Drawn to Evil

by Harry Whittington

  Vinson cursed. “The little fool!”

  I was the startled one. “Why do you say that?”

  Vinson stared at me. “Well, she did it, didn’t she? I know she came from a poor family. A kid on the make. She’s come a long way and got a lot of polish. Still I guess George couldn’t give her the things she wanted. Not by the handful, the way the poor kid grew up wanting them.”

  I boiled inside. This double-crossing slick rat hadn’t wasted any time. He’d thrown Liza to the wolves the first time a cop had even looked at him.

  “Did she ever say anything to you about killing her husband?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Did she ever suggest that you help kill him?”

  “Am I just very drunk, or are you insane?”

  “I don’t know how drunk you are, but I’m quite sane. You might as well understand. I have it on good authority that you were running after Liza Flynn — on the sly.”

  “My God! I am drunk.” He paced across to his desk, thumbed through a few letters and then turned around, smiling wryly. “All right, I better back up just a little. I took her out a few times. As you say, secretly. She wanted it, and I’m human. But that’s all there was to it.”

  “That’s what you say. Can you tell me where you were after midnight three nights ago?”

  “Three nights ago? My God, no! Am I supposed to know?”

  “You can stop joking. That was the night George Flynn was killed.”

  “My holy sainted aunt! The things I never thought I’d hear. You’re accusing me of murder!”

  He put on a good act. I boiled more.

  “Not yet. Let’s not make a big thing out of it. I just want to know where you were after midnight three nights ago.”

  He looked blank. “And if I can’t remember?”

  “You better try to remember.” But my heart was pounding. It wasn’t going to do him any good.

  I was feeling the steady throb of it now. The anger I needed. The tension that I had all the time when getting a killer. And the climax of it all was going to come when I had Liza Flynn. Cleared. Free. And mine. The only kind of thrill I’d never had.

  My voice was harsh and loud in the room. “I think we can talk better down at headquarters, Mr. Vinson.”

  Chapter 13

  HILLIGAN was out when I got to the station with my unconfessed killer. That suited me right down to the basement, which is where I took Larry Vinson. I called the desk and told them to send down about three men who didn’t mind hard work — with their fists. Vinson wasn’t smiling any more. I’d made him leave home without his hat or coat. He was just about as he had been when he dragged himself out of his girl friend’s arms to talk to me.

  Just before the uniformed men joined me, Vinson made one last attempt. “This is all a mistake, Sergeant. If you’ll just let me call my lawyer, I’m sure — ”

  I slapped his right shoulder hard with the heel of my hand. He sat down on the straight chair.

  “You’re not going to talk to anybody until I tell you you can. The sooner you make your mind up to that the better off you’ll be.”

  He glared up at me. “This is nothing more than kidnapping, Carter. It’s illegal to hold me like this.”

  “You’d be amazed at how many times I’ve heard that. And right every time. Illegal as hell. Illegal as murder. You want to yell about it, Vinson? Go ahead. Yell. Yell your head off. Nobody will hear you down here.”

  The uniformed men arrived and I briefed them on what I believed had happened. Vinson sat there listening. At first his face was taut. Cold. Angry. But as he heard my charges against him, the anger paled into a look of desperation.

  He just looked like he’d made an important discovery. He’d just discovered he didn’t have a chance in the world against me.

  • • •

  We started in on Vinson. I let the boys use their fists. Vinson was a playboy. He looked pretty soft to me. I didn’t think he was going to be able to take much of it. I just asked the questions and kept my hands clean.

  There must be something that keeps thoroughbreds going when the odds are hopeless. Dogs, horses — and I was finding out, human beings.

  The three boys were tough. And they were willing. It was only a few minutes before Vinson’s nose was bloody. Somebody’s ring cut his lips. Pretty soon his nylon shirt was spattered and streaked with blood. His blood.

  I leaned over him, watching the pain flickering in his face. I hate crooks and killers. That’s why I was a cop. I have no mercy for them. They aren’t human.

  “This is just the start, Vinson. I warn you. All I want you to do is tell me how you killed George Flynn. You wanted him out of the way, didn’t you, Vinson? He had found out about your affair with his wife, hadn’t he? You had to kill him or be killed, didn’t you? Is that it, Vinson? Maybe George Flynn came looking for you. Is that the way it was? You could claim self-defense, Vinson.”

  Vinson’s eyes were glazing over. “Lawyer.”

  That was all he’d say. He was almost unconscious.

  I was ready to wade in on him myself. I didn’t know how many hours had gone by. I’d lost count. There was a knock on the door and I shambled over to open it. It was a plainclothes cop. He motioned me outside.

  “Hilligan is upstairs,” he whispered. “He wants to see you. He’s heard that you’ve got Larry Vinson down here and he’s raising hell.”

  I nodded. I looked back in the door and told my three butcher boys to take five. They stepped back and Vinson slid off the chair. They didn’t even go near him.

  Hilligan was white around the mouth. “Carter!” he yelled as I came through the door into his cluttered office. “What kind of orders do I have to give you to get you to obey them?”

  I played it innocent. Hurt. “Why, Chief, what have I done?”

  “The last thing I told you, Carter, was to stick out at the Flynn house. Soon as I got out of the drive, you left.”

  “I found something, Chief. You know me. When I get after something, I got to follow it through.”

  He looked doubtful. “What did you find?”

  I thought fast. Really, I’d been thinking over all I was going to say to him. But this was the ticklish part. You see, I wanted him to know that I’d found out that Larry Vinson had done it for Liza Flynn. But I didn’t want to implicate her so that maybe they might prove her an accessory.

  “I talked to Mrs. Flynn,” I said. I had to admit it. My voice sounded persuasive, even to me. Respectful, you know. And not too sure. But persuasive as all hell. “I kept after her about somebody who might have wanted to kill her husband. You know, she keeps insisting that the telephone call was not from a boy friend. It was her nephew, Jerry, who called her at the Lyons’ party to get her to have George Flynn come through with some money to pay off a gambling debt. So I figured maybe there was some other angle. I kept after her. I found out — and she didn’t want to tell me, Chief — that this man Larry Vinson had been coming around, pretending to visit George but all the time making a play for her on the side.”

  “You can’t make me believe Vinson killed her husband,” Hilligan said. “No matter what your wife tells when you catch her playing footsie with some guy that just won’t leave her alone — it takes two to make that game work. Nothing in God’s world withers any quicker than love that ain’t tended.”

  I shrugged. I could straighten that part later. “So maybe she tried to be friendly. I don’t know. Maybe Vinson misunderstood. Anyhow, one time he got pretty violent and threatened to kill Flynn unless he gave Liza a divorce — ”

  Hilligan looked disgusted. “Did she tell you a fairy story like that?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And you believed it?”

  “You’d believe it too, Chief, if you could just have seen her. All broken up, crying. She didn’t want to tell me. But I convinced her, she had to.”

  “Look, you’re wasting my time. Unless you have some proof that Vinson was anywhere near the scene
of the crime, you better release him. And you better pray to God there’s not a mark on him. His lawyer will get your job as sure as you’re standing there.”

  I knew I had to keep Hilligan away from Vinson. “He ain’t given me no alibi where he was.”

  Hilligan’s face was hard. “To hell with him. Get him out of here. Turn him loose.” He unwrapped the debris that Carl Dill had raked out of the basement heater at the Flynn house. “Here’s what we’re going to work on, what you should have been working on while you were out chasing around after a man who could buy ten women like Liza Flynn before breakfast — ”

  I was really getting worried. I was sweating plenty. “Look, Chief, it ain’t always what you can get that you want. Sometimes it’s what you can’t get that you want. That’s what it was with Vinson and Liza Flynn.”

  Hilligan was smiling with satisfaction over the articles on his desk. He looked up and snarled, “What the hell is the matter with you, Marty? What you got against Vinson? You sound like you’re afraid he didn’t do it. Now get him out of here and let’s get to work.”

  I leaned across the desk. I was resting my weight on the heels of my hands. They were so sweated that the desk was wet under my palms. I had to make him see it my way.

  “Will you do me one favor?”

  Hilligan had already turned back to his murder trinkets. He looked up again. Coldly.

  “Will you send a detail over to the Island Towers to search Vinson’s apartment? Will you let me hold him while you do that?”

  “Why?”

  “Will you do it?”

  “You’re asking for trouble, Marty. You’re wasting my time. I’d have to get a warrant — ”

  “I don’t care! Will you do it?”

  “What in hell is eating you? First it had to be a racketeer named Alonzo. A dope who wouldn’t breathe unless the syndicate told him to. Now it’s a rich young guy who has never had any serious trouble with dames in his life.”

  I licked my lips. My cottony lips. I knew I had to get that apartment searched. If a detail could be forced to find that bloody sap where I’d hidden it in Vinson’s apartment. I was in. To hell with Vinson’s confession then. To hell with that bunch of charred clothing on Hilligan’s desk. That bloody sap was all I needed.

  • • •

  It took fifteen minutes of hard talking. I had to review my record for Hilligan. My good record. The record that I was risking for the biggest thrill of all my life — possession of Liza.

  As soon as Hilligan fell for it and ordered a search detail sent over to the Island Towers, I rushed back down to the basement. I found things pretty much as I left them. The three cops were smoking over by one of the air shafts. Vinson was lying on the floor where I’d left him.

  I worked fast. I had to. One of the cops brought water and revived Larry Vinson.

  “Well, tell me how you did it, or the boys’ll start working on you again.”

  His bleary eyes looked me over. “Now you sound like what you are, Carter. A killer. A bloody rotten killer.”

  “Don’t talk yet, sweetheart,” I said. “Just save your breath. You’ll need it. You’re going to be begging me to let you tell me how you killed George Flynn.”

  I motioned to the cops to go ahead again.

  “God help you, Marty, if this don’t work,” one of the cops whispered at me as they once again started.

  I didn’t bother to look at him. The thuds I heard told me what was happening. I did glance at my watch. The search detail had been gone long enough to find that bloody sap in Vinson’s apartment. Hell, there weren’t that many rooms. God, suppose they were so stupid they couldn’t find that leaded weapon?

  I started talking to Vinson. Told him the whole story over and over. His head didn’t move. He just glared at me.

  I began to get sick. I was ready to ease up on him when there was a knock on the door. I threw it open. It was the same plainclothes messenger boy from Hilligan.

  “Chief Hilligan says they’ve found the murder weapon in Vinson’s apartment. It’s all right for you to hold him.”

  I wanted to yell with laughter. I turned around in the room. I walked up close to Vinson. “You hear that, Vinson? The bloody sap that you used on Flynn. Found in your apartment.”

  Misery chased the agony across Vinson’s eyes. I wasn’t feeling pity for Vinson now. I was doing what I had to do to get a killer’s confession. This was the fury I fed on. I was molding facts to fit. Why should a lovely like Liza Flynn be hooked for something a man like this schemed?

  And it was perfect. I knew it was perfect. The rough angles would only lend credence to the whole case. Drunken, vengeful Vinson had waylaid George Flynn, killed him — and calmly tried to blame Liza while a great man lay dead.

  I went over it all out loud for Vinson. I had to send for the sap and a cop to swear to him that it had been found in his apartment.

  Finally, he began to nod. He twisted and squirmed there on the floor. He arched his back, kicking. He started laughing. Kept nodding his head and kept laughing. And when we quit hitting him he didn’t even know we’d stopped.

  He just lay there on the floor with his arms stretched high, nodding his head, the laughter pouring out of him.

  Chapter 14

  THINGS weren’t quite as I’d expected they would be in Hilligan’s office. I told the boys to lock up Vinson. I stopped by the lavatory and washed my hands. I combed my hair, straightened my tie and tried to spruce up a little. But when I came into Hilligan’s office, I stopped grinning. The place was as cheerful as a morgue.

  Hilligan was sitting behind his desk. His face was pulled in a frown. You got to realize how wrong he’d been proved to know just how he looked. He looked ill. He looked old. The scraps of cloth and the clothing was spread out before him.

  He looked up and said come in. “I don’t get it, Marty. If I hadn’t found that sap in Vinson’s place where he’d hidden it, I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t even have believed Vinson’s signed confession.”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “Well, that’s the way it is, Chief.”

  Carl Dill was standing beside Hilligan’s desk. Dill was really miserable. Underthings and broken shoes were piled before him. The things that Dill had found. Promotion. Praise. Everything dear to Dill was in that pile of junk. And now that’s all it was. Just junk.

  “Lab tests prove that’s Flynn’s blood on the sap?” I asked Hilligan.

  “Sure, it’s his blood,” Hilligan said.

  “Okay. That don’t leave much, does it?” I was looking at Dill. I couldn’t hide my smile.

  “I don’t care where that thing was found!” Dill snapped. “That woman is guilty of murder. There’s the clothes she got blood on — ”

  “That ain’t what Vinson’s confession says,” I reminded him. “Vinson. Alone. All alone.”

  “To hell with it!” Dill yelled. His voice cracked. “She hated Flynn. The maid broke down and admitted that. And when I showed Mrs. Flynn some of these clothes, she went all to pieces.”

  “She’s been under great strain,” I said. “And with you hounding at her — ” I shrugged. Left it unfinished.

  • • •

  I went out and got in my coupe. I was dead tired. All I could think about was getting home to bed. I’d sleep and then I’d go to Liza Flynn. I’d tell her what I had done. I’d tell her I had done it for her. As I had promised.

  But it started while I was driving home. The sight of George Flynn’s bloody mask. The red-rimmed eyes of Larry Vinson. They were riding in that car with me.

  I couldn’t escape them. They followed me up the elevator, and they walked with me along the corridor to my room. Inside the room, I bolted the door. I turned around and there they were. Leering.

  I found a bottle. I poured myself a drink and it didn’t help. Nothing helped. I drank from the bottle and let the scalding alcohol pour down my throat. The room reeled about me. I dropped the bottle and fell across the bed.

  But I escap
ed them. I passed out.

  It was daylight when I woke up. Sunlight streamed through the window and burned into my eyes. I found the bottle where I had dropped it on the floor. It was empty.

  I looked around the room. I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stand to be alone. I ripped off my soiled, sweated clothes. Naked, I stumbled into the shower. I turned on the water. Full force. The cold power of it nearly knocked me over. But I began to feel better.

  This was hell. I knew that maybe all my life I was going to dread being alone like this. But I laughed.

  I wasn’t going to have to be alone. I was going to have Liza with me. Dear, deadly Liza.

  There was a newspaper lying face up in the corridor when I opened my door.

  I stood there staring down at it. There was a huge picture of Vinson. Looked like one the reporters must have swiped from Vinson’s smart living room. It showed him at his best. The headlines leaped up at me: BALDING LOTHARIO ADMITS KILLING FLYNN.

  The backs of my legs were weak. I wasn’t sure they were going to support me. I knew what I needed. I needed a drink — and Liza. My desire for her was a living fire in me.

  I started driving across Lafayette toward Liza’s home. I stopped and bought a fifth of whiskey. I had to sit under the wheel and take a drink before I started driving again. My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly get the cork out. The liquor sloshed out of the side of my mouth and dripped on my fresh shirt.

  Now I not only felt like hell, I began to stink.

  • • •

  Liza opened the front door herself. I looked at her. She was all one smooth long line from her dark curly hair to the point of her slippers. Already, I began to feel better. She was my kind of woman. There’d be no nonsense about our loving. She’d be wanting me as I wanted her. There’d be no holding back.

  She came into my arms. She hurled herself against me and her hands went about my shoulders. And I knew it was worth it. This was it. The big thrill. The excitement. A barrel over Niagara. A missing engine over Arctic wastes. Armed hoods jumping you in an alley. Hellish passion burning in black eyes. The kind of heat that generates heat. A fire that burns from fire and never consumes itself.