Not I, Said the Vixen

by Bill S. Ballinger

  “Yes,” she agreed, “I’m sure… that’s the way it happened.”

  “Now…” I asked, “about the gun. Where did you get it?”

  “I’ve had it a long time,” she told me. “I brought it with me from New York…”

  I pointed out to her that New York has the Sullivan Law against possession of firearms.

  Several times she seemed at the point of replying before she finally told me, “I used to know a boy… from Louisiana. He gave it to me… that’s why I had it.”

  “Could you get in touch with the man who gave you this gun?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know where he came from in Louisiana—and I only knew him in New York. I haven’t heard from him… in years.” Her voice trailed off. Then she said, “His name was Larry something. Larry… Walton… “

  I was growing weary, but there were still a few points which I had to cover. “When the police came, after Arthea Simpson was shot, how much of this did you tell them?”

  “At first when they arrived, they hardly asked me anything. Then a doctor came a little later…”

  “You are referring to the medical examiner from the coroner’s office?” I interrupted.

  “He must’ve been, because he looked around and then he told the police to take me to a hospital. Then the police took me next door to the station and they asked me questions…”

  “The police asked you to make a statement? Is that correct?”

  “That’s right. After they typed if up, I signed it.”

  That night she couldn’t return to her apartment because the police were still in it. The next morning, Thursday, she drove alone to Palm Springs. When she returned to Los Angeles on Sunday evening, Arthea Simpson had been identified and Ivy had been arrested.

  This was enough. I doubted that Ivy Lorents could answer many more questions that evening… from me or anyone else. And it wasn’t the time to take her in my arms… kiss her, comfort her, tell her it was a bad dream… a nightmare—one which she was in—and another one from which I was just escaping. I couldn’t. Not then. Instead, I said as calmly as possible, “All right… for tonight.”

  Ivy arose from the sofa. Walking slowly beside me to the door, she took my hand. Her great green eyes searched my face. I smiled at her tentatively. A smile answered me back. “I feel better,” she told me. “I don’t feel so… afraid.”

  Her hand was cold. “Get to bed. Get some sleep,” I urged her. “I’ll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, don’t talk to anyone. Refuse to answer all questions—regardless of what they are.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Just as you say.” Then she withdrew her hand, and almost in the manner of a hostess opened the door for me. “Thank you very much. Thank you for getting me out on bail.”

  I looked at her wide eyes. They were no longer green. They were nearly pure black, the iris opened to a fathomless depth. Her hair tumbled to her shoulders, resting on the gold cloth of her robe. And I said inanely, “Don’t get upset.”

  Upset? I hardly remember riding the elevator to the lobby.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Pauline Morrisey, a widow, lived in the apartment directly beneath Ivy Lorents. Pauline, middle-aged, had moved to Hollywood two years before, after the death of her husband who had owned an automobile agency near Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Morrisey had arrived in Hollywood with a bank account heavily reinforced from Mr. Morrisey’s estate.

  Anticipating a more glamorous life than her Midwest existence, Pauline Morrisey had looked forward to living among swimming pools, palm trees, and glittering personalities.

  She was disappointed. Her neighbors lived their own lives within odd and unusual hours. She seldom saw them either coming home or leaving the building. Although Pauline Morrisey had never actually met Ivy Lorents, she had seen her on several occasions, and knew something of her background.

  According to gossip gleaned from the building help, she knew that Ivy Lorents had formerly been a successful high-fashion model in New York who had arrived in Hollywood to pursue a chimerical cinema career and had, supposedly, played several minor roles in pictures.

  Pauline’s one contact—and friend—in the temporary and make-believe world of Hollywood and Los Angeles was John Barker. Barker was a balding, sagging man, of indefinite age who worked as a reporter on the Los Angeles Register.

  With Barker, Pauline maintained a tepid romance. In her clearer thinking moments, Pauline Morrisey admitted to herself that Jack Barker was hardly what she had expected to find as a suitor.

  Since the shooting of Arthea Simpson Mrs. Morrisey had seldom strayed far from the subject in her conversation. She had gone over it many times with Jack Barker.

  Now, nearly a week later, Pauline tugged the girdle beneath the Capri pants which stretched tightly across her seat, and jangled a collection of costume jewelry bracelets on her wrist. She told Barker, who had been invited to dinner, “I don’t think she’s coming back.”

  Barker slumped comfortably in a large chair. Picking up Pauline’s thought, he glanced at the ceiling. “Ivy Lorents? No…” He shook his head. “She’s out on bail and Cyrus March has her stashed away someplace.”

  “Ohhh?” Pauline was obviously disappointed.

  Barker stared balefully, his eyes hot with remembered anger. “I saw the bastard late this afternoon. Tried to get a story. He gave me a brush-off.” Barker hunched his flabby shoulders.

  Pauline shook her carefully groomed head. She said firmly, “Then even if she is staying somewhere else, she’ll be back. She’ll have to come back to get things… and stuff like that.”

  “Nuts! Besides, the cops will keep her place closed until after the trial.”

  “Well… all of her clothes are up there, I’ll bet. And she can’t just forget them.”

  His resentment against March flared again in Barker’s eyes. “Yes, but that’s still no story… or maybe it could be. If she does come back, or if March does, it might be interesting to hear what they have to say.”

  Pauline had not yet caught the direction of Barker’s thoughts. She told Barker, “If they do come back, they won’t be shouting out the window.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

  Hastily, Pauline attempted a speculation. “You mean… tap… her telephone?”

  “No. The telephone company wouldn’t do it. But I might be able to bug Lorents’ place.” He gestured around Pauline’s living room. “Especially… as this would be a handy place to listen from.”

  Pauline was swept up in excitement. This was adventure! “Could you really?”

  Barker replied, working it out in his mind, “I might be able to swing it. I know where I can get some equipment—a short wave mike and receiver, so there wouldn’t be any wire tapping. I could plant the mike upstairs… and leave the receiver down here. It only works for a couple hundred feet.”

  “When would you do it? Tonight?”

  “No. In the morning.” Then, cautiously, “You told me the cops have gone all over place. Is that right?”

  Pauline nodded. “They were up there all last weekend—and then packed up and went away.”

  “So they won’t be going through her apartment again.” Suddenly, Barker stretched, holding his arms rigid above his head. He gave a short laugh. “I’m not going to tell the paper. I’m doing this on my own.” He lowered his arms, and showed his teeth in a grim smile.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I awakened in the morning, after a restless and wretched night. All through the dark hours, my emotions had been arguing with my mind. At such times, logic is never a clear-cut winner. I realized that it was my desire… or craving… or necessity… to find another, a new Beatrice which had first overridden my reason when I had met Ivy. The two women were similar in many ways, but they were not identical. In their beauty they were very much alike—or, rather, it was the impression of beauty which had first blinded me to their differences.

  But this conclusion, reached through anxiety, to which my knotted pillow
s and twisted sheets could offer testimony, did not lessen my desire for Ivy Lorents. In fact, it was heightened, because, for the first time, I found myself able to bury the past.

  Ivy, too, I realized, must be filled with doubts and fears—the emotion raging for expression—suppressed. With her liberty and life in jeopardy, her engagement to Robert Knox at a humiliating conclusion, it was certainly not the time to press my own attentions on her.

  Resolutely, I told myself that my first obligation to her was professional—as her attorney. At the present, nothing more.

  I went downstairs to breakfast, unable to do more than mangle a soft-boiled egg. On the way downtown, I stopped in a bar. This was something I’d never done before… when I’d been getting dry-cleaned—cold turkeyed. But it was imperative that I make it all the way through that third day. I couldn’t afford to have half my attention diverted to stuffing my nerves back into their root ends. Neither could I afford another shot of sedatives from Pete Hoffman. They slow me up too much.

  So I decided I’d have a beer. Just one. Cold and frothy, and pretty goddamned wonderful. Yet I was able to set down the empty glass, pay for it, and walk out without too much trouble. Someplace, in the back of my mind, I heard myself saying, “You’ve done it. You’ve proved something. Now let well enough alone.” And I could face the reality—this had to be the end of the road. If I lost my way now, when I found my way back—later—Ivy Lorents wouldn’t be there waiting.

  Lydia Gorham, with a list of notes in her hand, was waiting at my door when I walked into the office. “Tim Nordeen called… and so did the D.A.’s office. No one less than the big man himself.”

  “Canfield?” I asked.

  “Yes. He wants to meet with you.”

  “Is Bert in?”

  She nodded. Pressing the intercom, I said to Taylor, “Can you come to my office?” Then I told Lydia, “Tell Tim I’ll see him whenever I can, and make an appointment with Canfield.”

  “When?”

  “Soon as possible.”

  As Lydia left, Bert Taylor came in. “Time’s awastin’,” I told him. “Canfield is already on us. It’ll take time to get through the red tape, but see that we get copies of the questionings of Ivy Lorents by the police, and her signed statements. Also the autopsy report from the coroner’s office.”

  “We’re entitled to them.”

  “Yes. But we’re not necessarily entitled to the photographs taken by the crime laboratory, and I want those too.”

  “You mean… of the apartment?”

  “I want to see the layout of Ivy’s place exactly the way it was,” I told Bert. “Not the way it is today, but the way it was that night. The police’ll probably put up a squawk, but get those photos!”

  Lydia stuck her head back through the door. “I have Canfield’s office on the phone now,” she announced. “He can see you right away… or real late this afternoon.”

  “Tell him I’m on my way over.” Taylor followed me out of my office. “Another thing,” I said to Lydia, “order a box of candy, a couple of books, a bouquet of jonquils… and send them over to Ivy Lorents at the Claymore.”

  A brief expression of surprise touched Lydia’s face before she asked, “What name is she registered under?”

  “Jones, of course. Miss Jones, room 1104.” I nonchalantly closed the door.

  As I walked down the wide echoing corridor of the stone Hall of Justice building toward the D.A.’s office, I was joined by a group of newspapermen. Glancing at their faces, I noticed that the fellow with whom I’d had the run-in the night before wasn’t among them. I knew most of the men—from the Register, the L.A. World, and the news services. We usually got along pretty well together. I was too aware of cases in the past which had been tried luridly in the papers before the trial was held.

  Sparring affably, we walked along together. They wanted to know, naturally, if Canfield had offered to make some kind of deal on a pleading for Ivy.

  “What kind of a plea?” I asked, in return.

  “Second degree,” the man from the World replied.

  “Why should she?” We stopped in front of a door marked: Private. H. C. Canfield, DISTRICT ATTORNEY. “After all,” I told them, “Miss Lorents is innocent of any charge.” I quickly stepped inside Canfield’s reception room.

  The District Attorney, holding an important elective office, is more a politician than a lawyer. Canfield welcomed me with artificial warmth. “Come in, Cyrus. Glad to see you again.” His reddish hair seemed merely an extension of his ruddy face.

  I glanced around his large office which I’d seen many times—filled with massive furniture, conservative green carpeting and drapes, carefully calculated to be impressive, yet without offending a taxpayer’s sense of economy. A second man was seated quietly in a leather chair. “Hello, Joe,” I greeted him.

  “Oh, of course you know Joe Willard, too!” Canfield appeared pleased that we were all acquainted.

  “Sure. I know Cyrus,” Willard, an assistant D.A., stood up and shook hands with me. A thin, frail man, with a deceptive appearance—so commonplace that he could endear himself to the commonplace jurors. But behind his average-man facade—a pose a lot of other good attorneys, including Clarence Darrow, have assumed—Willard possessed a top-notch legal mind combined with tenacity and ruthlessness. This helped to make Joe Willard the best trial lawyer on Canfield’s staff.

  “You must be anxious about this case,” I told Canfield casually, “if you have Joe on it.”

  “Well… you know how it is, Cyrus,” Canfield replied, unperturbed. “Everyone else is busy. And it so happens that Joe is sort of interested.” He waved a big red hand at me. “Sit down. Sit down.”

  I sat down and stretched out my legs. “Joe interested in this Ivy Lorents situation?” I shook my head in disbelief. “I didn’t think it was so important.” These remarks fooled no one. They were all part of the warm-up.

  “The case might be important. It just might be…” Canfield’s ruddy face wore a second-layer flush.

  Pretending to think about it, I said, “I suppose it could be… puffed up. Made into something all out of relation to its actual importance.” I glanced at Willard.

  “You’re overlooking the importance of who was killed,” Willard spoke up. “Arthea Simpson was probably as well known as any woman in the state.”

  I remained unimpressed. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “You wouldn’t?” It was Willard’s turn to appear surprised. “Then name another woman… someone with the sports publicity, the friends, the money, the family… everything… that Arthea Simpson had.”

  “Aren’t you being influenced by the money and publicity angles?” I asked.

  “Because Arthea Simpson was rich is no more reason to be influenced than if she had been poor.”

  “If Ivy Lorents had been the one who had been killed, it wouldn’t have been so important,” I pointed out to Willard.

  “I would hardly call your client poor,” he retorted.

  “To the best of my knowledge, Ivy Lorents has very little money,” I replied.

  “Someone paid your fee,” Willard narrowed his eyes in speculation. “And if I can hazard a guess, it was a stiff one.”

  “I’ll tell you this, Joe. If I had to defend Ivy Lorents for nothing, I’d do it!”

  “And put up her bail?” This was a point I couldn’t afford to discuss with Willard. Or Canfield. They hadn’t opposed bail for Ivy too strenuously, or I couldn’t have gotten it. Bail, on a murder charge, is an exception. If granted, the bail, of course, is always back-breakingly high. Canfield could very well have been playing the situation for publicity, too. With Ivy out of jail, he could depend on the newspapers to keep interest in the case alive. So, I wasn’t too greatly impressed by their philanthropy.

  Taking a package of gum from my pocket, I started to chew a stick. I was beginning to feel edgy, and it didn’t help when Canfield and Willard exchanged knowing glances. I said, “I don’t think Ivy Lorent
s is guilty of murdering Arthea Simpson.” I rose to my feet. “I don’t think you have a case.” Canfield remained impassive. He gently pushed a silver-framed picture to the front of his desk. It was a photo of his wife and five kids. For the edification of voters. “We don’t agree with you, Cyrus.” His voice held a reasonable tone.

  As I stood there, looking at the D.A. and Willard, I became conscious of a secretive air in the office—as if they shared knowledge which I didn’t have. I had a feeling that they were waiting for me to walk into a trap. Stalling for time, I stared at Willard who refused to meet my scrutiny. Finally, he asked, “When do you want to set the preliminary hearing?”

  Almost instantly, too fast, Canfield inserted smoothly, “We can arrange to get it on a calendar for next week.”

  I thought the situation over. Lighting a cigarette, I tried to sound out my suspicions. It seemed to me that Canfield and Willard were too sure of themselves—and were pushing matters too fast. Furthermore, there had been no offer of a compromise—the possibility of permitting Ivy to plead to a lesser charge. Although I wouldn’t have accepted a compromise at this point, and I didn’t believe that Ivy would either, the lack of the offer bothered me.

  It was simply, as a lawyer, I couldn’t see the basis of a first degree murder charge. There was absolutely no motive for Ivy to have wanted to kill Arthea Simpson. However, Canfield was convinced that he had found a motive; otherwise, his actions made little sense. And now he was pushing for a fast preliminary hearing.

  For me to agree to a preliminary hearing, under the circumstances, was equivalent to giving the prosecution a free dress-rehearsal before the actual case was tried.

  I shook my head. “We’ll waive the preliminary hearing,” I told Willard. “We’ll be ready for the trial itself.”

  Willard covered his disappointment, if there was any, smoothly. “Can you be ready in a month?” he asked.