Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  Gus shifted his weight again. Beside him, Swede Carlson, his broad posterior propped solidly against the edge of the roll-top desk, listened stolidly as Gus listened with rising irritation to the county attorney, speaking officially and for publication to the representative of the Smithville Gazette, who stood, notebook in hand, taking it down. The county attorney was at the far end of the room, in front of the grimy barred window, hamming it just enough to make it look good in the picture the Gazette photographer was taking.

  “You can say we’ve got all the angles covered, Miss Maynard. There’s never been any organized crime in Smith County, and there’s not going to be.”

  Gus Blake was aware of a rasping in his left ear. It sounded like sandpaper taking rust off an iron grate. He heard it again and assorted it this time into words. “Get this dame out of here, Blake.”

  “You can say we’re all on the same team, here in Smith County, Miss Maynard. We’re putting everything we’ve got in this. Every law-enforcement officer in Smith County has his nose to the grindstone and his shoulder to the wheel.”

  The county attorney stopped, waited for the camera flash, and relaxed. He turned to Swede Carlson. “Anything you want to add, Chief?”

  “I guess that about covers it, Frank.”

  Hearing the faintly sardonic inflection, Gus remembered what Swede Carlson had said down in the basement about the Filipino boy Buzz Rodriguez now sitting out in the hall under guard, waiting to be thrown into the Smithville County Jail. The county attorney’s oblique glance across the room included both of them. He turned back to Connie Maynard. “One other thing. I want to make it clear that any rumors suggesting a scapegoat in this affair are false. The people of Smith County will have no doubt where they come from. And you can say Chief Carlson is in charge and giving the case his personal attention.”

  He picked his hat up off a chair. “I think that’s all I can do here tonight. Can I take you back to town, Miss Maynard?”

  “No, I’ve got my car, Mr. Hamilton,” Connie Maynard said. She closed her notebook and looked at Gus. “What now?” she was asking.

  Swede Carlson’s elbow dug into his ribs. It was as eloquent as his low-rasped: “Get that dame out of here.”

  Connie Maynard was still looking at him. “Go out and have a look at the kitchen and pantry, Con,” he said. “Woman’s angle. Bachelor Hall stuff.”

  Her green eyes sharpened.

  “Go on,” he said coolly. “And when you’re through you can run along home. The chief’ll take me in.”

  For a moment as the suspicion changed to anger in her eyes he thought she was refusing. The county attorney had his overcoat on and his hat in his hand. “Come on, Miss Maynard. I’ll show you the kitchen. I’d like to have another look at it myself. Attention to detail is what counts, in cases like this.”

  As the door closed a wintry smile passed through Chief Carlson’s bleak eyes. He said, “Never liked dames messin’ around where they don’t belong. Makes me nervous.” He moved his heavy, nerveless body off the edge of the desk. “Okay, fella. What do you know?”

  “I came out to ask you.”

  Gus looked around the room. It extended the length of the house, with two windows at the back and one at each side of the fireplace in the side wall. The back windows were barred with iron grids fixed solidly in the wall. The side windows were blocked, one with a heavy steel filing-cabinet, the other with an old-fashioned safe, open, and in careful order compared with the bulging pigeonholes of the desk. It was covered with gray powdery film where the police had dusted for fingerprints. The three electric bulbs that had gone off were strung down from the ceiling, one over the desk and two in opposite corners of the room.

  “He liked a lot of light.”

  Carlson nodded. “Had ’em all on tonight. On all over the place when the boys got here, ’cept those three. They came on when they put the fuse back.”

  He let himself down into the creaking swivel chair. Gus looked at the battered desk against the wall at the front end of the room. It was crowded with papers, the surface as well as the pigeonholes. A padlock in the middle front hung by a short chain. Behind the desk two long windows were sealed from the inside with brown-painted iron shutters. Across them and the strip of wall between them, an old pier glass, turned lengthwise over the desk, was tilted forward so that Doc Wernitz, sitting there, could glance up and see the whole room—the barred windows at the back end, the brown steel filing-cabinet and the open safe blocking the side windows.

  “Anything missing, Swede?”

  “No idea. You can say in the paper I’ve only given it a cursory glance, so far.”

  The chair creaked wretchedly as Carlson leaned back in it. He watched Gus cross the room to read the framed license on the dun-papered wall by the door. It acknowledged receipt of $3,500 and $1 by the Commissioners of Smith County, in return for which they authorized Paul M. Wernitz, operating as The Smith County Recreation Company, Inc., to distribute and offer for rent or lease recreational devices as defined in and in strict accordance with Chapter 482 of the Acts of 1944 and all regulations and amendments thereof. Gus glanced at the official signature at the bottom. It was always a little amusing to him to see Nelson Cadwallader Syms’s cramped signature authorizing the distribution and operation of the machines that Aunt Mamie, Mrs. Nelson Cadwallader Syms, girding up her ample loins, was hell-bent on banishing and destroying forever—along with one of the county’s most lucrative sources of cash income.

  There was nothing else in the room to look at except the brown linoleum on the floor, cracked in places and worn to the boards in front of the desk and safe, and two wooden armchairs. There was also a calendar topped with a seminude bit of November cheesecake and the compliments of the Smithville Consumers Coal Company. Gus stopped in front of it, studying it with concentrated interest. He was trying to figure out what Swede Carlson was sitting there watching him for. He knew Carlson was a shrewd cop, for all the slow-molasses and owl’s-grease technique, tough and canny, and honest within the pragmatic limits of his calling. At least he had never known him to be dishonest, and he had known him to go out of his way to help people when not doing it would have seemed the smarter tack. Like the Filipino boy waiting outside now—unless that was a little political warfare and Carlson was just seeing to it the county attorney wasn’t making the first arrest. Why, he wondered, was the Swede apparently so interested in him right now? He studied the lady on the calendar a moment longer and turned back.

  “Think this is an out-of-county job, Swede? A mob killing?”

  It had none of the marks of the two mob killings he’d covered in New York, nor any he’d ever heard about.

  Chief Carlson brought the swivel chair creaking back into position. “Might be,” he said. “And again it mightn’t. I don’t know much about it, Gus. Just got here a little before you did—been down in the other end of the county all evenin’ talkin’ to a guy that knifed his wife. Least that’s the way it looks. Looks like a mighty lot of trouble for anybody else to go to.”

  He got heavily to his feet. “Sort of looks the same way here. But I don’t know much about mob killin’s, ’cept what I see in the movies when I ain’t got my nose to the grindstone, or read about when I got my shoulder off the wheel. When I’m not carryin’ the ball, or keepin’ my eye on it, that is. Keeps a fella pretty busy, not bein’ an acrobat.”

  Gus grinned at him. “Why does this look the same?”

  Chief Carlson glanced bleakly off in the general direction of the kitchen. “Can’t say, Gus. Not considerin’ the people you’re runnin’ with here lately.”

  “Miss Maynard?” Gus looked at him intently, surprised. “She works on the paper, Swede.”

  “Sure she does.” Carlson agreed amiably. “Come to think of it, her old man owns it. Used to was, Gus, a fella could tell the Gazette somethin’ off the record and it was off the record. It’s different now. Tell the Gazette somethin’ and Miss Maynard hot-foots it home and spills it to J
ohn. Not that he didn’t know it already, mind you, but there were times he didn’t know anybody else did. And I’m not sayin’ she’s out here tonight because he sent her. He’s too smart for that.”

  Gus Blake’s gaze was still intent. “If you’re saying John Maynard’s mixed up with Wernitz—”

  “Okay, Gus. He’s your boss. Loyalty’s a fine thing. All I know is old Doc here gives him a quarter machine for Christmas. Doc Wernitz never gave presents just for fun. I’ll tell you somethin’, Gus. When Doc Wernitz told me he was pullin’ up stakes and gettin’ out of Smith County, he came personally round to headquarters and took me five miles out on a country road to do it. He didn’t want anybody else to know he was pullin’ out. He mentioned everybody in general and several in particular he didn’t want to know. John Maynard was one of ’em. Funny thing, Gus, you were another.”

  “Me?” Gus gave him an alerted glance. Then he shook his head. “Unless you mean the editor of the paper.”

  “No. Not the editor of the paper. He meant you, personally.”

  “You’re nuts, Swede. Or he was. I didn’t even know the guy. I made a point of not knowing him.” He grinned suddenly. “That’s why you’ve been watching me as if you thought I’d get in the safe?”

  “Sure, Gus. One of the reasons.”

  The bleak eyes rested steadily on him.

  “No, I’m goin’ to play ball with you, Gus. I’ll play ball with you if you’ll keep your mouth shut and keep that dame out of this. Hear? Maybe I’m a fool to do it, but I know damn well you didn’t slug Wernitz. Even if it—” Chief Carlson stopped a bare instant, and went on. “Even if it should look like you might have had some reason to.”

  Gus Blake looked silently at him. “Reason to?”

  “Okay, Gus. Keep your shirt on. I’m just a dumb country cop, but there’s some things I’d take my Bible oath on. Don’t crowd me, now, Gus. If you’re in a hole, I’ll do my best to get you out. But if I’m wrong—just get this, Gus— if I’m wrong, so help me God, I’ll hang you higher’n Absalom if I have to do it with my own hands. Now shut up and come on. I want to look around here, and I want to get at that kid out there before that fat-backed county attorney of John Maynard’s throws him in the can and everybody starts yellin’ race prejudice. He may be guilty and if he is he’s goin’ to hang, but till somebody proves it, it don’t make sense to me.”

  He kicked the swivel chair toward the desk. “Go on, Gus. Get goin’. I’m lockin’ this room up—nobody’s goin’ to paw around these papers ’cept me. Get all this straight, Gus. I been pushed around longer than I like it. Old Doc here was a sort of friend of mine. See?”

  “Sure,” Gus said. “I see.”

  He went over to the door, bewildered to a state of semi shock. Either Swede Carlson was drunk or he was, and he knew neither of them was. He had never spoken five consecutive words to the murdered man. He wouldn’t have recognized him, dead, down there in the cellar, any more than he would have recognized him alive on Main Street. He tried to think what the man really looked like, alive, without his head caved in and the black spidery veil covering his face. A vague image came into his mind of Doc Wernitz standing alone on the curb in front of the bank in Courthouse Square at noon one day. Whoever Gus was with had nudged his elbow and said, “That’s Doc Wernitz. You know. Hi, there, Doc. How’s tricks?” As the image cleared and focused Gus could see a sort of invisible little man, alone on the curb there, in straight gray topcoat, thick-lensed spectacles, neat-looking in a dry, ageless sort of way, who touched the brim of his gray hat and said, “No tricks.” Gus remembered that now, and remembered that hearing him say, “No tricks,” he’d turned to look at him again, thinking it was a pretty good answer to people who still went on saying, “How’s tricks,” and especially good in Wernitz’s line of business.

  He could not remember, now, who it was with him, and so far as he could recall that was the last time he’d seen Doc Wernitz until he saw him on the cellar floor, dead as a staved-in mackerel. As for any reason he himself could have— The big Swede was bats. He shrugged his shoulders as he crossed the room.

  Or am I bats myself? he wondered. He went out into the passage and stopped short. Something had happened. When he had-first got to the house, and again when he followed Carlson back up from the basement, he’d seen the young cop standing at the foot of the stairs by the Filipino boy who’d found the body. Buzz Rodriguez had been sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, moaning incoherently. Gus had recognized him as one of Wernitz’s service mechanics. He’d seen him in a dozen places servicing the fantastically elaborate machines, and sometimes seen him three and four times on a big night at the Sailing Club when the jack pots were falling, come to refill the window and tube of the machines. Something had happened now. The young cop was literally propping Rodriguez against the wall. His face was gray as ashes, his head wobbling forward. Gus turned to Carlson. He was pulling the door of Wernitz’s office shut and talking at the same time.

  “Get Mac in here to seal this door, Corbin. I’m leavin’ the lights on and I want him to sit right here till I get back. Step on it, hear?”

  He jerked around to the stairs. The young officer’s red face gleamed with sweat. He looked undecided from Carlson to the limp body on his hands.

  “Sure, Chief. But this guy’s drunk. I don’t know—”

  Carlson strode across the hall. “What do you mean? This boy don’t drink.” He picked Rodriguez’s slumping body up in one powerful arm, gave him one look, and swung around. “Good God, son, this boy’s not drunk, he’s half dead. Get an ambulance out here. There’s a phone in the kitchen—step on it, son. Out there.”

  He stuck a square forefinger off toward the back of the house. “Upstairs, Gus—get some blankets. This boy’s hurt bad. I told that bas—”

  Gus cleared the stairs. A door was open at the right. The room there was empty except for an iron folding cot in one corner, but two worn army blankets were folded across the foot. He grabbed them and ran back. Swede Carlson let the boy down on the floor and wrapped him up. His thick fingers moved gently over the back of the boy’s head.

  “He was slugged, too, down there in the basement. Like Wernitz.” His face was hard, his colorless eyes set. He got to his feet. “It’s a damn good thing I didn’t let ’em throw him in the can. He could ’a been dead by mornin’. You would have had a scapegoat.” He looked down at Rodriguez, scowling heavily, and went past him to the back of the house. “Mac,” he called. “Come in here.”

  Mac was a short, wiry detective in a double-breasted bright-blue suit.

  “Seal this door up, and watch it. Nobody goes in there. That means nobody.” Carlson motioned to the Philippine boy on the floor. “You know Buzz Rodriguez here. When the ambulance comes, Corbin’s to go in with him. I’m phoning Stryker to meet him at the hospital and stick with him—all the time. Maybe the kid knows who hit him. I don’t want any son of a bitch tellin’ me he’s dead before he can tell it.” He put his hand on the door and turned back. “Is there a doctor in Smithville we know don’t play the slot machines, Mac?”

  The detective went on sealing up the door of Doc Wernitz’s room. He shook his head. “Now you know none of them got time to fool around, Chief.” He sounded to Gus like a man stepping around a wounded polecat on a narrow path.

  If Carlson’s reply was audible it was not audible to Gus. He followed into the kitchen passage, where a door opened on the cellar stairs.

  “Watch him, Blake.” The detective in the bright-blue suit spoke cautiously without turning as Gus went by him. “Murders burn him up. Gets mean—meaner’n hell. Get the Maynard girl out of here, if I was you.”

  Gus quickened his step, and slowed down deliberately.

  He’d let Connie Maynard off one part of this murder case— the part down in the basement. He knew she was upset anyway. But if experience was what she wanted, she could get the rest of it the way other reporters did and as it came. He grinned witho
ut amusement. In front of the cellar door he stopped, listening. Swede Carlson was talking on the phone. “And get hold of Doctor Adams. Tell him it’s important, hear?”

  The phone went back into place. Carlson was talking to someone in the kitchen. The answer quietly disposed of Constance Maynard, for the time being.

  “Outside in her car, Chief. She don’t like kitchens, she says. Don’t know anything about ’em. She’s goin’ to wait for Blake.”

  Carlson came back into the passage. He gave Gus a bleak smile.

  “The lady’s—”

  He stopped as the phone rang. “Hold it, George. I’ll answer that.” Gus heard him say, “Hello,” and a silence, and then Carlson’s voice again, heavily ironic. “Tell Mr. Maynard Miss Maynard and Mr. Blake are both here. Both doin’ nicely. I’ll tell Miss Maynard her father’s worried about her.” He put the phone down and let his breath out slowly. “George, go tell Miss Maynard her father wants her to come home now. Tell her Mr. Blake says he can get along all right from here on without her.”