The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  I was shaky, and Butler could spot the trembling in my voice. “Can’t take very much more of this kind of a game. If this keeps up, the fellow who wants to bump me off can’t have a straight run of errors. All he has to do is connect once and that finishes me.”

  And there wasn’t any doubt that my bodyguard had the same idea going through his brain cells. “Get some sleep, if that’s possible. Tomorrow morning you go to the office and I’ll be at your side. As soon as I get a recording of everyone there, we’ll go straight to the Professor’s place. I’m not kidding myself, either. Time is of the essence when you got Death staking the cards against you.”

  Sleep was near impossible. I wasn’t conscious of the pain in the hand; I just wanted to go on living, and that didn’t seem to be an unreasonable desire on my part. If the someone we were looking for happened to be part of the office staff, that narrowed the search down. But cold sweat gathered on my forehead when I thought of the possibility it might be a person outside the office. Then we could never spot him.

  * * * *

  Butler and I went to my office promptly at nine o’clock the next morning. I slumped at my desk; he sat in a chair in the corner, looking through the current issue of Detective Adventures and shaking his head.

  One by one most of the staff stopped in to see me and give their sympathies. Apparently the boss had told everyone about the attempts on my life, and I was the talk of the office. Everyone expressed sympanthies.

  At closing time, Roger Hartly stopped in to see me. He was in charge of the art department—one of those fellows who could have been in his late twenties or early forties. You couldn’t win a bet guessing his age. He had a busy head of hair that told you, “either musician or artist.”

  Roger spread a few drawings out on my desk.

  “Here’s some nice stuff by the fellow who wrote us last week. Harold Gibson is his name. He’s been freelancing for some of the pulps out in Chicago, and I think he’s going places.”

  I looked at the drawings and nodded automatically.

  “Guess that accident last night unnerved you,” said Roger. “But as long as you got that nursemaid from the police department around, I guess your killer wouldn’t have an easy job making a victim out of you.”

  I felt like telling Roger to jump into the lake when I caught Herman’s eyes. It was first names now, especially when Death has almost given you a fatal kiss and you sort of feel a closeness to the man who is doing his best to keep you alive. I arose from my desk and went over to the corner of the room where my detective pal was going through some back issues of our magazines.

  “We better leave now,” he suggested in a low voice. “I got all the recordings we need. The sooner we get over to the Professor’s apartment, the better.”

  The suggestion seemed sound to me, and we were on our way uptown in five minutes.

  * * * *

  I watched with eager eyes, like a kid of ten, as Professor Musterman played those recordings. He did it a second time, and then a third time. On a sheet of paper he had the names of the people.

  “Your man is Roger Hartly,” was his verdict. “New England in it, a bit of the Middle West, and that nasal touch. I can place a handkerchief over this speaker and show you a recording of the voice as it would be when it is disguised.” Five minutes later we listened to a second recording and there wasn’t the slightest bit of doubt as to the identity of the man.

  “Where does he live?” asked Herman.

  “Uptown, off Central Park West. I’ve never been there. He’s not a very sociable fellow and likes to keep to himself; I guess he has his own crowd and goes out with them.”

  * * * *

  The apartment house was relatively new, and we went up to the sixteenth floor. When my bodyguard rang the bell, an eye appeared at the peep-hole. I told her who I was, and she let us both in. Then we got the shock of our lives. She must have been about five feet six, thin, and in perfect proportion. Jet black hair drawn back and narrow eyes. She was dressed in a kimono!

  I got what was off my mind first.

  “Tell me—why they call you Butterfly,” I tried to remark in an offhand manner. It was a shot in the dark and it worked. My ego went up one hundred per cent as she replied in a musical tone of voice.

  “I was born in the Orient. My parents were missionaries, and Roger met me in Japan while he was painting some pictures for a millionaire. He gave me that pet name. Maybe I reminded him of the tragic heroine of a certain opera.”

  We waited and waited for Roger to come. If his wife knew anything was wrong, she never once betrayed it.

  “Can I get you drinks?” she offered as we heard the key turn in the lock.

  Roger looked at the three of us, and you could see a wild cast to his face.

  He pointed his index finger at me and demanded, “What kind of a cat and-mouse game are you playing with me? You knew all along I wanted to kill you. And I had every right to do so; you took my wife’s love away from me. Are you trying to drive me mad?”

  How do you reason with a madman? One who has let jealousy deprive him of the power of clear reasoning? Then Roger raised his other hand, and it held a snub-nose .32 which he pointed directly at me.

  Herman got into action with words.

  “Look here—before you do any shooting with that gun—you can make a mistake and kill the wrong man. Why not ask your wife if there happens to be another man? And if so, let her name him.”

  “If you go for your gun, Mr. Detective,” warned Roger, “I’ll let you have it too.” Then he turned towards his wife and kept his eyes focused on us at the same time. “Is Joe the man?” was all he asked.

  Mrs. Hartly nervously bit her lower lips as she tried to avoid her husband’s piercing gaze. I guess I was about ready to sink to the floor; all she had to do was to mention my name and that was my finish. Whoever the other fellow happened to be, if she loved him, she probably wouldn’t betray him; I could be a sacrificial goat.

  Then, all of a sudden, the expression on Roger’s face changed as though he had suddenly become conscious of some fact he had long overlooked.

  “You don’t have to answer,” he recommended with sarcasm in his voice. “I think I know who has been responsible for all of this. I’ve been blind a long time, but now I see things clearly.”

  His eyes shifted to me. “Sorry, Joe, for the mess I have made of things. The man who likes my wife must be the same one who suggested you were playing around with her. That rat is…”

  But he never finished the words. Four shots in rapid succession poured into his back as he slumped to the floor—dead.

  There was the glint of a gun-barrel in the door behind him, and Herman got out his gun and emptied its contents at the narrow opening. Then the door slammed tight. We smashed through that wooden door into a hall and then spotted the service door to the apartment.

  Butler opened it and commented as we looked into an empty hall, “The killer must have had a key to the apartment. All the time he was behind that door taking in every word being spoken. Well, Mrs. Hartly knows who he is; I’m going to take her to Police Headquarters. She’ll talk.”

  As we turned to retrace our steps, we heard one shot. We raced back to the room to see Mrs. Hartly on the floor with her husband’s gun in her outstretched hand. She had put one bullet into her brain—which was all that was needed for the job.

  * * * *

  Detective Pierson came over with the boys from Homicide, and they took charge of things. Butler saw I was ready to collapse.

  “I’m going to Kansas, where I have an aunt, for a rest or I’ll have a mental breakdown,” I said. “But first I’m going over to my boss’ place and tell him to get a new editor.”

  “I might as well go with you,” suggested Herman Butler. “After all there is a killer still on the loose. Whether or not he wants you, the law wants him. It’s going to be my job to get him, even though we I haven’t the slightest clue as to his identity. If one of my bullets nicked him, he’
s got to go to a doctor, and the law requires a physician to make a report within twenty-four hours of such a case. Let’s go over to Mr. Parker’s house.”

  * * * *

  I saw Eleanor first and told her what had happened.

  “You certainly need a rest, Joe,” she said sympathetically. “My husband is in his library. Go on in and settle things with him.”

  I entered the library followed by Detective Butler. I came right to the point and to my surprise found my boss very nice about it.

  “You take off as long as you want, Joe,” he said. “A month, two, three—as long as it takes. And remember, it’s with pay; I never forget the loyalty of a good man.”

  I extended my hand, and we shook with my nervous fingers holding his in a tight grasp. Then I saw the red trickle of blood coming down his sleeve and staining my fingers.

  “So you never forget the loyalty of a good man,” I echoed. “You killed Roger; his wife is dead because of you; and you nearly sent me to a grave.”

  “Don’t reach for your gun,” advised Butler, behind me, “because there is nothing I would like better than to say in my report that you were killed resisting arrest.”

  * * * *

  Three months later, after the jury had returned a verdict of guilty in the first degree, without a recommendation for mercy, Herman and I sat in Luigi’s. I had taken two month’s rest and looked much better.

  “I’m going to continue with the magazines,” I told him. “Eleanor wants me to carry on. Somehow, when you go through an experience like mine, you get a different attitude when you read fiction manuscripts. To think that Parker even told Roger to take the car and run me down. Parker was just as jealous as Roger; even though he had been cheating, making love to Mrs. Hartly, he thought I was making love to his wife. He wanted me out of the way, as well Roger. Poor Butterfly. I guess I’ll always think of this as ‘The Butterfly of Death.’ Parker had a gold key to her apartment, and he always knew when her husband was out. Women are a funny lot.”

  There was a peculiar smile creeping over Detective Butler’s face. “Women are a funny lot? Which reminds me. I get married next month, and you are going to be my best man.”

  MY BONNIE LIES…, by Ted Hertel

  Shortly before I graduated from law school, my great-aunt Anna took my arm and pulled me aside at a cousin’s wedding. “Why do you want to be a lawyer, Bonnie? All lawyers are liars.”

  I reminded her of the honored tradition of such great attorneys as Lincoln. I told her of the proud profession of well-respected men and women who held to the truth and sought justice in all they did.

  “Bah! Remember Nixon. Get out while you still can.”

  From that moment on I vowed to be honest and straightforward with my clients, my fellow attorneys, the judges I would appear before, and the public at large.

  That, of course, was my first lie.

  * * * *

  When I graduated, I became an associate with a large, prestigious, law firm. I was paid more money in a year than my father had earned in the seven years it took for him to put me through college and law school. In return the firm expected me to live there 24 hours a day in order to bill the absurd number of hours I had to meet to remain on the partnership track. Billing fifty hours a week does not mean working fifty hours a week. More like a hundred, actually. Something always interrupted the day: a cold call from a securities broker; the two-hour, three martini lunch, so fashionable in those days; the continuing legal education classes; or the pro bono work the firm also expected of associates.

  So I learned creative billing. Our minimum billable unit was a quarter hour. It took only a minute to read a letter? Bill it at “0.25.” A three-minute phone call? Another quarter-hour on the time-sheet. Thirty to forty-five minutes on a brief? An hour. The little lies became the necessities of staying sane.

  There were no fax machines when I first entered the practice. It was easy to tell the complaining client that her work was actually done and would go out in the mail that night. Of course, I would then do it and get it to the post office for last pickup. Even backdating the bill became standard operating procedure. The advent of the fax gave birth to a new lie: “Oh, my secretary is out sick today. We’ll fax it to you first thing in the morning.”

  Next, I found myself encouraging frail, elderly clients to appoint me as the personal representative of their estates. Funny how soon afterwards they died—and how quickly their probate assets were eaten up. Those legal fees will kill a person.…

  Did I have any regrets? Only that I didn’t have more frail, elderly clients.

  * * * * *

  Eventually I left the firm and set up my own, Cunningham Law Offices. I shifted my focus from a civil practice to helping people I believed were wrongly accused of a crime, assuming, of course, they had enough money to convince me of their innocence. Over the fifteen years of my criminal defense work, I had rarely lost a case. Further, I had developed quite a reputation for getting the job done right the first time. There aren’t a lot of second chances in criminal law. So I worked—and I worked hard. After all, it’s the duty of the lawyer to use every means to keep wealthy clients out of prison.

  * * * *

  When they weren’t jetting around the world, Paula and Gene Fischer appeared nearly every week on the local society pages. Gene owned a computer consulting company. Paula, according to the papers, did nothing besides serve on the boards of several charitable organizations. The Fischers lived on a sprawling, secluded estate on Shore Drive. They had everything money could buy.

  So it was with some degree of surprise that I saw a panic-stricken Gene Fischer barge into my office without an appointment that Monday morning. A recent newspaper article covering the exclusive Carillon Ball had described him as “fashionable and strikingly handsome,” which upon meeting him turned out to be an understatement. Tall, broad-shouldered, and very tan, he was dressed to kill, which turned out to be the perfect attire for what he had to tell me. I stood to greet him and directed him to one of the leather chairs facing my desk. He started right in, just as if we were old friends.

  “I killed Paula. Late last night. She was—”

  “Whoa! Stop right there. Just so you understand, I only represent people who are innocent.”

  “Well, then you obviously can’t help me.”

  “That’s not what I said at all. I merely want you to know that if I take your case, it’ll be because I believe you aren’t guilty. You obviously haven’t been arrested or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “Let’s just say that so far I haven’t been caught. When the police find me, they’ll arrest me.”

  “And why will they do that?”

  “I told you: because I killed my wife.”

  “Yes, I understand that you believe, wrongly of course, that you killed your wife, but why will the police believe that?”

  “Well, for one thing, somebody saw me do it.”

  “That’s the sort of mistake an amateur makes—”

  “I’m hardly a professional.”

  “Of course you’re not. What I’m saying is an amateur believes an eyewitness to a crime is infallible. Quite the contrary, actually. Witnesses are generally unreliable—and the police can easily be convinced of their mistakes once a professional, like me, presents the true facts to them. Now, tell me what you think happened.”

  Fischer related that over the last ten years of their marriage he had become more obsessed with his business and less absorbed with his wife. Between their frequent trips Paula filled her life with committee work, he had assumed. However, within the last year or so she had become careless, raising Gene’s suspicions. Phone calls were abruptly terminated when he entered a room. Several times in the past few months he had tried to reach her at this or that committee meeting, only to be told she had called with some excuse for not attending. Yet when they talked later, Paula would tell him all about how much had been accomplished at the meeting.

  Although Fischer suspec
ted his wife’s affair, he wasn’t in a position to make an accusation since he himself had begun an affair some months earlier with a young woman named Karen Goodrich. She was “beautiful and about as smart as a couch cushion.” A mutual friend had introduced Paula and him to Karen at a party. Gene and Karen found they had a lot in common, not the least of which was an interest in his money. They met secretively several times a week for an expensive meal and sex.

  Last night Fischer had come home with a migraine from a business meeting. He heard some noise out in the back yard and, upon investigating, saw Paula and Karen, both very naked, caressing each other in the hot tub. They did not see Gene, however, until he walked out of the patio doors with the gun from the study in his hand.

  “Betrayed, not only by my wife, but also by my mistress.” I didn’t point out the obvious irony in that statement.

  “My only mistake was not making sure the gun was fully loaded. I shot Paula twice and then the damn thing just ‘clicked.’ I wish there’d have been at least one left for the other slut.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You were at a business meeting last night and left because you weren’t feeling well. You stopped at Del Mondo’s for dinner, had a few too many drinks—not a good thing with a migraine, I’m sure you know—saw a couple people you know, and finally went home. Because you’d been drinking, you took a cab home. When you got there, the driver helped you to the house. You heard some noise around back, so you both went to the rear yard. You and the cabbie found your wife dead in the hot tub, with her girl friend standing over her holding the still smoking gun. She saw you and, thinking you were next, you took off until you could come here this morning. Right?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? That’s not what I said!”

  “No, but I’m convinced that’s what happened. I told you I don’t represent the guilty. Bad for the reputation to lose all those cases, you know. Since I am in fact representing you, it follows that you are innocent. All those drinks at Del Mondo’s apparently left you very confused. I have a rather straightforward defense litany for my clients: ‘You don’t have a wife. If you have a wife, she’s not dead. If she is dead, she wasn’t murdered. If she was murdered, you didn’t kill her. If you did kill her, you were crazy.’ We know the first three aren’t true in your case, so we’ll approach it from the fourth line of defense, namely, you didn’t kill her. It’s never necessary to get to that ‘crazy’ one, by the way.”