître d’ said over his shoulder:
“Are you talking about the Bradley party?”
“Bradley?” queried the detective.
Not until the luckless waiter had retreated to the kitchen did the maître d’ explain. It had been a wedding reception and, as long as the bride’s father was picking up the tab, it was firmly defined as a Bradley event. The groom, however, had been a German graduate student at Princeton.
“And some of his family and friends flew over from Munich—about fifteen of them. Mr. Bradley asked for our only German-speaking waiter to be assigned to the function room.”
Suddenly the night was pleasantly balmy, the air clear and all personal discomfort a thing of the past. With the giddy feeling that he had won a trifecta, Perenna formulated his next question. But this time it was a delinquent busboy drawing the maître d’ to a far corner.
It was several minutes before the detective could finally ask, “And do you remember when the wedding reception broke up?”
“Of course,” was the contemptuous reply. A cleaning crew had been waiting in the wings, its meter ticking, ready to charge into the banquet room the minute the last guest cleared the door.
Now that luck was running in his favor, Perenna reentered the adjacent bar with his photographs already arranged in an inviting fan.
“And you mean they recognized him?” Reardon asked unbelievingly the next morning.
“That’s right.”
“How solid was the identification?”
Perenna confined himself to facts. “The barkeep chose Alec Moore’s picture without a blink.”
“Was Moore drawing attention to himself?” demanded his suspicious superior.
“Nope. He was just slumped in a corner quietly getting blotto. The barkeep was worried enough about his condition to offer to get him a cab. But Moore said he was walking and managed to stagger out on his own.”
Reardon nodded grudgingly. With families like the Ludlums starting lawsuits all over the place, bartenders these days were more aware of their obviously drunken customers.
“So what if Moore is clear for the break-in? Maybe he hired a pro,” objected Dave.
“If anybody bought himself outside help, he’d make sure he had a gold-plated alibi. Not one like this. It was nine out of ten Perenna, here, wouldn’t find the right place. What put you on to it anyway?”
“The guitarist.”
Reardon, notoriously unmusical, blinked. “My God, what did he sound like?”
Before their eyes Francis Perenna, diffident novice, became the voice of authority.
“An incredibly bad Conway Twitty.”
Waving Perenna irritably out the door, Reardon scowled.
“A music critic, yet.”
“The whole thing is too pat. It could be a put-up job.”
Reardon examined his assistant curiously. “Why are you so hellbent on Moore?”
The flow of frustration boiled over. “Because whenever we come near him, everything goes haywire. First we find a clear print on the phone and bust his story about the library. That should have been the beginning of the end. But, instead of coming up with something we can punch holes in, he decides to keep his mouth shut. Then, when you really start putting on the pressure, he falls into a trance. Now this one-in-a-million chance about the bar pays off. It’s all so weird that I was honest to God seriously wondering if he’d decided to protect someone.”
“Don’t you believe it! The most important person in Alec Moore’s world is himself.”
Dave agreed too much to mount an argument. Changing the subject, he said, “From your lousy mood I guess the witnesses you saw this morning didn’t come up with anything.”
“Not a damn thing. And I got to more of them than I expected. After I saw Rugby and the Kichsel people, I had some luck. It turned out that Vandermeer and a couple of the committee members are in town on business. But they all sing the same tune. They heard Underwood explode when the adjournment was announced and that was it. The only one I’ve got left on my list is that banker who was with the Kichsel crowd.”
“He’s got less at stake than the others. Maybe he’ll cough up more details.”
“Fat chance. But since I’m due at his place in half an hour I’d better have a sandwich sent in. You want anything?”
Reardon whiled away the interval by remarking bitterly that it was just like Madeleine Underwood. On the one occasion in her life when her mouthings might have been of some value, she had chosen to become tight-lipped. He was rolling along nicely in his condemnation when a patrolman appeared with two brown bags.
“The corned beef is mine and the pastrami is his,” Reardon directed, still intending to unleash one or two more choice comments.
But the patrolman had a message as well as food. Alexander Moore was outside, supported by Paul Jackson. They wanted a few minutes of the inspector’s time.
Wordlessly the two men looked at each other.
“He’s brought along some protection this time,” Dave advanced cautiously. “You think he’s trying for a deal?”
Reardon shook his head gloomily. “It won’t be that simple. Probably he’s dropped by to tell us he’s entering a Trappist monastery. That way he’ll never have to say another word for the rest of his life.”
But the Alec Moore who came bounding through the doorway did not look ready to renounce the pleasures of this earth. He was brimming with energy, his face was split by a broad smile and he began proceedings by wringing Reardon’s hand. To the rear Paul Jackson padded along, his dark eyes alight with mischievous appreciation. Before anybody else could utter a word, he raised a placatory hand and said, “Relax, Inspector. My client has an alibi for the Underwood killing and wishes to apologize for any inconvenience his silence may have caused.”
“Absolutely,” burbled Moore, unable to contain his exuberance.
Reardon’s disenchanted gaze swept over his guests. “There are alibis and then there
are alibis,” he breathed softly.
“This one is the Rock of Gibraltar. In fact,” Jackson continued breezily, “it’s a real doozy.”
• • •
Even though Inspector Reardon was a quarter of an hour late for his appointment at the Sloan, he had to wait a few minutes until the light on Miss Corsa’s phone went out.
“That was Paul Jackson calling,” Thatcher explained at once. “He tells me that Alec Moore has satisfactorily explained his movements at the time of Madeleine Underwood’s murder.”
Reardon had long since become hardened to the way news of every wrinkle in a major investigation speeds to the interested parties.
“His story involves six independent witnesses, so it should hold up,” he admitted.
“That is welcome news for everyone at Kichsel,” said Thatcher, tacitly conceding that it might be otherwise for a hard-pressed investigator.
Shrugging, Reardon got down to business with his standard query about a proposed press conference.
“No, I didn’t hear anything of that sort,” Thatcher replied. “I can see how it would be a logical development for Mrs. Underwood. If she was planning any startling revelation, she would have had to look for another forum. But, you know, I not only didn’t hear any such reference, I doubt if there was one.”
“How so?”
“She must have been the only person in the room who didn’t realize that Rossi would stop the proceedings. There’s no doubt she was totally taken aback by the adjournment. And if she instantly determined to take countermeasures, I assume that it would have been some time before she decided on their exact nature.”
Reardon sighed. With no further prospects on his list, this sounded all too probable.
“And now that Moore’s been cleared, I’m right back to the Quax mess.”
“Fundamentally it’s a simple battle,” Thatcher said encouragingly. “Kichsel wants to invade the soft-drink market. Those in possession want to keep Kichsel out. That’s a very commonplace situation.”
“Yeah, except for one thing. In this fight we’ve got a crazy woman who doesn’t follow the rules. Hell, she doesn’t even know the rules, and she’s been tearing the place apart for a couple of years.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Reardon’s eyebrows climbed so high they almost disappeared into his hairline. “You don’t think trying to wreck Rugby’s and having brawls with everyone in sight at a congressional hearing is crazy?”
Thatcher hastened to shore up his own reputation for sanity. “Certainly I do. My quarrel is with your implication that she’d been doing it for years. My very first reaction when I saw her whipping those protesters into a frenzy was that she’d undergone an astonishing change. I remember saying as much to Trinkam.”
“You were at the riot?”
“Yes, I was there with Charlie Trinkam, a colleague of mine from the bank. He handles the funding for Rugby and he was curious when we spotted a disturbance in front of the restaurant.”
“And you’d had dealings with Underwood before?”
“Not dealings. I only saw her three times in all. The first occasion was at the Ludlum trial, where Paul Jackson introduced me to her.”
“And doesn’t he get around?” Reardon murmured resentfully, still smarting from the great alibi clarification.
Thatcher suppressed a smile. “It is certainly one of his skills,” he agreed. “But my point is that Madeleine Underwood, at the courthouse, was dealing with the opposing attorney, the press, and an unknown banker. And she was normalcy itself. Oh, she was clearly a rather silly woman basking in the limelight, but her approach was perfectly reasonable. She did not expect everyone to agree with her—far from it. Time and effort would be required to alert the public to a peril which she, in her superior wisdom, had already recognized. In fact, nothing would have disappointed her more than a universal agreement that made NOBBY’s proselytizing unnecessary.”
First Sean Cushing and Alec Moore had collapsed as suspects. Now the victim was painted in different colors. The inspector did not sound happy.
“You know, you’re the first person who’s claimed she was anything but a loony. Part of that, I suppose, is because I’ve been concentrating on the time immediately before her murder.”
“And part could be due to the vested interest of the new management at NOBBY,” Thatcher pointed out. “They’re trying to restore their image by blaming everything on Madeleine Underwood. But even they have to fall back on a sudden transformation. As they keep telling Elmer Rugby, NOBBY mounted many protests without any physical confrontation.”
Plucking his earlobe thoughtfully, Reardon said, “Maybe she did flake out. Is that so surprising? She’d made a lot of mistakes and she must have been wondering if she was up to the job.”
“No. Charlie Trinkam has been seeing a good deal of the NOBBY people during their settlement negotiations, and according to them, Mrs. Underwood did not acknowledge any mistakes. Besides, the quality that woman projected at the Rugby riot and, indeed, at the hearings, was certainly not self-doubt.”
Inspector Reardon was less impressed by Thatcher’s argument than by the availability of a new source of information.
“This guy Trinkam seems to be picking up tidbits here and there. I’d better schedule an appointment with him.”
It was easier to reach for the intercom than to explain Charlie’s zest for the human comedy.
“Like Paul Jackson, he gets around,” Thatcher murmured, his finger on the buzzer. “But if you want him, I’ll see if he’s free.”
Upon learning that Trinkam would join them shortly, Reardon returned to the witness at hand.
“So what quality was she projecting?” he asked patiently.
Dutifully Thatcher closed his eyes and tried to summon his three sightings of Madeleine Underwood. It was as if scraps of film footage had been stored away waiting to be retrieved. There she was swimming from her limousine at the courthouse, a gracious suburban matron dressed for the occasion, confident and secure, even approaching playfulness with her suggestion that she would convert Paul Jackson. At Rugby’s, of course, she had been operating on a much more dramatic level. Her voice had risen and fallen to accommodate off-stage noises; her gestures had discreetly underlined her message until the peroration, when she had flung her arms up in challenge. And finally came the hearings, where she had assumed a more compact form, buzzing around in her red suit like some stinging insect determined to draw blood.
“She was certainly combustible with everybody at the hearings,” he muttered more to himself than to his guest.
“Not just them,” Reardon corrected. “She took on Cushing because he accepted funding from the Soft Drink Institute and she was ready to throw out Perez.”
But Thatcher was not listening. Letting his mind run free, he was presented again and again with the scene at Rugby’s.
“I know what the major difference was. She wasn’t enjoying herself anymore,” he finally exclaimed. “At Rugby’s she was appealing to the protesters to bar the doors primarily as a show of support in the face of nameless threats. If the woman at the courthouse had discovered something discreditable about Alec Moore she would have been smug and complacent. But at the hearings she wasn’t. In fact, you could almost say there was a diffused paranoia about her accusations there. As if she herself were being threatened and was lashing out in self-defense. When I come to think of it, the change is very curious.”
By the time Charlie Trinkam sauntered in five minutes later, Thatcher had almost as many questions for him as Inspector Reardon did. But, as usual, Charlie beat everybody to the punch.
“Something new on the Underwood murder?” he asked hopefully.
“Alec Moore has come up with an alibi,” Thatcher relayed, “but Paul Jackson says the details are confidential.”
Unabashed, Charlie immediately swiveled toward Reardon.
“That’s what I say too.”
“My God, don’t tell me he�
��s the last flower of chivalry and he’s protecting a lady’s fair name,” Charlie protested.
This innocent suggestion produced an astonishing result. The inspector engaged in some internal struggle for a full minute before the first strangled guffaw erupted.
“Not exactly,” he managed to gasp in the midst of his spasms.
With Reardon temporarily out of commission, Thatcher sought confirmation of his own theory. “You’ve been seeing the people at NOBBY, Charlie. Haven’t they said anything about a sudden change in Mrs. Underwood?”
“They can barely talk about anything else. Peggy Roche called her at home on Sunday to wish her luck at the hearings and to discuss the Rugby demonstration starting the next day. Peggy swears that Underwood wasn’t planning anything unusual. In fact, Madeleine was so excited about the hearings, she said she probably wouldn’t have time for the protest but she was sure Iona Perez could handle everything.”
Like Thatcher, Reardon saw the possibility for support of a hypothesis. “But then she fouled up. Don’t they think that’s what upset her? Maybe made her try for extra mileage out of something she was good at—whipping up her members?”
“Hell, no!” Charlie said genially. “She didn’t think she was messing things up. Cushing says after her stint on the stand, she thought she’d done a first-class job.”
“That’s right,” said Reardon in exasperated recollection. “Congressman Hull said the same thing. She was proud of her testimony and looking forward to more of it.”
Thatcher had equipped himself with a notepad. “Let’s get these times down and see exactly when she changed.”
“Some of it is easy enough,” said Reardon, tolerant of amateur enthusiasm. “On Monday she testified. After she split from Cushing she checked into a hotel around the corner.”
“Unexpectedly?” asked Thatcher. “That might mean something.”
“I don’t think so. She explained to the desk clerk that she’d almost been late that morning because of a traffic jam. So she decided to stay in town until the hearings were over.”